“Sadie?”
James squeezes my hand, and I turn to look at him. His face is turned toward me, long dark lashes fringing his eyes behind his glasses. Even in the dim light, I can see that they’re not a continuous blue; they’re full of different patterns like a lattice: a pale ring around his pupil.
He tilts his head. “Would it be inappropriate to give you a hug?”
What?
“N-n-n-no.”
Before I can say anything else—likeAre you crazy?—his arms come upand wrap around my shoulders. I lift my hands and rest them on his back. It’s meant to be friendly, but my body is off and running. He’s solid and warm and so real, heart beating against mine as his chest presses into me and then retreats as he breathes in and out. With my nose pressed into his shoulder, all I can smell is clean soap and pine. And I slowly melt into him. You’re supposed to be saving his life, remember? Can a hug do that?
“I’m sorry about your stepdad,” he mumbles, and a gust of air whispers across the top of my head. “I’m really glad you’re here. Thanks for being an awesome listener.”
The girl’s code winds golden strands around the boy and girl, binding them together.
He pulls back. “You don’t have to share anything you don’t want to with me, Sadie. Okay? But I’m happy to listen if you ever want to talk.”
“Same,” I say, “and thank you.” The space he gives me to be myself makes me feel as light as air.
I’m more myself now that I’m not living with Jake running me down and getting in my head. I’m opening up like I’ve escaped from under a rock. I could never tell a guy like James Royce about how I grew up—he already knows too much about Jake—but just theideaof having someone to talk to? I appreciate that more than I can say.
The warmth of him pressing into me lingers as he stands and stretches then picks up his glass from the table.
“I need to go to bed,” he mumbles.
“Yeah. Me too.”
He puts his glass in the kitchen sink and then hesitates in the entrance to the corridor, then gives me a tired lopsided smile. “Night, Sadie.”
“Night, James.”
I wait until his bedroom door clicks shut before I move. How much would I have liked that hug to mean something else? It made me feel safe, but my heart is still thumping and I can feel the sharp thrill in my bloodstream. For a second there I forgot who we are and how carefully I’ve been pushing the attraction away.
The apartment settles around me, all soft hums and shadows. I rinse my glass and stand at the sink, watching the water run over my hands. Beyond the window, the city stretches out in a scatter of lights, and my reflection floats faintly over it, half there, half not, like I’m still learning how to take up space.
Everything feels precarious. My mom. Jake. My job. The lie I’m carrying like a stone in my pocket. One wrong move and it could all come tumbling down.
But beneath that, there’s something else. The strange relief of being seen, even if it’s just a little. Of sitting with someone in the dark and not having to explain myself. Of giving and receiving.
I pad down the hall and close my bedroom door. Tomorrow I’ll have to face all the problems again, but tonight, for the first time in a long while, I feel a little looser. I hope James feels that, too. And as I slide under the sheets, the city breathing outside the window, I realize that for the first time I don’t feel like I’m just surviving.
And that feels like the start of something new.
Chapter 17
James
Sadie never speaks much in meetings or contributes to the chat in the office, and I glance over at where she’s curled up on the couch, nose buried in a fantasy book, before looking out of the window. In the silent streets below Des’s apartment building, the light is reflecting off the cobbles in the mid-morning sun. That hug with Sadie made me ache, like a phantom pain. It felt so good to wrap my arms around someone else, like a bone-deep comfort. There’s something about Sadie that I really like: a stillness, a sense of calm, a need not to impose on everyone else or insert her opinions or problems into everything.
The old warehouse buildings are basking like sharks in the sunshine, windows gleaming. A strange desperation grabs me; it’s the kind of Sunday Jane and I would have gone for a cycle down on the boardwalk near where we used to live, but the thought of going out on my own makes my insides want to curl up and die.
“Come on,” I say, turning around to Sadie. “Let’s go for a coffee. We can sit and read for a bit, then walk up the esplanade.”
“Like, buy a coffee from a coffee shop?” Sadie says, eyes scudding across mine before they come to rest at a point over my left shoulder.
Despite our hug yesterday, she’s back to not meeting my eyes. I’ve beenwatching her in the office, and she doesn’t have any problem with looking at women, specifically Jo.
I hum to myself. “Yeah, sound good?” I don’t want her to be nervous with me, and she seemed fine when I was talking to her last night. “Would you rather stay in and read?” I say, barreling on. “I’m okay with that. Don’t feel you have to …”
