Prologue #3
“Because I don’t know if you want me to.”
Her expression changed, small enough that I would’ve missed it a month earlier. I didn’t now. “I do,” she said.
I kissed her. Slowly. Her hand came up to my jaw. I pulled back after a second, and she followed me, so I kissed her again, and that one wasn’t slow.
By August we were together. Nobody had declared it.
There wasn’t a conversation where I asked her to be my girlfriend — it simply became true.
She came over because she wanted to see me.
I went to her dock because I wanted to see her.
We kissed everywhere we could find privacy: my car, the boat, behind the boathouse, my bedroom when my parents weren’t home, once in her room when Jane had taken Tobias into town and Roman was gone.
And late in August, on my bed, we almost went further.
Ally was underneath me, her shirt somewhere on the floor, my mouth at her neck and her fingers curled into my hair — and then her hand came flat against my chest, and she pressed, gently, and I stopped instantly.
I lifted my head to look at her. She was breathing hard, her cheeks flushed, and there was something in her face I couldn’t read. “Hey,” I said. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” She swallowed. “I just — I’m not ready. Not — not for that. Not tonight.”
“Okay.” I said it without a beat of hesitation, and I meant it, and I watched her register that I meant it.
I rolled off her and pulled her into my side instead, and she came, tucking her head against my shoulder.
“That’s it. That’s the whole conversation.
We don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for. Ever.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Ally.” I pressed a kiss into her hair. “No. Christ, no. Why would I be mad?”
She didn’t answer that. She lay there against me with her hand over my heart, and for a second I had the strange feeling that she wanted to tell me something and couldn’t — that there was a reason underneath the not ready, some whole shape of a thing sitting just behind her eyes.
But she didn’t say it, and I didn’t push.
I never pushed with Ally. Whatever she gave me, she’d give me because she chose to, or she wouldn’t give it at all.
So we stayed there, her head on my chest, my fingers moving through her hair, no rush and no deadline. Just us.
I didn’t understand what she’d stopped for until the fall.
School started, and Ally disappeared.
Not literally — that would’ve been easier. She was everywhere. Hallways, classes, the parking lot. She just wasn’t mine anymore. She didn’t answer texts. Didn’t answer calls. Wouldn’t look at me.
The first week, I gave her space. The second, I stopped. By the third, I was fucking furious.
If Ally wanted Harrington instead of Ryan, she got him.
I could be cold — better than most. I started small.
“Move, O’Toole,” and she’d step aside. “You’re in my seat,” and she’d leave.
I made comments when I passed her, nothing that would make anybody wonder why I cared, just enough to make her jaw tighten.
One afternoon she dropped a pen, and I stopped it with my shoe. She bent to pick it up. I didn’t move my foot. Her eyes lifted slowly. “Seriously?” It was the first word she’d said directly to me in almost three weeks.
I smiled. “Look at that. She talks.”
“Move your foot.”
“Ask nicely.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“There she is.” I moved my foot. She grabbed the pen and walked away, and I watched her go — and then I followed. “Ally.” Nothing. “O’Toole.” She kept walking. “Alison.”
She stopped. Turned. “Don’t call me that.”
“Then stop pretending you don’t know me.”
Her eyes flicked around the hallway. Too many people. I opened the nearest empty classroom door. “Inside.”
“No.”
“Then we can do this right here.”
Her face tightened. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
She went inside, and I followed and shut the door.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she said.
I leaned against the door. “That’s funny.”
“You’ve been acting like a complete asshole.”
“Also funny.”
“Ryan.” Hearing my name almost undid three weeks of anger. Almost.
“Why?” I said. “Why did you disappear?”
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t.” I pushed off the door. “Three months, Ally. Don’t stand there and insult me.”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said, looking away.
“What wasn’t?”
“Us.”
I stared at her. “That’s your explanation?”
“No.”
“Good. Because it fucking sucks.”
Her eyes flashed. “You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?” She pressed her lips together, and I stepped closer — and she stepped back. I stopped immediately, and that did something ugly to my stomach. “Are you scared of me?”
“No.”
“Then who?” Silence. “Roman?” Her face drained, and that wasn’t an answer, but it was enough of one. “What did he do?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Ally.”
“Nothing.”
“You’re shaking.”
She looked down at her hands and tucked them against herself. “Please let me go.”
I should’ve. Instead I said, “You told me you trusted me.”
Her eyes filled. “I do.”
“Then tell me what the fuck happened.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the only person I trust.” She said it like it hurt, and I stared at her.
“That makes no sense.”
“I know.” She covered her face, and when she dropped her hands she was crying. Quietly. “I wasn’t supposed to care about you.”
My anger drained out of me. Not completely. Enough. “Why?”
“Because my father already decided who I’m going to marry.”
I didn’t understand. “What?”
“Victor Tremblay.”
The name landed differently now — the photographs, his hand on her waist, the way she’d looked down at it. “Why the fuck would you marry Tremblay?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Good.”
“My father doesn’t care what I want.”
“You’re eighteen.”
“Yes.”
“He can’t force you to marry somebody.”
“No.” She wiped her cheek. “But he can keep Tobias.”
That shut me up. “What does Toby have to do with it?”
“Everything.”
She sat down in the nearest desk, and I took the one beside her, and then Ally told me. Not all at once. I had to pull some of it out of her; other pieces came so fast she stumbled over them. Roman had told her when she was fifteen. Tremblay had wanted the arrangement, Roman had agreed.
“Arrangement,” I repeated. “You’re his daughter, not a fucking merger.”
“To my father, there’s not much difference.”
“What does Tremblay get?”
She was quiet for a second, and then she said it, flat, staring at the desk in front of her.
“Me. Untouched.” My whole body went cold.
“That’s part of it,” she went on, and her voice was very careful now, the way it got when she was holding something at arm’s length so it couldn’t cut her.
“It’s a term. An actual term. My father promised him I’d come to the marriage — pure.
That’s the word they use. Pure. Like I’m something in a case.
It’s part of what makes me worth whatever Victor’s paying for me.
So I can’t.” Her eyes came up to mine, wet and steady.
“I haven’t. With anyone. Because the second that stops being true, I stop being worth the arrangement, and I don’t know what my father does then, but I know it isn’t let me go. ”
And I understood. All at once, the whole shape of it, the thing that had been sitting behind her eyes on my bed in August. “That’s why you stopped,” I said. “In August. That’s why you—“
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want you.” Her voice broke on it.
“God, Ryan, it was the opposite of that. It was that I wanted you so much I almost did the one thing that gets me killed. I stopped because I was protecting both of us. And then I couldn’t even tell you why, so I just — I let you think I wasn’t ready, and then school started and I ran, because loving you and staying near you and keeping that promise all at the same time was going to get somebody hurt, and it was going to be you. ”
“Has he touched you?” I asked. “Tremblay.” Her silence lasted too long. “Ally.”
“Yes.”
My hands curled. “How?”
“Not — not that. He touches my waist. My back. Sometimes my face. He kissed me once. My mouth. My father was standing right there.” She wiped her cheeks.
“That’s what I let him have, because I have to let him have something.
And I count the whole time. I go somewhere else in my head and I count until it’s over. ”
I walked to the windows. “Your father knows,” I said. “About all of it. The promise. Tremblay.”
“He made the promise.”
I closed my eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“That’s why I couldn’t tell you,” she said, and I turned. “Look at you. You’re already—“
“I’m not angry at you.”
“I know. But you’ll do something.”
“Yeah.”
“Exactly.” She stood. “If my father ever finds out I love you — if he finds out you’re something I’d break that promise for — he uses everything, Ryan.
He uses Tobias. Especially Tobias.” Her face crumpled.
“And my mother can’t help me. She’s scared of him, she’s depressed, she drinks, she stays in that house and pretends nothing’s happening because that’s the only way she survives it. ”
“And you?” I asked. “How do you survive it?”
She looked at me. “I do what he wants. Until I can get Tobias out. That’s the whole plan. That’s all I’ve got.”
“Does Roman know that’s what you’re waiting for?”
“No.”
“Good.” I moved closer, and this time she didn’t move away. “You should’ve told me.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“By making me think you regretted me?”
“If you hated me, you’d leave me alone.”
“No.”
Her eyebrows pulled together. “No?”
“No. Terrible plan.” A laugh escaped her through the tears, and I touched her face. “You don’t get to decide I hate you.”
“I don’t know what else to do.”
“We figure it out.”
“You can’t fix this.”
“I didn’t say I could.” That surprised her, and I wiped beneath her eye with my thumb.
“I don’t know what your father’s doing. I don’t know what the fuck their arrangement actually buys either of them, and I don’t know how to get Tobias away from Roman.
” Her breathing shook. “But I know you don’t do this alone anymore. ”
“Ryan.”