Chapter 6 6

Wren's pov

I woke up with bruised knuckles, a dry mouth, and a very clear memory of every terrible thing I had done the night before.

For about four seconds I lay in the strange guest bed staring at the ceiling and let myself hope it had all been a bad dream, and then my right hand throbbed in a way that felt deeply personal.

I had punched Kai Ashworth-Vane in the face. I had punched him hard enough to hear something crack, and the worst part was that some small, shameless corner of me was still extremely satisfied about it.

"Right," I told the ceiling. "We are leaving today, and we are never speaking of this again."

The ceiling did not argue, which I took as agreement. I pulled on a borrowed sweatshirt of Zara's with writing about a Parisian art festival, tied my hair into what I hoped looked like a deliberate knot, and crept downstairs on tiptoe like a burglar in someone else's nightmare.

The kitchen smelled like coffee and toast and a faint trace of cedar soap. Kai sat at the marble island in gray sweatpants and nothing else, a bag of frozen peas pressed against his face, with two black eyes the exact shade of aubergines and a nose swollen to roughly the size of a small plum. He was eating cornflakes out of a mixing bowl with the grim dignity of a man at his own funeral.

"Do not say anything," he warned, without looking up.

"I was not planning to say anything."

"You were planning to laugh."

"I was planning to be extremely mature about it." I paused in the doorway, and my mouth betrayed me with a tiny, helpless twitch. "You look like a very sad panda."

"That is not mature."

"It is a compliment to pandas."

He lowered the peas, and I got the full effect. Both eyes were swollen almost shut, his lip had a split down the middle, and the bridge of his nose had a bend in it that was definitely new. I felt a flicker of guilt, which I squashed immediately like a spider.

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

"Only when I breathe," he answered. "Or talk. Or think about the fact that I was assaulted in my own car by a girl who has known me for nine years and spent every one of them doing absolutely nothing violent."

"I was waiting for the right moment."

"You picked a terrible one."

"I picked an excellent one, and I would do it again."

"I am aware," Kai muttered, stabbing at his cornflakes. "That is the entire problem."

Footsteps thundered down the staircase before I could think of a reply, and Zara arrived in a silk dressing gown and one sock, her hair standing up like a startled cat. She stopped dead in the doorway, looked at her brother, and made a noise that began as a gasp and ended as a shriek of pure laughter.

"Oh my God," she wheezed, gripping the doorframe. "Kai, your face."

"It is not funny."

"It is the funniest thing I have ever seen. You look like someone folded you in half and then tried to unfold you again."

"Wren did it," he announced flatly.

"I know she did it, I was standing in the hallway when you both came in looking like a car crash and a crime scene." Zara dissolved into a fresh wave of giggles and sat down heavily on a stool. "You have no idea how long I have wanted to see someone do that to you."

"You could have done it yourself."

"I would have broken a nail." She dabbed her eyes with the sleeve of her dressing gown. "Wren, darling, I could kiss you."

"Please do not," Kai muttered. "She might bite."

I opened my mouth to answer and found, to my horror, that I had no reply at all, because the word bite had done something unexpected to my stomach and I was not prepared to examine it before breakfast. I busied myself with the kettle instead, scrubbing my face with steam.

"You have until noon," Kai announced, after a heavy silence. "Both of you."

"Until noon for what?" Zara asked, pouring herself a coffee as though nothing alarming had been mentioned.

"To leave my house."

"We are not leaving your house."

"Zara."

"Kai." She mimicked his tone perfectly, which made me love her even more. "The hotel is closed, we have nowhere to go, and you promised last night that you would sort something out in the morning."

"I promised nothing. I promised to think about it."

"You delivered it in the voice of a man who was going to be generous."

"I delivered it in the voice of a man with a broken nose."

"Same voice," Zara informed him serenely.

"I was already planning to leave," I put in, dropping a teabag into a mug with more force than the situation required. "I am not in the habit of taking lodging from men who comment on the condition of my underwear."

Zara choked on her coffee so violently that she had to slam the mug onto the counter. "I am sorry, what?"

"Nothing," Kai and I replied together, in the same flat voice.

"That was not nothing. That was a fully formed sentence." She looked between us with the avid delight of a child at a pantomime. "What exactly happened in that car?"

"I hit him," I admitted.

"Because?"

"Because he was rude."

"How rude?"

"Moderately rude," Kai offered, at the same moment I insisted, "Extremely rude," and we glared at each other over the kettle like two cats on a fence.

"I am going to find out," Zara declared, pointing her spoon at us both. "I am going to find out if it takes me the entire week."

"There is no week," Kai told her. "Noon."

Zara's phone buzzed on the counter, and she glanced at it, then went very still. She read the screen twice, tilted it to the light, and set it down with a frown I did not like.

"The hotel has sent an update," she announced slowly. "They failed the safety inspection. The whole building is closed for three weeks."

"Three weeks," I repeated.

"There is more." She scrolled. "They apologize sincerely and offer us a full refund and a complimentary dessert voucher, which is not helpful. And every other hotel in the city is booked solid because of," she lifted her eyes, "some enormous hockey tournament happening downtown."

We both turned and looked at Kai, who suddenly became fascinated by his cornflakes.

"Do not look at me like that," he muttered. "I am only playing in it."

"You are the tournament," Zara informed him.

"I am one of forty players."

"You are the reason we are homeless."

"You are not homeless, you are overdramatic." He pressed the peas back to his nose and winced. "There is a youth hostel on Canal Street."

"With bunk beds and a shared bathroom and sixteen Germans," Zara gasped, aghast. "Absolutely not."

"I am happy to sleep on a friend's floor," I offered quickly, to rescue everybody from the awkwardness. Then I remembered that I knew no one in New York, and I closed my mouth.

"You do not have a friend in New York," Kai pointed out, unhelpfully, as though he had read my mind.

"Thank you, I had noticed."

"Please," Zara begged, sliding off her stool and pressing both hands together like a girl in church. "Kai. One week. I will pay for the groceries, I will wash the towels, I will name my firstborn after you. Please."

"Do not name your child after me. It is a terrible idea."

"One week, Kai."

He looked at the ceiling for a long moment, as though consulting an invisible committee. I watched a muscle move in his jaw, and I could not tell whether he was angry, tired, or something else entirely, something he was clearly trying very hard to hide.

"Fine," he conceded at last. "One week. With rules."

"Anything," Zara breathed.

"Rule one. No cheerleaders on the ground floor."

"I would not dream of inviting a cheerleader," I muttered.

"That rule is for me," Kai told me, "and I am aware of how it sounds. Rule two. Nobody touches the trophies."

"Why would we touch the trophies?"

"Because Zara touches everything." He shot her a look. "Rule three. Nobody speaks to me before ten in the morning."

"I will not speak to you at any hour," I informed him.

"That is the nicest thing you have told me all week," Kai replied, and for one very small second the corner of his split lip lifted. Then he winced and the smile vanished, and he stood, tossing the bag of peas into the sink. "I have an appointment with the team doctor. Do not break anything while I am out."

"No promises," I answered, out of habit.

"I did not expect any," he admitted, and he walked out of the kitchen with a stiff, careful, slightly dramatic limp that I strongly suspected was for my benefit.

The moment the front door closed, Zara grabbed my arm and hauled me up the stairs to the guest room, shut the door with a click, and leaned against it like a policeman in a film.

"Right," she announced. "Spill."

"There is nothing to spill."

"Wren Sokolov, you hit my brother in the face. You came home soaking wet in nothing but shorts and a coat. He chased you down the street. He looked like he had been run over by a lorry, and you looked like you had seen a ghost, and then you both announced nothing at exactly the same time. If you tell me nothing happened, I will scream."

"He made a rude remark."

"What did he say?" She whispered with gossiping like concern.

"I am not repeating it."

"Was it about your body?"

"Zara."

"It was about your body." She clapped a hand to her mouth, eyes wide. "He mentioned something about your body, and you punched him."

"I did not say that."

"You did not have to." She dropped onto the edge of the bed, shaking her head in awe. "Do you know how long I have waited for someone to put him in his place? I would have bought you a trophy."

"I would rather not have a trophy."

"I would have had it engraved." She patted the mattress beside her, and I sat, and she bumped my shoulder with hers. "Are you all right? Truly?"

"I am fine."

"You are shaking."

"It is the cold, I promise."

"Your hands have been shaking since you came inside." Her voice softened. "I am sorry he is such an idiot. I am sorry about last night, and about every awful thing he muttered when we were kids.

He is better than he used to be, I think. A little."

"He is not better," I told her. "He is only older."

"That is the same thing, for boys." She nudged me again. "But I am still very, very glad you hit him."

I laughed, and it came out wet and wobbly, and she hugged me hard enough to squash my ribs.

We spent the rest of the morning in the guest room with the door shut, eating toast and whispering. Zara told me everything about Paris, the campaign she was still waiting to hear about, the girl who had slipped her a note at fashion week and then vanished.

I told her nothing about the stinging, humiliating warmth I had felt in that car, and I told myself it was because there was nothing to tell.

At half past one the front door opened downstairs. Footsteps crossed the hall, heavy and deliberate, and Zara and I looked at each other.

I went to the top of the stairs and found Kai standing below with his nose freshly taped, a white strip across the bridge, and a folded piece of paper in his hand. He climbed the steps slowly and stopped one stair below me, which put his face level with mine, and I tried very hard not to notice how close that was.

"The doctor says it is broken," he told me.

"Displaced, but not badly. It will heal in six weeks."

"I am very sorry."

"You are not."

"I am a little sorry," I admitted.

"Good." He held out the paper. "This is the bill."

I took it and read the number printed at the bottom, and my eyes nearly fell out of my skull. "That is the price of a car."

"It is the price of a very good doctor, an X-ray, and a scan that you caused."

"You cannot be serious."

"I am completely serious. You owe me a doctor's bill, Sokolov."

"I owe you nothing," I told him, holding the receipt between two fingers. "You owe me an apology for what you told me in that car, and if you want to talk about debts, we can begin there."

"Say that again," he murmured.

"You heard me."

"The part where I owe you something."

"You owe me a great deal," I answered, lifting my chin. "Nine years of it, if I am counting properly."

For a long, strange moment neither of us moved.

His eyes, bruised and swollen and still unexpectedly bright, searched my face as though he were reading a sentence in a language he used to speak. Something flickered in them, quick and unguarded, and then it was gone, and he stepped back down one stair.

"We will discuss it another time," he announced stiffly.

"Of course we will."

"Do not break anything else."

"I will do my very best."

He went back downstairs, and a phone began to ring, but it was not mine. It was Zara's phone, and she answered it in the hallway, and I heard her voice climb three full octaves in a way I recognized from a lifetime of birthdays and Christmas mornings.

She hung up and stood staring at the screen, her face white and then pink and then white again.

"Zara?" I asked cautiously. "Is everything all right?"

She came down the hallway slowly, with the phone clutched against her chest and tears standing in her eyes. "I got it," she whispered. "I got the campaign. Paris, for a whole month, and they want me on a plane on Friday."

"Zara!" I threw my arms around her, and we jumped up and down like children, shrieking, and I cried a little, and she cried a lot.

"A whole month," she kept repeating. "A whole month, Wren, in Paris."

"You are going to be incredible."

"I am going to be terrified." She pulled back, wiping her eyes, and then her face did something strange. Her whole face went completely still for a moment. She looked at me, and then, very slowly, she looked down the stairs toward the sound of her brother clattering about in the kitchen, and I did not like the thoughtful expression that appeared on her face.

"Wren," she whispered, in a small, careful voice. "I need you to do something for me."

"Anything."

"I need you to stay here while I am gone." She swallowed. "In my brother's house. Alone. With him."