Chapter 47

CHAPTER FOURTY-SEVEN

LAKE

52 bobas left until we both die …

I wake up with the most delicious post-coital hangover, a little groggy, a little sore, a lot happy. I snuggle into one of Tam’s cushy pillows, cracking my lids to a dim, empty bedroom and a little divot where Tam used to be. I sit up quickly, yawning and stretching my arms over my head.

My gaze shifts toward the bathroom, wondering if Tam might be in there. But then I remember what Jacob said last night, about some early morning meetings. I scoot off the edge of the bed, turning on the lamp until I get the strength to stand up and open the curtains.

There’s a note waiting for me, tucked underneath my phone. I don’t even remember where my phone was last night. Probably in the pocket of my overalls? I look around to see that someone—it had to be Tam, right?—has already cleaned up the spilled boba, picked up our clothes and the discarded towel.

Hmm.

Maybe … he doesn’t have a cleaning crew?

I pick up the note and rub at my blurry eyes so that I can read it over.

Forced at gunpoint by Jacob. Please help me. My lips quirk as I remember the note I threw at his head—if you don’t love me, we both die, please help me. I continue reading. I’ll be back midafternoon. Get some rest now because you won’t be getting any later. xoxo Tam

I shake my head and put my hands—and the note—against my face, hiding a stupid smile.

Did I just … Yeah, I just did.

I slept with Tam. Fucking finally.

I drop my hands to my lap and then slide off the bed, deciding that an immediate shower is in order. There’s more … cleanup from last night to take care of. I yawn my way into the oversized too-white bathroom and start the water.

The first thing I do is start going through shampoos and conditioners, hair masks and face masks and cleansers and body washes and … There’s an entire Sephora in here. No, there’s an entire Sephora and two Ultas. It’s a lot.

I squint my way through the bottles, selecting one that seems like it’s made for colored hair. I take my time washing, enjoying a lazy morning in Tam’s beautiful home. There’s a big, frosted window in the bathroom, orange-yellow sunshine spilling in prisms across the tiles.

I’m in a state of disbelief as I shower, my mind on last night and everything that happened. The night was wonderful, and the moment is forever etched into the depths of my soul. But this morning? I lift up my left wrist and stare at the curse mark.

We have seven weeks. That’s it.

And there’s only an eight-percent chance that we’d sleep together and still fail. Eight percent. I purse my lips in frustration and drop my arm to my side. If I focus on the curse and how little time we have left, I’ll start to panic. I can’t get Tam to fall in love with me if I’m in a state of anxiousness.

I climb out, dry myself off, dress in some baggy white sweatpants and a hoodie with no bra.

I step out of the bedroom and then lean back against the door to close it, eyes shifting to one side. The hallway ends in a wall that’s entirely glass. Outside, I see shrub-covered hills and sunshine and not much else. Turning to my left, I see a long hallway that hooks a sharp right at the end. In front of me are the stairs.

Okay then.

I push off the door and head straight for the stairs, hoping to find the kitchen. Trying to conjure up memories from last night doesn’t work. I let Tam take my hand and lead me, and I have no idea where the hell I am.

I pause in another gigantic hallway, capped by another glass wall that vaults a good twenty or so feet in the air. Sunlight spills across the floor as I pause with one foot half-lifted, hands in my pockets, eyes narrowed.

I doubt Tam needs a house this big, but I also realize that with his security concerns, only something like this would do. He’s too popular to live somewhere normal. He’d be crushed to death by fangirls the day he moved in. I smile a little at the thought of Tam climbing out of a moving van with boxes stacked in his arms, sprinting wildly away from a horde of women with signs written in glitter.

Not that I blame them.

Tam is pretty fucking awesome.

I did not expect him to go full boyfriend on me like that, and I’m obsessed. My cheeks heat, and I think about the terrible fact that I really, really, really like him. I’ve never felt anything this intense in my entire life. It’s hard to think about anything but Tam. Not even the curse can pull my attention for long, and it’s the entire reason I’m here.

I pick a direction at random, opening doors as I pass them by. The first one I open reveals a massive room with mirrors on all the walls, a dark ceiling with sound-dampening pads on it, and shiny wood floors. A sense of déjà vu hits me, and it takes a few minutes of staring to realize that this is the room where Tam films his dance practice videos.

Oh. Wow.

I move into the room, my bare feet whispering across the floor. One of the things I noticed when I was watching his practice videos was how his—and the other dancers’—sneakers squeaked across the floor. It really stuck out for me, that rhythmic cry of rubber on wood.

I pause dead-center to stare at myself, reflected back on all four walls.

“Break up with me,” I sing off-key, confident in the fact that I’m completely alone in here. “If you dare. But I know you won’t, and you can’t resist. Why lie to me?” I try one of Tam’s signature body roll dance moves, and I end up finding myself so ridiculous in the mirror that I double over laughing. I’ve got tears in my eyes as I try again, and something pulls a little between my legs.

I clamp a hand over both my mouth and my sore vagina. I’ve used my fingers on myself plenty of times in the past, but I’ve never really tried a toy. So … Tam was a little different. My mouth twitches, and I flee the room, still searching for the kitchen.

I swear at one point, I feel a breeze. It tickles my hair against the back of my neck, and I imagine dry leaves or tumbleweeds blowing across the ground dramatically. I am officially lost. Searching for the source of the breeze only makes it worse, and I somehow end up in a laundry room.

When I emerge from the laundry room, I realize I’m at the staircase again. The same staircase that I started with when I came down.

I go back to the bedroom to get my phone so that I can tell Tam how lost I am in his giant house. Instead, when I get in the room, I find my gaze drawn to Tam’s duffel bag, the one with the sweater in it. I really liked that sweater on him. When he hugged me while wearing it, long sleeves falling to cover his hands to the fingertips, I swooned a little. Maybe it could be saved?

I walk over to Tam’s bag, curious about boundaries and all that. Should I be unzipping his bag, even just to grab the sweatshirt? I consider it for a while, but in the end, I asked Tam to invade my space. I said that. He seems keen to comply, so … I unzip the bag, dig around until my fingers hit plastic, and I draw out the sweater.

I stand up and toss it back on the bed, so I can get a tie to put my hair up. I’m gathering it into a ponytail when my mind drifts to Tam yet again. The way he came over to stand beside me and Leo, the expression on his face, the sharp glint in his green eyes.

I look up and meet my reflection in the large mirror that’s leaned up against the wall.

“Are you going to accept his offer or not?” I mock, pretending to be Tam. I point at myself and lift my chin. “No, you jealous potato, I am not. You know why?” I do another one of his dance moves—badly—and then grin at myself. “Why, I’ll tell you. Because I’m dating international superstar Tam motherfucking Eyre.”

I readjust my hair, make sure my ponytail looks at least halfway decent, and then I take the sweater down to the laundry room. A quick Google search gives me what I need, and I work at getting the dried, um, stain off with a brush before I soak it in cold water, and then wash it like normal.

While that’s going, I continue my search for the kitchen and swallow back a shout of triumph when I spot the angular sofa from last night. Joules is sitting with his back to me, peeling an orange.

“Good morning, sweet brother,” I call out to him, padding up to stand beside him. I put my hands on my hips, and Joules pauses, looking up at me. He must be able to tell something happened last night based on the way I’m standing or smiling or being nicer to him than I should be. He’s lying to me. He’s lying, and I should be pissed.

Joules drops the orange and shoots off the couch, snatching my wrist before I can run away from him. I groan and just let him look at it. What good is hiding it going to do for me anyway?

“Shit, fuck,” he grinds out, scowling in the direction of the all-glass wall behind me. The city glints under the sun in the distance, the swimming pool a nice blotch of blue against the urban landscape. “He slept with you, and he didn’t … I’ll kill him.”

“Joules,” I warn as he drops my wrist and turns away, pushing his hands up and into his hair. The way he’s talking, the way he’s acting … I don’t like it. “I don’t understand why you won’t tell me what’s wrong, but I don’t think you need to worry about me and Tam.”

“Of course I’m going to worry about you and Tam. Until the curse is broken, I’m going to worry about you every fucking day.” He turns back to me, fingers still buried in his hair, and looks me up and down with dark, troubled eyes. Joules drops his arms by his sides. “I got complacent with Joe and Marla. I was sure that they were in love. They’d slept together, and there’s the eight-percent rule and all that. Lake, if I’d only pushed him that much harder, he could be here with us.”

I swallow the hard lump of grief in my throat.

“I’m going to tell Tam about Joe finally,” I admit, as if I’m telling Joules the worst possible secret. Talking about that last day is … so hard. Joules screaming, and the CPR, and the pleading look in Joe’s eyes as he slipped away … “I mean, he knows about Joe, but I’m going to talk about what happened that day.”

Joules sighs.

“I already told Kaycee,” he admits, and my eyes go wide as I stare at him. He stares right back. If he is matched to Kaycee like I suspect, this is a good thing. It’s a great thing. “When we slept together, night before last.”

“That’s good,” I tell him, and his shoulders relax a little. “If you’ve done that already, then you must really like Kaycee.” I put my hand to my chest. “That’s how I feel about Tam, so don’t stress.”

“I’m glad that you feel that way, but what about him?” Joules retorts, the edge of his lip curled up in distaste. It’s not just Tam that he’s upset about, it’s whatever else is going on that he won’t tell me about. “He has to love you back, Lake.”

“Have you seen him?” I respond, clasping my hands together. “Joules, he’s giving this his all. Please. Consider us a done deal, okay?”

My brother appears skeptical, giving me another once-over and a shake of his head.

“God, you’re so dick-drunk right now, I can’t even talk to you.”

I roll my eyes at him, stealing his peeled orange off the table. I crack it in half and offer one side out to him. He takes it and sits back down on the sofa with a sigh.

“Tam offered to pay me to be your bodyguard,” Joules says, and I stop with an orange slice halfway into my mouth.

“Wait, what?” I clarify, trying to puzzle it out in my head. “Tam thinks I’ll need a bodyguard?”

“You will for sure need a bodyguard once you two go public. I’m shocked that you haven’t been outed already, with the way you two were carrying on at the concert.”

I frown at that.

Oh.

Yeah, I knew my life would change once I started dating Tam, but I haven’t had much time to consider anything but the curse. And still, since it isn’t broken, that’s my priority. It has to be, or we only have fifty-odd days to live. A bodyguard, huh? And Joules? Tam would pay my brother to hang out with us during the day?

“That sounds like a win-win, right?” I ask, because I already know that Joules’ new salary is about four times higher than he was making back home. “Only … you don’t look like you agree.”

Joules meets my gaze, chewing thoughtfully on his own bite of orange.

“Kaycee’s also offered me a job as her bodyguard,” he admits, and my cheeks flush.

My brother and I are … Well, we’re both in our mid-twenties, so it’s not like it’s unexpected that we might find people to settle down with. Only, I thought Joe would be here with us, and … I just want to break the curse. I rub at my wrist and Joules notices.

“You should take that job,” I blurt before he can get it in his head to do anything else. “Take the job with Kaycee. Go after Kaycee. Give a relationship with her a real, fighting chance.”

“I could never do anything that would cause you harm,” Joules whispers, voice rough, dark eyes shifted to the side. He scoots forward on the couch and then reaches out for my hands. The orange falls into my lap. Joules looks back at me, and I can see that this is going to be one of the most difficult conservations we’ve ever had.

Because he’s lying to me. Because he’s nervous about something. Because he loves me more than he loves himself.

But see, I feel the same way about him.

“Tam and I are this close to breaking the curse,” I tell Joules, even if I’m scared. Even if I don’t know if that’s true or not. Even if I don’t want to die. I force my fingers to stay relaxed in his hands, force a gentle smile to my face. “There’s nothing more you can do for me. We’re dating. We’re sleeping together. We’re spending time together. Joules, this is on me and Tam now. This is us. I love you so much, but I don’t need you right here, right now. Whatever it is that you need to do, I want you to go do it. Work for Kaycee Quinn.”

Break the curse, I think, because if I say it aloud, Joules will get angry with me. But I think he’s cursed. I don’t know when it happened, but if he’s acting weird about Kaycee, then it must be Kaycee, right? But if I don’t let Joules go, then he won’t be able to do what he needs to do. If only you’d let me help you, you ass. But he won’t because he’d fear that my curse wouldn’t break.

“Lakelynn, I’m not as strong as you think I am. Joe is gone. You cannot leave me. Do you understand?”

I nod frantically at him, and then squeeze his hands back when he squeezes mine.

“Same goes for me, Joules. Don’t you leave me here by myself.”

“You won’t be by yourself,” Joules replies with a sad smile. “You’ll be with Tam.” He spits his name out and then shakes his head with a sigh. “He’s so lucky that he’s your Match. If he wasn’t I swear …”

“I believe it,” I tell him, and then I tug Joules by the hand into the kitchen. I release him to sit on a stool and go about scouring Tam’s food supply. “Let me make you breakfast, okay?” I pause with one hand on a cabinet door and glance over my shoulder at Joules. “I’m guessing that I won’t be seeing you for a little while?”

“I’ll give you until the end of the month to break the curse, and then I expect you to come home and bring your pop star fuckboy with you. If it isn’t broken by then, we’ll … I want us to be together.”

“Okay.” My throat is tight when I go back to searching through cabinets, but I tell myself it’s all going to be okay. It’s going to be fine.

But those thoughts? Each one has the sharp, metallic taste of a lie.