: Chapter 21

I’ve always hated the it was only a bet trope.

Right now, I have the same sinking feeling of nausea I get when I’m reading a book and the pieces start to fall into place. Because maybe this is why Jabari was so excited to see me. I really was Vincent’s birthday present—wrapped up in a neat bow and hand-delivered. And what about Griffin, the kid who came and asked Vincent for the key to the basement? Was that an attempt to get me upstairs to Vincent’s room? Was this whole night one big, coordinated team effort to get my pants off?

My underwear. Maybe it’s still up in Vincent’s room, wherever it landed. But maybe—just maybe—it’s in his pocket, a trophy to be shown off to his friends.

My brain has no brakes. I’m just a passenger, my grip on my seat white-knuckled as I go barreling toward the worst-case scenario. I can’t stop myself from replaying the events of the night, wondering if I somehow misread it all. If I somehow got the story wrong.

“I’m ready to go home,” I say, my voice high and tight.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Nina says, gripping me by my biceps. “What happened upstairs? Did you guys make out?”

I laugh weakly. “A little more than that.”

“Oh, God. Did you . . .” She trails off.

Maybe the basketball team will be able to tell you all the dirty details tomorrow.

And fuck, now I wish we hadn’t come at all, because this hurts. The same part of my imagination that’s so good at painting everything in romance tropes is turning the whole night into a horror movie. I press my fingertips into my chest, prodding at the tight lump where my heart should be. I think I’m going to throw up. Can stress kill you this quickly?

“Did he do something you didn’t want him to?” Nina demands.

“No. No, I—it was all consensual, and it was—”

My throat is too tight. I can’t finish the sentence.

Perfect. It was perfect.

“Kenny,” Nina says gently.

Her eyes are focused somewhere over my shoulder.

I turn just in time to see Vincent coming down the stairs. He’s not alone—a small crowd of his teammates surrounds him. Jabari Henderson is right behind him, a hand on either one of Vincent’s shoulders as he speaks into his ear like some kind of hype man. Their little cluster quickly grows as other partygoers are swept up into orbit around the birthday boy. I watch Priya, the girl from behind the kitchen bar, who’s pretty and sweet and exactly the kind of girl I’d want to be friends with, ruffle Vincent’s hair, and I have to look away.

Because I want him.

Despite every warning siren blaring in my head, there’s still a part of me that trusts him. That sees him in the crowd and thinks, mine.

All night, I’ve been falling.

And for him, it was all just a plot to get laid on his birthday.

“Kenny, listen to me,” Nina presses on. “Everything is going to be—”

“Holiday!”

I have to take a deep, steadying breath before I turn and meet the footsteps coming our way. When I do, Vincent stands above me, all broad shoulders and broad smile. He looks confident. Of course he’s confident—his friends are watching from the other end of the hall, by the front door. I feel frozen with something suspiciously like stage fright.

He told them. He told them about me, about what we were doing in his room, and now he’s come to—what? Claim his prize? Reveal the whole deceit like some kind of archetypal villain?

He wouldn’t do that, I want to scream.

But what if he did? What if he hurts me, and I walked right into it?

And even as a knot of cold dread forms in my stomach, the sight of him melts something in me. Magenta and cyan lights from the living room dance floor spill into the hall, catching in Vincent’s hair and twinkling in his eyes. The sight of his face shouldn’t be able to set off this many fireworks in my chest.

You could be my worst mistake, I think.

“What do you want?” I ask, voice barely audible over the pounding music.

“Come to the bar with us,” Vincent says, still smiling, and holds out a hand.

There’s a third tally mark on his forearm now. The logical part of my brain knows it’s probably just because he did another shot. The paranoid part of my brain wonders if that wobbly permanent marker line is me.

Does he actually want me to come, or is he just trying to parade me around as his conquest?

If I were brave, I’d ask. I’d tell him I’m scared, and that I don’t know how to do this. I don’t come to parties. I don’t straddle boys and ask them to touch me. I’m in way over my head. He was so patient with me upstairs. He listened. I felt like I could say anything. But now? With all his friends in earshot? I won’t embarrass myself like that.

So, I just inch backward and say, “I’m not twenty-one.”

Vincent’s confidence cracks, just a little. I see it in the downward tilt of his mouth before he catches himself.

“Are you free tomorrow, then?” he asks. “Before your shift? Or sometime this weekend?”

“I’m actually not free ever.”

Nina nudges me with a sharp elbow to my ribs. I grunt but don’t stand down. Her rose-tinted romanticism isn’t going to thaw my ice-cold panic. My walls are up. The drawbridge is shut, the turrets barricaded, the moat crocodile-infested.

Vincent Knight isn’t getting anywhere close to me. Not now. Not like this.

His mouth parts, then closes. He glances at Nina, then back at me, looking lost.

“Are you okay?” he asks, shuffling a step closer. I feel the heat of his body and have to take a bolstering breath. “We can go somewhere quiet, right now. If the bar sounds too overwhelming, or if you just want to talk—”

Vaguely, I’m aware that he’s offering to pick me over his team and their birthday celebration plans. I feel myself trying to latch on to that.

“No,” I blurt, folding my arms tight over my chest. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”

I feel too exposed, too out in the open, but I know that if Vincent gets me alone again, I’ll just fall back into that strange sense of security that leads me to do impulsive and ridiculous things, like kiss him and ask him to touch me and demand that he take his pants off. But I don’t say all that. I just stare at him with every ounce of distrust roiling in my body.

I don’t like how he’s looking at me. It feels like he can see straight through me—and like somehow, I’ve hurt him and not the other way around. It’s not fair. And then whatever emotion is written across Vincent’s face falls away and is replaced with that cold, confident, brooding thing he does. His mask. His defense mechanism.

Or maybe it’s not that at all—maybe that’s who he really is.

How many villains start out looking like the good guys?

“So that’s it,” he says. “You got your story, and now you’re done?”

I flinch. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Vincent shakes his head. “Nothing. Just . . .” He scans my face, and I catch another flash of hurt before he pulls his eyes off mine and lets out a shaky breath. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. Really. There’s gotta be a billionaire with a big dick out there who needs an English tutor to rip him to shreds.”

I think it’d sting less if he slapped me.

Vincent’s made fun of me for reading romance novels before. More than once, in fact, he’s pointed out that maybe my standards are unrealistically high. I have the sudden and horrible feeling that he’ll make fun of me if I tell him how scared I am. How much I want from him. How quickly I’ve gotten attached. He’ll think I’m silly. Immature. Inexperienced.

And he’d be right.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to be in love. Not for real.

“I think you should go to the bar,” I say, voice shaking.

For a moment, Vincent looks like he’s going to argue, but then his lips press into a flat line and he offers one sharp nod—deciding I’m not worth the trouble.

“You’re in charge, Holiday,” he says.

You’re in charge. Words uttered half an hour ago in much different circumstances, in a much different tone. I feel like I’m standing outside my own body, watching us careen toward each other like cars on an icy freeway, incapable of stepping in to stop the catastrophic collision.

My anger explodes like an airbag.

“Have fun with your boys, then,” I snap. Despite my best efforts not to say anything else, I add a very soft and slightly sarcastic: “Happy birthday.”

I turn on my heel and march into the kitchen, determined to have the last word. The second I’m swallowed up by the crowd and the booming bassline of a dark, moody song, I feel my heartbeat pounding in my temples and against my ribs. People are laughing and dancing all around me, drinks sloshing out of red cups in their hands and hips swiveling in time with the music. Everyone’s having the night of their lives.

And I’ve just imploded mine.

It all happened so fast. It feels like a fever dream.

Oh, God. What did I do?

What had to be done. I refuse to be the girl who gets blindsided. I’m smarter than that. And I’m certainly smart enough to clock a trope when I see one, so really, I’m disappointed in myself for letting this go so far. I let him see me naked. I flinch. I let him eat me out. I came on his hand. I lunge for the now-unmanned makeshift bar and surge up on my tiptoes, suddenly glad for my height and my long arms as I lean over the counter and rifle through empty red cups and glass bottles.

I need alcohol. Immediately.

I need to be so drunk that tonight becomes the kind of night that Nina and Harper always talk about having. The kind of night that ends with your head in the toilet but makes for a good story once you’ve left the embarrassment (and the hangover) far behind.

My mind gives a sharp tug. The specifics of my conversation with Vincent are already becoming a blur of anger and fear and disbelief, but I distinctly remember him saying something along the same lines. You got your story, and now you’re done. My skin prickles with unease.

What the hell did he mean by that?

I feel a hand on my back, and for one split second, I think Vincent has followed me—but when I turn to look over my shoulder, it’s Nina.

I’m furious to find that I’m disappointed.

“Did he leave?” I snap.

Nina bites down on her bottom lip, and I have my answer. Well. Good. I don’t want to spoil his birthday. I hope he has a fantastic time at the bar with all his buddies. I hope he gets his twenty-one tallies—by whatever means necessary—and that he has tons of fun telling all his friends about how I begged him to make me come.

“Kendall,” Nina says, and her sympathy stings like a knife.

“Don’t,” I rasp. I snatch up the first red cup I see on the kitchen counter, drain it, and let out a spluttering cough. It’s straight vodka. It’s like liquid fire—but I’d rather burn down the rest of tonight than think about Vincent. “If you need me, I’ll be chugging jungle juice with Harper.”

I’d rather be the supporting cast in her tragedy than the main character in mine.