I cross my arms in my robe-cloak and lean against the counter. “Something bad happened last night.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” Cynthia’s eyes roll as she gestures toward me with one hand, then cups the other back on her mug. “What, exactly,happened?”
I close my eyes tight for a second.
“Neve. You’re scaring me. Did he do something to you?”
My eyes fly open. “No, no.” I shake my head quickly. “No… I…” I think of the way he caught me when we first collided. Before the worst part of the night. How my heart raced. How he felt like my savior, which is silly, because why would he care about anyone chasing me? And he probably didn’t, but his friend—Sylvan, I remind myself in my head—got Jackson to back off, so in a way, they did save me.
“Let’s sit.” Cynthia nods her head toward the living room, beyond the kitchen in our open floor plan.
I’m not going to argue with her, even though I don’t know if I’ll be able tosit.Panic makes me move. And right now, I actually want to pace. But I let Cyn head toward the velvety red couch we bought at a thrift store as I grab my latté and follow her.
The sun is weakly streaming in from the balcony and we have the black curtains pulled open, allowing the tiniest fraction of warmth to cut through the cold from outside. When Cyn is seated, legs curled up beneath her and a plush, cream-colored blanket pulled over her legs, matcha to her lips, I pace in front of her, on the opposite side of the marble coffee table painted to look like a chessboard. An expensive gift from Nolan when we first moved in here over a year ago, in the summer, when Casper offered me the place.
“That’s not sitting?—”
“Jackson.” I cut her off because the words are bubbling hysterically now inside my chest and since I’m in motion, ice cubes clanking alongside the metal of my straw and the glass itself, I feel like I can speak. “Last night?—”
“I swear to God, Neve, ifhedid something to you?—”
“He’sdead.”I’m halted now, facing her, our eyes locked.
She sucks in a breath and covers her lips with one hand, her brows jumping.
She doesn’t speak.
“He’s dead,” I say it again, like I need to hear it myself. “He… Last night, you know, he picked me up to talk, and he’d found out about his friend…” I don’t elaborate because Cynthia knows what I did with Will and she thinks it was a horrible idea but not out of any loyalty to Jackson, whom she met exactly once. Rather because she thinks I shouldn’t be giving parts of my soul awayby sleeping with everyone and their mother. Or best friend, as it were. “I told him I was planning to break up with him anyway, and he lost his shit. Pulled into Sky’s parking lot?—”
“That explains Faust,” Cynthia murmurs, but her eyes are still wide and she’s hanging on my every word, trying to make sense of it all, but it doesn’t make any fucking sense becausewho killed Jackson?
“He was drunk, and acting crazy, and I got scared so I opened the truck door and ran away.” I roll my eyes, shaking my head. If I had somehow calmed him down, maybe he’d be alive, but it’s not my fucking job to calm a grown-ass man down, is it? Maybe it’s not my job to fuck his best friend either but that’s neither here nor there. “I ran past the arena and I collided with someone and…” I stop shifting from foot to foot and take another sip of my latté like it’s liquor. When I swallow, I close my eyes. “It was Faust.” Saying his name still feels strange and I only whisper it.
The only “Faust” I know is from the stories, and he wasn’t exactly an upstanding human being.
“We didn’t really talk, just sort ofcollided,but I heard Jackson coming, so I ran from both of them. I saw another guy.” I gesture with my hand, eyes open now, but I’m not focused on Cyn. I’m remembering. “But I darted past him. Then I hid when I heard them all talking. The other guy…” I look at my friend. “Sylvan?”
“Connor,” she says with a sharp intake of breath.“Shit.”
I nod once. Great. They really are both as infamous as Nolan said they were, to anyone who knows hockey, at least. “He threatened Jackson. Told him to fuck off, basically. Then they both, the hockey players I mean, started to look for me. But I don’t know them and it freaked me out, so I ran around the stadium, intending to lose them, then go home.”
“Lose them,” Cynthia deadpans. “Honey, you’re notlosingthe two best athletes in Toronto.”
Drayton isn’ttechnicallyin Toronto, but it’s close enough that now I’m used to everyone around here saying it.
I raise my brows. “I mean, Auston Matthews does still play for the Leafs, does he not?” Even I know that. The chain around his throat? Yeah.I know that.
Cynthia smiles, but it doesn’t meet her eyes. “What happened next.” She doesn’t really phrase it as a question. It’s like a gentle command for me to keep going. Like she knows this is the important part. What I don’t want to say.
I start pacing again, watching snowflakes twirl in the air, landing on the busy streets outside the window, cars idling in wintry traffic. Skyscrapers and complexes are in the distance, but local, eccentric shops line the streets. It’s part of the reason I wanted to come here so badly when I saw photos of it, back in Boone. The beauty of my hometown is unrivaled here, but theoptionsand fashion and hole-in-the-wall, notorious doughnut shops astound me.
When I’m not making horrible decisions on the weekends, influenced by alcohol and attention, I like shopping.
But last night… Yeah. Didn’t like that excursion.
“I stopped running from them.” I’m still doing laps in my living room, arms crossed, latté rattling around in one hand. “Because…” I stop then. Stop moving. Stop talking.
I was so confused when I first saw him, lying there on the frosted grass. I swore in my mind it must have been my nearsightedness. But even when I saw who it was, I almost ran. I thought it was a trick. A ploy.
