Page 3 of Meant to be Mine

I scrolled through a mental list of names and came up empty. And then, like she always did when I needed someone steady, my mind went to my best friend, Kensey.

She would give me advice. Tell me what I needed or didn’t need. She’d always been the person I called when I needed to think something through out loud. I smiled just thinking about her. Even back when we were kids, she had this way of cutting straight to what actually mattered while I was still circling the problem. She would have made an amazing assistant for me, but unfortunately, she was three thousand miles away, teaching at a fancy prep school on the east coast.

I glanced at the clock. Too early to call. I’d try her tonight, once I got home and didn’t have six other fires to put out at the same time.

I grinned, already wondering what she was going to bust my ass about when I called her.

2

KENSEY

Itipped my head back and the sun warmed my cheeks and painted the inside of my eyelids bright red. Grinning at the sky like a maniac with my eyes closed, I took a deep breath of air. Southern California always made me forget how cold and gray the east coast was nine months out of the year. I wasn’t built for gray skies.

But I am built for this. I opened my eyes and carried on my way down the sidewalk, a Tupperware container balanced in one hand. LA was home. Always would be.

Three days ago I’d been sitting at my desk at Crestwood Academy, submitting final grades into a portal that always glitched right when you needed it most. Two days ago I’d been packing. Yesterday I’d been on a plane. And today, here I was, walking down a street in Beverly Hills like I hadn’t spent the last nine months wearing ugly cardigans and sensible shoes.

Somehow, two years had passed since the last time I was in LA. I knew we all lived under the same sun, but it was different on the west coast. The last two summers I’d signed up for the summer school program at Crestwood, partly because the extra pay was good and partly because it was easier to stay busy. This summer would be different. I was taking time off.

Mom’s accident had made it impossible for me to ignore the passing of time. She’d broken her arm recently. Nothing dramatic, but it was a reminder she wasn’t as young as she once was. It had rattled something in me.

My parents weren’t getting any younger. I wasn’t going to get a lot more summers with them. And if I kept my distance too long, I’d find myself looking back at all my missed chances to spend time with them. No way. Not happening.

So here I was. No summer school. No lesson plans. Just three months stretching out in front of me with nothing but sun, sand, and sea on my mind. Well, that and my best friend in the whole world who I hadn’t seen in too long. Drew didn’t even know I was coming. I grinned like an idiot thinking about his stupid face when he saw me. He was going to be so surprised I’d made the trip home.

Finally, just as the morning temperature was becoming a little too warm, the store came into view. I stopped and took it in. Or attempted to. It was huge, dominating the retail plaza and dwarfing the stores on either side of it. Drew had sent me a few pictures but he wasn’t the type to brag. Never had been, which was why I liked his rich ass. He didn’t act like the other rich kids in the exclusive private school we had attended.

I knew his cousins were in fashion. Vaguely. The way you know things about people you grew up near but didn’t really track closely. Surface-level facts about his family. They were fine, but he was the only one I really associated with.

Blackwell was a name that meant something in this city, had for as long as I could remember. Drew’s father was one of the movers and shakers in the movie business. And his mother was an A-list actress. She worked more behind the scenes these days, but every so often, I would see her in a new movie.

Drew had never been part of any of that. Not really. When we were younger, Drew was the guy with the boat and the easy laugh and absolutely no life plan. He played the stock market and drifted. His investments always seemed to hit, and the man never needed to work a day in his life if he didn’t want to. Drew had confided to me that it got boring to just sit around without any direction. He was looking for projects to sink his teeth into, and that was how he had ended up running the Blackwell store for his cousins.

The storefront alone told me this wasn’t some side project. Brushed gold lettering on the glass, the kind of understated signage that screamed luxury without beating you over the head with it. I pushed the door open and stepped inside. The air-conditioning hit me first, followed by the scent of eucalyptus. It felt like walking into a spa. My shoulders dropped of their own volition and the crease in my forehead from squinting in the sun relaxed.

“Holy effing crap,” I breathed.

I turned from left to right, trying to soak it all in, but I couldn’t decide where to look. There was a literal bartender in here tossing shakers and pouring colorful drinks like this was a five-star luxury hotel lobby.

And then I spotted Drew.

My gaping mouth slapped closed and my grin bloomed anew. He stood near the center of the sales floor in a blue suit and white shirt. I was pretty sure it was custom. Duh, it’s a Blackwell suit. He’s got to promote the clothes they sell. And his cousins should be paying him for looking that good in one of their designs.

His shirt was open at the collar, no tie. His hair was styled, shorter on the sides than I remembered, the shaggy mess I used to tease him about now actually styled. But the stubble was still there, the same five-o’clock shadow he never quite got rid of, and it grounded him, made him recognizable even with everything else dialed up a notch I hadn’t been braced for.

He spoke with a man in a polo shirt holding a clipboard. Drew had one hand on his hip, the other rubbing at the back of his neck. The muscle in his jaw worked overtime while the man in the polo let out an exasperated sigh.

I walked up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. “Did someone order a muffin?”

Drew turned around fast, already half-annoyed, like he expected one more problem to add to whatever pile he was currently balancing. And then his eyes landed on me, and the annoyance evaporated.

“No way!” He grabbed me and pulled me into a hug so hard he lifted me clean off the floor, spinning me half a step.

I laughed into his shoulder and held on to my Tupperware for dear life. His arms were strong around me, stronger than I remembered, and for one disorienting second I forgot we were standing in the middle of his very fancy store with strangers definitely watching. He smelled like cedar and something minty. Shamelessly, I took a sniff and tried not to let my eyes roll into the back of my head.

God, I’d missed this. Missed him. Two years was a long time to go without one of his amazing hugs.

He set me back down, hands still on my shoulders like he needed to confirm I was actually there. “Kensey Blake. What the hell are you doing here?”