Page 18 of On the Edge

Petra pulls back from the hug, looks me in the eye, then glances over to Sierra. “You’re right, she looks like she needs a girls’ night.”

I feel the heat creep into my cheeks as I glance over at Sierra, still not sure where we stand after that earlier tiff about Nate. “You’ve been talking about me?”

Petra rolls her eyes. “Not like that, sweetie. Sierra just mentioned that you were missing Marco and were also pretty stressed about work. I need all the details—your Italy trip, and Nate’s return.” She raises her eyebrows like she wants me to spill everything about the last five weeks right there on the sidewalk in front of the bouncer and a dozen strangers.

I glance back and forth between them. “That requires drinks,” I say before I turn and walk through the doors, then edge my way through the crowd.

We find Lauren near the bar, where she’s managed to hold down a small table with four stools. “About time,” she says over the noise of the music and the crowd as she pushes three glasses toward us.

“What are we drinking?” Petra asks.

“Vodka tonic with lime,” Lauren says.

“Bleh.” Sierra fake gags. “Could you just give me something sweet with my alcohol, please?”

“You get the next round and you can choose the drinks, eh?” Petra says. “For now, learn to enjoy your vodka without covering up the taste.”

“Enjoy vodka?” Sierra looks toward the ceiling. “Spoken like a true Russian.”

“Only half Russian, butfullycapable of drinking like one,” Petra boasts as she plays up her accent. It’s true though, she can drink any of us under the table, any night. “Okay,” she says, turning toward me after taking a big sip of her drink. “We want to hear all about Italy!”

“Was it as amazing as it looked?” Lauren asks. “Because those pictures ...” She pretends to swoon off her chair.

I give them the highlights of the trip, and appreciate that Sierra doesn’t look bored given that she’s already heard most of these details. Then I pull out my phone to show them a few pictures I didn’t post on social media—photos of Marco’s gorgeous country house with the amazing stone pool that felt like it was built into the mountainside.

“Whoa.” Petra puts her hand on my wrist to stop me from sliding over the next photo. “Who is that?”

She peers closer.

“You mean Christian?” I ask.

In the photo, Marco is sitting back on a lounge chair, his very tan chest on display, and looking over at his best friend. Christian is sitting on the side of his lounge chair, facing Marco, the profile of his entire body is on display. With his sun-lightened hair and his bronze skin, he looks like he walked off a yacht in the Mediterranean, which he had done only about a week before this photo was taken.

“Who is Christian?” Petra asks, letting his name roll off her tongue in a sensual purr as she zooms in on the photo.

“Marco’s best friend. You’ve never met him?”

“Honey, where would I have met him?”

“I don’t know, he’s with Marco all the time. Comes to a ton of the races. I guess I thought you might have met him back when we were all racing.”

“I’d remember if I’d met a sex god like that,” she insists and we all laugh. Petra has no filter.

“You know,” Sierra says, leaning closer. “He actually kind of looks like Nate.”

We turn toward her with wide eyes and open mouths.

“Nope,” Petra says decisively. “We are not going there.”

“Going where?” Sierra asks, her face full of confusion, like she doesn’t understand what she just said.

“To the place where I say he looks like a sex god and you say he looks like Nate,” Petra replies, her voice slightly hostile.

“I’m sure that’s not what Sierra meant,” I say, slinging my arm around Petra and whispering “down girl” in her ear, which makes her lips quirk down at one end.

“No, that definitely isn’t what I meant,” Sierra confirms. “Just that he’s got the same hair color and cut as Nate, and look at that straight nose and his jawline. From this profile, he just looks a bit like Nate.”

Okay, so she wasn’t commenting on the fact that both Nate and Christian are in insanely good shape. Bodies of sex gods and all that.

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