Cafes were extremely crowded on Saturday evenings, but there was this one quiet place almost in the middle of nowhere. Rhys plopped down our stuff on the corner-most table.

I sat right beside him and melted instantly in his arms. He signalled the waiter to bring two coffees but I couldn’t be sure since I had my head in his shoulder.

“What happened?” he asked me, but his voice was smug rather than concerned.

“Just tired!” I mumbled. He only pulled me closer and didn’t bother me much. His hand found mine somewhere under the table, and he pressed his fingers against the length of mine.

His hand was soft, warm and it felt like a soft fuzzy blanket on a cold evening.

“Your hands are so small,” words escaped his lips and he encaged mine in his. Hands, I mean.

I pressed my entire palm against his, comparing our size. His hands were huge, making me feel like a kid. I didn’t mind a bit.

His fingers encircled around my wrist and he smiled at how his one hand could easily enclose both my wrists.

I tried but I couldn’t enclose his one hand in mine, and before I could make any comment or tease him, the waiter returned with two coffees.

He had ordered a cappuccino for me and hot coffee for himself.

I let his hands go and gripped my glass. He sipped his coffee with one hand and gripped my waist tightly with another. It was a protective hold, one I didn’t know he was capable of.

He pulled me closer and I smiled up at him. He used the sleeves of his sweatshirt to wipe my mouth, which I was certain had the reminants of the cappuccino that I was drinking.

I chuckled and he went back to drinking his coffee.

“When I go back home, what am I going to tell my mom about why I didn’t go to the party,”

“Tell her you were on a date with a charming young man,” he replied, looking down at me playfully.

“Oh, is that so?” I asked, ignoring the butterflies in my stomach. “Was I on a date though?” I questioned, matching his teasing tone. His hand on my waist lowered the tiniest bit, and his glare changed from playful to possessive.

“We should just get to the party,” he spoke drowning his cup of coffee and getting up. I rolled my eyes but followed the suite.

It would take us a while to see each other that way, and I was willing to wait.

The walk was longer than I had anticipated, perhaps due to the drop in the temperature. I wasn’t cold, I was uncomfortable. Without Rhys’s hand giving me warmth, I felt like a lizard at night.

Rhys noticed me shaking, but kept his mouth shut. I wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t care or because he didn’t know what to say, but either way, I was hurt.

Luckily, my hurt was about to be vapourized, and I didn’t know it.

Rhys had me enter the party before him, just so no one would think that we’d come together and pair us. He wanted his reputation intact, and that was him doing just that. Perhaps he should’ve once considered how I would feel, but okay, shit happens.

The smell of alcohol hit me as soon as I entered the house. My mother was fine with me attending the party as long as I got back by twelve. We lived in a safe neighbourhood, so, my mother wasn’t worried much.

I was handed a pong glass overflowing with beer. I hated beer, I had always considered myself too sophisticated for beer, so I handed it over to some drunk guy passing by.

I spotted Daniel with Rivika near a fountain, and they were having one of the most light-hearted discussions I had ever witnessed.

By the time I reached there, Daniel was covered in Rivika’s drink and she was storming away.

“What happened?” I asked, pulled out a handkerchief and wiping the drink off Daniel’s shoulders. Fortunately, his jacket was in his hands, so the expensive pure leather remained unharmed.

“I don’t really know, ma’am,” Daniel had this sweet habit of calling girls ‘ma’am’. He was so polite at times that I really wondered what century he was born in. “One minute we were having a normal conversation and the next, I told her she was looking like a gorgeous young lady and here I am…”

“You did not just call Rivika of all people, ‘lady’!” I chuckled, dabbing gently at his wet face. He smiled at me and I shivered-but not cause of the cold, rather cause of the sparkles that the smile sent through me.

“Why aren’t you wearing a jacket?” Daniel asked, lifting my arm and putting a sleeve of his jacket through it and repeating the same with my other arm until I looked like a coat hanger carrying his jacket.

He flashed me another smile, and this one was most likely reserved for how I looked in his oversized jacket. “Don’t throw your drink at me, but you’re looking cute,” he joked, his eyes darting to my drink-less hands for safety.

He smacked his lips before putting a light arm on my back and guiding me towards the snacks bar. “Have some food, it’ll warm you up,”

“I am not cold!” I argued but he wasn’t having it, I felt so damn warm in his jacket that I didn’t want to risk losing it. I pulled the zipper of his jacket up, and started eating. Daniel disappeared to where Rivika was, probably to convince her to forgive him.

He was decent guy, but sometimes the ladies didn’t want all decent. They wanted hot man in suits who could be a gentleman in public and whispered dirty promises in private.

Daniel was gorgeous, an angel sent from the heaven, probably a knight from the fourteenth century. He was just the kind to love girls right, but we got to make some bad decisions before finding the right guy, right?

Right.

Rhys didn’t join me for the rest of the night. He was hanging out with his friends, and I was with mine.

We were all gathered around by the pool. It was too cold to take a dip, so we were just sitting, chatting up. That was until a certain bitch by the name of Angeline showed up and emptied her drink on my head before giggling, “Nerd alert,”

“At least I won’t have to become a prostitute to feed my stomach, bitch,” I retorted, smiling. Thanks to my parents, I had gotten pretty good at controlling my temper, so, I just pushed people until they lost it, which they did, once they realized how unaffected I usually remained. “But, then again,” I added, looking up and down at her body with a scrutinizing gaze. “Who’d pay to touch that,”

Hoot broke out around us and Angeline reached out to grab another glass from a watcher’s hand and threw the contents at my face. I jerked my head back, and let it fall all over my chest making it look insanely hot. Some guys whistled around us and I threw them a sultry look before turning back to Angeline.

“Well, well…” I spoke, smirking. “How about I show you how it’s done?” Before she could say anything in response, I pushed her into the pool to my right.

With that, I turned around, about to leave, when a hand grabbed my ankle and pulled me back. Angeline jumped up, and used the momentum to try to grab me and pull me inside the water.

I gasped, as she failed, and my resistance ended up with my head colliding with the pool’s hard edge.

“Jan!” came a familiar voice from the crowd and I felt strong arms grip my shoulders firmly, pulling me up. Angeline tried to pull me back in, but that person pulled me to my feet. “What the hell were you thinking?” asked Daniel.

“I just lost it, Dan,” I replied hazily. Something felt wrong with my head, with my vision, but I managed to get one glance at Angeline all alone in the pool with no friends and people clicking humiliating pictures of her. “If I see a photo or video of this incident with my face in it, your fate’s going to be way worse than that!” I declared loudly, but my voice sounded slurred.

My head fell backwards and Daniel instantly grabbed it. He cursed, which told me something was wrong before he did. He rarely cursed in front of women. “You’re bleeding, Jan! Someone get me a towel!”

“I am so sorry to get your jacket ruined!” I apologized sincerely.

“Nonsense! Stop talking!” I did. And along with that, I blacked out.

When I woke up, I was in Daniel’s room. It was all green-a shade darker than what I’d imagined. I had never been inside his house.

I had always assumed it was extremely beautiful, and it was-at least his room was. It had some anime figurines on the study table, and a moon shaped lamp on the bedside table. There was a cute little stuffed panda and some photo frames containing pictures of him with his family and Rhys.

There were some astronomer figurines as well as some comic books. It would’ve been a typical room if it weren’t for an Oxford banner covering a wall.

There were a few Bon Jovi posters, a signed Coldplay record, and an Imagine Dragons themed Vinyl’s player. I finally looked down at my own self-I was covered in a decent white blanket with cute little stars and planets.

It was all so elegent and so breathtaking.

Daniel entered the room-shirtless, but wearing pants, like they always are in the books, and drying his dripped wet hair that made my mouth water.

His blue eyes turned to me, and he instantly jerked back in recognition and pulled the towel to his chest, letting the water droplets run down his face.

I gulped.

“Don’t be shy, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” I winked, trying not to show how much him shirtless affected me.

Nonethless, he grabbed a black shirt and put it on. If I thought he was looking hot before, then I certainly had no clue what to say when he was in all black.

“Thanks…” I muttered before thinking. “For you know, bringing me here…” I added, to cover up.

“Anytime,” he spoke genuinely. “How’s that head?”

“Better. What happened exactly?”

“I had brought a car so I drove you here. Mom loves you so she obviously didn’t mind. I texted your mother from your phone saying that you were over Rivika’s.”

“Oh, thank you so much!”

“You should get that head checked up tomorrow. I had a doctor come over while you were still knocked out. He tied that bandage up and said you were fine but…” he trailed off. He was scared…scared for me…and that made me want to giggle from happiness.

“I’ll go see a doctor tomorrow. But thank you so very much…really,”

He smiled faintly before opening his cupboard and pulling out more sheets and blankets. “You should stay the night. You can sleep on the bed and-”

“This is the part where you say that you’ll take the floor or the couch or the guest bedroom, and I’ll tell you that it’s fine I can sleep elsewhere and we’ll argue like they do in the books. Tell you what, we’ve slept on the same bed before and that too side by side. You won’t be the first man I have shared a bed with, so I don’t see why you should compromise.”

His lips tightened but he didn’t argue. “If you feel uncomfortable anytime, feel free to wake me up, okay?”