Chapter 5 #5
“And you,” I say, “have no idea who I truly am.”
She holds my gaze for three more seconds. Then she steps back, and my hand falls from her waist, and the distance between us fills with the noise of the party and the clink of glasses and the sound of people who have no idea what’s happening by the window.
Cat turns and walks into the crowd without looking back. I watch her go—the sway of her hips, the straight line of her spine, every furious degree of the angle at which she holds her head.
She slips outside through the garden door a few minutes later. I follow. Stay in the shadows by the trellis. She has her phone to her ear. Straight to voicemail.
“Hey, Jon. It’s me. Again.” A pause. Her voice tightens. “Kaiden is here. He’s being…Kaiden. Penny’s here too. I just—” Another pause. “Call me back when you get this. Please.”
She hangs up. Stands in the garden alone, arms wrapped around herself, staring at the trees. The wind catches the loose strands of hair around her face, and she looks, for one unguarded moment, like exactly what she is: a girl who is very tired of holding herself together.
I step out of the shadows. She senses me before I speak. Turns her head. The vulnerability vanishes so fast it’s like watching a door slam.
“You really need to stop doing that.”
I close the distance between us. Reach out and catch her chin between my thumb and forefinger—tilt her face up to mine.
Her breath hitches. Her hands come up to my wrist, but she doesn’t pull away.
Just holds on, like she needs to anchor herself to something while her body decides whether I’m the threat or the lifeline.
“Relax,” I murmur. “You’re going to wrinkle that perfect forehead.”
“Let go of me.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re being an asshole.”
I slide my hand from her chin to the side of her neck. My fingers wrap around the warm column of her throat—not squeezing, not threatening, just resting there with a possessive weight that makes her entire body go rigid and her pupils blow wide in the moonlight.
“Your boyfriend’s not here,” I say quietly. “He left you alone at your mother’s most important night. He doesn’t pick up when you call. He doesn’t come when it matters. And you’re still defending him.”
Her throat works under my palm. I can feel her swallow. Feel the hummingbird pace of her pulse against my fingertips.
“That doesn’t make you an upgrade,” she whispers.
“No?” I lean closer. Our foreheads nearly touching. My thumb traces the line of her jaw, and I feel the shiver run through her like a current—from her throat to her spine to wherever it goes when it leaves my reach. “Then why aren’t you pulling away?”
She doesn’t answer. Her fingers tighten around my wrist. Her eyes are locked on mine—wide, angry, hungry, scared. Everything she spends her days hiding is right there on the surface, and I want to devour every bit of it.
I hold her there for three more heartbeats. Feeling her pulse. Memorizing the rhythm. Then I release her, slowly, letting my fingers trail down the side of her neck and across her collarbone before dropping my hand.
She takes a step back. Then another. Her chest is rising and falling faster than it should be, and her hand drifts to her own throat—touching the spot where my fingers were—before she catches herself and drops it.
“Fuck you, Kaiden.”
It comes out breathless. Wrecked. Nothing like the ice princess she wants to be.
I smile. The real one. The one my mother says makes me look just like my father at his most dangerous.
“Play your cards right, Kitty Cat, and I just might let you.”
She spins on her heel and storms back toward the house. I watch her go—every step, every rigid line of her retreating body, every furious degree of the angle at which she holds her head.
I stand alone in the garden and think about the way her pulse raced under my hand, and the scars hidden beneath her sleeve, and the voicemail she left for a boy who doesn’t deserve to hear her voice.
The photographer is already by the driveway, packing his equipment into his car. I cross the lawn and stop beside him. He sees me coming and reaches for his camera.
“Got what you needed,” he says, scrolling through the display screen. My hand on her back. Her fingers curled in my shirt. The garden light falling across both of us like something out of a goddamn romance novel. From every angle, it looks intimate. Real. Like we belong to each other.
“Gold,” I say. “Send them tonight. Not tomorrow.”
I slip another fifty into his palm. He nods. Drives off.
I stand in the driveway with the noise of the party behind me and the cold October air biting through my shirt, and I think about Cat somewhere inside that house laughing at something Penny says, and I think about the scars, and I think about the word she whispered when I asked if she wanted me to move my hand.
No.
I should stop. Walk inside. Enjoy the party. Leave Catherine O’Farrell alone.
Instead, I go back to my room later that night and stare at the photos glowing on my screen.
Catherine O’Farrell with her fingers curled in my shirt and her face tilted toward mine.
The garden light making us look like the only two people in the world.
I open GlossX. Create a new anonymous post. Attach the best photo.
Edgewood’s Ice Princess with her new King. Guess Pennington got replaced.
Post. Upload. Done.
My phone buzzes instantly. Notifications. Comments. Shares. The machinery of high school gossip churning to life like an engine that’s been waiting for fuel.
I set the phone face-down on my nightstand. Stare at the ceiling. Tell myself this is strategy. Tell myself this is about winning. About power. About teaching Catherine O’Farrell who runs Edgewood Prep.
But my hand still smells like her perfume, and the ghost of her pulse still throbs against my fingertips, and the last thought I have before I fall asleep isn’t about winning.
It’s about the sound she makes when I wrap my hand around her throat.
And how I’ll do absolutely anything to hear it again.