Not My Type Until He Was Hers

Sienna POV

The thing about being the girlfriend of Silver Ridge Prep's golden boy is that you are never just a person at a party.

You are a prop.

A very pretty, very well-dressed prop that smiles at the right moments, laughs at the right volume, and stands at exactly the right angle so that when the cameras come out you look admirable and the cameras always come out.

I had gotten very good at looking admirable.

The victory party was in full swing inside Derek Chen's house, which was less a house and more of a point to note. Three floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, a rooftop terrace that overlooked the whole of Silver Ridge. The kind of house that reminded you every ten seconds that some people were born into a different version of the world entirely.

The basketball team had won the interschool championship by fourteen points.

Liam had scored thirty-two of them.

I knew this because I had been told approximately seventeen times in the last hour.

"Thirty-two points," Mika said, appearing at my elbow with two glasses of sparkling water she had somehow acquired. She handed me one. "Your man is having a moment."

"He's allowed," I said.

"He's been allowed for three hours."

I looked across the room.

Liam was in the center of it all, the way he always was, tall, golden, laughing that big clean laugh that made everyone around him feel like they were standing in sunlight. His dark blond hair was still slightly damp from the locker room shower. His team jersey had been replaced with a white shirt that fit him in the specific, deliberate way that said I know exactly how this shirt fits me.

He was beautiful. I had always known he was beautiful. I had been telling myself that for eleven months, three weeks, and four days, which was the full length of our relationship and yes, I knew the exact number, which probably said something about me that I preferred not to examine.

As if he felt my eyes on him, Liam looked up.

His face did the thing. The slow, warm smile that spread like sunlight across his features, designed and delivered straight at me. Like I was the only person in the room. Like thirty people weren't watching.

He crossed the space between us in ten seconds flat.

"There she is," he said. His arm went around my waist, heavy and certain, and he pulled me into his side. "Where have you been?"

"Right here," I said.

"I looked up and you weren't in my line of sight. That's the same as being gone." He said it with a smile, so it sounded like a joke. His words, it always sounded like a joke.

I smiled back. "Sorry. I was talking to Mika."

"Mika has her own boyfriend." His eyes found mine. Something in them, just for a half second tightened. Then it was released. The sunlight came back. "I want my girl next to me tonight. Big night."

"I know. You were incredible."

"I know." He laughed. So did the three people nearest to us who had been pretending not to listen. "Say it louder."

"You were incredible," I said again, louder.

Everyone cheered. Someone clapped Liam on the back. He turned to receive it and I exhaled quietly into the small space his arm had created around me.

Mika caught my eye over the rim of her glass.

She had a very small, very knowing look on her face that I chose not to acknowledge.

The music shifted to something slower and louder at the same time, the kind of song that made the walls feel closer. Someone dimmed the lights to that specific shade of amber that made everything look warmer than it was.

Liam turned back to me. His hand moved from my waist to the back of my neck, warm and deliberate.

"Hey," he said softly.

"Hey," I said.

And then he kissed me.

Not a gentle kiss and not a private one. It was the kind of kiss that made a statement, his hand in my hair, his body turning slightly so the room could see his profile, the angle perfect for the three phones I could see rising in my peripheral vision without even trying.

I kissed him back because that was what you do as the girlfriend of the golden player.

I put my hand on his chest because that was what looked right.

I felt his heartbeat under my palm, strong and steady and completely certain of itself, the way Liam was certain of everything and I waited for the feeling that was supposed to come with it. The warmth and safety. The quiet, settling knowledge that this was mine and I was his and everything was where it was supposed to be.

It didn't come.

It hadn't come in a while, actually.

But I kept my hand where it was and I kissed him the way the room needed me to kiss him, and when he finally pulled back there was a sound, small, appreciative, collective one from the people nearest to us, and Liam smiled against my mouth before he fully let go.

"Perfect," he murmured.

I didn't know if he was talking about the kiss or about me or about the whole picture we made together.

I suspected it was the picture.

"You're glowing," Chloe said, materializing on my other side the way she always did, sudden and warm and smelling like vanilla perfume. She linked her arm through mine and squeezed. "Both of you. Genuinely sickening."

"Thank you," Liam said, already looking past her at someone across the room.

Chloe leaned close to my ear. "You okay?"

"Perfect," I said, using his words.

She pulled back and looked at me with those sharp green eyes that had known me since we were twelve years old and shared a desk in the back of Mr. Harrison's English class. Chloe saw things. She always had. It was one of her most wonderful qualities and also occasionally her most inconvenient one.

"Perfect," she repeated back to me, very gently.

I lifted my glass. "Perfect."

She watched me for one more second. Then she let it go, because she loved me and because sometimes letting things go was the kindest thing you could do for a me.

Liam's hand found the small of my back again.

Across the room, someone raised a glass and shouted his name and the whole party seemed to tilt toward him, pulled by the same gravity that had been pulling people toward Liam Carter since the day I met him.

I stood at his side and smiled.

I was very good at this.

The music got louder. The lights got warmer. And somewhere in the back of my chest, in the small quiet place I did not let anyone visit, something that had

been slowly going numb for a very long time pressed its fingers against my ribs and reminded me it was still there.