by Linde, K. A.
And now, I enjoyed when everyone was required to wear black, gold, and silver to events. So, when I showed up in my signature red, I stood out as the guest of honor.
Whitley and English loped across the sand with wide smiles on their faces. I realized that Lark had paid attention to the details. While Lark was in gold, highlighting her burnished hair, Whitley was dressed in silver, and English was in black. With my red dress, together, we were a set. Just how I liked it.
“Happy birthday,” English said, pulling me in for a hug.
Whitley was there next. “You look beautiful, you lucky bitch.”
I laughed. “You’re ridiculous.”
“As ever,” Whitley said with a spritely curtsy.
Then she grasped my hand, and we traipsed across the sand.
The sun had already set, and bonfires were burning bright on the beach. Bars had been placed outside with bartenders mixing drinks for the crowd dancing to the music the DJ spun on the stage.
All of my friends were in attendance, save for my husband, who was conveniently absent. I wasn’t surprised. I knew he had work engagements. Though I couldn’t even begin to understand why someone would schedule that on the last day of the year, let alone on my birthday. But he’d show up when he wanted.
Lark had somehow managed to create a beachside pillow fort for our group. There were expensive, plush blankets laid out, topped with a mountain of pillows for lounging. We had our own bartender, who prepared fruity drinks, complete with umbrellas, for the lot of us. Though the boys were unsurprisingly drinking bourbon.
Everyone wished me happy birthday as I joined the group and took my drink. This was the first time in a very long time that I hadn’t designed my own birthday party. And it was kind of… nice not to have to be in charge. Something I never would have guessed before.
“Let’s dance,” Whitley said, downing her drink like a champ. She pointed at Gavin.
He arched his eyebrows and gestured to himself. “Me?”
“Yeah, you. Come dance with me.”
He laughed, but there was something else in his expression as he stepped across the blankets toward her. “All right, bossy.”
“Bossy girls are just leaders who didn’t stay down when boys told them to be quiet,” Whitley said defiantly.
He smirked then, roguish and handsome in the firelight. “By all means, lead then.”
She winked at us and then dragged him into the crowd. What a pair.
English was already pulling Court away. Sam looked reluctant as Lark tried to get him out in the crowd.
“Come with us,” Lark told me.
I saw Penn walking toward me, alone. He was handsome, dressed down in a linen button-up rolled to his elbows and khaki shorts. His eyes were the same brilliant blue, and he had a half-smile on his face.
“Can I have a minute?” he asked.
I swallowed. Warning alarms went off in my head. This was a bad, bad idea. Camden was surely on his way here. It probably wasn’t a good idea for me to incur his rancor. Not today. Not with what was on the horizon.
“Later,” I told him, letting Lark drag me out into the sticky, sweaty crowd.
Penn’s face disappeared in the chaos, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
I wasn’t sure that I’d ever denied Penn anything. I’d toyed with him and teased him and purposely riled him. But it had never been real. Not like this.
I lost myself to the music then. Lark, English, and Whitley came to dance around me. Our hands were raised high in the air, and we dizzily sang along to the pop song. Even with the noise, it was a little unfair how good Whitley was.
“Do you sing?” I yelled over the crowd. I didn’t think that I’d ever heard her sing before.
Whitley shook her head. “No!”
“You should!” English shouted.
Lark agreed vehemently. “Seconded.”
“You can’t even hear me!” Whitley said with a laugh.
“What I heard was great.”
Whitley just rolled her eyes. She grabbed Gavin’s shirt in both hands and dragged him against her. But she didn’t sing again. It was odd for someone who was always the life of the party to now be so silent.
I shrugged it off as a pair of hands came to rest on my hips. I knew those hands. I tipped my head back against Camden’s shoulder and looked up at him.
“You made it,” I said into his ear.
“Of course I made it,” he said gruffly.
I shivered as his hands slid down the side of my dress and then around back to cup my ass. I tensed just slightly. His hands there brought back memories from the night before.
“Sore?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“That’s a shame,” he breathed. “Going to have to fix that. I liked the way you had to shift every time you sat down.”
I nearly groaned at the words. I wanted that. I wanted more than that.
I turned in his arms and pressed myself flush against his chest. Our hips moved to the thrum of the music. My fingers tangled up into his dark hair. He leaned down then and kissed me. It was not gentle. It was possessive. I dug my toes into the sand as desire shot through me.
“Happy birthday,” he said against my lips.
“Am I going to get my birthday wish?” I asked as my eyes fluttered open to look at him.
“Right now?” he asked. “Here, in the sand?” I softly shook my head, but he just smirked. “You don’t want to be watched?”
I swallowed. “No.”
He nipped at my earlobe. “Liar.”
I closed my eyes again and leaned into him. “Maybe…” I amended. “Like… not completely public, but we could get caught…” I trailed off.
“You have a filthy mind.” We swayed from side to side, dancing in the moonlight, as the party went on all around us. “I do enjoy it.”
Our friends closed in around us, hips grinding and music pumping. Everything felt right. It might be a truce, but a part of me liked having him here rather than always a source of contention. Never knowing which side of his personality I was going to get. Maybe he could take his anger and just use it in the bedroom. Maybe it could always be this way.
Eventually, my friends all left the sand and flopped down on the blankets. Lark had procured a cake—a huge cake with frosting that swirled from blood red all the way up to the lightest pink. It was beautiful, and there was one tiara-shaped candle at the top.
I moved to stand before it as my friends all sang “Happy Birthday” to me over the noise from the party. I smiled so hard that my cheeks hurt. This was how it was supposed to be. And as the song came to an end, I stared into that one flame.
“Make a wish!” Whitley cried.
Gavin nudged her, and she laughed, leaning into him. He slung a casual arm around her waist. But I couldn’t think about what that meant for them at this moment.
Just the candle before me. The one wish I had for my birthday. My eyes met Camden’s over the flickering light. And I knew just what I wanted to wish for.
I closed my eyes and blew the candle out.
17
Katherine
A waiter came by to cut the gorgeous vanilla cake with raspberry cream layers and dish it out to the rest of the partygoers. It looked delicious, but I couldn’t even eat a bite. I was so fired up from the party and the wish and the magic of our last night on the beach. I wasn’t even hungry.
I just wanted more dancing and singing and a kiss at midnight. Then Camden and I could finally finish what we’d started. The perfect birthday.
I walked around the others who were enjoying the cake and to my husband’s side.
He tugged me in close. “So, what did you wish for?”
“If I told you, it wouldn’t come true.”
He arched an eyebrow. “But what if I guess?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny,” I said with a wink.
“I’m a very good guesser,” he breathed into my ear.
“Oh, I bet you are.”
“Was it to have my cock inside of you later?”
My body tensed with anticipation and need. Fuck, I wanted that. But that hadn’t been my wish. He could think that was it all he wanted. I wouldn’t mind. I wouldn’t tell him what it actually was. I’d never let myself be that open, not when so much was still on the line.
“Would you make that wish come true?” I purred.
“I would consider the matter.”
“Well,” I teased, trailing my nail down his jawline, rough with stubble, “I will let you know when it comes true.”
His phone buzzed in his pocket then. Loud and insistent.
I sighed. “Another call, really? Are you ever going to get a day off?”
He frowned. “I wasn’t expecting another call.”
He removed his phone from his pocket and turned it to face him. His frown deepened, but I didn’t see the name on the screen.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“No one. I have to take this. I’ll be right back.”
“Camden, it’s nearly midnight.”
His voice hardened. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” I muttered, but he was already walking away across the sand.
My stomach tightened in worry. I didn’t want to feel anything at all about who could be on that line. But if he hadn’t been anticipating another call and he hadn’t shown me who was on the line or told me, I had only one guess who it was.
Fiona.
I needed a drink. A stiff drink. No more umbrellas. Shots would do.
I stomped back over to the empty pillow fort. All of my friends had returned to the dance floor. The countdown was drawing ever nearer to midnight. And here I was, taking shots, alone, on my birthday. Fabulous.
Then there was a body next to me.
I looked over in surprise to find Penn Kensington. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, you’ve been avoiding me like the plague,” he said with that signature smirk.
“Don’t you think there’s a reason for that?”
He took the shot out of my hand and downed it himself. “That’s your third. I think you’re a bit drunk.”
“So what if I am? It’s my birthday.”
“And you can cry if you want to?” he asked imperiously.
I glared at him. “Could you cut the shit, Penn? You’re here. Risking the ire of my husband and your wonderful wife. What could you possibly want?”
He sighed and motioned for the bartender to pour us each another shot of tequila. He held one out to me and took the other in his hand. “I’m here to wish you happy birthday.”
I took the shot and sighed. I was taking my anger out on him. Not because he’d actually done anything wrong. I was mad at someone else, and Penn just happened to be here.
We lifted our shots and then downed them, as we’d done hundreds of times together. I swallowed the burning liquid and smiled up at my partner in crime. Exactly where he had always been—at my side.
“Thank you,” I said, dispelling my irritation. “I’m not mad at you.”
“I know.”
“So, what are you really doing here?”
“I actually wanted to wish you happy birthday. And… I saw you taking shots all by yourself. Didn’t seem right.”
“So, you wanted to be chivalrous?” I admonished.
He shot me a look that I’d seen a million times. One that said he could be nothing but who he was.
“Of course you did,” I muttered.
“You know, just because things are different between us doesn’t mean that I stopped caring about you,” he said softly. “You’re still one of my closest friends. We’re still crew, Ren.”
I waved him away. “I really don’t need to hear it.”
He frowned but stayed resolute. He’d always been comfortable with the worst parts of my personality. They used to mirror his own. Before he’d gone all moral.
“And I brought you this,” he said, holding out a red box with a gold ribbon.
I stared at it. My heart tripped over itself. I knew what was in that box.
“You didn’t,” I whispered.
“I missed last year. We were…” He trailed off.
He didn’t have to say it. Besides the fact that I had been on my honeymoon, Penn and I hadn’t been talking a year ago. But every year before that, every year since my father had been arrested and thrown in prison, he’d given me one of these little red boxes.
“I thought you’d forgotten.”
He gave me a half-smile. “How could I forget?”
I didn’t want to accept it, but this wasn’t about Penn Kensington. It had nothing to do with us at all. This was about the little girl I’d been once upon a time. The girl who had believed in love at first sight and big, romantic gestures and happily ever afters who had never thought she’d ever love a man as much as her daddy—the one person who had sworn he would always be there. And I’d believed him. To my own detriment.
I took the box from Penn’s hand, tugged the gold ribbon off, and slowly peeled away the red wrapping. I popped the lid on the box, and nestled inside on red crushed velvet was a small silver ballerina charm. The same exact brand and style of bracelet charm that my father had given me every single year on my birthday. Every year until we’d all discovered the truth about what a vicious liar he was.
Penn, in his unending goodness, had known how much those charms meant to me. He’d given me a new one every year since then, save for last year.
“Thank you,” I whispered, my heart in my throat as I clutched the box to my chest.
He pulled me in for a hug, planting a faint kiss on the top of my head. “You’re welcome.”
“What’s this?” a voice sneered nearby.
I jerked back from Penn’s touch at the first sound of Camden’s voice. He strode across the sand back toward us. His eyes darted back and forth between us, alone on the beach.
“Nothing,” I said, mirroring what he’d said to me when Fiona called on my birthday to talk to him.
“Nothing,” he said, disbelieving. “It’s always nothing with you two, isn’t it?”
“I was simply wishing her a happy birthday,” Penn said. He shook his head at Camden. “I’ll go now.”
“Oh no, stay,” Camden growled. “By all means, wish my wife a happy birthday.”
“Camden,” I said in distress, “it wasn’t like that. He just gave me my birthday present.”
“Of course he did.” Camden snatched the box out of my hand. I made a sound of protest, but he was already opening it. “Let’s see what lover boy got you.”
“Stop it,” Penn said in frustration. “What is wrong with you?”
He plucked the charm out of the box and held it aloft. “I think it looks a little cheap, but what do I know?” Camden asked. His eyes were straight fire. The brown so dark that they were nearly black in the flickering light. Anger swept his body like a tornado, wrecking everything in its path. “Who knew you’d like this better than diamonds? But it comes from him. So, of course you do.”
“The truce, Camden,” I reminded him. Tears were brimming in my eyes.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to be doing this.
He dropped the charm back in the box, closed it, and tossed it back to me. I fumbled the box and barely caught it.
“Fuck the truce.” He stepped forward, dangerously close. “Just when I thought that I might be able to trust you again.”
“Leave it, Percy,” Penn said. “Can’t you see that you’re hurting her?”
Camden grasped the front of Penn’s shirt in his hand. I thought Camden was going to punch him.
“What are you doing?” I gasped.
“You should get the fuck out of here, Kensington,” Camden growled.
Penn pushed him off, straightening out his shirt. “Yeah, I’m going to go, and I’m taking Katherine with me. I don’t trust you not to hurt her.”
“My wife is not going with you.”
“Both of you, stop it,” I said, pushing my way between them. I turned to Penn. “Just go. I’ll be fine. He’s not going to hurt me.”
“Only if you ask me to,” Camden said low.
Penn’s eyes were pained. He didn’t want to go. Not because he was in love with me, but he was my closest friend. We’d been through everything together. He’d defend me to his last breath, but he couldn’t defend me against this. We both knew it.
“Go to Natalie,” I said, jutting my chin toward where she stood, her silver hair glowing in the moonlight. She was watching what was playing out. I could practically see the calculus running through her mind about whether to come over or not. “Go.”
“Fine. But if he lays a hand on you… I swear to god.”
“He won’t. He’s never hurt me,” I assured him. “It’s not like that.”
Penn shot one more furious look at Camden, and then walked toward Natalie.
I could hear her voice rise up out of the crowd. “What’s going on?”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and just shook his head. I didn’t hear his response. I probably didn’t want to anyway.
I whipped around then. My own gaze now simmering with anger. I needed off of this beach. I needed to be somewhere alone to release all of this. I didn’t want to have the rest of this argument in front of my friends and a party full of strangers.
“Walk with me,” I snapped.
Then I set off across the sand with the box clutched in my hand. My knuckles were white with strain. I didn’t wait to see if he followed me. I had no doubt that he would. I heard his feet behind me, but he made no move to catch up. I walked until my legs ached and I could go no further. Our villa was mere feet away, but I couldn’t go back inside either.
I waited for him to reach me. My chest rising and falling with a growing fury. I had put everything aside for him this week. I’d ignored all the problems we had. I’d done everything so that we could start fresh, just like he had asked. He had wanted this truce between us. And then he’d thrown the whole fucking thing in my face. My hands trembled at my sides.