Chapter 355: His home
"Yes, Dad, you are the best." JJ beamed, already turning a page, entirely satisfied with the arrangement.
"Great, then it’s settled." Julian leaned over and kissed Amara softly, one hand resting on the back of her chair. "Now please, let your mother have dinner in peace."
"Aww, Dad, that’s gross," Justina said, wrinkling her nose, though there was no real disgust in it, just the reflexive protest of a teenager watching her parents be affectionate at the dinner table.
"Excuse me, young lady." Julian sat up straighter, feigning offense with a hand pressed to his chest.
"Kissing my wife is not gross. I’ll have you know I’ve been doing it for over eighteen years and I plan to keep doing it for many more."
"Okay, okay," Josh muttered, already standing, gathering plates before things could get any more sentimental. "We get it. You two are disgustingly in love. Can we go now?"
Amara laughed, a real laugh, watching her three children pretend not to watch their parents be happy togetherJJ still half-buried in her book, Josh clearing the table with more enthusiasm than he usually managed for chores, Justina already lost in thought, clearly somewhere far away, already picturing herself walking into that dance with Kelvin Cylien on her arm and every single person in that corridor forced to eat their words.
It was, Amara thought, watching Julian’s hand find hers again under the table, one of the good nights. She’d learned, over the years, not to take those for granted.
—-
Julian, as it turned out, had never actually met Kelvin Cylien himself, but he’d known the man who owned the label Kelvin was signed to for the better part of fifteen years, ever since a joint venture that had made them both considerably richer and, somewhere along the way, actual friends rather than just business contacts.
One phone call was all it took. Kelvin, when he heard the request, hadn’t hesitated at all, apparently more than happy to do a favor for the label owner’s old friend, and, as it turned out later, genuinely charmed by the idea of playing hero for a night.
He arrived at the Vale mansion in a car that drew half the street’s attention before he’d even stepped out of it, dressed down just enough to look effortless rather than staged, the specific, expensive effortlessness of someone whose stylist had spent two hours making sure he looked like he hadn’t tried.
Justina was already downstairs, dressed in a deep purple mini gown that caught the light every time she moved, hair done, nerves buzzing just under her skin in a way she was trying very hard not to show.
When Kelvin walked through the front door, she froze completely, actually froze, mid-breath, one hand gripping the bannister because there was a considerable difference between watching someone on a stage from the fourth row and having that same someone standing in your own front hallway, smiling at you like this was a perfectly ordinary Tuesday.
Josh and JJ, for their part, greeted him with the same flat, unbothered hello they’d have given any of their father’s business associates.
To them, he wasn’t a global pop star. He was just some man their dad knew, here to do their sister a favor, and neither of them saw any particular reason to make a thing of it, which, if anything, seemed to relax Kelvin more than anyone else’s reaction all evening.
"Take care of my baby girl," Julian said as the two of them headed for the door, his voice light but his eyes doing the actual instruction.
"Don’t worry, Mr. Vale," Kelvin said, offering his arm to Justina with an easy grin. "She’s in good hands."
—-
At the school dance, the effect was immediate and total. The moment they walked in together, every head in the gymnasium turned, and the whispers that had followed Justina down the corridor two weeks earlier changed shape entirely no longer daddy’s girl who called the cops, but how did she pull this off, murmured back and forth across the dance floor with something close to awe.
Kelvin performed a short set once the DJ handed things over, the whole gym pressed close to the stage, phones up, screaming along to songs they’d known the words to for months and then, because he was there for exactly this reason, he came down off the stage and danced with Justina in the middle of the floor, spinning her once under the lights while half the school watched and tried to look like they weren’t watching.
Every boy in that gymnasium had eyes on Justina by the end of the first song.
Justina’s eyes, though, kept finding their way to one boy in particular, standing near the drinks table, doing a poor job of pretending he wasn’t watching too.
It worked, Justina thought, catching Nolan’s gaze across the room for the third or fourth time, something warm unfolding in her chest that had nothing to do with the music.
Kelvin went back up to finish his set a little while later, the crowd surging toward the stage again, and it was in that gap Justina, standing slightly apart from the crush of bodies, catching her breath, that Nolan finally crossed the floor toward her.
"Hey." He had his hands in his pockets, and there was none of the sharp edge from the corridor in his voice now, none of his friends flanking him to feed off of.
"You look beautiful. Guess daddy’s good girl does dances or parties like the rest of us, huh?"
Justina felt her stomach drop, bracing for a repeat of two weeks ago, until she caught the small, almost sheepish smile at the corner of his mouth, and realized, a beat too late, that he was teasing rather than attacking.
"I’m sorry," he said, before she could respond, dropping the teasing entirely.
"About last time. That wasn’t okay, what we said. Drugs are bad, that’s it, full stop. You did the right thing, calling it in. I was just embarrassed, and I took it out on you, and that wasn’t fair."
"Oh." Justina blinked, thrown enough that it took her a second to find her voice. "Thank you. That actually means a lot."