Never Thought I’d End Up Here

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

We’re being attacked.

They’re the first words to pop into my head when I bolt upright, squinting into the dim light. My heart slams furiously against my chest as I rub my eyes, muscles bunched, searching for the source of the noise. Someone had been gasping. No, crying. Maybe a thief had broken in during the middle of the night—

But the hotel room appears undisturbed. The door is closed, the velvet curtains half-drawn over the city lights outside. The faint blue glow of the alarm clock blinks from the bedside table: 3:42 a.m. I look around more slowly, waiting for my heart to settle down again.

And then I spot Cyrus on the other bed. Only the corner of the blanket is draped over his stomach, his long legs hanging over the side, and his eyes are squeezed tight, as if in pain. A broken, helpless sound escapes his lips.

“No …” he murmurs. “No—please—”

“Cyrus?” I whisper. Wide awake now, I hop off the bed and lower myself down by his side, my mouth dry. He’s lost in whatever nightmare he’s having. A sliver of moonlight creeps in past the curtains, illuminating the sheen of sweat on his forehead. He’s never looked so helpless before, so afraid, not even when he thought the plane was going down. “Cyrus,” I say, louder, touching his shoulder.

He flinches, inhaling sharply like someone breaking through the currents right before they’re about to drown, his eyes wide and disoriented. Then they find my face, and something in him changes. Goes quiet.

“Are you okay?” I ask, flicking on the night-light.

“Yes,” he whispers, pulling himself up against the pillows, his knees drawn to his chest. His hair is all mussed, so long that it falls like black silk over his brows. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“That’s fine,” I say, smoothing out my nightgown. Under normal circumstances, I would be more self-conscious about waking up in the middle of the night with a boy in his hotel room, but there’s something about this moment that’s safe, private—I feel like I could say or do anything right now and he wouldn’t judge me for it. I stand up and grab one of the bottles of water from the table, twisting the cap for him before holding it out. “Here.”

He accepts it gladly, and I watch the movement in his throat as he tips his head back and drinks.

“Do you have them often?” I ask, sitting down on his bed. There’s only just enough room for me to avoid brushing against his legs when I turn around to face him. “The nightmares?”

“More often than I’d prefer,” he says, quiet. His hands tremble faintly as he screws the cap back on. “I’m actually surprised Oliver hasn’t said anything about it. I must have woken him up a bunch of times.”

“I had no idea,” I tell him.

And I should really just stop there, leave it at that. I should probably even be delighted to see him suffering. But it hurts, watching him like this, his fears flooding in over his head. If I were a soldier, I would be the very first to be dismissed from the front lines or killed on the spot for my weakness, because who else would run across the battlefield to their enemy, offering up bandages instead of bullets?

“You know,” I say slowly, “I get nightmares a lot too. Really vivid ones. I don’t think I ever scream out or anything, but that’s because I’m usually frozen inside them—like I can’t move or speak. I can only wait until I wake up. When I was younger, if I had a really bad nightmare, I’d turn on all the lights in my bedroom and drink a giant glass of warm water, and then I would sing to myself under my breath. Not, like, a lullaby. But something really annoying and ridiculous, like an advertising jingle.”

“An advertising jingle?” he repeats with a soft laugh, resting his cheek against his arm.

“The more obnoxious the better,” I confirm, hating how much the sound of his laughter pleases me. “That way, the only thing I can hear is the jingle stuck on loop selling me crunchy chocolate cereal, instead of my own thoughts.”

“I should give it a try sometime, then,” he says.

“You should. Or, if that fails, you can call me,” I say before I can stop myself. God help me. The desire to comfort him is so much stronger than the desire to destroy him now . “And I’ll sing advertising jingles to you until they’re permanently stuck in your head. I have a beautiful singing voice, you know. Very throaty.”

His smile is careful, as if he doesn’t want to take the offer too seriously. “Is that a threat?”

“It’s a promise.” I meet his surprised gaze, hold it, my heart picking up its pace inside my chest like it’s in a hurry to go somewhere. He’s the first to look away, the red flush of his neck visible even in the mellow light.

“I doubt you understand what you’d be signing up for here,” he says quietly. “It takes forever for me to go back to sleep once I’ve woken from a bad dream. A lot of the time, I lie wide awake until morning, just—thinking. Thinking about things I shouldn’t.”

“Like?”

He hesitates. Starts to say something. Stops again before it can get past his lips. “Mostly, the things I regret,” he tells me. “The things I should have done differently, or shouldn’t have said. Terrible mistakes I’ve made. The measures I could have taken to prevent my parents from splitting—”

“Your parents split?” I ask, shock rippling through me. I had seen them together a few times at school, when they were coming to pick Cyrus up or attend the annual school concert or one of his piano recitals. I’d never spoken to either of them, but even from afar, they seemed the perfect match. His mother was beautiful in that elegant, timeless way that could have made her a star in another age. His father was popular among the teachers, with a booming voice and laugh and a rotation of tailored suits. They seemed happy , holding hands as they strolled across the football field, down the wide corridors where the preschoolers’ fingerprint art was on display.

“It happened right after you left,” Cyrus explains, the words coming slowly, like he’s piecing them together out loud for the very first time. “The official split, at least. They’d been fighting long before that. That was actually why I started to get into reading. Whenever I heard their voices rise, I’d quickly grab a book and go to my room and it would help me escape into this other world where I could pretend to be someone else.

“But even then, even though I hated it when they were mad at each other, it was like—you know how people say that growing up, they thought it was normal to have candy for breakfast, or to skip school whenever it rained, because that’s simply what their family did, and they had no other point of reference? I thought it was normal for your parents to fight at home almost every night. For them to throw things and slam doors and scream at each other for hours on end. I asked my dad about it once, and he said that my mom was only angry at him because she loved him. Because it meant that she cared. He said that was the secret to a relationship: You had to keep things interesting, even if that meant getting on their nerves. So maybe I should’ve seen it coming, but I didn’t—when they told me it wasn’t working out anymore, I wasn’t even sad at first. I was purely stunned.” He scoffs, shaking his head. “Stupid, right?”

“No. You couldn’t have seen it coming,” I say firmly, my chest aching for him. “You were so young.”

His eyes are exquisitely dark, desolate. “But I keep thinking that if only I had—I don’t know, maybe everything would have turned out better. I wouldn’t have made things so difficult for them. They argued about me more than they argued about any other topic. Whether I should be spending more time practicing piano, or if I was spending too much time on the piano. Whether I should sign up for summer camp or stay home, and if I did, then who was going to cook for me and look after me. Whether I should pick Chinese or French as my language elective. And it might seem ridiculous, but part of the reason why I want to get into Stanford so badly is because that was one of the only things they ever agreed on. It meant something to them. I still remember sitting with them on the couch together one night, and it was so … unusually peaceful. They were both in a good mood for once, and my dad was holding my mom’s hand, and we were sharing these bowls of roasted sunflower seeds, and they started talking about the future … They met at Stanford, you know that?”

I shake my head, wide-eyed. “No. I didn’t.”

“Yeah, when they first started dating, my mom was getting her PhD—her mentor at the time was Dr. Linda Shen, who was basically my mom’s idol—and my dad was getting his master’s degree because he’d taken some time off from his studies to work. So they were both telling me about it, how beautiful the campus was, the places they’d go to get lunch together, and my dad said he thought Stanford would be perfect for me. It was close to home, and familiar, and it’d be, like, this family thing, if we all went there …”

That’s why. Now it all makes perfect, painful sense. The determined glint in his eyes whenever he spoke about Stanford, the strange intensity in his voice, even his obsession with getting a recommendation letter from my aunt. It’s not just about his dreams for the future—it’s his dreams for his family.

“I keep imagining it,” Cyrus says, swallowing. “I imagine calling my parents to tell them I was accepted, that Dr. Linda Shen herself wants me at Stanford, and they’re both so excited about it that they start talking to each other again, and maybe they remember how and why they fell in love in the first place. Maybe then … Maybe I could fix it.”

“Cyrus, that’s—” My voice catches, and for some reason, I feel like I could cry. “It’s not up to you to fix your parents’ marriage.”

“But I was the one who ruined it in the first place.” His expression remains even, almost calm, yet his fingers tighten into a fist. “They were happy, before they had me. Sometimes,” he says, very quiet, “I think I ruin everything I touch.”

Yes, you do , the vindictive voice in my head whispers, but it’s more distant than ever, as if sounding from a thousand miles away. I grab his hand, unfurling his fist, and tug it toward me, letting it rest on my exposed knee, right where the hem of my silk nightgown ends. His fingertips are so warm that the heat spreads upward through me, curling inside my ribs. My skin itches pleasantly with the sensation, and I have to steady myself for a moment before speaking. “See?” I say, soft. “You haven’t ruined me.”

He stares down at the place where his hand burns against my leg like he’s still deep in a dream, then up at me. “Haven’t I?” he whispers.

Part of me wants to say that he has. That my life was ruined once by him when I was expelled from my old school, and again, by myself, when I gave up modeling. It’s the same part of me that was convinced my life was already over, destroyed beyond repair. That while everyone else was moving on, I was moving in circles. But now, alone in this room with him, the night breeze sighing against the windows, the sweet song of crickets filling the air, the press of his palm like a salve, nothing feels entirely ruined. How could it be, if I ended up here?

“Don’t overestimate yourself, Cyrus,” I tell him with a faint smile, as if everything inside me hasn’t reoriented itself to his touch. His thumb shifts, just slightly, probably by accident, and it sends a shock of electricity coursing through my veins. I lick my lips. My mouth is dry, my throat tight with all the things I want, and suddenly I’m scared that I’ve gone too far with this little revenge plan of mine, that everything’s slipping out of my control. I’d wanted his heart, but I hadn’t wanted to give away mine.

I stand up. Turn around. “I should head back to my room—”

“Wait,” he says, a hitch in his voice. “Don’t go.”

I whirl back toward him in surprise.

“You … You might wake people up if you leave now,” he says. “You can keep sleeping on the other bed until early morning and slip out before the group starts heading down for breakfast. Oliver won’t be back until then anyway.”

“Is that the real reason?” I ask him.

He goes still, alarm flashing in and out of his eyes. “What?”

“Are you really scared of waking people up? Or are you just scared of sleeping alone after a nightmare?”

“Maybe,” he says, more easily than I would’ve expected.

I pretend to think it over, pretend I’m not giddy as I hop back onto the bed, drawing the covers up to my chest. But I can no longer pretend that I don’t have any feelings for Cyrus Sui.

***

“What. The. Hell.”

I nearly fall out of bed at the sudden slam of the door, the familiar voice that shouldn’t be here. Or wait, no, I shouldn’t be here. This isn’t my hotel room. This isn’t even my bed . I look up, my disorientation fading, blankets tumbling down around me, and find Oliver standing just a few feet away. His bag hangs off his shoulder, his jacket still on, his brows lifted so high they’re at risk of leaving his forehead. On the other bed, Cyrus is also slowly blinking awake, rubbing his eyes.

“Wow,” Oliver says, apparently unable to utter anything except exclamatory sounds. “Wow, wow, wow. Wow.”

“Okay,” I say, checking to make sure that the straps of my nightgown haven’t slipped down my shoulders before sitting up. “This isn’t how it—”

“Wow.”

“Have you recovered yet?” I demand.

“Nope. I may never recover,” Oliver says. “I was not prepared to come back to this.”

“We were just looking over photos,” I say as righteously as I can while very much aware that this scene looks like it belongs to the front page of a tabloid.

Oliver’s brows climb up even higher. “While you were asleep?”

“Before we fell asleep. Wang Laoshi was outside and I was stuck here, so Cyrus gave me his bed to take a nap …” I clear my throat, unable to look at Cyrus without reliving everything from last night, the quiet intimacy of the darkness and the vulnerability in his voice and the odd beat of my heart. “We didn’t expect you to be back so early.”

“I didn’t expect to be back so early either,” Oliver says, shrugging off his bag and leather jacket in one movement, “but it appears my dad’s new driver is a street racer. Or just someone who doesn’t believe in traffic lights.”

“What event did you have to attend anyway?” I ask, hoping to divert his attention from the fact that I’m now climbing slowly out of the bed. “Did your family open up another winery?”

“No, this was for his client’s new art gallery. My dad wanted me there to charm all the guests. Well, supposedly , but the old man gets bored out of his mind at these things so I think he just wanted some company— Hang on.” He narrows his eyes. “Don’t change the subject. What were you two doing the whole night?”

“ Nothing. I told you, we were looking at photos, and then we fell asleep. The end.” I nudge one of the slippers on the floor toward me with my toe. “Can you just let me go back to my room and act like this never happened?”

“I’ll let you go back to your room,” Oliver says. “But you should know that I’m not a good actor.”

***

True to his warning, Oliver maintains a thoroughly scandalized expression all throughout the morning, from when we bump into each other again at the breakfast buffet to when everyone regroups in the hotel lobby to when we pile into the bus for our next stop.

“Can you quit looking at me like that?” I ask, crossing my legs in the seat beside him.

He drops the scandalized face but only to peer over at me with unabashed curiosity. “You’re not sitting with Cyrus?”

“No,” I say. “I thought I’d talk to you.” Ever since I returned to my own room, where Daisy was waiting, wide-eyed and looking ready to burst with questions, I’ve spent the whole morning untangling my feelings in the daylight. And though I can’t guess at what might be going through Cyrus’s head after last night, I can be certain, at least, of what I want.

Oliver flashes me a grin. “And whatever did I do to deserve this honor?”

“I’m going to ask you a very obnoxious question,” I begin as the bus rumbles onto the road. “But I need you to answer me honestly.”

“Sure. Honesty is one of my best traits,” Oliver says. “Along with my good looks, natural charisma, impeccable style, shiny hair, and melodic voice, of course.”

“Okay, no comments on any of that—”

“Because there’s no need to comment on what’s objectively true,” Oliver says, nodding in understanding. “I get it.”

Just ask him. Say it. I take a deep breath and choose the most direct route possible: “Do you like me, Oliver?”

He pauses. Stares at me for what might be a full minute. “ Like you, as in a let’s-make-out way?”

“Not really the wording I would’ve chosen, but yeah. Romantically. Not just as friends.”

Another pause. His voice is light when he asks: “Do you want me to like you?” As if he’s asking whether I want him to grab me a soda.

“I mean … it would be nice if you liked me as a friend, because despite my initial reservations, I like you like that a lot,” I say carefully, and brace myself for the fallout, my fingers gripping the seat belt. Maybe he’ll ask me to go sit somewhere else on the bus. Or maybe he’ll just spend the rest of the ride in sullen silence and never speak to me again, because what’s the point, if I don’t see him as a potential boyfriend?

But the warmth doesn’t fade from his eyes. “If you don’t want me to like you in that way, then I won’t.”

“Seriously?” I twist around in my seat to face him, my relief mingling with surprise. “How does that even work? You can’t just switch your feelings on and off. You don’t decide to like someone; you simply do.”

“What can I say? It’s a tough skill to master, but I’ve mastered it,” he says with a shrug. “This may be very hard to believe, seeing how totally cool and in control of my emotions I am now, but I used to fall in love way too easily. Like, I would fall in love with the attendant who helped add ice to my drink in the airport lounge. I’d fall for a stranger who held the door open for me once, or a guy in my class because he waved at me in the halls, or a cute girl handing out flyers for the local animal shelter, or a waiter who swatted a fly away from my meal and smiled when our eyes met. And I would act on it. I’d ask for their number and buy them flowers—I didn’t have any game like I do now, just stupid sincerity.” He looks away, out at the blurred sweep of trees, and turns quiet.

“But they never loved me back, and you kind of get sick of the whole unrequited love thing after a while, you feel me? There are only so many angsty, depressing love songs you can listen to before you start feeling a bit pathetic. So I got my shit together and stopped falling so deep that I can’t help myself up when I need to. I still have my little crushes because it keeps things interesting, but I don’t actually, like, like anyone until I’m certain they’ll like me too. And I was never certain with you.”

My heart pinches. Even though this is the confirmation I was after, I still can’t help imagining him years ago, offering up his heart on open palms to people who dropped it or tossed it aside.

“What about the prince?” I ask.

“Right, yeah. That guy . ” Oliver glances back over at me and makes an unimpressed face. “ Forgot to mention the part where he was after my dad’s money because he’d spent all his royal savings on a massive emu farm, and then he got bitten by an emu and decided he wanted nothing to do with them anymore. Not really what I’d consider boyfriend material, let alone husband material. Plus, he wasn’t even that hot.”

I wrinkle my nose. “You can do so much better.”

For the first time, I think I glimpse the self-doubt underneath the lacquer of his brash confidence, the active effort it requires to smile all the time, to keep everything light and make everyone laugh. “We’ll see. But hey,” he says, holding up three fingers like he’s making an oath, “I promise I won’t fall for you. You’re, like, a bro. Like, a very pretty bro, who I’m into platonically, and whose house I might crash at in the future, once you’re married and I’m named the most eligible bachelor of the century.”

“I would love that,” I tell him earnestly, bumping his shoulder with mine. “I don’t have any other guy friends. You’ll be the only one.”

“Damn, I feel special, then. But, like, really? You have no other guy friends?”

“None,” I admit. Before, when I wasn’t pretty, it was like I didn’t even exist to guys, unless it was as the punch line of all their cruel jokes. And then once I turned pretty, I was only a girl to them, apparently too dumb and too different to join in on their important conversations. They would discuss my body openly like it was a debate topic and feign interest just to withdraw it the second it became clear I wasn’t willing to sleep with them, and even when we did hang out, their eyes never stayed on my face. The nicer ones got girlfriends, and their girlfriends warned them to keep their distance from me, until our every exchange felt monitored, morally wrong somehow, and it just wasn’t worth the trouble anymore. Cyrus wasn’t like the rest of them, but he was never a friend to begin with.

As if reading my mind, Oliver asks, “What about Cyrus? Or— Oh . ” His brows rise. “I’m guessing you wouldn’t have any problems with him liking you in a let’s-make-out way.”

“Okay, still not warming up to that phrase. But it’s … complicated between us,” I say, which feels like a severe understatement. “We have a long history. I just didn’t want to accidentally lead you on.”

“Wow,” he says, blowing out a breath.

“Wow, what?”

“I have to admit, you’re kind of different from what I thought.” He peers over at me. “Like, you’re hot, obviously, but you’re also thoughtful and brave and mature and nice even when you don’t need to be, which is, like, actually really rare these days. And I swear I’m not just saying that. Cyrus is a lucky guy.”

“Oh shush,” I say, like this might not be one of the kindest arrangements of words anyone has ever gifted me with. Maybe I can be all those things , a new, hopeful voice inside me whispers. Maybe I already am. Maybe I don’t have to be the outcast, or the model—I can just focus on being a good person surrounded by other good people in beautiful places, and that’s more than enough.

“Yes, sure thing,” Oliver says, then winks at me. “Well, you can rest assured there’s no boy drama here.” He raises a fist like he’s making an invisible toast. “To friendship.”

I have to laugh as I mimic the gesture, clinking my fake champagne glass against his, my chest warm with affection. “To friendship.”