LOGINChapter 2 - The Reunion I could’ve lived without
Nova
The persistent knock on the door was what woke me up, it sounded a lot like a persistent tax collector at 7 a.m.
“If you don’t stop knocking, you won’t know peace in this life and the next”
Katie cried out while covering her head with her pillow, she was still sleeping and definitely hungover.
“It’s Jay”
Said a familiar deep voice on the other side of the door.
‘Fuck’ Katie and I groaned at the same time.
Jay is Lena’s dad's bodyguard, and the same man who popped up at random to deliver gifts, check in. Pick Lena up like a VIP and reminded us just by existing that Lena dad is rich enough to have a glorified baby sitter on his payroll.
And if Jay was here that means the car conveying us to Lena’s house is parked downstairs; I shot up from my bed, the sleep leaving my body instantly as I took on the mess around me.
Lena and Katie were still snoring, spread out like dead angels on their beds and the floor was littered with empty bottles of the drinks they indulged in after we got him yesternight, heels and sparkling crop tops.
We were supposed to be ready before jay’s arrival and should have left hours ago.
“Lena”
I shook her shoulders softly, she rolled over changing position.
“Lena”
I shook her harder and with more urgency “wake up, your dad’s party is today!”
“What the fuck Nova”
she muttered, eyes barely open, I walked over to the curtain and opened it allowing the brightness to come in, and I yanked the covers off both of them.
“Bitch give it back”
Katie whined and hugged her knees to her chest in fetal position.
“I hate you” Lena added still sleeping comfortably.
“Jay is downstairs”
I snapped and that seemed to get in Katie’s head since she sat up slowly.
“And. Today. Is. Your. Dad’s. Birthday Lena!”
I raised my voice while shaking her.
“The party you planned for him”
I added through clenched teeth, because they were acting like we weren’t about to miss the one event we had zero excuses to be late for.
Lena sat up like someone has just plugged in her sanity charger.
“I’ll never drink again in my life”
she whispered dramatically while clutching her head.
Lies.
“Hey Jay, we’re almost done”
Lena switched to her fake sweet voice, I couldn’t resist the eye roll. “Give us like thirty more minutes”
I gave her the deadliest look I could manage while picking used facial wipes from the floor.
“Internship starts on monday, I need to make good impression”
“I know, I know”
she muttered and the rest of the morning blurred into a chaotic dressing scene full of last minute packing, shared hair straighteners, and one of Lena’s emergency black coffee shots.
All the pent up tension disappeared like the steam of a boiling water as I gaped at the looming mansion.. point of correction; The private palace.
The sleek BMW that conveyed us gilded into a garage that looked like a luxury dealership and my jaw almost dislocated at how wide it opened. Bentleys, McLaren’s and more than one fucking rolls Royce!
Katie didn’t blink, her expression remained the same, being a wealthy heiress herself I’m sure this is a normal sight to her. But I was stunned, there is nothing normal about this, I’m definitely out of my league.
A private elevator took us to the upper floor where gold lined walls and glass sculptures made the hallway look like an extravagant art museum.
Lena walked ahead greeting familiar staff in tailored uniforms while Katie was still immersed in her phone like she didn’t just walk in a scene into a scene out of crazy rich Asians.
“Your dad is waiting in the dining hall” Jay said, pausing at a set of double doors for us to walk in.
“Daddddyyy” Lena squealed and ran in, Katie on her heels and I was last to step into the doors.
Everything in my body went still immediately and it’s not because of the giant chandeliers that looked like floating glasses of clouds in the room or the twelve foot long golden table that took up almost half of the room, I didn’t care about any of that.
Because at the head of the table with my best friend still in his arms sat the man from last night.
The man whose dick was in my mouth a few hours ago, the man who made me choke, moan, drip and swallow every drop of his cum like I’ve been trained for it.
Katie gave him a brief side hug and it was my turn; I stepped forward, my heart pounding, my cheeks already burning as I extended my hand for a polite handshake hoping he wouldn't recognize me.
But of course… he did.
He looked up from my outstretched hand slowly, his icy gray gaze were sharp and hungry as the locked onto mine and he smirked.
Fuck.
He finally took my hand in his warm, firm grip; the same hand that held my head in place last night, his thumb discreetly traced a circle on the back of my hand.
“Daddy, this is Nova. My roommate and Bestgirl”
Lena said brightly and I smiled in agreement like I wasn’t seconds away from having a stroke.
I’m Nova hart, scholarship student, straight A Virgin and the first blowjob I gave a man was to my best friend’s billonaire father and this is just the beginning.
CHAPTER FIFTY NINE : NALA POVI woke up not knowing where I was.That was the new normal apparently. Eyes open, body frozen, brain running a full threat assessment before it allowed itself to register that the ceiling was different from the room's ceiling, that the smell was different, that the bed beneath me was soft in a way that concrete floors and cots were not soft.Safe house. Ivin's.Right.I breathed.The breathing thing had become a whole process now cause it had to be deliberate and counted, the only breathing you did when your body had forgotten it was allowed to just breathe without checking first.Ivin was in the chair.Of course he was.Same chair energy as the hospital except this time he was awake, forearms on his knees, eyes on my face, and when he saw me register him he didn't move or speak or make it a thing. Just stayed exactly where he was and let me take my time coming back to the room.I appreciated that more than I had words for."Isla?" I said. First word out
CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHT NALA POVThe priest was a small man with kind eyes and he definitely looked like someone who had married people in stranger circumstances than this and had made peace with that being his life.He looked at me over his glasses when Ivin introduced us and said nothing about the bruising or the jacket or the fact that I was wearing clothes that weren't mine and had clearly not slept in something that felt like years."Are you here of your own free will?" he asked.I looked at Ivin standing beside me.Ivin looked back at me with that face."Yes," I said.The door opened behind us and Scar came in with Isla close to his side. She had Scar's jacket around her shoulders now, swimming in it, her dark hair loose and her eyes moving around the room with the careful attention of someone who had learned that new rooms required immediate assessment.She assessed the priest.The desk.The candles.Ivin.Me."What is happening?" she said in her careful broken English."We're get
CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN: NALA POVThe building was much more warmer than the car had been and much more than where we left had been, somehow that made me loosen up a bit.That was the first thing I registered walking through the door. It felt like a home with the way it was warm, quiet and smelling like old paper and candle wax with the peaceful stillness of a place that had absorbed a lot of significant moments and was prepared to absorb another one.A man in a collar nodded at Ivin like he had been expecting him and looked at me once without making anything of the bruising or the jacket that was swallowing over half of my frame or the fact that it was not even yet six in the morning as he moved to give us space.I looked around the room.Then I looked at Ivin."This isn't a restaurant," I said."I know.""You said after I eat.""I said the answer was coming after you eat. I didn't specify the order."I stared at him. "That is the most dishonest technically accurate thing you have ever s
CHAPTER FIFTY SIXIVIN POVShe was in my car, Nalayna is alive, breathing and wrapped in my security jacket with her shoulder against the window and her hand still holding the other girl's even in sleep because Nala, even a shadow of herself was still Nala, still holding onto whatever she had decided to hold onto with everything she had left.I drove because that was the only option besides pulling her into my arms and I did not look at her in the mirror anymore because every time I looked at her in the mirror something happened to my ability to operate a vehicle safely and I needed to operate a vehicle safely right now.Fifteen whole days.I kept landing on that number like a sore spot you kept pressing without meaning to, fifteen days of just existing while all my thoughts and action raveled around a girl i was supposed to ignore, a girl that should mean nothing to me but apparently my world is a meaningless and faded white and black, she happens to be the splash of high definition
CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE NALA POVI don't know how long I cried on him.But it was long enough that my legs stopped working properly and he was doing most of the holding up without making it a thing. It was Long enough that his shirt was wet and I had moved past caring about that somewhere around the third wave of it. Also long enough that the crying stopped being about any one specific thing and became about all of it at once, the room and the sessions and the fever and the gate and Ethan's voice and the man in the good coat and thirty minutes and all of it, every single day of it coming out in the grey morning air against Ivin's chest.He didn't say anything.Didn't shush me or pat my back in that performative way people patted backs when they were uncomfortable with crying and wanted it to stop. He just held on to me with both arms, they were solid and warm and completely still the way only Ivin could be still, like he had decided this was where he was and nothing was moving him from
CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR IVIN POV (contd)Relief was too small a word for something that started in my chest and moved outward until I could feel it in my hands. Relief was what you felt when you found a lost object. This was something categorically different from that and I was standing in a room in a port warehouse at 5am finally looking at it directly.I was in love with her.Not in the general direction of love. Not the early proximity of it. Fully, completely, irrevocably in love with a stubborn sassy reckless redheaded woman who had walked into my life as a debt and dismantled every wall I had built since I was nineteen years old and hadn't even noticed she was doing it.I was going to have to sit with that.Later.Right now I crossed the room and crouched in front of her and put my hands on her face as carefully as I had ever put my hands on anything in my life and she closed her eyes and leaned into my palms and the sound that came out of her was so small and so completely wrecked







