SURE THING PROLOGUE
IMOGEN CAVENDISH — 6
At six years old, I had a very clear idea of how my life was going to go.
Some of the details were still vague.
I did not know what I wanted to do for work, mostly because every job anyone had explained to me sounded like it involved too much sitting still.
I had not decided where I wanted to live, though I saw no compelling reason to ever move out of my parents’ house.
And I was torn between three different dogs I intended to own.
But I knew who I was going to marry.
Nikolaj Vega.
That part had been settled for a while.
It was why I had invited him to tea.
I had invited the others too, mostly because there had been no practical way to get Nikolaj without also getting Jared and Cleo.
This was fine. I liked them.
Just not as much.
The car pulled up outside our Vegas house twenty-three minutes after Duncan had betrayed me to our parents.
I had counted.
“Your people are here,” Duncan informed me. He stood beside me at the front window with his arms folded.
Duncan and I looked almost exactly alike. Everyone said so.
I did not consider this a compliment when he was being irritating.
“You’re a tattletale,” I reminded him.
Duncan looked at me. “You stole Clark’s phone.”
“I borrowed it,” I explained.
“You didn’t ask,” Duncan pointed out.
“I was going to give it back,” I told him.
Duncan turned from the window. “You sent a car.”
“I needed them to come over,” I said.
Duncan stared at me for a long second. “You could have asked Dad.”
That had not occurred to me.
I chose not to acknowledge this.
Outside, the rear door of the car opened.
Nikolaj came out first.
I immediately forgot Duncan existed.
Nikolaj had pale blond hair then, much lighter than it would get later, and the brightest blue eyes I had ever seen on anybody.
He spotted me through the window. His whole face changed.
Nikolaj grinned and waved both arms over his head.
I waved both of mine back.
Duncan sighed beside me.
Jared got out behind Nikolaj, already talking, though I could not hear him through the glass.
Cleo scrambled out last and shoved Jared because he had apparently done something to deserve it.
Jared shoved her back. She kicked him in the shin.
I nodded approvingly.
Duncan looked at me. “See?”
“They’re your people too,” I reminded him.
“I know,” Duncan said heavily.
The front door opened before I could get to it.
Dad stood there with one hand braced high against the frame. He looked down at the three Vega children on our doorstep. Then he looked at the driver. Then he looked at me.
I stopped several feet away.
Dad’s mouth twitched.
That was usually a good sign.
“Princess,” Dad said carefully, “did you instruct one of my drivers to retrieve the Vega children?”
“Yes,” I answered.
Mom made a sound behind him. It was suspiciously like a laugh.
I looked around Dad.
Mom stood in the foyer with one hand over her mouth.
“It was for tea,” I explained.
Dad looked down at Nikolaj. Nikolaj smiled up at him. “We came for tea.”
Jared pushed past him into the house. “Do you have cake?”
Nikolaj looked offended. “Jared. You’re supposed to wait until they offer.”
Jared stopped. He looked at Dad. “Can you offer us cake?” Jared asked.
Dad bit his lips and closed his eyes.
Mom laughed outright.
Cleo went straight to Duncan. “You told on her?” Cleo asked him.
“She stole a phone,” Duncan replied.
Cleo looked at me.
I shrugged.
Then I nodded.
Cleo looked back at Duncan. “Still.”
“Thank you,” I told her.
Duncan glared at both of us.
Nikolaj came over to me. “You really sent the car?” he asked.
“Yes.”
His eyes went toward the driveway. “Can you send it for me tomorrow too?” Nikolaj asked.
“Why?”
“School.”
I considered it.
Dad did not. “No,” he said.
Nikolaj looked up at him.
Dad gave him a look.
Nikolaj wisely abandoned the idea.
Tristan and Danika arrived ten minutes later. Tristan came through the door already laughing. “I still think we should’ve waited to see what they did next,” he told Dad.
Danika came in behind him. “He laughed for five straight minutes before I got him in the car.”
“I was impressed,” Tristan defended himself.
“My six-year-old dispatched one of my cars to collect your children without asking anyone,” Dad said.
Tristan glanced toward us. “They got in,” Tristan pointed out. “That’s my favorite part.”
“Of course it is,” Danika said.
Mom was still smiling.
Dad noticed. “Bianca.”
Mom looked at him. “What?”
“You’re enjoying this.”
Mom considered denying it. She did not. “A little,” she admitted.
Dad stared at her.
Danika shook her head. “I want to know why not one adult questioned this.”
I raised my hand.
Everyone looked at me.
“The driver knows me,” I explained.
Tristan bent over laughing.
Dad rubbed a hand over his face. “This is not amusing,” Dad said. His face and tone weren’t as severe as then words.
I understood even then that he was amused but trying not to let us see it.
Tristan straightened eventually. His grin remained. “That’s where you’re wrong, pretty boy.”
Dad gave him an exasperated look.
Tristan only grinned wider.
Tea happened because I had gone to considerable trouble to arrange it.
Mom let me use the small china cups because she understood important things.
I did not actually like tea, but that was beside the point.
I was hosting.
Nikolaj sat beside me because I had put his chair there.
Jared reached for a third cookie.
Danika caught his wrist without looking. “No,” she said.
Jared slowly put it back.
Tristan waited until Danika turned away and slid the cookie back toward him.
“Tristan,” Danika said without turning around.
His hand stopped. “What?” Tristan asked.
Danika turned and looked at him.
Tristan grinned.
“Stop encouraging them,” she said.
“I’m feeding our son.”
“Cookies. He’s had two.”
Tristan glanced at Jared. “He’s growing.”
Jared nodded solemnly.
Danika pointed at both of them. “No.”
Tristan laughed and took the cookie himself.
Dad watched them from across the table.
“This is why your children behave like this,” he told Tristan.
Tristan bit into the cookie. “Your daughter commandeered a car today.”
Dad’s jaw tightened.
I took a sip of tea. It tasted terrible.
Nikolaj leaned close. “Do you like tea?” he whispered.
“No,” I whispered back.
“Me neither.”
“It tastes like leaves.”
Nikolaj looked into his cup. “It is leaves.”
I considered that. “That explains it.”
He grinned. I smiled back.
I had already told Mom that I was going to marry him.
Dad knew too, because apparently married people had no respect for confidentiality.
The Vegas did not know.
Neither, as far as I could tell, did Nikolaj.
“I’m going to marry Nikolaj,” I announced.
The table went quiet.
Dad did not look surprised. He had already had time to form an opinion.
“No,” he said.
I frowned at him. “I wasn’t asking.”
Tristan made a strangled sound. Danika elbowed him, but she was covering her mouth, head bent.
Dad ignored both of them. He looked at Nikolaj.
“Nikolaj,” Dad said, “have you been informed of this arrangement?”
Nikolaj had a cookie in one hand. He looked at Dad. Then he looked at me.
I waited.
He shrugged one shoulder. “Sure thing,” Nikolaj said.
Tristan put his head down on the table.
Mom finally lost control and laughed.
Dad pointed at Nikolaj. “No.”
Nikolaj blinked.
Dad pointed at me. “No.”
I folded my arms.
Dad looked between us. “Absolutely not.”
Tristan was laughing too hard to be useful.
Mom came around the table and touched Dad’s arm. “James,” she said.
Dad looked at her.
“They’re six,” Mom pointed out.
“I’m aware.”
Mom’s mouth twitched.
Dad looked back at Nikolaj and me. “I’m establishing policy early.”
“Of course you are,” Mom said quietly.
Nikolaj leaned toward me. “Do we get cake?” he whispered.
“At a wedding?”
He nodded.
“Obviously,” I told him.
“What kind?”
“Chocolate.”
Nikolaj nodded. “Good.” And that was that.
My future was settled.
IMOGEN — 12
Six years later, I decided Nikolaj was an idiot.
This did not alter the marriage plan in any official way. But it was a significant complication.
“What the hell were you thinking?” I demanded.
Nikolaj sat on the edge of the kitchen counter at his parents’ house with one knee torn open and a scrape running from his wrist nearly to his elbow.
Danika stood between his legs, cleaning the cut on his knee. “I’d like to hear this too,” she said. “What possessed you to jump off a roof?”
Nikolaj winced as the antiseptic hit. “It was the garage,” he said.
Danika looked up at him. “The garage’s roof.”
“A low roof.”
Tristan stood at the island beside Dad. His mouth was doing something suspicious.
Danika saw it. “Don’t,” she told him.
“I’m not saying a word, sweetheart,” Tristan said. He was still smiling.
Danika gave him a look.
Tristan lifted both hands.
I was not amused. Not remotely.
I had gotten the story in pieces.
Someone at school had dared Nikolaj to take his skateboard down the sloped roof over the garage.
Nikolaj had apparently considered this a perfectly reasonable use of a roof. He had made it off.
Technically. The landing had been less successful.
“It looks worse than it is,” Nikolaj told me.
I stared at him.
His grin weakened. “Mostly,” he amended.
“You could have broken your neck,” I said.
Something shifted in his face. “I didn’t.”
I hated that answer so much that I could not speak for several seconds.
“That does not make it less stupid.”
Nikolaj looked toward Tristan. “Dad?”
Tristan studied his injuries. Then he glanced toward Danika.
“You almost had it?” Tristan asked.
“Tristan,” Danika snapped.
“What?” Tristan asked. “I’m gathering facts.”
Dad looked at him. “You’re encouraging him.”
“I didn’t say good job.”
“You didn’t have to,” Danika said.
Tristan considered that. “Fair.”
Dad took a drink of water. Then he looked at Nikolaj.
“Imogen is right,” Dad said. “No helmet. No plan. No one in position to help if something went wrong. That isn’t daring. It’s stupid.”
Nikolaj stared at him. “You too?”
“Yes,” Dad said.
Nikolaj looked betrayed.
Tristan finally took pity on him. “For what it’s worth, kid, I bet it looked cool right up until you hit the ground.”
Danika turned on him.
“Tristan.”
“It was stupid,” Tristan added quickly.
Nikolaj grinned.
I got angrier.
His eyes were still bright with it.
He was hurt. He could have been much more hurt. And he thought some part of this was funny.
“You think this is funny,” I said.
Nikolaj’s grin disappeared. “No.”
“You do.”
He looked at me for a moment. “I did,” he admitted. There it was.
I turned away. That was worse.
Cleo and Duncan came in from outside. They were arguing.
“You changed the rules halfway through,” Duncan told her.
“I changed one rule,” Cleo corrected.
“Because you were losing.”
Cleo looked at him. “Obviously. Why would I change the rules while I was winning?”
Duncan stopped beside the island and noticed Nikolaj’s knee. “That looks bad.”
“It isn’t,” Nikolaj said.
I made a sharp sound. Nikolaj looked at me. He did not repeat himself. Smart.
Isabella came in through the back door several minutes later.
Jared followed her.
There were tiny flowers tucked into Isabella’s hair. There usually were if she had been outside long enough.
Mom once said Isabella could get lost in a parking lot if there was a cloud she liked.
Jared had apparently found her near the far wall. “She followed a bug through the hedge,” Jared explained.
“It had blue wings,” Isabella said.
Jared looked at her. “You went through a hedge.”
“It was beautiful.”
Jared shrugged. “Yeah,” he conceded. “It was.”
Isabella smiled at him. He bumped his shoulder into hers.
Nobody thought anything of it.
We never did.
That was how all of us were.
Too close to notice the shape of it.
Danika finished bandaging Nikolaj’s knee. “You’re grounded,” she told him.
Nikolaj frowned. “From the skateboard?”
“From anything with wheels until I stop seeing that roof every time I close my eyes.”
That quieted him. Finally. Nikolaj slid carefully off the counter.
He started toward me.
I moved away.
He stopped.
The last trace of humor left his face. “Imogen.”
“I want to go home.”
Dad looked at me. “We can go, princess.”
Mom had been quiet through most of it. She came closer and touched my hair.
“You ready?” she asked.
I nodded. That made me feel worse.
Because I did not actually want to go home.
I wanted Nikolaj to have not done it. There was a difference.
“I’m sorry,” Nikolaj said.
I looked at him. “For getting hurt?”
He paused. “For scaring you.”
My throat tightened. “I wasn’t scared.”
Nikolaj studied me. He knew I was lying.
Even then.
He did not call me on it. “Okay,” he said.
I hated that softness most of all.
He looked terrible. His hair was a mess.
His knee was bandaged. His elbow was raw.
And he was standing there.
Whole.
Still mine in all the uncomplicated ways that mattered at twelve.
I stepped forward and hugged him hard enough that he grunted. His arms went around me immediately.
“Ow,” Nikolaj complained against my hair.
“Good,” I told him. “You deserve to suffer.”
His chest shook. He was laughing.
I pulled back. “If you laugh, I’ll hit you.”
Nikolaj bit his lips together. His eyes still laughed.
I pointed at him. “I mean it.”
“I know,” he said.
“You’re never doing that again.”
Nikolaj hesitated.
“Nikolaj.”
“Not that exact thing,” he promised.
I narrowed my eyes. He grinned.
I shoved him. He stumbled back.
Dad made a quiet approving sound. Mom looked at him.
Dad lifted both hands. He had not said anything.
The room filled up around us again.
Cleo and Duncan resumed their argument.
Jared was trying to convince Isabella that the blue-winged bug belonged outside.
Danika was still upset.
Tristan had finally stopped smiling where she could see him.
Nikolaj leaned down beside me. “For the record,” he whispered, “I almost landed it.”
I turned my head slowly.
He took one look at my face. Then he ran.
Badly.
Because of the knee.
I caught him before the living room.
IMOGEN — 16
By sixteen, I had learned one important lesson.
Never tell two families full of people with excellent memories who you intended to marry when you were six.
They would not forget.
They would not let you forget.
They would preserve the information with the care normally reserved for birth records and criminal convictions.
The girls were getting ready in my room for a school dance when Jared’s voice carried up the stairs.
“If you three take any longer, Nikolaj’s going to wear a trench in the carpet.”
From downstairs, Nikolaj called back, “I’m not pacing.”
“You just passed the window again,” Jared shouted.
“I like the window,” Nikolaj replied.
I smiled despite myself.
Isabella sat cross-legged on my bed.
She had already finished getting ready and looked beautiful in a pale blue dress that made her seem softer somehow, which was saying something.
Cleo sat on the floor in front of my closet.
She had rejected three pairs of my shoes. This had not stopped her from continuing to inspect them.
“The silver ones,” Cleo said.
“I’m wearing the red ones.”
Cleo looked over her shoulder at me. “Then why am I down here?”
“I didn’t ask you to be.”
She considered that. “Fair.”
I put in my second earring.
My dress was black, short, simple, fitted through the body with narrow straps and a clean square neckline.
Dad had already seen it. His exact response had been, “No.”
I had looked at him calmly.
Dad had then said, “Absolutely not.”
Mom had said one word. “James.”
I was wearing it.
Dad’s authority had limits. Fashion was one of them.
There was a knock on my open door. Duncan leaned against the frame. “Dad says two minutes.”
“He wouldn’t leave without us,” I said.
“No,” Duncan agreed. “But he says he will.”
“He’s lying.”
“Obviously.”
Cleo got to her feet. Duncan’s eyes went to her. Just for a second.
Cleo smoothed the side of her dress. Also just for a second.
I looked between them. They were both trying very hard not to look again.
Interesting.
Duncan finally looked at me. His brows rose. “Dad saw that dress?”
“He did.”
“And survived?”
“Barely.”
Duncan’s mouth twisted. Mom’s smile. Dad’s face.
It was strange how much of both of them lived in him.
“Two minutes,” he repeated. Then he left.
Cleo watched the empty doorway for a second too long.
I noticed. I did not say anything. Not because I was tactful.
Because Isabella was watching me in the mirror. She noticed everything.
We went downstairs together. The boys were in the living room.
Jared was draped over the back of a sofa. Duncan had taken up position near Dad.
Nikolaj stood by the windows. Apparently he really did like that window. He turned when we came in.
And stopped. It was not dramatic.
That was what made it dramatic.
Nikolaj was almost always moving.
His face moved. His hands moved.
His mouth moved even when it absolutely should not.
He had grown tall in what felt like one unreasonable burst, all long arms and legs, narrow through the hips, his shoulders already broader than made sense on the rest of him.
His dirty-blond hair fell into his eyes. He did not push it away. His gaze moved over me.
Slowly. Every part of me went still.
His eyes came back to mine. Something in them was different.
For one stupid second, sixteen-year-old me became six again.
Then Jared ruined it.
“Jesus, Nikolaj,” Jared said. “Blink.”
Nikolaj blinked.
Everyone laughed. Heat climbed up my neck.
“I was blinking,” Nikolaj muttered.
Jared snorted. “Not enough.”
Nikolaj shot him a look. “Shut up.”
Dad had stopped smiling. He looked from Nikolaj to me. Then back to Nikolaj. “No,” Dad said.
Nikolaj lifted his brows. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Keep it that way.”
Tristan laughed from the other side of the room. “Oh, man,” he said to Dad. “I told you this was coming.” He was standing behind Danika, both arms wrapped around her.
“No one asked you,” Dad replied.
Danika craned her neck to turn and look at Tristan. “Leave them alone.”
“I am,” Tristan said. “I’m talking to James.”
Danika rolled her eyes. He kissed the top of her head.
Mom came to stand beside Dad. She looked at me. “She looks beautiful,” Mom said.
“I’m aware,” Dad replied.
“Hmm.”
Dad glanced down at her. “I’m not glaring at her,” he said like she’d just accused him of it.
Mom looked toward Nikolaj. Then back at Dad. Her mouth curved.
Dad’s jaw tightened. “Pictures,” he announced.
We were arranged in front of the windows.
It took several attempts.
Jared kept doing something behind Isabella’s head.
Cleo elbowed him. Duncan told everyone to act normal.
This was an unreasonable request.
Eventually Mom got us all in one place with a few quiet words.
Nikolaj ended up beside me. Of course he did.
He had been ending up beside me in pictures since we were children.
His arm settled around my shoulders. It had done that a thousand times.
My body noticed anyway. I hated my body.
Dad was adjusting the camera when Tristan moved beside him.
Tristan studied us. His grin spread.
“Hey, pretty boy,” he said. “Remember when Imogen sent a car for him and announced the wedding?”
Dad did not look at him. “Vividly.”
Tristan laughed. “You categorically forbade it.”
“It was a reasonable position.”
Danika looked over. “They were six.”
Dad finally glanced at her. “And here we are. The position was still reasonable.”
Mom shook her head.
I closed my eyes. “I was six,” I reminded everyone.
Nikolaj looked down at me. “You’d already picked the cake.”
I looked up at him. “Chocolate.”
“Exactly.” His eyes lit up.
That was the thing. That particular look.
The one that came just before he made me laugh.
I had never been very good at resisting it.
I bit the inside of my cheek.
Dad clapped once. “Picture.”
We faced forward. Mom got her picture.
Danika got approximately forty more.
Then we escaped.
The dance was loud and dark and full of people we had known for most of our lives.
We had gone as a group. That was normal for us. We arrived together.
We occupied too much space together.
We split up. Reformed.
Lost one another. Found one another.Maria was with us too. Frankie and Estella’s daughter had been folded into our lives so completely that no one ever thought to explain her presence.
She spent most of the night moving between Cleo and me, disappearing with other friends, then turning up again whenever our group re-formed. At one point she took one look at Duncan watching Cleo dance with someone else and leaned toward me.
“He looks constipated,” Maria observed.
I glanced at Duncan.
“Jealous,” I corrected.
Maria considered him again. “Could be both.”
Cleo danced with Duncan. Then somebody else. Then Duncan again.
Isabella disappeared for fifteen minutes. Jared went looking for her without being asked.
He came back with Isabella and two sodas. She had apparently been outside looking at the moon.
Also normal.
I danced with Nikolaj. I danced with Jared.
I danced with Duncan exactly once because we both found it ridiculous.
I danced with boys from school. That was normal too.
It had simply never occurred to me before that Nikolaj might care.
I was dancing with a boy from our history class when Nikolaj appeared beside us.
He tapped the boy on the shoulder. “My turn,” Nikolaj said.
The boy looked at me.
I looked at Nikolaj.
His expression was perfectly casual. His eyes were not.
“Apparently it’s his turn,” I told the boy.
He laughed and stepped away.
I waited until he was gone. “Your turn?”
Nikolaj watched him leave. “He was getting handsy.”
“His hand was on my waist.”
“I saw.”
“That is generally where hands go when people dance.”
Nikolaj finally looked at me. “I didn’t like his.”
I stared at him. For once, he did not have a joke ready.
That did something unpleasantly effective to my stomach.
I noticed his tie. “You mangled your tie.”
Nikolaj touched it. “I was under stress.”
“From someone touching my waist?”
He considered that. “Apparently.”
I stepped closer. “Hold still.”
Nikolaj did. I put both hands on his tie.
His body went quiet beneath them. That was new too.
I straightened the knot. Then I looked up.
His face was close. Too close. His eyes dropped to my mouth.
I stopped breathing.The music was still loud. People were still moving around us.
For a few seconds none of it mattered.
“Nikolaj,” I said.
His gaze came back to mine. “Yeah?”
My hands were still on him. I let go. “There.”
Nikolaj looked at me for one long second. Then he held out his hand. “Dance with me.”
I took it.
NIKOLAJ VEGA — 17
There were questions I could ask my father and questions I could not.
Not because Dad would refuse to answer. The opposite.
Dad would answer too much.
If I asked Tristan Vega for romantic advice, he would be delighted.
Then he would make it a thing. Mom would know within five minutes.
Jared would know in six. Cleo would know in seven.
Ming would somehow know first.
James could keep his mouth shut.
More importantly, I had spent most of my life watching the way he looked at Bianca.
It had never changed.
A room could be full of people and James always knew where she was.
He knew something about wanting one person.
So I asked him.
We were at the Cavendish house after dinner. Everyone else was downstairs.
I could hear Jared arguing with Duncan over something.
Cleo was taking sides loudly enough that she had probably caused the argument.
Isabella had put on a movie no one appeared to be watching.
Imogen was somewhere in the middle of all of them. I had been trying not to look at her all evening.
It was going badly.
James was in his office. The door was open. He looked up before I knocked.
“Nikolaj.”
“Can I ask you something?”
James closed the folder in front of him. “Of course.”
I went inside.
He waited. That was one of the things James did.
He could wait longer than anybody I knew.
It made you want to start talking just to get it over with.
I sat down. Then I stood back up.
James watched me. His expression remained perfectly neutral.
I sat again. This was humiliating. “How do you make someone fall in love with you? Or just like you romantically?”
James looked unsurprised by the question. “You don’t. I think you just know. Don’t you think? Some people just need a little extra help figuring it out.”
I stared at him. “I was hoping billionaires knew more.”
James’s mouth twitched. “Your father has been a terrible influence.”
“He’ll be thrilled you noticed.”
James studied me for another moment. “Does she know?”
I looked at him. I had not said her name. Of course that had not mattered. “She used to.”
James lifted one brow. “That wasn’t what I asked.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “I don’t know.”
That was the truth. It was also the problem.
Before James could say anything else, Imogen yelled from downstairs.
“Nikolaj!”
I looked toward the hallway. “What?” I called back.
“Jared cheated.”
“I did not,” Jared shouted.
“You absolutely did,” Imogen called.
“That was strategy,” Jared yelled.
I heard Imogen laugh. My whole body reacted to it.
Ridiculous.
I looked back at James. He had seen that. Obviously. His mouth twitched again.
“Don’t,” I warned him.
“I didn’t say anything.”
Imogen yelled my name again.
James opened his folder.
I stood.
He did not look up.
I left.
IMOGEN — 18
Four days after graduation, I learned that it was possible to know someone your entire life and still have no idea what they meant.
It was also possible to know exactly what their mouth felt like against yours and somehow make ordinary eye contact with them afterward.
Technically. I was not doing especially well at it.
Our families were at Tristan and Danika’s house. There was food everywhere.
Music played outside. People moved in and out of the house.
I sat beside Isabella on an outdoor sofa and pretended to listen to Cleo.
I was aware of Nikolaj. Constantly.
He was across the patio with Jared and Duncan.
White T-shirt. Dark jeans.
Nothing remarkable.
I hated the shirt. I hated his arms. I hated his mouth.
Especially his mouth.
I looked away.
Cleo stopped talking. I glanced at her.
She followed my gaze across the patio. Then she looked back at me.
Her eyebrows rose.
“Don’t,” I said.
Cleo smiled.
Isabella’s pencil paused over her sketchbook.
I looked at her. She went back to drawing.
Traitor.
I stood. “I’m going inside.”
Cleo watched me go. She was still smiling.
I made it through the kitchen and into the hall before I heard voices around the corner.
Jared. Nikolaj.
I would have kept walking.
Then Jared said my name.
I stopped. I wish I had not.
“You gonna tell Imogen?” Jared asked.
Nikolaj answered too quietly for me to hear.
Jared said something else.
I caught only the end.
“—then what the fuck are you doing?”
There was a pause.
Then Nikolaj answered clearly. “I don’t know. It can’t become a whole thing.”
Everything inside me went still.
That sentence seemed to make the rest of the house disappear.
It can’t become a whole thing.
Of course. I had been stupid. That was all.
Painfully, spectacularly stupid.
I backed away before either of them could see me.
Then I went upstairs. I had known better.
Hadn’t I?
There had been years of teasing. Years of looks. Years of nearly.
And then there had been—
No. I was not thinking about that.
Clearly Nikolaj had already done enough thinking for both of us.
It could not become a whole thing.
Fine. It wouldn’t.
I was very good at not needing things once I knew they were unavailable.
This was not true. It sounded good, though.
I went into Cleo’s room.
Cleo followed me less than a minute later. She closed the door behind her. “What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
Cleo studied my face. “Imogen.”
I sat on the edge of her bed. Cleo stayed where she was. She knew me well enough not to crowd me.
I looked down at my hands. “It was nothing,” I said. “I got it out of my system.”
Something moved in the hallway. One step. Then nothing.
I looked toward the door. Cleo did too.
No one came in.
Her attention returned to me. “You don’t look like it was nothing,” Cleo said.
“I’ll work on that.”
Her mouth tightened. Cleo knew when pushing me would only make me worse.
She came over and sat beside me. She did not hug me.
That was why I loved her. She just sat there.
After a while, she bumped her shoulder against mine.
I bumped hers back.
Neither of us said anything.
When I went downstairs again, Nikolaj stopped me near the patio doors.
Something in his face had changed.
I knew immediately.
He had heard me.
Good.
That was what I wanted.
I told myself that very firmly.
“Imogen,” he said.
I looked at him.
Nikolaj hesitated. “We’re okay?”
There were a thousand possible answers.
I picked the safest one. “Of course.”
His eyes stayed on mine. Then he nodded. “Good.”
That hurt much more than it should have.
So I smiled. He smiled back.
And that was how we put it away.
Not all at once. Not particularly well.
But well enough.
We became ourselves again.
Friends. Dear friends. Safe. Mostly.
A few weeks later, everyone was together again.
Of course we were.
Our families gathered the way other people breathed.
Without needing much planning. Without needing a reason.
Dinner was at my parents’ house.
Mom was outside with Danika. Dad and Tristan were in the kitchen.
Duncan and Jared were playing pool.
Cleo was criticizing both of them. Isabella sat curled in a chair near the windows, drawing.
Nikolaj was beside me on the sofa. Not touching me.
We had gotten very good at that.
Tristan came out of the kitchen with a drink in his hand. He looked at Nikolaj. Then at me.
His expression changed. I knew that look.
Trouble, Danika would say.
Tristan turned toward the kitchen. “James,” he called. “You remember when your daughter hired a car to collect my son and then announced they were getting married?”
Dad appeared in the doorway. “I remember.”
Tristan grinned. “You forbade it.”
“Categorically,” Dad said.
That made Tristan laugh.
Jared looked over from the pool table. Cleo was already smiling.
I wanted to leave.
Tristan looked at me. “So what happened to the wedding, Imogen?”
It was an old family joke. Nothing more. Nothing important.
I smiled. “I grew up.”
Tristan laughed first. Jared joined him.
Cleo did too.
Dad’s mouth twitched. Mom smiled from the patio doorway.
And Nikolaj laughed.
I looked at him.
He looked easy. Unbothered.
Exactly as he should have been. Exactly as I had wanted him to be.
I laughed too.
Then I looked away.