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“Source Reveals Details of the Lavish Weekend Away Kieran Alexander Shared with Girlfriend”
—Page ONE
THE HALLWAY OPENED into a grand ballroom, the shape of a full moon. Glass windows stood like unified soldiers. Pairs of guests danced in unison, dresses swaying while their male partners talked their ears off.
“Time to dance,” she acknowledged.
We walked to the center of the room as the next song began.
Carefully, I laid my left hand on her back and wrapped my other over her hand, trying not to think about how delicate her fingers felt.
The same hands that choked a tennis racket.
Once her torso pressed against mine and her stare focused over my shoulder, we were off.
One foot following the next, the music guided us all in a symphony of daring notes. Her hand would press into my shoulder as we spun, the candle flames blurring. She quickly curled her fingers in as we returned to a steady sway.
It was easier to think about the steps of the dance than try to ignore her frequent glances. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“No, nothing.” She paused, the pools of her dark eyes darting to my face.
“When did we start pulling punches, Aldridge?” I asked.
Refusing to shy away, she asked, “Do you have a new movie coming up?”
“Not until January, why?”
“I assumed that was the reason for the new look. You never explained it.”
“I just needed a change. Something new. I couldn’t let you keep upstaging me at these events.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Are you aware of how much you roll your eyes? You’re probably on the verge of damaging your eye sockets at this point.”
“I don’t roll my eyes that often.”
“Yes, I know. Only when I talk,” I argued with a laugh. I could see it in her closed lips that she wanted to laugh too. “I dare you not to roll your eyes the next time I say something, then.”
“Then I dare you to give me an honest answer.”
“About the hair?”
“About the hair.”
I exhaled and found her gaze. I wasn’t sure what it was, but she made me bold. “A secret for a secret?”
Hesitation, then, “Okay.”
“It’s my original hair color. The blond originally started so I’d look less like my father. A habit I’ve decided to break this weekend.”
Surprise nudged her brows up. “That felt like half of the truth.”
“It’s the whole truth, just half the story. Your turn.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. “I changed my mind.”
“That’s definitely not how this works.”
“It is when you’ll look at me differently after I say it.”
“I promise I won’t.”
She pressed her lips together, turning her head to the side as she spun again.
“This place is beautiful during the winter,” she said, changing the topic.
“The snow covers every rolling hill, every balcony, and the rooftop like a gingerbread house smothered in frosting. It makes everything look like a painting.”
I exhaled. If she didn’t want to talk about it, then she didn’t want to talk about it. I wasn’t looking to start a violent game of arm wrestling in the middle of the ballroom.
“That sounds beautiful.” Regardless of my annoyance about her inability to be honest, it did sound beautiful.
It rarely snowed in Valencia because of where it rested on the coast of Spain.
The winters were mild, so trips to the beach were feasible year-round.
Abuela and I used to kick off our shoes and walk through the sand every night, talking about what we were thankful for.
We’d go back and forth, responding faster and faster with no silence in between words, like a competition.
“Does it snow a lot in Rhode Island?” I asked.
Her brows furrowed. “I—yes. I didn’t realize you knew where I was from.”
“We may not be friends, but when I met you three years ago in New York, your face was everywhere. I recognized you immediately. The protégée from Rhode Island on a world tour of tennis domination. I don’t even remember what I said to you when I saw you, I was so taken aback.
” I laughed, thinking about how flustered I must have looked standing in the rain, approaching her.
“Are you saying you had a crush on me?” Disbelief struck her.
My voice barely a whisper, “What if I did?”
Her eyes fell to my lips, and I wasn’t sure if it was my or her breath that hitched.
“My secret,” she said.
“Yes?”
“You won’t judge me?”
“Of course not.”
“I used to be married. Does that make you think any less of me?”
Her words silenced me, but not for the reason she feared. Of course she had been married. She was her. It didn’t surprise me that a man would waste no time marrying her. What surprised me was how one wasted their time losing her. A woman who never backed down from a challenge.
“I could never think less of you,” I said.
She seemed more surprised by that than my reaction to her confession. “Did you already know?”
I nodded. “I knew you were with a tennis player.” I wasn’t sure who, but the news of her getting married had passed my doorstep at one point.
I didn’t investigate it further. I preferred avoiding the tabloids.
But the fact that our… arrangement… existed in the first place was enough proof her marriage had ended. “I’m assuming it was him…”
“Yeah.” She nodded.
“That felt like half of a secret.”
The corner of her lips rose. “More like a quarter of one.”
“How do I get another quarter?”
“By telling me I’m the best tennis player you’ve ever seen,” she teased.
“You don’t have to convince me of that.”
She took a second to decide before saying, “He’s here.”
Oh. That felt like more than a quarter.
Where, I wanted to ask, but that was too forward.
Instead, I found myself pulling her in a little tighter. Holding her closer. Wondering if he was the reason we were here in the first place. But Cecilia appeared.
“Can I borrow you for a minute?” Cecilia cut in.
“I’ll talk to you after,” Luna told me.
“Of course,” I said, stepping back and finding a spot at the side of the ballroom, watching her walk off.
I grabbed the nearest drink and tried not to analyze the room for a man Luna Aldridge would find worthy of marriage.
Someone who knew the slope of her back and the type of bread she preferred in the morning for toast. Minutes later, the smell of champagne and old wood made me nauseated and fueled my headache when I found Cecilia gone and Luna dancing with a man.
She smiled, he smiled. He laughed, she laughed. He moved like a rigid board. She moved like a willow tree under his hand, her frame bending with the air in an effortless sweeping motion. It was so similar to the way she looked playing tennis, but so different.
The space beside me was filled by Cecilia in a gray dress.
“Is that him?” I asked her.
“Who?” she asked.
“Her ex-husband?”
Her head ticked like a clock in my direction. “She told you about Jeremiah?”
“It didn’t feel very voluntary. But I think she was on the verge of breaking out in hives if she didn’t.”
“That’s Luna for you. She prefers to keep things private until she has a plan to handle them. Did she tell you how things ended?”
“No, that’s her business to share when she’s ready.” Maybe things had ended amicably. Maybe they were friends now. But I couldn’t help but ask, “Is he a good guy?”
“Not at all. He broke her heart, and I’m not even sure he feels guilty about it, because he’s so focused on what he wants.”
“And what does he want?”
“Her. He wants her back.”
I swallowed. “What does she want?”
“I… I’m not sure.”
I gripped my tie and pulled, loosening its unrelenting hold around my throat.
This was an act. It was all an act. Her relationships, past and present, shouldn’t matter.
But that logic didn’t seem to calm me.
This house was either haunted and determined to kill me, or seeing Luna Aldridge like this—like she was three years ago on that rainy night—with a man who didn’t deserve her was shrinking my ability to focus.
There was a stutter in their rhythm.
She scowled at him. He said something back, his eyes pleading.
Then her brows caved into a downward slope and the muscles in her neck sharpened.
They were arguing. She was trying to stay calm, but her cheeks were a sunset pink.
I could see the impression of his hand on the back of her dress, the material stretching against his grip as he tried to reason with her.
“Are they…” Cecilia’s voice was sharp. A best friend ready to intervene.
“They’re fighting,” I confirmed.
“That’s it, this has gone on long enough.”
“I agree.”
“Should I, or would you—”
“I couldn’t be happier.” I put the glass back on the table and moved in long strides across the ballroom.
Not one of my best thought-out ideas. Maybe one of my worst, actually, right up there with counting the number of crystals on her dress. But there I went, impulsively marching forward with no thought of consequence or rationale.
I didn’t stop walking until I was taking Aldridge’s hand out of his and pulling her in a different direction.
Did people notice? Probably.
Did I care? Not at all.
Did she? Highly probable, since she was cutting off the circulation in my hand as I pulled her out of the ballroom.
“No, that’s fine, I wasn’t in the middle of a conversation or anything,” she huffed as we came to a halt in a quiet hallway lit only by windows.
“I reacted, okay? You looked hurt and—”
“That is my business—do you think I can’t handle myself?” she retorted. The lamplight from outside caressed her face.
“You know I don’t think that.”
“I can handle my own battles, Kieran, but now I’ll never know what he had to say, because that moment is gone.”
“I thought you were trying to get away from him—”
“Well, you were wrong. You know what I think?”
“Oh, please tell me, as if you haven’t made your opinion obvious enough.”
“I think you love to insert yourself into every situation that has nothing to do with you.”
“Says the woman who begged me to come this weekend so she could prove something to a man who doesn’t deserve her.”
“Begged? I did not beg you. I do not need you here, and I don’t need to prove anything to anyone.”
I scoffed. “Oh, sure, okay. I didn’t know we were blatantly trading lies now.”
“Why do you even care? Why do you care about who I’m dancing with or talking to or—wait, are you jealous?”
“I am not jealous,” I snapped. Jesus, why was this tie so tight? Shoving my fingers into the loop of the material, I pulled it loose.
She came closer, crossing the hallway. I stepped away, my back hitting the molding. I—I couldn’t stand to be this close to her irritating, vexing, enigmatic face.
“Then why do you care?” she urged, pleaded, just below my chin. Her face tilted up toward mine, our chests rising and falling, as if preparing for battle.
“God forbid I try to help.”
As she opened her mouth, a few blurred figures at the end of the hallway came into view. We were being watched. A spectacle to seize and share for later, tracking our body language and each of our words.
“I don’t need your help. You’re not my—”
“Can you be quiet?”
“Now you want me to be quiet?”
“Fine, be loud, but leave, then.”
Her eyes lit with a roaring fire. “I don’t know why I ever thought that this fake re—”
I cut her off and suppressed the words that were about to obliterate our entire plan—this month of grueling proximity and feuds and shared car rides and tense touches—by pressing my lips against hers.
Kissing her was against all of my preconceived notions. The epitome of the golden rule. The one thing I could fall back on whenever I was confused or distraught or lost. The one thing I knew about myself.
That I hated Luna Aldridge.
Or, at least, I had.
To act like she was a friend was to break my belief system. So to kiss her was… was to lose the entire infrastructure. I was stepping through broken floorboards, walking through unknown shadows, running against the ocean’s tide.
I had expected the floorboards to cut through bone. For the shadows to haunt me. For the ocean to at least fight back. To devour me with its waves and drown me. But they… they froze for a moment. Everything froze.
Aldridge stiffened, unresponsive.
Every millisecond that passed urged me to pull away out of embarrassment and horror.
But then she parted her lips slowly and leaned in, her frame relaxing against my chest. And like some type of ancient curse, I instantly became dazed by the scent of coconut, along with the overwhelming feeling of her soft lips consuming mine.
She dragged her bottom lip over mine, and a shiver traced the outline of my spine. It was soft and pure and calm and baffling. Until she trailed her hand up my chest to the back of my neck and into my hair. It tortured me for its entire journey.
Any sense of logic or control I had disintegrated. Hesitancy was gone. Certainty, conviction, and craving crawled over my body and dragged me down into hell where everything was upside down as she pulled on my tie.
I wrapped my hands around her waist and pulled her in closer, crushing my lips against hers. Waves crashed against waves in a battle for more.
I needed more, I wanted more, I’d die without more.
More of the material of her dress under my fingers. More of the controlling grip she had on my neck and in my hair. More of the sound of her breath against my lips.
Luna, Luna, Luna.
Touches and whispers that belonged to me were no longer mine; I had no control. She was more addicting than a summer night in the ocean. I was ready to succumb to the waves if it meant I didn’t have to leave.
“You’re breathtaking,” I heard myself mumble against her lips.
She pulled away, and my hands slipped from her waist, a sense of vacancy flooding my body. A light that had been switched on in my chest was twisted off, the bulb shattering into darkness.
The golden light from the lamppost outside flooded the side of her face. Her lips were swollen, and her eyes were wide open. The questions behind her eyes mirrored the ones in mine.
Her lips, her hands, her skin, her body, her her her.
I wanted to know what she was thinking, from one enemy to another. But even if I tore the wallpaper off the walls around us, I’d likely only find a fraction of what she was hiding. And I didn’t know, for the love of God, why I cared.
All I knew was that one moment I felt strangled having to watch her break down in front of her ex-husband, and the next I was about to witness the downfall of our plan. Now, I felt confused about—about whatever that just was.
“I…” She brushed the tip of her finger against her bottom lip. It was torture to know that it had been between my teeth moments ago.
Her eyes caught mine in unease. She swiped her hands against the bodice of her dress and cleared her throat. It gave me a second to gather my thoughts and figure out what the hell to say. How to explain what I just did. How to think about anything but the feeling of her.
But she turned and walked away as if nothing had happened, the light from the windows flickering over her departing figure.
My shoulders fell. Relief should have flooded my body, but I only felt stuffed with knots as I watched rain begin to fall outside.