Chapter 27
Present Day
I thought time would fade West from my memory, but it didn’t happen like that.
It happened like this.
I close my eyes and remember. I hold on to everything. I preserve him in resin. I fall asleep and trace the crooked line of his nose. I run the pad of my thumb over the swoop of his lashes. I lick the divot above his lips.
Tonight, he stumbles into the darkness of my room, and it’s achingly familiar.
I’ve imagined his hands on me more times than it happened in real life.
I feel the drag of his fingers over the bare skin of my hip before they slide forward, flattening over my stomach.
I roll onto my back, desperate for contact.
His hand slides to my ribs and stops. I arch into him, groaning in frustration. His touch has me in shambles.
His face is over mine now. He’s shirtless, in the same gray sweatpants he was wearing earlier. His thumb brushes against the underside of my breast, and I wriggle against the sheets, looking for friction I can’t find.
His lips fall to my neck. The scrape of his whiskered jaw against sensitive skin makes me shiver.
I run my hand down his chest to his waistband.
He swears loudly and collapses to his elbows, his weight pressing me into the mattress.
It feels so good I almost pass out. He drags his tongue from my collarbone to my ear, and I’m panting.
“Can I touch you?” he rasps. He sounds like he swallowed a fistful of gravel.
“Yes,” I beg. I press my hips against his, the shock of contact threatening to burn me alive.
He slides his hand down to the inside of my thigh and nudges. My knees fall apart.
“But I thought you hated me.” I hear the smirk in his voice.
“I do.” I grind out the words. My eyes fly open, and I catch a glimpse of chest, forearms, muscles, before he rolls off me and flips me over. I’m on my stomach, my hands scrabbling for purchase.
He presses a line of kisses down my spine and then traces back over his work with his tongue.
He settles his chest against my shoulder blades, crushing the air from my lungs so perfectly I want to ask him to do it again.
I bite my lip to keep quiet as his mouth ghosts over my ear. “Do you want me or not, Jupiter?”
“I don’t know,” I pant.
I feel the whisper of his hands everywhere. “I’ll have to help you decide,” he promises. I don’t know if it’s a vow or a threat.
I wake up, sweaty and flushed, West’s sheets twisted around my ankles and damp heat pooling between my legs.
I don’t dare reach down and feel, knowing I won’t be able to stop myself from finishing the job.
I bite my lip and screw my eyes shut tight while my heart slows and I try to repress the feeling of West’s weight pinning me into the mattress.
His mattress. The one he claims he’s been waiting to get me on.
I need to get out of here.
I pull myself up and make West’s bed look less like I had a sex dream about him.
When I find my clean pajamas folded on his nightstand, I ignore the possibility that he might have walked in while I was having a sex dream about him.
I step softly into the hall and stop in my tracks at the soft murmur of voices. Plural.
I tense for whatever I’m about to walk into, but a smile blooms on my face as I enter the kitchen. “Gabbi?”
“Hey, Mars.” She looks up from her phone.
She’s wearing a matching orange workout set and has two neon star-shaped zit patches on her chin.
She’s folded up comfortably in one of West’s kitchen chairs.
He’s standing over the stove, stirring something in a saucepan.
He glances over his shoulder at us, his eyes sparking with interest, but he doesn’t say anything.
“You remember me?” I ask Gabbi.
“Sure. We went to those caves that one time, and you bought me one of those black velvet souvenir bags filled with shiny rocks.”
I lean my hip against the counter. West wordlessly hands me a cup of coffee, which I accept without taking my eyes off his sister. I need more distance between the dream and the next time I look at him. “I did?”
“I think I still have it somewhere. I fucking loved those things.”
“Wow. Good for me,” I say. West chuckles.
Gabbi’s eyes dart to her brother before she looks back at me with an apologetic grimace. “I didn’t realize you’d be here when I came over.”
“It’s fine,” I assure her quickly. “It’s not what it looks like. I’m just crashing here because of a fire in my hotel.”
“I know,” Gabbi says.
“Oh.” I tuck my hair behind my ears, feeling West’s eyes on the back of my neck.
“Why, what did you think I meant?” she asks.
“West and I aren’t, we’re not—” I’m searching for the words to emphasize that nothing is going on between her brother and me when he stretches across the counter and gently removes the mug from my hand.
His arm brushes mine as he lifts the mug to his lips.
He takes a long sip and wordlessly hands it back to me, as if to say We are.
I blink up at him, dazed as his tongue darts out to lick a drop of coffee off his lower lip.
Gabbi watches with raised eyebrows, and any plausible deniability I had goes right out the window. I swallow, my knees a little wobbly after West’s naked display of intimacy. “So, what are you up to this morning?” I ask Gabbi.
“Just stopping by to borrow West’s lockpick. I locked myself out when I went for a run this morning.” She rolls her eyes at herself and lets out a colorful series of swear words.
“Hey, since you brought it up, is your brother a serial killer or something? I can’t think of another reason he’d own one of those.”
West glances up at me over the bowl he’s cracking eggs into. “It’s for late-night break-ins.” He throws me an easy smile, and I have to repress false memories of his mouth doing other things, the dark scruff on his chin scraping wonderfully against my skin.
“It’s for me,” Gabbi interjects. “I’m a fucking idiot, and I lock myself out all the time.”
“Was a spare key out of the question?”
“If I had a nickel for every spare key I’ve given him, taken back, and then lost, I’d have at least two nickels. Now he keeps a lockpick on hand because he’s worried I’m leaving keys all over the city.”
“I wonder what it’s like,” I muse.
“What?” Gabbi asks.
“To know the version of West that’s thoughtful. Kind. Not an asshole. I’ve heard rumors of his existence, but…” I shrug and take a sip of coffee.
Gabbi laughs, and West gamely ignores the insult.
“There’s oatmeal with brown sugar on the stove.
I remember you used to like that. Scrambled eggs will be ready in a few minutes.
Or feel free to raid the pantry. You can have anything you want.
” His voice is still hoarse from sleep, and when his eyes flit to mine, a flash of last night’s dream comes back to me.
Gabbi stands and stretches. “He wants you to have the oatmeal, though.”
“Gabbi.” West’s tone is exasperated, with maybe a hint of warning?
“He went to the store at seven a.m. to buy it,” Gabbi says with a gleeful smile. “Okay, bye!” She scoops up West’s lockpick from a key bowl and jogs down the hall and out the front door.
His fingers find a pen on the counter. He spins it in a circle. “She can be a lot.”
“She’s a little sister. Torturing our older brothers is our birthright.”
“I deserve it, probably. She’s actually pretty cool.” He picks up the pen and taps it against granite.
Adult West is less fidgety than the boy I met at nineteen, but it’s still there inside him, emerging when he’s not keeping it carefully restrained. He almost looks nervous.
“What is the rest of your family up to these days?” I ask.
“One brother is a forest ranger in Idaho, another one is on a cross-country biking trip at the moment, and the baby of the family is still living with my parents. They’re all doing well. I don’t go home that often, though.”
“Still?”
“I’m not angry anymore. I just know what’s good for me and what’s not. After my grandma passed and my brothers all got a bit older, my mom didn’t need as much help with them.”
I nod as five hundred follow-up questions appear in my head unbidden. “I should leave.”
“Now? You don’t want to eat?”
I look at my dead phone. I can’t contact Daphne, I have no hotel room to return to, and I should eat before my signing this morning. I can spend another thirty minutes with West, right? What’s the worst that could happen?
“Do you have a charger?”
He shows me where to plug in my phone, and then I cross the kitchen and hop onto the counter next to the stove while he scrambles eggs in the pan.
I don’t want to give him a trophy for doing the most basic cooking task, but too many of the guys I’ve gotten into situationships with in New York treat food delivery apps like their own personal chef and taxi service.
I lean my head against the cupboard while I watch West and wonder if this is what we would have had if he’d come to New York with me. And if we had spent Sunday mornings making breakfast together, would it have lasted, or would his self-esteem and my career have blown it all up anyway?
“You’re ruminating,” West says.
“A little.”
“What about?”
“I haven’t seen any gaming consoles in your house.”
“That’s what you’re thinking about?”
“That and the stack of papers on your table.” The pile of papers with a red pen sitting on top has been in my peripheral vision since I entered the kitchen. “What are they?” I hop off the counter and scoop oatmeal and brown sugar into a bowl.
“Student essays.” West serves himself eggs and toast before sitting across from me.
“What students?”
“Mine.”
I choke on my oatmeal. “Hit men have students?”
“First assignment: ten thousand words on how to hide a body.”
“What’s the second assignment?”
This stumps him. “Assassination?”
“Practical.”
He laughs. “I’m a high school English teacher, Mars. These are essays I need to grade.”
“I was kidding when I called you a sexy English professor.”
He arches a brow. “When did you call me that?”
Oops. Must have been in my head.
“So, high school, huh?” I ask.
“Kinda crazy, right?”
I feel a welcome rush of irritation. “As in teenagers?”
“Yes,” he says slowly, perhaps sensing a trap.
“For how long?”
“This is my second year. I moved back here to get my teaching certificate and have a more stable job, as fun as it was having four roommates and no money in New York.”
“Do you like it?” My mind sketches a portrait of West with reading glasses perched on his nose, chalk dust in his hair, and elbow patches on his tweed jacket. It fits.
“I do. I mean, no one wants to need two jobs, but until I’m making real money from writing, this isn’t a bad gig.
Dr. B wants me to get a master’s degree and teach in his department, so that’s an option, too.
The kids are awesome, but every single day they come to school and say the most unhinged things I’ve ever heard in my life.
Last week, one of them looked me in the eyes and said I’ll never get a girlfriend because I dress like his dead grandpa. They give zero fucks.”
“You don’t terrorize them into respecting you?”
“You can’t terrorize this generation into respecting shit.”
“Well, there goes my last theory.”
“About what?”
“Why you’re so jacked. I was sure you were something scary like a hit man or a gravedigger. But between two jobs and all the macros you must be counting—”
“I don’t do that.” He looks offended.
I laugh and turn my head to the side. I drop the teasing lilt and drag my spoon through oatmeal. “I’m surprised you and Gabbi are so close,” I say, trying to keep the conversation in neutral territory and not on his muscles.
He scoffs. “You made that clear when you told her I’m an inconsiderate asshole.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. I cast West as the villain in my life so long ago, it’s difficult to accept that without a time machine, he could be anything else.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. You’re one of the good guys, but you make exceptions for me.”
West sets his fork down and pushes his plate out of the way as he leans toward me. His gaze is piercing. “Is there a world in which you forgive me? Ever?” he asks in a voice that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
“This is a pointless conversation.”
A muscle in his jaw works. “You’re telling me there’s nothing I can do to fix things between us?”
The oatmeal turns to sludge in my stomach. “Correct.”
He drums his fingers on the table as he stares at me, his expression scrutinizing. “Give me your worst.”
“What do you mean?” My voice wobbles.
He waves his hand for me to get on with it. “I’m serious, Mars. Get it all out of your system. All the scathing words you’ve written in your head over the last decade. I want it all on the record.”
“Why?”
“I need to know what I’m up against.”
I close my eyes and take a breath. It doesn’t matter what he says now, because it can’t change the fact that he never loved me the way I loved him, and all it ever got me was pain. I don’t hate myself enough to try to make it work for a third time.
“Nothing we had is worth salvaging, West.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“What am I supposed to think? You see me for a few days and get lost in college memories and think you want something more, but we’ve been here before. This isn’t the first time we’ve done this dance!”
He folds his arms, his eyes narrowing. “This is different. I’m different now,” he insists.
“Do you still have that interview scheduled for today?”
“Yes.”
“If you cared about me at all, you wouldn’t.” I don’t bother to hide the thickness in my throat as tears burn my eyes. I push back from the table and grab my phone from the charger, quickly requesting an Uber.
West pushes to his feet with a pained expression. “I’m trying to fix this, Mars, but I need a little more time to show you. Give me time,” he pleads.
“You had a decade! A decade in which you did not show up, did not care, and pushed me away every chance you got. Time’s up, West. It’s too late.”