Page 2 of Golden Star

“Depends,” he says playfully. “Are you going to tell me your name?”

“I’m Sapphire.” I glance down at my wrist again. “Like my bracelet.”

“Except you’re far more beautiful.” He picks up his glass, and I stand there speechless as he gives the pink drink a try.

For a heartbeat, the chattering inside the bar fades. There’s just the two of us, here in this moment, strangers on the verge of something I can barely understand.

Something Iwantto understand.

“What about you?” I ask when he places the drink back down. “What’syourname?”

Before he can answer, the door slams open so loudly that everyone turns to look.

Matt.

My boyfriend—well,ex-boyfriend—strides in, his jaw set, his eyes blazing with that look that makes my stomach twist. Not in the good way it used to, but in that anxious, here-we-go-again kind of way.

“Larkin!” someone off to the side says Matt’s last name—one of the guys who used to play on the Presque Isle football team with him. “You made it!”

Matt ignores him as he pushes through the crowd, barely glancing at the dark-haired, silver-eyed man as he steps around the bar to stand next to me.

“Sapphire.” His eyes scan my body, as if he’s making sure no one else has touched it in the less than twenty-four hours since we broke up. “We need to talk.”

“Now’s not really a good time,” I say, but he reaches out and wraps his fingers around my wrist. Not hard, but with a possessive edge that makes my skin prickle.

“Please,” he says, and there’s a sort of desperation in his tone that makes my heart soften a bit. “It’s the last few minutes before the new year. I don’t want to end it like this.”

I’m hyperaware of everyone watching us—the silver-eyed stranger, Zoey, Matt’s old football buddies, and probably a dozen others.

“Fine,” I say, yanking my wrist free. “Talk.”

He pauses, as if he wasn’t expecting me to say yes so quickly.

Then, he begins.

“I want us to have a fresh start.” He leans closer, and his eyes are anxious—pleading. “Come home with me. Tonight.”

“I’m not moving in with you,” I say for what must be the hundredth time these past few months. “I’m not ready.”

“You’renevergoing to be ready.” He slams his hand onto the surface of the bar, and I jump, and then there’s a loudcrackas water sprays out of the service sink.

“Great,” I mutter, and I hurry to the sink, water getting all over me as I twist the valve, searching for that sweet spot to fix it.

“Let me help,” Matt says, and then he’s there, as if nothing happened, reaching forward to take over.

Before he can, I twist the valve shut, cutting off the spray. Water drips from my sleeves, chilling my skin, and I take a deep breath, steadying myself.

“I didn’t realize how handy you were,” he says in a strange mix of approval and irritation.

“It’s been happening a lot lately.” I wipe my hands on my soaked jeans, which doesn’t do much to dry them off. Luckily, I keep a spare pair in the back, in case of incidents like these. “We really need a new sink.”

His face softens a little, as if seeing me soaked and struggling pulls something sympathetic out of him. “You know I just want us to be together,” he says, gentler now. “I love you. I always have, and I always will.”

I love you, too,a part of me automatically wants to say—the part that’s been saying it to him since I was a starry-eyed freshman, and he was the most celebrated senior on the football team.

He’s waiting for me to say it back when the countdown begins, voices echoing through the room as people raise their glasses in excitement.

“Ten… nine… eight…”

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