Did we have sex?
Chapter
31 SOPHIA
I fall back onto my bed and stare up at the ceiling.
The flat white plaster above offers zero answers as I try to force the shattered fragments of last night into some semblance of a timeline.
The pieces I actually have. There are damn few of them.
Muffled notes of deafening music. Sharp, pulsing strobe lights. The bitter scent of salt water mixed with cheap alcohol. Maria's wild laugh. And then... gaps. Massive, dark, bottomless craters where the night simply stops existing.
Aunt Clara was already home when I crept back through the front door.
With a look that could have easily turned me to ash, she pointed silently at my phone resting on the kitchen table.
I snatched it up and bolted straight to my room without stopping.
I needed a physical, heavy wall between me and her suffocating questions before I was capable of articulating a single sentence.
I press the power button. The screen flickers to life, painfully bright.
Ten missed calls.
A dozen messages from James.
A flood of texts from Maria.
And buried beneath all that digital static lies the slow, specific, crushing weight of what this morning has produced: Lorenzo's sprawling mansion.
His unreadable mother. The icy judgment of my aunt.
A centenary celebration I am apparently now forced to help plan.
And a punishment that has somehow managed to also be hisultimate torture—a twist of logic whose sheer unfairness my brain cannot even begin to parse.
Because of Lorenzo. All of it is happening because of Lorenzo.
I scroll through my contacts and tap Maria's number. It barely rings once before she picks up.
"Sophia!" Her voice explodes through the speaker, relieved and entirely breathless.
"Finally. I've been sick with worry. You just completely disappeared from the face of the earth last night, today you weren't in school, and Lorenzo" She cuts herself off mid-sentence.
The sudden silence has the specific, telling quality of someone who has almost walked into a trap and is now violently reconsidering their footsteps. "How are you? Are you okay?"
"As fine as samone can be after getting drugged " I say, and the word tastes like ash on my tongue.
I am not fine.
My head has been doing something specific, h?mmering, and thoroughly unpleasant behind my temples since the exact second I woke up. My stomach has violent opinions about every scent my bedroom encounters, and that gawning gap in my memory is deeply, comprehensively unsettling.
"But I can't remember anything," I admit, my voice wavering dangerously.
"What happened?"
Silence on the other end of the line.
On my lap, Prince shifts his weight, rolling over with a heavy sigh and burying his nose in his paws. His deep, rhythmic purring is the only sound in the room for a few agonizing seconds.
"Maria. Speak to me."
"Okay." A heavy breath crackles through the phone. "So. The thing is... you are currently the number one topic of conversation at Weststarr."
My grip on the phone tightens until the plastic casing gives a faint, warning creak.
"Why," I say, the syllable flat.
"Okay, so we were dancing...well, you were dancing. You were really going for it last night, which honestly, Shopi, I didn't know you had that kind of party animal in you..."
"Maria. Focus."
"Right, yes. So you were on the chair..."
"I was on a chair?!"
"and then Lorenzo appeared out of nowhere. And he was..." She pauses again, choosing her words with the extreme care of a bomb technician. "He was different. Like, completely not his usual arrogant self. After he found out that someone spiked yiur drinks he complet lost it"
I sit up straight, the comforter pooling around my waist. "What."
"Yes our plan worked " she says, her voice dropping lower, almost reverent.
"He came up to you .He dragged you off that chair...threw you over his shoulder, literally, in front of the entire crowd and carried you away from the madness."
A sharp pause where the sound of my own pulse fills my ears.
"I tried to follow them, but Ben and Alex kind of... appeared. Blocked the exit. And then I lost you both."
My fingernails dig into the back of my phone. "And then?"
"And then by morning, everyone was talking about how Lorenzo Calloway had spent the rest of the night with you. You know..."
Maria makes a sound that contains approximately twelve separate, highly toxic emotions.
"Vivienne was in such a state at school during the break that she knocked over Melissa Carter's entire lunch tray and didn't even pretend to apologize."
I close my eyes, pressing my lids tight. "Oh my God."
"I know."
"No, Maria...oh my God." I press my free hand firmly over my mouth.
"Vivienne thinks that Lorenzo and I..."
"Well," Maria interjects, her tone suddenly dripping with a dangerous, sharp curiosity.
"Did you?"
"No!" The word tears out of my throat, fast, absolute, and driven by the sheer, unadulterated shock that she would even ask. "I woke up completely alone in a guest room in his house."
I freeze, the realization hitting me like a physical blow.
In his clothes.
The way his oversized fabric dragged against my skin, smelling vividly, aggressively of him expensive cedar wood and heavy, dark, masculine cologne.
No.
I shake the thought away with violent force, physically forcing my lungs to expand against the phantom scent. "No. Absolutely not."
"Okay, okay," Maria says, sounding like she is working overtime to keep a triumphant laugh out of her voice and failing miserably. "But Shopi, think about it positively."
"What in the world is positive about any of this?"
"Just that Lorenzo was... that he acted like the whole thing was deeply personal. Like it actually mattered to him."
"And?"
"And you won," she says, her voice swelling with pride.
"I did?"
"Yes. You showed him that you are not a pushover."
The room plummets into a heavy, suffocating quiet. Prince looks up at me with his piercing yellow eyes, blinks slowly, and looks away again, apparently satisfied with his evaluation.
Yes. I did. I prove to him wrong .
"But everyone at school is going to think I hooked up with him," I start, the panic finally clawing its way up my throat.
"True, but it's not that bad," Maria says simply.
"Oh, it is."
"No, it's not. Letting everyone think that you had sex with him is just a bonus."
I appreciate Maria's kind words and the desperate way she is trying to cheer me up, but honestly, I see nothing positive about the rumor that we slept together. It's not a bonus. It's an absolute nightmare.
"Shopi." Her voice loses all its amusement, turning gentle, almost maternal.
"Breathe. Just breathe."
I force myself to do it. I drag the cool air into my chest and exhale it in a shaky wave. "What do I do, Maria?"
She is quiet for a long moment. "I think you should forget about the others," she says softly, "and show Lorenzo that he does not affect you at all."
I say nothing. My throat feels entirely too tight to form words.
Because he does affect me. The brutal truth settles heavily in my chest.
The specific way he looks at me makes my stomach drop, twisting into something complicated and strange.
The way he always steps directly into my personal space, invading my boundaries, almost forcing me to look up at him while pressing his suffocating body heat straight into mine.
I have to stay away from him.
I cannot let him affect me.
I don't want him to have that power.
In fact, I don't even want to think about him.
So why can't I stop? Why does my mind keep replaying the moment he stood in front of me, the way his shirt clung like a second skin to his muscular, well-trained body?
Did we have sex? Did... No. No, I know myself. And... I stop. I just hope that underneath his arrogant, asshole mask, he didn't take advantage of my state last night.
"Shopi? Are you still there?" Maria's voice cuts through the fog, snapping me back to reality.
"Yes. Sorry."
Prince places his heavy, warm paw right on my knee. My gaze drifts unbidden to the armchair in the corner of my room. To the dark, tailored designer jacket draped over the backrest. The one that doesn't belong to me, yet holds my eyes hostage.
"I just hate this," I whisper into the quiet space.
"I know, love," Maria says warmly.
"I genuinely, completely hate every single second of this."
"I know, Shopi."
The late afternoon light bleeds into a deep gold against the opposite buildings. Somewhere far below, a car horn blares. Someone laughs loudly on the sidewalk. The world just keeps turning, completely oblivious.
What if we actually did kiss?
What if we were about to have sex?
Oh my God, what did I say to him last night?
What if I actually liked it?
No. Never. I would rather jump off a cliff.
But then again, I was completely defenseless, totally out of it, and he... No. No, no, no.
I push the thought aside before it can grow real roots in my brain. "He told me we're meeting tomorrow," I say, desperately switching the track.
"For the planning."
"Planning?"
I look at the heavy, black leather folder resting on my desk. The one Melissa firmly pressed into my palms on my way out the door. The one I carried home on the bus, clutching it tightly against my chest without opening it once, just sitting on the back seat and staring blankly out the window.
"Yes," I say.
And then everything pours out of me. I tell her every single unfair detail of my punishment and the fact that I am forced to sit across a table from the one person I would love to never exchange another syllable with for the rest of my natural life.
Maria makes a sound that is not even remotely close to a word—a cross between a gasp and a strangled, thrilled squeak.
"Spit it out," I command.
"I didn't say anything," she says with total, mocking innocence.
"Maria."
"I'm just sitting here, Shopi."
I look down at Prince. He blinks his large, amber eyes back at me lazily, completely unbothered by my impending doom.
"Goodbye, Maria," I sigh.
"See you tomorrow, sweetie," she chirps.
"Yeah. See you at school."
She is still laughing into the line when I hit the red button on the display and hang up.