FORBIDDEN LOVE

Chapter Two

I flopped backward onto the bed, phone wedged between my shoulder and ear, staring up at a ceiling that still felt like it belonged to someone else.

"Okay, but how big is 'big,' exactly," Samantha said, and I could hear the crunch of chips on the other end. "Give me numbers. I need numbers."

"I don't know, Sam, big. Like — my closet is bigger than my old bedroom."

"Shut *up*."

"I'm serious. There's a whole wall just for shoes. Shoes I don't even own yet, apparently, because there were three bags in there when I got here that I didn't buy." I rolled onto my stomach, kicking my feet up behind me. "My mom said it's a 'welcome gift.' I think Richard just told someone to buy a teenage girl things."

"Okay, rich people are unwell," Samantha said. "I need to see this closet. Send pictures. Actually no — send a video. A tour. I want the full experience."

"I'll do you one better, I'll FaceTime you when you visit."

"When am I visiting?"

"Whenever you want, there's like four guest rooms."

"*Four.*" She exhaled like she'd been personally wounded. "Okay. Moving. What else. Tell me everything."

I hesitated, picking at a loose thread on the duvet. I hadn't meant to bring it up. I'd told myself I wasn't going to bring it up.

"There's a stepbrother," I said, like it was nothing.

There was a beat of silence, and then Samantha's voice sharpened with interest. "Okay. And?"

"And nothing. I'm just telling you he exists."

"Lily."

"What?"

"You said that in a voice."

"I didn't say it in a voice."

"You said it in a *voice*, I've known you since third grade, I know your voices. That was the voice you used about Marcus Delgado in tenth grade right before you cried about him for two weeks."

"Okay, first of all, rude." I pressed my palm against my face, grateful she couldn't see how warm it had gotten. "Second of all, it's not like that. He's my *stepbrother.*"

"Uh huh. And?"

"And he's..." I searched for a word that wouldn't give too much away and failed. "Fine. He's fine. Objectively."

"Objectively fine like a normal amount of fine, or objectively fine like you thought about it more than once today."

"I hate you."

"That's not a no."

I groaned and dragged a pillow over my face, muffling myself into it. "He has this whole — I don't know. He doesn't even try. He just walked out of the kitchen with no shirt on like it was nothing, and I nearly forgot how to use my legs."

"Lily Bennett."

"Don't."

"You're falling for your stepbrother."

"I met him *four hours ago,* Samantha, I'm not falling for anyone, I'm just saying he's the kind of good-looking that should be illegal, and I have to live in the same house as it now. Forever. And pretend I'm normal about it."

"This is the plot of a book," Samantha said, delighted. "This is genuinely the plot of a book I would read."

"It's my *life*—"

A knock cut me off. I sat up fast, yanking the pillow off my face like it might somehow give me away, and called out, "Yeah?"

My mother poked her head in, already dressed for the evening in a way that made me suspicious. "Hey, baby. Who are you talking to?"

"Sam. What's up?"

"I'll let you go in a second, I just wanted to tell you — Richard's throwing you a little welcome party tonight. Nothing huge, just some close friends, people from the business."

I blinked. "Tonight? Like — tonight *tonight*?"

"I know it's fast, but he was excited." She stepped further into the room, and there was something in the way she was holding her hands together that told me this conversation had a second half coming. "And I picked something out for you. It's hanging in your closet already — the red one."

"The red one," I repeated slowly.

"You'll look beautiful. I want you to feel beautiful. This is a fresh start, baby, for both of us."

"Mom—"

"I already had it steamed." She smiled the way she always did when the conversation was closed whether I liked it or not, and ducked back out. "Party starts at eight. Don't be late."

I stared at the door for a long moment after it shut, then lifted the phone back to my ear.

"Did I just hear the words *welcome party*," Samantha said.

"Tonight. In four hours. And apparently I'm wearing something my mother picked out, which is never a good sign."

"Send pictures," Samantha said immediately. "I mean it this time."

---

By eight, the house had transformed into something I barely recognized — string lights threaded along the terrace, a quartet playing low in one corner, servers weaving between clusters of people in suits and cocktail dresses who all seemed to know each other in ways that made me feel, once again, like the outsider I was.

I stood at the top of the staircase for one extra second, smoothing my palms down the front of the dress, and told myself it was just a party.

---

**AIDEN'S POV**

Tony was mid-story, hands cutting through the air like he was closing a deal instead of recounting one, and I was nodding along without really hearing him. Kate stood beside him, scrolling her phone with the particular boredom of someone who'd been dragged somewhere and was making sure everyone knew it.

Then I heard heels on the staircase.

I don't know why I looked. There were forty people on that terrace and half of them were wearing heels. But something made my head turn anyway, and when it did, Lily was halfway down the stairs, one hand trailing along the railing, her mother a step behind her like an afterthought.

The dress was red. I registered that first, distantly, the way you register weather. Then I registered the rest of it — the way it moved when she did, the line of her bare shoulders, the fact that she was looking straight ahead like she was concentrating very hard on not looking at anyone at all.

She reached the bottom step and her eyes found mine, just for a second, before she looked away.

I lifted my glass and didn't drink from it.

"—and that's when he tried to renegotiate," Tony was saying, "after we already shook hands—"

"Mm," I said, watching her cross the terrace, watching the exact moment her heel caught the stone and she covered it with a small laugh directed at no one, watching the way her hair moved against her collarbone.

She was seventeen minutes into being my father's stepdaughter and I already knew this was going to be a problem.

Tony's hand cracked against the back of my head.

"Ow — what—"

"You've got wine on your shirt, genius." He nodded down at the dark bloom spreading across the front of my shirt, where my grip had apparently gone slack without my noticing. Kate looked up from her phone just long enough to raise an eyebrow at me, which was somehow worse than anything she could have said.

"I'm fine," I said, too fast, and set the glass down.

"Never said you weren't." Tony was grinning now, following my line of sight until he found her across the terrace. "Bruhhhh, she's on fire." He let out a low whistle, then glanced sideways at Kate and pulled her in for a quick kiss. "Not as much as my pumpkin, though."

Kate giggled against his mouth, swatting his chest without much conviction. "Smooth."

"I try." Tony looked back at me, eyebrows raised, clearly not done. "You gonna say something or just stand there doing your statue impression?"

I didn't answer. I was already looking for her again.

---

**LILY'S POV**

I made it down the stairs without tripping, which felt like a personal victory given how hard my heart was working against my ribs.

I didn't look for Aiden. I want that on record. I looked for my mother, and for a waiter with something other than champagne, and for anything that wasn't the sensation of being watched from across the terrace — and only after all of that did my eyes happen to land on him, wine glass in hand, staring at me like I'd interrupted something.

I looked away first, cheeks burning, and let my mother pull me toward a cluster of her new friends. But I could still feel it, that stare, like a hand pressed flat against my back.

This party was going to be a very long night.