Page 34

Ellery

There’s nothing between me and the top of the sky. I’m standing among the stars. The aurora writhes and pulses around us, like it could catch me in its tendrils and take me with it, sweeping me away to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. A curtain of green folding through green, flaring pink and purple and dying again.

Goosebumps race along my arms. I don’t know how the world can contain such a thing. Problems that felt enormous a few weeks ago seem very small from up here.

New York. Grad school. The family business.

Do I want any of it?

Nick pushes past me while I’m still working out how to move and walks out to the brink of the rocky outcrop, confident that he won’t fall. With slow steps, I follow until I reach the edge and peer over the side.

We’re perched on bare rock, spotted with pale lichen and slick where the ice has melted and refrozen. The ledge ends and drops away to black. The very tips of spruce trees sway in the breeze far below, their trunks swallowed by the dark. Vertigo kicks in, making my head swim, and I inch back until the ground feels solid again.

“You can come closer. It’s safe.”

“I’m fine here, thanks. Heights aren’t my jam.”

When I think I have him figured out, he throws a curveball, like the full-on belly laugh. I’d have staked my entire tip jar on Nick never having laughed out loud in his life.

“Do you bring people up here for tours?”

“This spot is just for me.”

Just for him and he brought me here.

I force myself closer to the edge again and wrap my palm around his forearm. He’s solid and cold through the flannel. He doesn’t move, just lets me hold on. I could take my hand back. I’m sure I’d be fine, but I don’t.

“Thanks for showing me this.”

I watch the lights while Nick watches me, and I pretend not to notice. Neither of us moves for so long my nose goes numb.

He looks up at the sky. “I should get you home.”

I nod, and I’m caught off guard by how much I’d rather stay.

Back in the van, we’re both quiet, listening to a local radio station play old love songs. It’s only awkward if you make it awkward, Ellery.

Except I came here to work out what I want, and lately the answer keeps landing on the guy sitting six inches away with both hands on the wheel. Catching feelings was not on the itinerary. I did not come all this way to start arranging my life around another person.

“Thanks for tonight,” I say when Nick drops me at my doorstep.

“Goodnight, Ellery.” He fixates on the dash but the way he says my name sends a shiver down my spine.

With my key in the lock, I look down at the van idling at the curb. He waits until I’m inside every single time. I don’t know how he knows because it’s not like he sticks his head out of the window to check, but he knows.

The second the door shuts, I hear him drive away.

Bright sunshine and a chill on my skin wakes me. I pull on a sweater and nestle back under the covers with a coffee and my notebook.

My pen fills pages, adding to the observations and half-formed thoughts I’ve collected over the past couple of weeks. I write about last night. Not the aurora—I try, but the words don’t come close. I write about the guy who took me to the one place he keeps for himself, then acted like it meant nothing on the drive home. No matter where I start, I keep wandering back to Nick.

He shrugged off moving back to Ravenslight Creek like it was a blip. It wasn’t. That old, quiet part of me stirs, the one that secretly wrote for the school paper for a year before my parents found out and shut it down. She’s curious. She wants to know what happened to him, and why that laugh sounded like he hadn’t used it in a long time.

I force my pen down.

That terrible couple from LA. He got my name wrong three times, and I smiled through all of it. A world away from home, and I still can’t summon the words to tell a man he’s being a dick to his face. But it’s not Chad I keep circling around.

One frame, Nick’s by the van. The next, he’s behind Chad. Eerily still, watching him the way I’ve only ever seen on nature documentaries. He wanted to hurt Chad.