Chapter 3
ZARIAH
SIGNS ARE RIGHT THERE
By the time I got off the plane, I was way beyond a bad mood, and the universe was determined to keep me in one.
I’d paid extra for first-class handling to protect my typewriter.
It’d been sealed tight, filled with foam peanuts, and plastered with thirty ‘fragile’ stickers.
Apparently, those were taken as fun suggestions.
The airport agent lifted the box, a symphony of broken parts. Foam peanuts fell from the gigantic hole in the side. When he placed the box on the counter, it crunched. I slid it closer, and the rustle of parts inside made me feel sick.
“You should file a report online,” he said. “Lie, say it’s priceless, and you can’t buy it anywhere else. You’ll get a slightly better payout.”
“It is priceless,” I said listlessly. “I can’t buy it anywhere else.”
He sighed. “Sorry, honey.”
I opened the box to see my beloved typewriter from Grandpa Hersch, now a big block of mechanical crap I had to lug to Marrs. I could get it fixed, but I didn’t have that kind of money. Maybe the payout from the airline would cover it? Ugh, I wasn’t optimistic.
This hurt so bad, I had to take a moment to breathe properly.
“What happened to Grandpa’s typewriter?” Elijah’s voice broke in from behind.
I swallowed the disappointment. If Elijah saw me freak out, he’d freak out too. “You don’t like the upgrades I made?”
He took the box from me. “I told you not to take it to Atlanta.”
“And I told you to stop wearing that cologne. It smells like cat piss.”
“Why’d you come back?” he retorted. “It’s been so nice not pulling your long hairs out of my ass crack.”
Yep, that was my twin all right. I smiled, and crossed the distance between us, wrapping an arm around him. Elijah was a chaotic mess, but he was my chaotic mess.
I buried my head against his chest. “I can’t believe you took all the inches in the womb.”
“My dick or my height?”
“We both know my dick’s bigger than yours.”
He snorted, squeezing me. “Not to gross you out, but I missed you so much, Z.”
“Missed you too, E.”
My smile was fleeting as Elijah lumbered to the baggage carousel for my actual luggage. I failed in Atlanta, one of my dearest possessions looked like someone had chucked it into a ravine, and…Elijah.
His five o’clock shadow wasn’t a fashion choice, there were bags under his eyes. He was trying to be nonchalant but we both knew it was an act.
A few weeks ago, Elijah got into so much trouble.
Our parents had no idea that he’d crossed lines he’d never crossed before.
I couldn’t help but think that if I hadn’t left for Atlanta, none of this would’ve happened.
I didn’t want to believe it, but wasn’t it true?
Elijah was impulsive. If I wasn’t around to stop him, he did things without thinking.
He needed structure. Accountability. If he didn’t have that…
I caught sight of Elijah’s car outside. A lone figure opened the door, and I narrowed my eyes. There he was.
Elijah told me all about who he’d been partying with this summer, who he’d been drinking with, who he’d been spending the most time with—the captain of the Gladiators. Elijah’s enabler.
I passed through the crowd, heading for the car, until…
Fuck.
He’s hot.
My anger at Elijah’s negligence was hard to nail down because his new hockey captain was really fucking attractive.
It was a huge inconvenience. I mean, the guy’s scraggly beard wasn’t doing him any favors—did the Gladiators throw out the clippers with their last coach?
But beyond the ‘isolated hiker in the woods’ facial hair—whew.
The hockey captain was a big guy, handcrafted to be my type. His shirt fit him, but his muscles still poked against the fabric. Were his biceps seriously that huge? He was so distracting, it was unfair.
No—no. I had to focus.
He was the one clearly enabling Elijah while I was gone.
“Hey!” I snapped my fingers to get his attention. “Olesky!”
Olesky stared at me, eyes wide, frozen in place.
“I heard what happened. If you and Elijah are such good friends, how could you let him fuck up like that?" I put a hand on my hip, gesturing to Elijah still inside. "He needs structure, not someone to let him do whatever he wants!”
“Are you serious?”
“Uh, yeah?” I frowned. “There’s no way you’d let your teammates get away with—”
“I’m not Olesky.”
I blinked, surprised. I could’ve sworn Elijah texted me who he was bringing. “I thought…you’re the hockey captain?”
He took a step closer, weirdly not blinking. “Raya?”
“It’s Zariah,” I corrected him.
With a name like Zariah, people found creative and annoying ways to mispronounce it.
It used to bother me when I was younger.
Being different like that—being different at all.
I borderline-sheared my curly hair because it wasn’t in fashion, hid parts of myself to fit in, and when my mom wouldn’t overhear, I went by Raya.
Especially during the summer I stayed with my Grandpa Hersch.
After my grandfather died, I stopped caring about stuff like that. I let my hair grow out and returned to Zariah. Hersch chose my name. I didn’t want to butcher it anymore.
Still with his eyes on me, the hockey captain touched his chest. His voice deepened. “Denali.”
Denali?
Denali…Maddox. Denali Maddox? No, no, no, that wasn’t…that couldn’t be. I already had a shitty end to my summer, I couldn’t deal with this too.
Because this wasn’t Denali. He couldn’t be, he wasn't the boy. The one with bottle-cap glasses and huge sports goggles he wore on the rink. The boy with cystic acne and a mullet.
Puberty shot him up so fast, every step he took was awkward. He had to figure out what to do with his new, elongated limbs. I even had to teach him how to hug me because he didn’t know his own strength.
No, this wasn’t a boy at all, this was a man. Towering over me even more than when we were kids, way more muscular than he’d been five years ago, and…those same dark eyes. I searched his face, taking in the new details while he gazed back at me, unwavering.
Memories bubbled under the surface, threatening to implode.
Oh, god.
Denali's lips curving into a smile, molded against mine. Him squeezing my hand so tight because he didn't know any better. He always insisted on tying my shoes and skates. Carefully, he threaded the laces, double-knotting them just to be sure, because above all else, he took care of me.
Until that twisted into something I couldn't control.
“Denali,” I breathed out, shocked.
“I got your bag!” Elijah fractured the silence between us, and Denali and I flinched, lurching away from each other.
I whirled around to see Elijah, buried in his phone. “You won’t believe this, they changed the dining hours." He read off the times, frowning. "The signs were right there, right in front of me. How did I miss this? It was so obvious.”