“I’m out,” I tell my brother. “Heading to the gym.”
He doesn’t bother to hide his bemusement as I snatch the envelope off the table and turn toward the door.
“You’re doing the right thing,” he calls after me.
Since that is absolutely zero fucking consolation to me at this dark moment, I keep going without bothering to respond. I go out to the curb and enjoy the cooling night air on my face. Text my driver. Slouch against the nearest pole and twiddle my thumbs while I wait for him to arrive. Impatiently answer my phone without checking the display when it buzzes, thinking it’s him.
But it’s not him.
“Yeah,” I say.
“I’m not drunk,” Bellamy says, catching me by surprise. “I just want you to know that.”
There’s a new note in her voice, something I can’t quite decipher. It seems nervous. Husky. Maybe even a little sultry.
Whatever it is, it makes nerve endings sizzle to life up and down my arms and across my nape. My heart, meanwhile, gallops into overdrive.
“Okay…?”
“I could spend tonight with my friends, but I’m tired of being reliable,” she continues. “I’m tired of not crossing any lines with you.” She hesitates. In the silence, I hear a disbelieving little laugh, and I swear I also hear (feel?) her lick her lips. “I could keep quiet, but I’m really tired of doing the safe thing. And I feel like you should know that the thing I really want for my birthday is you.”
I freeze, my mouth drying out. Not that it matters, because sudden nerves and excitement lock down my throat and make speech impossible anyway.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she says quietly. “But I took a chance. I’m upstairs in room 2810. You could come and stay with me tonight. No questions asked. No regrets. And we never have to say anything else about it either way, so it’s fine if you decide not to.”
I can’t answer in that head-spinning moment. Can’t think. Can’t breathe. I’d have been better prepared if she’d called to tell me that she’s been working undercover with the CIA this whole time.
“Anyway…” Longest pause of the night. “The ball’s in your court, Griffin.”
I’m still reeling from her use of my first name for the first time ever when she hangs up without another word.
4
Bellamy
What did I just do? Someone tell me, please.
Well, I know what. The single most out-of-character act of my entire good-girl life (good daughter, good student, good employee, you name it) and possibly in the history of humankind. That’s what.
I’m standing in the middle of the expensive hotel room that I can’t afford, reeling from my sudden burst of boldness, when my phone buzzes in my hand. I check the display with a sinking heart, thinking that it’s probably Griffin calling back to a) give me my two weeks’ notice and b) escort me to the nearest hospital for a full mental health evaluation, but no. It’s my best friend, Ella Richardson. Who, I now remember, I forgot to text during tonight’s flurry of unusual behavior.
“Hey,” I say, huddling inside my wrap and feeling ridiculously vulnerable.
“Where the hell are you?” she barks. I hear a crowd and a pianist playing jazzy tunes in the background. “I thought you said you were at Bemelmans. There’s no sign of you.”
“Wait, what? I just left. What are you doing there?”
“I came to rescue you from the Beast. There was no way I was going to let him ruin your entire birthday like that. Now I’m sitting at the bar with a cake, looking like an idiot. Where are you?”
Do I have great friends or what? Ella is a pastry chef at her aunt’s bakery, Valentina’s. She makes amazing cakes.
“You’re the best,” I say, my heart aching at the loss of my birthday treat. “Too bad you weren’t here thirty seconds ago to stop me from making the biggest mistake of my life.”
“Oh my God. What did you do?”
“I gave in to my longstanding crush on my boss, got a room upstairs and invited him to join me.”
“What? You’re drunk!” she cries, appropriately scandalized.
“Not even a little bit,” I say, sad that I won’t later be able to pin this temporary insanity on too much alcohol.
“What’s gotten into you? The whole time you’ve worked for him, you’ve kept your feelings for him under wraps. You act like I’m crazy every time I mention how you make heart eyes at him. And now this? What are you thinking?”
I flop onto the bed, which I’ve turned down in an abundance of optimism, kick off my heels and stare glumly at the ceiling.
“I probably wasn’t thinking at all. But if I were thinking, it was about how sexy he is and how I’d rather hook up with him than some idiot from a dating app. He should be game, right? He sleeps with every other woman who crosses his path.”
“Well, that’s true,” she says, laughing.
“I’m moving soon. I’ll probably never see him again once I go to law school. And I’m twenty-six years old now. I’m so sick of being a good girl all the time. I just wanted to take a chance for once. Do what I wanted to do.”
“And you want to do him.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Wow. What you just did is either the bravest thing I’ve ever heard or the most self-destructive. I can’t quite decide.”
“Neither can I.”
“I can’t get over this. You and the Beast—”
For some reason, the nickname, which he’s spent his entire professional life earning, by the way, rubs me the wrong way. Which is ridiculous.
“Stop calling him that,” I snap.
“That’s what you call him,” she says, outraged. “Because he’s such a jackass to everybody at the office. Especially you.”
“He’s not all bad,” I say, taking a position based on a gut-deep feeling of mine rather than the historical record.
“Whatever you say, Bella. So is he coming?”
My heart sinks. I have no way of knowing. I may well waste my entire evening up here by myself, waiting for someone who never plans to come.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“I say give him another half an hour,” she says. “And then if he doesn’t show—”
Knock–knock–knock.
“Oh my God,” I say, bolting upright and getting up. “Someone’s at the door.”
“It’s him!”
“Either that, or housekeeping with a chocolate for my pillow.”
“It’s him. I know it. Enjoy yourself. Have a fuck for me, since I won’t be getting any anytime soon.”
“I’ll try,” I say, laughing. “Gotta go.”
I hang up, put the phone on the nightstand, hurry to the door, check the peephole and see that it is him. I die a thousand little deaths while I stare at his distorted image and try to decide whether he’s come to tell me to get a grip or to take me up on my offer. Then I decide that there’s only one way to find out for sure, take a deep breath to steady my racing pulse and swing the door open.