Chapter 2: Friends, that's all.
Chapter 2: Friends, that's all.
Aria's POV
Consciousness came back in pieces. My stomach was on fire. My temples were pounding. Then I snapped awake.
The pillow was wrong. The sheets were wrong. I ran my hand over the silk slip I was wearing and stopped. Who changed my clothes. Where the hell am I. This isn't my place.
It wasn't my apartment.
My apartment had been taken back by the Sterling family.
That landed with a particular, flat kind of cruelty. I sat on the edge of the bed for three seconds and let it settle.
Orion Voss.
It came back to me all at once.
"How could it be him?*
*No, that's impossible. *
*Everything's ruined."
The way he'd looked at me when he had me pinned. The way I'd said I won't regret it like I meant every word.
I pressed both hands over my face and breathed.
The voice came from my left — low, unhurried, carrying that specific brand of amusement that belongs to people who have never once in their lives been embarrassed about anything.
Orion Voss was leaning against the bedroom wall with his arms crossed, wearing nothing but a towel slung around his waist, bare from the collar up, like he was deliberately putting last night's receipts on display.
He looked at me, the corner of his mouth pulling up. "The hit-and-run energy is really something, Sterling. Good morning."
I stared at him for a full three seconds.
It's him. It's actually him.
I met Orion at the Swiss boarding school when he was already the institution's most reliably troublesome student — skipping class, riding motorcycles, playing pool in the dormitory hallways, giving the headmaster a blood pressure problem on a weekly basis. His family had shipped him somewhere nobody knew his name, hoping the place would sand down his edges. What they didn't account for was me.
I climbed walls. Orion waited at the bottom to catch me.
I skipped lectures. Orion took the notes.
I had a crush. Orion helped me strategize.
Every single thing Julian refused to do with me — the motorcycles, the pool halls, the escape rooms, the curling, the go-karts — Orion showed up for all of it, every time, until I was done.
His family had sent him there to get knocked around by real life. Instead I'd covered for him.
And now I'd slept with my best friend.
"Orion." His name was the only word I could find. "I — we —" I stopped. Started again. "How did we get here. How did this happen. Can you explain that to me? Can you just, for once, explain—"
He looked at me like I had wounded him.
"You can't just sleep with someone and pretend they don't exist," he said. "You owe me something."
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
"Watch something first." He pushed off the wall, pulled his phone from somewhere, walked to the edge of the bed, and held the screen out to me.
The footage was already playing.
Bar surveillance. Fixed angle, black and white, heavy grain, timestamp burned into the lower left corner. But the center of the frame was perfectly, mercilessly clear.
I watched myself lurch in from the direction of the bar, crash straight into him, grab his collar to keep from going down.
The footage was honest in a way that made me want to disappear into the floor.
I watched myself tip my face up toward his, reach out, trace one finger slowly down the line of his face — across his brow, down the bridge of his nose, stopping at the sharp edge of his mouth. He didn't move. I went up on my toes and leaned in. He stepped back half a step until his back hit the bar, and I just followed, closing the distance, boxing him in.
The whole time, I was the one moving forward.
I handed the phone back without speaking. I dug both hands into my hair.
"Where did you get this."
"Bar surveillance." He sat down on the far edge of the bed, unhurried. "I know the owner. Got a copy before I put you in the car last night." He paused. "Figured it might be useful."
My face went hot. The full weight of it landed in my chest. Useful. This is a tape of me being an absolute menace and he called it useful.
I opened my mouth to explain. Nothing came out.
And then it struck me — there was nothing to explain. The facts were the facts. I had done what I had done.
I couldn't look at him after that.
"Aria." His voice cut through the spiral, not unkind, not urgent. "Marry me."
I stared at him. "Marry you." I repeated it like I needed to hear it again to believe it. "You want me to marry you?"
"We slept together, Aria. That's not nothing."
"That was —" I stopped. Started again. "That doesn't mean we have to get married, Orion."
"Doesn't it?" He shrugged, like this was the most reasonable thing anyone had ever said. "We hooked up. We can't just pretend it didn't happen. That's a weird place to leave things."
"Are you insane?" The words came out louder than I meant them to. "We're friends. That's what we are. Friends."
Something shifted in his face.
"Friends," he repeated. Slowly. Like he was turning the word over, checking it for cracks. "Friends."
"Yes. Friends."
He looked at me for a long moment.
"You didn't sound like you were talking to a friend last night."
I felt my face go hot.
"That's not fair," I said.
"I'm not trying to be fair. I'm trying to be honest." He crossed his arms. "Aria. Then last night happened. And now you want to just — what? Go back to being buddies? Grab coffee and pretend?"
"Yes," I said. "That's exactly what I want."
He laughed. It wasn't a happy sound.
God, why does he have to make this so difficult.
"Orion. We're friends." I pressed my fingers to my temple. "We were drunk. It was a mistake. A really, really bad mistake and I'm not going to let one night blow up —"
"Friends." He turned the word over once.
My face burned. I didn't look away. "Last night was a mistake."
"Here's what's not a mistake." He flipped the phone screen toward me. The surveillance footage was still running on loop. Then he pulled up Twitter.
#AriaSterlingScandal. #TheSterlingSwap. #OrionVossNewWoman.
I went quiet.
One "fake heiress" label was already enough to make my life hell. Add "mistress" to it and my position at the orchestra was gone. Not at risk. Gone.
I felt something that was almost funny in how bleak it was.
Orion set the phone down and sat up straighter, and for the first time in this whole conversation he let something sharp show through. "First. The Apex board has been on my case for two years about completing a marriage disclosure before the IPO. I'm not letting them pick someone for me. I'd rather choose."
"Second." He paused. "We work. You know that. We've known it since boarding school. You don't perform for me. I don't have to perform for you. That's not nothing."
"Third." His tone shifted into that narrow register between genuine and not. "You took considerable liberties with me last night. Someone should be accountable."
I looked at him for a long moment.
He slid the ring off his finger.
Just like that. No warning. He picked up my left hand — I didn't even pull back, what the hell was wrong with me — and pushed it onto my ring finger.
"I'll wait," he said.
That was it. That was all he said.
I stared at my hand.
The ring sat there. Cold. Heavy. Real.
What the fuck.
I couldn't move. Couldn't think.
"Orion —"
"I'm not rushing you," he said. Calm. Completely, infuriatingly calm. "I just need you to know where I stand. We're friends. Getting married would be good for both of us. I'll have your back."
My phone buzzed.
A push notification from the Lincoln Center internal system.
Sender: Diane Holloway.
"Aria, I need you to come to Lincoln Center this morning. Prepare yourself. — D.H."
I stared at the screen. My fingers tightened around the phone.
Diane didn't send messages like this. Not with that particular quality of careful understatement. Not unless what she was being careful about was already bad.
Diana's message was still on my screen when Vivian called.
