She threw a look at him over her shoulder and walked back into the throng of dancers.
He let out a sigh. There was something to be said for being in a family who didn’t do dramatics. Of course, Tilly would be a mess if he did get bad news—
“Nope. Not thinking of that,” he muttered, scanning the crowd. “Now, where the hell did Bria go?”
Bria sipped the gin and tonic she’d grabbed from one of the party’s many bars after absconding from her…tete-a-tete with Owen. Thank God for the shadows crowding around her and the noisy partygoers doing some weird TikTok dance nearby. If she couldn’t hear her own thumping heart in her ears, maybe she could convince herself she wasn’t rattled by what had just happened. A dry snort tore at the back of her throat, and she took another sip.
Who was she kidding? She was rattled, damn it.
This was not meant to happen. When she’d approached the hot guy dressed with the stingray attached to his shirt, she hadn’t expected to be assaulted by memories of Simon’s betrayal a few minutes later.
Hell, she’d thought her ex’s betrayal had slid right off her until now. She hadn’t been that emotionally invested in him, and she’d accepted he was more goodtime beefcake than anything else. She didn’t even cry when she busted him and her physiotherapist doing their own type of stretching, bending, and moving together.
She’d told Elisa and Zeta that evening, and she’d been fine every day for a good week after. Totally fine. Whenever they’d asked how she was feeling, and if she was okay, she’d laughed and said she’d actually dodged a bullet.
But whoa, when the woman dressed like some kind of sex-kitten scientist interrupted her and Owen, clearly furious and emotionally hurt, it had all rushed back to her—the second she’d busted Simon with her physiotherapist—and…well, she’d basically bolted.
Not her finest hour. But she’d never been good with impulse control. She jumped out of airplanes for a living, after all, and she’d kneed Simon in the nuts right in front of the hot Aussie she was trying to impress.
Impulse control was not her strongest personal trait.
Of course, she normally wasn’t a chicken either. And taking off without any word to Owen was very much a cowardly thing to do. Another sip of gin and tonic slid down her throat, doing little to calm her nerves.
Okay, she needed to get her shit together. A Halloween party on the rooftop of her apartment building was not the place to have an emotional meltdown or an existential crisis, or whatever the hell she was having.
“You know what you’re having,” she muttered against the rim of her gin and tonic. “You know what this is. This is you liking Owen more than you should and freaking the fuck out about it.”
She scowled, downed the rest of her drink in one mouthful, and then pulled out her phone from the tiny pocket she’d stitched into the Scooby-Doo costume. She’d touch base with Elisa and Zeta, see how they were.
Okay, De Lucas. Safety check time. You know what to do. She included a crazy-face emoji to the text for good measure.
The term “safety check” required a specific response, a specific emoji. A secret code answer so when they were out with someone new, if one of them wasn’t okay, the other two would know straight away, locate them via their phone’s GPS, and go kick butt.
Zeta replied within a minute with her appropriate emoji: the frog face.
A few seconds after that, Elisa replied with hers: the artist pallette.
Bria smiled. They were both good. Probably having a great time.
And you’re not?
Hey! Zeta text back. Where’s yours?
“Shit,” she muttered. She’d forgotten her own emoji.
She tapped in the umbrella emoji, hit send, and slipped her phone back into her pocket. Her sisters were safe and well, which meant she couldn’t use them as an excuse for hiding in the shadows avoiding people.
That made zero sense. Since when did she avoid people?
Bria De Luca didn’t avoid people. Bria De Luca was the extrovert of the siblings, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. The freaking skydiving instructor.
Is Bria De Luca now also the wounded girl with trust issues?
“Fuck that for a joke.” She threw herself out of the shadows. “Watch out, Owen, here I come.”