Chapter 29
Sloane
Olivia jingles so loudly, I can hear her from outside the bathroom where she’s waiting with Gen and Jean.
A heavy knock sounds on the stall as I shimmy my vegan leather bootcut pants back on, hiking them up to my waist and holding my breath to snap them shut, slightly wobbling in my heels, before Jean boisterously yells that “someone’s in here.
” When I reemerge into the smoky haze of the club, Gen’s smile is mischievous while Liv emphatically shakes her head no.
“Eroding my nasal cavities? For what?”
“Live a little,” Jean rolls his eyes. “Sloane?” He lifts his brows, expecting me to follow but I shrug apologetically.
“Gives me a headache. But go, have fun my little snowbirds!” Patting Jean on the butt, I press a kiss on Gen’s forehead, giggling when she spins and her mirrorball dress floats around her.
They disappear into the bathroom, leaving Liv and I to absorb the bass radiating from the dance floor a few yards away.
Head falling back, she closes her eyes, a dreamy smile flitting across her face. “Everything’s so different,” she says before turning her head toward me. “You know, I didn’t even kiss anyone at midnight last year.”
“Not Will?”
“No,” she exaggerates. “He disappeared. And I didn’t have…friends,” she laughs, but it's sadness and relief all in one.
“Well. Now you have Ben.” I rub her arms brusquely, and the gold plates on her skirt make music again.
“You can kiss him under the stars and make a wish and be…stupidly happy,” I beam at her, only to find her crying.
“No. No, no, no. If you don’t get it together I’m shovin’ you in that bathroom and—”
“I’m fine,” she mumbles, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
She’s the weepiest drunk I’ve ever met. “I just was thinking about how I love Ben, so much, but how I’m so grateful that I have you.
And Gen. And I guess Jean,” she laughs, and it’s garbled as more tears run past the waterproof liner I forced her to use in case something like this happened.
My chest constricts as I pull her into my arms, forcing myself to breathe.
It hurts when people tell you they need you, doesn’t it?
Fear grips me when they do, because I know I’ll never be exactly what they need or enough of it, and it’s only a matter of time before they realize it, too.
That no matter how much I love them, they’ll notice all the ways I don’t quite measure up.
“You’re goin’ to have your best year yet, Olivia Beckett,” I whisper into her hair.
“I think you are, too,” she pronounces. “I think Andy’s in love with you,” she slurs on a whisper, like we’re two girls at summer camp swapping secrets.
“Definitely not,” I laugh, remembering the bottle girl who hasn’t stopped making passes at him all night. “And I wouldn’t have told you if I knew you were gonna make this a thing.”
“I’m making this a thing?” She gasps as our friends burst out of the bathroom, their irises larger than when they went in.
“Do you think he’ll notice?” Gen says rapidly, blinking one two many times.
“Grant will live,” I tell her as we all link hands like a human chain before wading back into the crowd of Bostonians, natives and transplants, who’ve gathered to shout down the new year together. Grant will, in fact, be furious, but he’ll also blame me and love Gen anyway.
“Look at him,” Liv says to me, meaning Andy, and Gen mouths who to Jean, who knocks his head in the direction of the table the men have commandeered.
“No.”
“Leave her alone,” croons Jean, who is, for whatever reason, maybe the most emotionally intelligent member of this little group.
“Well he’s watching you like he’s a man in a desert who hasn’t had water in forty years!” she shouted over the music, and I wonder if he knows we’re talking about him. But I won’t look. I might see that girl orbiting him again.
“Forty’s so specific,” Gen giggles. “You’re so weird. I can’t believe I hated you.”
Liv’s eyes swell again. “I can’t believe I hated you,” she wails, throwing her arms around Gen as they start to bob to the synth and bass coasting through the speakers.
Jean links his arm through mine, fortifying me as we stride over to the table. Concern shades my brother’s features as he peeks over our shoulders, standing up to scour the crowd for Gen.
“You know, while I love the whole protector vibe,” Jean says, sliding in next to my brother, “Gen could literally gut someone with just her eyes. Liv too, actually.” He steals his drink away and downs it before Grant can protest, flashing him two rows of alarmingly straight teeth.
“He’s right,” Ben says, unbothered as he spots his girlfriend in the crowd, an easy smile settling on his face, and Jean’s laugh comes out like more of a squeak.
“You’re peppy,” Grant says, suspicion in his eyes, and Jean and I exchange a glance, fighting the laughter threatening to bubble up.
“What’d you do?” my brother asks, to just me, and I feel the sharp pain of whatever feeling or realization I buried during our fight a few weeks ago.
Because even though things have been forgiven, they haven’t been forgotten.
I’m still as careless and wild as I ever was and Grant is still the golden boy with the stick up his ass.
I suck in my cheek, rolling my eyes as I form a retort.
“Don’t be a dick, Fielder,” Andy says, finally speaking up from his seat between Ben and Grant, barely glancing his way as he casually sips his beer.
Instead, his gaze finds mine and they lock in quiet conspiracy.
Something warm spreads across the open wound Grant left, like a balm.
Grant scoffs, and I practically see the way it chafes across Andy’s skin, can see in real time his careless smirk slip into something harder.
“It’d cost you nothing to just, I don’t know, give her the benefit of the doubt. ”
Ben’s mouth presses into a straight line as he stifles a laugh, looking away from the table as understanding dawns on my brother. I’d assumed Gen would’ve mentioned the whole me and Andy sleeping together thing, in passing anyway. It seems she left that little bomb to me.
“Great. Thank you, Sloane, for doing the one thing I asked you not to do.” He tears the cut back open, deeper this time, I don’t know when it got like this between us or if it will ever be completely fixed.
I thought maybe after he found out Connie was sick that he’d stop trying to push me away.
Scratch at me until my self image matched the one in his head.
It takes more than I wish it did to hide the feelings from my face.
“I promised I wouldn’t flirt with any of your teammates. You have no proof I did any such thing,” I tell him with a shrug, crossing my arms as I narrow my eyes at him, begging him to argue but I hope he catches the dip of my mouth, the silent plea to let this go. To forgive me.
“You know what? It’s none of my business,” he huffs out, motioning for Jean to move, just as Andy’s jaw twitches. I brace myself.
“You’re right, man. It’s not. But if you have a problem with it, you should probably talk to me—not her.
” My stomach dips at the suggestion that he should speak for me at all, but I can’t help the warmth that creeps across my skin, up the back of my neck—the blush that blooms over my cheeks.
He’s in this dark corduroy button up that’s rolled up his forearms, so I can see the tension there as he flexes his hands in a fist on the table, can see the tendon in his neck that twitches with irritation, and it’s overwhelming that he’s this irritated for me.
Overwhelming but enthralling, if my rush of adrenaline is any indication.
Grant shakes his head, fucking off to wherever his angel of a girlfriend is dancing the night away, and I hope he realizes she did cocaine on a dirty bathroom counter, and I hope his head pops off because he can’t control every little piece on his happy little checker board.
“Ian’s here,” Jean shouts just as a voice from my childhood sings “it goes on and on” and starts pumping through the speakers, and Andy bristles. I don’t know what the deal is, why this bothers him, but I can tell he’d rather avoid him right now.
“I think the dart board’s free,” I say before turning to Ben. “And I don’t think you’re gettin’ away without stepping foot on that dance floor so, shoo!” His head rolls, only remerging once a resigned grin is etched in his face.
“You read my mind. You think I can bribe the DJ into something slow?”
“On New Year’s Eve?” I chuckle as Andy steps down, brushing his hand across my waist in subtle possession. We disappear to the back wall of the club, farthest away from the rooftop patio that overlooks Boston Harbor, and find the vacant target. Andy gathers the darts and hands me all the reds.
“You get any better?” he says, stepping behind me as I line up my first throw, and I’m thrown back to the first night we met. The pool table, the darts, the cheesy pick up lines.
“This is my thing, Andrew. If anything, you were just messin’ me up.
” I step away from him, throwing the dart.
It lands within the triple ring, and I mutter a string of curses under my breath.
His dart flies and does marginally better, and I sneakily lift my brows, pleased by the way it pulls a smirk to his lips, and the urge to lean against the wall and let him crowd me grows with every dart we throw.
With one left, he presses up behind me, leaving no room for me to evade him, and reaches to guide my hand.
It’s a relief I wish wasn’t so visceral—having him near me, touching me, holding me.
One hand on my throwing one, the other settled on my hip, slipping beneath the band of my jeans, skimming the skin there like he always does. Like I love.
“Let’s just try,” he says low in my ear. I feel my pulse beneath the center seam of these pants; either they’re too tight or my body is straining against them. We pull back and he counts; on one I release a breath and we let the dart fly.
Of course, it’s a fucking bullseye. I round on him, feeling antsy in my own skin, only to find his heavy lidded gaze on me, filled to the brim with amusement.
“That was luck,” I insist, quickly spinning to collect the darts for a rematch. A feminine voice sounds behind me, and when I flick my gaze over my shoulder I see the bottle service girl an inch closer than would be professional, all things considered.
“One more minute,” she says, like she’s forcing herself to sound breathy, her lips pouting in a way that can’t be natural while tinsel sparkles in her dark brown hair.
“You really should see the fireworks from the deck.” She gives him these sex eyes and if I was closer, I fear I’d trip her.
Instead, I turn back to the dart board and let the feeling roll off me, because I told him to see other people.
That I don’t want to be a roadblock for him, just like he shouldn’t think he’s one for me.
The thought doesn’t sit well, though, and I swallow, facing the harbor as I pass him his set of darts.
“Let’s go.” He offers me his hand, and I realize the little table fairy has flown away.
“Where’s your friend?” My voice doesn’t really sound like my own; it’s clinical, like the kind nurses use with you when they’re just covering for someone else and don’t want to get attached but want to be polite.
Andy searches my face. “The bottle service girl?” he corrects, eyes narrowing.
“Yeah. I think she’s expectin’ a New Year’s Eve kiss,” I tell him, like a wing woman and not a woman he’s been sleeping with, passionately, to the point of tears for the past week.
“And why would I want to do that?” He steps toward me, his head tilted down so I can see the exasperation in the crease of his brow.
“She’s hot,” I say, forcing a smile. The song changes to What Are You Doing New Years? as the crowd starts to move onto the icy deck, willing to brave the cold breeze that floats off the harbor in hopes of a fresh start marked by an explosion that’ll obliterate everything they’d rather forget.
“Didn’t notice.”
“Come on,” I say, my breath stuttering as he lifts my chin with a gentle grasp.
“I told you you’re the only woman I’m seeing.
I meant that. I don’t see anyone else, Sloane.
” The words burn across my skin, and I think if I could just get to the deck, I’d be able to think straight.
“If you want to kiss someone else tonight, tell me right now and I’ll leave,” he says.
I tilt my head, alarm widening my eyes, and I’m sure he’s being dramatic. “I mean it, Sloane. I want you.”
“Well, you’ve had me,” I force a chuckle. “Numerous times. Many venues.” The joke doesn’t crack anything in him; instead, his throat bobs, and vulnerability slashes across his face.
“I want more than that,” he says, shaking his head.
“You don’t mean it,” I insist, hearing the loud shouts from the deck.
Thirty, twenty nine, twenty eight…
“I do. Sloane, I…” twenty four, twenty two… “I can’t stop thinking about you. And I’ve tried. It’s no use.”
“You sound stupid,” I mutter, biting back the small smile that curves without my permission. Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen.
“I feel stupid. And I don’t really care.
Just…tell me I’m not crazy for feeling like this.
” His hand skates to the back of my head, tilting back and toward him like he’s done so often that now, I crave it.
My feelings are lodged in my throat, struggling to make themselves lucid and decipherable, but I feel them nevertheless.
Ten, nine…
“I read that play.” It tumbles out of me, unlocked from the safe I’d placed it in when I decided it was something he never needed to know.
That I read it and liked it and understood why he’d underlined and starred and creased the pages.
That I read it and saw myself reflected in all that waiting.
That I read it and wondered if that’s what he saw in it, too.
“Yeah? And?” he asks like the news is bigger than it is, his eyes softening with too much hope.
“I still don’t think this is all pointless. But maybe we can talk about it. Some time.”
Five, four, three…
His sigh of relief, the distance he closes between us, the slight grin that tugs at the corner of his all too perfect lips, send a wave of belonging through me.
“I’d love that,” he tells me. Two…one… “Happy New Year, Sloane,” he says as fire erupts in the sky in the distance, as bells clang and people cheer, as his lips brush against mine and I let him kiss me tenderly, letting the feeling seep into my bones.