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Still, the idea that she’s going to get wrecked tonight in an effort to forget us makes me feel like absolute shit.

After dinner, Vivienne and Ricky excuse themselves to Viv’s room, and though Fab and I are ready to go, I make an excuse about better cufflinks, and drag him upstairs.

“Dude, we need to go,” Fab says, pacing the stretch of hall in front of my room.

Elijah and mom’s laughter drifts through the empty house, lingering in the stairwell, reminding me of how happy they are.

Reminding me that this thing with Vivienne and I have to be a few bad choices. It cannot keep going on.

“I know but I don’t trust myself. I need to talk to Viv but I need you here so I don’t–”

“Nut in your pants again?” Fab offers, and I kind of regret coming so clean to him.

I nod. “Yeah, pretty much.” No point in having an ego about it. Viv has total control over me.

“Fine,” he sighs, taking his phone out of his pocket. The screen illuminates his face, and I watch as he smiles, texting his girlfriend.

“That,” I tell him, snatching his focus from the text message he’s crafting.

“I want to look at my phone like that. And the only time I’ve felt that is,” I trail off, pointing toward Vivienne’s door.

Fab stuffs his phone away, closing the distance between us so he can clamp his hands on my shoulders.

“You have two choices. Use this face of yours and the connections at the club and move on. Tonight. Right now. Okay? Put the Lancaster smile to use and let yourself have options tonight. Okay?”

My brows furrow of their own volition. “What’s the other thing?”

“You talk to Elijah and Maribel, of course only after talking to Vivienne. Explain to them that the two of you met before you realized who each of you were, and tell them you have feelings. If you make it work long term, it could be no problem. But if I had to guess,” Fab says, tugging at the scruff sprouting on his chin, “I’d say they won’t like it because they will think it’s just sexual, that it’ll fizzle out and in the meantime, going public with a sex fling will humiliate everyone. ”

I see it play out that way in my head, and the fact that Fab does too only reassures me that tonight has to be about meeting someone new.

“You will find someone that you feel this way about again,” Fab says softly. “Before Sin, I loved someone else. Did you know that?”

I shake my head, because as long as I can think back, it’s always been Fab and Sin. “When?”

“The summer before I met Sin. I dated a gorgeous brunette from Bricks. Fell head over heels. We never even had sex, but God, man, I had it so bad for her. So bad.”

“How’d you move on?”

Fab smiles. “She fucked another guy. And if that doesn’t kill the mood, I don’t know what will.”

“Shit, man, I’m sorry that happened.” I had no idea. Fab is so confident, and though he’s the shortest of our group, he has the confidence of an NBA player. “I can’t wrap my head around you getting rejected,” I tell him, because that’s the truth.

Fab levels a serious gaze my way, his dark eyes brimming with intent.

“I met Sin and nothing mattered. I forgot that the other girl existed, and that she slept with someone else. The pain I felt, it evaporated when I met Sin, because Sin is the one, and when you meet the one, everything else just falls away. It becomes pages in your story that you’ve already read, and have no plans to reread. ”

I look at Vivienne’s door, tiny bumps of excitement raising up on my forearms when I catch a moment of her muffled laughter. “What if she’s my Sin? And whoever I meet at the Club tonight is the girl that fucks someone else?”

Fab lets out a sigh and gets his phone back out, resigned to the moment. “Let me know when you’re ready, I’ll let Sin know we’re on the way.”

With my friend lingering a few feet away, I cautiously knock on Vivienne’s door, everything in my chest knotted tight, an emotional cramp in my brain.

She pulls the door open, this time wearing a tight black dress, one that hugs the swell of her full breasts and accentuates the bloom of her hips and the tightness of her waist. Her honey hair is wrapped into a fancy thing, a few loose strands hanging down, putting her neck on highlight.

The neck I want to crash my mouth against, leave my mark on, and taste as she cries my name.

“You look beautiful,” I tell her, my voice thin and low, tried by the moment, tested by our chemistry. “And I wanted to tell you, I’m going to the Club tonight for the same reason.” I adjust my glasses as a nervous habit.

“I figured,” she says, sounding as sad as I feel. “It’s…” her eyes fall to my lips, and she swallows thickly around the same knot of desire that's lodged in my throat. “It’s the best thing to do.”

I step closer to her, greedy to feel her breath on my lips. “Absolutely. Best for our parents,” I add, my hand drifting to the doorframe where I brace myself as she steps closer to me, too.

I tip my head down and she lifts hers up, and our lips nearly graze when she whispers, “have fun tonight, Reed.”

“Okay,” Fab’s hand lands in the crook of my elbow as he pulls me back, her minty breath dusting my lips just as he does. “Too close. We gotta go.” He looks past me to Viv and Ricky, wearing a tight red dress with a mermaid tail. “Have a nice time ladies.”

Ricky says goodbye, but Fab has me going down the stairs and out the door before I can say it back.

“That fucking dress,” I groan, smoothing my hands through my hair as I sit in the backseat of Fab’s car, his eyes flashing in the rear view mirror.

“Dude, get it the fuck together, okay?” He turns, facing me, the engine running.

“You’re in college. You are traditionally hot.

You have this whole I reject the wealth thing and you come from a good family.

All of that shit makes you prime picking for the girls who are gonna be at the party tonight.

Hell, not just the girls at the club but girls in general.

Okay. Chicks love the whole Clark Kent shit you have happening.

So pick your jaw up off the floor, stop fucking pining over your step sister and get your head in the game. ”

His blinker ticks quietly in the background as he holds my gaze, his eyes burning with intensity.

“Damn, what happened to the choices talk upstairs?” I click my seatbelt in place and slump against the seat.

“We both know you don’t want to upset your mom and honestly, I think you’re as much in love with Elijah as you are with Vivienne. So you and I both know you’re not gonna risk their happiness and make it serious with Viv so let it the fuck go, my man.”

I stroke my hand down my jaw, peering out the fogged up window, staring at the front door. The girl that stole my breath on the beach lives with me. She’s going to be in my family by marriage in just a few weeks.

It’s not fair .

“Clark Kent thing, huh?” I can’t help but ask, smirking at Fab in the rear view.

“You know, the whole glasses covering up the fact that you’re basically just a fucking gym bro, but then you’re also smart as shit, too. You know, Clark Kent.” He eyes me cautiously in the rearview as we come to a red light not far from Sin’s place. “Don’t make me regret saying it.”

I smile, and spend the rest of the drive deep in thought, greeting Sin when she gets in. Fab drapes his hand on her thigh as he drives, and she holds tight to his wrist, both of them behaving like they’ll die if they can’t touch, even for one minute.

That’s how I feel about Viv. And now I have to go into the party and pretend I feel the exact opposite.

Fab parks ten minutes later, and like a true best friend, doesn’t move to leave the car right away. He pulls a flask from his breast pocket, passing it back to me. I shake the flask, and arch a brow.

“Vodka,” he answers, “and I think you’re gonna need it if you’re gonna try to forget her.”

Because he’s told her everything, Sinela turns in her seat, her caramel colored hair shining beneath the parking structure lights. She smiles, reaching back to drape a consoling hand on my knee. “My friend Thea is coming tonight. She’s a computer science major, too.”

Obligatory conversation at its finest. “Oh yeah? Where at?”

Sin lifts a shoulder. “Florida University,” she says. “Like you.”

It should make me incredibly happy that a fellow computer nerd is coming tonight, that she knows my best friend’s girl and attends the same university as me.

But I’m not excited. Not at all.

“Fab, you got those joints?”

His eyebrows lift, because I’ve never been a guy that partakes in smoking weed. I used to tell everyone in high school that I didn’t smoke because it made me sick, but the truth is, I promised my mom that I wouldn’t.

He passes one back to me, and lights it. I take a deep inhale, then a long pull from the flask, and for the first time ever, I understand wanting to forget.