Page 157 of Secrets on Ice

“Yeah,” he says. “I heard you.”

My chest splinters into something hot, and it comes up my throat as anger, and I unleash it on him.

“You signed a lease.” My voice shakes. “You went downstairs and signed a lease and got the keys, and you didn’t … you didn’t even talk to us. You just decided.”

“Em …”

“No.” I step into the kitchen, and I distantly notice that I’ve moved toward him, toward the man I supposedly can’t be near, but I’m too far gone to care what that means. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to listen to something I said to Cassidy, something private, something I was ashamed to even say out loud, and then go and blow up your whole life over it without asking me one single question.”

“I wasn’t trying to …”

“This is your home!” It comes out cracked and too loud. “You live here, and she’s your sister. Your whole life is here. And you’re going to move out, you’re going to leave, because of me? Because I’m broken? Because I can’t …” My voice gives out. “Because I can’t stop hurting the one person who saved my life?”

“Ember.” He says it so gently it makes it worse. “That’s not what this is.”

“That’s exactly what this is.” Tears are coming now, hot and furious. “You heard me say you scare me, and you decided the answer was to punish yourself for it. To pack up and go, like you did something wrong. Like this is yours to fix.” I press the heel of my hand against my chest because it physically hurts. “It’s not yours to fix, Sully. It’s mine. It’s my head. It’s my mess. And now you’re leaving your home because my head is broken and I can’t even …” I sob.

“Hey.” He takes a step and stops himself, hands half up, careful, always so careful with me now. “I’m not leaving because you’re broken. You’re not broken. I’m leaving because I love …” He catches himself, barely, and bites his confession back. “… because I care about you,” he says instead, rougher. “And if my being here is part of what’s keeping you stuck, then I don’t want to be here. It’s that simple. I would rather be one floor up and have you get better than be down the hall and watch you suffer. That’s not punishment, Em. That’s the opposite.”

And, somehow, that’s what finishes me. Because he’s being kind. He’s unbearably kind, generous, and good. He’s giving up his home, his sister, and the whole shape of his days, and he’s doing it quietly and without blame, and he won’t even let me be the villain in it. I don’t have anything left to fight him with.

“Please don’t go,” I whisper, and it’s the last of the anger draining out and leaving just the truth underneath, small and pathetic. “Please, don’t leave because of me.”

“Em.” His voice breaks on it. “I have to.”

He’s already decided. He decided before I even walked in, and there’s nothing I can say that will make him choose himself over what he thinks I need. Because that’s who he is. That’s who he’s always been. Cassidy is crying quietly by the counter, and that messes me up.

“I’ll come back for my stuff over the next couple of days,” Sully says, to no one. “I don’t want to make it weird. I’ll be right upstairs. Anything you need, either of you, anything at all, you call me, and I’m here in two minutes.”

I nod, because I can’t speak.

He looks at me for a long moment, and there’s a whole world in his face that I don’t have the strength to read. He then picks up his keys, the ones with a new key on the ring, and goes and packs some things. He doesn’t take long, and once the door closes behind him, I break.

I’ve taken the safest, kindest person in my life, the one who ran across a club and pulled a man off me, the one who has come to my room every single night this week, let me claw his face open, and told me every morning it wasn’t my fault. I’ve made him feel so impossible to be around that he’s had to leave his own home to get away from me.

That’s what I do now. I hurt people who love me.

“I ruined everything.” I gasp into Cassidy’s shoulder. “I ruin everything I touch.”

“No.” She’s crying, too, holding my face. “No, Em, that’s not true, that’s not …”

But I’m not listening. I’m lost in my head, and I don’t ever come out of it.

45

EMBER

Ican’t tell you what today is, or how long it’s been since Sully left. Time doesn’t move in here like it does out there. I sleep at the wrong hours and lie awake at others. I watch the light move across the ceiling and then watch it go again. Cassidy sets food down beside me. I eat enough of it to make her stop hovering, and when she’s gone, I leave the rest.

I haven’t left the apartment in who knows how long. I’ve been working from home, I mean, that’s what I’ve been telling Cassidy. But honestly, I just seem to stare at a blank screen. I know that every time Cassidy suggests a walk, going to the office, grabbing dinner downstairs, going to run club, or just an elevator ride down to the lobby, some cold flat feeling washes over and paralyzes me. Out there is where it happens. Out there, are men and noise and hands you don’t see coming. In here it’s quiet, in here I can’t hurt anyone, and nothing can hurt me.

Cassidy’s been holding it together on her own for a long time, and I know that’s not fair. I know she’s carrying the whole business plus me, and I can’t make myself care enough to fix it. The samples we were so excited about sit in boxes I can’t look at. Sam’s apartment, the Maine house, all of it belongs to a version of me I can’t reach anymore.

So, when I come out of my room and find all of them sitting in my living room, I know immediately that I’m in trouble. Cassidy, Jo, Collette, and a woman I don’t know, with kind eyes and a notebook on her knee, sitting in the armchair like she’s been invited, because apparently, she has.

“What is this?” I snap.

“Sit down, Em,” Cassidy says gently. “Please.”