Chapter 26
Sloane
A harsh winter swell rasps across the roof deck, and suddenly, we’re in a snow globe. Andrew’s laughter floats from somewhere unreachable, flits across my skin just like the snow, and melts right into me.
“Maybe we should—”
“No,” I insist, crossing my arms, hands tucked under. “I love it up here.”
From here, I can see that someone’s window is still lit with lights, can still sense the sporadic brave soul daring to drive through a street that’s piled high with snow.
I’m a small, unimportant voyeur to the stars and the moon and the breeze, a witness to the ones still unable to let their mind rest for the night—like me.
“So. Rank them,” Andy says, clearing his throat as he finally drops down next to me after starting the fire, unbothered by me or my holiday intrusion. “Rooftops.”
“One: my roof in Atlanta.”
“Okay, fair. Nostalgia or whatever.” Tightlipped, careful smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth—all charm.
And from the moment I decided to be normal about all this, about being snowed in here with him and Carmen and their sweet as pie mother, he’s been nothing but charming.
Like my transgressions over the past month are that easy to forgive.
I smile into myself, slowly breathing out.
“Or whatever,” I chuckle, pulling my coat tighter like it’ll stop his contentment from bleeding into me. “The one from the party. And yours.”
“Really?” he asks, chuffed, his cheeks already rosy from the blistering cold, and I roll my eyes. “That’s it?”
Cocking head, I run my tongue along the tip of my teeth, curious. “I wonder what you really think about me. That I’ve been on a million roof tops with just anyone?”
His cheeks turn rosy as he takes a quick swig from the bottle.“Maybe? You’re like…an heiress.”
It dawns on me that he has, most definitely, looked me up, typed my name online and seen the overexposed snapshots of me leaving a bar when I was far too young to be served, seen the up-skirt ones that you simply can’t pay anyone enough to take down.
Seen the photos of me clinging to some guy’s arm as we slipped out of a night club, the way I would before I took Elliot’s seminar, because that all stopped when I met him.
It had to. It wasn’t the kind of thing a girl like me, so talented, with so much potential, should be doing… he’d said.
I take a cleansing breath. “The tabloids aren’t real life, Andy,” I tell him. “I mean, I go out. But I think they run the same photos every few weeks.” I flick my gaze over to him.“So no. No other roofs.”
“Why do you like them?” he pivots, eyes sparking with a curiosity that should feel invasive but instead feels like the warmest invitation.
And when I suck in a breath, taking his curiosity and trying my best to serve it, it’s because I, for some inane reason, want him to be satisfied.
Because I can’t help myself from seeing his eyes light up when I give him a little bit of me.
“I just…could always think better lookin’ at the sky.
Feels like my thoughts have room to exist, like nothin’ can box them in.
” I pause, remembering the suffocation that peppered my youth.
I can still remember trying to outrun it.
“And I love being around people, obviously, but sometimes I just need a minute.”
“It’s an escape.” And it’s the way he says it—like he knows, in the marrow of his bones, what it feels like to crave it. Like he knows me.
“Yeah,” I breathe out. “It’s exhausting…pretendin’, all the time. You know?” I ask, testing the waters, waiting for the invariable scoff or chuckle or silence.
A snow flake slowly falls between us, disappearing into the blanket.
“I do,” he confesses, solemn and far too earnest for someone I’m trying to not want. “Maybe we should have a word.”
“A word?”
“Yeah. If it’s ever too much, you know if we’re ever in the same place,” he explains, briefly glancing away, “just say the word. We’ll escape.”
“Find a roof,” I muse, wondering when it turned into this: him being someone who knows the right things to say to me.
“Find a roof,” he repeats, his eyes falling to my mouth before he self corrects. “The word could be…pineapple.”
“Why the fuck would I ever say that word?”
He chuckles, amusement manifesting in the fine lines near his eyes when he smiles. “Fair. Okay, how about…” he pauses, his gaze roaming over my face as I wait, my skin alive with a thousand small pricks. “Cassiopeia?”
Oh.
There’s an unsettling swell within me, and my swallow only barely pushes it back.
“The constellation? Like, in Serendipity?” I nod, flustered. “That’s a good one.”
“What can I say?” he jokes, like the allusion is anything but romantic, and I clutch the edge of the plaid quilt, tugging it close and bringing the wine to my lips.
They tremble when the glass presses against my mouth, but it eases when the blood red liquid washes down my throat. It’s not courage that it gives me, but clarity.
This thing between us, that has somehow only ever managed to fall on one side, mine or his, at any given time, only works because we’ve been nothing to each other.
We’ve been friends—we are friends. Andrew can’t know that I’m unreliable and turbulent, that I have a tendency to be disappointing.
That I’m hanging on by the thinnest of threads.
He can’t understand that I have no desire to be someone’s anything after thinking I was Elliot’s all.
He cannot truly, ever understand what it’s like to lose all sense of self because of a man and his mistake, and the silence that comes after.
If he understood, he wouldn’t look at me like I was something he could hold or keep. Really, he wouldn’t look at me at all.
“I need to apologize.”
He stills. “For?”
“For what I said to you outside of the hospital,” I tell him, trying so hard not to be the girl that runs from her problems like Grant said. “I was just havin’ a hard night, and my mom’s doctor wasn’t bein’ positive about things…and I took it out on you.”
“You don’t need to—”
“And I need to apologize for the kiss,” I add in a flurry, letting the words and that moment fall into the space between us.
He scoffs, shaking his head like I’m foolish for wanting to rewind our clock at all. “Sloane—”
“I shouldn’t have let that happen. I put us in an…unfortunate situation. It confused things.” I focus on the edge of the blanket, pressing the knitted corners into the pads of my fingers.
“I wasn’t confused. I wanted to kiss you. I liked kissing you,” he says, matter of factly, like I already know this—because I do. Of course, I do.
“No, I know,” I shrug, unable to cope with the things he’s shoving my way. Maybe if I was less fucked up, less of a mess, I’d just gingerly take them from him. Cherish the words, the sentiments, return them.
“Did you not want to kiss me?” he pushes, trying to catch my gaze as I continue to avert it. “Because—”
“Of course I wanted to,” I whisper because my nerves feel like a tiny, overloaded boat, careening toward the edge of a waterfall, and because I’m hoping reigning in everything else about myself will pull him back, too. “But I shouldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” I stutter, unable to tell him the truth. “Because we’re friends and because—”
“Because it freaked you out,” he says, unapologetically. “You felt—”
“I didn’t feel anything,” I tell him, gaze narrowed as I remember the overwhelming bliss that was his lips against mine.
His tongue slowly rakes over his bottom lip as he lets my words sink in, and where I expect them to be the death knell, he only reaffirms his gaze on me.
“Would that be so bad? To feel something?”
The urge to be honest, to tell him I’m tired of feelings that just sharpen into disappointment, sits right at the tip of my tongue, but it would be harder than the lie. Than pretending.
“I feel a rainbow of things, Spellman. Just nothin’, specifically, for you.” My lips roll, shielding each other from the cold.
“Because we’re…just friends?” Disbelief hangs heavy in his gaze and he is relentless. It makes my blood run hot, my jaw clench, my molars grind, my skin flush.
“Exactly,” I tell him through gritted teeth, watching the slyness of his gaze build, all of his reticence suddenly gone.
“And friends, who don’t feel anything for each other, typically run away like that after a kiss?
” The dark gold locks of his hair dusted with snow, the arrogant cut of jaw, the bitter lift of the corner of his mouth—they turn the cool expansive night into an oppressive taunt I can’t help but wriggle under.
“Oh my god,” I groan, moving to just leave but Andrew’s hand nimbly wraps around my wrist, tugs me toward him, and it’s electric, his callused fingers against me like that.
“No, really. If it was just a kiss,” he says, not even pretending not to be wounded, “why’d you run off like that?”
“I had places to be, Andrew,” I shout, stealing the wine bottle and knocking it back against my lips. “Aren’t you the king of the casual hook up? Sometimes, people just like to kiss each other, and it doesn’t mean anything.”
Exasperation must line my face, has to be right there for him to recognize, but he skates the back of his hand against my cheek anyway, tangling his fingers in my hair. My breath turns ragged. My eyes water, my nose burns, my heart races.
“So if I casually wanted to kiss you, right now…that wouldn’t mean anything to you?”
Every word he’s ever said plays like a siren song in my memory as I try my hardest not to look at his lips. But it’s more than this with him. He knows that, and he doesn’t care. The way this isn’t just about wanting each other, anymore, doesn’t seem to scare him the way it scares me.
His question lands featherlight on my conscience, whispers across it, quietly daring me to forget all the ways I used to hurt after feeling just like this.
“Andrew, come on,” I shake my head. “Why do you have to—”