Wasn’t he about fifty years too young to be so cynical about life? Jaya smiled her best and brightest smile. “I told you, Lord Northcliffe. I think forgiveness could begin with us.” Good work, Jaya. She should write self-help books and travel the world healing nations.

He crossed his arms, his biceps bulging. His overall expression told her he didn’t quite believe her. But his eyes held hers just a little too long, and Jaya knew she’d played her first move well. He could be hooked, even if there was a caginess about him she’d have to work on.

Jaya kept smiling as they talked, hoping he wouldn’t see the angry outbursts she was swallowing quicker than the scalding coffee she’d poured herself. She willed him to be hypnotized by her smile, her brown eyes, her easy banter.

The rose pendant glittered at her throat in the rising sunlight, throwing red embers of light across Grey Emerson’s skin.

Grey

There was something about the way she was leaning in to him, her smile just a touch too wide, her eyes just a bit too… blinky.

Grey was used to girls flirting with him. He didn’t know what it was—his brooding, dark demeanor, perhaps, or maybe the way he was always just a little too tall and a little too broad for any space he occupied. Or maybe it was just the title of nobility he carried. Whatever the case, he cycled through the same steps with nearly every new girl who walked through the gilded double doors of St. Rosetta’s:

Girl: Flirt

Grey: Pretend to not notice

Girl: Touch Grey

Grey: Cough and step aside, just a bit too far for her fingers to easily brush him

Girl: Smile

Grey: Glare

The only exception to that cycle so far had been Daphne Elizabeth, who was now one of his self-proclaimed “friends,” along with Leo and Rahul. Instead of telling him all the ways in which he could screw himself, DE had latched on to him freshman year, convinced that he needed someone to take care of him. He found her annoying and tolerable in equal parts, though he’d never tell her about the tolerable part. When she’d made it clear she would rather read War and Peace a thousand times over than date him, he’d relaxed and let her talk to him. Sometimes.