LOGIN_Freya’s POV_“I can be lame for you.”I stared at him.“That,” I said slowly, “is the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever said to me.”“Probably.” He nodded, completely unbothered.“It doesn’t even make sense.”“It makes complete sense.”“It really doesn’t.”“You like things that are real.” He shrugged. “I’m offering real. The lame version, specifically, since the other version seems to be scaring you.”“Nothing scares me.” I said immediately.“Sure.” He said.I hated that he said it like that. Quiet and easy and not even slightly argumentative, like he had filed my response under noted but incorrect and moved on.I picked up my drink.He smiled the crooked smile.I looked away first.The problem with Maxine was that he was very good at existing in a room.Not in the loud way. Not in the way that demanded attention and performed for it. He just settled into whatever space he occupied like he had always been there, and people responded to it without knowing why. Within twenty minute
_Freya’s POV_The next day, I remembered what day it was.And I almost didn’t go.I stood in my kitchen on Saturday morning with the invitation in my hand and ran through the list of reasons not to. Traffic. The venue was forty minutes away. I had class I could theoretically be attending. My shoes would hurt. There would be a seating chart and I would be seated next to someone’s divorced uncle named Gerald.Then I thought about my cousin’s face if I wasn’t there, and I put the invitation down and went to get dressed.I wanted to be clear that I was not dressing for my mother. I was dressing for myself, in the sense that I was a person who had standards. The fact that I spent forty-five minutes on my makeup and selected the green dress specifically because it was the most difficult thing to find fault with, structured, elegant, exactly the right length, was entirely coincidental.“You look incredible,” Danica said, through the phone, we were on a video call while I was doing my eyeline
_Author’s POV_Freya had been standing outside for eleven minutes. “He was just—” she said into her phone. “Mm,” said Danica, from what sounded like the bottom of a very comfortable duvet. “You’re not listening.” “I’m listening,” Danica said, in the voice of someone who was not listening. Of course. She’s woken up much later and saw Freya’s incoming call. Thankfully, she wasn’t that drunk out of her mind.“Gold dress. Card. Man. Bad idea.” “I didn’t say bad idea.” “You didn’t have to. You called me at midnight.” Freya’s cab was eight minutes away. Then six. Then, inexplicably, nine. She paced a short strip of pavement in heels that had stopped being shoes twenty minutes ago and become a personal vendetta. Cold made itself known a few minutes later as well, sipping through the supposed beautiful dress. “I just think,” she started. “Freya.” “What?” “Go home,” Danica said kindly, and hung up. And before she could say a word, she heard him before she saw him. Not footsteps ex
_Author’s POV_Freya had been gone eleven minutes.She knew because guilt had made her start counting somewhere around minute four, when her cousin’s story showed no signs of ending and her mind kept drifting back to the booth where she had left a pregnant, newly composed, suspiciously relaxed Danica with two empty glasses and no supervision.She ended the call and turned around, unable to take it anymore.But to her surprise, the booth was empty.Her heart lurched before she spotted Danica near the exit, Eden Cross beside her with his hand at her back. Freya exhaled slowly, but then she panicked because Eden had found them.It meant the driver had talked, which meant Danica was going to have feelings about that tomorrow.But tomorrow was tomorrow.Freya smoothed the front of her dress and started navigating back through the crowd toward the bar to settle their tab before leaving.She was almost there when she felt it.A hand. On her arm. It wasn’t accidental, not the casual brush of
_Danica’s POV_ Freya called on a Saturday evening with a specific tone in her voice. I knew that tone. It was the one she used when she had already decided something and was calling to inform me rather than consult me. It sat somewhere between excited and completely unreasonable and it had gotten us into trouble more times than I could count going back to when we were fifteen.Also, it was one of the reasons I got myself in this mess of a marriage because of pregnancy. “Don’t say no before I finish.” She said. “That’s never a good start.” “Danica.” “Fine. Talk.” “There’s this club.” She began. “No.” “I said don’t say no before I finish.” I switched the phone to my other ear and looked down at the sketch I had been working on. A half finished face on cartridge paper, eyes almost right but not quite. I had been at it for an hour and the eyes were still refusing to cooperate. “Freya I’m pregnant.” I said. “I can’t go to a club.” “You can go anywhere you want. You just can’t d
_Eden’s POV_Something was different. I noticed it the way I noticed most things, quietly, at the edges, without making it the center of anything. A shift in the atmosphere of the house that I couldn’t immediately name but couldn’t ignore either. Danica had stopped. Not stopped as in gone, or unwell, or anything I needed to act on. She was there. I heard her in the mornings. I saw her occasionally at breakfast when our schedules overlapped. She was eating properly, moving carefully, doing everything she was supposed to do. She had just… stopped doing the other things. She wasn’t waiting anymore. I understood this without being able to point to a single specific evidence. It was the absence of something rather than the presence. The light under her door that used to stay on late was now off by ten. The way she used to look up when I walked into a room was now simply not happening. She looked up, registered me, and looked back at whatever she was doing with the same expression she’
_Author’s POV_Eden’s hand never left her arm.He guided her through the crowd with the kind of quiet authority that made people move without being asked. Nobody stopped him. Nobody stepped in his path. They just shifted, almost instinctively, creating space where there had been none.Danica stayed
_Author’s POV_The party was already in full swing by the time the car pulled up outside the venue.Danica had spent the better part of an hour convincing herself this was a terrible idea. She had gone back and forth, sitting in her room, staring at the ceiling. But every time she tried to talk her
_Danica’s POV_I couldn’t move.My legs refused to carry me toward the exit even though every part of me was screaming to leave. To walk out before anyone could see the embarrassment written all over my face. Before my eyes did something I would regret.I stood there, staring at the elevator doors
_Danica’s POV_When I woke up again later that evening, Evelyn informed me of Eden’s impending arrival. She’d carefully explained that his arrival would be in about 4 hours.I hated to admit it, but I looked forward to seeing him even after everything that happened.Maybe he’d explain, maybe he’d t







