Chapter 10 #2
Alice lifts a brow. “Did you have a key?”
The look on my face must answer for me, because hers goes flat.
“Exactly,” she says. “That’s called breaking and entering.”
Her voice is dry, but it’s there. A little piece of her pushing back through whatever Johnny did. I hate how badly I need to hear it.
I walk toward the edge of the pool and stop, shoving my hands into my pockets before they do something stupid.
“Water makes sense to me,” I say, because apparently tonight is the night I start saying shit out loud.
“It doesn’t ask questions. Doesn’t care if I’m pissed off or losing my mind.
I get in, go under, and for a while everything shuts the fuck up. ”
Alice looks at me. “That’s weirdly honest.”
“Yeah. Don’t get used to it.”
“Cancer thing?”
I glance at her. “What?”
She lifts one shoulder. “The water. The hiding. The pretending emotions are manageable if you drown them hard enough.”
My mouth twitches even though nothing about tonight is funny. “You calling me out with astrology right now?”
“You brought me to a pool after dark, Jagger. I’m working with the evidence provided.”
Fair.
She sits near the edge, boots planted on the tile, arms still wrapped tight around herself. I sit beside her, leaving enough space that she doesn’t have to decide whether to move away from me. I hate that the distance matters, but it does. It means I’ve given her reasons to measure it.
For a while, neither of us speaks. The water barely moves, but the room makes sound out of it anyway, tiny ripples licking tile, vents humming above us, pipes settling somewhere deep in the walls.
Alice stares into the pool like it might tell her something useful if she waits long enough.
“I don’t know how to stop wanting to kill him,” I say.
The words come out rough and too fucking honest, leaving a bad taste in my mouth the second they’re out, but Alice doesn’t flinch. She just looks back at the water, arms tight around herself, face turned toward the blue glow like it’s easier than looking at me.
“I know,” she says.
“I’m not saying that to scare you.”
Her mouth pulls into something too tired to be a smile. “You don’t have to try very hard.”
A laugh almost gets out of me, but it dies before it becomes anything. I lean forward with my forearms on my knees, watching the pool light move over my split knuckles.
The cuts look worse here. Darker. Uglier. “You still think I can scare you off?”
Alice glances at me then, and there’s enough of her in the look to make my chest hurt. “I think you scare yourself more than you scare me.”
Well fuck.
For a while, the pool does the talking for us.
Water shifting against tile. Vents humming overhead. Alice breathing beside me, close enough that I could touch her if I wanted to ruin the moment, far enough that I know she’s still deciding whether sitting here with me was smart or just another terrible choice in a week full of them.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I say, because it’s easier than admitting I know exactly what she wants and I’m too fucked up to give it to her clean.
Alice lets out a quiet laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “I don’t think anyone has ever survived wanting anything from you.”
I look at her.
She doesn’t smile.
“I don’t need you to be good, Jagger. I know what you are.” Her voice softens, but her eyes stay on mine. “I’m not asking you to become someone else overnight. I’m asking you to understand that helping me is not the same thing as using my hurt as an excuse to get your revenge.”
The words move through me slowly.
They should make me angry, and they do, but not at her.
At myself. At Johnny.
At every fucked-up instinct in me that wants to turn care into a closed fist because closed fists make more sense than fear.
“I do,” I say.
Her brow lifts.
I drag a breath through my nose. “I’m trying to.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.” I look at her. “But it’s honest.”
Her expression softens for half a second before she kills it, and I see it anyway. I always see her. That’s the problem.
My hands curl before I can stop them, and Alice notices immediately. I force them open again and hate that she saw it. Hate that she has to watch my hands like they’re another thing in the room that might go wrong.
Her face changes, small and sharp, like I said the wrong thing and the right thing at the same time.
“You can’t save me from what already happened.”
“I know.” I look at her because if I look at the water, I’ll say something easier. “I don’t know how the fuck to do this.”
Her voice lowers. “Do what?”
“Care about someone without making it ugly.”
The pool room goes still around us, or maybe I just stop hearing it. Alice’s eyes stay on mine, and for once, she doesn’t make a joke. For once, I don’t wish she would.
“I’m not good at letting go,” I say. “I’m not good at standing there while someone hurts what—” I stop, jaw locking around the word before it comes out wrong.
Alice catches it anyway. “What?”
I shake my head.
“No.” Her voice is quiet now. “Say it.”
I look at her, at the blue light moving over her face, at the tired under her eyes and the stubborn line of her mouth, and I know I should choose a better word. A safer one. Something that doesn’t sound like a chain.
I don’t.
“What’s mine,” I say.
Her breath catches.
I expect anger, so I brace for it.
Alice looks down at the water instead. “That’s the part that scares me.”
“I know.”
“No, Jagger.” She looks back at me, and her eyes shine without breaking. “I don’t think you do. Because some part of me likes it.”
My whole body goes still.
She laughs once, small and bitter. “Yeah. That’s the part I hate. You say things like that, and I should run. I know I should.”
I barely fucking breathe.
“But when you say it, it doesn’t feel like Johnny,” she says, voice thinner now. “It doesn’t feel like a game. It feels like a door I can open or close, and you’ll stand there bleeding outside it if I tell you no.”
“I would.”
“I know.” Her mouth trembles before she pulls it back under control. “That’s the problem.”
For a second, neither of us moves.
Then she reaches for the hem of her sweater.
My eyes drop before I can stop them.
Alice pauses with her fingers twisted in the fabric. “Don’t make this weird.”
“Too late.”
“Jagger.”
I drag my gaze back to her face and keep it there. “You sure?”
“No.” Her mouth twists. “But I want to get in.”
So I stand and turn around.
She huffs a quiet laugh behind me. “Wow. Manners.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
Clothes rustle behind me, and I keep my back turned while her boots hit the tile first, then her sweater.
I strip down to my boxers, leaving my jeans and shirt in a pile near the bench, and the cold air bites at my skin.
It’s not the cold that has my pulse fucked, though.
It’s her. The quiet. The fact that she’s still here after everything.
“You can turn around,” she says.
I do.
She’s standing near the edge in a black bra and panties, arms wrapped around herself, chin lifted like she’s daring me to look too long and daring me not to look at all.
I don’t know what to do with that, so I do the only safe thing.
I step into the water first.
Cold closes around my legs, then my waist, then my chest when I sink lower. It steals the air out of me for half a second, sharp and clean and exactly what I came here for.
Alice watches me from the edge. “You always look this miserable when relaxing?”
“Pretty much.”
“Hot.”
My mouth almost twitches. “Get in, ghost girl.”
She rolls her eyes, but she sits on the edge and lowers herself into the pool. The second the water hits her, she sucks in a breath and grabs the ledge.
“Jesus fuck, Jagger.”
“It warms up.”
“You’re a fucking liar.”
I smirk.
She glares at me, but it’s there again. That little piece of her. The sharp one, proof despite whatever my brother’s done to her now, it’s still alive.
I stay back while she adjusts to the cold, giving her room as the water moves around her and the blue light cuts soft over her skin. She looks wrecked and furious and beautiful in a way that makes my chest hurt.
She’s shaking a little from the cold, one hand still on the ledge, but her eyes don’t move from mine. I want to promise her I won’t fight. I want to be the kind of person who can say the clean thing and mean it.
But I’m not.
And if I lie to her now, she’ll know.
“I can’t not fight him tonight, but from now on, I won’t use you as an excuse,” I say.
Alice studies me for a long second before she nods once. It isn’t forgiveness. It isn’t trust. But it’s something.
She lets go of the ledge and moves toward me through the water, slow and careful at first, testing whether the choice still belongs to her.
I don’t move.
Every instinct in my body screams to reach for her, pull her in, prove she’s here with me and not him. Instead, I stay where I am and let her close the distance herself.
Her fingers brush my chest.
Barely anything.
It hits worse than a punch.
“Do you still want me?” she asks.
The question guts me.
“Yes.”
Her gaze drops to my mouth, then back up. “Even after—”
“Don’t.” My voice comes out harsher than I mean, so I pull it back. “Don’t finish that like anything he did gets to change what I want.”
Her lips part.
I lift my hand slowly, giving her every chance to move away. She doesn’t, so I touch her jaw, just enough to feel her shiver under my palm.
“I want you,” I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I mean it to. “I wanted you before him. I wanted you after. I want you right now so bad I can barely stand here and look at you without wanting to fuck you.”
Her breath catches, but she still doesn’t move away.