Maybe I want to be around you
1838 Words
MIRABELLA
I shove my way through the snickering crowd, down the steps, and across the dock, and then I’m running, my wet clothes plastered cold against my skin, Sophie’s voice trailing after me.
“Mirabella, wait!”
I don’t stop.
I run until I hit the end of the dock and my lungs are burning and I can’t hear the music anymore, and then I pull out my phone with shaking fingers and book a ride without even looking at the price.
I stand at the edge of the road with my arms wrapped around myself, dripping, and I don’t look back at the lights of the yacht.
The driver doesn’t say a word when I get in, which is the kindest thing anyone has done for me all night.
I stare out the window the whole ride back, watching the beach road blur past, and by the time Windsor House comes into view I’ve stopped shaking but I haven’t started feeling anything else yet, which is maybe a mercy.
The house is quiet.
No lights on downstairs, no sound from any of the upper floors.
Cassian must have already gone to bed, and the relief of that—of not having to arrange my face into something functional for anyone—is so overwhelming it almost takes my knees out.
I go upstairs.
I peel off my soaked clothes and leave them in a heap on the bathroom floor and stand under the shower with the water turned up as hot as it will go, until my skin goes pink and oversensitive and the cold is completely gone and I still don’t feel clean.
Then I get out, pull on a tank top and shorts, and crawl into bed.
I don’t know how long I lie there.
Long enough for the shaking to stop.
Long enough for the humiliation to stop feeling sharp and start feeling like something heavier and duller, the kind of thing that settles into your chest and just stays there.
I stare at the ceiling and I don’t cry, because I think I’ve run out of whatever was powering that, and mostly I just feel numb and very, very tired.
That’s when my door swings open and Kaden strides in without knocking.
I sit up so fast my head swims.
“What the hell do you want?”
The words come out before I can decide whether I want to say them, but I don’t take them back.
“Haven’t you done enough damage for one night?”
He doesn’t look remotely bothered.
His dark hair is damp, like he’s recently showered, and he’s changed into sweats and a tight t-shirt, a water bottle loose in one hand and a surly expression sitting across his face like it belongs there.
He looks around my room with the unhurried ease of someone who owns the place, which, technically, he does.
“We’re family,” he says.
“Family doesn’t knock.”
“You shouldn’t have come to the party tonight,” he adds, almost as an afterthought.
“Well, thank you for the warning,” I say, keeping my voice flat and cold.
“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind next time. Now leave my room.”
He acts like I haven’t spoken.
His eyes move around the space, and then he takes a step closer, and the frown that crosses his face is almost thoughtful, like he’s working something out.
“I’m still trying to figure you out,” he says.
“Kaius hates you, thinks you’re up to something. But I find you—” he pauses, like he’s choosing the word carefully, “—intriguing.”
“What do you want, Kaden?”
He goes quiet for a moment, his eyes dropping to the floor and then coming back up to mine, and they’re so dark in the low light of the room they look almost black.
When he speaks again, his voice is low enough that I almost miss it.
“If only I actually knew that.”
The honesty of it catches me off guard, and I hate that it does.
“The real question is why you’re still here,” I say, but my voice has lost some of its edge.
He closes the remaining distance between us and sits down on the edge of my bed like he was invited, like this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and brings his mouth close to my ear.
His breath is warm against my neck and I go very still.
I don’t smell alcohol on him, though I’m almost certain he’d been drinking at the party.
Hadn’t he?
“What are you doing in my room, Kaden?”
“Because I’m bored and you’re the only one home.”
He stretches out on his elbow like he’s settling in, water bottle tucked against his side, completely unbothered.
“The party was still going when I left. Why did you come back?”
He sighs.
“Got tired of the scene.”
Suspicion moves through me slow and quiet.
“Where’s Kaius?”
“Still there.”
A shrug.
“Like I said. Just you and me.”
“I was about to go to sleep.”
His eyes drift down to my bare legs for a moment, and then to where my tank top sits against my chest, and he doesn’t say anything about either, which is somehow worse than if he had.
Instead he shifts further up the bed and drops his head onto my pillow like it’s his, completely at ease.
“Get out,” I say, my voice tight.
“I want to sleep.”
“It’s still early.”
He glances at me sideways.
“You’re not still sulking about the party, are you? It was supposed to be funny.”
A short, hollow laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
“Of course. That’s why I’m laughing right now.”
He turns onto his side so he’s facing me, and something in his expression shifts, going quieter and more serious in a way I haven’t seen on him before.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “I’m sorry.”
I don’t know what to do with that.
I just nod, because there are no words lined up behind my teeth that feel adequate.
He watches me for a moment with something curious in his eyes.
“Do you think you’ll ever be able to adjust? To all of this?”
He’s so much more attractive when he’s not smirking, and I’m suddenly aware—uncomfortably, inconveniently aware—of exactly how close we are, close enough that I can feel the warmth coming off him, close enough that I can smell whatever he uses after a shower, clean and warm and completely unfair.
I shake my head, and then I catch myself and shift back an inch.
What am I doing?
The first moment he says something that isn’t cruel and I forget every single thing he’s done?
I put some distance between us.
“I don’t like games,” I say.
“You and your brother don’t want me here. I don’t want to be around you. So why pretend otherwise?”
“Nah.”
He closes the gap I just made, easy as breathing.
“You don’t want to be around us. But maybe—” his shoulder presses lightly against mine, “—I want to be around you.”
“No, you don’t.”
He doesn’t move away.
His shoulder stays against mine, and I genuinely cannot tell if it’s intentional, but when his face turns toward mine I know with complete certainty that he is entirely aware of every point of contact between our bodies.
He smells so good I can’t think in a straight line.
“You know you’re hot when you’re not snarling.”
His eyes drop to my mouth and stay there.
I’m frozen, but it isn’t fear making my heart pound.
Kaden’s eyes are dark and heavy, the green in them swallowed almost entirely, and the look in them is one I don’t know how to answer and can’t make myself look away from.
“You should go,” I say, and I swallow.
“I want to go to bed.”
“No, you don’t.”
He’s right.
I don’t.
My thoughts are a mess and my pulse is doing something embarrassing and I know I hate him, I know I do, and none of that seems to be doing anything useful right now.
He leans in, and his jaw grazes against my cheek, the scratch of his stubble soft and deliberate, and a rush of warmth moves through me so fast it startles me.
“You just had to come and screw everything, didn’t you,” he mutters, and it doesn’t quite sound like a complaint.
And then his lips are on mine.
My heart kicks hard.
I pull back before it can go anywhere, breaking the kiss on a sharp inhale, fully prepared to pretend it didn’t happen, to chalk it up to proximity and a terrible night and bad judgment—but then I make the mistake of looking at him.
His eyes are heavy-lidded and dark, and he slides his fingers into my hair and draws me back in, unhurried, like he has nowhere else to be.
His lips brush mine once, a question, before he pulls back just far enough to look at me.
I touch his jaw, and I close my eyes.
I didn’t realize until right now how much I’d been wanting something to cut through the numbness of tonight, and the fact that it’s him—the fact that it’s Kaden Windsor of all people—is something I will absolutely deal with later.
His mouth meets mine again, deeper this time, and I stop thinking about much of anything at all.
Then his weight shifts over me, the solid press of him pushing me back against the mattress, and his hips move and the warmth of it rushes through me all at once, and I’m trembling in a way that has nothing to do with being cold.
He kisses me like he’s been thinking about it, deep and unhurried and impossibly thorough, and I’m so far gone I don’t even register the footsteps until the voice comes from the doorway.
“Are you f*****g kidding me?”
We break apart.
Kaius stands in the open doorway, still in his party clothes, staring at us with an expression I’ve never seen on him before—something past anger, something closer to disbelief.
“Kaius—” Kaden starts.
But Kaius is already gone, his footsteps hard and fast down the hallway, loud enough to fill the silence he leaves behind.
Beside me, Kaden rolls onto his back.
He stares up at the ceiling for a long moment, and then exhales one quiet, flat word into the dark.
“Fuck.”
- Writer
