1. Nora #3
The bed is too big—California king, probably, the kind of bed that could fit four people comfortably.
The sheets are too smooth. Everything smells expensive and unfamiliar and wrong.
Some kind of lavender situation, or maybe vanilla.
Not the cheap grocery store vanilla. The kind that comes in a glass bottle and costs forty dollars.
I lie on my back, staring at the decorative ceiling fan, replaying the moment on the helipad over and over.
I'll keep my bedroom door open.
His voice. Right next to my ear. Low and certain and so close I felt the shape of the words against my skin.
I roll onto my stomach. Bury my face in the pillow—which also smells like expensive nothing—and press until my lungs protest.
It doesn't help.
My body won't shut up. That's the only way I can describe it.
I'm aware of every inch of my skin. The curve of my hips under the sheet.
The weight of my breasts against the mattress, sensitive in a way they've never been before.
The warmth between my legs that won't go away no matter how many times I tell it to, no matter how still I lie, no matter how hard I try to think about literally anything else.
This is new. All of this. I've never felt like this. Never spent hours awake thinking about someone's hands—three someones' hands, which is a whole other problem. Never replayed the way someone said my name like I could find some secret message in the syllables. Never ached.
That's the word. I ache.
I don't know if I was broken before and now I'm fixed, or if I was fine before and now I'm broken.
I twist. Turn. Kick off the sheets because I'm too hot.
Pull them back thirty seconds later because the air conditioning makes goosebumps rise on my arms. Lie on my side.
My back. My stomach again. The pillow is too flat.
Then it's too thick. Then I'm thinking about Cade's chest and the tattoo I only saw for two seconds and Rhett's voice and Jude's grin and?—
Two hours pass.
Maybe three.
My stomach growls.
Right. Food. I haven't eaten since—when? Lunch? The wedding cake? I don't remember. The caterers left enough food to last a month. There's a whole second kitchen somewhere in this villa stocked with things I probably can't pronounce.
I get up. Pull on a nightgown—cotton, comfortable, nothing special. Open the door.
The hallway is dim. The villa is silent—not the comfortable silence of an empty space, but the held-breath kind. The kind that makes you hyperaware of every sound your body produces. No music drifting from anywhere. No voices, no footsteps, no signs of life. They must be asleep.
Good. That's good. That's what I need.
I pad barefoot down the hall, the marble cool and smooth under my feet. The sensation grounds me for about two seconds before my brain starts calculating distances. The kitchen is twenty steps past Cade's room. Maybe thirty. I'm not counting. (I'm absolutely counting.)
I pass his door.
It's open.
Not cracked. Not ajar. Open. All the way open, the door flat against the wall like someone pushed it there deliberately. Like he meant it. Like when he said what he said earlier—I'll keep my bedroom door open—he wasn't flirting or teasing or saying words just to watch me squirm.
He meant it.
My pulse kicks up. Hammers against my ribs like it's trying to break out.
I should keep walking. I know I should keep walking. I can feel the knowledge sitting in my chest, solid and reasonable. The kitchen is right there. Twenty steps. Thirty steps. I can take thirty steps. I've taken thirty steps a million times in my life. This is not complicated.
I take one step past the door. Two. Three.
I stop.
I look.
I don't mean to. (I absolutely mean to. I've been meaning to since I left my room. Maybe since I walked into this villa forty-eight hours ago.)
The room is dark. Not pitch black—moonlight filters through the glass doors that open onto a private balcony, spilling pale silver across the floor.
I can see the shape of the bed, unmade, sheets tangled and twisted like someone fought with them before giving up.
The ocean glitters beyond the glass, endless and black and impossibly beautiful, and I should be looking at the ocean, but I'm not.
I'm looking at the empty bed.
No Cade.
I should leave.
I step inside.
One step. Then another. My heart is doing something arrhythmic and vaguely life-threatening.
The room smells like him—I don't know what that means, I don't know what he smells like specifically, I couldn't describe it if someone held a gun to my head, but I know it's him because my body tightens the second I cross the threshold.
Pulls. Reacts. Every nerve ending I have votes unanimously: more of this.
I hear water. Or—wait. Maybe I heard water? Past tense? Like a shower that just stopped, the pipes still settling?
Oh God.
Oh God.
I'm standing in the middle of his bedroom. In a cotton nightgown that barely reaches mid-thigh. At whatever-o'clock—I don't even know, I didn't check, time stopped meaning anything two hours ago when I gave up on sleep.
The food is in the kitchen. The kitchen is not here. The kitchen is the opposite direction of here.
I should go.
I don't go.
"I knew you couldn't resist, sweet stepsister."