“Oh, we will.” Her gaze shifted to the dance floor again. But the honest moment was gone, wiped away with the curl of her level lips. The expression was her equivalent to putting up her dukes. “So, you and the gardener, huh? You said you caught yourself a bigger fish, but I didn’t think you meant physically.”

I looked in the direction she’d indicated, finding Kash standing in the shadows in that glorious suit, watching me with his brow low and lips level. It changed his face, darkened it to menace, the expression foreign to me on a face I’d come to know so well.

I met her eyes again and found challenge there. Challenge and ruin.

“It’s no wonder you wanted to use Longbourne,” she continued, turning to face me fully, shoulders square and eyes black.

“Why does it matter where we get flowers?”

“It doesn’t matter to me beyond the fact that it matters to you.”

A flash of danger, a siren of warning. It was all a game to her. The Felixes. Brock. Kash.

Kash.

If she knew what he meant to me, he’d be cannon fodder. If she saw my feelings, she’d exploit them.

She’d exploit him.

“He’s pretty, I’ll give you that,” she said, still smiling that horrid smile. “I don’t know if I’d risk wedding contracts on him, but if that’s what you had to do to get him into bed, who am I to judge?”

Don’t take the bait. Don’t let her know. Bury it, hide it so she can’t find it.

Let her think she’s right.

“Well, that’s all they’re good for, right?” I lied, the words sour and thick in my mouth. “You know how it is. After Brock, I needed to blow off some steam. He’s a useful distraction.”

“You’re a shitty liar, Lila,” she said, amused. “You forget I’ve seen you together. If you think I’d believe he’s nothing more than a distraction, you don’t know me at all.”

I laughed, the sound easy and carefree, my heart sick. “And if you think I’d go from Brock to a gardener, you don’t know me either. He’s a rebound, Addison. He means nothing to me.”

“Oh, I think he might disagree,” she said, her lips twisting and cruel and triumphant.

Horror, absolute and complete horror, overtook me as she glanced behind me, still smiling that knife smile.

Kash loomed at my back, dark and fierce, his eyes blue shards of glass, glittering under the low lights. For a long, still moment, he laid the weight of the betrayal on me, the full extent of what I’d said, of what he’d heard, and I buckled under the pressure. The second I reached for him was the second he turned and walked away.