Chapter 4
Four
The chime of a doorbell. Footsteps padding across polished floorboards.
But no music.
The fibreglass door swings open, revealing the very person responsible for my presence on this wraparound deck.
Aspen.
She’s the kind of pretty that feels unfair. Her smile doesn’t just crease dimples into her cheeks; it pulls the freckles on her pert nose closer and makes her hazel eyes shine even brighter.
“Hi,” she greets, all grace and golden light. “You came. And you look…” Her gaze dips, catching the hot-pink streak daring its way out from under my cream cricket dress, then lifts again. “Wow.”
My two-sizes-too-big shades from earlier are gone. In their place is a sweep of blush, a slick of gloss, and now I’m ready to live in the lie the glow fakes across my skin.
“Thank you! So do you.” My compliment is genuine. “I’m obsessed with the hair.”
It’s that effortless look, half up, half down, with two delicate braids framing her face. Honestly, I wish I’d gone the same route. Instead, I’m layered, styled, accessorised, while she shines in a yellow cami and denim shorts.
Oh well. Better to be overdressed than underdressed.
“Thank you, Bri. I can call you Bri, right?”
I nod, and with another flash of dimples, she steps aside to let me in.
Silence greets me over the threshold. Stillness, too.
I scan the space automatically. Open concept, oak beams overhead, light soaking the room in golden strokes. The layout matches ours, but the feeling… doesn’t. This place is warmer. Grounded. And not just because it’s free of faux-beachy palettes or showroom furniture. This place is lived-in.
“This place is really nice,” I murmur, tracking a sunbeam across the floor.
But the same glow streaming through glass doors does more than illuminate. It accentuates the absence. Of sound. Of people.
“Am I early?”
“Early?” Aspen tilts her head. “No. The guys are out back, getting the grill going. I think a few others are coming, but I have no clue when or who they even are.”
Few others? I think I got my wires crossed. This is definitely not the party the pre-drinks flowing through my system thought it’d be.
“Oh,” I recover quickly, hoisting the champagne bottle between us. “I brought a gift.”
“You didn’t have to.”
I shrug, bracelets glinting as I hand it over.
“But thank you. Come on, let me introduce you to the guys. Minus Reese. He should be back soon though. You’ll know who he is right off the bat. He’s the embodiment of a flirt with a dirty smirk.”
“Charming.” As I trail after her, the counter mess catches my eye. “Making martinis?”
“Trying.” Her grimace answers before her mouth does. “Failing miserably.”
“I’ll help,” I offer, maybe a little too quick. Anything to spike my blood alcohol content. “I’ve made more than a few in my lifetime.”
“Oh, thank god. I need all the help I can get.”
The door slides open, and the outside rushes in. Smoky sweetness hits first—ribs or something charred just right. Then a laugh follows, resonant, thrumming against the doorframe like a bassline.
I try to track it, but by the time I look, it’s already dissolved into the breeze.
Two guys stand broad-shouldered and relaxed at the grill, golden rays sloping off every dip and curve of their backs.
The one with caramel running through his curls is already angled toward us. His chin tips, casual. “Hey.”
Am I imagining it, or did his friend tense? The faint shift of his shoulder blades, the subtle roll of muscle beneath his skin—small, but unmistakable. If I could see his face, I’d know. He doesn’t turn, though, and from the stillness in his posture, it doesn’t seem like he intends to.
“Brielle, this is Dylan.” Aspen waves her hand. “Dylan, Brielle.”
“Nice to meet you, Brielle.” His smile is polite, but his dark eyes pierce, trying to read between my lines.
Whatever he’s searching for, I doubt he’ll find.
Tonight, like most nights before and most to come, I’m nothing more than a vessel for mind-numbing vices.
I start to echo the nicety, but it dies in my throat when nameless turns—barely, just ten degrees past indifference—and our eyes catch. Lock.
Grey.
Like stills of an ocean under a storm-thick sky. Darker than the pendant resting against his chest, lighter than the looks he pins me with.
So that’s the colour of his eyes.
The recognition is there in the flare of his nostrils, in the flash of disdain. It fades for a heartbeat as his gaze sweeps over me, then snaps back to my earrings.
I have to hold from flicking them. They’re fancy, a gift from my mother, but not in-your-face-fancy so I have no clue why they’ve provoked so much ire.
“Brielle, meet Carson.” Aspen doesn’t seem to notice the chill rolling off him. “He’s the one who found your phone.”
Carson. So that’s his name. Solid, clipped, exactly like him.
Now that we’re not cloaked in moonlight and missteps, I can take him in fully.
Cropped brown hair frames cut-glass features. Red trunks ride low, drawing my eye to the clean lines of his torso. It’s all sun-bronzed skin stretched over muscle that’s clearly been earned, not given.
A swimmer’s build, no question.
He’s the first to speak. “How’s it going?”
So that’s the route he’s taking—bare-bones civility, clipped short and hammered into place as his gaze falls back to the grill. A dismissal if I ever saw one.
I guess I deserve it. Things didn’t exactly end on a high note.
“Thank you for”—last night, making sure I got home, holding me when I needed it—“keeping my phone safe,” I land on.
“Don’t need your thanks,” he grunts, forearms flexing as he wields a pair of tongs. “Some guy called Alex was blowing up your phone.”
My nape heats under the reminder.
It was three messages, not thirty, but I let it slide.
“Yeah.”
Thankfully, Dylan steps in before the tension thickens beyond plausible deniability. He plucks the bottle from Aspen’s hand and, over the hiss of the grill, reads the label aloud. “Moet my father bought it. “I didn’t know what else to bring.”
“You didn’t have to bring anything.” There’s a clink as he sets the bottle down. “But it’s a nice gesture. And now,” he nods at Aspen, “you’ve got a backup plan if the martinis don’t work out.”
I’m determined not to let her efforts go to waste.
Back inside, the counter holds sweating vodka and olives floating in brine. A crooked shot glass sits at the side, but before I can reach for it, Aspen blurts, “Brielle, I’m so sorry.”
Ah. So she did notice Carson’s cold shoulder.
Instead of feeding into it, I go for oblivious. “For what?”
“Carson.” She frowns toward the deck. “He wasn’t exactly warm. I swear he’s not usually like that. But if you’re uncomfortable, if you’d rather go, I’d understand.”
“It’s fine,” I say, maybe a little too fast. Here is fine.
With people who don’t know the ins-and-outs of my life.
In a space that doesn’t echo with the kind of hollowness that forces me with my thoughts.
“He didn’t do anything wrong. I promise.” I did.
I consider offering some sanitised version of what happened, but decide against it. If Carson wanted it known, he’d have said something on the back deck.
“Are you sure? I feel awful.”
“Please don’t. There’s no reason to.”
She hesitates a moment before biting her lip and nodding.
“Okay. Just… don’t take it personally, all right?
Easier said than done, I know, but they’re the type who take a while to warm up.
Once they do, they’re amazing. I swear.” She studies the shapes through the glass again.
“Honestly, I thought Carson would be the easy one out of the two. Guess I had that backwards.”
“Are you friends or…”
“Friends. Just friends. All of us including Reese.” She drifts closer, voice lifting a little with reassurance. “Reese. He’s one person you don’t have to worry about being standoffish.”
“Only a heavy dose of flirting?” I tease, brushing my thumb over the rim of a nearby glass. There’s a whole mess of them, clear, cloudy, and a few that look possibly undrinkable. “You really made all these?”
Her nod is sheepish.
“They’re all kind of disasters. I really have no idea what I’m doing.” Olive clinks against the glass she holds out. “Wanna try?”
Do apples grow on trees?
One sip in and damn.
“Whoa.”
My wide-eyed stare meets a told-you-so grin.
“That went down like gasoline.”
Does it stop me from drinking again? Of course not.
“You like it?” She scrunches her nose.
“Not exactly,” I admit, but the glass is already halfway to my mouth again. “Alcohol’s alcohol, though. Still,” I grimace, “this definitely needs some work.”
At least now I’ve got something to keep me busy. Time to fix these and make a real dirty martini happen.