Page 15 of The Pucking Date
Like he and Allegra had already merged into some smug, country-club monolith. Like they were legacy stock I hadn’t been born into.
It was polite code for“you didn’t go to the right prep school, your family tree doesn’t have a Latin motto, and your mother knows how to cook her own rice.”
Not from his world? Please.
I’ve spent my whole life navigating rooms filled with men twice as arrogant and half as useful as Chad Vanderbilt. I can hold my own at a press conference, in a boardroom, or during a post-game bloodbath. But apparently, because I didn’t descend from colonial stock or summer in Nantucket, I didn’t make the cut.
And the kicker? Turns out my younger brother Adamdoeshave a Latin motto.Tattooed on his butt.
Fortes fortuna adiuvat—fortune favors the bold—in thick, elegant script. Got it in Vegas after the Defenders clinched a playoff spot and he lost a bet to Nate and Finn. Now it’s immortalized just above his left cheek like some Ivy League frat house crest…if that crest were mooning you in a hot tub.
So technically? Wedohave a family motto.
As if being the daughter of first-generation immigrants was something to be ashamed of. Yes, my father’s parents came from Czechoslovakia. Yes, my mother’s parents emigrated from China. And yes, they built careers, raised a family, and gave me every damn tool I needed to walk into any room and hold my own.
It’s the fucking American dream.
But apparently, that wasn’t enough for Chad Vanderbilt. So good riddance to him and his oysters and his ice sculptures. And to his world. Because I’m not interested in begging for a seat at someone else’s table. Especially not when I’m busy building my own.
So there you have it, folks. The Chad Experiment was a failure.
And that’s when Finn O’Reilly found me in Montreal. All the rules I’d built to protect myself didn’t just bend in Montreal, they shattered. Because he didn’t just look at me like he couldn’t walk away.
He looked at me like hesawme.
And somehow, he got close enough to catch me.
I can tell he’s waiting me out. Biding his time until I come to my senses. But I need that night to mean nothing. It’s the only way I stay whole.
Now I’m in a guest room, wearing his shirt, replaying the way his eyes darkened when he saw me in it, like I was still his and he didn’t appreciate the time off.
Tomorrow, I’ll pretend this never happened. I’ll be Jessica Novak again—controlled, untouchable, safe.
But tonight, wearing his shirt like a confession I’m not ready to make, I know I’m lying to myself. Because the way he looked at me? Like I was his biggest mistake and his deepest want rolled into one? That look is going to haunt me until I either run again or stop running altogether.
2
ITSY BITSY TEENY WEENIE RED BIKINI
FINN
It’s late afternoon, and I’m lying on the sand pretending I’m here for the sun and not the vision in red that’s been haunting my dreams for seven weeks. Wesley’s passed out beside me, probably dreaming of whatever heartbreak drove him from Alaska to the big leagues. Dmitri’s nearby, restless energy radiating off him as he tracks his daughter’s chaos down the beach.
And me?
I’m doing what I shouldn’t be doing.
Watching Jessica Novak wearing a ruinous excuse for a bathing suit.
She’s sprawled across a striped towel, sun-drunk and smug, owning the beach without lifting a finger—long, toned legs crossed at the ankle, one knee cocked just enough to make a man forget how to walk. That damn scrap of fabric? Pure weaponry, sculpted to hug every curve of her tall, athletic frame.
She’s readingThe Three-Body Problem, because of course she is—Chinese sci-fi, quantum chaos, big-brain stuff.Jessica Novak doesn’t just look like she could ruin your life in a sentence, she probably brought footnotes.
Her sister’s kneeling beside her, rubbing sunscreen across her back, laughing at something Jessica mumbles from behind her book, casual, innocent, completely misleading.
But it’s not innocent.
Jessica arches into the touch, slow, lazy, blissfully unaware she’s the center of every filthy fantasy I’ll be replaying for the next decade. Her neck tilts just enough to bare that maddening curve where her shoulder meets her throat. Her spine is a clean, perfect line of temptation, red strings untied and trailing at her sides, nothing short of an invitation.
