“Dixon, we need to talk,” she said, trying to ignore how nicely his body felt against hers. She pulled away, but he stiffened and held her in place.
He gave her a little squeeze and pulled out his notepad, writing with one hand in the dim light that streamed through the window in the hall. I know. It’s cold, though.
“What do you know?”
That we would never work.
Lila sighed. “That’s not what I was going to say, Dixon.”
We’re friends. I know. I feel the same way.
She turned in his grasp and stared at his face. “What on earth are you doing, then?”
He grinned and scrawled on his notepad. This time, Lila watched him as he wrote every word. I said I wanted to kiss you. I didn’t mean I wanted more.
“Why?”
Jealousy is a powerful motivator.
A hammer hit Lila’s chest as she read his simple words. Dixon and Tristan always roomed together, always seemed to finish each other’s thoughts, and always moved with the precision of one person. Other things came to her, like Tristan’s annoyance after Dixon had kissed her and his constant overprotectiveness toward his friend.
“Wait a minute. You and Tristan are together?”
Dixon’s jaw opened so wide that she could make out the small nub of his tongue in the back of his mouth. “No!” he mouthed, then wrote it out, adding many gratuitous exclamation marks. Gross. He’s my brother.
“There’s nothing gross about—”
Dixon pointed at brother again, then gross.
“Wait? He’s really your brother? As in you both share a parent, you’re not just friends?”
Dixon nodded.
“Same mom?”
Dixon shook his head.
Lila leaned back into the building. Tristan’s father had been a highborn. She could only guess at the man’s morality now that she knew he had slept with two slaves on his family’s estate. It wasn’t wrong for the highborn to bed the poorer classes; it wasn’t even wrong to intermarry, though it made life more difficult for the couple. It was only immoral for a highborn male to have unprotected sex with a female slave, creating children forced to grow up in servitude. No wonder Tristan and Dixon felt bitterness toward the highborn. Their father had used his slaves for more than just work.
That was no highborn man. Not a proper one, anyway.
“Who are you, Dixon? I could never figure it out. It shouldn’t be hard to find the identity of a man like you, but no slave children aged out of the Holguín estate who met your description. Only Tristan’s.”
Dixon shrugged. Mystery. He winked.
Lila didn’t like that answer. Her mind flashed back to the dance around the apartment and how he had twirled her so perfectly. It was as though he had been born to do it, as though he practiced, as though he’d been tutored by a dance master. “Just now, when you danced. That was a waltz. A perfect waltz. You’ve had training.” Her mouth opened wide and she stood up, still shocked. “You’re not from the poorer classes at all. You’re a highborn. Your father was highborn, and so was your mother.”
Sit down.
Lila sat.
Long story.
“You had a slave chip.”
He tapped long story again with his finger. It was clear he would not tell the story that night, but it didn’t matter all that much.
Lila could do her own search.