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Tom’s grin was hazy, just like his eyes, as he slapped Aiden on the back. ‘Glad you’re here, mate. Let’s get you a drink.’ Much to Aiden’s mortification, he began to shout to the partygoers: ‘Move, everybody. Son of art royalty coming through!’

Maybe it wasn’t so different after all. Aiden kept his head down, face blazing, as Tom guided them through the crowd now ogling him and into a large kitchen. Drink bottles were lined up on every surface, and groups congregated around countertops to chat and take pictures.

‘What can I get you, mate? Beer? Lager? Whisky?’ Tom was already riffling through his collection, clearly eager to impress.At least, Aiden could only assume that’s what it was after the scene he’d just caused. It wouldn’t be the first time somebody had sucked up a little too hard.

‘Beer’s fine.’

‘Only the best for you.’ He picked up one of the more expensive brands, removing the cap with his teeth. ‘Listen, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. One of my mates is at Elmington—’

Aiden’s heart stopped, the world slowing down around him as though everyone was wading through tar, including him. Tom’s words were drowned out by the alarm bells in his ears, but he imagined the possibilities:And he said you had a nervous breakdown and walked out in the middle of an exam. And he heard you stopped getting out of bed to go to your lectures. And he was wondering why the fuck you’d turned your whole life into something barely recognisable.

‘Whoa,’ Tom said with his mouth around his own beer. ‘Am I out of line? Sorry, Al…’

Dizzy, Aiden tried to tune back into the conversation. Tried to look like he was a normal person, not that broken shell he’d become last year.

‘Sorry, I missed that. What did you say about your mate?’ He leaned closer, feigning interest even as the bottle in his hands began to quiver.

In his ear, Tom shouted over the dance music: ‘He was wondering if you could put in a good word with your dad about that apprenticeship he’s running. Dead interested in the dealer business he is!’

‘Right.’ Aiden might have felt relieved if the question didn’t make him feel so numb. This was why he hadn’t wanted people to know who he was.There was always someone who needed something, usually from his dad, which left him as nothing more than pawn, a go-between. ‘I think the position has already been filled, but I’ll see what I can do.’

It was a lie. He wasn’t even talking to his dad right now – or, rather, his dad wasn’t talking to him. Not after he’d turned down that apprenticeship himself, among a few others. He’d gleaned from shameless social media stalking that Jonathan had hired someone else over the summer, a young lad not too dissimilar in looks from Aiden. Probably a nice replacement now the heir to the business had been unofficially disowned.

‘You’re a top bloke!’ Tom said, clinking their bottles together. ‘Cheers, mate.’

‘Cheers,’ Aiden said, and then, when Tom got pulled into another conversation, muttered, ‘I’m not your mate.’

He leaned against the kitchen table, trying to gather his composure. It would have been easier if, at the same moment, his eyes didn’t drift around the room and inevitably land on Juniper’s. His first instinct was to straighten, reassemble his composure before she caught a chink in his armour. Hers was to look away, as always, which at least gave him the opportunity to admire her form in the bright lights. Her hair was down, curls slightly more organised, and her face glittered with more makeup than usual. Her eyeliner tapered into a point beyond the smoky corners of her eyes and velvety cherry-red lipstick accentuated her plump mouth. She wore a black leather skirt that didn’t leave much to the imagination, pleats draped over irresistibly wild hips and ending midway down her overwhelmingly curvy thighs. Her mesh top was just as generous –toogenerous.Something lurched inside Aiden at the sight of her cleavage, and kept lurching when he noticed a tattoo curling around her shoulder like vines.

Fuck.

He was so enchanted by her that he hadn’t even noticed who she talked to, not until she laughed straight from her belly when her friend whispered in her ear.

No, not just a friend. Amir.

Why was it thathewas the only person she couldn’t stand? The only one who couldn’t make her laugh like that? The only one she didn’t even want to look at.

The room seemed to expand, leaving him a lonely dot floating at the centre of it, and he couldn’t help but imagine what it would feel like if his lips got as close to her as Amir’s were, hovering just above the soft hinge of her jaw.

‘Staring isn’t cool, man.’ Luc’s black-painted fingernails were suddenly clicking in Aiden’s face, and he tore away quickly.

‘Not staring. Just observing. That’s what artists do, isn’t it?’ He handed Luc a drink, but they nudged it back to the table.

‘No thanks. Smells like piss, just as I’d feared.’

Aiden didn’t care. He was going to need something stronger than the beer he currently sipped to get through tonight. Maybe he would fall into old habits, after all. He gestured with his head to the living room. ‘What’s it like in there? Any better than out here?’

‘If you like David Guetta, which you shouldn’t.’ Luc grimaced. ‘Why are we here again? To see if you can exchange dissing for kissing with your high school nemesis over there?’

Aiden’s brow furrowed. ‘Am I supposed to know what that means?’

Luc’s sigh was withering. ‘Why don’t you just go over to her?’

‘Why would I want to?’ he snapped, and then regretted it. Luc was about the only friend he’d made, or at least the only one who seemed to see him as more than just a Whittaker. It wasn’t their fault that everybody else in this room, bar one very fiery classmate, had already decided he was only worth what his surname could offer.

Luc seemed oblivious to his frayed temper, only shrugging. ‘That, dear friend, is a mystery to me. But it beats ogling her from the other side of the room, does it not?’

Frustration bubbled in Aiden at the prospect of another terse conversation with her. He already felt on the edge of his limit after the conversation with Tom, though he’d hoped to be stronger than that. Hoped he was finally recovering. ‘I can’t get through to her. It’s pointless.’