Some wounds just don't heal.
And not all love is bulletproof.
In the aftermath of the disaster at Arrowsmith Institute for Excellency, Freya Arsov is left rattled to her core.
She had it all. Four best friends who would do anything for her. A boy...
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SHE WAS QUIET.
Julian kept glancing over his shoulder at Beatrice Jawara. The ceilings of the darkened Chelsea townhouse towered over their heads, strobe lights flashing across his cheekbones, the sharp scent of liquor mixed with sweat and Dior bathing past the dance floor, a rushing electronic beat pulsing along gyrating bodies, skin on skin, hands on skin, liquor stained lips on liquor stained lips.
It was a pretty familiar scene. Wealthy kids wasting their parents' money on a party.
His therapist told him he needed to do familiar things to move on. Go to a party, Larry had said. Julian had blinked across at the man like he'd sprouted horns.
Somewhere, in the back of his head, parties had become synonymous with bad things. And Freya.
He never walked into a party and didn't think of her. This was her place. She hated parties yet it was probably where he'd spent most of his teenage years with her.
He should have taken her to a fucking library instead. She didn't like parties, she liked libraries.
She didn't like parties, she liked drugs.
Julian was such an idiot.
Larry was also an idiot, he decided. He was a private consultant. The best of the best, insisted his mother. Worth every cent. He was full of shit.
His mother hadn't let a day go by this break without asking Jules about Freya. When he never managed to answer, she decided he should go to therapy. And Larry counselled him like he was a lovesick boy whose girlfriend broke up with him.
Go to a party, get over her.
Jules was certain his therapist didn't know shit about women— or, more accurately, shit about Freya Arsov.
Julian didn't need to get over an ex-girlfriend. Julian needed to not wake up every fucking morning thinking about how he should've pulled her right out of his father's wine cellar that they'd broken into when they were thirteen, slammed that door and locked it tight, shouldn't have shared that bottle of red with her and kissed her when it was empty, both of them choking on laughs, wine-drunk.
"Do you want a drink?" Beatrice's soft voice interrupted his thoughts.
Jules wanted to leave. He wanted to leave the moment he'd entered. But he'd invited her and he wasn't enough of an asshole to ditch her.
