Page 10

I think the moment when Ryan stood a fraction closer than I wanted, waiting for me to reply, was the first moment in all this that I felt afraid.

It’s a hard thing to really explain to anyone who’s never experienced it: how much the size and presence and aura of a guy can cut through all the layers of social assumption you’ve learned and make you realise that you’d be powerless if he wanted to hurt you. Totally powerless.

Even in a room full of people.

I guess it’s in some ways lucky that we’re all of us used to appeasing when under threat. My instinctive reaction when challenged on where I was going was not to give anything away to him but to laugh and say, ‘Well, I may be going home. But that depends.’

Ryan listened to my answer, glanced around, and then said, ‘You should stay. You haven’t even talked to me yet.’

He gave me a grin, and I realised that the way he’d accosted me had been an effort at flirting. He hadn’t been accusing me of anything, or trying to scare me.

I let out a breath that I hoped he couldn’t see was shaky.

I caught his eye , I thought to myself. This is a good thing.

Cordelia had clearly been right about his type.

I gathered myself together and managed to say, ‘I might be persuaded if you’re going to be fascinating enough.’

‘Well, I’ll… do my best.’ Ryan gave a laugh, and the admission that he wasn’t infallible was somehow a little touching. ‘To start with, let me get you a drink.’

‘Oh, that’s…’ I glanced towards the crush of people near the drinks, considered and then gave in with a smile. ‘I wouldn’t mind one.’

‘OK. Don’t go anywhere,’ he said, and headed to the drinks table.

Obviously, I fleetingly thought about the dangers of taking a drink from a strange man who might be a poisoner, but dismissed my anxieties pretty quickly. He didn’t know who I was and would be an idiot to drug someone at a comparatively small party.

I came a little way back into the room, and caught Luca’s eye. He raised his eyebrows, clearly checking in, so I gave him an ‘All OK’ smile.

And then Ryan reappeared, squeezing in that little bit closer than most people would have done. It was less intimidating this time, and seemed more about an attempt at cosying up to me. Or just a lack of awareness of personal space maybe.

I thought about Cordelia’s description of Ryan as a reformed womaniser and wondered whether he wasn’t so great at social cues.

Whether he got himself a bad rep by getting things like personal space that little bit wrong.

I’d worked with a guy like this in the past, and at first felt uncomfortable and then after a while sorry for him as I’d realised he just didn’t understand.

But anyway. I took the glass– which had what looked like another Margarita in it– and then thought about how easy it would have been for him to lift a petite woman like Holly Moore into the river, and I felt the hairs rising on my arms.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘It’s the full-fat version,’ Ryan said as I took a tiny sip. ‘Real alcohol. In case you were, you know…’

I gave him a grin. ‘That’s OK. I’m drinking tonight. A little, anyway. No training tomorrow.’

‘Oh, what training?’ Ryan asked me, taking a big gulp of whatever he was drinking. Vodka tonic, maybe?

‘Rowing.’ I pulled a face. ‘I’m back in again after an injury and it’s boring as hell. Everything hurts.’

I watched his interest sharpen. Cordelia had been so spot-on. The sports stuff totally hooked him in.

Ryan quizzed me about the rowing, then started telling me about his rugby, and actually it turned into a decent conversation. And somehow, even though someone handed him another drink and asked if he was doing shots, we didn’t break off.

‘Why rugby?’ I asked him, after a while. ‘I mean, you’d make an amazing rower. Just saying.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, shrugging. ‘I guess… my brother and I were always into it. And then he became this star player. He’s playing for England now, you know?’

‘Seriously?’ I asked, and then, reading his expression, I added, ‘What an asshole.’

Ryan gave a surprised laugh. ‘That’s… kind of how I feel about it. He’s made it seem like any other success isn’t good enough. At least, that’s the way Dad talks about it.’

He shook his head, and I felt a weird little twist of sympathy. I realised that this kid had grown up with everything being handed to him financially, and yet felt… not good enough.

Well, there was at least one side of that which I understood. And Aria would have understood all of it.

‘Tell me about it,’ I said quietly. ‘Try having a brother who’s made it to the Senate before he’s thirty. Particularly after I… You know. Left the US and came here.’

I deliberately sketched over the reasons for coming over here. At some point, if I got to know them better, someone was probably going to google me. And if they did, they’d find out about Aria being an addict.

The real Aria might have wanted to keep it quiet at first. But in the long run, it gave me something to confess. And an aura of vulnerability. Which would be helpful if Cordelia was right about Kit and his habit of collecting broken people.

It was that thought that made me look around for Kit, and I realised when I found him in the crowd that he was already watching me. So much for thinking he’d moved on to other things.

He held my gaze with an expression I couldn’t read, and it gave me a slightly sick thrill of anxiety.

I was the one who looked away.

‘… when you’re doing Olympic rowing,’ Ryan was saying, shaking his head. ‘Surely your parents must stan that.’

I laughed, enjoying the sudden Gen-Z slang in his otherwise impeccably posh speech, all the while trying not to think about that gaze of Kit Frankland’s.

I’d prepped for this, anyway, and the words came easily enough.

‘Oh. My mom thinks sport is frivolous. She thinks I’m frivolous, actually.

And Dad has never understood how he managed to father anyone so disorganised and willing to make a spectacle of myself. ’

Give them a story that’s pretty much the truth, Reid. That’s how to do this job.

‘Sounds like our parents should hang out,’ Ryan said with a weird, unhappy little smile. ‘Mine could tell yours how important sport is and how they wished I was better at it. They could share anecdotes about our inadequacy.’

He gave a laugh, and drank suddenly, and I got the impression he was embarrassed at oversharing.

‘They can hang out on an island somewhere,’ I said. ‘Fuck ’em. If they aren’t proud of us, they’re idiots. Look at us.’ I raised my arms and gave him a brilliant smile. ‘We’re awesome.’

Ryan gave a slow smile, and then clinked his glass against mine, but whatever he opened his mouth to say next was lost to the arrival of a couple of older-looking guys. They bounded up to him, and one of them got Ryan into an almost immediate headlock.

I watched a switch go in Ryan. The unguarded, fragile side to him was immediately shut away, and he became a loud, bantering, backslapping lad. And it didn’t take me long to realise why.

These were his older brother’s friends. A pair of twenty-eight-year-old ex-rugby-playing lawyers.

It was easy enough playing along with their noisy camaraderie. I recognised their type more readily than I did the rest of the students here. I’d had to flirt with enough guys like this during my time.

They were the kind who would continue to be hard-drinking, slightly bullying wielders of power, and many of them would go on to break laws. And they would all of them be willing to share way too much to a spellbound, innocent-seeming young woman they were trying to impress.

One of the two (I can’t even remember their names, Reid.

I want to say Hector, maybe, but in my head they’re all Hectors or Percies or something)– one of them went to get a cluster of shot glasses.

Eight of them. They were full of tequila, and it was clear that I was expected to have two of them as well.

It slightly surprised me that Ryan held up a hand. ‘Not really drinking tonight, fam.’

‘That’s simp talk,’ the guy with the shots said. ‘Seriously, take a look at yourself.’

I saw Ryan hesitate, and then take the two offered shots without more argument.

He can’t stand up to them , I thought.

The shots were a clear end to our conversation. Ryan was too much into competitive drinking and rugby anecdotes now.

I slid away, not sure Ryan had even noticed, and looked for a quick way to escape the crush. Which basically meant the window.

Getting over the windowsill was an interesting climb in a short dress, but I think I managed it without showing the entire room my newly bought (and actually quite nice, by the way, Reid) underwear.

It was a relief to be out there, away from my immediate worry that I wasn’t going to be able to do what I came here to do. Ryan was supposed to be fascinated by me, not by some friends of his brothers.

I sighed and tried to breathe out the doubts.

There were only a few students hanging around outside, despite the fact that the air was a wonderful temperature and you could still hear the music with perfect clarity.

It was also beautiful out there, with that huge, open lawn and the colonnaded buildings around it.

I found a free spot along the wall between a couple of windows and leaned back against it.

Should I just leave at this point? Try again on another occasion?

But how many parties were there going to be?

These guys had exams going on. Finals. They’d be studying more and partying less, and I only had three and a half weeks until the end of term, at which point I’d lose them all to home and vacations and future lives.

I needed them to let me in. Quickly.