Chapter 3 3

Wren

"Define opinions," I said, watching Zara's thumbs fly across her screen with the particular fury she reserved exclusively for her brothers.

"He says, and I'm quoting directly, 'don't cause a scene, don't embarrass the family, and stay away from my building.'" Zara looked up at me, eyebrows raised nearly to her hairline. "As though we were planning an itinerary that involved him at all. As though I would voluntarily choose to be anywhere near my own brother's building when I could be literally anywhere else in this entire city."

"Charming as ever."

"He's been like this since he left for university. Worse, actually, once the scouts started calling. Convinced the entire world revolves around protecting the family name, as though our family name needs protecting from two nineteen-year-olds going to a concert."

I didn't say anything to that, mostly because I'd learned years ago that engaging too enthusiastically in Zara's complaints about her brothers had a way of curdling into something that felt too close to sympathy for either of them, and I'd used up my entire lifetime allowance of sympathy for Kai Ashworth-Vane exactly zero times.

We collected our luggage, hauled it through customs, and piled into a cab that smelled faintly of pine air freshener and somebody's abandoned fast food, and I spent the ride with my forehead pressed against the window, watching Manhattan unfurl in all its loud, glittering chaos, buildings stacked improbably high, yellow cabs weaving between each other with a confidence that seemed borderline suicidal, and the particular electric hum of a city that had never once cared who anyone's family was.

"This is it," Zara announced, practically vibrating in her seat as we pulled up outside a boutique hotel tucked into a quiet side street. "Home for the week. I researched this place for actual hours. It has a rooftop bar and everything."

It did not, as it turned out, have a rooftop bar for very much longer.

We were maybe forty minutes into unpacking, both of us sprawled across one of the twin beds arguing about whether we had time to shower before finding food, when the fire alarm went off, a shrieking, unrelenting wail that sent both of us scrambling upright so fast I nearly took the bedside lamp down with me.

"Is that real," I shouted, over the alarm, already shoving my feet into shoes.

"I genuinely don't know, grab your passport, grab your passport right now."

We hit the hallway at the same moment as approximately thirty other panicked guests, all of us funneling toward the stairwell in various states of undress, someone's dog barking somewhere below us, a man in a bathrobe clutching what appeared to be an entire bottle of wine like it was the only possession worth saving, and by the time we made it out onto the street, breathless and shoeless in Zara's case because she'd grabbed the wrong pair entirely in her panic, we could see actual smoke curling out of a third floor window.

"Oh my God," Zara breathed, staring up at it. "That's not a drill."

"That is extremely not a drill."

We stood on the pavement for the better part of two hours, wrapped in the emergency blankets someone from the hotel eventually produced, watching fire trucks arrive and firefighters disappear into the building and a small crowd of displaced guests grow increasingly restless around us, and by the time a harried-looking hotel manager finally emerged to address everyone directly, my feet had gone numb from standing on cold pavement in inadequate shoes.

"The fire has been contained," he announced, to a smattering of relieved applause, "but the building will need to remain closed for structural assessment. We are so sorry for the inconvenience. We're working to relocate all guests to partner hotels across the city."

"How long," someone shouted from the back of the crowd.

"We're hoping to have arrangements finalized within the hour."

The hour came and went. Then another one. By the time the manager reappeared, considerably more harried than before, to explain that every single partner hotel in a reasonable radius was fully booked due to some enormous conference happening downtown, my patience had worn down to something thin and fraying.

"So what exactly are we supposed to do," Zara demanded, arms crossed, radiating the specific, aristocratic fury of someone who has never once in her life been told no and is deeply unequipped to handle it now.

"We're doing everything we can, miss."

"That's not an answer."

I tugged on her sleeve, exhausted and increasingly desperate for literally any horizontal surface that wasn't a pavement. "Zara. It's fine. We'll figure something out."

"We are not sleeping on a street corner, Wren, I refuse."

"I'm not suggesting we sleep on a street corner, I'm suggesting we find literally any other hotel in this entire city that isn't fully booked."

Zara went very quiet for a moment, chewing her lip in a way I recognized instantly as her thinking face, and something about the specific quality of that silence made my stomach drop before she'd even said a word.

"There's an option," she offered slowly.

"I don't like your face right now."

"My brother's flat isn't far from here."

"Absolutely not. I’d rather chew six forbidden cactuses."

"Wren, he's not even there, he's got training all week and then the tournament starts, he's barely at that flat as it is, he mostly uses the campus one, the townhouse just sits there empty most of the year."

"I would rather sleep on the pavement."

"You would not, you're already shivering, and it's a five minute cab ride, and I have the passcode because I've stayed there before when I've visited him, and he will never even know we were there."

I opened my mouth to argue further and found, to my considerable annoyance, that I genuinely didn't have a better alternative to offer, standing on a cold Manhattan street at nearly midnight with a suitcase, numb feet, and absolutely nowhere else to go.

"He hates me," I said, which felt like the most relevant objection remaining. "He has hated me since I was ten years old, Zara. I am not spending a single night under his roof if there's any chance he finds out."

"There's no chance he finds out. He's got back to back training sessions and then the tournament kicks off. He won't be within ten miles of that house all week." Zara took my hands, her expression softening into something more pleading. "Please, Wren. It's warm, it's got about six spare bedrooms, and it beats literally every alternative currently available to us. I promise you he will never even know."

I should have trusted my own instincts more in that exact moment. I understand that now with a clarity I very much did not have standing on that pavement, exhausted and cold and thoroughly out of better options, staring at my best friend's pleading face and feeling my resistance crumble one weary inch at a time.

"Fine," I relented. "But if he finds out, I'm blaming you entirely."

"Deal."

The cab ride to Kai's townhouse took exactly six minutes, and Zara spent every single one of them scrolling through her phone with the satisfied energy of someone who had already won the argument, while I stared out the window at unfamiliar streets, exhausted and increasingly uneasy about a decision that felt, even in the moment, like it was going to cost me something I couldn't yet name.

We pulled up outside a narrow, elegant townhouse tucked between two nearly identical neighbors, dark windows, no lights on anywhere, exactly as empty and abandoned as Zara had promised, and something in my chest loosened slightly at the sight of it.

"See," Zara announced, already keying in the passcode with practiced familiarity. "Completely empty. Completely safe. We'll be gone before he even knows we were here."

The door swung open into a dark, silent hallway, and I stepped over the threshold into enemy territory with my suitcase in one hand and every single one of my instincts screaming that this was, without question, the single worst decision of my entire trip.

I had absolutely no idea, in that exact moment, exactly how right those instincts were about to turn out to be.

Inside, the house was even more absurd than I'd braced for, high ceilings, exposed brick, an open-plan kitchen with marble countertops that looked like they'd never once held a dirty dish, and the specific, cavernous quiet of a home built for a family rather than one twenty-five-year-old hockey player who was apparently never actually in it.

"This is insane," I said, trailing through the ground floor with my suitcase still gripped in one hand, like some part of me wasn't fully committed to staying yet. "How many people actually live here."

"Just him, most of the year. My parents bought it when he started university, some tax thing, honestly I've never fully understood it." Zara was already rifling through the kitchen cabinets with the easy familiarity of someone who'd done this before, emerging triumphantly with a bag of crisps that had definitely been there for longer than either of us wanted to think about. "Pick whichever room you want upstairs. He won't even notice the sheets have been used."

"That's a deeply unsettling thing to say about your brother's house."

"You know what I mean."

I did know what she meant, though it didn't make the house feel any less like enemy territory, every surface gleaming and expensive and entirely unfamiliar, photographs on the walls of a family I'd spent nine years serving rather than belonging to, hockey trophies lined up on a shelf like a shrine to a version of Kai I'd never once seen up close. 

I picked a room at the far end of the hallway, small and plain compared to the rest of the house, clearly a guest room rather than anything more personal, and told myself, climbing into unfamiliar sheets well past two in the morning, that one week in this house was survivable, that Zara was right, that he'd never even know.

I fell asleep faster than I expected to, exhaustion finally winning out over unease, and if I dreamed again that night, I didn't remember it by morning.

I would not be so lucky the second time.