ONE QUESTION

HAVE YOU READ CHAPTER 5?

I JUST POSTED IT LIKE 10 MINUTES AGO; MAKE SURE YOU SAW IT.

Anyway this is the last chapter before what I consider "the good part". 7 and 8 are my favorite chapters so far and I can already tell 9 is going to be a banger as well. Things to look forward to! Hope you enjoy :)

I brushed my jawline with my fingertips, grimacing in the mirror. "Somebody's going to notice."

"They are not," Eloise chastised me. After five years as my head maid, we were familiar enough that I allowed her a little sass. "This is the best concealer money can buy."

"It won't last when I'm in the water. Everyone will see."

"Leave your hair down, then. That'll cover everything."

Eloise always had a practical solution to my worries. I opened my claw clip and let my dark hair settle over my shoulders. I almost never let it down; it felt untidy, but Eloise made a good point. I craned my neck, checking in the mirror, and my hair effectively covered all evidence that last night had been…affectionate.

I blinked, and I was there again. Eyes closed, hands tangled in Kile's hair as he kissed my neck. Even if I'd known then the mark it would leave, you couldn't have persuaded me to stop. As it was, it had taken all my restraint to call it off when we did.

That restraint was wearing ever-thinner. I knew this was a bad idea.

I knew that, but I would still absolutely be going back for more.

Eloise knew—not everything, but the general idea. It was more or less impossible to keep secrets from the person who dressed you every day and took your hair down every night, but there were a few things I'd managed to keep to myself. Still, she knew the who and the why—at least, as much as I could explain why—and she'd made it known that she approved.

Like everyone else, apparently, Eloise had been a fan of Kile since he was in the Selection. She was the one who always let him sneak into my room back then. Little did I know that was also setting a precedent for our adult lives, and we actually had to be even sneakier the second time around.

"You look fine," Eloise told me sternly, sensing I was wavering. "Now go out and play."

"You sound like my mother. But I'll go. Thank you, Eloise."

I grabbed a towel and met my brothers at the pool. Ahren was chatting with Camille and Josie, who were lounging on beach chairs, while Kaden and Osten appeared to be waterboarding each other. Kaden was normally so serious, but there was something about reuniting with all your siblings that could make grown adults act like children. Or maybe that was just the effect Osten had on people.

It was affecting me too. No worrying about the cold this time; I jumped right in, interrupting whatever primal battle Kaden and Osten were fighting. It didn't actually slow them down very much. Ahren paused his conversation to greet me, although he wasn't exactly nice about it. "You're late," he said accusingly.

"Sorry. Wardrobe malfunction."

He scoffed. "How do you mess up a swimsuit?"

I splashed him. "Mind your own business. Where's Marie?"

"Mind your own business," Ahren retorted before realizing that was rude and he was supposed to be the nice twin. "She's napping. She's starting to accept the time difference, but she probably won't fully figure it out until it's time for us to go home."

"You could always stay another week," I suggested hopefully.

"I can't imagine what my in-laws would have to say about that."

I couldn't either, but that was because I assumed they would say it in French, and that language still stubbornly evaded my understanding. Something about the vowels.

"Alright, you win!" Osten declared dramatically. You could never be sure if he actually meant that. A false surrender followed by tackling you from behind was one of his favorite strategies. It was a good thing Osten was so far down the line for the throne, because he would commit a lot of war crimes if given the chance.

Therefore, Kaden never let his guard down, ready to leap back into battle at any second. It was hard to believe the drowned rat in front of me was married with a child on the way, and Osten, red hair a tangled mess and a white smear of sunscreen on his nose, was almost six inches taller than me. Since when did my little brothers get so grown up?

For the next couple hours, though, they were going to be acting as immature as possible. Something about a family reunion, something about that week between Christmas and New Year's where time passes in the most mysterious ways, something about the pool and a complete lack of "adult supervision". It was easy to slip back into our old roles, like no time at all had passed. There was no Selection, and Ahren had never moved away, and our parents were still running the country. We could just be kids again. Kaden and Ahren raced each other from one end of the pool to the other. Osten dared me to do a flip so many times I actually tried it—not one of my best ideas.

It was as I recovered from that flip, swiping the water from my face and shaking my wet hair into something resembling order, that I realized someone else was joining us. Kile, a towel slung over his shoulder, on the cobblestone path to the pool. "What'd I miss?"

I suddenly felt self-conscious even though I knew I looked fine. I wrestled those feelings into submission, along with the buzzing tension under my skin that always seemed to accompany Kile's presence lately. Whatever our arrangement was (which had yet to be spoken aloud due to our inability to have a civilized conversation when we could be making out), it was not something I wanted to share with my brothers. On pain of death, I had to act natural.

In theory, acting natural was easy. A good portion of my job involved keeping a neutral expression when I was bored or even repulsed by my colleagues. Was hiding attraction really that much more difficult?

Yes, apparently. I took one look at Kile, no shirt and hopping into the pool with us, and my insides threatened to dissolve. I really needed to work through some of this stuff.

And what better way to do that than…

I reeled my mind back from the gutter I'd apparently cast it to. Just minutes ago, I'd been goofing around like a child. I needed to remember that Kile and I had been friends first (what were we now? I had no idea) and we were absolutely capable of behaving as such.

It was just different now. A lot different. I couldn't help glancing him over (he wasn't exaggerating—clearly he had been working on his tan) and lingering where I probably shouldn't. Kile was more subtle about it, as he always seemed to be, but I felt his gaze land on me more than once. The self-consciousness faded rapidly; it was addicting, the knowledge that I had his attention, and I would have given just about anything to know what he was thinking when he looked at me like that.

The iron tension between me and Shirtless Kile was shattered (quite effectively) by Osten tackling me from behind. I never should have let my guard down around him! But maybe it was for the best. Maybe this was a better road to be walking down.

I came up sputtering and made some vague threats regarding Osten and that one (you know the one) chamber in the dungeons. Osten just laughed, which was about what I expected. The only way to actually get through to my youngest brother was acts of revenge, and as the queen, I was obviously way too mature to engage in a splash flight.

No, never mind. Osten splashed at me just once, and I retaliated on instinct. All hell broke loose after that. The five of us dripping wet, Ahren trying to make rules and form teams, Kile and Kaden in some kind of all-or-nothing death match. It was chaos, but in a fun way.

Friends. See, this wasn't so hard.

Then Kile picked me up. There was nothing inappropriate about it—I'd seen him do the exact same thing to Osten when my little shit of a brother whacked him with a pool noodle—but my breath caught in my throat. In real time, I managed to laugh and protest the way I would if this was anyone else in the world, but every square inch of skin-to-skin contact burned in a way that would have led to something had we been alone.

We were so not just friends.

I suspected the burning was one-sided. I knew, to some degree, Kile wanted me—last night was proof of that—but he obviously had no trouble acting natural while I was flustered by the slightest touch. When he dunked me in the pool, it was not actually enough to cool me off.

When the boys got tired of fighting each other, we all sat on the poolside, near the significant others on their beach chairs. Not surprisingly, Camille was rolling her eyes a little at our antics—she was actually a year younger than Ahren and I, but she always acted older. Josie, on the other hand, looked a little disappointed. Ordinarily, she would have joined in on the roughhousing, but I knew she wasn't feeling well, despite the mythical pregnancy glow. That was the real reason they told us about the pregnancy so early; this way, Josie didn't have to "get food poisoning" so often. It was a lot easier to just be honest about it.

Perhaps that was a lesson I should have applied to my own life, but I chose not to. I wasn't really lying, anyway. Not to anyone besides myself, and did that even count?

Osten and Kaden were arguing about who had won the splash fight; I barely heard them. First of all, it should have been obvious that there were no winners in this game, only losers. Second, and more importantly, Kile's knee kept bumping into mine, and there was no way he wasn't doing it on purpose. I tried to glance at him without meeting his eyes. No issue there—he had leaned back on one elbow, talking to his sister. That was almost worse, giving me freedom to take him in. We always had our moments in the dark, or under the soft glow of Christmas lights. The sight of him in full sun threatened to unravel me.

Check that. I was entirely unraveled, entranced and possibly out of my mind.

Everyone else was talking. They wouldn't notice it, the way I was leaning towards him, pulled in by an invisible thread. Only Kile noticed, a subtle tilt of his head. I just wanted to touch him, but fortunately, I hadn't lost all control of myself.

Yet.

My voice came out soft and lilted, betraying nerves I hadn't known were there. I'd made every effort to move on from the night of the wedding as quickly as possible, but my subconscious remembered, tensing when I put it all on the line. That feeling, reaching out and being shot down, would probably stick with me for years to come.

This time, there was nothing to worry about. This time, when I told Kile to meet me in my room when everyone else was asleep, he gave me a serious nod in return, and the half-smile-half-smirk he wore for the rest of the day told me he knew exactly what I wanted.