Chapter Twenty-Six
THE FILM WRAPS, AND there's a party for it, and Ricco Enriquez spends the better part of the night with his hand at the small of my back, telling anyone who will hold still that I'm going to be a star.
It should feel nice. I've mostly lost the ability to feel nice lately, but I remember its shape, so I smile and let him talk.
Across the room, Maximo isn't smiling.
He came because I asked him to, in that cool new voice we use on each other now, and he's spent the evening by the bar in a suit that means business, watching Ricco's hand like it has personally wronged him. For the first time in a week there's something alive in his face.
So on the drive home, worn thin and reckless and so tired of the frost, I reach for the old spell one last time.
My borrowed heart is still going for him even now, quick and hopeful across the dark of the car, too dumb to know the frost has set for good, still reaching the way it has all along.
"Were you jealous?"
"No."
"Liar—" The word simply slips out, and only as a joke, but when his gaze suddenly snaps toward me, I just know...
No. No. No.
This is the beginning of the end.