3. Nora
NORA
Valentina had one leg folded under her and the other stretched into the sink while she did her eyeliner like gravity didn’t apply to her.
I stood beside her at the bathroom counter trying to clip my earring in place without stabbing myself in the neck while steam from somebody’s shower downstairs drifted weakly through the vents.
The suite smelled like expensive hairspray, vanilla lotion, and champagne left too long in glasses overnight.
“You’re staring again,” Valentina said without looking away from the mirror.
“I’m not staring.”
“You absolutely are.”
I adjusted the black-and-gold mask sitting pushed up on my forehead for now. “I’m judging your life choices.”
“That’s different.”
“It’s really not.”
She leaned closer to the mirror, carefully dragging the eyeliner wing outward. “You should stop pretending you’re not interested.”
“I’m not interested.”
“In them.”
“I know what you meant.”
“Then answer correctly.”
I set the earring down before I actually stabbed myself. “I met them once.”
“And?”
“And that’s literally the entire sentence.”
Valetina finally looked over at me then, dark hair pinned half-up while the rest spilled over one bare shoulder.
Her uniform tonight was identical to mine, except somehow she wore hers like the outfit had been designed specifically for her.
The black satin hugged her curves, gold chains draping against her hips, while her mask framed those sharp brown eyes that saw too much when she let them.
“You wanna fuck them,” she said simply.
I almost dropped the earring anyway. “You cannot say things like that while I’m holding sharp objects.”
“You didn’t deny it.”
“Val.”
She grinned immediately. “Nora.”
I hated when she used my own tone against me.
The other girls in our suite had already headed downstairs nearly twenty minutes earlier, after spending an hour arguing over shoes and whether one of the guests was secretly an actor.
Dani and Sierra were nice enough, but both of them treated this whole weekend like spring break with billionaires.
Valentina treated it like fate. Which was worse.
“You know what your problem is?” she asked, going back to her eyeliner.
“You ask me that a lot.”
“You think wanting something automatically makes it dangerous.”
I snorted quietly. “Usually it does.”
“That is so deeply unhealthy.”
“That doesn’t make it wrong.”
She capped the eyeliner pen and twisted around carefully on the counter to face me fully. “Moreno kissed me against a hallway wall last night and I almost blacked out.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose immediately. “Please stop telling me things.”
“No.”
“You are incapable of boundaries.”
“I’m capable. I just don’t respect them with you.”
I pointed at her with the earring still in my hand. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. You don’t know these men.”
“And you don’t know yours.”
“They are not my men.”
She gave me a look. I stared back.
“Nora,” she said flatly.
“They’re not.”
“You literally came back to the suite last night looking dazed.”
“I was tired.”
“You walked into the bathroom at three in the morning and used face wash instead of toothpaste.”
I paused.
“That happened once,” I muttered.
She laughed loudly enough that I lunged for the bathroom door before she woke half the floor.
“Jesus Christ,” I hissed.
Still laughing, she lowered her voice slightly. “You like them.”
I focused on getting the earring clasped correctly this time. “I don’t know them enough to like them.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Unfortunately, I knew exactly what she meant because I had spent most of the day trying not to think about them and failing pretty spectacularly.
Training that morning had been shorter than Friday’s.
Mostly event flow updates, guest preference reminders, assigned sections.
I had listened carefully, memorized everything automatically, and still spent half the time replaying the night before.
Stryker watching me like he expected honesty and usually got lies instead. Blade noticing my feet hurt before I even admitted it to myself. Viper talking like every sentence had three meanings and he knew exactly which one would get under your skin fastest.
It was ridiculous. I had known them for maybe two hours total.
“You’re doing the thing,” Valentina said.
“What thing?”
“The thinking thing.”
“That tells me absolutely nothing.”
“You get this little line between your eyebrows when you’re trying to talk yourself out of something you already want.”
I immediately smoothed my expression.
She pointed triumphantly. “There. Exactly that.”
I ignored her and reached for my lipstick instead.
Valentina finally hopped down off the counter and stretched. “You know what I think?”
“You’re gonna tell me anyway.”
“I think you spent two years dating a rich guy who treated you like a responsible little girlfriend and now your brain short-circuits every time somebody actually makes you feel something.”
I uncapped the lipstick slower than necessary. “That’s dramatic.”
“It’s accurate.”
It wasn’t entirely inaccurate, which annoyed me more.
Ethan had been nice. Genuinely nice, actually.
He met me when I was seventeen and bartending illegally with a fake ID at a lounge his friends frequented.
He liked that I read books during slow shifts and corrected his grammar once without apologizing for it.
I liked that he never made me feel poor even though his parents had more money than I could conceptualize.
For two years, he paid for dinners, helped me get my GED, let Valentina and I practically live in his apartment whenever things got bad.
His parents paid his rent and tuition and credit cards without blinking, and by extension, they paid for us too.
I cared about him. I just never loved him.
And the sex had been fine in the same way microwaved chicken was technically food. Comfortable. Predictable. Forgettable.
Eventually, Ethan realized he wanted somebody who fit more easily into his world, and honestly, I had been relieved enough not to cry when we ended things.
“You’re comparing them to Ethan,” Valentina guessed immediately.
“I’m not.”
“You got the forehead line again.”
I glared at the mirror instead of her. She walked behind me toward the bedroom area, pausing in the doorway.
“Max told me Calder used to fight professionally.”
“That sounds safe and healthy.”
“It sounds hot.”
“You need standards.”
“I have standards. They’re just different than yours.”
She disappeared into the bedroom before I could answer. A second later her voice floated back out in rapid Spanish. “No te hagas la tonta, Nora. Quieres ir con ellos.”
Don’t play dumb, Nora. You want to go with them.
I automatically answered in Spanish too, quieter. “Querer algo no lo convierte en algo inteligente.”
Wanting something doesn’t make it smart.
Valentina laughed from the other room. “I’m twenty years old. I don’t care about smart, and at officially twenty-one neither should you.”
That dragged a reluctant smile out of me despite myself. When Valetina first came to the foster house at nine years old, she spoke almost entirely Spanish and exactly enough broken English to understand when Mrs. Grady was being cruel. Which was often.
Mrs. Grady liked calling Valentina stupid whenever she misunderstood instructions, liked forcing her to repeat English words until she cried from humiliation.
So I learned Spanish in secret from library books and television subtitles, because it was easier teaching Valentina quietly at night than watching another adult hurt her for something she couldn’t control.
Eventually English became easier for her than Spanish most days. But when she got emotional, excited, angry, or tired, Spanish always slipped back out first.
She came back into the bathroom wearing the full uniform, and immediately ruined any serious thought I was trying to have.
“Holy shit,” I muttered before I could stop myself.
Valentina grinned slowly. “I know.”
The black satin one piece fit her perfectly, hugging every dangerous curve while the gold details caught against her skin. Combined with the mask and heels, she looked less like a bottle girl and more like the kind of woman men bankrupted themselves over willingly.
“You look insane,” I told her.
“In a good way?”
“In a way that’s gonna get somebody arrested.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
I rolled my eyes and finally put my own lipstick on before she could keep going. She watched me through the mirror for a second, quieter now.
“You know you’re prettier than me in that outfit, right?”
I snorted immediately. “Absolutely not.”
“Nora.”
“You’re objectively insane.”
“You look like every rich man’s fantasy of a good girl with daddy issues.”
I choked on absolutely nothing. Valentina cackled.
“You cannot keep saying things like that.”
“Why? I’m right.”
I grabbed my mascara before throwing it at her head. She dodged easily.
“See? Violent. Hot. Very repressed. Men love that.”
“You’re exhausting.”
“You love me.”
Unfortunately true. She came closer then, adjusting the strap on my shoulder automatically where it had twisted slightly. Her expression softened in that rare way it only did with me.
“You deserve to have fun too, you know.”
I looked at her in the mirror.
“Not everything has to be survival all the time." she said quietly.
That landed harder than I wanted it to because she was right.
I had spent so many years organizing our lives down to the dollar and hour and backup plan, that it sometimes felt like I’d forgotten other people just did things.
Made bad choices. Wanted people. Slept with strangers because of attraction, instead of stability.
“You’re twenty,” I reminded her softly.
“So are you. For like…” She checked the time on her phone. “Another three hours.”