Total pages in book: 34
Estimated words: 34243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 171(@200wpm)___ 137(@250wpm)___ 114(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 171(@200wpm)___ 137(@250wpm)___ 114(@300wpm)
By the time we reach the other side, I realize something.
“We forgot our bags—”
“It’s taken care of.”
I appreciate how seriously Icelle says it. I feel like that shows how aware she is of the privileges she’s been born with. But at the same time, it just takes my breath away, the way they seem to have their own Hogwarts-elf system going on, only this one runs on the magical art of efficiency.
I’m still trying to figure out the logistics of how any human staff could’ve pulled that off when—
“May I have a word with you, Tiara?”
Arkane’s voice is right behind me.
Oh.
Oh no.
I turn around.
He’s standing a polite distance away, hands loose at his sides, sunlight catching the fabric of his suit in a way that makes the blue-bordering-on-black go even darker at the edges. He’s not looking at Icelle. He’s looking at me, and only me.
“Uh—”
I glance at Icelle for help, because that’s what best friends are for, but Icelle’s already walking away. She’s already six feet down the curb. She’s the fastest walker in the world when it suits her, apparently, and right now it suits her, and I’m officially on my own.
“Okay,” I say weakly.
Arkane waits until Icelle’s far enough away that she can’t hear, and then he says, very simply, “I’ll be gone most of the day.”
I stare at him, because out of everything I thought he might be about to say, this wasn’t one of them. I was bracing for a comment. A warning. Maybe a you-shouldn’t-have-kissed-me-earlier, which I’ve been pre-writing defenses against for the last forty minutes of my fake nap.
But this...
I don’t even know how to process it, and so I just do what I usually do, every time life throws me a curveball.
I look at him stonily, doing my best to channel Icelle’s RBF.
“Why are you telling me that?”
“So you don’t have to think I’m avoiding you.”
Great, just great.
Another curveball.
But there’s no time for me to process this because Icelle suddenly pops up between us—
“The ride’s here.”
She grabs my hand and we’re already walking the other way when I realize Arkane isn’t with us. I know I shouldn’t look, I can’t, I totally mustn’t...
But yeah, I still end up looking over my shoulder, and that’s when I see Arkane walking the opposite direction, and as he comes close to a silver, fancy-looking sportscar, it automatically opens, he slides inside, and seriously?
Not once does he look back.
Not. Even. Once.
Chapter Five
THE YOUNGS, THE LIMS, and me, the restless.
If my life were a daytime soap, that would have been the title of tonight’s episode, with how I suddenly find myself dining with Icelle’s family, which turns out to be one of San Antonio’s wealthiest families.
I’m seated between Joy and Icelle, with an empty chair to my right, and when I glance at it, Icelle only says, “Ark’s,” without further explanation, and that’s when I realize: the empty chair is Arkane’s. He’s not here, because he’s still on the business thing he warned me about at the airport, and I’m absolutely not thinking about the empty chair beside me.
Nope.
Not once.
The dining room around us is bigger than the entire first floor of any place my mom and I have ever lived. Walnut table the length of a bowling lane. A chandelier that looks like it weighs more than me. A painting on the far wall that I’m pretty sure is an actual, you know, painting.
Aldrich sits at the head of the table, and Lucius, Benedict, Marius, and Raiden are all across from me. Four brothers. Four ridiculously good-looking men, and I already know the first thing I’m supposed to be doing tonight is studying them for clues, because Icelle told me she’s in love with one of her stepbrothers and refused to say which one.
Detective mode: engaged.
Lucius, the eldest, is dark-haired and harsh-featured in the way Roman generals used to be carved into stone. He’s eating with the kind of precision that suggests his cutlery knows him personally. Good-looking in a way that makes you want to stand up straight.
Across from him, Benedict is blond, blue-eyed, and so beautiful it’s giving me pause, because he looks like a painting of an angel someone decided to give a jawline.
Beside Benedict is Marius, who’s got copper eyes and the easy charm of someone who’s never had to work for a laugh in his life. He’s the one everyone at the table keeps turning toward for punchlines, and whatever he’s saying is already making Icelle’s RBF soften at the edges, which for my friend is basically a standing ovation.
And then there’s Raiden, twenty-one and Icelle’s biological half-brother, so that’s obviously a no-go. Their family may be complicated, but not that kind of complicated.
Anyway, that leaves Lucius, Benedict, or Marius, and...
Still zero clues, but I have the rest of summer to figure things out, and speaking of...