Elsie's words have been rattling around my skull since last night, bouncing off the walls of my brain like a pinball trapped in a machine that refuses to tilt.
"He looks at you like you're the only thing in this room worth seeing. Also, I bet he could throw you around like a rag doll. Get it, sis."
My fourteen-year-old sister, ladies and gentlemen.
Future therapist or future menace to society, jury's still out.
I stand in front of bathroom mirror, yanking my hair into what can generously be called a ponytail when the memory hits.
Wine shooting out my nose, Maxwell pressing his napkin to my face with chef-like efficiency while Kobe thumped my back and announced that most people wait until at least the third glass before alcohol starts exiting through alternative routes.
My apartment building's front door barely closes before—
"Fancy meeting you here, pretty stranger."
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Kobe leans against my building's brick wall like he owns it, looking criminally good in jeans.
His presence in my neighborhood feels like finding a Rolex in a cereal box—expensive, unexpected, and probably a sign that something chaotic is about to happen.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" I hiss, scanning the street like a paranoid squirrel. "Anyone could see—"
"Then we should stop standing here looking like a conspiracy."
That dimple appears—that fucking dimple—and my reproductive system starts composing sonnets.
No. Stop it.
We are not doing this on a public sidewalk where literally anyone could see.
"Rooftop bar in Brooklyn. Cocktails under thirty bucks, zero paparazzi because they have standards about cheap liquor. You in?"
My shoulders are halfway to my ears, tension coiled so tight I might snap.
"Kobe…"
"You're so tense I can see it from here." His voice drops, suddenly serious. "Come on, Rae. Let me take you somewhere you can actually breathe without worrying who's watching."
I should say no. I should absolutely, definitely, one-hundred-percent say—
"Fine. But if this ends up on DeuxMoi, I'm auctioning my story to Netflix."
"Knew you couldn't resist me."
He pushes off the wall with that fluid grace and I follow like the disaster human I am, trying not to notice how his T-shirt clings to his shoulders or how he smells like something woody and expensive and trouble.
This is fine. Just drinks with one of the three men you're sleeping with.
On a public rooftop. In Brooklyn. Where anyone could see. This is absolutely fine and not at all a terrible idea.
The rooftop bar is aggressively Brooklyn—exposed brick, Edison bulbs, bartenders with more tattoos than skin. Kobe orders whiskey sours without asking what I want, which should annoy me but somehow doesn't.
"So," he starts, settling across from me with the ease of someone who's never met a situation he couldn't charm his way through. "Desert island, five movies. Go."
"Are we seriously playing icebreakers right now?"
"Humor me. I'm an actor—I need to know if your taste is terrible so I can judge you accordingly."
I take a sip of my drink—damn, that's good—and consider lying. Saying something impressive. Something that doesn't reveal what a complete disaster my taste actually is.
"The Godfather, Alien, Pride and Prejudice—the Keira Knightley one."
"Controversial choice."
"Fight me. It has the hand flex scene, which is basically porn for repressed people."
His eyebrows shoot up, and I realize what I just said. Fuck.
"Also," I barrel on, face burning, "When Harry Met Sally and... Shrek 2."
"Shrek 2?"
His voice cracks on the title, and I'm ready to physically fight this beautiful man on this Brooklyn rooftop.
"It's a perfect sequel and I will die on this hill.”
His laugh erupts, genuine and delighted, and something in my chest does a little flip. "God, you're weird. I love it."
He loves it. He loves that I'm weird. File that under things to obsess over at 3 AM.
The way his eyes crinkle when he's genuinely amused versus his practiced Hollywood smile—I'm cataloging the difference, and that's probably not healthy.
"Okay, worst movie you've ever seen. And you can't say any of mine."
"Bold assumption that I've seen any of yours."
The mock offense that crosses his face makes me laugh despite myself.
"Raegan Delacroix. Are you telling me you haven't watched my Oscar-winning performance in Shattered Glass? The film that made critics weep? The role that required me to lose twenty pounds and learn Portuguese?"
"You won an Oscar?"
"Nominated. Won for The Silence After, which was somehow worse to film because I had to cry on command for six weeks straight." His delivery is light, practiced, but something flickers beneath the surface. "Turns out emotional devastation is great for awards season and terrible for your mental health. Who knew?"
"What was it like? Winning?"
He considers the question longer than I expect. "You know that moment in cooking competitions when someone wins and they're crying, hugging everyone, saying it's the best moment of their life?"
"Sure."
"It's nothing like that." The playful mask slips slightly. "You're in a room full of people who spent the whole night hoping you'd lose. Your acceptance speech sounds stupid the second it leaves your mouth. And then you go home to an empty apartment and realize the gold statue doesn't actually talk back."
My chest tightens at the loneliness beneath his words.
"That sounds awful," I say softly.
"It was fantastic," he deflects, grin returning. "I got a great parking spot at the after-party. Tell me about Elsie instead. The real version, not the polished one you give interviewers."
"I don't give interviews."
"Exactly my point." He leans back, studying me with an intensity that contradicts his casual posture. "You're fascinating, Rae. I want to know what's behind all those walls."
"That's rich, coming from the man who treats charm like a second skin."
"Deflection." His grin widens. "See? Fascinating. Come on, give me something real. What was it like, growing up as Elsie's protector?"
The question catches me off guard. I take a long sip, buying time.
"She was two when our father died," I began. "I was twelve. Our mother vanished into grief, and Elsie needed someone to fight for her. School administrators, insurance companies, kids who called her names she could read on their lips even if she couldn't hear them."
I watch his face change, the mask slipping completely now, and there's something raw underneath that makes my chest tight.
"Fuck."
His response is so simple, so inadequate and yet perfect, that I almost laugh.
"By fifteen, I was forging my mother's signature on medical forms. By sixteen, cooking every meal because Margot couldn't remember we existed."
Kobe's playful expression flickers, something darker surfacing beneath. "And your mother just... let you?"
"She wasn't equipped to do anything else. The drinking consumed everything." I drain my glass. "When I was eighteen, Mom discovered she could monetize Elsie's deafness."
His whole body goes rigid. Every muscle locks, and for a second, I see something dangerous flash across his face. "What?"
"Dressed her in sad clothes, made signs about medical costs, paraded her around shopping centers… Every dollar went straight to the liquor store."
His hand shoots across the table, grabs mine, and the contact is electric and grounding all at once. His thumb traces circles on my wrist, and I focus on that sensation instead of the memory threatening to drown me.
"I came home from my shift and found Elsie alone, hungry, confused. Cash scattered across the kitchen table like confetti from the worst party ever thrown. I packed our bags that night. Stayed with Scarlett's family until I figured out rent on my own."
"At seventeen?"
The disbelief in his voice makes me look up, and his eyes are suspiciously bright.
"Someone had to be the adult and I was Elsie's sister. That trumped everything." I met his gaze. "I never let Margot near her unsupervised after that. Not until she showed up looking sober and stole nearly every dollar I'd saved."
Silence stretches between us, heavy with things neither of us knows how to say.
I wait for him to crack a joke, to deflect with that signature charm that's gotten him out of every uncomfortable situation since puberty.
Instead, he turns my hand over, traces the burns and cuts that map my years in kitchens, and speaks.
"My father ran off to Costa Rica when I was seven," he says quietly. "Personal assistant, cliché as hell. Mom remarried four times trying to fill the gap."
"Kobe, you don't have to…"
"I learned early that if I was funny enough, charming enough, nobody would notice I was falling apart." His laugh holds no humor. "Hollywood loved that about me. Until it didn't."
"Being Jared's cousin must complicate things."
"Jared is everything I was supposed to become." The words come out rough, stripped of performance. "Responsible. Successful. Respected by our family in ways I'll never be. The partying, the scandals, the relationships that imploded because I couldn't stop acting long enough to be real with anyone—"
Kobe stops, jaw tight, but I hear what he didn’t say. He uses charm like armor because the alternative terrifies him.
My breath catches at the rawness in his voice.
"You're the first person I've wanted to be real with in years, Rae." His amber eyes find mine with devastating honesty. "That scares the hell out of me."
He stands abruptly, comes around the table, and pulls me to my feet. When he kisses me, it's different from before—deeper, more desperate, like he's trying to communicate everything he can't say.
His hand slides into my hair, and I melt against him, tasting whiskey and promises and the particular sweetness of being truly seen. Someone whistles from another table, but I don't care.
Let them look.
Let them see Kobe Spencer kissing a nobody from Brooklyn like she's precious.
"The jealousy is eating me alive," he admits suddenly, murmuring against my lips. "Watching Maxwell be your first. Knowing Jared's learning sign language while I can barely order takeout without Google Translate."
"You speak Portuguese."
"For a role. Completely useless in real life." That self-deprecating grin appears. "I'd rather share you than lose you. But watching them touch you doesn't make it any easier."
I cup his face in my palms. "Then we need something that's just ours. Something separate from whatever I have with them."
Hope flickers in his amber eyes. "Like what?"
"I don't know yet." I trace his jaw with my thumb. "But I promise I'll find it. Something that makes you feel as seen as you've just made me feel."
His smile transforms—boyish, genuine, devastating.
"I'm holding you to that, Raegan Delacroix."