Chapter 2
“You remembered?” I pulled back, stunned. Even my own sister, Jessa, forgot as she dropped me off at the airport.
Saint made an indignant noise in the back of his throat. Insulted by my question.
“After all these years, the countless parties, do you really think so little of me, Madelayne?” His lips stretched into a smirk that could seduce trouble as we sat down.
I thought the world of him. Always had. And when he smirked at me like that, a whisper sounded in my head.
We’re alone in a foreign country where no one knows who we are…
Was I really that delusional into believing an ocean was enough to blur the lines between us? When Saint had never been anything other than sociable towards me?
Maybe. Okay, yes. Yes, I really was.
I lived in my daydreams, cursed to wish they were a reality instead.
When I didn’t answer, the smirk grew as he folded his hands on the table.
“What?” Suddenly self-conscious, I shifted in my seat, the supple leather sticking to my thighs. “Do I have something on my face?”
I reached to wipe whatever crumbs were there away when his deep, core-striking chuckle stopped me.
“No, your face is perfect. Not even an eyelash on your cheeks.” Saint shook his head, the smirk diminishing slightly on his lips. “I was just thinking I haven’t really seen you since your graduation party. And we didn’t really get a chance to talk then. How does it feel to officially be done? Is graduating everything you wanted it to be?”
“You mean aside from being free of my father’s constant complaints that I was his only child to ever get held back, thus bringing shame upon our family name?” I was in third grade and didn’t test well, but my father took it as an act of defiance he shamed me for. To Saint, I shrugged. “It’s nothing to write home about, I guess.”
Except, for me, it was.
I’d been counting down the days, months, and years to this moment, this day.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that my father shamed me for being an almost nineteen-year-old graduate, it was another year of Saint seeing me as a high schooler.
I lived in this delusional reality in my head where graduating high school meant one less obstacle for the man in front of me—if he decided to touch me.
And I wanted him to touch me.
I wanted to be the girl Saint took home.
I wanted so much he couldn’t give me.
He might’ve been Archer’s best friend, but he was my secret.
The kind of secret that fed my lost soul.
It was nothing salacious. Nothing remotely scandalous. They were simple, almost quiet moments of my life that I spent with Saint. Where I got to know him as someone other than my brother’s friend.
We’d play video games well past my bedtime when Archer was passed out drunk from whatever party they just came home from and I couldn’t sleep.
He’d bring me fantasy books with dragons and magic that he thought I’d enjoy because my father only ever bought me classics that bored me to tears.
He’d make me playlists with all the emo bands that blasted from his car and Archer’s room after I annoyed him about this song or that artist one too many times.
He was also the reason I fell in love with skateboarding.
Saint might’ve been in my life because of Archer, but there was always a sliver of him that felt irrevocably mine.
Saint cleared his throat and I squirmed in my seat from the fierce, stony expression on his face.
Did he see my thoughts play out behind my eyes?
He cleared his throat again. “Madelayne?—”
“Would you like to try any of the house wines?” A waiter appeared, breaking the silence but not the tautness that wrapped around my limbs in a vise grip.
Saint rattled off one of the names from the small menu the waiter handed over. Once he passed it back and the waiter walked away, I looked at Saint ardently. “Should I expect you to order for me for the duration of this meal?”
“You’ll enjoy it,” he promised through a chuckle, unrolling the cloth napkin and placing it across his lap.
Movements that were supposed to be casual but were wielded in stiffness.
“Now I’m determined not to.”
Brat. His dark green eyes danced with amusement.
“Don’t be like that, Madelayne. Let it be my gift to you.”
“I guess.” I sighed, dramatically, while on the inside I was giddy like a schoolgirl over Saint giving me something. Even if it was a wine I wasn’t going to like. “If you insist.”
“Appreciate that.” He rolled his eyes at me, but amusement danced across his sharpened features.
The waiter came back, showing us the label of the bottle, which meant little to me, before pouring it into our glasses with an exaggerated flourish.
It wasn’t my first drink ever, far from it actually. I’d been to plenty of field parties back home where I got drunk on cheap beer and had snuck spirits into my drinks at my father’s functions, so my tolerance was pretty high for a girl who only weighed a buck twenty when soaking wet.
But I didn’t like wine. Had tried it on a few occasions and the taste left something to be desired.
Saint didn’t take his eyes off me as he lifted his glass, almost challengingly, in a silent toast.
I followed suit, eyeing the red liquid in the glass as they clinked together.
Taking the smallest sip possible, I tried my best to keep my features schooled as I set the glass back on the table.
I think I failed by the way Saint rolled his lips together before taking another sip and asking, “What do you think?”
“It’s okay.” I shrugged.
He chuckled, leaning back in his chair. Those dark eyes didn’t waver from mine. He could smell the bullshit, but wouldn’t call me on it.
Instead, he took another sip from his glass and I watched his throat work with a bite to my lip that I released as he finished with a satisfied aaah.
The way his throat worked, that Adam’s apple bobbing. I sat on my hands. My thighs warm on top of them.
Setting the glass down, Saint watched me intently.
A look that seized my lungs in an iron grip.
A look he’d never given me before.
That wicked gleam that was always present in his eyes shone darker, a little hungrier. And not for the food we had yet to order.
But then he blinked and it was gone. Like it was never there to begin with.
I wanted to stab my thigh with the fork on the table.
Nothing was different in his gaze; my mind was trying to romanticize the night. Just like every other night I’d spent with Saint where he’d shower me with sprinkles of his attention.
Brother’s best friend.
Brother’s best friend.
You’re like a little sister to him.
That’s why he’s here.
Nothing more.
Saint raised a brow when I did nothing but stare at him.
“So.” He dragged out the word. “London.”
“London.” I nodded, taking a sip for courage. To settle the nerves. I took another to be safe. My face contorted with disgust. It really was bad wine.
“What do you plan on doing while you’re here?”
I shrugged, causing a look of disappointment to cross Saint’s face.
“So you’re telling me” —he dug his elbows into the table, leaning closer to me with disbelief— “you flew all this way with no idea what to do. At all?”
“Archer was supposed to be here,” I told him. “He knows London better than I do. I had been relying on him to show me around.”
Admitting that aloud made me feel helpless. Like I let other people make decisions for me when that was the opposite of my personality.
“Archer bailed? I thought he was just coming on a later flight when he told me something held him up.” Saint’s face was getting a workout in different expressions. Disappointment to disbelief to now shock.
“Yeah, something did come up. Our dad.”
Saint’s entire expression fell into something only described as unpleasant. “Explain.”
“Nothing much to explain.” My eyes dropped to the table and I forced them back to his face. His brutal, beautiful face. “Dad called and he went running. The same song, to the same dance they’ve always done.”
Saint mumbled something under his breath with a shake of his head. “That’s fucked up, Madelayne.”
I shrugged again, the gesture heavy on my shoulders. “Not like it hasn’t happened before.”
“Doesn’t mean it should keep happening,” he growled. “I fucking hate how they always do this to you. I swear sometimes your dad makes me want to hit him over the head with a cast iron skillet. Maybe then he wouldn’t be so calloused to you.”
“Or give him a concussion.” I tried to joke, but my eyes were wide with the ferocity of Saint’s words. He was really angry over this. So much so there wasn’t even a crack in his ruthless expression at my words.
He just repeated, “Or a concussion,” as if that was a great consolation prize.
An electric thrill shot down my spine.
Maybe it made me a bad person, but it was nice to finally have someone be on my side. To see how my father treated me and see it for what it was. Wrong.
Still, I felt this ingrained need to defend Archer, even if I was still pissed at him.
“Who’s going to say no to the mayor of Honeycutt?”
“I did.” When I raised my brow in question, he elaborated. “He asked me to be at the banquet tonight, telling me I should fly home early. I told him I couldn’t.”
“Because business?” Great. Even Saint knew about the event while I was left in the dark. It didn’t surprise me, but the hurt was there all the same.
“Among other things.” He shifted in his seat.
“How’d he take hearing no?” It wasn’t a word my father heard often.
“He was annoyed, but he’ll get over it.”
“So confident in his affections for you.”
“We all know I’m your dad’s favorite.” He grinned, cocky bastard.
“A mystery to us all.”
Saint shrugged, unbothered by it.
He stopped questioning my father’s affections around the same time his father was arrested and our town turned against him.
It was odd that my dad, who was captain of the Perfect Image Committee, didn’t cast Saint out like the rest of the town. Especially because if I so much as sneezed at the wrong time, I’d be subjected to a twenty-minute lecture on how disrespectful I was. Maybe it was because Saint wasn’t his child, but a member of his beloved town. Maybe it was because Mrs. Delacore was my mom’s best friend.
The reason didn’t matter. At least, not to me.
Once the news broke that Mr. Delacore had been arrested in a Ponzi scheme that scammed rich families all over Georgia, including almost everyone in our town, out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the people of Honeycutt all but burned Saint’s seized home to the ground.
I remember sitting on the couch with Archer, our sister Jessa watching from over our shoulders, as they raided the Delacore mansion. Seeing Mr. Delacore being escorted out in handcuffs had me squeezing Archer’s hand as he furiously texted Saint with the other while Jessa gripped my shoulders in a death grip.
All of us worried what this meant for Saint and his mom, knowing how unkind our town and father could be. But Dad didn’t turn Saint away, like we feared.
Instead, to our shock and mostly delight, he stepped in to help Saint and his mom in any way he could. And while the support of the mayor wasn’t enough to sway public opinion, too much money gone and goodwill sacrificed, at least the Delacores weren’t alone.
They had us.
Saint practically moved into our house as a teenager, attached to Archer’s hip.
Though the two friends were far from similar.
My brother was the jock, the popular kid with a smile that could win a school’s presidency, while Saint was the troublemaker with a fierce scowl, the one who wore band t-shirts and ripped black jeans while sulking in the corner with a tattered paperback in hand.
They were opposites in attitudes, but no one fiercer in their loyalties than Saint and no one more possessive of those he cared about than Archer.
“So you were here on business, how’d that go?” I asked.
A dark look crossed Saint’s face for a moment, but then I blinked and it was gone.
Must’ve been the candlelight.
“It went fine. But I’ll be happy when I’m back in the office.”
“Miss your baby?” I teased.
“You have no idea.” He took a sip of wine. “I get so anxious when I’m away, just imagining how the fuckers I put in charge in my absence are screwing everything up.”
Saint and Archer were business partners for a rapidly growing tech company. So rapid that my brother was moving to Seattle next month to head their new office there.
“I’m sure you’ll strike the fear in the slackers when you get back.”
“That’s the plan.” His fingers drummed on the table.
Saint was such an angry teenager after his father’s arrest, lost and searching for a purpose. He rained hellfire on the town that so cruelly turned against him.
At eighteen, he went away to the university in this very city, where he learned to channel his anger into determination and resistance.
With the help of my brother, they were able to come up with the company, and with the backing of my father, they were able to get it off the ground.
It took off from there. And Saint hadn’t stopped to breathe since, determined to earn everything he had. To not be his father.
We were two people with daddy issues. Coping with them in different ways.
“Madelayne,” he called, leaning over the table to tap my temple. The contact left sparks crackling in his wake. “Where’d you disappear to?”
“Just thinking about how we both have daddy issues, but you’ve channeled yours in a more positive way.”
“Your dad still not talking to you?” It should concern me how much Saint knew about my life without me having to tell him, but I had long become accustomed to him and my brother gossiping like little hens.
“Nope.” I popped the ‘P’ for dramatic flare. “Hasn’t for almost two months, not since graduation. The most he’s done to acknowledge my existence is the passive-aggressive glares he throws my way when we cross paths in the kitchen or the weighted silence of Sunday dinners.”
“He’ll get over it,” Saint reassured me, but I shook my head, knowing it was a filler sentence with no substance.
“The only way that will happen is if I go to college, which is the last thing I want to do.”
People always told me you go to college to find yourself, but that was a lie. The first thing they had you do upon freshman orientation was declare a major. How was that finding yourself when you were thrust into a box from day one?
I spent the last nineteen years being shoved into a box. A dark and cold box where I felt aimless and lonely.
There was no desire left in me to go back.
In London, I could breathe, free from the stifling conditions my father put me and my siblings under.
Perfection was what the Novaks strived for and perfection was not a word used to describe me.
“What do you want to do?” he asked, but not in the way I had heard countless times since people found out about my decision. There was no judgment or condemnation, just open curiosity.
“I don’t know.” My voice was small.
My father was the mayor of our little town, Honeycutt, Georgia. A small rich and entitled suburb outside Atlanta.
My brother owned Delvak Tech with Saint, a business owner at twenty-seven, while my sister Jessa, who was three years older than me, was about to enter her first year of law school in the fall.
I was the black sheep of my family.
The girl who loved the stars, and trees, and her skateboard.
My dreams didn’t stretch to the white-collar workforce.
In all honesty, I had no idea what I wanted to do. Had no plan.
I was fucking lost and scared and ran away to London to escape it. A whole week not to think about it.
Saint frowned, leaning across the table to be closer to me. “What about skateboarding?”
“That’s not a career,” I echoed the words I heard a million times over.
“Says who? That’s how I made money after my dad.”
“You were better than me.”
“Bullshit.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re amazing, Madelayne.”
A soft smile touched my face.
Saint wasn’t one to throw out compliments without meaning them.
“Tell me, if you could do anything right now, what would you do?”
“Dye my hair pink,” I said almost wistfully.
For a couple of years now, I wanted to do it but was too afraid of my father sneaking into my room at night and shaving it off.
Saint took a sip of wine, and I was again hooked on the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
“Do it.”
“Yeah, right.” I laughed.
“Why not?”
“You’ve met my father. The control freak.” I rolled my eyes. “I already don’t fit in with my clean-cut, proper family of tailored suits and monotone wardrobes. You want me to lose my hair, too?”
I was the girl who liked ratty combat boots to red-soled heels, fishnet stockings and ripped denim shorts to floor-length dresses.
Bright colored skirts and three-day worn band t-shirts.
I was born into a rich world with a chaotic, bleeding heart.
Saint studied me from across the table with a pensive expression. “Move out, then.”
“I can’t.” It pained me to admit that. “Dad has me on lockdown. I’m not allowed to move out until I enroll in school. He’s literally holding me hostage to make me do what he wants.”
“He wants what’s best for you, and for him, the best way to set you up is through college.”
“What’s best for me is for me to decide. How am I supposed to grow if another person is making the decisions for me?”
“You’re not,” he admitted.
“Exactly, so I’ve decided to make living with me the worst thing imaginable so he’ll personally pack all my belongings for me.”
Saint laughed, a full belly laugh, and I smiled at the sound. He didn’t do that enough. Laugh a laugh that was full of joy and nothing else. “God help the man.”
“Help him?” I laughed, unable to keep it at bay when his sounded so inviting. “Help me!”
Saint stopped laughing, giving me a serious look when the waiter suddenly appeared, ruining our moment. “Have you decided what you would like to start with?”
“Actually, we haven’t even looked at the menu. Give us a moment?”
“Of course, sir.” Our waiter bowed his head and backed away.
Once he was gone, I turned my eyes to the menu. Examining it for the first time tonight.
And what I saw had my mouth dropping.
It was a short menu, with only a few options per course, but that wasn’t what sent me balking.
“There are only aphrodisiacs on this menu,” I murmured as a soft moan hit our ears.
Saint and I looked up, meeting each other’s eyes as another moan sounded.
We followed the noise.
The man a few tables down had his arm wrapped around his date’s chair, supporting the back of her neck as she started trembling.
A waiter pulled the red satin curtains that draped the wall around their table. Though they were hidden from view, the sounds they were making were not.
And they weren’t the only couple in heightened desire.
All around, I saw different stages of intimacy.
Some had their curtains drawn around them, while others were more discreet in their exchanges of playful touches or flirty glances, feeding each other food and drinking bubbly champagne.
It was all couples and partners.
And then there were the handful that sat close together, watching other couples.
I wasn’t sure how I missed it before, but almost all the tables in this room only had two chairs. Even the booths were designed to only fit two bodies comfortably.
Some empty tables had a third chair in the mix, and I couldn’t help but think of three people coming here together.
Was the air suddenly broken in here? It was becoming rather warm. I pulled at the neckline of my dress.
“What the fuck?” Saint breathed out the husky words, still twisted around in his chair, taking in the scene as a man fed another man a chocolate-covered strawberry, making him suck the juices off his fingers when he was done.
“You picked this place,” I accused as a steady beat of heat found rhythm between my legs.
“A buddy of mine told me about this place the other day.” He turned around to give me a glare, though his pupils were wide. “Said it was perfect for a night with a woman.”
“I mean, clearly.” New noises joined the moans, and I was convinced Saint and I were locked in a special kind of hell.
God, my skin felt tight. My body restless. I had to get out of here or?—
Saint pushed away from the table so fast, the chair fell down behind him. Every muscle in his body was pulled taut with tension as he threw down enough money to pay for the food we hadn’t yet ordered and turned to me. “I need a smoke.”