Chapter 36
Nova
The wine is sweet and strong. After whatever Lena gave me, the whole world has gone warm and soft around the edges. We’re sitting on blankets on a roof eating food Vaelor somehow conjured while the Hollow celebrates beneath us. The stars are so close I could touch them.
I’m not thinking about bears or ravens or what’s coming. I’m not thinking about anything. The music is drifting up through the open windows and everything feels good for once.
The song changes to something slow. Kyron is standing in front of me with his hand out before I even register it.
I take it and he pulls me up. His hand finds my waist and we’re swaying, those blue eyes looking down at me in the moonlight, and my heart is doing something it shouldn’t be doing in front of five other people.
“You’re beautiful, Nova,” he says.
My face goes hot. Immediately. “Kyron, you can’t just say things like that to me.”
“I can and I will and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
I grin because he’s right. I hate that he’s right.
Then I’m kissing him because I can’t help it.
His hand tightens on my waist and pulls me closer.
The other one comes up to my jaw, tilting my face, and he kisses me back slow and deliberate like he’s been thinking about exactly how he’d do this.
His mouth is warm and he tastes like wine and his fingers are in my hair now and I grab the front of his shirt because my knees aren’t working properly anymore.
He smiles against my mouth and deepens the kiss. I forget where I am. I forget there are five other men on this roof. I forget everything except his hands and his mouth and those blue eyes when he pulls back just far enough to look at me like I’m the only thing that exists.
“Alright, my turn.” Locke’s hand on Kyron’s shoulder, pulling us apart.
I’m still catching my breath when Locke takes my hand. He pulls me in, holds me close, looks down at me with those green eyes.
“You look…”
“Don’t say beautiful.”
“I wasn’t going to. Obviously.” He spins me. I laugh because I wasn’t expecting it and my feet almost leave the ground. When he pulls me back in, his mouth is near my ear. “I was going to say happy.”
I swallow hard.
“That’s my favorite sound,” he says. “You laughing.”
I press my face against his chest because I can’t look at him right now. His arms wrap around me and we sway for a few more beats before Trey cuts in with all the grace of a man who has never danced a day in his life.
“I’ve got this,” he says.
“You absolutely do not,” Kyron calls from the blankets.
Trey ignores him. Takes my hand. Tries to spin me.
We nearly go off the edge of the roof. Beckett yells something.
Trey catches me around the waist and we’re both laughing so hard I can barely stand.
He has no rhythm. None. His feet are everywhere.
He keeps stepping on mine, apologizing, and then doing it again immediately.
“You’re terrible at this,” I say.
“I’m amazing at this. You just can’t keep up.”
I shove his chest. He grins, spins me out toward Vaelor, who catches me without missing a beat. Literally. Because Vaelor can dance.
“How—”
“Memory House,” he says, already leading. “Required.”
“Dancing was required?”
“Grandmother’s orders.”
He dips me. I grab his shoulders and scream a little. The guys lose it. When he brings me back up I’m breathless and dizzy and he’s grinning at me. It’s wildly unfair that he’s this good at it.
Beckett taps his shoulder. Vaelor steps back. Beckett steps in and everything goes quiet.
Not the music. Just everything else. He holds me close. Hand on the small of my back. We barely move. My forehead finds his jaw. I close my eyes and just breathe him in.
“I keep thinking about you in the hallway,” he says. Low, just for me. “When we—”
“Shhh, Beckett.”
He laughs against my hair. My face is on fire but it’s not embarrassment.
Because the memory of it — his hands on the me, the drywall dust on his arms, the way he looked at me right before I grabbed his shirt — sends heat through me so fast I have to press my face harder into his jaw so he can’t see my expression.
He can feel it though. I know he can. His arm tightens around me.
The music picks up. Rane is there, pulling me away from Beckett with a grin.
“My turn. Last dance.”
I take his hand. We are terrible at this. Spectacularly terrible. The music is fast. He’s spinning me. I’m laughing. His hands are warm on my waist. I don’t want this to stop.
The moonlight, the stars… It’s perfect.
“I wish we had this sooner,” he says.
“We’re having it now.”
“I know. I can’t wait to have so many more. Dates. Nights. All of it.”
My hand tightens on his shoulder. “I’d like that.”
He pulls me closer. The music slows again. We sway. I can hear the others behind us, talking and laughing, and it’s everything.
I pull back and look at all of them. My guys. On a roof. Under a full moon. Wine-drunk and happy and here.
“This is the best night I’ve ever had,” I say because I mean it.
Trey raises his glass. Kyron is smiling from the blanket. Locke nods once, the way he does when something matters too much for words. Vaelor’s eyes are bright. Beckett is watching me with that look, the one where he’s saving this somewhere I’ll never find.
I open my mouth to say something else when a voice cuts through everything from below. Loud.
“Alright, where the hell is she? Where is Nova?”
Oh shit.