“Will you just leave it!” Lucy snapped, jerking out of my grip.
I frowned, feeling myself already drawing back. “Just leave it? You come in here looking like you’ve just been to a funeral, but you were supposed to be at some rich guy party.” That I wasn’t invited to, by the way.
Lucy scoffed. “Whatever. I’m going to bed.”
He tried again to stomp down the hallway, but I stepped in front of him. “Lucy, you can’t just shut down like this—and snap at me, by the way.”
“Well, I just did, so apparently I can.” Lucy’s voice was sharp, but wobbly. “Leave me alone. I don’t need this right now.”
“This?” I seethed. “You mean me? Asking you if you’re fucking okay! What, you spend one night with your dad and his friends, and suddenly you’re like them, just shoving me off!”
Lucy shook his head. “I’m not–it’s just–”
“Tell me, Lucy.”
Clearly, I should have calmed my tone down, because Lucy clammed right back up and shoved past me. He slammed the door to his bedroom closed, and I heard his lock click, like I was going to just stomp my way in there.
Really, anger was coursing through my veins, so he wasn’t wrong, but it was still offensive. Like I didn’t have enough decency to knock before I stormed in there.
“If this is how you’re going to be,” I heard myself shout, “then I might as well just leave you alone here to sulk!”
“Go then! See if I care!”
I clenched my jaw and stormed to my guest bedroom. I threw my clothes in my backpack, cleared out my things from the bathroom, and escaped the air in the apartment that was now suffocating me. With each step, I felt a crack form in my heart. The heart that I was leaving behind in Lucy’s apartment.
Before I even hit the sidewalk, my phone was to my ear.
“Knox,” Duke called, sounding jovial, “What’s up, man? Still holed up with your boyfriend?”
“I’m coming over.”
21
LUCY
Iprobably got two hours of fitful sleep last night, and I could feel the bags under my eyes before I even saw them in my bathroom mirror.
Knox had left last night, and I couldn’t blame him. I yelled at him. I showed him exactly how much like my father I was—like the people that Knox has said he hated from the very start, because of our selfishness and shortsightedness.
He was right.
I’d tricked him, somehow, into thinking I wasn’t a product of my upbringing, but when push came to shove, I folded. And now Knox was gone.
His things were gone entirely from his bedroom, the bed partially made because that was all he ever bothered to do, and even his toothbrush was gone from the bathroom.
Only his jacket remained in the coat closet by my door, and that was probably because he couldn’t spend another second in this place with me.
I should have been happy to have my studio back—once I put my supplies back in there—but I felt hollow.
The apartment was silent, a deafening, suffocating thing, and even Jackson was tiptoeing around me. He meowed at Knox’s door an hour ago, looking for someone I’d run off from both of us.
The lock turned, and I whipped around.
“Knox?” I strode quickly—jogged, if I was honest with myself—toward the door.
My dad pushed the door open.
My heart fell into my stomach, and I stopped in my tracks.
