Chapter 25 #2
The words hung there for a beat.
Rachel’s face softened instantly. Dante just looked tired.
“Vienna,” Rachel said carefully. “Maybe not tonight.”
I laughed once, but there was no humour in it. “That’s sort of the fucking problem, Rach.”
Because every night was not tonight.
Every night I was meant to wait, to watch, to hold myself back, to accept the little she could give and call it enough. And for years—years—I had.
But now that I knew what her life looked like when the curtains were closed? Now that I had seen the bruises and the fear and the way she reached back despite herself?
It wasn’t enough.
It was never going to be enough again.
I dragged a hand down my face. “I can’t keep doing the window.”
Rachel was quiet.
Dante got out of the car, shut his door harder than necessary, and came around to my side. “Then don’t.”
I looked at him.
He shrugged one shoulder, but his eyes were sharp on mine. “You’re no good to her like this. If you go over there tonight, pissed out your skull and halfway to a breakdown, you’ll do something stupid.”
“I do stupid very well.”
“No,” he said flatly. “You do reckless very well. This?” His gaze swept over me. “This is just pathetic.”
That would have annoyed me under normal circumstances. Tonight, all it did was make my chest ache.
Because he was right.
I wanted to go to her. God, I wanted to go. I wanted to vault that balcony, break the fucking glass, get down on my knees in front of her and tell her I was done with distance, done with silence, done with every single careful line that had kept us apart all these years.
I wanted to touch her.
I wanted to make sure she was real.
I wanted too much.
And if I went to her like this, wanting everything, I wasn’t sure I’d leave.
Rachel touched my arm lightly. “Come inside.”
I stood there for another second, staring into the dark beyond the car park, to where enemy territory sat somewhere past the trees and the roads and all the miles I usually crossed without thinking.
Not tonight.
“Fine,” I said at last, the word scraping its way out. “But if anyone says something profound to me, I’m fighting them.”
“Noted,” Rachel said.
“Scrap that. If anyone says anything at all to me, I’m fighting them.”
“That’s a very reasonable thing to say,” Rachel replied completely deadpan, and then shoved me through the door.
Inside, the bar was a riot.
Someone had dragged in extra speakers. The lights had been dimmed low enough that the coloured bulbs around the mirrors stood out brighter than usual. The floor was already sticky underfoot. A group of prospects were trying and failing to start a chant near the dartboard.
Jenna was at the bar laughing so hard at something Heather had said that she nearly snorted her drink.
Ant was arguing with Sunshine over the rules of some card game no one else appeared to understand.
Even Bee, mercifully spared the late-night madness, had left behind one of her glow sticks from earlier, which now sat snapped and glowing neon green on the counter.
The whole place looked deranged.
Perfect.
“Vienna!” someone shouted as I came in. “You look like shit!”
“That,” I called back, grabbing the glow stick from the bar, “is because I am transcending.”
“No, mate,” Greg laughed from somewhere near the fruit machine. “You’re just pissed.”
“Same thing to the enlightened.”
“What happened to fighting?” Rachel murmured low enough that only I could hear.
“Rachel!” I gasped at her. “Stop being so violent.” And then I flicked her in the face with my beard.
I should have gone upstairs. Should have collapsed face first into bed and let the room spin until sleep took me under.
Instead, I looked around at the noise, at the lights, at the movement, at all these people who loved too loudly and lived too heavily and expected nothing from me tonight except whatever ridiculousness I chose to give them, and I made a decision.
If I couldn’t have her, if I couldn’t stand under her balcony and lose my mind over what I was missing, then I was going to drown it out.
“Who’s on music?” I demanded.
“Why?” Riley asked warily.
“Because your current playlist lacks vision.”
Before anyone could stop me, I was behind the bar, leaning over people, reaching for the auxiliary cable, ignoring Rachel’s helpless laughter and Dante’s look of immediate regret.
My fingers fumbled twice before I got my phone connected, and then the opening beat of something loud, filthy, and gloriously brainless exploded through the speakers.
“What the fuck is this?” Dante shouted.
“Medicine!” I shouted back.
The reaction was immediate.
Half the room booed, the other half cheered.
I found two more glow sticks in the drawer beneath the till—don’t ask me why we had so many; this place was apparently one minor breakdown away from becoming a children’s disco at any given time—and snapped them both hard enough to make the neon spill through the plastic.
One pink, one blue.
Outstanding.
Rachel let out a delighted laugh the second she saw my face. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.”
I vaulted onto the lower end of the bar—not the top, I’m not suicidal—and began raving like a man possessed.
There is no dignified way to describe what happened next.
At some point, a whistle appeared in my hand. I do not know where it came from. I do not know who gave it to me. I can only assume the universe recognised that I was entering my Terry Crews era and provided accordingly.
So there I was—half cut, glow sticks in both hands, a whistle between my teeth, and my beard catching the strobe lights every time I flung my head around.
Raving at the bar like the world’s most emotionally unstable club mascot.
Rachel screamed with laughter. Even Dante looked close to smiling before he remembered he was morally opposed to joy.
“Move over!” Jenna yelled, climbing onto a chair and waving her drink in the air.
“No one can move over,” I shouted. “This is a solo spiritual experience!”
Then I blew the whistle so hard my ears rang.
The room erupted.
And for a little while—just a little while—it worked.
I threw myself into it completely. Into the ridiculousness.
Into the neon and the pounding bass and the sheer stupid physicality of movement.
I danced with whoever got too close. I nearly took out a prospect with a glow stick.
I ended up on the floor at one point, leading some sort of synchronised arm-wave that Sunshine refused to participate in on the grounds that I was, and I quote, “an embarrassment to the patch.”
That was fair. Maybe.
I didn’t care either way.
Because every time Gabriella’s face threatened to rise up again, every time I pictured the balcony and the glass and the exact shape of her mouth when she was trying not to cry, I moved harder. Louder. Faster. Whistle. Lights. Noise. Anything to keep from hearing the one thing under all of it.
Go to her.
Go to her.
Go to her.
I didn’t.
That was the point.
That was the whole fucking battle.
By the time the music shifted again and the room had melted into that loose, happy kind of chaos that came after too many drinks and too much dancing, I was sweating through my shirt and breathing hard, my chest heaving, my head full of static.
I leaned both hands on the bar and laughed at something Rachel said without fully hearing it.
Then, when no one was looking, I glanced toward the window.
Toward the dark beyond the glass.
Toward enemy territory.
She’ll be waiting, something in me whispered, and the thought hit me like a grenade. Because she would be, wouldn’t she? She’d step onto that balcony or stand behind the doors or flick the light and wait for the answering shape of me in the dark, and tonight… tonight there would be nothing there.
I gripped the edge of the bar until my fingers hurt.
For one insane second, I nearly went anyway. Nearly walked straight out of the club, half mad with need, and headed for the bike.
Then Rachel slammed another drink down in front of me. “No brooding.”
“I’m not brooding.”
“You’re aggressively brooding.”
“I’m contemplating.”
“So brooding with a touch of multi-tasking then.”
I snorted despite myself.
Dante passed behind us, muttering something about idiots and babysitting and needing stronger alcohol, and Rachel took immediate offence and started singing again just to annoy him.
I should have smiled.
Instead, all I could think was that somewhere across town, Gabriella might already be at the glass.
Waiting.
Wondering.
Missing me.
The thought was so dangerous I had to swallow against it.
I picked up the drink Rachel had given me and knocked half of it back in one go.
Not tonight.
If I went to her now, I’d break. And if I broke in front of her, there’d be no putting any of it back in the box again.
So I stayed.
I blew the whistle. I waved the glow sticks. I laughed too loudly and danced too hard and made a complete spectacle of myself because the alternative was crossing enemy lines with every last restraint hanging by a thread.
And this time, for once, I chose not to go.
Not because I didn’t want her.
Not because I didn’t need her.
Because I couldn’t.
And yet I knew if Gabriella got word to me that she needed me, really needed me, I would go. No matter what state I was in or what it would cost me, I would go.
How could I not?