STUCK BETWEEN BROTHERS

AURORA Aurora Blake had exactly four minutes to fix her hair, reheat a granola bar in her coat pocket with her own body warmth, and convince herself that tonight would not be the night she finally snapped at a stranger for calling her “sweetheart.” She was failing on all three counts. Character Note — Aurora Blake, 23. Aurora grew up in the shadow of Emeraldo City’s glittering skyline without ever once setting foot inside it — not really. She lives in Dockside with her mother, Miriam, who has been sick for three years with a heart condition that outpaces every paycheck Aurora brings home. Aurora has worked catering jobs, hostess shifts, anything with a uniform and a tip jar, since she was seventeen. She is disciplined almost to a fault — she pays every bill a day early, she never raises her voice at customers no matter how they speak to her, she keeps a list titled Things I Will Buy My Mother When I Can that she updates and never checks off. But underneath the composure is a girl who still believes, stubbornly and a little recklessly, in the kind of love that ruins you a little. She hides it well. It comes out in the songs she hums under her breath, the way she still reads romance novels under the covers with a flashlight app, the small, sharp wit she can’t quite keep leashed when someone underestimates her. She does not yet know her own last name means anything at all. The van dropped six of them off at the service entrance of the Kingston estate at exactly 5:40 p.m., and Aurora spent the walk up the gravel drive doing what she always did before a job like this — turning herself down like a dimmer switch. Less voice. Less face. Less her. Just a tray, and hands, and eyes that saw everything and were seen by no one. The house didn’t help. It rose out of the hillside like it had never once doubted it belonged there, all glass and pale stone and a fountain out front lit gold from beneath the water. Aurora had served in a dozen houses like this one across the city and she still hadn’t gotten used to the particular quiet that money bought — no traffic, no sirens, no upstairs neighbor’s television through the wall. Just silence so complete it felt like being underwater. “Blake.” The catering manager, a tightly wound woman named Denise, didn’t look up from her clipboard. “You’re on champagne trays for the first hour, then floor service in the east room. Smile. Don’t hover. And for God’s sake, don’t let anyone see you sit down, even for a second — the Kingstons notice everything.” “Copy that,” Aurora said, already reaching for an apron. She didn’t know, yet, exactly how true that last part was. By eight o’clock the party had reached the particular pitch that Aurora had learned to read like weather — laughter too loud, drinks refilled too fast, a hundred conversations happening in a language of money she understood the shape of but not the words. Waitstaff moved through the crowd like a tide going out, and Aurora moved with it, tray balanced, spine straight, a triangle-folded napkin under every glass because Denise had drilled it into her on day one: presentation is the only thing these people actually pay attention to. She’d almost made it through the east room unbothered when a hand closed around her wrist. “You,” said the man attached to it, “are the best thing I’ve seen all night, and I’ve seen the Renoir in the east hall.” Aurora didn’t flinch. Flinching invited more. “Champagne?” she said, tray steady, voice pleasant and utterly flat. He laughed like she’d said something clever on purpose. He was handsome in the deliberate, expensive way — a haircut that cost more than her rent, a watch that cost more than her mother’s last three surgeries combined, and eyes that moved over her like he was already deciding which parts of her he’d keep. Character Note — Timothy Blake, 27. Timothy is the golden son of the Blake family — at least, the family that carries the Blake name and none of its actual blood. Raised to believe the world owes him whatever he wants the moment he wants it, Timothy has never once in his life been told no and meant it. He is charming in the way a trap is charming — smooth, well-lit, built to look like an invitation. Beneath the tailored suits is a man who collects things: cars, watches, women, outcomes. He does not fall in love. He acquires interest, and once acquired, he does not like to lose. Tonight, watching Aurora move through a room full of women wearing his mother’s old jewelry, he has just found something he intends to own. “I don’t want champagne,” Timothy said, plucking a glass off her tray anyway and setting it down without drinking it, just to have a reason to keep his hand near hers. “I want your name.” “Aurora.” She kept it short. Kept moving. Tried to. He didn’t let go of her wrist. “Aurora. That’s a name for someone who should be in this room, not walking through it with a tray.” His thumb pressed once, lightly, against her pulse point, like he was testing something. “I could arrange that, you know. One phone call.” She’d heard versions of this line before, from men who thought a job title made them a fairy godmother. She smiled the smile Denise had trained into her — warm enough to be professional, cool enough to close a door. “I like the tray, actually. Good arm workout.” “Feisty.” Timothy’s grin widened, delighted rather than deterred, which Aurora noted with the small, cold part of her brain that had learned long ago to catalogue danger the moment it smiled at her. “I like that even more.” “Let her go, Tim.” The voice came from just behind Aurora’s left shoulder — low, even, entirely unhurried, and somehow it landed in the noise of the room like a hand closing a door. Timothy’s grip loosened on reflex before his expression caught up to it. Aurora turned. Character Note — Damien Kingston, 31. Damien is the elder Kingston son, the one the business pages call “the heir apparent” and the family calls “the wall.” He runs Kingston Group’s acquisitions division with a precision that unsettles people twice his age, and he has not raised his voice in a business meeting in over six years — he’s never needed to. Three years ago a woman he’d planned to marry left with a portion of his trust fund and half his ability to trust anyone new; since then he has built a life that requires almost nothing from other people, which suits him, mostly. He is calm in the specific way of a man who has decided calm is safer than the alternative. He rarely notices women in rooms like this one. Tonight, for reasons he can’t yet articulate to himself, he noticed her before Timothy ever put a hand on her. Damien didn’t look at Aurora when he said it. He looked at Timothy, and something in that look made the temperature of the conversation drop ten degrees without a single raised word. “She’s working,” Damien said. “You’re making my father’s party a liability. Pick one problem to be tonight.” Timothy released her wrist like it had grown suddenly hot, laughing it off with the practiced ease of a man used to smoothing over his own bad behavior in public. “Relax, Kingston. Just admiring the scenery.” He gave Aurora one last look — slower this time, cataloguing — before melting back into the crowd like nothing had happened at all. Aurora exhaled the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, and found Damien watching her with an expression she couldn’t quite name. Not pity. She would have hated pity. Something closer to attention — the kind that made her suddenly, uncomfortably aware of the flush on her wrist where Timothy’s hand had been. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said, because saying thank you felt like it would cost her something she didn’t have to spare tonight. “I know,” Damien said. He held her gaze one beat longer than the situation required, said nothing else, and walked away toward the terrace — leaving Aurora standing there with a tray full of champagne, a wrist that still remembered Timothy’s grip, and the distinct, unsettling sense that she’d just been seen, really seen, for the first time all night. She didn’t have long to sit with the feeling. “So,” said a new voice, considerably closer than she expected, considerably more amused, “does everyone in this family have to introduce themselves by ruining someone else’s night, or was that just him?” Aurora turned to find a second version of the man who’d just left — same dark hair, same sharp Kingston jaw, but where Damien’s eyes had been still water, this one’s were a struck match. Character Note — Victor Kingston, 28. Victor is the younger Kingston son, and has spent his entire life being introduced as “the younger Kingston son” — a fact that used to bother him and now mostly just amuses him, or so he tells people. Where Damien is control, Victor is combustion: quick wit, quicker charm, a flirt by nature and a romantic by conviction, the kind of man who remembers everyone’s name after one meeting and means it every time he uses it. Underneath the charisma is a fierce, almost old-fashioned protectiveness — Victor has started more fights defending people who never asked him to than he can count, and lost exactly none of them. He runs Kingston Group’s public-facing ventures, which suits him: he likes people, likes rooms, likes being watched. Tonight, watching a waitress hold her own against Timothy Blake without so much as a tremor in her hand, he has just found the most interesting person at his father’s party. “That was Timothy being Timothy,” Victor said, taking the champagne glass Timothy had abandoned and holding it up to her in something between a toast and an apology. “And that was my brother being — well, that’s just Damien being Damien. Terrifying and then gone. He’s an acquired taste.” “Is there a third flavor?” Aurora asked, before she could stop herself. Victor’s grin went sharp and delighted, like she’d handed him a gift he hadn’t expected to get tonight. “There is. I’m considerably better company, considerably more likely to actually thank you for the champagne instead of just standing there being handsome and useless about it, and I never, under any circumstances, let a woman refill her own glass at a party I’m at.” He plucked a fresh glass off her tray with a flourish. “Victor Kingston. And you’re going to tell me your name isn’t actually written on your name tag, because whoever assigned you that tag clearly does not understand marketing.” Despite herself — despite the ache in her feet, the ghost-grip still warm on her wrist, the four hours left on this shift and the six weeks left until her mother’s next round of bills came due — Aurora felt the corner of her mouth twitch upward, traitorous and real. “It’s Aurora,” she said. “Aurora.” Victor said it like he was tasting it, like it was worth savoring. “Well, Aurora. Welcome to the circus. Try not to let any of us bite.” He didn’t wait for a response, just winked and let the crowd swallow him back up, already laughing at something someone else had said three feet away — and Aurora stood there a moment longer than she should have, tray forgotten in her hands, distinctly aware that two very different men had just looked at her tonight like she was more than a uniform. She had no idea yet how much that would cost her. Or how much it would give her back.