I was going to see the boys. Why were they even here? Weren’t they busy being famous and all?

My heart was beating rapidly, and my stomach was twisting in nerves. This was too sudden. I could hardly think, and what I was thinking was repeating itself in my head.

Carter.

Carter.

Carter.

Over and over again that name.

Was he here too?

Of course he is.

When we reached the top, I spotted a long line of suitcases against the hallway wall. There were some pinks ones too.

What the hell did that mean exactly?

My vision was spinning as she led me to the living room, and before I even looked at any of them, my skin prickled, like I could feel his presence without seeing him. Totally impossible, but the feeling was undeniably there, stirring my insides into a frenzy.

“Leah’s here!” Marlena proudly proclaimed, like I was some Queen that’d just arrived.

The first person I saw was Rome in between the kitchen entrance and some dark haired girl beside him that oddly resembled Melanie. For a split second, I thought it was Melanie, until I noticed her unusually plump lips, fake boobs, and orange spray tan. It was a completely insipid version of my best friend.

Without wanting to, I gaped at him in shock. Rome looked completely different from his grungy looking days. He was dressed in stylish rocker clothes. Like Leo, he was tatted up, both sleeves done, depicting some sort of abstract design that looked very impressive. A super expensive watch adorned his wrist, its giant face gleaming under the bulbs of the chandelier overhead. He was all… money. Dripping in it, actually. His green eyes looked at me warmly, and he came bounding in my direction, his girl following him closely behind.

“Leah!” he said, throwing his giant arms around me in a tight hug, bathing me in his expensive cologne as he gave me a sloppy kiss on the side of my head. “Holy shit, look at you, wearing pink like a girl would.”

“Hey, well, I sort of am a girl,” I replied lightheartedly, when really I was feeling suddenly conscious. It was laundry day back at the condo, and I had only the clothes at the very bottom of my drawers: oversized pink top of the most generic kind and a pair of jean shorts that had seen better days a thousand years ago. Compared to Rome’s girl, who was immaculate in her brand name summer dress, I was dressed like a sack of shit.

I’m just being comparative. Not that it was a sack of shit in my eyes.

He pulled away and immediately gestured to the girl. “This is my girlfriend, Alyssa. Alyssa, this is Leah, the one I’ve told you lots about.”

He talked about me?

He caught my curious look and quickly added, “All good things, Leah. All good things.”

I forced a smile on my face; it wasn’t the Joker one from before, but it was still forced as fuck. “Hi, nice to meet you,” I told Alyssa.

She scanned me up and down for a moment, her gaze lingering distastefully on my old purse. Ah, yes, the look of a girl assessing me, doing her own comparing. Probably trying to evaluate how much of a threat I was, and I certainly wasn’t by the end of her perusal. She didn’t look very impressed.

“Nice to meet you too,” she replied slowly, like I was five years old and hanging on to every word. Obviously, I was just a peasant, fortunate to even be chatting to such a goddess.

Excuse me while I count my lucky stars.

“Rome’s said… lots of things about you to Molly and me.”

I stilled just then. The girl was friends with Molly? What, the same Molly that Carter was apparently screwing? The same long-legged Molly from all over the tabloids?

I was dumbfounded. I just stared at her incredulously, and she must have wondered why because her brows came together in question.

“Right,” I eventually muttered.

If they expected me to make conversation, I had nothing on me. My mind was blank. It was an absolutely empty, desolate canvas that was more focused on the fact I didn’t have the courage yet to look at the rest of the room where I knew he was.

“Leah, I have the coffee table filled with snacks and treats,” Marlena then said. “Harold’s out getting dinner. I didn’t have time to cook after the surprise. Help yourself, darling.”

“Thanks,” I told her as my eyes automatically wandered to the coffee table.

I saw two pairs of legs a foot away from the table. One pair was slender and long, tanned and smooth. The other was in a pair of jeans, and one leg was bopping up and down, restlessly. With incredible hesitation, I glimpsed up and saw him. My breath left my lungs and I trembled as my eyes connected with the blues of his.

There was no emotion on his face.

That damn face that did things to me now in the same way they did years ago.

I felt like someone had stepped on my chest and was squeezing the life out of me. He looked so good, so defined. And while my glimpse was barely half a second long, I saw all of him with incredible depth. Casually dressed in a basic tee and jeans, he was much bigger than I thought, and I knew straightaway those shirtless pictures of him online were certainly not created in the land of Photoshop.

I tried as best as I could to look casual, while my gaze then shifted to the girl sitting next to him. It was indeed the Molly I was thinking of with those endless long legs and conditioned auburn curls. She looked at me with bored interest.

“That’s Molly,” Rome then said, catching my gaze. It felt silly he was introducing me to a celebrity, like I had no idea who she was. If I’d stuck with not stalking Carter online, I wouldn’t have known who she was at all. But all I saw, as I stared at her, were the ridiculous fucking photoshoots she’d done. I’m pretty sure the most shocking one involved her dressed in a scantily-clad pig’s costume – try to imagine that – while tied and roasted over a pit of fire. It wasn’t real fire, of course, and whoever added that part in needed to be fired.

I still to this day have no idea what the message of that photoshoot was. But some artsy-fartsy people, right? Nowadays, it could’ve been about fucking lotion or something ridiculously random like that.

“Hi,” I said to her, seemingly filled with words today…

She forced a smile on her face before looking down at her cell phone, sliding its screen with her manicured nails. At least she wasn’t assessing me. Maybe I just wasn’t assessment material looking the way I was.

Deflated and confused by this entire situation, I turned away from them and clasped my hands together. With nerves raging through me, I stared about the room, wondering where the rest of the guys were. I could use a distraction, and I was sure I’d feel more relaxed talking to them instead.