Chapter 11
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
HARPER
I dreamt you were on Dateline last night, weird, you know the one where the women snap?
That one—thank God you never had a knife fetish or I’d be worried—you don’t right?
Have a knife fetish? I swear it’s not cheating if you’re in a different country!
I mean I don’t pay taxes in France, ergo, do I really exist there?
But, again, no knives, right? Please don’t leave me on read.
–Stuart the exchange student
I t’s not starting out great—this date.
First off, Ezra has been non-existent since the last failed one. Did I get drunk and maybe flirt with the idea of kissing him? Yeah. Did I also wake up twice thinking he was in bed with me, only to find myself spooning my pillow like it owed me money? Yes, ma’am.
My feelings have never been more confusing.
Straddling him did not help. It just made him worse—more infuriating, more unreadable.
Plus, he’d punched that guy like a knight in shining armor I’d always sworn I didn’t want.
Did he have to smack me in the hormonal bloodstream with that much testosterone?
Was it really necessary to smell that good while doing it?
And then he barely texted this week. Just one message saying Vex , the actor , would be on time at the restaurant and that he’d sent over my interview questions.
When I’d asked what he was doing, he mentioned visiting family.
Something about a eulogy. Then, totally deadpan, he’d asked if it was hard being a woman and why I torture myself at the salon. Weird.
I glance at my phone again. Still nothing but a passive-aggressive thumbs-up emoji from earlier.
What did I expect? For him to rush in and stop the date?
For him to confess his love in the middle of the street?
How would I even react? The grey area of our friendship was starting to haunt me, and I didn’t know if it was the dates doing it…
or if it was me finally cracking. Maybe I’d just gotten tired of pretending I didn’t want someone safe.
Someone who knew me well enough to order my food without asking.
I set my phone down. Five minutes late. Vex the actor was fashionably five minutes late.
Whatever. I pasted on a smile and lifted my huckleberry martini?—
And then I felt it.
A shift in the air. The kind of subtle buzz you get before a summer storm, or before something very, very bad happens in a horror movie.
I looked up?—
Hazel eyes. Gorgeous hazel eyes, framed by criminally long lashes. Messy, designer-wavy hair, gold threads through dark strands like the chaos was planned. Sharp cheekbones. Smirk that could start wars. Black peacoat over a tan shirt, dark jeans, sneakers—hell, even the shoelaces looked smug.
He wasn’t just stunning. He was beautiful.
He was perfect.
He was?—
Holy shit on a stick.
He was Ezra.
My Ezra.
The martini glass slipped from my fingers, shattering. Ice cubes and pink liquid bled across the floor, one traitorous cube sliding perfectly into my dress, right against my nipple—hello, front-row seats to my dignity dying.
It was the dress. The dress was making me react. Not Ezra. Nope. Not Vex. Definitely not Vexra.
Oh god, he was walking toward me.
Every head turned. I swear at least two marriages ended right there from the way women looked at him. A waiter and a waitress practically body-checked each other to get to our table. The bartender was already making me a replacement martini. I forgot how to breathe.
And then—like it was the most natural thing in the world—he stopped in front of me, cupped my face with his warm, capable hands, and gently closed my hanging jaw.
“You look beautiful, Harper,” he said, voice low. “Just like I remember.”
You look familiar and fuckable, I thought. Just like I remember. Oops.
“Statistics!” I blurted.
His brows lifted. “Excuse me?”
I laughed. Too loud. “Ha, ha—math. Stats. You like numbers. Me too.”
What? What? What was that?
He leaned down, blocking my body from the view of my set-up phone. “You okay? You’re shaking.”
“Cold,” I lied. “Ice on my tits.”
And I wondered why I was in this predicament? With the dating? Well I need not look further than ice on my tits .
He snorted. “Why do I feel like that should be a song?”
“Because it should,” I whispered.
“Relax,” he murmured. “It’s just me.”
But it wasn’t. Not this version.
This wasn’t Ezra from my kitchen. This was sexiest man alive Ezra. The kind of man you climbed like a tree—not because you wanted to, but because biology demanded it .
I was still trying to remember how breathing worked when I heard it.
“Ezra?”
A woman’s voice—warm, lilting, and absolutely sure of itself.
He froze. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to notice before he turned toward her with a smile that was polite but… tight.
She was gorgeous in that effortless, I don’t have to try because God just made me like this way.
Long, hair twisted into a glossy knot, a silk blouse tucked into tailored trousers, diamond studs flashing at her ears.
She walked right up like she owned the oxygen between us.
The hate I felt was immediate. I’d never been one of those girls, is this what it took to turn me into them?
Just one girl looking at Ezra? What was mine? My best friend? My fake date? Vex?
“I thought that was you.” Her eyes skimmed him in a way that said she’s either seen him naked or wants to. “It’s been, what… since Yale?”
Yale.
I blinked in shock. Ezra went to Yale? Since when? I met him Freshman year, second semester, had he transferred then?
He didn’t even look at me—just smiled faintly at her. “Hey, Lila. Yeah. It’s been a while.”
“More than a while,” she said, her tone dipping into something happened between us and I’ve never forgotten it territory. “You disappeared. No calls, no texts. Next thing I knew…” She trailed off, glancing at me like I was the world’s worst interruption. “Well. I guess you’ve been busy.”
My grip on the napkin tightened. My brain tried to connect dots—Ezra, Yale, Yale Girl, Vex —but the picture wouldn’t quite form. Wait, why did this version of him look so familiar?
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She gave me the kind of smile rich women give poor women in old movies. “I’m Lila. Ezra and I… go way back when he had his YouTube channel.”
Go. Way. Back. YouTube?
I smiled sweetly as haunting images of a guy named EZ Wyatt or Ezra Wyatt popped up into my head like a social media feeding frenzy. I’d been obsessed with him since age twelve then he just, stopped posting content. “I bet you do.”
Her eyes flicked to my phone on the table, angled perfectly at us. “Filming again? Good for you.”
“Something like that,” I interrupted.
For the first time, Ezra looked uncomfortable. His jaw flexed once before he cleared his throat. “Good to see you, Lila. We should?—”
“Catch up sometime, absolutely.” she finished for him. Her hand brushed his arm—too long of a linger with those fingernails—and then she was gone, heels clicking across the polished floor like a mic drop with each irritating step.
I stared at him. He stared down at the table. “So, yeah, I’m Vex, but some people know me as Ezra Wyatt, in another life I was kind of a big deal.”
In another life he was called the love child of James Dean and Marlon Brando.
In that moment, something in my gut whispered what my brain hadn’t caught up to yet, something dangerous and hateful to admit, no not hateful, embarrassing.
I didn’t know him. My best friend in the whole world.
Not really.
Ezra slid into the seat across from me like nothing had happened.
Like Lila, Yale, Past lives, YouTube, and weird arm touches weren’t hanging in the air between us like smoke.
The replacement martini arrived—thank you, bartender who clearly ships me with my own mental breakdown—and I took a long sip.
“So…” I said, the word drawn out like I was unspooling fishing line. “Yale?”
He glanced up, one eyebrow lifted. “What about it?”
“Oh, nothing. Just… not a detail I had in my little mental file labeled ‘Ezra: Grumpy Pain in My Ass.’”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Didn’t think it was relevant.”
Didn’t he though? Why the omission on all of this?
“Mm. Right. Just like how you didn’t think it was relevant to mention you’re apparently on a first-name-basis with a Bond Villain? Bet she’d kill you first, just saying.”
He smirked, shaking his head. “You’re cute when you’re jealous, maybe that’s why it didn’t work out last time, hmmm?
” He said snapping me back into the date’s purpose.
Why we never had another date, why this never worked out, the apartment, the lie, right.
In this scenario I needed him. I could murder him after dessert.
“And yet here you are.” I swirled my martini and eyed the pokey side of the stick. “On a date.”
“For the record,” he said, leaning in slightly, voice pitched low so only I could hear, “I’m here because you asked me to be, remember?”
The way he said it—quiet, steady—made something unpleasantly flutter in my chest. Damn it he had no right being that pretty.
I deflected and pointed the stir stick at him. “Right. Because it’s definitely not because you wanted to spend your Friday night being interrogated on camera by a woman in a wet dress.”
Thank God, I almost said ‘wet dream’. That could have gone sideways quickly—again.
His gaze flicked down for a fraction of a second—like he remembered exactly where the ice had landed—and then back up to my face. “Could be worse.”
Oh. Oh, that was unfair. Rules. We needed rules!
No lingering stares! My ovaries were not strong soldiers!
They were currently fighting for their lives like I’d just slapped Spanx three sizes too small on them and told them to breathe!
My brain short-circuited somewhere between could be worse and damn, just, hot damn, I’d look good on you naked.
I took another sip of my drink and tried to focus on the fact that my phone was still recording. “So, Vex. The internet says you’ve played… what, six different characters who’ve died tragically in the rain?”
“Seven,” he corrected. “One was snow.”
“Right, of course.” I made a show of writing it down, because otherwise I might have reached across the table to shake him until his secrets fell out. “And tell me, Vex—does the tragic death thing get you more fan mail, or do people prefer when you brood in, say, dimly lit kitchens?”
He grinned faintly, leaning back. “What do you prefer?”
The question hit with more weight than it should have, and I suddenly hated the fact that the answer was I like it when you’re in my kitchen, Ezra.
I cleared my throat. “I think the internet can decide that one.”
The rest of the questions felt like wading through syrup—his answers easy and charming, my smile tight but camera-friendly.
Every time he looked at me, I kept thinking about Lila.
About Yale. About the fact that I’d never once thought to Google him, and now it felt like there was an entire other life I’d missed.
By the time the bill came, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to kiss him or kill him.