Chapter 6
The Party
Nina dragged her to the hockey house for Beat State, a Kingston tradition, a bonfire and a keg and roughly ninety percent of the athletic department crammed into a house that smelled like beer and dryer sheets.
"I don't want to go," Tessa said, for the fourth time, standing in front of her closet in a towel.
"You've said that already. Wear the green one."
The green dress was tighter than anything Tessa had worn since before Poppi died, and she stood in front of the mirror running through the familiar catalog of complaints before Nina physically took the hanger out of her hands.
"You look like a whole entire snack and you're wearing it, let's go, Toni's saving us a spot by the fire.
" She saw Beck within the first ten minutes, laughing at something with a red cup in his hand, and her whole body did the thing it always did now, some ancient fight-or-flight circuit lighting up like she'd spotted a predator instead of a boy who'd sent her four unanswered, achingly kind text messages.
He saw her too, his laugh trailing off mid-sentence, holding her gaze for one long beat before he came over an hour later, once the party had shifted into that late, hazy hour where the music slowed.
"Hey, stranger," he said, standing close enough that she could smell the specific mix of cologne and bonfire smoke on him.
"Hey."
"You ghosted me pretty hard there."
"I know. I'm sorry. I don't have a good explanation."
"You don't have to apologize." He studied her for a moment, something careful in his expression.
"I just—" He stopped, seemed to reconsider whatever he'd been about to say, and instead nodded toward the crowd shifting into something like dancing near the makeshift speaker setup in the corner.
"You want to dance, or is that also a crime I need pre-approval for before I attempt it? "
She should have said no. But the song was slow, and his hand found the small of her back like it had done it a hundred times before, guiding her until her back was against his chest. His hands slid to her hips, pulling her back into him until there was no space left, his breath warm against her neck.
"I've thought about you every single day since that night," he said, close to her ear.
"I need you to know that wasn't nothing to me.
" She felt herself soften despite every instinct telling her not to, arching back into him almost involuntarily, and for one dizzy moment she let herself believe it, fully, for the first time.
Then the old voice arrived, right on schedule.
This is exactly what happens right before you find out what you actually are to him.
She pulled away so fast she nearly knocked over the girl behind her, already pushing toward the door.
"I have to go," she said, and didn't wait for an answer, just pushed through the crowd toward the front door, out into the cold October air, walking fast down the sidewalk with no real destination except away, arms wrapped around herself against the chill.
She heard him behind her before she saw him.
"Tessa. Tessa, wait—"
He caught up easily, and got in front of her, hands up, not touching her, blocking the sidewalk with his whole body.
"I can't keep doing this," he said, breathless, something raw underneath his usual charm. "I've never once pushed for more than you've given me. I just need to know if I'm imagining this. Something happens every single time we get close, and then you run, and I don't understand what I did wrong."
"You didn't do anything." Her voice cracked on the last word, tears already threatening.
"Then what is it?"
She stood there under a streetlight, breathing hard, and for one terrible second she thought she might actually tell him the truth — about Tyler, about the photos, about every reason she'd built for believing she was the kind of thing boys used and then put down.
She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. That was when he closed the distance instead, slow enough that she could have stepped back, could have said no, could have kept running the way every instinct told her to.
She didn't. His hands came up to frame her face, thumbs at her cheekbones, and he looked at her for one long, searching second like he was asking permission with his whole body before he finally kissed her.
It wasn't a movie kiss. It wasn't soft or careful or perfectly choreographed.
It was a little desperate, a little angry underneath the tenderness, two people who'd been circling each other for a month finally colliding, and Tessa felt every single wall she'd built over the last year crack straight down the middle, felt it happen physically, a loosening in her chest she hadn't known was possible anymore.
When he pulled back, forehead resting against hers, both of them breathing hard in the cold, he said, quiet and rough, "I'm not going anywhere.
Whatever you're so sure is going to happen.
I'm not him. I don't know exactly what he did to you yet, but I know I'm not him, and I need you to at least consider the possibility that I might be telling the truth.
" She didn't know how he knew there was a him.
She was starting to understand that Beckett Callahan noticed a great deal more than he ever let on.
? ? ?
She didn't sleep much that night, replaying the kiss on a loop until the sky started to lighten, and by the time her alarm went off for her nine a.m. class, she'd already reread his three a.m. text — get home safe, I mean that, text me when you're in bed — probably a dozen times, memorizing the exact phrasing.
Nina took one look at her over breakfast and set down her spoon. "Okay. What happened. You have a face."
"I don't have a face."
"You have an extremely specific face. It's the face of someone who either witnessed a crime or got kissed by someone she's been pretending not to like for a month. Given the general vibe of your life lately, I'm betting on the second one."
Tessa told her the whole thing, or most of it, and Nina listened with the particular focus of someone who'd been quietly rooting for this outcome since September.
"So what now?"
"I don't know. I panicked and told him I had to go, and then he chased me down the street and kissed me, and now I don't know what the actual next step is supposed to be. Do I text him? Do I wait? There should be a manual for this."
"There's no manual, Tessa. You just text him. You're allowed to want something and say so."
She texted him around noon, after an entire morning of drafting and deleting.
Tessa: hey. sorry about running off last night
His reply came within seconds, like he'd had his phone in his hand the whole time waiting.
Beck: don't apologize. best night I've had in a long time, running included
Tessa: can I see you today?
Beck: I was hoping you'd ask. I made pretty aggressive plans to be free all afternoon just in case
They spent that entire Saturday afternoon walking slow loops around the lake, no destination, no agenda, just talking — real talking, deeper than the texting had ever quite managed, both of them circling closer to the conversation that would come later that same week, the one on the curb outside the hockey house that would finally crack her open completely.
"I'm not going to pretend I'm not scared," she told him, somewhere around their third loop, the lake catching the late afternoon light. "I want you to know that going in. I'm probably going to run again, some version of last night, at some point."
"Okay," he said, simple, unbothered by the warning. "Then I'll probably chase you again. I'm getting pretty good at it, for what it's worth. Building up my cardio specifically for this relationship."
She laughed, surprised by how much lighter the confession made her feel once it was actually said out loud instead of carried silently, and thought that maybe this was what safety actually felt like in practice — not the absence of fear, but someone willing to stay in the room with it anyway.
She still hadn't told him the whole truth. Not by a long way.