Chapter 14
“THIS IS WHAT, thirty floors up?” Grant asks, craning to take a last look at the rooftop pool as the elevator doors close.
Still high from our moment of triumph with Cole, my coterie and I had swept into the waiting elevator without confirming that it was going down, and were promptly shot up twenty-five floors. I’m still waiting for my ears to pop.
I stay put in my chair in the corner. I refuse to put my bare feet on the floor.
A rooftop pool attracts two kinds of apartment residents: those who will visit the pool exclusively to show off the view, and those who will employ it as a hunting ground for sexual partners.
I know that these elevators have seen some things.
Ian leans against the wall beside me. He’s on my bad side, and while my vision has cleared up some, he remains a beige blur, the features of his still-naked torso unclear.
Not that I’m trying to sneak peeks. I don’t think I’ll need to; that scene in the apartment has core memory written all over it.
But I wouldn’t mind confirming the accuracy of my updated mental reference.
The car slows, coming to a stop a few seconds later. When the doors part, I expect someone to be waiting to board, but no one’s there. Grant steps out, Diego following.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“A challenge,” says Grant, and looks at Ian. “Bet we’ll beat you to the basement.”
The older Hammond scoffs. “Using what? The stairs? No way.”
Grant holds out a hand to keep the doors open. “Easy bet, then. Say, twenty-five bucks?”
“What? No. That would be stupid.”
“So make it fifty,” Diego offers innocently. Too innocently. He glances back at Grant, and I pick up on something familiar in his expression. Something… conniving?
Whatever it is, Ian is too focused on his brother to notice. He crosses his arms over his chest. “Fine. Fifty bucks says we’ll get to the basement before you.”
“We’re on!” Grant releases the doors, looking way too confident for a guy who’s about to run down twenty-six flights of stairs and lose half of his month’s entertainment budget. Not that he knows I’ve set one yet; we’re going over that Monday.
The doors begin to close, but just before they do, Grant shoots out a hand, pressing them back again. He points at Ian. “That’s fifty for each of us.”
“Sure. I’ll be taking fifty dollars from both of you in however long it takes for you two to get down there after we do,” he adds, with a nod my way.
“You sure about that?” Grant leans in farther, hovering a finger menacingly over the panel of floor buttons. He punches the 21. And the 17. And the 4. And the 8…
Ian straightens, back separating from the metal wall with a peeling sound. “Grant—”
With a shit-eating grin aimed at his brother, Grant splays his palm and draws it down the columns of numbers, illuminating all but three before retreating.
“Grant!” I shout, half laughing at the unexpected cunning.
“You shithead!” Ian bellows as the doors begin to close.
Grant lovingly extends his brother the finger. “Enjoy the ride!” he singsongs, then darts around the corner with a whoop! Diego giggles madly. The doors shut.
I do a quick tally of the floors we’ll be visiting. He managed to miss the 5, my old floor, making it less likely that we’ll be enduring a second encounter with Cole, but we have twenty-three goddamn floors before we get to the basement.
I turn to Ian with a grimace. “There is a second elevator, if you’d like to try your luck?”
Ian shakes his head. “This is what I get for underestimating them.”
“Suit yourself,” I say, not minding the prospect of our forced proximity. I turn to face him, sitting up on my knees so I don’t have to crane my neck as much. “Well, thank you for helping me move. Sorry that it’s about to cost you a hundred dollars.”
He smirks. “It’s fine. It’s been… interesting.”
“Oh?”
The elevator comes to a stop, chiming a bright ding! before the doors open. I hadn’t noticed the ding earlier. That’s going to get old.
No takers, just a large 24 painted on the wall and an oversized print reading “Alright, Alright, Alright.” The car waits for ten seconds before the doors close. Twenty-two to go.
“Interesting, seeing where I used to live?” I continue, eagerly. “Or interesting because you can’t find a better way to describe the experience of demoralizing my ex?”
Ian ducks his chin and reaches for the brim of his cap, but for once, he isn’t wearing it. Instead, he ruffles his hair, reminding me of how soft it had felt between my fingers the night we met. “I know that I can have an impact.”
“An impact?” I repeat, not bothering to hide my laugh.
“Such a tame word for turning a man to dust at the sight of your dominant masculine form.” His brows raise, and I roll my eyes.
“Please. Like yours is ever not the dominant masculine form. When Heather saw you this morning, she shouted, ‘Whose horse is that?’”
He huffs a laugh. “That was a first.” He runs a hand through his hair again, then rests his forearm against the back of the chair.
“Impact is what our dad says. We got our height from him. When I hit a growth spurt in high school, he sat me down to talk about how intimidating size like ours can be. To women, in particular, it can be threatening. So be aware. Don’t loom, don’t corner, leave an exit clear… ”
“Grant must have gotten that Dad chat, too,” I say. “He left the front door open when I went into the house the first time. It was really thoughtful.”
“Good.” He nods, more to himself than me. “Dad also said that if dealing with the kind of guy who’d be…” He seems to search for phrasing.
“Angling to have yourself described as dominantly masculine again, Mr. Hammond?”
“If a guy’s so fragile that the sight of me can take him down a peg, then he deserves to be.”
I prop my chin in my hand. “Fair enough. But how’d you know that Cole fit the bill?”
The elevator settles at the next floor; I’ve already lost track of how far we’ve gone.
The doors open, but Ian’s eyes don’t leave mine.
He watches me with the same stormy concern he wore when he entered the apartment earlier.
My fingers curl, digging into the plush fabric of the chair.
It’s disarming, being on the receiving end of a look like that.
I don’t know whether to rally my defenses or surrender.
“Whatever happened with him left you desperate enough to move into the Dawghouse,” he says, firmly. “Anyone who could do that is clearly lacking.”
My skin tingles. He cares.
He’s quiet for a moment, eyes going distant. His gaze is still unfocused when he says, “That night in the bathroom, I don’t know if you remember, but you said that you were…”
His eyes meet mine again, and heat spreads from my cheeks to my chest…
and lower. “Several things, but sad was one of them. And for a second, before we—” He raises his hands and lets his fingers link briefly before separating.
“You looked it. More than sad. Like… diminished. And I saw that again in your apartment.”
The words generate more than tingles. My body is sparking.
The urge to tell him everything is so fierce, I have to physically brace against it.
I run the scenario: the mystery pain, the breakups, the hope I felt early on with Cole, and the relief of my endometriosis diagnosis before the relationship’s gradual breakdown.
The degree to which I’d allowed myself to be diminished—ten points to Ian; diminished was a quality word choice—my eye, and the fear and uncertainty that quietly dominate every spare moment and thought.
The urge passes before the elevator reaches its next stop. Confiding in him might relieve me of some of the burden, but to watch the concern in his eyes twist into pity is an indignity I’m unwilling to risk.
“We’d been over for a while,” I say, the go-to line worn to edgeless. “It was just shitty timing on his part.”
“That’s vague,” he complains, and my thrill at the fact that he cares enough to point this out is outweighed only by how appalled I am that it takes so little to thrill me.
I don’t know if it’s me or my ever-present instinct to please, but I add, “Seeing him reminded me of who I was when we were together. Who I’d become with him by the end. And I don’t want to be that person anymore.”
“Hmm.” He eases himself into a half-seated position on the arm of the chair, bringing him close enough that I feel the heat radiating from his body. “Still vague. But very dramatic.”
I let out an involuntary laugh, and he smiles.
“It’s embarrassing,” I say, which is also true. “You saw Captain Day-Glo. I stuck it out with him. He stopped caring—” I halt, my chest tightening. It’s exactly what happened. Cole stopped caring. I’ve lost all humor as I add, “And I kept trying, anyway.”
I force myself to meet Ian’s storm-cloud gaze.
“I like being useful. I genuinely enjoy doing things for the people I care about. I like making their lives easier. Better. And when the cracks started to show, I filled them by leaning into that. I took on more and more around the apartment, prioritized the things he liked or wanted to do. And he was appreciative at first,” I add, more for my benefit than Cole’s.
“But it didn’t take long before all that became routine, too. ”
It wasn’t enough.
“I can understand someone not seeing the value in maintaining a pristine toilet,” I say, the example inane, but real.
“But he stopped caring that I did. That things like that matter to me. And then that became routine. I started to expect less and less from him, and he delivered. He didn’t value what I did. And by extension, he didn’t value me.”
“And you stayed,” he says. No judgment, just an observation.
“I convinced myself I didn’t need it. The consideration. It was either that or believe I didn’t deserve it,” I say, and wince. I could break my own heart thinking about that too long.
Before I descend fully into melancholy, I force a smile. “Still vague?”