“Training’s going to be difficult if I’m not allowed to look at you.”
“Looking at me for training is fine. Staring at me like this is not.” She finally tore her eyes away from the road to gesture between us.
“How, exactly, am I looking at you?” I asked, amused.
“Like you…” Scarlett faltered, and the air suddenly condensed into something thicker, almost tangible.
Her eyes didn’t quite meet mine, but the steady drip, drip, drip of water against the windows matched the spike in my pulse.
“Like I what?”
The question floated between us, soft enough not to disturb the tension coating the interior of the car.
Her lips parted for a breath before she lifted her chin, her face hardening. “Like you’re flirting with me. That’s not allowed, remember? It’s one of the rules.”
“Do you have many of those?”
“What?”
“Rules.”
“I’m a ballerina. I live by rules.”
“That’s too bad.” The light finally turned green, and I broke eye contact to focus on the road. “You’d have more fun without them.”
Scarlett’s gaze warmed my cheek before she, too, faced forward again.
The tension didn’t dissipate in the resulting silence so much as rearrange itself, charging the air with a steady hum and making me hyperaware of her presence even when I wasn’t looking directly at her.
The subtle shift of her leg. The dip of her chin. The shallow rise and fall of her chest.
Fuck. My fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
The twenty-minute drive to Scarlett’s flat seemed both far too long and far too short, and when she finally climbed out of the car with a murmured thanks, I couldn’t muster more than a nod.
I waited until she made it safely inside before I drove away, but the scent of her lingered.
Scarlett is off limits.
Vincent’s warning echoed in my head.
I was inclined to heed it-not because I was afraid of him, but because I was afraid of what getting close to Scarlett might do to me if I didn’t.
SCARLETT
“Who drove you home?”
“What makes you think someone drove me home?” I unpacked our Chinese takeaway and avoided my brother’s eyes. “I always take the tube.”
It wasn’t Thursday, but he showed up at my flat an hour ago after he finished dealing with our father’s situation. I took one look at his face, let him in, and ordered us food.
Sometimes, sibling intuition trumped explanations.
“It’s a long walk to the tube station, and you don’t have an umbrella drying in the hall. Therefore, you didn’t take the tube.” Vincent shrugged. We were seated at my kitchen table in our usual spots-me next to the window, him next to the fridge. “Elementary, my dear Watson.”
“Wow, I have Sherlock Holmes in my kitchen. Someone call BBC One and tell them they need another reboot.”
“Ha ha.” Vincent snagged a spring roll from its container. “It wasn’t Carina, was it? Because I haven’t forgotten the time she drove my Lambo into the curb.”
“She’s apologized multiple times for that,” I said, suppressing a laugh at the memory of Vincent’s face when he saw the scratch on his precious car. Carina was like a second sister to him, which was the only reason he’d let her behind the wheel. “And no, it wasn’t her. It was someone else from the academy.”
Asher was training there and therefore a temporary member of the academy, so I wasn’t lying. Technically.
I hadn’t wanted to get into a car with him. I didn’t deal well with new-to-me drivers after the accident, which was why I rarely took taxis, but the paparazzi ambush had left me no choice.
“So it’s another staff member.” For some reason, Vincent looked relieved. Maybe a paranoid part of him had feared
Asher was the one who drove me home. “Good.”
I didn’t correct him and prove his paranoia right.
Looking back, I should’ve been terrified given Asher’s reputation for reckless driving. However, he’d driven safe and slow, and our conversation had kept me from spiraling.
For someone whose mere presence put me on edge, he had a way of also easing my anxiety-namely by distracting me so much I didn’t have time to think about anything else.
A twist of unease tightened inside me. I didn’t like my contradictory reactions to Asher. I preferred to sort my emotions into separate boxes-black and white, good and bad, alphabetized and color-coded. But when I looked at him, I was a muddled canvas of gray.
I hated gray.
“So, are we going to talk about what happened?” I asked, switching subjects. Asher and I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I didn’t want Vincent to freak out and go on a tangent about me consorting with the enemy. “How’s Dad?”
All I knew was he’d had an accident. He had a lot of those now that he was retired and constantly puttering around, but they usually involved him hitting his head or slamming the door on his hand. Nevertheless, he made it sound like he was dying every time.
Vincent wasn’t the only drama queen in the family.
Still, he was our father, so it was our duty to check in anyway, hence why Vincent gave him an emergency ringtone.
“He fell and broke his hip. He’s fine,” he said when I opened my mouth. “He doesn’t need surgery. But, uh, he asked me to come home and stay with him until the season starts or he’s fully healed.”
I narrowed my eyes as Vincent wolfed down his spring roll. “You can’t hire a home nurse? It has to be you, specifically?”
“I did hire a nurse, which is why he wants me to stay with him. You know he hates being alone with strangers.”
Fair enough, but…”Vince, you can’t even make a proper bowl of soup. What are you going to do while you’re there?”
I couldn’t picture my wonderful, athletic, yet deeply out of touch brother taking care of anything that didn’t involve a football, a video game, or a party.
“Good thing soup has nothing to do with it,” he countered. “I just have to keep Dad company and make him feel better about having the nurse around twenty-four-seven. If I’m not there, he’s liable to drive her to murder.”
“How long will recovery take?”
“It’s hard to say. The doctors estimate anywhere from three to four months.”
“Hmm.” I studied him with a hint of suspicion. “You’re not doing this to get out of training with Asher, are you?”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.