Chapter 5 #4
“I’m not starting anything. I’m just pointing out what everybody in this room already sees.
” I run my finger along the rim of my glass.
“You’re here alone. In a house full of people, and you’re standing by yourself at a window, and the one person who should be beside you couldn’t be bothered to show up. ”
Something flickers behind her eyes. Not anger—something deeper. Hurt, maybe. Or the exhaustion of defending something she’s already stopped believing in.
“I don’t need my boyfriend attached to me at all times, Kaiden.”
“No,” I say, stepping closer. “You don’t. But you deserve someone who wants to be.”
That lands. I see it land—the slight parting of her lips, the way her arms loosen from their crossed position before she catches herself and tightens them again.
“Since when do you care about what I deserve?”
“Who says I care? Maybe I just like watching you squirm.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“And you look incredible tonight.” I say it the way you’d drop a match into a pool of gasoline—casually, knowing exactly what it’ll ignite. “That dress should be illegal. I’ve been trying to have a rational thought since I walked in, and you’re making it impossible.”
Cat’s blush deepens. She fights it—I watch her fight it—but it creeps up her chest and into her cheeks despite every defense she has.
“You can’t just say things like that.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“Because I have a boyfriend, and you’re—”
“What? What am I?”
She looks up at me. Six inches between us. Close enough to see the individual lashes framing those impossible eyes. Close enough to feel the heat of her breath.
“You’re dangerous,” she says. Quiet. Like an admission she doesn’t mean to make.
Something dark and hungry unfurls in my chest. I want to grab her.
Pin her against the window and show her exactly how dangerous I can be.
Kiss her until that composure shatters and there’s nothing left but the real Catherine—the one who makes sounds in her throat when I pull her hair and flushes crimson when I lean too close.
Instead, I smile. “You have no idea.”
“Kaiden—”
“CATHERINE!”
Penny barrels into the moment like a wrecking ball in combat boots, champagne flute already half-empty, grinning like she’s been watching us from across the room and has chosen the exact worst moment to intervene.
“Oh good,” she says brightly, looking between us. “The sexual tension has arrived. I could feel it from the appetizer table.”
Cat closes her eyes. “Penny.”
“What? I’m just saying, if you two start making out next to the book display, I need at least thirty seconds’ warning so I can get my phone out.”
I laugh. A real laugh—the kind I don’t give away easily. Penny MacHale is a pain in the ass, but she’s funny, and she has the particular courage of a person who says exactly what everyone else is thinking.
Cat groans. “Please stop encouraging him. He doesn’t need help.”
“Encouraging him?” Penny takes another sip of champagne and gestures between us. “Honey, you’re the one who’s been staring at his mouth for the last two minutes.”
“I was not—”
“You were.” Penny turns to me. “She was.”
“I noticed,” I say.
Cat looks like she wants the floor to swallow her. “I hate both of you.”
“No you don’t.” Penny throws an arm around her. “You love me. And you want to do unspeakable things to him. I’m comfortable with both of those realities.”
I grab Cat’s champagne glass from her hand before she can react, take a slow sip, and hand it back. She stares at the glass like I’ve contaminated it. I stare at her lips and imagine how that champagne would taste on her mouth.
“You could do better than Pennington,” I say.
Her eyes narrow. “Are you volunteering?”
“Just stating facts, ice princess. The position of ‘person who actually shows up’ appears to be open.”
Penny raises her glass. “God, I love this conversation.”
Cat shakes her head, but I catch it—the ghost of a smile she kills before it can fully form.
She’s enjoying this. She’s fighting it with every weapon in her arsenal, but underneath the deflection and the eye rolls and the insults, Catherine O’Farrell is having fun.
With me. At her mother’s book party. And that knowledge settles into my bloodstream like a drug.
Before any of us can say another word, our fathers materialize out of the crowd—Thomas with his arm slung my dad, my father beside him with a glass of scotch that probably costs more than most people’s car payments.
Thomas walks over to us and pulls Cat against his side and smiles down at her. “I have to say, princess, I’m so glad to see you hanging out with somebody other than Jonathan.” He looks between Penny and me with genuine warmth. “I like these two much better.”
Cat plasters on a smile. But her eyes—those eyes—are all fire, and they’re aimed directly at me. “Jon is very nice, Daddy.”
Penny rolls her eyes so hard I think she’ll pull a muscle.
My father swirls his scotch. “Pennington? Be careful with that one. His older brother was…not a great person, and their father used every connection he had to make it go away. If you’ll excuse my language, that whole family breeds men who cry when they don’t get their way.”
Cat’s jaw tightens, but Penny speaks first. “I hate to agree with the adults, Cat. But they’re not wrong. Just…be careful.”
I move closer to Cat while our fathers slip back into political conversation—close enough that only she can hear me. “We’ll talk about this later, Kitty Cat.”
I reach for her hand. Slowly. Deliberately. Turn her wrist over in my palm and run my thumb along the inside of it—soft, intimate, the kind of touch that looks like nothing from across the room but feels like everything up close.
And I feel it.
Raised skin. Thin ridges. Parallel lines under the long sleeve of her dress.
Cat rips her hand away. Her eyes meet mine, and what I see in them is raw, animal terror—the expression of someone whose most carefully guarded secret has just been touched by the last person she’d ever choose to trust with it.
I say nothing.
She pulls her sleeve down. Composes herself. Turns back to Penny and says something bright and meaningless, and the ice princess is restored so quickly that if I hadn’t been watching—if I hadn’t felt those scars under my thumb—I’d never have known the mask slipped.
I walk away. My heart is hammering. Not from the contact—from the implication. From the picture that’s forming in my head, piece by piece, of a girl who carries something so heavy that she carves it into her own skin just to survive the weight.
Who hurt you, Catherine?
The question burns in my chest. I want the answer the way I want air—desperately, unreasonably, with a possessiveness that goes beyond anything I can rationalize as bullying or rivalry or sexual attraction.
Something has been done to her. Something terrible. And the urge I feel isn’t to break her anymore. It’s to find whoever broke her first and make them wish they’d never been born.
But that urge exists alongside the other one—the one that wants to push her against the nearest wall and kiss her until she forgets every dark thing that lives inside her.
The one that wants to wrap my hand around her throat and watch her eyes dilate the way they did in the library.
The one that wants to be the person she comes undone for, not because I force it, but because she chooses it.
Both urges are real. Both are mine. And I don’t know which one will win.
The photographer calls for group photos a few minutes later. Our families gather near the display table—the O’Farrells and the Monaghans, two dynasties performing civility for the camera.
I step beside Cat. My hand finds her hip like it’s been designed to rest there. She stiffens but doesn’t move away—not with both families watching, not with the photographer adjusting his lens.
I lean down to her ear while the camera clicks. “Smile, princess. You look like you’re being held hostage.”
“I am,” she whispers back. “By your hand on my hip.”
“You want me to move it?”
A beat. “No.”
The word is so quiet I almost miss it. But I don’t miss it. I catch it the way I catch everything about her—with a focus that borders on obsession.
The photographer waves that he’s done. Our families start to disperse. But I keep my hand on Cat’s hip and turn her to face me before she can slip away.
“Kaiden—”
“One second.”
I angle us toward the window. The garden is behind her, lit by the glow from the house. The light falls across her face—half gold, half shadow—and I can see every detail: the freckles across her nose, the slight part of her lips, the way her lashes cast shadows on her cheekbones.
I know the photographer is watching. That’s the point. I’m giving him the shot I’m paying for.
I pull her closer. Not forcefully, but firmly—my hand sliding from her hip to the small of her back, my fingers pressing into the curve of her spine through the fabric of her dress.
She doesn’t resist. Her hands come up to my chest—not pushing, not pulling.
Just resting there, like her body hasn’t decided yet whether to fight or surrender.
“What are you doing?” she breathes.
“Whatever I want.”
Her eyes widen. Her pulse is visible in her throat—rapid, erratic, betraying everything her expression is trying to hide.
I lean down. My lips brush the shell of her ear. “Better watch your back, ice princess.”
She inhales sharply. Her fingers curl into the fabric of my shirt.
“Do your worst, Kaiden,” she whispers. “Your immature little games don’t scare me.”
I pull back just far enough to look into her eyes. “They should.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not playing anymore.”
She searches my face. Looking for the lie. Looking for the angle. I let her look, because the truth is written all over me and I’m too far gone to hide it.
“You have no idea what I'm capable of,” she says. Not angry. Not cold. Something else. Something that sounds almost like a warning—not to me, but to herself.