Hi love,
Scroll down to read the first four chapters of my upcoming release and get pre-order discount!
✓ Enemies to Lovers
✓ Fake Dating
✓ Forced Proximity (wedding chaos)
✓ Celebrity x Athlete Romance
✓ Opposites with explosive chemistry
✓ Accidental engagement
✓ One cupcake away from murder
✓ Hate kissing that feels too real
✓ “We hate each other… right?”
Part 1
“I fucking hate you.”
1 - Abs Aged Better Than Reputation
Liam
The water was my confession booth, and this morning, I had sins to atone for.
The pool deck was silent at five in the morning except for the hum of filtration systems and my own breathing, which was measured, controlled, and the only thing in my life that still was. With a deep breath, I dove in, letting the cold shock my system awake, and started my first set of butterfly strokes.
One length. Then two. By the third, I could feel that fraction of a second where my timing was off, where my body wasn’t quite syncing with my mind. My fingertips brushed the wall at fifty-four point three seconds.
It should have been fifty-three point eight.
Half a second.
But in swimming, that was the difference between gold and going home. Or between being ‘Liam James, Olympic Champion’ and ‘Liam James, Remember Him?’
Coach Ricardo stood at the edge, stopwatch in hand, his weathered face carefully neutral. We both knew what those numbers meant. He said nothing, just nodded for me to continue.
He said nothing, and that was worse than yelling.
Once upon a time, the 100m butterfly had been my entire identity. Olympic gold, world records, and magazine covers calling me unstoppable.
Now? I was the guy with a six-pack and a scandal attached to his name.
Apparently, abs aged better than reputation.
The pool had always been my church. The only place where the noise stopped, where I could be just a body moving through water instead of Liam James, Olympic gold medalist turned professional disappointment with commitment issues.
I pushed harder on the next set, trying to find that rhythm again. The one that had won me gold in Tokyo, which had made me the fastest butterfly swimmer in the world. But my shoulders were tired in a way that had nothing to do with lactic acid, and everything to do with the fact that I had been running on empty for longer than I cared to admit.
The fire was dimming. I could feel it, that hunger that used to consume me every time I touched the water. Now it was just routine. Muscle memory and going through motions that used to mean everything.
“Take five,” the coach called out.
I grabbed the edge, breathing hard, and that’s when my phone buzzed nearby. Seven missed calls from Xavier, my publicist. This is never a good sign.
Before I could reach it, my mind did what it always did during rest intervals. It drifted back to places I had spent a decade trying to avoid.
I was eighteen again, standing in the hallway of my high school, watching Ethan Kane, my best friend, kiss Kiara Sharma.
My heart ached because they were meant for each other. I had made sure that they got together because Kiara was brilliant and kind. Ethan was sweet and head over heels for the Indian firecracker ever since they were kids.
And he wasn’t the kind of guy who broke things just by existing near them.
I never told anyone about the heartbreak. Not Ethan, not Kiara, certainly not my parents, who were already disappointed enough that I had chosen to swim over the family business.
That night, I made a decision that love wasn’t for people like me. People who were always chasing something, always moving, never quite able to stay still long enough to hold on to anything real.
It was easier that way.
My phone buzzed again, snapping me back to reality.
I hauled myself out of the pool and grabbed it, water dripping onto the screen. Xavier’s name flashed, and I sighed.
“Please tell me you’re calling with good news,” I answered, already knowing better.
“Define good,” Xavier said, his voice tight, which meant he already had four espressos, and it wasn’t even seven in the morning. “Have you seen Elite Gossip this morning?”
“Xavier, darling,” I crooned, knowing his jaw was clenched. “I’ve been swimming. I haven’t seen anything except chlorinated water and my own mediocre fucking times.”
“Right,” he said tightly. “Well, according to Elite Gossip, you’re currently dating three women. Simultaneously. There are photos of you with the Swedish gymnast, the model from that charity gala, and… wait for it—Sofia.”
I closed my eyes. Sofia, the Portuguese swimmer I went on exactly one date with three months ago. She wanted something serious, while I wanted to go home and watch Netflix. Alone.
We had agreed to disagree.
“The Swedish gymnast and I had coffee. One coffee. We talked about carb-loading strategies.”
“Sounds riveting and very romantic.”
“The model? I said hello to her. Just once at a gala I attended for exactly forty-five minutes.”
“And the yacht party photos?”
“I left that party at ten because I had training at five, which, shockingly, is where I am right now,” I said, rubbing my face. “Xavier, I haven’t even—” I lowered my voice, even though Coach was the only one here. “I’ve been celibate for four months. I have forgotten what pussy feels like. I’m more concerned with which hand lotion—”
“You’re joking.”
“Do I sound like I’m joking?”
“Liam. Your entire brand is built on being the charismatic playboy athlete. The sponsors eat it up, and the fans go crazy over it. And you’re telling me it’s all—”
“Smoke and mirrors? Yeah, pretty much.” I grabbed my towel, suddenly exhausted. “Most of those women? We didn’t even kiss, let alone hold hands! The media sees me talking to someone and runs with it.”
“But can you at least try to look like you care about your image?” Xavier said, sounding as if he were strangling his phone. “The James family brand is getting nervous. Your father called me yesterday.”
Of course he did. My father, who built a luxury watch empire and expected his only son to be the perfect ambassador. Instead, he got me. An Olympic champion, yes, but also the guy who couldn’t seem to keep his face out of the tabloids for the wrong reasons, and couldn’t keep it in his pants.
“Tell him I’m handling it.”
“Are you, though?” Xavier said, his voice softening. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like you’re self-destructing in slow motion.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“I’ll clean it up,” I said, not knowing how. “Just... give me some time.”
After Xavier hung up, I sat on the bench, staring at my reflection in the pool’s surface. Twenty-six years old, Olympic gold medalist, millionaire from endorsements and family money.
And completely, utterly hollow inside.
Ethan had finally proposed to Kiara two weeks ago. I had stood there with a champagne flute, watching my best friend slip a ring onto the finger of the girl I loved when I was a kid, and felt... happy.
Genuinely fucking happy.
Of course, I didn’t want her anymore, but I craved what they had. That certainty and that solid, tangible thing that didn’t disappear when the cameras stopped flashing.
I wanted to feel something that wasn’t performance.
My phone dinged again. Another tabloid notification. I was about to close it when a name caught my eye.
Deepika Sharma: Hollywood’s Jealous Problem Child?
I shouldn’t have clicked. I had my own PR disasters to deal with. But something made me open it. Maybe boredom, maybe that dark curiosity that made me read articles about myself, even though they always made me feel worse.
It was as if the article was dishing out insults in that typical internet way, where being mean was just part of the show.
‘Depika’ couldn’t let her sister be happy. ‘Depika’ was difficult on set. ‘Depika’ was jealous, unstable, and unprofessional.
“They couldn’t even bother to spell her name right,” I muttered to the empty pool deck.
I scrolled through the comments, each one worse than the last. People tearing apart her body, her acting, her right to be upset about her boyfriend cheating on her with her own sister.
I should have felt vindicated because Deepika Sharma had hated me since we were eight years old.
The memory hit me as if it were yesterday. The harsh summer sun falling over us as Kiara’s cousins visited San Francisco from LA. Some business connection between our fathers that meant I had to ‘be nice’ to their daughters. But only one of her cousins showed up, Deepika.
I was showing off in our pool, doing flip turns and underwater handstands, because that’s what eight-year-old boys did when they wanted to impress people. Or in my case, when I wanted everyone to know I was the best at something. Even better than Ethan, the quiet, grumpy kid who was attached at the hip with Kiara.
Deepika had been sitting at the edge, feet dangling in the water, wearing this frilly pink dress that looked expensive. She couldn’t swim well. I remember her saying something about only knowing how to float, but I was too busy being a cocky little shit to care.
“Watch this!” I shouted and dove deep, coming up right next to her with an enormous splash.
Water went everywhere. All over her dress, her face, and her dark hair in a cute ribbon.
And all over her hand that donned a delicate gold ring (that was loose on her small finger) with a tiny stone that caught the sunlight. I watched her face change as she looked down at it and watched the ring slip off her wet finger in what felt like slow motion.
It hit the pool deck and bounced once. Then it rolled right into the pool.
It was gone.
Her face crumpled. “That was from my grandmother,” she whispered, staring at the water where the ring had disappeared. “She died last year. It was her ring.”
I was frozen, suddenly aware that I had done something terrible, that there were some things you couldn’t just apologize your way out of. The ring was at the bottom of the deep end, twelve feet down, and Deepika couldn’t swim well enough to get it.
“I didn’t mean—” I started.
But she didn’t let me finish. With both hands, she shoved me hard, and we ended up in the water together. What started as her trying to dunk me in revenge turned into both of us thrashing around, each trying to prove we were stronger, better, and more capable of drowning the other.
My mom had pulled us out, both of us sputtering and furious, and the Sharmas had left early.
I never apologized properly, and she never forgave me.
We had been enemies ever since.
The last time we met was two years ago at some industry party where Hollywood and the sports world collided. She had looked at me with those sharp dark eyes and said, “Still the same arrogant, over-hyped pretty boy with more ego than talent, I see.”
I smirked and winked at her. “And you’re still a wannabe starlet who couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag.”
She walked away, and I felt hollow for the rest of the night, the way I always did after our encounters. Like we were both reciting lines from a script we had memorized too well.
I bet she writes out all her disses in her notes app. Just like I do. Probably even recites them in the mirror if we ever end up stumbling into each other.
I can’t prove it, but I’m sure of it.
Every charity event, every industry party where our worlds collided, we circled each other like sharks, all sharp smiles and sharper words, still eight years old and drowning in that pool.
I hated her because she hated me first.
But reading that article, seeing the comments dissecting her like she was something less than human...
I felt something uncomfortably close to pity.
Nobody deserved it. Not even Deepika Sharma, with her devastating smile and her ability to make me feel like an idiot with just one perfectly arched eyebrow.
‘Depika,’ I read again, shaking my head. The disrespect was almost impressive in its laziness.
My thumb hovered over the share button. Some petty part of me wanted to add to the pile, wanted to screenshot and send to the group chat with a laughing emoji.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I closed the article and tossed my phone aside.
The water was calling me back. The only honest thing in my life and the only place where I didn’t have to pretend to be anyone except exactly who I was.
A guy who was only good at swimming and increasingly bad at everything else.
I dove back in, and for twenty-five meters, I almost felt like myself again.
Almost.
2 - Stockholm Syndrome with Better Abs
Deepika
“Yash, that was incredible. Truly moving.”
Then the director walked right past me as if I were part of the set.
I stayed in character for five full seconds, long enough for the camera to stop rolling, before my left eye twitched. It wasn’t the cute, delicate twitch. No, it was the I-might-set-something-on-fire twitch.
“Brilliant, Yash! Just brilliant!” Director Rajesh clapped his hands together as if Yash had just discovered fire instead of remembering his lines for once. “The way you held that pause? Chef’s kiss.”
Yash turned around and flashed me his infuriatingly perfect smile. “You were great too, Dee.”
Dee?
Don’t punch him, Deepika. Your knuckles are far too perfect to touch the likes of him. Plus, who knows where that face has been. Erugh.
I gave him a saccharine smile. “Don’t call me that.”
I stood a few feet away, mascara tracking down my cheeks from the scene we had just wrapped. My chest was still tight from the emotional breakdown I had just performed. The one where my character finally confronts her dying mother. The one I had been preparing for since four in the morning, listening to my own mother’s voicemails on repeat until the grief felt genuine enough to bleed on camera.
She was very much alive. But I missed her and her aloo parathas.
“Deepika, that was... adequate. Let’s move on,” Rajesh said, already walking away, shouting about lighting setups.
Adequate. As if it meant nothing.
“He’s an idiot,” Yash muttered, squeezing my shoulder as he passed. “You were phenomenal.”
I forced a smile once again. Probably the umpteenth time in the presence of Yash Malhotra. Why? Because Yash was nice. He was always nice. That was his whole thing, his charade. The nice, handsome leading man who would inevitably get the Oscar nomination while I would get a throwaway mention in the trades, ‘Oh, and Deepika Sharma was also there.’
This is my life now.
My ‘breakout role’ had everyone talking, sure, but they were talking about how I was the ‘surprisingly good’ best friend, the ‘scene-stealing’ sidekick and most importantly the emotional glue holding the lead together while he got the glory.
I wanted to be the one whose name came first on the poster. Be the reason people buy tickets. And I wanted to stop feeling like I was auditioning for a seat at a table that was supposedly already mine.
I retreated to my trailer and peeled off my costume. It was a frumpy cardigan that Wardrobe had insisted made me look ‘approachable’. I reached for my phone. Five missed calls from Blake, my publicist.
Ugh.
Blake: Have you seen the new article?
If it says I’m difficult again, I’m suing the English language.
Blake: Worse. ‘Deepika Sharma: Hollywood’s Jealous Problem Child?’
I poured myself a bowl of Lucky Charms (dinner of champions at seven in the evening) and called her back.
“Please tell me you didn’t punch anyone today,” Blake answered on the first ring.
“Hello to you too. And no, my violence remains purely hypothetical,” I said, crunching through a mouthful of marshmallows. “What did I do now?”
“What did you do?” Blake’s voice climbed an octave. I could imagine her pacing around, chewing on her nails. “Deepa, honey—”
“Deepika.”
“There’s a story on Celeb Gossip calling you difficult to work with. Apparently, an anonymous source says you throw tantrums on set and refuse to do press.”
“Let me guess,” I said, closing my eyes at the throbbing headache forming at the back of my skull. “The source is five-foot-ten, has extensions, and shares half my DNA?”
Silence.
Blake continued, “I can neither confirm nor deny, but the article mentions your jealousy issues regarding your sister’s happiness.”
Of course it fucking did.
It had been six months since I had walked into my apartment. The same apartment I foolishly gave Yash, my ex-boyfriend, a key to, only to find him in bed with Diya.
My twin sister. My identical twin sister, which somehow made it worse, like he couldn’t even be bothered to cheat with someone who didn’t share my face.
My stomach twisted even now, remembering how they froze. How she had cried fat tears and how sickly it had felt.
The worst part came after that.
Everyone told me I should be happy for them because she’s my sister and they’re in love.
Sure. Sure, Diya’s happiness was important. My happiness could go fuck itself. Without lube.
“Deepika? You still there?”
I realized I was stabbing my spoon into the milk, watching the cereal disintegrate. I swallowed and shook myself back to the present. I refused to let them live rent-free in my head. They had already taken enough.
“Yeah. I’m here. Listen, Blake, can we at least ask them to spell my name right? It’s D-E-E-P-I-K-A, not Deepa, not Depika, not—”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Blake sighed, as if my name were an inconvenience. “Try to stay out of trouble this week, okay? With the Elite Awards campaign in full swing, we need you to be all business.”
Professional. Of fucking course.
Because nothing said professional like being publicly humiliated by your ex-boyfriend and your twin sister while the entire internet decided you were the villain for being upset about it.
After Blake hung up, I did what I always did when the world felt too sharp. I opened my secret Instagram account. TerribleRomanceReviews had twenty-thousand followers who did not know they were getting romance novel critiques from an actress who couldn’t even keep her own love story from imploding.
Tonight’s victim was Passion’s Plunder, a pirate romance where the heroine fell in love with her captor after he ‘ravished’ her on page thirty-two.
“Nothing says ‘happily ever after’ like Stockholm Syndrome with better abs,” I typed, posting a photo of the book’s cover. A shirtless man with improbable hair and a woman whose corset defied physics. “One star. The parrot had more personality than the hero.”
The comments flooded in immediately, making me smile because they were my people. My anonymous, romance-loving, trash-talking people who didn’t care that I was difficult or that my sister was sleeping with my ex or that my hips were two inches too wide for Hollywood’s idea of beautiful.
Yash’s voice crept into my head. “You know, Diya’s been really disciplined with her diet. Maybe you could try…”
I aggressively shoved another spoonful of Lucky Charms into my mouth.
My phone buzzed. Another text from my publicist.
Blake: Btw, you’re trending on Twitter. #DeepikaSharma. Don’t look.
I looked.
@HollywoodTea: Deepika Sharma really thought she could keep a man looking like THAT? Diya is serving face, meanwhile Deepika stays pressed LOL
@FilmSnobSince1999: Unpopular opinion: Deepika Sharma cant act. She just has one expression
@YashDiyaShipper: Yash and Diya are GOALS! Deepika needs to move on and stop being bitter!!! #YaDiya4Eva 🙄
If they had used any more exclamation marks, it would have been satisfactory. And what the fuck is Yadiya? Their stupid ship name?
I sighed and locked my phone, staring at my reflection in the dark screen.
Not American enough for Hollywood because I was too ethnic, too curvy, and too much. Not Indian enough for my family in Mumbai because I was too Americanized, too loud, and too selfish for not immediately forgiving my sister.
I didn’t belong anywhere.
My gaze drifted to the vintage teacups lining the shelves in my trailer. Fifty-three at last count. Each one a distinct pattern, a different story. I started collecting them in college, hunting through estate sales, thrift and antique shops for the most delicate, beautiful things nobody wanted anymore.
I understood that feeling intimately.
Outside, I could hear Rajesh shouting about tomorrow’s call time. Five in the morning. Another day of being adequate, another day of watching Yash get praised for breathing while I performed minor miracles and got a fucking pat on the head.
But here’s the thing they didn’t show you in the movies. You don’t get a dramatic montage when your life falls apart. You don’t get a soaring soundtrack or a wise mentor who tells you exactly what to do.
You get Lucky Charms for dinner and internet strangers dissecting your worth. You get a vintage convertible in your garage that you’re too terrified to drive because what if you crash it? What if you ruin one more beautiful thing?
You get up at four in the morning and you do it all again.
Because maybe if I was good enough, perfect enough, small enough, quiet enough...
No, I stopped that thought cold. I was done making myself smaller and done apologizing for taking up space.
I wanted a leading role. I wanted respect, and I wanted to walk into a room and have people remember my name. Spelled correctly.
I wanted to belong somewhere that wasn’t the footnote of someone else’s story.
I reached for my laptop instead. Someone had sent my agent a script last week. It was a lead role, finally. A romantic comedy about a woman who runs a wedding planning business and falls for her nemesis, the owner of a competing company.
Ha! If it was a book, I’d eat it up in a day.
The character was described as full-figured, confident, and unapologetically herself.
Lucky Charms forgotten, I opened the file and started reading.
My phone buzzed again, and my interest piqued when I saw a familiar name, making a grin curl up on my lips.
Gold Medalist Olympian Liam James Sleeping with Three Women?!
What an ass. I scrolled through the article only to make a face at his disgustingly handsome face photographed with recent models, gymnasts, and women in short dresses who, in my opinion, deserved better than the gray-eyed monster.
I was sure scientists would find a new type of sex disease just from his blood test.
Shaking my head, I turned my phone face down and focused on the script instead of the smolder from a certain gold medalist.
3 - Being an Adult Was Overrated
Liam
If I had known that attending my best friend’s engagement party would result in me confronting every poor decision I made between the ages of eight and fourteen, I would have faked my own death by drowning.
But there I was, on a rooftop in Los Angeles, surrounded by twinkling string lights and people who actually knew how to be happy, nursing a champagne flute and trying not to look like I was planning my escape route.
“Liam!” Kiara grabbed my arm, practically vibrating with joy. She looked radiant because she was literally glowing as if she had swallowed the sun. “I’m so glad you’re here!”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I lied smoothly. I already calculated that I could reasonably leave in forty minutes without seeming rude.
She held up her left hand, where a diamond the size of a small country caught the light. “Isn’t it perfect? Ethan designed it himself. Well, ‘designed’ is generous, but he drew a stick figure ring on a napkin and the jeweler translated.”
“It’s beautiful.” I laughed because it was so perfectly Ethan. “You’re beautiful. I’m happy for you guys.”
And I meant it because I genuinely was happy for them. The eight-year-old version of me would have been shocked.
“Oh!” she said, and her eyes lit up in that way that always preceded disaster. “My cousins Deepika and Diya are coming tonight! Deepika is running late from set, but she’ll be here. You remember her, right?”
How can I forget her?
My champagne tasted burned on my tongue. “Vaguely.”
“You two were so memorable together as kids,” she said, her smile pure innocence, but there was a glint in her eye that suggested she knew exactly what she was doing. “Maybe you’ll finally get along now that you’re both adults.”
Adults. Uh-huh.
Unless one of us pushes the other one through the balcony.
After the pool incident at eight, we met again two years later during Ethan’s tenth birthday party. She was invited since she was visiting Kiara.
The birthday party was a sprawling backyard affair with games and prizes, and Deepika and I had turned it into the Olympics of Petty.
We competed in everything. Sack race? I won. Three-legged race? She won. Musical chairs came down to the two of us, and when I sat down a fraction of a second before her, she accused me of cheating.
“You pushed me!” she shouted.
“You’re just a sore loser!” I fired back.
The argument had escalated until somehow (I still wasn’t clear on the physics) we crashed into the birthday cake. Chocolate frosting was everywhere. Ethan had turned red while Kiara threatened to kill us both with her slippers. And Deepika had gotten frosting in her hair and blamed me.
I was grounded for a week.
Then, at fourteen… ah. I would rather swim with sharks than remember that incident.
In everyone’s life, there’s one moment that they’d like to forget, and for me, that was it. Because it still haunted me and woke me up in the middle of the night sometimes, cringing so hard I wanted to leave my body.
It was a Valentine’s Day party I had thrown at my house when my parents were out for a weekend. I had been stupidly staring at Kiara like a lovesick puppy, and Deepika had noticed because of course she had.
She noticed everything.
We played Seven Minutes in Heaven with the bottle landing on us, and I wanted to die on the spot.
We were shoved into a closet, surrounded by winter coats, and Deepika had leaned against the wall with a knowing smirk.
“So,” she said, “Kiara, huh?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, leaning on the opposite wall. I didn’t like how drastically our bodies had changed since we last saw each other, and I wasn’t used to the deep tone of my voice or the lankiness from my tall height.
“Please,” she said, rolling her eyes. There was glitter on her lids that made her dark eyes shine. “You look at her like a golden retriever looking at a tennis ball. It’s embarrassing.”
I was mortified that my nemesis knew my deepest, darkest secret. So I had done what any mature fourteen-year-old boy would do. I lashed out.
“At least I’m not stuffing my bra,” I smirked.
Her face had gone white. “What?”
And because I was an idiot, I doubled down. When we emerged from the closet, someone had asked what happened, and I said, loud enough for half the party to hear, “Nothing much. Just learned Deepika’s a thirty-four-b.”
The room had gone silent except for the few guys who laughed at Deepika. But I knew I had messed up big time when Kiara and Ethan glared at me while her cousin’s eyes, the glittery ones, filled with tears.
I had realized, too late, that I had crossed a line I couldn’t uncross.
She left the party. Just grabbed her coat and walked out into February in San Francisco, which wasn’t even cold, but she looked so small and hurt that I felt sick.
I wanted to follow her and apologize, but I was frozen, surrounded by people laughing. And by the time I worked up the courage to go after her, she was gone and I couldn’t find her.
We never spoke again.
“Liam?” Kiara asked. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, fine. Just... thinking.” I said, forcing a smile. “I’m sure Deepika and I will be perfectly civil.” Very civil. No punching or throwing each other off the balcony.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Kiara muttered, but she was already being pulled away by someone else who wanted to admire her ring.
Ethan appeared at my elbow, grinning like an idiot. Love looked good on him. It made the sharper edges of him softer, his differently colored eyes shine.
“Dude, Kiara’s cousin is coming tonight. You remember Deepika, right?”
Not again.
“So I’ve been told,” I said, taking a long drink of champagne.
I’d need the alcohol if I had to face her.
“Maybe you two will finally get along.”
I looked at my best friend and tried not to laugh hysterically. “Sure, we will. It’s your and Kiara’s special day after all.”
“Good,” he said with a small smile. “Because if you ruin it and make Bella angry…”
I shuddered, thinking about it. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Ethan sighed and nodded. “She’s really hoping you two can be friends. You know, for the wedding and stuff.” He clapped me on the shoulder and wandered off to greet more guests.
Friends with Deepika Sharma? The girl I spent my entire childhood tormenting, culminating in the most mortifying moment of both our lives.
This was fine. Everything was fine.
I checked my phone, and it was half past seven, and Miss Uptight was officially late.
Maybe she wouldn’t show. Maybe she was attending someone’s funeral on the weekend at night. Maybe she was communing with the Devil—
“Liam, darling, this party is charming, but when do we eat? I haven’t had carbs since Thursday.”
Valentina, my date for the night, said, sliding beside me. She was six feet tall in heels, legs for days, and bone structure that made photographers weep. And unfortunately, completely wrong for me in every possible way.
But she photographed well, and Xavier had suggested I bring someone ‘visually impressive’ to counter the latest tabloid disaster. Valentina was a model I had met at a campaign shoot. She was nice enough, smart enough, and crucially aware that this was purely transactional.
“There are appetizers circulating,” I said, gesturing vaguely.
She wrinkled her perfect nose. “Those little toasts with fish eggs? No, thank you. Oh look, champagne.” She plucked a fresh glass from a passing server and glided away to network.
I should have felt something. Attraction, interest, or anything. But nada. Instead, I felt like I was playing a role in a movie I hadn’t auditioned for. Thankfully, it would end soon, and I’d go home in my million-dollar mansion to watch Netflix alone on my bed.
Not alone. I could eat zero-calorie mango ice-cream. Yum.
My phone buzzed.
Xavier: How’s it going with Valentina? Getting good photos?
She’s lovely. I feel nothing.
Xavier: That’s the spirit. Remember, you’re cleaning up your image.
By pretending to date someone I’m not actually dating?
Xavier: It’s called strategy, Liam. Look it up.
Rolling my eyes at the last text, I pocketed my phone and surveyed the party. Ethan and Kiara were in the center of everything, laughing, glowing, and surrounded by people who loved them. This was what normal looked like.
What healthy looked like.
The elevator doors opened across the rooftop, and I turned automatically, expecting another batch of late arrivals.
And then I saw her.
Deepika Sharma, seventeen years after the pool incident, thirteen years after the cake disaster, ten years after I had humiliated her in a closet and never apologized.
She was wearing a deep golden dress that caught the light, her hair longer than I remembered, and on her arm was—
Marcus. Marcus fucking Reynolds, Hollywood’s current golden boy and looking every inch the leading man in his perfectly tailored suit.
Of fucking course. Of course, she had brought a date. Of course, he has blond hair (my blond hair was better and healthier). Of course, he fucking looked like he stepped out of a cologne advertisement.
Our eyes met across the rooftop, and I watched her entire body go rigid. Time slowed, only for a moment, before she looked away.
She turned to say something to Marcus, who laughed. It was a warm, genuine sound that carried across the party, making my bones crackle.
Why the fuck am I annoyed by the golden boy?
“Is that…?” Valentina had reappeared at my side. “Oh my god, is that Deepika Sharma? I love her in ‘The Last Goodbye.’ She was robbed at the Globes.”
“Mmm,” I managed.
“You know her?”
“Sort of. We grew up together.”
“How fun! You should introduce me.”
Fun, indeed. This was going to be so much fun.
Across the rooftop, Deepika was greeting Kiara with an enormous hug, laughing at something, pointedly not looking in my direction.
Seventeen years of unpleasant history, one rooftop, an engagement party, and a hundred guests who did not know they were about to witness either a reconciliation or a murder.
I finished my champagne in one swallow because being an adult was overrated.
4 - Oopsie
Deepika
“Hold still or you’re going to look like a drunk raccoon,” Priya hissed, wielding an eyeliner pencil like a weapon as our Uber hit another pothole.
“I’m going to look like a drunk raccoon,” I said, checking my phone for the fifteenth time. I was officially late to my cousin’s engagement party (they got engaged earlier but wanted to throw an official party), still in my car, getting my makeup done by my best friend while wearing a golden dress that cost more than my first paycheck.
Ugh. I hate being late.
“Okay, listen to me,” Priya said, grabbing my face and forcing me to look at her. “Yash is bringing Diya. Your ex-boyfriend is bringing your identical twin sister to a family event, which is psychotic. But you? You are going to walk in there looking like a golden goddess with Marcus Reynolds on your arm, and you are going to be fine.”
“Fine,” I echoed weakly, with an equally weak nod.
“Say it like you mean it.”
“FINE!” I said, sounding as if I were trying to convince myself. Because I was.
Priya sat back, examining her work. “You look hot. Like, inappropriately hot for a family event. Your boobs look amazing.”
“Thanks?”
“Just saying, if Yash has any regrets, they are about to multiply.” She handed me my lipstick. “Now get out there and make your twin sister feel like the poor man’s version.”
I loved Priya. She was a terrible influence and the best friend I ever had. She gave me a flying kiss as she left for her own party to attend.
Marcus was waiting by the elevator, looking devastatingly handsome in a navy suit. He was my co-star, my friend, and tonight, my armor.
The fact that he was secretly dating a lovely sound engineer named David was information the world didn’t get to have yet. Hollywood wasn’t ready for Marcus Reynolds to come out, even though it was the twenty-first century and we should have been past it.
“Deepika, you look lovely,” he said, kissing my cheek and offering me his arm. “Ready?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Perfect. Let’s go.”
* * *
The rooftop was gorgeous with string lights, a city view, and beautiful people drinking expensive champagne. I scanned the crowd immediately, my stomach in knots.
Where was Yash? Where was Diya? Where was the nearest exit?
And then my eyes landed on him.
Liam fucking James.
Time didn’t slow down because that would be too romantic. Instead, it felt like time slammed to a halt, like a car hitting a brick wall.
He was across the rooftop, champagne in hand, looking unfairly good in a suit that probably cost more than my rent. His date was a literal supermodel. Tall, dark hair, perfect bone structure, and the kind of woman who made me want to check my teeth for lipstick.
Our eyes met, and neither of us smiled.
Seventeen years of terrible history passed between us in a single look. Pool water and a lost heirloom, birthday cake and accusations of cheating the game, a Valentine’s Day closet where he humiliated me so badly I cried in my mom’s car for an hour, promising her I’d never see him again.
I looked away first, turning to Marcus. “We need alcohol.”
“Way ahead of you, darling,” he said, steering me toward the bar.
Unfortunately, Liam had the same idea.
We arrived at the bar simultaneously, both reaching for the same champagne glass as if it were some kind of rom-com meet-cute, except we already knew each other and hated each other’s guts.
Our fingers touched, and I jerked my hand back as if he had burned me.
“Still compensating with excessive chlorine exposure, I see,” I said sweetly.
His jaw ticked, but he forced a smile and said, “Still showing up where you’re not wanted?”
“It’s my cousin’s engagement party.”
“And Ethan’s my best-friend. I was in his life before you were born.”
The audacity. The absolute audacity of this man.
“We’re the same age, you egotistical—”
“Children!” Marcus cut in, laughing as if this was all very amusing and not a powder keg about to explode. “Perhaps we could save the death match for after the toasts?”
Liam’s date appeared at his elbow. Valentina was a model who worked for about seventeen different charities. She also had an engineering degree, because of course, she did. She was probably gearing up for Miss Universe too. Women like her didn’t just have one talent. No, they collected them like Pokémon cards.
“Is everything okay?” Valentina asked, her voice like honey.
“Fine,” Liam said tersely.
“Wonderful!” I beamed, with enough fake enthusiasm to power a small city.
We were not fine. Nothing was fine.
I was about to grab my champagne glass, ready to retreat to literally anywhere else, when I heard the whispers and the shift in energy meant that something terrible was happening.
I turned and there they were.
Yash Malhotra, my ex-boyfriend and the man I had planned to marry. Who promised me forever, who looked me in the eye and said he loved me.
And Diya. My twin sister, my other half, and wearing the same golden dress I was wearing.
The same fucking dress.
Except hers was shorter, showing more leg, and somehow the dress that had made me feel beautiful suddenly made me feel like a before picture. Like the curvy, too-much version of my own sister.
Yash’s hand was on Diya’s waist, possessive and familiar in a way that made my stomach turn.
Diya saw me and had the audacity to look surprised. “Oh! Deepika! I didn’t know you’d be wearing… I mean, you look—”
I couldn’t hear the rest. Blood was rushing in my ears, my heart was hammering against my ribs, and I was going to either cry or commit murder, and I wasn’t sure which would be more satisfying.
So I did what any rational adult would do.
I turned to grab my champagne for a sip and accidentally threw the entire glass on Liam’s Tom Ford suit.
The champagne arced through the air in slow motion, splashing across his chest, his jacket, and probably his shirt underneath.
“Oopsie,” I said, not sorry at all.
Liam looked down at his ruined suit. Then at me and then at his suit again.
“Oopsie,” he repeated, his voice deadly calm.
If it hadn’t been for the situation I was in, I would have laughed at him.
And then he bumped into me accidentally of course, sending me stumbling backward directly into the dessert table.
I felt it happen in stages. The impact, losing balance, and the horrible realization that I was falling, and then—
Frosting.
Cold frosting in my dark, wavy hair, down my dress and smeared across the side of my face.
I gasped, sputtering, and wiping chocolate mousse from my eyes.
The rooftop had gone silent.
Everyone was staring. I could see phones out, already recording, because of course they were. This was going to be on gossip sites within the hour.
And suddenly I was ten years old again, covered in birthday cake at Ethan’s party, with Liam James standing over me looking smug.
Something inside me snapped.
I grabbed a cupcake from the ruined dessert table (it was red velvet with cream cheese frosting) and launched it directly at Liam’s head.
It hit him square in the face.
Bullseye.
Ha, take that, jerk!
His expression of absolute shock was the most satisfying thing I had seen in six months, and it made my body light up.
“Deepika, honey—” Marcus warned, but I was already grabbing another cupcake.
“You want to play?” I said to Liam, who was wiping frosting from his eyes. “Let’s fucking play.”
“You’re insane,” he said, but he was already reaching for ammunition.
This was it. This was my villain origin story. I was going to murder Liam James with baked goods at my cousin’s engagement party, and honestly? So fucking worth it.
Somewhere in my peripheral vision, I saw Ethan and Kiara watching us, mouths open.
Kiara leaned over to whisper something to Ethan.
Ethan said loud enough for me to hear, “Should we stop them?”
My cousin replied, “Let’s see how this plays out.”
I appreciated that about my cousin. She understood the value of chaos.
“You’ve been a fucking nightmare since we were eight years old,” I said, stalking toward Liam with another cupcake.
“Me? You pushed me into a pool!”
“You lost my grandmother’s ring!”
“You destroyed Ethan’s birthday cake!”
“You told everyone my bra size!” My voice cracked on the last word, and oh god, I was going to cry. Not here. Not now. Not in front of him and Yash and Diya and everyone with their phones out.
Liam froze, cupcake in hand. Something flickered across his face. Regret? Guilt? It was gone too fast to tell.
“Deepika, I—”
“Don’t.” I held up my hand, covered in frosting, throwing it at his suit, smiling at the satisfaction it brought me to see his stormy gray eyes clear and soften and widen all in the span of five seconds. “You’re an asshole. Always have been.”
He stared at me, lifting his hand, and I waited for him to tug my hair or pour another glass of champagne on me, but surprisingly he did neither of those.
Instead, he gently wiped the frosting from my eye and I blinked at him.
Liam James was acting like a decent human being in my vicinity?
The moment shattered when Diya appeared at my elbow, her perfect face arranged in concern. “Dee, are you okay? Do you need to—”
I pulled away from her touch. “Don’t fucking touch me,” I said, my words coming out sharper than I intended.
Diya looked taken aback, but her knight in shining armor appeared beside her with an arm on her waist, glaring at me. The same eyes used to look at me full of love.
How quickly did his so-called love dissolve into nothing?
“Let’s go, darling,” Marcus whispered in my ear, taking my hand and dragging me away from the uncomfortable situation.
I was grateful to him. And as we went to the nearest washroom, I could feel the warmth of someone looking at me. Thinking it was Yash or Diya, I turned around and found Liam’s eyes staring at my hand that was holding Marcus’.
Catching my eye, Liam said, “Real mature, Sharma!”
I turned around and flipped him off over my shoulder as the doors closed.
I was covered in frosting, my ex was here with my twin sister wearing the same dress as I did, and I had just assaulted an Olympic gold medalist with cupcakes in front of a hundred witnesses and approximately hundreds of camera phones.
This was going to be everywhere by morning.
Blake was going to kill me.
I was going to be ‘difficult’ Deepika again, unstable Deepika, and ‘can’t handle her emotions’ Deepika.
But right now, covered in chocolate mousse and cream cheese frosting, with my heart in pieces and my dignity on the dessert table, I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Marcus looked at me, covered in frosting, mascara probably running, golden dress ruined.
“Well,” he said finally. “That went better than expected.”
I burst out laughing, and then I was crying, and then I was laughing and crying, and Marcus just pulled me into a hug and let me ruin his expensive suit, too.
“I hate him,” I said into his shoulder.
“I know.”
“I hate her.”
“I know.”
“I hate everyone.”
“Understandable.”
After a few more sniffles, I pulled back and looked into his eyes. “Can you do me a favor?” I asked, my voice groggy.
“Anything for you, darling,” Marcus said with a smile and paused. “Anything but murder.”
“What a friend you are,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Well, if murder’s off the table, then how about… I get smashed.”
“Are you sure?” he asked carefully, as if I were a bomb that was about to explode.
I nodded, wiping the water droplets from my hair. Marcus, bless him, helped me wash the hair in the bathtub and clean up the frosting from my neck, face and dress so I looked presentable.
“What’s the worst that could happen now?” I said, feeling much better that I had relieved my anger on a certain medalist.
Really? What’s the worst thing that could happen? I kiss Liam? Ha!
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