“Forget it. She’s at the bar,” she says, face drawn tight, anodd placed helplessness on her symmetrical face as she nods toward the dimly lit center. A makeshift bar is flooded with guests sipping their drinks while they lazily assess the art surrounding them.
And there, at the darkest edge, is Sloane. Golden hair falling around one shoulder, she tips her head to side, a dreamy, half-aware smile stretching across her mouth. She clasps the stem of her cocktail between her fingers and tips it back, teeth tapping against the glass before throatily laughing at something the woman next her says. She reaches a tanned arm across the bar, pointing at the turbulent oil painting beautifully bathed in warm lighting, only for the curve of her lips to dip into sadness. Fear grips me again as I take a step forward, desperate to set it all right, terrified of what it will mean if I don’t.
I’m a yard from her,with in arms reach of pulling her into me and losing myself in her orange blossom, when a hand that isn’t mine brushes against her lower back and a head that isn’t mine dips low and close to her ear. It’s universal intelligence, or a gut instinct, that tells me it’s Elliot fucking Walker. And instead of running, instead of feeling scared, anger overwhelms me when I catch the way Sloane, despite the drunken heaviness in her limbs, shrinks away.
I can hear him telling her to slow down, can hear the foreign, out of place possessiveness that has her whirling on him, knocking his drink out of his other hand. The glass clatters to the ground, the crash lost in the raucous sea of Bostonians making the most of the organized chaos. Elliot’s jaw hardens, shifts as he swallows, reassessing Sloane with a vengeful glint in his stare and I step forward, one second away from intervening even though I know it’s exactly what she wouldn’t want but—I don’t care. Before I can do it, her midnight gaze catches on me, the corner of her mouth tugging up into a tired grin.
“You’re here,” she slurs, scoffing as she rests a hand on the back of a chair, bracing herself against it. She’s in this orange, beaded dress that gives ways to those impossibly long legs, whose thin straps aren’t enough in this weather. Her eyes are smudged, and it would almost look intentional if I didn’t know her. If I didn’t know the bloodshot strain in her gaze wasn’t just from a few drinks but from the force of something greater thatI should know about.
I should, but I don’t, because I haven’t been here, and the disappointment in her gaze is far less than I deserve.
“Sloane,” I start to say, only for Walker to clear his throat like he owns the floor we stand on and my blood boils.
“Who is this?” he asks, pinning Sloane with a decisive glare that grates against my skin.
“Her boyfriend,” I say just as Sloane insists that I’m, “No one.”
She shrugs, shaking her head at me as tears well in her eyes and a stone lands in my gut.
“Can we talk?” I ask her, knowing I don’t have a right to, keeping my gaze patient and level on just her. Her chest rises and falls, mouth painfully twisting around a thought.
Elliot smirks, some silent joke bouncing off us. “Sloane,” he sneers, the grays at his temples glinting in the shine of a portrait light. “I knew you weren’t taking yourself seriously but this? I mean?—”
I hardly have a moment to notice that I’ve edged toward him, that my fist has pulled into itself, that the hard flat of it has cracked against his jaw. He laughs, blood sputtering out from his mouth as he grins with red stained teeth, my hand wrapped around his collar.
“She’s whore. Just look at her,” he seethes, eyes hard as steel as they slide towards her, and I don’t look. I shove him into the bar cart, chest heaving. I watch his hand splinter as it smashesinto a delicate wine glass, my own satisfaction growing when I notice his grin faltering. Ben pulls me away from the embarrassing man cowering against the wooden mantle, cradling his hand as his shocked outrage tries to find something kindred in Sloane’s eyes but he finds nothing. Because her gaze is fixed firmly on me, is a storm of despair as she makes no move toward me.
No, instead, she runs.
I follow her through the crowd, wrenching myself away from Ben and through the doors that lead to the back. The lot there is decrepit, hasn’t been kept up with like the front facing part of the building. Faded white parking lines appear in no sensible pattern, cracks in the pavement merging into each other until they end in craters that swim with sediment thanks to the rain.
“Sloane!” I shout, thunder cracking like a whip in the cold, wet air, and she stops just as the door behind me swings shut. “Let me—let me explain.”
“Explain what?” she shrugs, arms reaching high as her hair begins to stick to her face, her neck, her shoulders, before her arms swing back down with the force of total resignation. “You’re free, Spellman. We’re not dating,” she huffs, bitter sadness in her gaze as she parrots back the lie I told her brother. “You’re not bound to me. No one is.” She chokes on a sob, her breath catching her throat as she lets her head fall back, and I can’t tell where her tears begin and where it’s the storm we’ve caught ourselves in.
I’m with her in two strides, have my hands braced on either side of her face, my thumbs laid atop those freckles I love so much. “Baby?—”
“I’m not,” she spits, searing me with her undivided attention, swallowing hard. “I’m not anyone’s anything. Never was.” Jaw flexing, she pulls away from me, walking toward theend of the lot that merges with the side street the cars are parked on.
“Sloane…Sloane just—” I race after her. “You can’t drive like this.”
“Drove here just fine.” She marches across the lot, stepping into a deep crater that has her falling forward. My arms fly out to catch her, pulling her in to me, and her face scrunches up in frustration, exhaustion painted on the delicate lines of her face as she frees herself from my embrace. “Why are you doin’ this? I am givin’ you an out, I’m?—”
“I don’t want an out, Sloane! I want in. I want all of it. I don’t want to lie to you, I don’t want to hide from you…that’s why I’m here. To be honest. To try. I—” I pause, struggling to confront this final thing. “I’m here because I love you, Sloane, and?—”
“Don’t!” she shouts, falling to her knees, the word a tear in our sky that feels irreparable. That feels definite, a hard line she’s thrown out in a desperate attempt to protect herself. “I don’t want it. I can’t?—”
“Why not?” I drop her ground, blinking away the rain drop blurring my vision, and cradle her face in my hands again. “Sloane, I will make myself new for you. I will go anywhere. I willdoanything you ask of me.” She shakes her head, lips trembling before giving way to heart wrenching sobs that have me questioning everything. Her eyes find mine, horrified, but I press on. “I love you, Sloane. And if you don’t want me because I’m not enough for you, because I disappoint you, because I’m a horrible fucking person?—”
“You’re not,” she cries, watery and garbled.
“I am, Sloane. Push me away for all those reasons. God knows they’re good ones. But not because you’re scared. Please.”
Her jaw quakes as she regards me, throat bobbing as therain washes the last of her mascara away so it’s just those dark blue eyes, that scape of dreamy freckles that trail across the high points on her face, those full, rosy lips.
“Connie’s gone. She left,” she tells me, and the silent sob that rips through her fractures something deep within me. It spreads between my ribs, wraps me in the bone deep sadness is holding the woman I love so far under.
“I’m so sorry.” I just hold her, brace her against me as the torrent of her loss tries its best to wash away with the rain. I brush back the wet strands stuck to her skin, stroking her head as she buries it into my chest.
