Page 81 of Fractured Ice

"Probably not," she admits. "But at least you'll be rested while you overthink it."

I laugh despite myself. Emma grins and heads for the stairs.

"Emma," I say.

She looks back.

"Thank you."

She waves it off the way she waves off most things that matter, and heads upstairs. I sit alone in the kitchen for a while with the vanilla candle smell, the quiet house, and the question I already know I'm going to answer.

I just have to decide if I'm brave enough to answer it out loud.

19

Ethan

The girl has been talking to me for way too long and I haven't retained a single word.

I know she's attractive in an objective sense, like most of the other girls at this party. I know she's smiling. I know she's standing close in a way that says she's interested, and normally that would be enough information for me to work with, but tonight it's doing exactly nothing.

Knox is beside me talking about the new PlayStation drop with Noah, both of them deeply invested in a conversation I haven't been part of since they started it. I'm holding my fourth cup of jungle juice and looking at the kitchen doorway, thinking about a kissing booth and the fact that I have no idea how to fix any of it.

The front door opens.

Rory comes in first, then Emma, then Sienna, and I stop thinking about anything else.

She's in a black dress. Some simple corset style mini dress. Short. Low-cut. The kind of thing I've never seen her in because she doesn't do this, she does sweaters and jeans. This is something different, this is her having decided tonight to be devastating and succeeding without any apparent effort. The dress hits mid-thigh and the neckline does things to my ability to function that I'm going to have to manage carefully.

I'm hard before she makes it through the kitchen doorway.

The girl who'd been talking to me says something. I turn, smile, and say something back that I hope is appropriate, then I look back at the doorway. Sienna's eyes find mine across the room and she tips her chin up slightly, acknowledging me, but I can't tell anything more than that.

Jace materializes from somewhere and has his arm around Rory within about four seconds. Knox and I start moving toward the girls at the same time.

"You want a drink?" I ask Sienna when I reach her.

"What are you having?"

"Jungle juice." I hold up my cup. "Fair warning… it's strong."

"How strong?"

"I've had two cups and I'm feeling good."

She looks at the cup. Looks at me. She's been looking at me differently since the kissing booth and I've been trying not to read too much into it… failing completely. "I'll have one."

I hand her mine and go get a fresh one.

Behind me, I hear Knox offer to get Emma a drink.

"I can get my own drink," Emma says with a flatness that could strip paint.

The party fills up the way hockey house parties fill up, quickly and completely, until the living room is loud and warm and the music is shaking the walls. I'm watching Sienna from the kitchen the way I've been watching her all night, which is to say constantly and with a level of intensity I've stopped trying to be subtle about because I want her to know I can't take my eyes off her.

She works the room effortlessly. Talks to people she wants to talk to. Laughs when something is actually funny. Ends conversations when she's done with them. Two different guys approach her over the course of an hour and she shuts both down like she shuts guys down for a living.

Every time one of them approaches I tense.