He’s speaking to her in French.

She answers back in the foreign language, fluent. He kisses her head, and then she spins around and kisses his lips, standing on the tips of her toes.

Lily turns to face me at this, and her eyes grow wide and eager. I want to, Lil. God, do I want to. Now’s the best time to talk to Rose. Even if it’ll break her moment with her boyfriend, it’ll save me from rejecting Lily again.

“Rose,” I say.

She drops to her feet, but Conner keeps his hand tangled in her hair, intoxicated by Rose’s commanding movements. She possesses him, but he’s equally as possessive of her, which I still find strange. I thought for sure Rose would devour any man she touched, but they have this symbiotic relationship instead of the parasitic one I share with Lily.

“Yes?” she asks.

My throat swells at the thought of asking her for help. Even as the words rest on my tongue, saying them is so fucking hard. So I turn to Connor. “Have you heard anything from the private investigator?”

“He’s working on tracing the messages. We’ll see if we can find any leads.” After the wave of texts in the car, that’s not exactly the news I wanted to hear. I don’t like waiting around. I only have patience where Lily is concerned. Waiting for her to choose me over a quick lay—that was hard, but I endured it. Waiting for this guy to rip apart our lives—that, I’m not taking so well.

“Lo,” Rose snaps. Her hand flies back to her hip. She could tell I was dodging. “Spill.”

I inhale. “As you know…” I rub the back of my neck, heat flushing my body all of a sudden. I’m not used to that. “…I don’t have a college degree, so getting a job that pays better than minimum wage is going to be a challenge.”

The silence lingers, waiting for me to continue, three sets of eyes boring into me in curiosity and hesitation. They think I’m on the verge of giving up, of throwing my hands in the air and saying I can’t do hard, physical labor. I can’t flip burgers. I can’t fucking be a normal lower-class guy who has to work for his money. I’ve never had to do that, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try. They think less of me, and I haven’t given them reason to believe otherwise.

“I’d have no problem flipping burgers,” I explain, “but I owe Ryke forty grand for rehab that I’d like to pay in a reasonable amount of time…plus, you know, rent.” I pause again, half expecting Rose to bail me out and say, you don’t have to pay rent, Lo, you’re practically family. But I forget who she is for a brief second. Maybe her little meltdown over a vase tricked me, but she stands resolute, strong, unwilling to let me take the easy road.

Good.

Still, I glare. Habit. “You’re going to make me ask, aren’t you?” I say.

She smiles icily. “Last year in the Cayman Islands, you said that not even the abominable snowman would want to fuck me.”

Lily gasps, “You did not.”

“I did.”

She punches my arm. I mock wince. Yeah, I deserved that.

Connor stays completely impassive. But he holds Rose closer, as though silently saying I’m wrong. Clearly guys with insanely high IQs want to fuck her.

I let out a deep breath. Here it goes. “I’ve already been scouted by modeling agencies before,” I explain. “You’d be an idiot not to use me in your menswear campaign.” Way to go, Loren. Call her an idiot. That’s definitely the way to land a job. Jesus Christ, no wonder you’ve never had one.

“I remember that,” Rose says stiffly.

“How come you’ve never modeled if you were scouted?” Connor asks.

“I may have walked into the interview drinking straight from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.” I was fucking with the agency, wasting peoples’ time and mine. I didn’t really want to model. I still don’t, but it’ll be quick money. And this is a chance for me to redo my past mistakes. I can make things right.

Connor lets out a long whistle. “Impressive.”

“I think so too.”

Rose looks ready to reignite their old argument, but Connor leans in and whispers into her ear again. French. Can’t understand a fucking word. She eases considerably.

“I need a translator,” Lily whispers to me.

“Or an interpreter.” Preferably not a male interpreter. I can just picture Lily getting aroused and flushed from some French guy. Even that proposed fantasy makes me cringe. Jealousy is the one thing I don’t ever want to tear us apart. But it’s there. Festering.

Rose finally pins her eyes back on me. “Modeling is difficult,” she says, her voice much softer. “It’s not just about having a good body or a pretty face. Ask Daisy.”

“I know,” I say. “But Rose, this isn’t going to be a career for me. I just need to make enough money to pay back my debts and get on my own two feet. That’s it.” I glance at Lily for a second. “And you won’t have to mess up your schedule for Lil. I’ll be there while the other models are. It’ll be better.”

Lily holds onto the waistband of my jeans, and she says, “And what are you going to do after modeling?”

I have no idea. The fog of my future is too thick to clear. “One step at a time,” I say. She nods, understanding.

Rose mulls over my proposition for a minute. And then she says, “Fine.”

I break into a full grin.

And she adds, “But just so we have things clear, I’m doing this out of pity.”

My smile vanishes. “You could have stopped at fine.”

It’s her turn to grin. “I know.”

Two days pass and I still haven’t had sex. And on top of that, I welched on telling Lo about the old tests. But I plan to. I just need to…phrase it correctly so he joins my immoral side of things. And Connor has yet to find any evidence about the so-called blackmailer (or whatever he is—considering he still hasn’t asked for anything in return).

“What about Patrick Bomer?” I sit with my legs crossed on the bed, an old navy-blue Dalton Academy yearbook on my lap. Big black circles outline certain faces and on others I’ve drawn X’s…and mustaches.

I raise my head and catch Lo’s frown through the circular mirror mounted above our dresser. He spent a solid twenty minutes dressing this morning and another ten minutes on his hair. It’s his first job at Calloway Couture. Hell, it’s his first job ever, and he’s freaking out about it.

“Why would Patrick hate me?” he asks, disheveling the thicker pieces of his hair on purpose.

“You won first place in our art class’s end-of-the-year projects.” Lo took a five minute video of a plastic bag blowing in the wind, which was beyond boring and beyond unoriginal, seeing as how American Beauty did it first.

He turns to look at me. “What? That’s not my fault. My project was damn good.”

“The entire class fell asleep,” I remind him. And Patrick made a bronze sculpture of Apollo, but it was hardly appreciated by Mr. Adams.

“So he should be pissed at the teacher, not me.”

I don’t refute because he’s right. Teachers gave Lo special treatment, even so much as awarding his crappy video the highest prize because he’s a Hale. Because his father is a multi-billionaire with connections so intricate that a spider would be jealous of the web Jonathan Hale weaves.

I glance at my computer screen on the bed. “Maybe he’s not angry anymore,” I add. “He’s at Carnegie Mellon for art now.”

“How do you know that?”

“Facebook.”

Lo groans. “Please tell me you didn’t sign up.” We’ve had an anti-social media rule since high school. We like privacy too much to waste it away on cyberspace.

“I didn’t. I signed you up.”

His eyes darken.

“The way I see it,” I say quickly, “is that if someone hates you, they’ll probably start slandering you on here.” I point to the screen. “It’s like a fly trap for suspects.”

Surprisingly, he risks his wrinkle-free, steam-pressed khakis to sit down on the bed beside me. Our canopy net tangles in his leg, and he curses under his breath, swatting the fabric away. “I swear I’m going to cut this stupid thing down.”