Chapter 5 #3
Danny looks between us. “What?”
X gestures across the room. “These two idiots.”
Ryan laughs. “They’re doing it on purpose.”
The girl in my lap sighs softly as my mouth moves along her neck. Her fingers tighten in my hair. But the entire time my gaze stays fixed on Catherine.
She lifts her cup slightly in my direction. Mock toast. I pull back. The moment breaks. Suddenly the girl in my lap feels like dead weight. I lift her off and set her beside me.
She blinks. “What?”
“Not tonight.”
Danny grabs my arm as I stand.
“The hell is wrong with you?” he says. “She’s been waiting all night.”
“Not interested.”
“Since when?”
I glance back toward the kitchen. Since that. I head for the bar. A few minutes later the five of us are upstairs.
Xander’s house has one of those ridiculous indoor balconies overlooking the living room. From here you can see the entire party. People moving below like pieces on a board. Danny lights another joint and passes it around.
Ryan leans over the railing.
“So,” he says.
“Yeah,” X adds.
“Yeah,” Danny finishes.
I take a drink. “What.”
Ryan nods toward the kitchen. “You’re obsessed.”
“I’m curious.”
“Same thing.”
Iz finally speaks. “You should be careful with her.”
I glance at him. “Why.”
He exhales slowly. “You know about the fire?”
Ryan nods. “Her last house burned down.”
Iz nods. “She was inside.”
Danny frowns. “Inside inside?”
“Yeah.”
“And she pulled both her parents out,” Ryan says.
“That’s the official story,” Iz replies.
I glance at him. “And you don’t buy it.”
He shakes his head. “It’s too tidy.”
That tracks. Families like ours don’t have tidy stories. We’re the ones who bury the real ones.
“So what actually happened?” X asks.
Iz shrugs. “No idea.”
I lean on the railing, watching Catherine below. Still laughing with Penny. Still pretending she isn’t aware of me watching.
“She’s hiding something,” I say.
Ryan grins. “Oh good. You’re obsessed.”
“Relax.”
But my eyes stay on her. Because now I know two things. One—Catherine O’Farrell isn’t who she pretends to be. Two—I want to know what she’s hiding.
At first I thought it was because I wanted to break her. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe I want to drag her down into the same darkness the rest of us live in.
Or maybe— I just want her under me.
Either way… I’m going to find out.
My father straightens my collar in the foyer before we leave, and my mother checks her lipstick in the hallway mirror like we’re about to walk onto a stage instead of across a lawn. Which, in a way, we are. The Monaghans don’t attend events. We arrive.
We cross the grass toward the neighboring property—two political families pretending they’re just neighbors with good landscaping. Lights glow from the O’Farrell house. Cars line the drive. Music drifts faintly from inside, something classical and expensive that nobody is actually listening to.
My father glances at me as we walk. “Best fucking behavior tonight, Kaiden.”
“Dad. You know me.”
“That’s exactly why I’m saying it.” He gives me a look—half warning, half amusement. “A little birdy told me you’ve been circling the O’Farrell girl. The one who’s dating the Pennington kid.”
I shrug. “Pennington is a bitch and doesn’t deserve her.”
My father laughs—short, rough, the laugh of a man who recognizes his own stubbornness in his son and finds it both infuriating and deeply familiar. “Just be careful. Penningtons play dirty, and I don’t need scandals this close to election season.”
“I’ll be on my best behavior.”
My mother appears between us and takes both our arms. “My handsome men. No more shop talk. I want to enjoy our Sunday.”
The front door opens before we knock. Thomas O’Farrell greets us himself—tall, imposing, built like the kind of man who learned early how to take up space in a room and never stopped.
He shakes my father’s hand with the warmth of an old alliance, and Fiona appears behind him a moment later, already smiling, already pulling my mother into a hug.
The house is full. Soft lighting. Champagne flutes clinking.
A violinist tucked into the corner playing something that sounds like money.
Stacks of Fiona O’Farrell’s new novel sit on a display table like relics in a museum—campaign donors, editors, professors, and local politicians milling around them.
The kind of crowd that pretends it’s here for literature while quietly measuring each other’s net worth.
Fiona pulls me in for a hug. “Kaiden, sweetheart. I’m so glad you came.”
“Wouldn’t miss it, Mrs. O’Farrell. I’ve been looking forward to getting my own copy. I hear it’s going to be huge.”
She beams at me—the way she does every time, like I’m one of her own. I like Fiona O’Farrell. She’s warm without being performative about it, and she writes books about women who survive dark things, which tells me she understands dark things in a way most people in this room don’t.
Thomas grips my hand next. “Hell of a game yesterday. Seven to nothing. That second goal of yours—Christ, the way you cut through that defense. That kind of instinct is going to take you far.”
“Thank you, sir. Though my father always says to have backup plans. Bodies break. Minds don’t.”
Thomas laughs and claps my father on the back. “Callum, you raised a damn good son.”
“Sharper than I’d like, most days,” my father says, but there’s pride underneath it. The real kind—the kind he doesn’t give out easily.
The parents drift toward the bar a moment later, slipping naturally into adult conversation—politics, publishing, old favors traded over champagne. I let them go. I have other plans tonight.
I’ve already spoken to the photographer. Pulled him aside when we first arrived—before the families gathered, before the champagne started flowing. Slipped him two hundred in cash and told him exactly what I need.
When you see me with the girl—red hair, black dress—you shoot. Every angle. Don’t stop until I step away.
He nodded. Didn’t ask questions. Two hundred dollars buys a lot of discretion at a party like this.
Now I scan the room. It takes less than five seconds to find her.
Catherine O’Farrell is standing near the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the garden, and every coherent thought I’ve had about behaving myself tonight evaporates like water on a hot engine.
Black dress. Long sleeves. Lace along the neckline that dips just low enough to suggest without revealing—the kind of dress designed to make a man’s imagination do all the work, and mine is working overtime.
Her hair is pinned up tonight, exposing the long line of her neck and the delicate architecture of her collarbones.
She’s wearing these black ankle boots with a heel that adds just enough height to bring her mouth to chin level on me, and I have a vivid, detailed fantasy about those heels digging into my lower back that I have to physically shake out of my head before I can walk a straight line.
She’s holding a champagne flute like it’s a prop in a play she didn’t audition for. The liquid hasn’t moved. She isn’t drinking. She’s watching the room—the same way I watch rooms—cataloging exits, measuring threats, keeping her back to the window because it means nobody can come up behind her.
Except me.
I cross the room. Nod at a few people on the way—a professor who’s been trying to recruit me for his lacrosse program, a woman from the historical society who always smells like lavender and judgment.
But my eyes stay on Cat. On the way the candlelight plays across the lace on her dress.
On the strip of skin visible between the neckline and the hollow of her throat.
On those emerald green eyes with the flecks of gold that make every other color in the room look cheap by comparison.
I stop behind her. Close. Close enough that the heat from my body reaches her before my voice does.
“Hey there, Kitty Cat.”
She jumps. The champagne tilts in her hand, and I catch the glass before it spills—my hand closing over hers, my chest brushing her back, the cold stem of the flute trapped between our palms. For a second we’re frozen like that.
Her spine against my chest. My fingers over hers.
The faint, intoxicating smell of her perfume—something dark and floral that I want to bury my face in.
She pulls away. Fast. Turns on me with those green eyes blazing.
“Jesus Christ, Kaiden. You scared the shit out of me.”
I grin. “You’re the one standing with her back to the room.”
“You have to stop sneaking up on me.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
She huffs and tries to step around me, but I move with her—a half-step to the side that blocks her path without touching her. She stops. Crosses her arms. The movement pushes her breasts up against the lace neckline, and I let my eyes drop for exactly one second before meeting her gaze again.
She catches me looking. Her cheeks flush. “You’re disgusting.”
“You’re blushing.”
“I’m angry. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” I lean closer. Just slightly. Enough to watch the way her pulse flutters in the hollow of her throat. “Because from where I’m standing, angry and turned on look pretty similar on you, Kitty Cat.”
“Call me that one more time—”
“What? You’ll do what?” I tilt my head. “We’re at your mother’s book party. Surrounded by important people. You’re going to make a scene?”
Her jaw tightens. I can see the calculation happening—the cost-benefit analysis of telling me to fuck off versus the social consequences of a confrontation at her mother’s launch. I love watching that calculation. I love that I can push her to the edge of it and hold her there.
“Where’s Johnny Boy?” I ask, lifting a fresh champagne flute from a passing tray and taking a slow sip.
Cat’s expression doesn’t change. “Busy.”
“Busy,” I repeat. “Your mother’s biggest career moment. The book she’s been working toward for years. And your boyfriend is ‘busy.’”
“Don’t start.”