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He cuts me off before I can formulate the question. “You have to marry to be a full member. Show you have everything in place to give an heir and continue the legacy.”
“Right…” I smile at him. “And God knows you can’t keep a relationship going for more than a few weeks.” I try to lighten the mood.
Luke and I rarely talk about the Silent Circle, and I don’t want it to ever get between us.
“Yeah,” he chuckles. “Or maybe I’m doing it on purpose. No wife, no way dad can ask me to level up in ranks.” He shrugs. “I’m fine being a nobody in that world.”
He messes my hair and grabs the pen in my hand. “Now, come on, let’s go have a few drinks with my friends. Chris will be so happy to see you.”
But I shake my head. “This conversation took everything out of me.” I stand up and go back to my bed, hoping he doesn’t notice I keep finding excuses.
Because I can’t tell him the real reason I don’t hang out with him and his friends anymore.
That Chris and I dated behind his back for months while he was a senior and I a freshman.
That he broke my heart because he didn’t want to keep the secret from Luke anymore but didn’t want to tell the truth either. That his friendship with my brother meant more than the supposed love he had for me.
That when I see Chris now and hear him talk about Yale, his girlfriend, and his new life without me…it feels like he personally digs his hand inside my chest, fists my heart and rips it out of my body.
No, I can’t tell any of that to Luke. I’m not sure what his exact reaction would be, simply that nothing good would come out of it.
I wave him goodbye from my bed, hating him a little for reminding me of my ex even if he has no idea.
Chris and I were never meant to be a thing. The summer before my freshman year, I remember grabbing a coffee together while we were waiting for Luke to get a suit fitted. He’d been respectful, sweet, made polite conversation. He didn’t even mention once that I was starting high school a year late. The typical Chris we all knew.
Then I joined the same high school as him.
Stoneview Prep has a gym that students can use whenever, and we bumped into each other there one morning. Turns out it was a habit of his to go before school started every day, and it was in my plans to do the same.
After a week or so of exercising separately, he started helping me with weights.
That’s how this whole stupid thing started.
The heat of his skin at my back when he’d help me lift. The whisper of his breath against my neck when he leaned down to encourage me.
Chris is known to be the calmest and nicest of their group of crazy bastards. I love my brother, but he’s been a playboy for as long as I can remember, and the other two in their friendship group were the worst at getting in trouble. They like to think of Chris as the one who lays down the law. The one they can come to for advice. The protector.
He was far from a virgin angel, but everyone in our school knew Chris asthe nice one.
Easy to say when the three others were the literal reincarnation of sins.
What people forget about Chris Murray, is that no one can get between him and his goal. And the moment we started spending alone time together, I was his goal.
The moment he decided he wanted me, there was nothing I could do to stop it.
He wasn’t forceful about it. He was unapologetically smart. Softly controlling. He was flirting in a way that seemed so natural, I didn’t realize until it was too late. All I knew is that anytime he was close, I felt different. And anytime he showed he cared for me, I felt special.
I’ll drive you tomorrow. There’s no point using two cars when we’re neighbors and come here at the same time.
He was picking up his towel and water bottle when he said that, making his way to the men’s locker room before I could even think of a response. He didn’t ask anyway. It wasn’t a suggestion. He simply told me his plan.
Had I not been blinded by his shy smile and caramel hair sticking to his sweaty forehead, I might have realized that if he drove me to school…he’d have to drive me back too.
I didn’t fight it. I just followed whatever it meant. The next morning, he picked me up from my house and told me to wait by his car after school. I did. My brother didn’t even notice me, too taken by whoever his current girl was to see me when he walked to his own car. I stood there until most people had gone home and Chris came down the marble stairs of our elite school and into the parking lot.
He walked out alone that day rather than with his friends, and the satisfied glint in his eyes should have warned me that he liked being listened to. He liked when I did what I was told.
Knowing him the way I do now, I can bet he was biting his tongue that day. Forcing himself to swallow back thegood girlhe wanted to give me as a reward.
