34. PAIGE
THIRTY-FOUR
PAIGE
Stumbling out of my room, my feet drag toward the kitchen —definitely still drunk.
I need water.
Ugh. I’m supposed to make a plan today. Past Paige really is a bitch. But the first of my plans should be a detox.
My head tilts with heaviness, my eyes blinking, following the early-morning twilight spilling through the massive windows. As I reach the kitchen, I grab a water bottle from the fridge and drink the whole thing, then grab another one.
Just as I start to take a few sips, the sound of a door opening startles me. My body twists toward the noise and I see Linc walking in from what I think is the garage.
Buffy fucking bless . . .
My eyes bulge at the rugged sweaty man closing the door, his hazel gaze immediately finding me, penetrating through the fog of my drunkenness, and I’m stuck to the spot. Keeping his eyes on me, he pulls out his ear buds and says, “H-Hey,” through a heavy breath, but my eyes are trapped.
He’s fucking ripped. In my mind, I’ve already run my fingers along the divots and ridges. And the tattoos . . .
Obviously, I’ve seen them already, but I haven’t really looked at them.
That’s the thing with avoidance . . . you don’t get to explore if you’re hiding. I’m still too far to really make out any details, but I want to study them like hieroglyphics.
He’d always wanted tattoos, but said he thought they should come with stories.
Maybe they’d tell me what the hell is going on.
“Was just getting some water,” I slur through a mumble.
Well, if there was any question—I am definitely still hammered. Looking at the clock on the stove, I see it’s just after six, and I yawn at the sight.
“Y-You feeling okay?” Linc takes a couple steps closer to me, and my chest jumps again. He steps into the light of the kitchen, and I take another breath, trying to get my shit together.
Luckily, he still keeps some distance—I don’t trust my leftover drunkenness not to lean over and lick him or something.
When my eyes float up from his sweaty rippled torso, I meet his stare, tilting my head when I see him looking at me, expectantly. Right. He asked me if I was feeling okay.
I nod, jaggedly. It’s the only response I seem to be able to give, but as a greenish glint in his eyes catches the morning light from the windows, an image of his face flashes through my mind.
This version of him. His piercing, haunted eyes, his inked fingers holding me in the dark, carrying me.
“You carried me to bed,” I say quietly, through my haze.
Linc’s jaw tightens, and I vaguely remember the feeling of his stubble beneath my fingertips. I touched him .
“You guys fell asleep on the porch,” he says slowly.
That checks out. The tequila took a turn and it ended up being a “Gram’s Best Hits” night—tumbling through our favorite memories, songs. I cried, of course, but it felt good. And I wasn’t alone.
Which was . . . nice.
And infuriating. It happened so many times last night—I was struck over and over again with how it could have been this way all along. And all it does is remind me.
Of why Linc’s kept me away.
The thought turns my stomach, as it has every time since I’ve thought about it since he spewed the vile combination of words to me a couple nights ago.
But even through the tequila haze, I’m able to recall what Ellis said last night.
Careful. Take it slow.
As Linc’s eyes watch me cautiously, I feel mine sharpen the longer I study his features. It feels like I’m watching different versions of him flickering through slides before me.
Six, in his Batman shirt.
Nine, with his skateboard scar.
Thirteen, dressed as Angel from Buffy on Halloween.
Sixteen, in the driver’s seat. Our first real drive.
And eighteen, where he looked at me like I was everything. And then it disappeared.
It was stolen, some deep part of myself reminds me, and I feel the anger push past my buzz. A sobering rock in my chest.
And now there’s just this. Just him, just me. These versions of us. Another beat passes, but our eyes hold each other’s, it’s just long enough for my hurt to deepen a bit more before I whisper, “I’m so mad at you.”
His eyes drop with a frown as he releases a pained sigh. It’s only a second before his eyes pull back up, murmuring, “I-I deserve your anger.” He shoves his hands into his pockets and God. I just want to shake him.
I physically move to do so, but stop myself as he tenses. My feet halt a few inches away—not touching him—and his eyes are only able to keep mine for a few seconds at a time
“I’m not mad at you for that, ” I tell him, honestly.
Heeding Ellis’s warning, I can’t breach that subject right now and honestly, it’s not why I’m mad at him. But the pause is just enough that I lose some of my nerve. My body suddenly wobbles a bit, and I grab onto the counter to steady myself.
“A-Are you okay? Do y-you need to sit?”
A low noise rumbles in my throat. God, he’s always been so fucking sweet to me, and it’s squeezing my tequila-soaked brain at the moment.
My deep breath only makes things worse, sending a delirious wave through my head. I swear, I actually get high from the addition of sweat to his oceany-forest smell. My fingers grip the counter harder, and I finally force my eyes up to his.
I take another deep breath, then use the remaining booze and my sheer will to make this happen.
To confront this.
“ Fear and bravery—tomato, tomato, ” I hear Gram say in my mind, and it straightens my posture.
My knees shake, but I lock them and stand my ground as I finally say, “I’m mad at you for leaving me, Linc.” My voice is hoarse and ready to break.
Just looking at him while I’m telling him this is breaking my heart. I’ve imagined this moment so many times, but never did it feel like this.
Like I can feel all my pain from the past seven years staring right back at me. In the form of a face I’ve longed to see since he left.
His eyes are glassy, distraught, and It looks like every muscle in his body is being tightened. His jaw ticks, and he grits out, “I-I’m sorry, P-Pip. I-I h-had to go.”
Because of “what he did.”
My eyes fill at the impossibility of this task. How do I convince him he’s wrong when I can’t talk to him about the memory we’re disputing? Not without the risk of a traumatic blackout, anyway, according to Ellis.
And the only argument I have is my word against his.
But I know I’m right.
Suddenly, an idea comes to mind. A new tactic, but it will require more fear-bravery.
I take a sip of water as he still stares down at me, unmoving, and then I breathe deeply.
Keep going. Till the end.
Two affirmations find and fuel my cause, straighten my spine. I clear my throat, and then my voice rasps, “I—I thought,” I choke on air, terrified to give voice to the thing I’ve thought kept him away.
Like our dirty dream confessions when we first started dating.
If I share mine, maybe he’ll share his.
But the shame feels as real as the morning I woke up and found his note. The day I locked all of my hauntings in the music box he gave me and hid anything I could keep deep inside myself.
“ Rage. Rage, against the dying of the light. ”
Linc steps just a bit closer, and I take another breath. “I thought, after what happened, after I . . .” I trail off, but somehow manage to push the rest of the words through. “I thought you were disgusted by me. And I thought . . . leaving was easier than telling me.” The words barely make it past my lips.
There’s a wounded, childish tone to my voice, but I can’t help it. It hurts so fucking much.
“ God, no, Pip.” In an instant, Linc is scooping me up. The heat from his biceps shoots a spark somewhere deep just as he places me on the counter.
The browns and greens in his eyes lock with mine, directly in front of me as our noses graze, and I gasp. “Fuck,” he grits between clenched teeth, as his hands release my hips.
But they only move to grip the edge of the counter on either side of me. Our panting breath tangles between us, and I suddenly feel even more drunk.
Holy shit.
The charge between our eyes holds like bottled lightning. He blinks, only once, before his deep, hoarse voice takes my breath. “Never. I could never think that about you.”
I don’t have time to respond because his mouth collides with mine. In an earth-shattering, soaring, sky-rocketing moment—I feel locked and loaded.
Fucking blast off.
My anger evaporates and the shame curling my limbs releases. A noise aches in my throat as my mouth moves against his, sipping his lips like they’re the fountain to my soul—drinking him in and swallowing his hungry groans as he pushes his tongue past my lips.
Knocking my head against the cabinet behind me, I latch onto his jaw, fingernails burrowing and scraping across his coarse stubble.
“Perfect,” he growls under his breath while he’s devouring my mouth, positioning my neck in a way where he can reach every inch, murmuring, “My perfect, beautiful, fucking girl.”
God, his praise—the rough reverence in his voice makes me want to get down on my goddamn knees. To hear him call me his. A hand moves to my throat, and I whimper around his tongue —his fucking words— as he licks into my mouth again.
Good fucking God, I forgot how good he was at this. Even better than he used to be, I think.
Maybe he’s had practice . . .
I flinch, and the thought pulls my mouth from his, but we’re both panting heavily, gasping.
“I’m sorry—” he says, backing away.
I hop down from the counter, “No, it’s not—”
“No, I shouldn’t—I’m sorry,” he says again, and before I can even fucking exhale, he’s rushing down the hallway toward his room.
Shit.
After tossing and turning on the bed and getting exactly zero more hours of sleep, I’ve finally showered and I think mostly sobered up.
Standing in front of the mirror of the en suite bathroom, I take in my cleaner appearance. My eyes look a little closer to a Robin’s egg blue —brighter— than they have in my last couple of reflections. And the damp, frosty-colored waves spilling over my bare shoulders look at least moderately tame. My eyes stare back at myself, following the neckline of my tank top.
I can nearly feel his breath on my collar bone —hear the echo of his deep voice pulling through me.
“My perfect, beautiful, fucking girl.”
A shiver runs down my spine and I give my head a quick shake. Sliding a hair tie on my wrist, I snap it once—mostly as an attempt to snap me out of Morrowland— but the snap jingles the rest of the bracelets.
My eyes flick down to the purple lace wrapped around my wrists, counting the assortment of bracelets stacked together on top of them.
I step back into the bedroom, shuffling over toward my clothing pile.
Bending down, I grab the first flannel I see from the heap, a soft, dark blue, and I shrug it over my shoulders then take a breath.
“Dark Blue” by Jack’s Mannequin starts to play in my head because it’s just one of those things that you can’t help but hear anytime the combination of words make themselves known. Plus, what a great fucking song.
After fidgeting and lingering in front of the door for a few more seconds, I finally push through it, and my feet carry me slowly down the hall, toward the kitchen. As I get closer, the images from mine and Linc’s kiss start to come roaring back, and my steps wobble.
It fucking rocked me, and I still don’t feel great, but I think that’s at least partially from the anticipation of what awaits me at The Window.
When sleep seemed to be out of the question, I finally texted Jackson back.
Today, I’m supposed to make a plan.
I still don’t have any plans for this plan—but dealing with the shit at The Window is a start.
In perfect Jackson fashion, he responded to my text with a phone call about an hour ago, telling me that Beck wants to speak with me before he leaves for India later this afternoon—which instantly made me want to tell him I was busy until midnight, but then Jackson threw me a curveball.
“I’m sorry, Blue. It’s my responsibility to make sure you’re safe when you’re here. And I didn’t do that. I’m truly sorry.”
And it seemed . . . genuine. Sincere.
I immediately don’t trust it. Though, I’m not sure it’s Jackson I don’t trust in this scenario. But I have to deal with it at some point.
I clear my throat—pushing the nagging feeling away as I reach the kitchen. I can see Ellis sprawled out on the couch in the living room, a small towel over his forehead. “How are you vertical?” he groans, his eyes seemingly hidden under the washcloth.
I breathe a laugh. “I’m diagonal,” I mutter, slightly hunched. Walking over to the fridge, I grab a water bottle for the road just as footsteps sound from Linc’s hallway to the right of the kitchen.
“Ugh. Duuude you sound like the fucking Megazord stomping around,” Ellis groans.
I think it’s a Power Rangers reference, but I can’t be sure. I dipped out on most of the superhero stuff when Linc came into the picture, but my breath catches in my throat as soon as I see him come into view.
At first, Linc’s eyes are on Ellis, a smirk as he takes in his very hungover friend, before he sees me standing off to the side.
I suddenly want to see him smile more than anything. He almost did it just now. He looks at the keys in my hand, then asks, “Are y-you going to The Window?”
My brain is mush.
He’s so goddamn gorgeous. And right now, his dark, thick hair looks damp, giving a shine to his earthy eyes. The chiseled corners of his jaw have the most delicious sprinkling of scruff.
My mind tumbles to the feeling of the coarse hair biting my cheeks—his mouth, his tongue.
“Earth to Paige,” Ellis whines from the couch, and I swallow hard, blinking rapidly.
My eyes flick between Ellis still lying on the couch and Linc standing at the mouth of his hallway.
Finally, I nod like a dipshit, and I don’t miss a groggy snicker from the general couch direction.
But my eyes anchor to Linc, the balance of colors in his eyes is heavy on the brown against his dark gray T-shirt, and he says, “They wanna see me too.”
A sharp inhale pulls through my nose, my heart fluttering. I mean, I guess it makes sense, seeing as he was there. But I wonder why they didn’t talk to him last night while he was at the club. “They want to meet with us together?”
Ellis’s groan interrupts us as he sits up, rubbing his eyes with a pinching motion of his fingers. Despite rubbing them a few times, they’re still glassy and red as he squints down to the floor. “Do they know you two know each other?”
I’m about to tell him I have no idea when Linc speaks up, “Jackson does.”
“Does Jackson know about your arrangement with Desmond?” I ask.
“How do y-you know about my arrangement with Desmond?”
My eyes flick to Ellis, and he sighs. Linc’s eyes follow the noise and his mouth slopes down before his throat bobs. “A-Anything else you guys talked about that I should know before we go into this thing?”
It’s Ellis’s turn to look at me, and like the weird little wave of dominos this conversation has become, I look back over at Linc.
My mind works to sift through everything Ellis and I talked about last night. The only thing that seems relevant is the Veranda. So, I timidly explain what happened in the room—which at this point feels like ancient history.
When I get to the part where the boys were forcing me down on my knees, Linc barks out a cough. Or maybe a hybrid between a grunt and a gag, I’m not sure. Whatever the sound is, it’s unpleasant.
“And that’s when we came in?” he asks raggedly.
I nod quickly, and he exhales hard, almost like listening to my recount was as strenuous of a workout as he’d had this morning.
Before he kissed me.
The thought gets taken when Ellis says, “Try to see if either of you can get any more information on that Tariel guy. Even just a last name. I’m meeting with Wade this afternoon, maybe he can do a little digging.”
“Wade?” Linc asks.
“His hacker,” I clarify at the same time Ellis says, “Tech guy,” while narrowing his eyes at me.