By the time we got to Emmett’s restaurant, we were apparently too late to catch dinner. Fortunately, everyone was still there and gathered around the fire pit by the beach. I smiled when I quickly spotted Lia’s silhouette, her hair piled on the top of her head and her arms wrapped around Lukas’s neck as she sat in his lap.

“Ridiculous,” I remarked as Julian and I walked toward them.

“I agree,” he smirked, though it was a semi-hypocritical thing to say, given his hand gently massaging the back of my neck as we walked across the beach. I had mentioned feeling a little stiff from the ride, and since that mention, Julian had subconsciously had his hands all over me – rubbing my back, my shoulders, my neck. I was pretty sure he didn’t even know he was doing it, considering his busy eyes scanning the restaurant for Lukas and Emmett.

But whether he did or not, I definitely wasn’t complaining.

“Oh my God! I knew it!” Lia shrieked, bursting off Lukas’s lap and bounding toward me when she spotted us. “Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi!” she squealed, slamming into me with a hug that sent me hurtling backwards into Julian. I heard him laugh as he caught me, giving my ass a quick squeeze before he put me back on my feet.

“Hey, crazy,” I giggled, kissing Lia on the cheek. She ignored me to point a stern finger at Julian.

“You! You could’ve told Lukas you were bringing her so I had some warning!”

“I did tell Lukas,” Julian replied.

Lia’s face twitched with a second of confusion before she gasped and yelled, “Lukas!”

I laughed as I watched her kick sand up while marching back to him to demand why he didn’t share with her the good news. Julian exhaled as he ushered me with a hand on my back.

“It’s hard to believe stories that she was ever anything resembling a calm or mild-mannered person.”

I burst out laughing. “She really was pretty reserved for awhile.”

“I can’t imagine it.”

“I swear,” I smirked as I felt Julian’s fingertips slip just under my shorts. “She’s from a small, shitty town like me, and that place did a number on her for awhile, so I think when Lukas came around, that was the turning point.”

“You’re from a small, shitty town?” Julian turned to face me. “Where?”

I paused and blinked up at him, forgetting I’d even said that. My fingers smoothed over the sudden knot I felt in my throat, but I gathered myself quickly.

“You know, it’s every bit like you to weed out anything I say about Lia, and just listen to the part about me.”

“Yes. I don’t like her. I like you. Is that surprising?”

I smacked him so hard on the chest he actually winced as he laughed.

“Don’t you dare say you don’t like my best friend, Julian. I mean it. Especially when I know you do like her as a human being. If you’re Lukas’s friend, you have to. It’s not like she didn’t do worlds of good for him, too.”

“Fair.”

“Say one nice thing about Lia.”

“She has the good sense to associate with people like Lukas and yourself.”

“That doesn’t count!” I feigned anger, pushing away to walk ahead of Julian. But with two hands on my hips, he grabbed me back, and I grinned as I felt his lips in my hair.

“I like how you look when you get defensive of her,” he said low in my ear.

“Still doesn’t count,” I huffed, though in reality, I was far from pissed. I was nothing but pleased with Julian’s arms crossed around my body, my hands hanging on his forearms. My heart was beating fast over how good it felt to just melt back into his chest.

I was seconds from drifting off on a cloud when I heard a voice yell, “Oh shit! Look who it is!”

And suddenly, Julian was torn away from me, lost in a crowd of people eager to greet him.

There were more than half a dozen people around him, but I couldn’t help noticing the woman in the long emerald dress with the sophisticated, trimmed-to-perfection pixie cut. I had first looked at her because I never failed to be in awe of women who pulled off that hairstyle. To me, it had strict prerequisite bone structure requirements that very few people possessed. My mother was among them, but I was definitely not, so it never failed to pique my interest.

But then, of course, I started noticing Pixie Cut for different reasons.

Judging from the way she very gingerly rested her hand on Julian’s shoulder, and very slowly kissed his cheek, she knew him. And judging from the way her eyes flicked from me back to him before she smirked and murmured something, she probably knew him as more than just a friend.

Oh.

Fuck.

I hadn’t expected to deal with this – the situation or the emotions involved – and I wasn’t prepared. For starters, I wasn’t wearing a damned ball gown like Pixie was, nor was I dripping in gorgeously fine, expensive-looking jewelry like she was. The playing field wasn’t exactly level, but at the same time, why did I feel it needed to be? I didn’t own Julian. He’d never even called this a date. Realistically, it was – it had to be – but he hadn’t introduced me to anyone yet.

Then again, a decently buzzed Emmett had quickly approached to introduce himself to me. He had a big, excited smile on his face as he said, in a strangely restrained voice, “Nice to meet you. Julian has spoken about you.” He held his arms out defensively and cried, “What?” when Julian shot him a look across the fire pit. “What? I didn’t say anything weird!”

I was thankful for Emmett, because I definitely needed that laugh. Also, the mere fact that he was standing near me was apparently good enough reason for Julian to come back, circle an arm around my waist and reclaim me.

“You guys have a nice introduction?” Julian asked with wary amusement, his glare engaged in some sort of silent conversation with Emmett’s.

“We had a perfectly normal introduction, during which I revealed no more information than was necessary,” Emmett grinned at Julian. He pointed his thumb at Julian when he turned to me. “Sometimes I talk like him so he’ll understand what the hell I’m saying.”

“I still don’t understand him for shit,” Julian laughed as he brought me away to the two empty seats beside Lukas and Lia.

Lia was wrapped up in a blanket now. It went up to the middle of her nose and made her giddy eyes peering at me look all the more cartoonish. To Julian’s annoyance, she asked to switch seats with him for a bit so that she could be next to me. The fire flickered with mischief in her eyes as she sat down, dropped her legs in my lap and leaned into my ear.

“Oh my God, he’s being so un-Julian right now,” she whispered, putting a big grin on my face.

“He’s definitely being… super cute.”

“And that is definitely the first time ‘cute’ has ever been used to describe Julian Hoult. Pretty sure even when he was a baby, his mom called him ‘handsome’ and ‘efficient.’”

I laughed hard enough to attract Julian and Lukas’s attention for a second. Biting my lip, I exchanged a little grin with Julian before he went back to his conversation.

“Like that. That just now? You guys are acting like a couple or some shit,” Lia hissed. “Sara, I swear to God, I am presently overwhelmed with the possibilities of our summer if you start dating Julian.”

“Oh my God, will you cool it?” I laughed. “Can I take this a day at a time, please?”

“That’s what normal people who practice caution say. You’re not that person anymore. You just did two hours on the road as your first motorcycle ride ever.”

“To be fair, I’ve ridden the back of a motorcycle around an empty parking lot before.”

“Yeah. Totally comparable,” Lia said just before she was pulled into Emmett’s conversation. I was too busy exchanging eyes with Julian over Lia’s seat to pay attention to the question being asked, so I was lost once I was roped in to give my answer on the topic.

“Sorry, what’s happening?” I laughed sheepishly as Lia and Julian exchanged seats again. Emmett nodded toward the restaurant.

“I was just saying how I invested in this place because I did post-prom in Southampton after high school, and these assholes,” he gestured around the fire pit, “are telling me post-prom in the Hamptons is ridiculous, so I wanna know what everyone did for theirs.”

“Post-prom?” I repeated to buy time. I swallowed as I blinked at the flames whipping in the fire pit. “Um, in my town…” Crap. My throat felt suddenly so dry. “People went to party venues for the ‘after prom party,’ and it was adult supervised, but I know that they were able to still get away with bringing alcohol and stuff.”

“You don’t sound like you went to it,” a bright, clear voice observed. I turned to the side to realize it belonged to Pixie. She wasn’t being particularly rude, but I mentally cursed her for pointing that out.

“Yeah, I didn’t go,” I admitted.

“Why not?”

“Um.” Fuck. The entire circle was staring at me now, and I was so shitty at lying. I could practically hear Lia’s mind racing to figure out how to intervene, but she was coming up as short as I was. Damn it. I could lie swimmingly on a regular basis, if I was prepared to, but this question caught me completely by surprise. “I graduated high school a year early,” I finally confessed to some impressed looks around the pit. It seemed to be enough explanation for most, but Pixie pressed on.

“So you were a little younger your senior year. That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed at prom,” she said with sympathy in her voice. Whether it was real or not, I didn’t know.

“Yeah, I just…” I trailed off, my heart beating too fast now for me to come up with my next thought.

“Emmett, why don’t you tell everyone about the fire you started at your prom?” Julian said, causing even me to look promptly over at Emmett for an explanation.

“You started a fire at your prom, E?” some guy laughed.

“You’re surprised?” Julian smirked.

“I for one am not,” Lukas volunteered. “But I definitely need to hear the story now.”

And just like that, crisis averted. I was certain no one remembered my lack of attendance at my own prom as Emmett explained exactly how he committed accidental arson at his. I breathed easy again, and I closed my eyes with content when I felt Julian’s hand massaging the back of my neck again.

It would’ve been nice to open them without seeing Pixie staring hard at me.

“Lia, who is that woman?” I had to ask when Lia and I took our customary bathroom break for the sole purpose of asking these kinds of questions. “The one in the green who grilled me about my prom.”

“I don’t know, but trust me, I was asking Lukas the same question after she pulled that I’m-so-curious shit. Like, couldn’t she see that you didn’t want to talk about it? Jesus.”

“What did Lukas say? Does he know who she is?” I asked.

“No.” Lia flashed me an apologetic look. “I swear there’s so much even he doesn’t know about Julian, and he’s by far the closest to Julian outside of family.”

Dammit. It was crazy to think that, as much time as I’d spent with Julian of late, I hadn’t remotely scratched his surface. If a friend as old as Lukas still didn’t know a good chunk about him then I imagined there was no chance for me to get an answer if I somehow dared ask who Pixie was.

“So, Emmett’s funny,” I offered to lighten the mood.

“Yeah, he’s crazy,” Lia laughed. “And a party animal. Give him another few hours, he’ll turn this kumbaya into a full-on rager.”

“Oh God. Looking forward to it,” I snorted before we decided it was finally time to go back outside.

“Oh, come on,” Lia muttered when our feet hit the sand and our eyes spotted Pixie in my seat next to Julian. Lia peered at me. I must have looked upset because she brushed it off. “It’s okay. No biggie. That’s probably fair game when people leave their seats for the bathroom. It isn’t war unless they refuse to get up.”

Funny enough, Pixie refused to get up.

“Oh,” she made a little face after I said excuse me. She nodded over her bare shoulder at her own empty chair five seats down. “Can we exchange for a bit? I just need to catch up with this man. It’s been way, way too long,” she said, turning flirty eyes to Julian toward the end of her sentence.

I could feel Lia ready to blow a gasket behind me, but before she did, Julian stepped in.

“Sara, come here,” he said to me, hands on my hips as he pulled me to sit on his lap.

“Oh my God,” Lia said aloud before muffling her giggle and returning to Lukas.

My heart was beating fast now as I found myself returning Pixie’s hard stare while sitting on Julian’s lap, his hands resting in my bare lap. I did my best not to squirm as I felt his fingertips grazing the skin on my thighs, but I clearly did a poor job of that because the second Pixie paused their conversation to check her phone, he whispered to me, “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” I whispered back.

“Clenching your pussy. I can feel it on my thighs, and I’d rather not get any harder than I currently am in front of these people.”

I had no time to reply, biting down hard on my lip when Pixie’s eyes flickered back up to us – more specifically, to me.

“So, you rode pillion today,” she said.

“Pillion?” I repeated.

She glanced at Julian with a smirk then brought her eyes back to me.

“That means the passenger seat, sweetie.”

Oh, hell no. I knew even Lia had heard her bust out the condescending “sweetie” because there was an abrupt halt in her chatter with Lukas.

“Oh. Well, in that case, yes. I did ride pillion,” I replied with a smile I refused to let her break.

“I’m a bit surprised you would take someone inexperienced for a two-hour ride,” Pixie remarked to Julian. “You’re usually so big on following rules.”

“Yes, well.” Julian stroked his hands up and down my waist in a way that set my entire body on fire. “She can be very persuasive.”

The low rasp in his voice made me clench again, which in turn had him giving a low chuckle in my ear.

Oh God.

Lia was definitely eavesdropping, because her sudden, sharp giggle brought everyone’s attention to our little side of the fire pit.

“What’s up, Giggles?” Emmett asked.

“Oh, nothing. I just overheard Julian calling Sara ‘very persuasive,’ and I just had to agree.” Hanging onto Lukas’s neck, she turned around to look at me while still addressing everyone else. “She is unrivaled when it comes to making people do things. Right, Lukas? Let’s not forget that this bad bitch over here is the reason you and I got together.”

Lukas playfully held out his hand for me to shake. “I do owe you a big thank you,” he said. “Thank you for meddling when I was courting this woman. You are the best, and any uptight billionaire assholes in this vicinity would be lucky to have you,” he added, sliding a smirk over to Julian. I was already blushing hard, but Lia took it further.

“Did everyone hear that? Sara is the best, so don’t fuck with her,” she announced to no one in particular, though I knew exactly who this message was directed to.

“Yeah, she’s fuckin’ Superwoman,” Emmett chimed in. “Pretty sure no one else could’ve trapped those Roth assholes as fast as you did.”

No. No, no, no…

I stiffened, the knot in my throat instant.

“Emmett,” Julian ground out behind me, but it was too late. Someone had already asked what Emmett was talking about, and now, without thinking, he was explaining my role as a professional seductress in the Roth negotiations.

Oh my God. Stop.

The sound of my pulse in my ears drowned out the conversation around me. No one was supposed to know about the nature of my contract. Lia knew. Clearly Emmett knew. But now, all these strangers knew, and I couldn’t help but imagine that they were drawing unfairly sleazy conclusions about me. Then again, my job was to dress in skintight clothing to lure a pair of skirt-chasing billionaires to bid on Julian’s resort. Maybe the sleazy conclusions weren’t unfair.

Maybe this was just a part of me that I had never actually erased.

Too late, I cursed inwardly as I watched Emmett try to backtrack. I couldn’t hear what Julian and Lia had said to do damage control. Whatever it was, it clearly didn’t work because there were already several guys in the circle looking at me differently now. They were raising their eyebrows at me, their expressions stripped of the respect they had on when they thought I was Julian’s girl.

A feeling of filth crawled over my skin.

It was the same exact look I got from guys on campus after the incident. It was exactly this. The girls cringed like they were disgusted, but the guys looked like they were excited. Pleasantly surprised, even, in a dirty, sordid kind of way.

I knew what they were thinking. I didn’t look like that kind of girl – the crazy, kinky, reckless girl who would probably be an easy lay.

“So, wait, I don’t get it.” Pixie’s sharp voice pierced through my flashback. “You’re like… an escort for these men?”

My stomach turned, and my silence made her little red lips fall open.

“Wow, that’s…” She peered at a friend to her side and loudly whispered, “Yikes.”

My heart pounded out of my chest.

I was up and off already, my feet digging through sand as I paced away from the fire pit. I could hear Julian and Lia arguing under their breaths behind me. I hoped Lia would win the fight about who got to go after me, but I suspected Lukas had held her back, because it was the only possible way for Julian to win that particular matchup.

“Sara.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” I said between my teeth. “Or anyone.”

“My brother is a fucking idiot, Sara, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he muttered furiously. I swung my arm out of his grip the first time, but the second, I let him pull me close. “Please let me talk to you.”

“I don’t want to be here right now, Julian, I feel disgusting,” I protested. “I feel so dirty and disgusting right now. Those guys – they were looking at me like I was some kind of…” I shook my head, unable to finish.

I was crying. Apparently, I’d been. I wasn’t even sure when it started, but I prayed that the tears had waited till after I ran away from the pit. With Julian gripping me tight, I looked up at the stars to distract myself from the pain of my seizing lungs. I could feel the bad memories coming vividly back to me, and I couldn’t take it. They reminded me of all the guilt I’d managed to set aside in the past month with Julian. They reminded me of my mom, and how I knew she still worried about something twisted living inside me. I knew she worried that what I did in college wasn’t a fluke, and my recklessness was just waiting to come back.

I felt guilty for ignoring her calls.

I felt guilty for dressing provocatively, and being so sexual.

I had been so good at keeping her away for so long, but suddenly, the girl who hated herself was back, and she could barely breathe as she thought about what she’d done in the past four weeks.

“Come on. You’re coming with me.” Julian’s voice was firm as he guided me away. I wanted to shove him off of me, but I also needed him to calm me down like he had that night at the pool.

Before I knew it, he had me in the passenger seat of a car, the two of us speeding fast away.