“Keaton Constantine, what the hell?”
My brows popped. My mother rarely swore. “Wow, Mom. I didn’t even know you knew that word.”
“That relationship is important,” Mom explained, sounding like she was struggling for patience. “It’s your future.”
“Mom, I’m eighteen. You can’t really expect me to date the same girl for the rest of my life.”
“I can, and I do. You’ve been raised together. Groomed to be together. It’s not like you need to get to know her. You know exactly what kind of family she comes from. You should know that the expectation is that you two will get married.”
I laughed at that. “Again, we’re eighteen. We’re not going to marry anyone any time soon. And while I care about her, I don’t love her.”
I could envision her pinched face. “You’re being very naïve,” my mother said in a brittle voice. “Constantines marry well. That’s what we do. And it’s your role in the family to connect us with the Blairs.”
“And if I don’t want to?”
Mom didn’t say anything for a second. “Keaton, don’t make me compel you.”
“With money?” That was, after all, my parents’ go-to move.
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to. I had a trust fund and a monthly allowance that would balance the budgets of most Midwestern states—but both of those could be fucked with. By her. The first wave of trust fund money would be released once I graduated—and it would be enough to see me through college until I could get my own job . . . if I didn’t choose a career in rugby, that was. If I chose rugby, I’d need fuck-all from the family.
But again, I couldn’t start playing pro until after graduation at the soonest.
“You’re telling me that if I don’t keep dating Clara, you’re going to starve me out financially?”
“Don’t be gauche,” she said. She disliked overt money talk. “I’m just reminding you that the benefits of this family are tied to service to this family.”
“Does it matter to you that Clara doesn’t love me? Never mind how I feel?”
“This isn’t about love, sweetheart, this is about a merger of the families. Something better and stronger. You’ll see.”
I ground my teeth together. My gaze went outside my window again.
To Iris.
My skin was too hot and too prickly as I remembered the slide of her tongue over mine, that sound she made at the back of her throat, the way her ass fit my hands when I lifted her against me.
And fantastic. I had to stop. Fuck. Why that girl? I didn’t have time for that shit.
“Keaton? Are you listening to me?”
I dragged my attention back to my conversation. “Sorry, I was paying attention to a project I need to focus on. What did you say?”
“I told you, nurture that relationship. Please don’t disappoint me. The Blairs are some of my closest friends and could be our strongest allies.”
“Whatever you say. Are we done here? Can I go?”
“Keaton,” Mom said, and then paused. When she spoke again, her voice was gentler. “I’m trying to raise you as your father would have wanted. I’m trying to steer this family the way your father would have wanted. That’s all.”
My heart stuttered at the mention of Dad, at the giant Lane-Constantine-shaped hole in all of our lives.
“Okay,” I said finally.
“Okay. I love you, sweetheart.”
“Yeah, love you too,” I choked out and hung up the phone. I swallowed the pain as my eyes stayed fixed on Little Miss Perfect’s ass.
I hadn’t focused on my anger. It was her. She was near. Why would I even be thinking about breaking up with Clara? That kiss wouldn’t have happened. I could have just skated through senior year with no waves made, my mom none the wiser about me and Clara. Then I’d be the hell out of here and could do what I wanted.
But Iris was the reason for this. She was the reason I was thinking about what life would be like if we were different, and it had to stop. Which meant, I wasn’t going near her again. It just wasn’t going to happen.
Okay, if that’s what you want to tell yourself.
5
Iris
“You,” a low voice said near my ear, “have been avoiding me.”
Chills rushed down my spine as I turned my head to see Keaton standing behind me. The library was quiet and tomblike at this time of day, but I still hadn’t heard him approach my table. To be fair, I hadn’t really been listening—I’d thought I was safe in the very back, surrounded by the high wood shelves and out of sight from the entrance.
I’d thought wrong.
Keaton threw his big body into the chair next to me, and I was about to tell him to go away when he grabbed my chair and effortlessly dragged it around so that we were face to face. He planted his dress shoes on the outsides of my Mary Janes and his muscular thighs splayed on either side of my legs. I was trapped by his big, dumb body.
I ignored the traitorous shiver that induced in me.
“Keaton, what—”
“Listen here, Big Red,” he said, leaning in and bracing his hands on the sides of my seat. I could feel the heat of his hands on my thighs through my uniform skirt. “I need this project to go well, and I can’t afford to have it messed up, all right? So if you don’t want to see me, that’s perfectly fine. You just leave the project to me—”
“No. Way.” Anger simmered in my veins as I leaned right into him. Right until I could feel his breath on my lips. “Photography is what I live for. And I am not having some rugby jock screw over the one thing I love in order to screw me over.”
His eyebrows lifted. That one stray lock of hair he could never seem to tame brushed over his forehead as he did. “Oh, so it’s all about you now? Screwing you over is all I could possibly care about?”
“What other reason could you have for caring about art?” I scoffed. “And design? Give me a break.”
An expression I couldn’t decipher chased itself across his face, and he broke our stare, leaning back and looking at a bookshelf while a muscle in his jaw jumped. When he met my eyes again, his gaze was cold. So very cold.
“If you care so much, then we can do this together,” he said icily. “But I’m calling the shots.”
“No fucking way.”
“Starting now,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard me. “No more avoiding me. We meet every Friday night to work on this, and we meet on Saturdays too if we have to. You might be Daddy’s golden girl, but the rest of us have to worry about our grades.”
My jaw dropped open. The nerve of him—and the completely incorrect nerve! First, Isabelle was Daddy’s golden girl, and that was a fact I could never escape, because he’d never stop reminding me of it.
Secondly, my father would never punch up my grades. Not because he cared about the ethics of it all—oh no. But because he knew how political private schools could get, and if the wrong teacher talked, his reputation would be trashed.
And thirdly: “Like you have to worry about GPA, Keaton Constantine, rugby captain? With your family business? With the team? Please. Your entire life is cushioned by your last name and your genetic predisposition for leg muscles. You are a walking, talking rich jock stereotype.”