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Plus, I didn’t want to. I liked Ren, and, I liked Elsie too.

But if I could have them all…

I shook my head at myself and my wishful thinking as I made my way toward the kitchen. Deciding that Elsie’s texts could wait, I flipped to MagicMirror, a photo social media app, to check the notifications piling up. It wasn’t hard to see why—Dana had posted a video Ren filmed of me mixing the shots I’d made for everyone the night before.

With my hair pushed back behind my ears and a half-cut smile settled onto my lips, I looked… confident.Sexy. And the drinks looked delicious, definitely helped by the slow-motion effect she added during my pours.

Onightclub: Striker’s new shot, the Sanguine Sunrise, will be available all February as a special menu item! Come see for yourself why our newest bartender is quickly becoming the house favourite!

Damn, Dana really did know how to draw people in.

In more ways than one.

I leaned against the counter, and Kaylee looked over my shoulder while I thumbed through the comments, cheeks heating stupidly at Ren’s little blue heart emoji.

“Hey! That post turned out great!” She grinned, setting a cup of coffee down and turning to hunt for some sugar. “You look soprofesh.”

“Please just say professional.” I sighed.

“Can I see?” Danny asked excitedly, plucking my phone out of my hand and heading for the living room with their black ponytail swinging. “Good god, who took this? They must be a wizard behind the camera to makeyoulook cool.”

“I think it was Ren,” I said, swiping up the mug—a sculpted ghost holding a black bat—from the counter.

“Hey!” Kaylee complained. “That was mine!”

I shrugged, following my sibling to the living room. “Snooze you lose,Babydoll.”

She huffed as she pulled another mug from the cabinet, pouring coffee for herself again. “Asshole.”

“Guilty!” I sang back, collapsing onto the sofa beside Danny.

They flicked on the TV, the sound of the pregame coverage undercutting our sipping. I swiped my phone out of their hand.

“Hurry up, you’re missing the pregame!” they called to Kaylee, who groaned, fishing out plates before bringing out dinner for us.

It was still early in the season, but we watched all the games anyway. I would have loved to see more of them at the stadium, but I’d been selling our seats for cash for the last little while… But, maybe now that I had a job I could enjoy those season passes myself.

Maybe I could enjoy them with Ren.

Danny leaned forward immediately, popping open the takeaway boxes and shaking some sweet and sour pork onto their plate.

“If you spill on that sofa, both of you are dead. And not in a fun, hot vampire way. Regular dead.”

I snapped up an eggroll with a pair of chopsticks, moving over to allow Kaylee to sit with us. It was nice to just spend time together like this; it reminded me of when we were kids. Before school and bills had complicated our lives.

“How was class, Dan?”

“Oh,” they said with a miserable sigh I could feel in my bones. “You know. A lot.”

“Aw, rats! And here I was under the illusion that medical school was easy,” Kaylee teased.

My phone buzzed, and I glanced at the screen, warmth rushing to my face as Ren’s contact flashed alongside the little media icon. Just before my mind jumped, skipped, and hopped headlong into the hope that she’d sent me a nude.

Please, Vi. I am begging you, get a grip.

I opened our text chain, finding no nudes… But it was difficult to be disappointed when I saw the images shehadshared. A collection of photos she’d taken during the cast party the night before.

The first was tame enough, with Cole offering me a bite of cake from his fork while I sat sandwiched between him and Kaylee on one of the velvet sofas in front of the stage. His short blond hair looked like it’d been dyed pink in the glow of the neon lights.