"Oh, I knew the whole time," said Will, looking up from where he was batting away Isabelle, who was holding an icepack to his hand.
We were all gathered in the Kennedy's living room, two nights after I'd found Kai on his back lawn and kissed the living daylights out of him. I was snuggled into Kai's side, and his presence was comforting, because it was the first time we'd debuted our real relationship in public. Jameson was sitting on my other side, his legs thrown across mine; Jameson was perpetually lounging, and didn't believe in personal space. Will was in one of the armchairs, with Isabelle perched on the side with the icepack, ready to jump up and fulfil any task Will had been planning to undertake himself, most of which involved mixing drinks and passing them around. Seb and Cora had slotted in on the last couch, with virgin daquiris that Cora had made as Isabelle had proclaimed it against her religion to mix.
I was already five cocktails deep, a little dizzy and a lot giggly, enjoying the countless stupid debates and the relentless ribbing that always accompanied a hangout with my friends. Jameson had declared that it was an abomination to not see his friends on a Saturday night—and claimed that he may as well check himself into a nursing home if he spent the evening on the couch drinking alone—but I thought the real tragedy was that I hadn't seen our friends, properly, for weeks.
I hadn't seen any of our friends since I'd spent the night at Kai's, except for Isabelle, who'd been in the kitchen the following morning with her lips pursed in a poor approximation of disapproval that didn't hide her amusement. It probably hadn't helped that my hair was mussed, and I was still sporting my school skirt from the day before, hastily paired with one of Kai's discarded tees. To be fair, I didn't know Isabelle would be home. She'd spent the previous night at Cora's, and I had been too preoccupied to remember Cora's tendency to early rising.
At least I'd had the opportunity to apologise for my role in what Tommy had done to her years ago. She had listened to my effusive chorus of sorry for barely ten seconds before waving me off, and insisting that the good I'd done by dating her youngest brother and bringing her oldest brother back far outweighed my unwitting role in her heartbreak from years prior.
Besides, she'd said, Tommy had met his maker for that one; Will was a big guy, so that didn't surprise me even a little.
But apparently everyone knew about our little sleepover rendezvous, maybe because Isabelle's loose lips were almost as bad as Jamie's, and it was the latter who'd spent half of the day wiggling his eyebrows at us. He also brought up the topic of our relationship, with the customary disbelief at our audacity to keep a secret from him, which had prompted Will's revelation.
"You knew about me and Kai?" I asked Will. "Being a fake couple?"
Will nodded. By this point, he'd given up on trying to ice his own hand, and had submitted to Izzy's ministrations. His defence of Isabelle had inspired a certain level of hero-worship from his best friend's sister, who seemed to be pathologically intent on ensuring Will's return to health. If it had been anyone else, Will might've been ready to deal out a second round of blows, but Isabelle was so eager to repay him for his actions that he indulged it.
So, he used his spare hand to gesture between me and Kai. "Of course, I knew. Not to say he wasn't completely obsessed with you from day one. But you guys basically dry-humped on top of me, and he was still nervous to fucking text you the next day." Will shrugged. "I know Kai. He wouldn't be nervous unless he didn't know how you felt, and no one would not know how you felt unless the dry-humping was for show."
I was vaguely embarrassed, now, at my alcohol spurred decision to mack on with Kai at Rebecca's party, especially since I'd pretty much subjected Will to a front row seat. Not that I regretted it, because it was fucking awesome, but I still had the grace to blush at his recollection.
Kai raised the glass of sangria Isabelle had forced into the hand that wasn't preoccupied by being wrapped around me, offering a cheers to his best friend. "Thanks, mate."
Jameson did not have the same casual reaction to Will's revelation. "You knew?" he exclaimed. "And you told no one? Et tu, Brute!"
Will didn't look impressed. "If I told you, everyone would know. Which they evidently did not want, or they would have told you."
"I can keep a secret," Jameson protested, pointing at Sebastian, who clearly had not expected to be singled out and had been absorbed in a conversation with Cora. "Seb, tell him."
Seb responded to Jameson's meaningful glare with a shrug. "I mean, if you threaten him a lot, he can be okay. I usually suggest smashing every expensive bottle of whiskey at the mansion, or castration. I've found the first one seems to be oddly more effective."
"That's because I know that you're into dudes," said Jamie with a sage nod. "You would never destroy such an exemplary artifact of our people. But I know my bottles aren't safe."
Seb looked skyward, as if calling to some far-away gods for patience.
"But I can be a good secret keeper, if it's important. It's like, I didn't even tell anyone about the time you went to the Horny Corny with David Hillshore and he gave you that massive hick—"
Seb met Will's eyes, the latter of whom was sporting a decidedly disappointed frown. To Jameson's credit, he was on the way to hammered already, but that didn't have much impact; he was never going to be the group vault. Seb sighed. "He cannot keep a secret."
Will looked from one Delaney sibling to the other; Kai was muffling his laugh into the junction of my shoulder, and Isabelle was engrossed in her task of nursemaid. "And you're sure this is who you want to move in with?"
"Oh, you're such a bitch, Kennedy," Jameson said, sipping daintily from his own sangria, which he'd topped up with a hearty pour from his own vodka flask. "I am going to be a delightful roommate."
"Of course, you are," said Isabelle. "You're the one with the money."
"Who needs money when we have you to handle the furniture?"
Isabelle had built half the furniture in the Delaney house. I'd spent the past two nights with Kai there, helping to pack things away and label boxes, sorting through a lifetime of knick-knacks and old sporting trophies in between long rounds of kissing against the door of whatever dusty room we were tackling. It was as if we were making up for lost time; in the course of three months, I'd only kissed him three times, and two had been in public. Those two nights I'd stayed over, I took any available opportunity to plant my lips on his, which was most of the time. Isabelle took to throwing socks at us, whenever she caught us.
But the main source of pride, the one thing Kai wanted to show me, was all the pieces Isabelle had made. She loved to make furniture; her first had been the rickety table in the living room, the one she'd learned to make because she wanted them to have someplace to eat their dinner that wasn't the wine-stained couch.
Jameson was bankrolling a collection of high-quality wood for Izzy to work with to create the furniture for their new place. When the Delaneys had protested the cost, Jamie had scoffed. So, what, I should just pay someone else to make our furniture? I'm just buying the materials; you're doing all the labour for free. And trust me, my hands don't do manual labour; I will never put Ikea furniture together. To be more accurate, the Millers were funding it; Jamie was right, they wouldn't buy him a house, but they were willing to pay him a monthly stipend that would cover anyone's expenses.
If there was anyone more excited than Kai to move out, it was Isabelle. She'd spent the entirety of the past few days picking out the colour scheme for the apartment, and designing all the furniture she planned to install. Isabelle was usually laid back, but I suspected that when it came to living with boys, she was going to be a slave driver.
"So true," said Isabelle. "I'm going to do all the planning in our house. Since both of you are terrible at making plans."
Jameson sat upright. "How am I terrible?"
"Your plan to get Madeleine to hook up with you was to just go to her workplace and buy drinks until she noticed you," said Izzy.
"And?"
Isabelle raised an eyebrow. "And Madeleine believes in playing hard to get. So, you just got absolutely hammered, and she practically had to carry you home."
I laughed, my head tilted onto Kai's shoulder, remembering Madeleine's hysterics as she recounted Jamie's first attempt to strike up a romance with her. Madi and Jamie were still engaged in their casual romance; in the few hours I'd left Kai's to attend my work shift, I'd caught them wrapped together in one of the storerooms. Neither of them bothered to look even vaguely embarrassed. They were too similar; they both looked incredibly pleased with their performance.
Kai didn't seem to even be listening to our friends and their bickering. He was engrossed in a quest that I'd undertaken over the past few days; touching me anywhere he could respectably get his hands on. Nothing that would make our friends uncomfortable; we'd already garnered a reputation for inappropriate flirting, and nothing was more annoying than having friend too obsessed with each other to be decent company. But that didn't stop Kai from running his fingertip up and down the soft skin of my inner elbow, or tracing his short nails around the circle of my knee.
It made me shiver, though, and I saw him smile softly when I did, just out of the corner of my eye.
Jameson was unwilling to accept this assessment of himself. "I got her eventually, though."
Seb snorted. "Only once she came up with the plan and decided you were worth her time."
Jameson shook his head. "I am aghast at the allegations you all level against me. Besides, I am hardly the worst at making plans here."
"True," Isabelle accepted. "That honour would go to my other housemate."
Kai looked up from where he had been absorbed by tracing the lines of my palm with his finger, the next stop in his route to memorising every inch of my skin. "Me?"
"Yes, you. I can't believe you guys were faking it," Isabelle said, with a shake of her head. "All for revenge on Sydney and Tommy Aster. That's the stupidest fucking plan I've ever heard."
"You framed him for drug use," Kai pointed out. "That's far more drastic."
"I exposed him for drug use," Isabelle corrected, and she looked pleased at her ingenuity. I would never have expected the angelic Isabelle Delaney to be so vicious; then again, I'd always said she was crazy. In the best possible way. "You can't frame someone for something they're actually doing. Besides, that plan was awesome. You should get me to plan all of your revenge in the future. We want tangible results, people!"
Will shook his head. "Remind me to never make you mad, Buttercup."
Isabelle pointed at him. "Words to live by, Kennedy."
"I do think it's unfair that you're calling Kai's plan stupid," Cora said. "Kai was evidently only going along with it because he wanted an excuse to flirt with Valerie. She's clearly the one with a stupid plan."
Jamie laughed with delight. "Hear, hear!" he chanted, raising his glass to the sky, and winking at me when the rest of our friends lifted their arms in unison.
I gaped in betrayal. "C'mon, it wasn't that bad."
"Yes, it was," our friends chorused, before bursting into tipsy laughter at the comprehensive dismay on my face. And Cora added, "I almost didn't believe it when I found out, because that's how stupid it was."
"Cora!" I exclaimed. "How dare you?"
She gave me a little pinky wave, and I gave her the finger, with a scrunched nose and feigned glare that betrayed how I really felt; so full of light and life and happiness that I could barely believe it. I hadn't seen her since she'd dropped me at Kai's that afternoon, but there was not an ounce of jealousy in her countenance when she embraced us both this morning, smiling as she exclaimed how happy she was for us. I was certain her feelings for Kai wouldn't vanish within a day, but every time that I'd called her in the last two days, she'd insisted upon her happiness, and told me that she would cut off fingers if I kept asking about her feelings.
Cora was one tough cookie. That didn't mean I'd ever make out with Kai in front of her; not that he would ever know how she'd felt, or did feel, about him.
"She's a little right, you know," Kai whispered in my ear. I shivered when his lips grazed the shell, and felt them curl in response. He relished the effect he had on me, just as I revelled in the effect I had on him. "I did only agree because I wanted to flirt with you. And that's what makes it not a stupid plan; any plan that requires flirting with you is my favourite kind of plan."
I leaned into him, soaking in his warmth and the now-familiar curve of his body against mine, watching our friends with the realisation that it was not just Kai and I who were forever, it was all of us.
Even as my idiotic friends were enthralled by Cora, who regaled them with stories of my stupidity, and they all chimed in with their own Valerie-is-so-stupid stories from the past few months. All the moments from our fake relationship that, in hindsight, were blatantly, painfully real. The kiss in the Horny Corny, the display at Jack Heath's party, Kai and I twined in the guest bedroom of Jameson's house. Cora was in hysterics as she recounted my attempt at blackmail, pitiful as it had been, and offering suggestions for Jamie's new drinking game, starring Valerie's ridiculous plan.
But as she recalled all the moments that had led me here, to this moment, I couldn't have said any decision I made was stupid. Because all of those moments had led me here, wrapped in the arms of the most beautiful boy I'd ever known, inside and out, surrounded by my favourite people. So when she told the stories, one by one, it was not embarrassment but nostalgia that inflated my chest.
I couldn't help the stupid smile that spread across my face, even as I shook my head at Cora, who stuck her tongue out at me, and smiled. I leaned up to whisper in Kai's ear. "I'm honestly going to kill her one day."
***
I can't believe I got to write this book. I've started hundreds of stories in my life, without any real intention of finishing them. But you guys fell in love with these people, and through this book, I grew to fall in love with them as well. Thank you for sticking with Kai and Valerie; after writing about Jace and Lena, I never thought I would grow to love another couple so much, but these two have proven me wrong. Kai and Valerie are so completely different to Jace and Lena, but I don't love them any less. Thank you for loving them with me.
Please stick around. I'd love it if you guys could follow me; I have some exciting projects coming up, and I'd love to let you know about them when they arrive. I also have some very fun bonus material incoming (an epilogue of sorts, plus a chapter in Kai's POV).
If you have any questions about the book, the writing process, my thoughts on the characters or the plot or any of your own thoughts, please pop them here! I'm going to do a Q+A in a few days, and I'd love to answer some of your questions.
I can't believe I have to say goodbye. But MAYBE I don't actually have to say goodbye completely.