Page 9 of Don't Date Your Nemesis

She wrinkled her perfect nose. “Those little toasts with fish eggs? No, thank you. Oh look, champagne.” She plucked a fresh glass from a passing server and glided away to network.

I should have felt something. Attraction, interest, or anything. But nada. Instead, I felt like I was playing a role in a movie I hadn’t auditioned for. Thankfully, it would end soon, and I’d go home in my million-dollar mansion to watch Netflix alone on my bed.

Not alone. I could eat zero-calorie mango ice-cream. Yum.

My phone buzzed.

Xavier: How’s it going with Valentina? Getting good photos?

She’s lovely. I feel nothing.

Xavier: That’s the spirit. Remember, you’re cleaning up your image.

By pretending to date someone I’m not actually dating?

Xavier: It’s called strategy, Liam. Look it up.

Rolling my eyes at the last text, I pocketed my phone and surveyed the party. Ethan and Kiara were in the center of everything, laughing, glowing, and surrounded by people who loved them. This was what normal looked like.

What healthy looked like.

The elevator doors opened across the rooftop, and I turned automatically, expecting another batch of late arrivals.

And then I saw her.

Deepika Sharma, seventeen years after the pool incident, thirteen years after the cake disaster, ten years after I had humiliated her in a closet and never apologized.

She was wearing a deep golden dress that caught the light, her hair longer than I remembered, and on her arm was⁠—

Marcus. Marcus fucking Reynolds, Hollywood’s current golden boy and looking every inch the leading man in his perfectly tailored suit.

Of fucking course. Of course, she had brought a date. Of course, he has blond hair (my blond hair was better and healthier). Of course, he fucking looked like he stepped out of a cologne advertisement.

Our eyes met across the rooftop, and I watched her entire body go rigid. Time slowed, only for a moment, before she looked away.

She turned to say something to Marcus, who laughed. It was a warm, genuine sound that carried across the party, making my bones crackle.

Why the fuck am I annoyed by the golden boy?

“Is that…?” Valentina had reappeared at my side. “Oh my god, is that Deepika Sharma? I love her in ‘The Last Goodbye.’ She was robbed at the Globes.”

“Mmm,” I managed.

“You know her?”

“Sort of. We grew up together.”

“How fun! You should introduce me.”

Fun, indeed. This was going to be so much fun.

Across the rooftop, Deepika was greeting Kiara with an enormous hug, laughing at something, pointedly not looking in my direction.

Seventeen years of unpleasant history, one rooftop, an engagement party, and a hundred guests who did not know they were about to witness either a reconciliation or a murder.

I finished my champagne in one swallow because being an adult was overrated.

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