by K. A. Linde
“Oh yeah? Well, don’t dye it. I love it.”
She grinned, a swift, sly thing. “I know you do.”
“Cocky?”
“Hey, I’m learning from the best.”
I chuckled, eyeing the way she tried to hide some unease behind that smile. I wouldn’t have seen it if I didn’t know her, but I did know her. And I’d said no masks in private. What was she hiding?
“Speaking of,” she said, “what lesson are we working on tonight? Since I’m all dressed up for it.”
The thought died at her words. She thought this was a lesson. Because…of course she did. That was what she’d asked for. Just like a year ago when she’d asked for two months of carefree sex, and I’d given it to her. Until we both caught feelings, and that had been thrown out the window.
She wasn’t ready for a relationship. She’d said that, but I’d ignored her. Hoped that these lessons would bring us together again like last time. Not that I’d force her into a relationship she wasn’t ready for. But I wouldn’t settle for just this either. Not with how perfect we were together.
“No lesson,” I said finally.
Her nose wrinkled in confusion. “Oh? I figured the clothes and dinner went together.”
I laced my fingers with hers in the back of the car. “No. The clothes were a lesson. And you look stunning in them. This…the rest of this, is just a date.”
Her cheeks colored. “Oh. Well, I didn’t realize…”
“I wanted to take you out. As long as that’s all right with you.”
She paused as if debating whether or not it was okay with her. I wasn’t used to this feeling. Like I had to work for the person I was interested in. But I was interested in Natalie and only Natalie. A year without her had shown me that. So, I would wait. I’d be patient. I’d wait for her to be there, too.
“That sounds nice,” she finally said with a hesitant smile.
“Good.”
We’d get there. I knew there was so much more that she wasn’t telling me. So much more that she was holding back. But how could I even blame her?
Sure, I was pissed about Lewis. But I’d fucked things up with her first. With that goddamn bet. Then Lewis had shattered her trust, too. It was amazing that she was even talking to me. Let alone going out on a date with me.
We just had to take the next steps together. Prove that we could move on from what was holding us back. The lies that had torn us apart in the first place.
Chapter 13
Natalie
Tension settled in between my shoulder blades. There was no reason for it to be there. I’d been calling our date a date all day when talking to Jane. I was excited about it. But I just hadn’t put two and two together that this was a date, date.
I didn’t know why it even mattered. Penn and I had been seeing each other for a few weeks. We’d been staying at each other’s places, gone to the charity function, and been having a lot of incredible sex.
But all of that had had the sheen of him teaching me, of these lessons. They’d kept a certain level of separation. Even if it was imaginary separation. Because there was so little that actually separated me and Penn.
Now that I knew this was a real date, no lesson at all, I felt a little unsettled. Like I should have anticipated this. Thought about what I was going to say over dinner or something.
God, I needed to shake this off. I’d never had a problem being around Penn before. Not seven years ago as we’d walked Paris together. Or in the Hamptons when we’d cohabited for a few months. Not even when I’d been dating his best friend. There had been other nerves for that, but I’d always been comfortable around him. Even when I hated him.
“Breathe,” he said softly into my ear as we reached the host at the front of the restaurant.
I inhaled and then let it out slowly. I was being ridiculous. This was Penn after all. It was just that relationship stuff so soon after Lewis, even if I wanted it, made me nervous. I wasn’t the Natalie he’d wanted before, and he didn’t know all the deep, dark edges of me yet. The parts I wasn’t ready to look at in the light. The ones that said to burn this world down. That nothing could make up for what they’d done.
“Ah, right this way,” the host said with a smile.
“Are you okay?” Penn asked, gently taking my elbow as we followed the host to our table.
“Just a little nervous,” I admitted.
He grinned. “Since when do I make you nervous?”
“Have we ever gone on a date before?”
“Hmm, maybe not. Though I think there’s another reason for your nerves.”
I tried to force the smile on my face. How did he see through me so easily? See to my anger about Lewis. I didn’t want to ruin this date, even before I had known it was a real date. I wanted to do it even less now by telling Penn what had transpired.
Penn pulled my chair out, and I sat across from him. The restaurant was exquisite. Low lighting with flickering candles on every table. Everyone was dressed to the nines, and the room was crowded with young couples holding hands and glowing. This wasn’t a first-date kind of place. This was a place where you put your name on the list six months in advance and hoped you could get a table. This was a place that guys splurged on when they were proposing.
“This is nice,” I said. “Fancy for you.”
He sat across from me and shrugged. “I thought it’d be a good excuse to get you to go shopping.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “I would have gone without bribery.”
“Hey, I know how you feel about this all.”
“And yet, you brought me to a swank restaurant.”
“All right, maybe this isn’t a lesson, but you should be comfortable here.”
I shrugged him off and opened the menu. My eyes ballooned at the prices, and I closed it again. “Are you sure you want to eat here? How long did it take you to get a reservation?”
He sent me a cocky look. “I got it yesterday. And yes, I want to eat here. Get the most expensive thing on the menu.”
“Who are you, and what have you done with Penn Kensington? I would have been fine with pizza.”
“Oh, I know,” he said with a scoff. “No one eats as much pizza as you.”
“Hey, don’t diss pizza.”
“As if I could. It’s your favorite.” His glittering blue eyes bore into mine over the menu. A perfect Manhattan playboy smile on his face. “And to answer your question, Penn Kensington realized that he can be both people with you. Weren’t you the one to say that you liked it?”
I flushed all over again at the memory. “I did, didn’t I?”
The waiter came over, and Penn swiftly ordered us an exorbitantly priced bottle of red wine. He got a steak with all the trimmings, and I forced down my apprehension about money and ordered the lobster. The sommelier appeared shortly and poured our wine.
I brought the glass to my lips and took a small sip. My eyes closed briefly at the exquisite taste, and I sighed. “That is…delicious.”
His eyes widened. “Are you trying to convince me to leave early?”
“Oh no, I’m eating that lobster.”
He took a sip of his own and then smiled sadly. “This was my father’s favorite wine. He always had it in the house.”
“You don’t talk about him often.”
“No. Well, not many pleasant memories. It’s kind of amazing that he could even taste it after all the cocaine,” he said nonchalantly. “But he did have excellent taste in alcohol. One of the few good things about him.”
“I’m sorry that you never had a real relationship with him and that he died before you could work it out.”
Penn shrugged it off, setting the glass down. “We wouldn’t have worked it out. And anyway, him dying was the main thing that set me on a better path. In some way, it was a blessing.”
“Still, not great.”
“No,” he said carefully. Then his eyes met mine. “Are you going to tell me why you’ve been jittery and fidgety since I p
icked you up?”
God, I’d hoped that he wouldn’t ask again. That he’d let it go. “I’m not jittery.”
His foot settled over my own, which had been tapping incessantly and I hadn’t even noticed.
“Talk to me.” A command, not a request. His sexy alpha voice made me want to do exactly what he’d said. But damn, I did not want to ruin dinner.
“You won’t like it.”
“I don’t have to, but if it gets it off your shoulders, that’s all that matters.”
“My agent called today,” I said with another sigh. “She said that Warren called back, and Gillian wants to acquire my next book. They’ve offered to match my last advance.”
Penn’s lips pursed. “That’s…coincidental.”
“Is it?”
“Lewis?”
“Yes. I mean, she didn’t say that. She probably doesn’t know. But I do. I know that I yelled at him in the doorway of my apartment, and now, they’ve made an offer on my book. As if he thinks that he can fix his mistakes and that will fix us.” I paused over the words, anger boiling in my veins. I took a gulp of the expensive wine, hardly tasting it this time. “He wants to control me.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I know,” I said softly. “I told her to turn it down.”
“Oh, Natalie.” His voice was so tender that it cut through me like glass.
“Yeah. I mean, it’s one thing to have my career stolen. It’s another entirely to have to throw it away on your own.”
“This is just with Warren,” he assured me. “You can go with another publisher. Then you won’t be trapped under Lewis.”
I shook my head and glanced away, blinking away the tears that threatened to spill. Talking about it like this was way worse than when I’d told Jane. Penn knew how much this had destroyed me. He knew my hopes and dreams and how they were now crumpled to ash.
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
“That motherfucker,” Penn said under his breath. “I cannot believe he’s doing this to you.”
“Why wouldn’t he when there are no consequences to anything he does?” Fire replaced the despair in an instant. “When he never has to pay for the way he treats people?”
“I can make him pay for his actions.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Please don’t do anything stupid. I can handle this myself.”
“You wanted lessons on the Upper East Side, Natalie. Sometimes, you need to let others take care of things for you.”
“No,” I said sharply.
I didn’t want Penn involved. Not when I didn’t know what Lewis’s next move was. I wanted to be one step ahead of him. That was what I’d learned from Katherine. She was always ahead of me in some way. And I planned to stay ahead of both of them. So that this looked like a small misstep in the grand scheme of things.
“Can we talk about something else? There’s a reason I didn’t want to tell you about it.”
“Well, it was all over you. I couldn’t ignore it.”
“If this is our first date, then I don’t want to spend the entire time talking about Lewis,” I said, leaning forward. “Let’s talk about something else. Your book? How is that going?”
Penn looked like he wanted to say more about Lewis, but then he effortlessly switched topics. Ever the charmer. “I finally got a date for it. Looks like it’s coming out this fall after all. Supposedly, I should be getting copies at the start of the summer.”
“And is it the life-changing philosophy work you always wanted to do?”
Like my love of writing, ethical philosophy was where Penn’s passion rested. He’d wanted to write a groundbreaking book about sex and morality. Especially looking at the standard view that said only relationships could equal safe and moral sex. Unsurprisingly, he argued that relationships were hardly necessary as long as it was consensual sex between adults. He said more about diseases and pregnancy, but the gist was the same. One-night stands were A-okay in moral terms and, even further, could bring about real Aristotelian happiness.
But Penn didn’t answer right away. I was surprised by that. Even a year ago, he’d been adamant that this was the only route.
“I don’t disagree with my central argument. I think that people can be moral and achieve happiness outside of a relationship.” His eyes settled on mine as if he’d come to a deeper conclusion that he wasn’t sure he wanted to share with me. “But I’ll be honest and say that I can understand the standard view, too.”
I nearly choked on my wine. “Since when?”
“About a year ago,” he admitted.
“But you…you slept around after me.”
“I did. It wasn’t for moral reasons, and it brought me no real happiness. If anything, it brought me further from my intended result. Especially when it was clear that I was just trying and failing to forget you. That you were my happiness, and I’d lost you, like an idiot.”
My mouth dropped open at his admission.
I’d known that he’d slept around to get back at Katherine. That he didn’t do it out of any real pleasure. But it still hurt to find out especially since I hadn’t been with anyone else while he’d been getting his dick wet with whoever walked by. It was part of the reason I’d ended up giving Lewis a chance to begin with.
But to hear that I’d changed his entire view on his own philosophical musings. To hear that I was now the source of that happiness he’d been searching for since his father died. I didn’t…didn’t even have words for that.
It made me glow from the inside out. As if butterflies had just descended into my stomach and were whacking their tiny wings all along the inside. It seemed unbelievable and wonderful. And terrifying.
That he felt that way. That I couldn’t deny that I felt that way.
“And here, I can normally tell what you’re thinking, but I have no clue,” he said with a small laugh. “Did I speak my mind too much? I don’t think how I feel about you is a secret.”
“No,” I whispered. “Not anymore. I wanted to think that last year was all a lie to you. Just a joke. But it wasn’t, was it?”
He shook his head. “Every moment was real.”
The waiter took that second to bring out our meals. I was glad for the reprieve from that conversation. It was way more intense than I’d expected. I’d thought we’d have another round of observe the room or show how your clothes make you superior or whatever Upper East Side bullshit they touted. I’d figured I might get some information on strategy. Not talk about our feelings.
My feelings were too conflicted. Too conflicted to give in to that gorgeous smile, the too-blue eyes, and the adorable dimples. The man that I was just now really getting to know. I’d been attracted to him from the start. With a body like that, who wouldn’t? But it was the brain and the man beneath that mask that always intrigued me.
I’d come back to New York, thinking I could keep Penn at a distance. I hadn’t anticipated falling for him again so easily. Like sand through a sieve. The more I tried to guard my heart to keep from getting hurt again, the more he broke down all the barriers I’d put up, leaving me bare.
But maybe…just maybe, he wouldn’t shy away from this new side of myself I was just discovering. If I could fall for the two sides of Penn, maybe he could fall for both sides of me.
Chapter 14
Penn
Natalie had told me not to do anything stupid in regards to Lewis. And this wasn’t stupid.
This was very smart.
I wouldn’t seek him out. But if we happened to be called to the same meeting by Lark, then it wouldn’t hurt to show up and knock some sense into him. I could be perfectly rational about it. Not that he deserved it. One way or another, he was going to back the fuck off.
I stepped into the elevator for Rowe’s place, only a few blocks down the street from my own. When it opened to his incredibly monochromatic living room, I was greeted by the overeager expression from one Larkin St. Vincent.
“You came,” she said in obvious
relief.
“I did. I don’t think any of us have missed a summons before,” I said.
“True. But you were so adamant.”
“Well, I hadn’t planned on coming. Changed my mind at the last minute.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” She stepped aside, allowing me into Rowe’s penthouse.
Rowe was seated in a white armchair, his face buried in his computer, like always. Lewis was at the bar, holding a bottle of gin and adding olives to a martini. Katherine was lounging back against the chaise as if she were some golden goddess. Her skin was sun-kissed from the weeks she had spent in the Maldives with Camden. Even her dark hair had honey streaks in it from the sun.
For a second, with all of us assembled like misfit Avengers, it felt like coming home. As if the last year hadn’t occurred. As if we were back in high school or college, where our friendship was everything we needed. When we couldn’t live without each other.
But the illusion was just that.
We weren’t those people anymore.
We might have a shared past with secrets aplenty, but that didn’t mean we had loyalty anymore. Something had been irrevocably broken between us. And a meeting with all of us together couldn’t possibly change that.
Rowe glanced up then, looking up at me from under a pair of thick black glasses. He hadn’t worn glasses since elementary school. “Sup.”
I cracked a grin. Because despite it all, Rowe was exactly the same. “Hey, man.”
“Drink, Kensington?” Lewis asked as he strode to Katherine’s side and handed her the martini.
“No,” I said tersely.
“Oh, how I do miss this level of service already,” Katherine said. “The resort we went to took care of literally everything. I don’t know how I’m supposed to live otherwise.” She shifted her attention to me with a twinkle in her eye. “How are you, darling?”
I fought to keep from clenching my hands into fists. I could play this game. I was the expert after all. But I simply didn’t want to.
“Maybe we should get started.” I slid my hands into my pockets and waited for Lark to begin.