Chapter 7
Seven
Couple Gravity
Kelly
The second Roxanne said, “Girls, come with me,” I knew I was about to be emotionally ambushed in diamonds.
Hope looked thrilled. Avril looked curious. Isabel looked resigned, which told me this was not her first trip into whatever insane female wonderland the Norouzi matriarch kept hidden in this house.
Miley muttered, “If I come back wearing a tiara, shoot me.”
Britney, beside me, said under her breath, “You might need one if you ever come back to England with me and meet my in-laws.”
I should have laughed. Instead I was still too aware of the terrace.
Too aware of how close Xerses had gotten.
Too aware of that for one unstable second, with the ocean behind me and his body in front of me and his hand taking my drink out of my fingers like he already knew where my balance lived, I had almost kissed him.
No. I shook my head. I refused to think that through in the middle of the Norouzi foyer.
Roxanne clapped once softly, bangles flashing. “Come, come. I want to show you something.”
Charlie called after us from the terrace, “If this ends in crowns, I want photos.”
“It will not,” Miley said.
“It will,” Hope whispered to me. “Absolutely you get photos.”
The vault was worse than I’d imagined. Or better. Depending on whether you measured horror by wealth or by the likelihood of losing all sense of proportion once faced with color-coded diamonds.
Roxanne led us down a private corridor off the west wing, punched in a code, unlocked a carved door disguised as paneling, and ushered us into a room that looked like royalty had merged with a luxury archive and then hired a madwoman to alphabetize the results.
Hope put both hands over her mouth.
Avril actually took a step back.
Miley said, “No.”
Isabel sighed like a woman who had expected this level of excess and still found it embarrassing.
Roxanne beamed. “You see? It’s important to have options.”
Miley picked up a bracelet that could have funded a small country. “This is not options. This is geopolitical leverage.”
“It’s first pretty,” Roxanne said.
“Maman, this piece alone could buy my apartment building,” I said.
She didn’t blink. “Yes. And?”
“And that doesn’t concern you?”
“Why would beauty concern me?”
Britney muttered, “Because it has a security team.”
Roxanne laughed. “You are all so practical. It’s exhausting.”
“Someone in this family has to be,” Miley said.
“Yes,” Roxanne said. “That is what the men think they do, but they are also wrong.”
“For what?” Miley asked. “Preparing for an uprising?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is if you are dressed well enough.”
Hope laughed helplessly.
“It’s beautiful,” Avril said softly.
Roxanne’s whole face warmed. “Thank you, azizam.”
She started opening cases with the excitement of a woman showing children her favorite room in a museum she personally owned. Which, I guessed, was basically what this was.
Hope got pulled toward emeralds.
Miley got cornered into trying on a pair of absurdly expensive earrings and looked like she wanted to sue everyone present.
Isabel slipped into easy conversation with Roxanne about cuts and settings and older pieces.
Avril stood near me, wide-eyed and a little overwhelmed, and whispered, “This is too much.”
“It’s definitely too much,” I said.
“It can be both.”
Britney stayed on my other side, arms folded, gaze moving around the room with the exact kind of cool suspicion she usually reserved for financial men in custom suits and systems built to make women grateful for crumbs.
Then Hope made the mistake.
She turned from the emerald case and looked right at me.
“So,” she said carefully, “how are we feeling? Do you still hate me and Charlie from stopping that.”
I didn’t answer right away.
Roxanne was across the room. Miley was trapped in pearl-related despair. Isabel and Avril were distracted. This was as private as the night was going to get.
Britney had gone still. I set down the bracelet I’d been pretending to admire and looked at all three of them.
“No,” I said.
Hope blinked. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant. And the answer is I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Hope said carefully. “Maybe shouldn’t have let Charlie stop you both. You look like you’re lost.”
“Can’t be lost in a sealed vault complete with security.”
“Or you really do like Xerses.”
“Believe me I’m not lost.”
Britney shifted beside me. “Don’t go getting lost in his eyes.”
“Brit—”
I cut her off with a look.
Her mouth closed.
The room got quiet around the four of us without getting silent, which felt like a miracle considering the amount of sparkling metal in the vicinity.
I took a breath and made myself say it plainly, because if I didn’t now, this whole weekend was going to become one long exercise in everyone else emotionally managing me while I smiled and played along.
“This is my life,” I said. “My choice. You do not get to discuss or convince me to do anything. If I need support I’ll ask.”
Hope’s face fell instantly. “I wasn’t trying to-”
“You just want me to be happy.”
And Britney.
Britney was worried because she knew I was a virgin and Xerses clearly wasn’t. He was thirty and good looking and rich.
I knew all of that. But I also knew I was tired of everyone else handling me like a project. I looked directly at Britney.
“No more warnings,” I said.
Her expression didn’t change much. That was one of the things that made her so terrifyingly good at life.
“Kelly,” she said.
I softened the next part because she was still Britney and she had earned softness from me even when I wanted to shove her.
“I heard you,” I said. “I understood you. You do not have to keep saying it.”
Her jaw tightened.
“You’re asking me to pretend I’m comfortable with this.”
“No. I’m telling you to stop trying to make decisions for me.”
That landed. Her gaze moved over my face, reading for weakness and finding resolve instead.
“I can’t run scared of every man in life my age,” I said. “And if my life blows up and I make bad choices, that’s on me too.”
Hope made a small sound like she hated my words.
Britney held my eyes for a long second. Then something in her face eased. Not approval. Britney would rather die than make things easy. She gave one short nod. “Fine.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
Roxanne turned then, holding up a sapphire necklace like she was considering which kingdom to destabilize with it. “Kelly joon.”
I looked up.
She smiled. “Come here.”
The girls parted around me, the tension disappearing under the bigger, stranger shape of the room. I crossed to the mirror while Roxanne stood behind me and held the necklace up against my throat.
Roxanne’s hands settled on my shoulders. She smiled at me in the mirror.
“Beautiful,” she said simply. I hated when kindness did that.
Hope made a happy little sound. Avril nodded. Isabel said, “The color works.” Miley looked like she wanted to be grumpy and was losing. Even Britney’s mouth softened.
Roxanne unclasped the necklace before I could say anything stupid and kissed my cheek. “You do not need jewels,” she said. “But I like seeing what suits people.”
Something about that sentence got to me more than it should have. It was I like seeing what suits you.
I breathed and said lightly, “This room is trying to convert me.”
Roxanne laughed. “Too late, habibti. You’re already halfway ours.”
My body stiffened for one tiny beat before I recovered.
We came back out of the vault twenty minutes later.
Hope was already ahead of me, radiating.
“I need emeralds,” she said. “I have literally never needed anything more.”
“You don’t need emeralds,” Miley said. “You need perspective.”
“Perspective doesn’t go with everything.”
“Neither do emeralds.”
“Name one outfit.”
Miley paused. “That’s not the point.”
“It is exactly the point.”
Avril fell into step beside me. “You went quiet in there.”
“I was processing.”
“Processing the jewelry Maman is planning for you or processing the family?”
“Both.”
She smiled. “The warmth gets to you, doesn’t it.”
“It shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because belonging to a family like this isn’t mine to want.”
Avril looked at me. “Wanting isn’t the same as claiming, Kelly.”
That landed harder than it should have.
When we stepped back into the main hallway, Xerses was in the salon doorway and his gaze found me.
I walked straight toward him because if this weekend was happening, it was happening with him.
Roman excused himself. Xerses didn’t move.
“Barely made it out.”
One corner of his mouth moved. “Vault?”
“Your mother has enough diamonds to blind God.”
“That seems right.”
I should have stopped there.
Instead I said, “I told my friends to keep their opinions to themselves.”
That got his attention in full.
That sudden narrowing of focus he did when something mattered.
“How did that go.”
“Better than expected. I said my choices are mine to make.”
His gaze moved once over my face, reading whatever it was he always read there. “Good.”
He leaned closer, not enough to touch me, enough to make the air between us feel denser. “You have a lot of supporters.”
My pulse kicked. “I don’t need a chorus of people voicing their opinion.”
“That’s fortunate.”
I smiled despite myself. “Don’t ruin it.”
“Too late.”
“You always ruin it.”
“That implies a pattern.”
“It is a pattern. You say something almost kind and then you add the thing that makes it impossible to believe you mean it.”
“You could stop taking it that way.”
“I could. That seems unlikely.”
“Why.”
“Because your ruined version is still better than most people’s best.”
I almost closed my eyes and decided to kiss him now.
But the salon was filling around us. Voices layering. Glasses clinking. Hope laughing in the distance. Charlie already too loud. The room was alive, but the minute we occupied felt strangely private anyway.