Chapter 58
Fifty-Eight
THEN | SISK
“You don’t get to jump into the tar, save me, disappear for months, show up, fuck me, and then act like we’re just going to fall asleep like none of that shit happened.”
He stares at me for a moment and then swings his legs off the bed.
For one stupid second, I think he’s coming toward me, but of course he isn’t. He grabs his jeans from the floor and pulls them on.
“You’re leaving?”
“Need air.”
He steps onto the narrow fire-escape balcony, already pulling a cigarette from the pack, already checked out—as if this conversation is optional.
I stare at the open window for exactly three seconds before following him.
I can’t help but look at him. The city lights catch the hard lines of his back, the new muscles shifting as he moves. A shiver goes through me that has nothing to do with the temperature.
He doesn’t even turn around. “Go put on some pants. People can see you.”
“I don’t care.”
He glances back, his eyes raking over me, and a ghost of a smug smile plays on his lips. “I thought I made it clear to you that pants aren’t optional.”
“You’re not wearing a shirt. I’m not wearing pants. Who gives a fuck?”
“I do,” he says, his voice turning suddenly serious. He takes a slow drag from his cigarette, his eyes never leaving mine. “You give them enough of a show on stage. The rest is just for me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I say, crossing my arms. “Since when do you smoke?”
He looks away while I dissect him inch by inch—every tattoo, every muscle, even the small ring through his nose. He’s changed, that’s for sure. “I don’t even know you anymore,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “You do.”
“You vanished for months, Jax.”
“I needed time.”
A bitter laugh escapes me. “Time?” I repeat. “You needed time? After Ivan died? After we crawled out of that pit while everyone thought you murdered half the city?”
He looks away.
My voice cracks despite myself. “I defended you,” I say, the words breaking. “I stayed and defended you while nobody even knew if you were alive.”
“I’m sorry,” he tells me weakly.
“You are sorry? You disappeared!” I snap. “You left me to clean up everything.”
Jax flicks ash over the railing. “I know.”
“That’s it?” I laugh. “That’s all you’ve got?”
“You think I wanted you dealing with that?”
“Someone had to,” I snap again.
I look at him harder, and the words just tear out of me. “You didn’t even go see your mom!”
He lowers his eyes.
“You left everyone,” I say. “Me. Her. Your dad. Like none of us mattered.”
“I needed you to move on,” he finally says.
“Move on?” I nearly shriek. “You didn’t break up with me, Jax, you left without a word. After we both fell into hell!”
He doesn’t answer. My throat tightens, the question slipping out before pride can stop it.
“…Do you even want me to come back?”
Jax freezes. That’s all the confirmation I need. If he wanted me, he’d have said it already. Instead, he looks away.
“You’re good here,” he says quietly. “Safe. Dancing.”
Something inside me cracks, clean down the middle.
“So that’s it?” I whisper. “I’m just your fuck buddy now? Last I remember you wanted something serious with me. Of course I shouldn’t have believed it. You got what you wanted and left. Did you think I’d just be waiting here for another round?”
His mouth tightens.
“No, it wasn’t and it isn’t anything like that. It’s complicated, okay?”
“Sure is,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
He doesn’t argue or correct me.
“You know what?” I say, voice shaking. “I want you to leave.”
“No,” he says calmly, turning back to me, his eyes pinning me in place. “You don’t.”
Rage spikes. “I do. Go.”
He watches me for a long second then he steps closer anyway. His thumb catches under my eye, wiping away tears I didn’t realize were falling. He leans down and kisses me. For a moment, I melt—muscle memory, heat, him. Everything falls quiet, then I remember, and I shove him back.
“Do you want me to go back?” I ask, my breath uneven. “Back to Tar City.”
YOU BELONG HERE, IN OUR CITY
The voice in my head catches me off guard, but Jax drags me back with the next words out of his mouth.
“I can’t do the boyfriend thing, Sisk.”
My heart folds in on itself. I straighten, wiping my face with the heel of my hand, forcing myself back together piece by piece.
“Okay,” I say. My voice sounds steadier than I feel. “You should go.”
This time he doesn’t argue. I watch him grind the cigarette into the rail, and I realize he’s already let me go.
He leaves my life as suddenly as he entered it, and somehow I end up shattered all over again. But this time, I make myself a promise: This is the last fucking time.
* * *
ONE YEAR LATER
Lou slides a drink in front of me before I even sit down.
“You look hot,” he says, eyeing my boots.
“You look jealous,” I shoot back.
He grins. “Bitch.”
I’m looking around this bar like a tourist, noticing every crack in the booths, every rip on the coasters, every smudge on the glasses.
I see the guy yelling at the bartender, a couple in the corner making out mid-argument.
I notice everything, and as depressing as I find it, the liveliness of it all has me staring like I’m seeing it for the first time.
Lou props his chin in his palm. “So. Tell me everything. Did you make them cry?”
“Only twice.”
“Good. If you’re not making someone cry during an adagio, what’s the point?”
I shrug. “It’s so different there. Everything is so… I don’t know.”
“Clean?”
“Yeah. Clean.” I hesitate. “And kind of boring.”
Right on cue, a guy lifts his shirt just enough to tuck a gun back into his waistband before pulling his jacket over it. It’s as casual as tucking in a shirt.
Lou gestures around us. “I’ll take boring over whatever this is.”
“Right.”
“You got principal yet?” Lou asks.
“Understudy.”
“That’s still huge.”
“What about you?” I ask quickly. “You still at River Street?”
He makes a face. “Liquor store now. Night shift. Turns out I’m excellent at judging fake IDs.”
I nudge him.
“And,” he sighs dramatically, “I’m saving. Gonna open my own studio someday.”
“That’s amazing, Lou. Someday like…?”
“Someday like fifty years from now. When I’m seventy, with perfect turnout and no cartilage left.”
We both laugh, but I know what he’s not saying. He never left. I did. I ran off to a world where the biggest danger is a bad review, while he stayed here, where the biggest danger is… everything else.
“You’re really staying the whole weekend?” Lou asks.
“It’s just a visit.”
He lifts a brow. “You’re not going to avoid him all weekend, right?”
My grip tightens around my glass. “Who?”
Lou snorts. “Please.”
He knocks back his drink and stands. “Shots. Then we’re going to the alley show.”
“Alley show?” I repeat.
“Underground rap. Very Tar City. Very ‘I grew up angry and now I own it.’ You’ll love it.”
“I’m not angry.”
He stares at me. “Girl, we are all angry.”
He raises his glass. “To being single, making bad decisions, and not crying over boys.”
I clink mine against his. “To not crying over boys.”
He leans in conspiratorially. “And if we run into him, we’re acting unhinged. I will personally grind on the nearest straight man just to make it uncomfortable.”
I choke on my drink. “You would.”
“I absolutely would.”
We throw back the shots. For the first time since stepping back into this city, I let my shoulders relax.
* * *
The alley is packed, a solid wall of sweaty bodies pressed together. It’s gotta be a hundred degrees, and I’m glad I’m in these cutoffs. This is the vibe I need—dark, loose, and fucked up. It’s how we all get by here.
On some makeshift stage, a rapper’s yelling about being hungry and never saying sorry, and the crowd goes nuts like they’ve lived every single word.
Lou grabs my wrist and pulls me deeper into the crowd. “Come on,” he yells over the beat. “You didn’t come back to stand near the exit.”
Someone bumps into me and doesn’t say sorry. I laugh.
Lou is already dancing, dramatic and precise even when he pretends not to be. His shoulders roll. His hips snap on beat. A guy in a tank top stares a little too long.
Lou notices. “Absolutely not,” he mouths at me, grinning.
I shove him playfully. “Go.”
He spins, backs into the guy deliberately, then glances over his shoulder at me like, watch this.
A girl with glitter smeared under her eyes presses a black lollipop into my hand. “Five,” she yells over the music. “For the pretty one.”
I take it. Why not.
The rapper switches tracks to something faster now, angrier.
Lou slides back to me, breathless. “Okay, that one was straight but confused.”
“You’re a menace.”
“Correct.”
I start to unwrap the lollipop. Lou swats my hand away. “Absolutely not,” he says. “Anything but that stuff. You have a career.”
I raise a brow. “I’m not fragile.”
“No,” he says, grabbing two beers from a cooler someone’s carrying through the crowd. “But I love you too much to let you get dragged by that shit.”
I roll my eyes, pocket the lollipop and take the beer.
I watch someone climb halfway up a fire escape and hang there, screaming the lyrics back down into the alley like a confession.
The music shifts again and without thinking, I move. Just hips and sweat and rhythm.
Lou whoops. “That’s it!” he yells. “She’s back!”
I shove him again but I’m grinning. For a second, I forget about everything else.
Forget about clean studios and white walls and mirrors that show every flaw.
Here, no one is looking for perfect lines.
They just want to feel something, and that’s all I want tonight.
To feel something instead of the steel-hearted girl I’ve been pretending to be.
The beat switches again and Lou grabs my hands and spins me under his arm, exaggerated and dramatic like we’re onstage instead of standing in the street covered in spilled beer.
“Give me hips!” he yells.
“I am giving you hips!”
“Not your precious ballet hips! Give me the alleyway hips!”
I laugh and let go. I let my body move wrong, messy and off-count.
A guy with a neck tattoo leans in, his breath smelling like whiskey. “You dance like you’re trying to start a fight,” he says.