Longest chapter yet, slightly edited :) If you want a spoiler about the story, comment your question bellow x

C H A P T E R   T H I R T E E N 

"You can't back out now," I sing happily as we walk towards the grand house glowing with lights and soft music. I'd told Nathan we'd be going on an epic adventure and that he needed to wear a tux for this adventure attire. I don't think he caught onto the whole party concept until we'd arrived in front of the hosts' party house.

He asked, I hinted, but they were very lose hints. Nathan is pretty social, I'm sure he's going to be amazing in this party setting. I also think he's going to have more experience than Alex and I put together.

"Who is this person?" he asks.

"Roza Volkov," I say, "I think she's a model too." I hadn't heard much about Roza Volkov, I wasn't too big with names and people involved in the fashion side of the world, but her name rings a small bell in the back of my mind. When I'd been asked to come, I accepted because I really didn't have any plausible excuses to say no.

"Volkov Designs?" he questions.

"Not sure, I just know she wasn't gutsy enough to ask me herself," I reply.

"Assuming its Volkov Design's heiress, you're pretty special to be invited to this party. A while back Roza's friend Taliyah tried to get with one of the members in Alex's band and he had to ship shape up pretty quickly to impress Roza before she'd even consider an invite for him. And you, straight off the bad, well done." He slow claps.

For the second time today, I feel incredibly nauseous about attending this party. After ending the call with Mom and Hannah, I'd managed to talk myself into coming here and now hearing about this all, I really don't want to screw up my first impression with her. I know walking away is going to look ten times worst, but if you think about the horrible outcomes, pretending to be sick with the flu seemed pretty good right now.

"Compliment her appearance, her house and then something else and you'll be fine," Nathan reassures me.

"I feel like I could just puke."

"Save that for later." He chuckles. "We'll stay for a couple of hours and then escape to mine?"

"Sounds perfect."

I link my arm through his as we walk through the open front door. My eyes immediately start to scan the environment hungrily. The house is styled in a bright crème palate with golden accessories sparkling to create an expensive luxurious look.

By the open stair case, my eyes catch a tall stunning woman with a flowing white dress on with a thigh high split in the dress. It's simple, eloquent and is styled with chunky jewellery accessories dangling from her ears and neck. As she turns her head to smile, her cheeks compliment the distinct jaw lines. She flips a strand of golden brown hair over her shoulder before her light blue eyes connect with mine.

Her whole face lights up with excitement, and she doesn't try to contain it either. With screams of joy, Roza Volkov dashes over to me and grabs me in a death crushing hug.

"You're actually here and standing in my house." Nathan is suddenly pushed into the background and I'm being tugged away into the spot light of her affection.

"Thanks for having me at your house, I love your dress, it's stunning," I'm quick to compliment.

"Dad designed it just for me. I love your dress too. So plain, but refined. And that masked." She smiles.

Roza leads me deeper into her house, to the point where I feel like it might swallow me whole, but as we move through halls and rooms, we appear in the backyard which has been carefully designed to complement a social gathering point from the location of the bar, wide seating arrangement and subtle glow of lights neatly placed around.

"Now the party can really begin." She winks at me.

The music the DJ is playing abruptly stops in favour of a new track. One of my songs remixed with another one is loudly blasted through the stereo which surprises me. Heads turn in our direction and it makes me shiver with discomfort.

"Would you like a refreshment?" she asks.

"Sure." I smile.

"Anything specific? I can have the bartender make you anything you like."

"I'll have whatever you are having." Roza lets go of my arm and chases down a waiter, which allows Nathan to return to my side.

"Someone's in love." He snickers.

Roza swiftly returns with three tall stems of champagne. She hands one to both Nathan and I then sips on her own glass happily.

"I love your music, even if I'm slightly older than your intended audience. I'm glad you could attend my party. I would have invited you myself, but I was afraid you'd say no, and well," she takes another sip of her drink, "that would have been embarrassing for both of us."

"Thanks for the invite." I smile, not sure what else to say.

"Hi Janie," she calls out, waving to another petite model in a slimming skin-tight white dress.

Janie's smile seems forced, but she smiles and raises her glass in a toast gesture. Roza mirrors her action and then takes a small sip.

"I hate that slut." She growls under breath while still keeping a friendly appearance. "She tried to steal my boyfriend last summer, and she thinks she got away with it."

"Oh, that's horrible." I frown.

"She's getting what she deserves." I don't know what that is, but I'm too afraid to ask what that might be.

"We're very excited to be at your party," I try to divert the subject and bring Nathan into the conversation as well. I was worried I wouldn't have anyone to talk to and now it seems like Nathan is the one sitting in that corner.

"Aw, really?"

"I just love social gathering," I insist.

But as soon as those words come flying out of my mouth, I immediately regret saying it. Curling up in a ball at home sounded more fun than having to be put in-between any drama between Roza and Janie.

"I'm going to invite you to all my other ones, tomorrow I have a small something planned for a fashion preview, you should attend," encourages Roza.

I don't want to tell her about my plans for hitting up the recording studio because I don't want to sound like I'm not interested, Roza would be a really good person to be friends with considering her connections, so I nod my head and agree to come. Ava would either be very annoyed for blowing the record off, or very excited I'm making friends with a fashion heiress.

A slim brunet walks up and pleasantly greats Roza with two air kisses on either side of her cheek. She's wearing a bright red blush which stands out against her dark olive skin tone. The bright red dress and matching black and gold accessories are rough on the eye, but I smile back.

"Who is your friend, Roza?" she eyes me off.

"This is Sienna," she introduces, "She's into music and stuff." The down play of my career stings my heart. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to take that comment.

"Ah, The Masked Singer?" she questions, a flair of her French accent embodying her words.

"Yes." I shyly nod my head.

"Oh look, Patrick is waiting for you." Roza waves at an Italian man dressed in an open button white shirt with curly black hairs promptly fluffed out the top of his shirt.

"Better say hello, kisses." She makes a kissing sound before moving towards Patrick.

"Uh?" I look at Nathan with confusion.

Roza causally takes a sip of her drink before commenting, "She's a status climber, don't trust her." With a shake of her head, Roza grabs my arm and leads me away from the peak point of her balcony and somewhere a little quieter.

We walk down the stairs that lead to an open dance floor. There isn't many people dancing because everyone is upstairs gathered in small circles talking. Being down here gives me a chance to just breathe and gather my thoughts once again. Being in this party makes me feel like I'm in the middle of the ocean and I'm not the shark, I'm the prey.

"Are you as scared as me?" I whisper.

"Like I'm about to be eaten alive." He downs the drink and hands it off to a waiter walking past us.

"New drinks?" Roza asks.

"Do you have beer?" Nathan asks.

"Sure, what about you, Sienna?"

I shrug my shoulders and go with the first thing that comes to mind, "Something fruity."

"I'll be back soon." Roza smiles and then charges up the stairs to the bar. I look at Nathan and smile.

"Free alcohol, I have no complaints," Nathan adds before I can ask him about his night.

'Sorry.' I mouth, "I thought we'd be like flies on the wall or something."

"Not with your reputation, you're like an elephant in the room." He eyes off the other people surrounded us. Nathan is right though, everyone is watching us like hawks and it's a little scary.

"You just have to dance link nobody's watching, literally." Nathan takes a couple of steps back and starts dancing along to the music very badly, but the massive grin across his face takes away the awkwardness and replaces a sweet vibe. The DJ changes the music to something that's a bit easier to dance to.

Funk Town by Bruno Mars comes on and Nathan starts walking towards me in time to the beat while clicking his fingers. When he's a foot in front of me, he offers his hand out and I cannot refuse him.

I accept his hand and he tugs me onto the dancefloor. I bend my elbows and swish my hips from side to side and I click my fingers in beat. When the first verse comes on, Nathan points and moves his wrist in a circular motion to indicate to spin. As Bruno sings about being hot, I twirl around and he fans my body. I burst out laughing as the thought of how ridiculous we are.

Roza starts screaming as she runs onto the dance floor, she hands off the drinks and starts doing the dance moves from the music video. I raise both hands and use the free one to pound the sky and cheer Roza on.

I take a large gulp of my drink and start randomly rocking out to the song with them. Roza rocks out some seriously good dance moves and I feel like an awkward caterpillar wiggling in the background.

My radical dance moves cause me to splash a small amount of my drink on the dance floor and I start to panic about what Roza might say.

"Don't worry." She waves it off, "The cleaners are coming tomorrow."

"Sorry." I take another two large gulps which almost finish the cup.

Roza charges towards me and takes the drink from my hands and down the content before I am able to finish it off myself.

"Another?" she offers.

"Same one." I nod with approval.

I'm not a fan of the bitter after taste champagne has or beer. I can tolerate it, especially when it's chilled and in small dosages. Beer on the other hand, can someone say poison? This drink has a nice tropical juice flavouring and I love it.

Roza dances her way off while Nathan and I return to dancing. He takes a sip of his beer and I wrinkle my nose and focus on changing up my dance moves. The next song to play through the speakers is rap song, which surprises me. I didn't realise high end models listened to rap, I thought it would be the radio streamed stuff.

It's slower than the previous song, which I'm grateful for. I bop from side to side and do some cool hand actions while singing along to the chorus of the song, which Nathan repeats with me.

"And I got this sewed up." I giggle.

And what takes my breath is Nathan's sudden rap break out.

"Tell me what you see. Is it money or it's me?"

"Woohooo, go Nathan!" I cheer, but he stops rapping.

"That's all I know," he says.

Roza returns with a glass filled with my tropical drink and a clear shot glass.

"Drink up," she says as she hands them to me.

I don't want to say anything against it, so I accept the drinks and quickly take the shot then down the tropical juice to get the burn of the Vodka out of my mouth. The drinks go straight to my head and I feel light headed and slightly disorientated. I'm totally not drunk, maybe just tipsy.

"Let's dance more!"

Nathan finishes his drink and gives me a thumbs up. He starts walking towards the stairs, so I take that as a sign he's going for a second beer. I hand off my glasses and try to compose myself, but the thudding music makes it almost impossible to do so. Suddenly, I don't feel too crash hot.

"Could you show me to the bathroom?" I ask.

A worried look passes Roza's face, but she quickly shakes it off, "Sure, follow me."

Roza takes a hold of my wrist and pulls me along behind her. We walk up the stairs, across the balcony and inside the house. To the left, we walk down the hallway and go to the second door on the right. It's a grand bathroom with a long mirror, round sink and a shiny toilet.

"Thank you." I don't mean to, but I close the door in Roza's face. Perhaps she thought it was one of those fix your make up visits, but I seriously needed to use the bathroom after throwing back all that liquid towards my pea sized bladder.

I race toward the toilet, then finish up by washing my hands with expensive smelling hand soap and fixing my hair and applying small touch-ups to my make-up. Just as I start to apply the red lipstick, I miss the side of my lip and curse under my breath. Make-up remover was something I forgot to bring.

"Are you okay?" Roza calls out.

"Uh, eh."

"Need help?"

I couldn't avoid the fact I have a low tolerance of alcohol forever, and Nathan certainly wouldn't be any help. I stand behind the toilet door as I open it to wave Roza inside. She shuffles inside and looks around before finding me. Her eyes go wide and she tries very hard not to laugh, but giggles escape her lips.

"What have you done?"

"Missed the lines?" I giggle back.

"I have some make-up remover in my bedroom that should fix it," she replies.

"Do I have to walk through the crowd?" I frown.

"Toilet paper it is!"

Roza grabs some toilet paper and slightly dampens it before applying it to my face to try and remove the bright red from around my lips. The mark isn't complexly removed, but enough to make it faded and hardly noticeable. She applies more foundation over the red blotch and then fixes my lipstick for me.

"Perfect, now blot your lips." She hands me a second piece of toilet paper.

"Thank you."

"Ready for another drink?" she asks.

"Only if you're offering water."

"Soda water it is!"

While Roza charges off for another drink order, I return to the spot on the dance floor to find Nathan. And to my luck, he's standing on the edge with a worried expression consuming his face.

"There you are!" he practically screams.

"Bathroom break with Roza." I stagger across the dance floor and fall into Nathan's arms. He tightly winds his arms around me so that my body is propped up against his.

"Too much to drink?" he questions.

"Yes, Sir." I smile happily.

"Here, Sienna." Roza appears with a wine topped to the brim with liquid.

"No more alcohol for Sienna," Nathan immediately says.

"Good thing I brought soda water." I take the drink from her hands and down the content of it quickly. The cold none alcoholic liquid feels nice running down the back of my horse throat.

"I should take Sienna home before she passes out on your floor," Nathan interjects before Roza can say something else.

"But." A sad look consumes Roza's face instantly, which makes my heart sink to my feet. I feel bad leaving after such a short period of time, but I can't stay any longer without making any more of a fool of myself.

"We can hang out tomorrow, or something." I smile happily.

Despite being the slightest bit afraid of Roza and the social damage she could do to my status if we ever fell out, there's something about her that I like. She's cool, fun and I get that vibe she's down to earth despite having so much wealth and power circling her.

"Okay, but I'll walk you to the door." I'm thankful she offers because I have no clue where I'd need to walk to get there. Nathan's arm stays firmly wrapped around my waist as we walk through the house and towards the front. I still stager, but it makes walking incredibly easier.

"See you soon." I wrap her in a tight hug.

"Hopefully." Her blue eyes light up with promise.

"Text you laters, baby." I chuckle. "Wait, I don't have your number." I pout.

Before I have a chance to offer up my phone, Nathan interjects and hands his cell phone over to Roza.

"I'll give Sienna your phone number tomorrow. I don't want her to drop her phone, which she will in this state," Nathan explains.

"Okay." Roza types her number and even takes a photo of herself so that she can put it as her contact number. When she's finished, she hands her phone back to Nathan.

"Thank you for having us, goodbye." I wave as we walk out the door.

Nathan and I hop into an approaching car that I don't question. He helps me buckle my seat belt, only to be no help when he tries to put his on. I lean against his shoulder and close my eyes.

"How far away is your place?" I ask.

"It's close by."

Close felt like the wrong descriptive word to many things. It felt like we're just sat down in the car only to be turfed out in front of a mansion.

"I thought you lived in a small place?"

"Small if you compare it to the hotel," he teases.

Instead of walking through the front door, Nathan leads me around the side which feels like the longest trek of my life. I don't question why I can't walk through the front door and straight to bed, so I just suck it up and keep following. When we get close, Nathan disappears around the corner and flicks on a light.

Suddenly the blackness of his backyard lights up to a beautiful space which makes me smile with delight. I cautiously walk forwards as I survey the space around me. Roza's backyard had been nice, but nothing compared to Nathan's.

The back of the house opens up to an undiscovered seating area with a stocked bar in the corner which is big enough to be luxurious, but not ridiculous to looks like alcoholics. The decking area stops and opens to a beautiful slab of cream pavement which goes around their shimmering pool. The garden feels like it could go on forever, which is an aspect I like. Its unkept enough to be styled and rustic, while nearly trimmed to remove pesky weeds and to hold a desired shape.

I take another step and trip over something on the ground. I fly head first into the pool. The cold water embraces my body quickly which sends a chill shooting up my spine. As I resurface, I cough up the water I've roughly inhaled.

"Are you okay?" Nathan shouts with panic. He throws his suit jacket on the floor, then jumps into the pool next to me. Water splashes across my face and stings my eyes. But I don't say anything when he resurfaces.

"Your make up is smudged." He cups my face with both hands.

"I happen to like Alice Cooper."

"You're certainly a lot cuter then Alice Cooper." Nathan delicately removes my mask from my face and runs his fingers underneath my eyes tenderly to remove the black smudged make-up.

"Thank you."

"Welcome." He smiles brightly.

"Swim time?" I bounce up and down twice.

"Promise not to drown!"

"Sure." I nod my head, "and I doubt you'd let me die on your watch." I chuckle.

I swim towards the edge of the pool so that I can hold onto the side while I remove my shoes and any excess jewellery that I don't want to lose. I create a small pile along the side before pushing off the wall and swimming over to Nathan.

I wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his stomach.

"Rawr," I yell happily.

"What are you doing?" He swirls around in a circle while holding onto my legs.

"I wanted a piggy back," I chime in happily.

Nathan swims around the pool while I huddle close to his body, soaking in the warmth radiating out of him. We do a couple of laps up and down the pool before Nathan heads towards the stairs and walks straight up without removing me from his back.

As the water sloshes around us and my weight dawns on him, Nathan holds onto my legs tighter and I wrap myself around him even more. He walks straight past my belongings on the floor and straight to the back door.

"But we're wet."

"The cleaners will come and clean it up," he dismisses.

Nathan leads us down the first hall to the left and into what looks like a guest bedroom from the nice styling and lack of personal touches. He continues straight through the bathroom and into the shower where I hop off his back and quickly work on turning on the hot water.

Within seconds, hot water is spitting out the faucet and running down my body like a nice warm blanket. This reminds me of the times Lucy and I used to go swimming at her house before retreating to her bathtub to warm up in the late evenings.

When I'm warmed up, the reality of the situation dawns on me.

"You shouldn't be in here," I say.

"Saving on water, where will the ducks in the drain swim?" he teases.

"Your shower is over there." I point at the second shower head in the long shower. Nathan holds his hands up in defence as he takes two steps back and starts his own shower.

"Can I borrow some clothing to sleep in?" I ask.

"Sure." Nathan starts unbuttoning his white shirt and I find it hard to remove my eyes from his fine body. I know it's so wrong, but everyone is allowed to window shop, right? Next he removes his pants and my brain loses it completely.

I turn my back and focus on washing water through my hair. From the corner of my eyes, I can see Nathan wrapping a towel around his semi-naked body before leaving the bathroom. He closes the door which allows me to quickly strip out of my own clothes and wrap a towel around my body.

Within five minutes, Nathan returns with a pile of clothing. I put on the oversized t-shirt and the boxers and tie me wet hair up into a bun before walking out the bathroom to flop down on the bed. I snuggle up into a ball and throw a pillow on the ground for him.

"There you go." I smile happily. "Your bed looks very comfortable."

Nathan shakes his head with a chuckles, "I'm sleeping on the bed. You're welcome to sleep on the floor," he offers.

"Conscious Riley would never agree to let you sleep in the bed."

"It's my bed and we're just friends," Nathan corrects.

I don't fight him on it. He pulls the blankets back and climbs into the free space behind me. He wraps his arm around my waist and pulls my body so it's flushed up against his.

"Good night, Riley," he whispers into my ear.

"Night." I sleepily reply as I close my eyes and drift to sleep.