Chapter Five
THE YOUNGS, THE LIMS, and me, the restless.
If my life were a daytime soap, that would have been the title of tonight’s episode, with how I suddenly find myself dining with Icelle’s family, which turns out to be one of San Antonio’s wealthiest families.
I’m seated between Joy and Icelle, with an empty chair to my right, and when I glance at it, Icelle only says, “Ark’s,” without further explanation, and that’s when I realize: the empty chair is Arkane’s.
He’s not here, because he’s still on the business thing he warned me about at the airport, and I’m absolutely not thinking about the empty chair beside me.
Nope.
Not once.
The dining room around us is bigger than the entire first floor of any place my mom and I have ever lived. Walnut table the length of a bowling lane. A chandelier that looks like it weighs more than me. A painting on the far wall that I’m pretty sure is an actual, you know, painting.
Aldrich sits at the head of the table, and Lucius, Benedict, Marius, and Raiden are all across from me.
Four brothers. Four ridiculously good-looking men, and I already know the first thing I’m supposed to be doing tonight is studying them for clues, because Icelle told me she’s in love with one of her stepbrothers and refused to say which one.
Detective mode: engaged.
Lucius, the eldest, is dark-haired and harsh-featured in the way Roman generals used to be carved into stone. He’s eating with the kind of precision that suggests his cutlery knows him personally. Good-looking in a way that makes you want to stand up straight.
Across from him, Benedict is blond, blue-eyed, and so beautiful it’s giving me pause, because he looks like a painting of an angel someone decided to give a jawline.
Beside Benedict is Marius, who’s got copper eyes and the easy charm of someone who’s never had to work for a laugh in his life.
He’s the one everyone at the table keeps turning toward for punchlines, and whatever he’s saying is already making Icelle’s RBF soften at the edges, which for my friend is basically a standing ovation.
And then there’s Raiden, twenty-one and Icelle’s biological half-brother, so that’s obviously a no-go. Their family may be complicated, but not that kind of complicated.
Anyway, that leaves Lucius, Benedict, or Marius, and...
Still zero clues, but I have the rest of summer to figure things out, and speaking of...
Huh.
There’s this other thing that I also want to get to the bottom of, and well, I think I have my answer, with how I’ve been here for some time now, surrounded by a smorgasbord of good-looking billionaires of all ages, and it’s just not happening at all.
My skin, that is.
It’s not crawling!
Not a bit. Not a twinge. None of the I-need-to-leave-this-room feeling I’ve had around every other good-looking boy I’ve ever shared air with. And it’s been—I check my phone—nearly an hour. An hour with four of them. Four. And nothing.
Which is weird.
It’s not the kind of weird I want to examine right this second, though, because the dinner has started to do something I also wasn’t expecting.
Joy is asking me about Cornwall and actually listening when I answer. Aldrich is slicing into his steak with the calm of a man who has never rushed a meal in his life. Raiden says something absolutely shocking to Icelle, purely to gain a reaction from his sister, but when it just makes her blink—
We all laugh.
Her family. Me. And it’s all natural, and that’s when it hits me.
These people are my tribe, just a billion dollars richer.
They talk over each other and they argue about small things.
They switch once in a while between English and Mandarin, and this is totally normal for me, too (it’s just like Mom switching between your-average-broke-person-English and rich-people-English), and it’s somewhere in the middle of all this that Aldrich glances down the table, and wow.
Joy nods, Icelle turns to him like she’s ready to take notes, while his sons snap to attention and all of this from a single look?
Was he, like, army or something before he inherited his billions?
“Speaking of tomorrow—”
The mildness of Aldrich’s voice reminds me of Ark—
Stop thinking of him, Ti!
“We have an event to attend as a family.” His gaze turns to his daughter. “I need you to start practicing your smile in advance.”
“I understand.”
I honestly thought Icelle was joking, but then her lips start moving, and wow.
Just wow.
I have never seen anything this grotesque, and it’s a terrifying, lightning-quick transformation, too, with her beautiful face resembling Barbie one second, and Annabelle the next second, and I just...I just can’t hold it back any longer.
Snough.
That’s a new word I’ve made up on the spot. From now on, it’s what I’m going to use to describe when you’re snorting and laughing at the same time because that’s just what came out from my mouth, and the moment the sound explodes in the dining room—
Everyone’s laughing, too.
Not sure if they’re laughing at me or at Icelle since she’s laughing, too—or at least as much as her RBF is capable of showing—but who cares, right?
Because this right here, this is a good moment shared by good people while enjoying good food, and everything’s just so, so good—
Buzz.
That I’m not even surprised when my phone lights up on my lap at that very moment. It’s the story of my life. Whenever something really good happens, life finds a way to remind me that good things never last.
Mom: How’s Texas?
Or at least it never does for someone like me, whose mother’s way of showing concern for her daughter can be easily encapsulated in a three-worded text—or two if you take the abbreviation into account.
How’s Texas?
That’s Mom doing her duty, just so she can enjoy the rest of her own vacation with a clear-as-day conscience.
I don’t answer, and since I’m not clicking anything either, my phone goes dark again. Message preview seen, message still unread.
I take a sip of water, and as I try to convince myself that it’s fine, I’m fine, and everything’s fine—
“Icelle, darling.”
That’s when I hear Joy addressing my friend.
“You never told us. You did remember introducing Tiara to Arkane?”
“They introduced themselves to each other.”
And I completely forget about Mom being a candidate of World’s Best Mom (not!) with every head at the table swiveling to my direction, and I...I’m just lost for words.
Oh, Icelle, you...you...snitch!
“How remarkable,” Lucius says, mild, “for Arkane to take the time to introduce himself.”
And then Icelle...
Icelle nods.
Just once. RBF fully in place. Not looking at anyone. Not explaining anything.
And that’s when the entire family lights up.
Raiden starts snickering into his napkin. Marius hides his smile behind his wineglass. Aldrich sighs in the way that men sigh when their dinner has just become more entertaining than they planned for.
And Joy.
Dear, sweet Joy—
“Oh, that’s wonderful!”
Oh boy.
She’s actually clapping her hands in glee—but elegantly, mind you, because everything this woman does is very, very naturally posh—and she’s looking at me in a way that feels rather...threatening?
Like how you’d used to have this sinking feeling as a kid when your mom looks at you a certain way, and then you find out they’ve suddenly had this bright idea that they know exactly what you need to wear for a school event?
Yes, it’s that kind of threat I’m talking about, and yes, Mom had such days, too, and threats like it still scares adult-me for real.
“I should get working, too,” Joy enthuses. “We’ll have to make proper introductions to the rest of the family this summer, of course. The Cannizzaros are hosting in June, and Evergreen’s Fourth of July ball—we need to get a ticket for Tiara...”
“Um—”
“I—”
“Err—”
Joy reaches past Icelle to pat my hand and gives me a warm smile. “Don’t you worry, dear. I have everything taken care of.”
And then she goes on listing all the events I’m supposed to attend as Arkane’s plus-one, and I—
I’m delighted.
I’m thrilled.
I’m absolutely appalled, and as soon as dinner’s over, and we’re all free to go, I turn to Icelle in panic. “What did you say to them?”
“You were right next to me the whole time.” Icelle goes on walking down the hallway while speaking, forcing me to keep up with her. “You heard everything I said—”
“But you gave them a look! Remember? Lucius said it was remarkable that Arkane introduced himself, and you looked at them, and nodded. I saw you do it, don’t deny it—”
“Oh. That.”
She pauses on the stairs, and she’s just so ridiculously beautiful and elegant that even though I know she doesn’t mean to do so, she really looks like she’s posing for a photograph that’s meant to grace the front cover of a society magazine.
“What did that ‘nod’ mean?”
“Don’t worry—” Icelle resumes moving, and so here we go again, and I’m running up the stairs to catch up to her. “I kept my promise.”
Argh. Who’s not answering the question now?
“They don’t know about your feelings for Arkane.”
I open my mouth to give her some flak when I hear what she’s just said, and for the love of ugh—
“I don’t have feelings for him!”
Icelle blinks. “So it’s lust then?”
Aaaargh!
I’d have strangled her right there in the hallway if she weren’t my only real friend in the world. But since she is that—
“This is not over,” I warn her darkly, as we reach the door of my room.
Icelle nods. “It won’t be until you two are mar—”
I clap a hand over her mouth and shoot her a glare. “Don’t you say that again.”
Icelle opens her mouth.
“Or anything that has to do with Arkane.”
She closes her mouth.
I look at her in exasperation. “Seriously?” She really has nothing to say if it’s not about her stepbrother?
Icelle shrugs, which I later translate to ‘good night’ since she’s already walking past me and heading back to her own room.
I close the door behind me and press my forehead against it.
Why is she like this?
Why is everyone like this?
Why am I the only normal person in a house full of people who communicate in eyebrow-raises and nods and family-wide psychic agreements?
And why, darn it?
Why is it already midnight, and here I am, still unable to sleep because I can’t stop thinking about all the things I’m not supposed to waste time thinking?
I’ve been staring at the ceiling for I don’t even know how long. The guest room they’ve given me is bigger than my entire dorm, and the sheets are the kind of soft that makes you realize your normal sheets have been lying to you all along.
I start counting sheep.
One sheep jumps the fence. Two sheep jumps the fence. Three sheep—
Hmm.
Is it sheep or sheeps?
Because sheep is plural-as-singular, but when you’re counting them one at a time is each one a sheep?
Grammatically this is a nightmare.
Four sheep jumps the fence. Five—
I’ve lost count.
I restart.
One sheep. Two sheep. Three—
Wait.
Was that a floorboard?
Are those footsteps?
Is someone—
Knock.
I’m out of bed before my brain has finished processing the sound, and I’m tripping over my own feet in my haste to reach the door, and when I finally get it open—
There he is.
Arkane.
His lips slowly curve.
“Missed me?”