“Lexi!” Bianca shouts as she charges down the hallway to see her sister standing in the kitchen with a freshly showered Xavier, even though he’s wearing last night’s clothes.
At some point she’ll stop being stunned that he somehow looks good when normal people would look like complete crap, but it’s ridiculous that even in his rumpled t-shirt, with two days’ worth of scruff and his shoulders stained with water droplets because his hair is still wet from his shower, that he’s one of the hottest guys she’s ever seen.
Maybe it has something to do with him beingextremelyher type.
Whatever.
It’s so distracting that she forgets for a second that her sister is standing there, staring at her, looking very unimpressed.
“Bianca! I was just meeting your fiancé, who I’ve never met before today because I had no idea you were even dating anyone.”
She deliberately ignores Lexi’s sarcasm and sends Xavier a grimace of apology.
He returns it. “I should give you guys some privacy.”
“No, it’s okay. Lexi, if you want to talk about this, fine, come with me.”
Spinning on her toe, she heads back to her bedroom and throws a robe on while letting her towel drop to the floor, knowing her older sister is right behind her.
Bianca’s still trying to figure out what to say when Lexi shuts the door and starts.
“What the hell is going on, B?” Lexi whispers through gritted teeth. “You’re engaged?”
“It happened fast.”
Which is not a lie, not really.
“Obviously. So fast you couldn’t even introduce him to your family.”
“We were keeping things private. We’re in the same degree and it’s frowned upon to date someone in your program.”
Okay, thatisa lie and she’s not even sure why she’s doing it. She’d literally just decided to call off the whole thing, but there’s something about the judgmental expression in her sister’s brown eyes, the only physical feature they share, that’s pissing her off. If she’d just showed up last night, none of this would have happened.
“Not even our family? I mean, you’ve talked about him before. Xavier, right? I didn’t think you guys were this close though, or at least you haven’t been for a while.”
“We aren’t . . . weren’t, close, I mean, but then we were and with our degree program ending, we just realized we didn’t want to be apart, so . . . here we are.” She shrugs helplessly, no idea how to extricate herself from this. She needs to talk to Xavier, but there’s no way to do it right now.
Her sister pauses and shakes her head in disbelief, before sitting down on the edge of her unmade bed.
“So, how did he do it?” she asks.
Bianca wrinkles her nose. “Do what?”
“Are you kidding me? How did he propose?”
“Oh, right,” she says. God, she’s so bad at this. Lying was never a strength of hers. “I mean, it was last night after the party. We came back here and he just asked me.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, Lex, that’s it. Sorry, does it not live up to some kind of proposal standard I’m unaware of?”
And yeah, okay, she can admit it to herself. She’s still pissed off about last night, about how clearly her sister was able to get away this morning, but showing up to her party was just a no-go.
“No, I mean . . . no, of course not, but he didn’t think to get a photographer or have your family or friends . . .”
“Well, you weresupposedto be there last night, but you all bailed.”
That, at least, makes her cringe. “Everyone?”
