Page 17 of Mastered By Bliss

Squid stares across the street, scanning the crowd.“No.”

All three of us are looking, and I feel like an idiot.“I was just seeing things, I swear.Let’s move on, okay?”

Dmitri’s frown accompanies us all the way to the ramen restaurant.We walk in and I inhale the scents of broth, cumin, garlic, and sage.It’s the kind of place where you order at a digital kiosk, grab your food at the counter, and sit down.Nice and casual.

We pay for Squid’s meal.He sits nearby with a bowl, taking methodical spoonfuls, his pale green eyes watchful.Dmitri isn’t much different, his expression wary as he eats.

I set down my spoon.“I ruined our date.”

“What?”Dmitri pauses, his spoon halfway to his mouth.“No, you didn’t.”

“We’re not even talking.We’re looking for someone who isn’t there—who was never there.I looked up Billings online the other day, curious about some stuff Claudia mentioned.”

“And?”

“I didn’t find much.But it planted his picture in my head, and I think that’s why I saw him.”

Dmitri takes out his phone.“I wonder if anyone else has spotted him in town.He’s a celebrity, right?”

“Yeah, but…”

He scrolls through some search results.“Shit.”

“What?”

“A couple of gossip sites have reported him in town.Harvey Billings Spotted in San Esteban with Daughter Vanessa.‘Sources wonder if Billings is scoping out the site to film a new series.’”

“Maybe he’s here, maybe he isn’t.But let’s move on, okay?”I don’t want to talk about it anymore.Harvey Billings should have no place at our table.“Danica said you had a big family meeting today.How’d that go?”

He groans.“Heavy.Granddad laid on the guilt about not wanting to die and leave a ‘fractured family’ behind.Mom and Milana apologized, we all hugged it out.More importantly, Patrick is in Las Vegas.And he can fucking stay there, for all I care.”

My heart squeezes with sympathy.Dmitri’s mad, yeah, but he loved his cousin.He loves his family.

I stare down at the noodles in my bowl.“You don’t have to stay mad at him for my sake, you know.”

“What?”The sharpness in Dmitri’s tone has me looking back up.His eyes are narrowed in anger.“He assaulted you, Leah.That’s not okay.Ever.I don’t even know if there’s any coming back from that.Like, how could someone make up for that in his lifetime?How can he redeem himself?I don’t think he can.”

I try to make it into a joke.“Well, if you feelthatstrongly about it…”

Dmitri isn’t amused.“Leah.I know you want to make light of it.But in all seriousness, it was bad, what he did.The worst.And it’s up to you how you want to deal with it, but I can’t pretend to be okay with it.”

“I’m not okay with it.”I sigh, chastened.Gage called me out on the same thing, after I sprained my wrist.“But I also don’t want Patrick to have a place at our date, either.Not him, not Harvey Billings.”

“Then who?”

“Right now?Just you, just me.”

“And Gage?”

I glare.“Right now—just you and me.”

“How about later?”He waggles his eyebrows, the absolute dork.

“I guess we’ll have to see.”I need to steer us off the topic of Gage.I don’t want to talk about the “proposal,” if we can even call it that.Amarry meafter sex doesn’t count, does it?

Except Gage was serious.

Dmitri beats me to the conversation shift.“Tell me about the Youth Arts program.How’s it going?”

---