Brothers of Paradise Series

A tall figure appears by my side, a hand resting lightly on my lower back. Rhys says something in French that I don’t need to interpret to understand. It’s a polite but decisive fuck off.

Straw hat guy grins again and steps back, hands raised. And when the music picks up again, well… Rhys and I are the ones left dancing.

His hands are light on me, barely touching, like he doesn’t know if he has touching rights. I don’t know if I have them either, but his shoulder is firm under my hand.

“I can role-play as a boyfriend when I have to,” he says darkly.

“How chivalrous.”

“You okay? He wasn’t too forward?”

“Well, I couldn’t understand what he was saying, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.” Around us, dancers are moving in tune with the beat. And nothing, not the sweat on my skin, not even Rhys’s perpetually bad attitude, can take me down off the high I’m on. I smile up at him. “This place is fantastic.”

Rhys is quiet for a beat. He leads me slower than the beat, perhaps not as used to dancing, but he makes up for it with his physicality. “Where did you learn to dance like that?”

“I danced growing up.” Pulling at his arm, I spin underneath it, returning to his side in the next second. “It was my first passion.”

He doesn’t respond. I look up at his jaw, still tense. Is it always tense? “What?” I tease. “Surprised I have some form of marketable skill?”

He snorts. “Truthfully, yes.”

“You don’t pull any punches, do you?”

Another beat of silence. “I prefer honesty,” he says. We sway softly side to side, not really dancing, not really standing still.

“Even if it’s brutal?”

“Especially if it’s brutal.”

Nodding, I spin again, unable to entirely resist. “Let me ask you something then.”

Wariness. “All right.”

“I get the feeling that you’d rather photograph endangered species or bombing sites or perhaps just anyone who isn’t me. Is that true? I just want to know what I’m dealing with here.”

“I don’t prefer shooting models, no.”

“Then how come you accepted this job?” It’s an honest, serious question.

We sway to a complete standstill. “I prefer brutal honesty,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I’m an open book.”

“I’d never confuse you for that,” I murmur.

A twitch of his lips before they stretch into his sardonic smile. “Well,” he says. “How about we just agree that we don’t like each other very much and leave it at that?”

It must be clear that I don’t like that, because he chuckles. “You were the one who said that, in New York. All we have to do is stay professional.”

“You’re right.” My hands slip from his, dropping to my side. “And great collaborations have been built on worse.”

Rhys

Flying is a bitch.

It’s just not logical. Our species didn’t evolve wings for a reason, and nowhere is that fact more obvious to me than when I’m halfway up in the heavens and surrounded by clouds. It’s unnatural. Worse, it’s deranged. And yet the collective world has somehow agreed that this is now the preferred mode of travel and woe to anyone who’d have preferred a good old steamship.

I look down at my watch. A minute has passed since I last looked, and we’ve only been weightless for an hour. What joy. I push my chair back and close my eyes, breathing through my nose. The beginning of a flight is always the hardest. Thank God for the extra space in first class.

“These peanuts are very salty,” Ivy comments at my side. “Did you know they always add far more salt and spices to airplane food than normal? Apparently human tastebuds are desensitized at these altitudes.”

First class isn’t quite spacious enough, though, because we’ve ended up next to each other. I suspect that I’ll find the same pattern emerge when I look at all of our future travels. No doubt Ben thought he was doing me a favor.

I don’t open my eyes, and I definitely don’t open my mouth.

“Oh,” Ivy says. “Sorry. Are you busy brooding?”

“I don’t brood.”

“You’re the textbook definition of a brooder.”

“I am? Show me the textbook, then.”

“See? That’s exactly what a textbook brooder would say, while pondering the questions of life and it’s endless miseries.”

“I don’t ponder life’s endless miseries.” A small part of my brain registers just how petulant my response sounds, but the other is too busy being annoyed by Ivy Hart. I’m not brooding. I’m busy surviving our five-hundred-miles-per-hour hurtle through the Earth’s lower stratosphere.

“Its pointlessness, then? Its inequalities? How unfair it is that you’re forced to fly to Europe together with someone you find marginally annoying so you can shoot a campaign worth several thousands of dollars?”

“You’re wrong.”

“About which part?”

“I find you far more than just marginally annoying. Especially right now.” But my grip on the armchair has loosened, somewhat. At least her inane babble gives me something to focus on.

“You can’t argue and brood at the same time. Which one do you want to do the most?”

“Brood,” I say. And then, “Damn it, I’m not a brooder, Ivy.”

“If you say so.” Her voice brightens and I open my eyes, too curious not to see. She’s scrolling through the movies on her screen. She stops at one that’s awful. I’m talking would-make-Shakespeare-spin-in-his-grave-at-the-fate-of-the-entertaintment-industry-kind of awful. “This one is my favorite,” she says, and apparently there’s something worse than argumentative Ivy. It’s chirpy Ivy.

“All right, now you’re the one picking a fight,” I say.

“How am I doing that?”NôvelDrama.Org exclusive content.

I raise an eyebrow. “That movie? It’s pure shit, filled to the brim with clichés. I bet I could predict every single plot point.”

“So you haven’t seen it?”

“I don’t need to. It writes itself.”