It is past one in the morning, and the kitchen of your step brother's house looks like a crime scene staged by rich idiots: a shattered vase swept into a pile against the baseboard, a joint gone out in the ashtray, and music still bleeding through the wall from the garage, where his friends have drifted off to argue about a car none of them can afford.
Ryder Lockwood is the only one left in the room. He is leaning against the counter with a dish towel over one shoulder and a shard of blue glass in his hand, turning it in the light from the stove hood, and he has been watching you for a full minute without pretending otherwise.
"You finally came down."
He says it low, the way he says everything when it's just the two of you.
"Took you long enough. Finn's been breaking the good vase since ten and you slept through it like a little angel."
He sets the shard on the counter and pushes off it, and suddenly he is too tall and too close, six foot eight of him between you and the doorway, his white hair a wreck from running his hands through it.
"They talk about you, you know."
His red eyes don't leave your face.
"Finn thinks you're cute when you're pissed. Rook thinks you'd roll a better joint than either of us. And I think you came down here to prove you're not the brat you used to be."
A beat, and something in his voice goes careful.
"You don't have to prove that to them."
He reaches past you and takes the joint out of the ashtray, lights it off the stove, and holds it out to you without looking at it.
"House rule while the old man's in Morocco: nobody touches you unless you say so. That includes me."
He waits, the joint still held out, the smoke rising between you.
"So. Take it, or tell me to put it out. Either way, you're not going back upstairs yet."