“Sorry,” she whispers.
I arch an eyebrow at her, very, very confused. “Sorry?”
“Yeah.”
“Hah!” Wren kicks his feet up onto the coffee table, throwing his arm around Elodie; she nestles into his side, resting her head on his chest, and seeing them like this, so easy and natural and perfect together, makes my throat ache. I ignore them, looking back at Chase, lasering in on her startled, doe-eyed expression.
“I didn’t even need to guess where you were staying,” Wren says. “You’ve stayed here one too many times by now. I barely had to bribe the front desk for the room key, either.”
“I’ll make sure to pick somewhere else next time,” I mutter.
“Seriously, man. Go and get changed. I’m gonna be pissed if we miss our spot at Le Bernardin. Unlike obtaining your room key, scoring that table was hard. I had to jump through hoops. Hoops. Your mom hooked us up in the end. She called them and had a window res—”
My head snaps around so quick, I pinch a fucking nerve. “You told Meredith we were here?”
“Don’t get weird, dude. I spoke to her for, like, thirty seconds.” Wren makes a show of rolling his eyes. “She was more than happy to help. She said to tell you to stop by The Excelsior tomorrow evening for dinner. She said we should all go.”
Holy…fucking…
I’ve gotta…get…
I charge for the bedroom and slam the door closed behind me before I can do anything rash.
Dum, dum, dum.
My heart surges, my blood rushing in my ears. I can’t breathe.
It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. Just…breathe, man. Breathe.
My temper has a mind of its own. It doesn’t listen to reason at the best of times. I want to fly back out of the door and launch myself at that bastard Jacobi. I can already feel his bones breaking beneath my fists. His throat collapsing, crushed beneath my iron grip. I can’t kill the fucker right now, though. There are too many witnesses. And besides, I’m gonna calm down any second now, I’m sure of it.
Aaaaannnnyyyyyy second now.
This is fixable.
I can manage this.
I don’t know how, considering what I have planned for later on tonight, but…
I close my eyes and breathe.
Chase shouldn’t have been wearing that hoody.
Why didn’t I…couldn’t I…just tell her to take it off?
Cross didn’t have his PA slather me in baby oil all like most photographers do, so showering is a quick, efficient affair. I get dressed, my nerves jangling at the slightest sound from out in the living room. Wren laughs. Elodie squeals. She shouts, pleading with my roommate to put her down, and my chest gets tighter and tighter. There isn’t a single sound out of Chase. She’s silent, not a peep, which makes me unspeakably anxious. Has she left? Is she still out there? Why the fuck would she come here with Elodie and Wren, for fuck’s sake? It doesn’t make a lick of sense.
My mood is blacker than the deepest pits of hell when I throw open the door and emerge from the bedroom, ready to bitch slap the first person to make any kind of comment on the clothes I’ve chosen to wear. They match my mood. Torn black jeans. Black long-sleeved t-shirt. Black Yankees ball cap, flipped backwards. I caught myself in the mirror just now and I looked positively demonic, but that had more to do with the grim expression on my face than the clothes I’m wearing. Wren, dressed very similarly now, only without the hat, smiles and gives me a curt, “I approve.”
Elodie’s wearing a tight black dress.
Chase…
I sweep the room, looking for her.
“She’s still in the bathroom,” Elodie supplies. “She didn’t bring any going out clothes, so I loaned her a dress and some heels.”
“Did I somehow give you the impression that I give a fuck?” I rumble.
This earns me a tsk from Wren, and a sly, teasing smile from Stillwater. She leans forward on the couch, resting her elbows on her knees. “When are you gonna start being nice to me?” she purrs.
“I’m not.”
“You’re my friend. Elodie’s my girlfriend. That makes you friends by default.” Jacobi cuts me a sharp-edged smile that harbors the suggestion of a threat. “Figure it out.”
I open my mouth, but the disgusting word I was about to spit out dissolves on the tip of my tongue; the bathroom door cracks open, and then slowly swings inward, revealing an expanse of pale leg, a flowy black dress with lacy sleeves, four-inch heels, and a wary-looking Chase amongst it all. Her hair is a shock of perfect auburn waves. Her dark eyes are rimmed with smoke—grey shadow and black liner that make her look older. Impossibly, painfully sexy. Her lips bear only clear gloss, but it makes them look plump and juicy, ready to be bitten. Sucked. Licked.
Urgh.
I rip my gaze away from her and stalk to the window, bracing myself against the frame with my hands high over my head. “I can’t get fucked up tonight,” I mutter. “I’ll eat and then I’m out. I have to be back at the studio by seven tomorrow morning.”
“Don’t worry, princess. You’ll get your beauty sleep,” Wren says. But I can hear it in his voice—the high jinx. He has nefarious plans for the night, and I know the fucker. He won’t let me get out of them that easily.
42
PRES
* * *
Strange how you can link a person with a setting so strongly. I’ve never seen Pax out of Mountain Lakes. Seeing him here, in New York, is very, very weird. He’s perfectly at home in this huge, sprawling city. His clothes, his attitude, his ink. All of it makes way more sense here than it ever has at the academy. Here, it also finally hits home that he’s kind of fucking famous. People recognize him in the street. They nudge each other with elbows and point at him non-too-subtly with their jaws on the floor. Someone asks him for a photograph, a guy with a beer-stained t-shirt and a bunch of professional camera gear hanging around his neck—'paparazzi,’ Elodie mouths, pretending to throw up—and Pax threatens to break his fucking jaw.
Elodie and Wren go ahead of us, jostling each other and laughing, stopping briefly to make out, then running off down the street, weaving around the other people heading north along the outskirts of Central Park. That leaves Pax and I walking kind of together, alone. He’s a half a step ahead of me, his hands buried deep in his pockets, the peak of his ball cap covering the back of his neck, covering up his tattoos. He doesn’t say a word. His lips are pressed together so tight that they’ve turned white, in fact.
For every step he takes, I take three, battling to retain my balance in the ridiculous heels Elodie loaned me. I duck around some scaffolding in front of a building that looks like it’s about to fall down any second and I nearly eat shit. One second, I think I’ve got it, I think I’m going to be able to save myself from toppling over. The next, my heel buckles, I go over on it, and I’m spilling sideways, off the edge of the curb.
“ShiITT!”
A vise-like grip closes around my upper arm, grabbing hold of me before I can hit the deck. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Pax mutters. “You done, Bambi?” He pulls me upright, not gently, but not particularly roughly, either. I look up at him, trying not to be startled by the heat of his hand burning through the sleeve of the leather jacket Elodie also loaned to me. His jaw is set, a muscle feathering in his cheek. His nostrils flare. He blows down his nose like a spooked wild horse, ready to bolt at any second. When our eyes meet, his steel silver irises flash mercurially.