Chapter 1
KYRA
The only person in this room I’m not supposed to sit with is the one I know best.
There’s probably a joke in there somewhere. I write happy endings for a living and can’t even get a place card next to my own boyfriend. Very on-brand. Not that I’ve got much brainpower left for it.
I’ve spent most of the afternoon signing two hundred tip-in sheets for a special edition, nearly forty-five minutes pretending I enjoy champagne that tastes like somebody whispered peach over a bottle of vinegar, and the last twelve, watching a woman in a silver dress come up with one flimsy excuse after another to touch Aire.
Whatever joke is hiding in the situation can stay there. I’m tired.
Across the ballroom, Aire sits at the honoree table behind what looks like half a flower shop’s inventory in white roses and blue delphiniums, angled toward the foundation president on one side while Sienna Hart leans into him from the other.
She says something that makes everyone around them laugh and, for what has to be the fourth time tonight, rests a hand on his forearm.
Aire looks down at it. The photographer hovering near the stage notices it too, his camera coming up a second later.
Right on cue.
Give it an hour and there’ll be a six-slide carousel on Instagram called Ten Times Aire Rhodes and Sienna Hart Forgot They Were Just Friends, with ninety thousand women sporting flower emojis in their usernames explaining why they’ve known all along those two are meant to be together.
Which is going to be a little awkward for me—you know, his girlfriend.
“Your manuscript just hit thirty-eight thousand.”
I drag my attention away from Aire. Celeste Moreno, Riverlight’s director of literacy initiatives, is leaning toward me with her phone positioned between us. “Thirty-eight?”
“Thousand.” She nudges the screen closer. “Someone just pushed the bid up again.”
“Shut up.”
Celeste laughs, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “I know.”
I glare at the number as if sheer disbelief might knock a zero off.
No such luck.
“That’s insane.” I wince at how that sounds. “In the best way.”
Celeste gives my knee a quick pat and picks up whatever conversation she’d left hanging with the woman to her left.
I’m thrilled. Slightly horrified, but thrilled.
I just can’t wrap my head around a stranger spending thirty-eight thousand dollars on a draft containing coffee stains, entire paragraphs crossed out in temper, and at least nine hundred notes to myself that amount to some variation of fix this shit later.
I take another sip of champagne and try my hardest not to spit it back into the glass. Still awful.
The manuscript up for auction is the first complete working draft of my third novel, and the only copy with all my original notes still intact. My publisher wasn’t exactly thrilled when I told them I was donating it, which is why I waited until the paperwork was signed to bring it up.
It’s been sitting in a drawer at home for years, and yes, parting with it stung a little. But Riverlight is putting the money to good use across Memphis next year—school libraries, writing programs, music education—and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Aire gave Riverlight a hell of a lot more than my manuscript is bringing in. He just managed to do it without anybody putting my name next to his, which, now that I think about it, pretty much sums up the last six years of my life.
Whatever story Celeste went back to finally reaches its punch line, and she makes a strangled sound into her wine. Around us, dinner carries on in overlapping conversations, forks knocking against china, the occasional burst of laughter, and a low thread of music from the house band.
My phone buzzes under my napkin.
I don’t reach for it right away. If it’s Aire—and at things like this, it usually is—I’ve had years of practice not reacting like his girlfriend the second his name appears on my screen.
There’s a camera stationed near the stage for the speeches and performances, photographers working the edges of the ballroom, and enough attention on him tonight that the smallest reaction could become tomorrow’s entertainment.
The Riverlight Benefit isn’t being televised live, but clips are going up throughout the evening, and the red carpet streamed online from the minute the first guest arrived. God forbid anybody has to wait until morning to find out which famous person wore which version of black.
Aire arrived with his manager, Malcolm Reed, and spent most of his time on the carpet posing with Sienna for photographs.
I got here half an hour earlier with my literary agent, smiled my way through the backdrop, and fielded a reporter who asked if romance novels gave women unrealistic expectations about men, sounding very much like she’d already made up her mind.
I hadn’t even finished answering when someone farther down the carpet shouted that Aire Rhodes had arrived.
Her eyes flew past my shoulder. Seconds later she was smoothing her dress, tucking her hair behind one ear and turning pink when Aire looked our way and smiled.
I almost asked who had the unrealistic expectations now.
My phone buzzes again. I glance across the room first, but Aire is listening to one of the board members, and Sienna has finally found something better to do with her hands and is cutting into her salmon. No help there. I pull my phone into my lap.
Aire: You know I can see you, right?
Aire: Miss me that bad, sweetheart?
My mouth twitches. Should’ve known.
Kyra: Terribly. Mostly your left forearm.
Aire: Jealous?
Kyra: Don’t flatter yourself.
Aire: Come claim your property.
Kyra: You’ve got hands and a mouth. Use them. I’ll deal with the rest of you when we get home.
Aire: That a promise? You know I love it when you handle me.
Aire: Come over here and prove it.
Kyra: Malcolm would have a stroke.
Aire: Worth it.
Kyra: Easy for you to say. I’m not explaining to your label why their precious mysterious bachelor suddenly has a woman in his lap.
Aire: You say that like having you in my lap is a problem.
Heat crawls up my neck. I bite back a smile.
Kyra: Behave, rock star. You’re being honored in twenty minutes.
Aire: Yeah, and I’d rather not walk up there hard as fuck because you wanna keep shaking that ass in my direction.
Kyra: From all the way over here? Damn. Still got it.
Aire: Wanna test that theory? Fifteen minutes. Five to get that dress around your waist. Ten to remind you exactly what you’ve been missing.
Kyra: Fifteen? Cute. Give me five and I’ll have you seeing the whole damn galaxy.
Aire: Fuck, baby. Haven’t had you to myself in days and now you wanna talk reckless?
My eyes sting. Oh, for fuck’s sake. My period better be coming, because I refuse to believe one horny text from my own man is about to make me cry in public.
Except it isn’t really the text. Aire’s been so swallowed up by work these past few weeks that flirting with him has started feeling like a rare event.
We’re not falling apart or anything. He’s just always busy.
Most days lately, I get a distracted peck on his way out, another when he comes home half-dead, and scraps of conversation squeezed between calls, rehearsals, meetings, and whatever else has decided it needs him.
I know he isn’t doing it on purpose. Hell, I can see how exhausted he is.
But hearing that he’s noticed too—that he hasn’t had me either—gets me right in my stupid feelings.
I blink hard and cross my legs, pretending the damp patch in my thong doesn’t exist.
Kyra: Whose fault is that? I’ve barely managed to get a proper kiss out of you all week.
Aire: Exactly why I’m trying to fix that shit right now.
Kyra: In fifteen minutes?
Aire: You doubting me?
Kyra: I’m doubting your little plan. Malcolm will have you by the balls in ten, and you know that overgrown hall monitor would drag you back here himself if he had to.
Aire: Let him try.
Kyra: Famous last words.
Aire: Mhm. You seeing anyone after this?
I stare at that one, trying to figure out which version of our nonsense he’s starting this time. The last one had me playing nurse, and unless this dress suddenly comes with a stethoscope, I’m gonna need a hint.
Kyra: We live together, Aire. I’m your girlfriend. Ringing any bells?
Aire: I know, baby.
Aire: That’s the part I love.
Aire: You. Home. That dress on the floor. Your thick thighs over my shoulders while I eat that attitude right out of you.
My thighs tense like they heard him too, and my stomach does that soft little flip I refuse to ever get too old or too used to him for.
God, I love his filthy mouth. Of all the versions of Aire I get that nobody else does, this might be one of my favorites—the one hidden inside the man half the internet thinks barely speaks.
I could put a thousand love stories on paper and give every one of them the ending they deserve, but ours will always be the one I’d choose.
Maybe because the best parts have never been the grand ones.
Sometimes it’s a filthy message on a screen and the certainty that, when the night is over, it’s me he comes home to.
I raise my head and find Aire watching me with a dark, knowing look that leaves no doubt he means every word of that message. He holds my gaze for no more than a beat, one corner of his mouth lifting before a comment at his table pulls him back into the conversation.
I lower my eyes to my phone, fighting the smile trying to work its way onto my face. The last thing I need is to give us away.