I took off my glasses and rubbed my bleary eyes with both hands.
I wanted to go to bed. To fall, exhausted, into a dreamless sleep. But I couldn’t. Not yet. Not with Sloane’s bedroom lights still on, glowing warm and gold like a beacon as the snow continued to fall.
It was a habit worse than smoking in my opinion, not going to bed until Sloane’s lights went dark. It was a compulsion that did me no favors, considering the woman was a bookworm who read past midnight most nights. I glanced down at my copy of The Midnight Library near my elbow and wondered if that was something else I’d give up once I finally sold this place.
I was pathetic, secretly sharing a bedtime as if timing my lights-out with hers somehow ensured that she was safe. The sooner I sold this house and cut ties, the sooner we’d both be free.
The floodlight in Sloane’s backyard lit up the winter wonderland, and I was on full alert as I leaned forward to peer out the window.
There she was.
She’d changed into yet another pair of pajamas and topped them with a dark, bulky coat and bright red snow boots. I watched as she trudged purposefully out into the yard, willing her to stop before she was lost to me behind the hemlock and clump of arborvitaes.
I rose from my chair and held my breath. She paused, still in view, and I relaxed.
Sloane tilted her head to the sky and spread her arms wide. Then she pitched backward, falling flat on her back. My muscles coiled reflexively, ready to run downstairs and out the door until I realized she was moving. Her arms and legs were working in a sweeping motion. In and out. In and out.
I watched mesmerized as Sloane Walton made a snow angel.
I pressed my palm to the cool glass.
Take care of my girls. I heard Simon’s words as clearly as if he’d spoken them aloud.
It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know the effect his daughter had on me. How dangerous she was to me. How fatal I could be to her.
She was sitting up now, head tipped back. I wondered if she was thinking of Simon too. If that was yet another tie that unfairly bound us together. In a moment of weakness, I brought my hand to the window and traced her figure with my fingers on the glass.
I saw it before she did, the distant orange streak of light in the sky. A shooting star.
Sloane brought a hand to her face, then sat there in stillness.
She moved suddenly, done with her own stillness. I watched captivated as she carefully worked her way to her feet before jumping clear of her snowy creation.
Hands on hips, she stared down at it and nodded. Then she looked up. Not at the sky, this time, but directly at me.
My desk light was off. There was no way she could see me in the window, I told myself as I pulled my hand away from the glass. Still, I stood in the shadows and watched her stare up at my window.
After an agonizing minute, she looked away and slowly made her way back to the house.
It wasn’t until she’d disappeared from view and the lights in her bedroom finally went out that I realized something.
She’d been wearing my coat.
5
Hot Guy in My Bedroom
Sloane
Twenty-three years ago
I
should have been finishing my trigonometry homework or at least showering after softball practice. But to be fair, I hated math, and I didn’t allow myself to shower until I’d finished my homework. So really my only option was to take a book break.
There was a tiny possibility that my frustrations might have been motivated by the fact that I was exactly one chapter away from the really good stuff in my pilfered copy of Kathleen E. Woodiwiss’s Shanna.
It was my third reread of Mom’s tattered paperback, and I was besotted with the mercurial Ruark Beauchamp. Even though his—and Shanna’s—behavior would totally have been problematic in real life, I still liked the underlying idea that a secret torrid affair could somehow provide a safe space where you could be yourself.
I climbed onto the window seat cushion and built a mound of pillows behind me. A whiff of armpit caught me. I winced and shoved the middle window open to let in the fresh spring air. My team was on track to make the district playoffs this year, and the coaches pushed us harder every practice. I wanted it. It was all part of Sloane’s Awesome Life Plan, which I was fully dedicated to. But right now, all I wanted to do was lose myself in a sexy Caribbean love story. In seconds, concerns about my dried sweat and lame homework disappeared, and I was transported into the book.
I was midway through the good stuff when my attention was ripped from the page by our next-door neighbor Mr. Rollins reversing his pickup truck out of the driveway much too fast. He shifted gears, and the truck launched forward, spinning the tires as it accelerated out of view.
My stomach knotted. Things hadn’t been good next door since Mr. Rollins had lost his job a year ago. Dad said he’d been some kind of foreman at the chemical plant a few towns over. But the plant had closed. After that, Mr. Rollins stopped mowing the lawn. He didn’t grill burgers anymore either. Sometimes, if my bedroom window was open to the spring breeze, I could hear him yelling late at night.
My dad never yelled. He sighed.
He didn’t get mad at me and Maeve. He got disappointed.
I wondered what Lucian did when his dad yelled.
A tiny thrill rolled through me just thinking about him.
Lucian Rollins was a junior and starting quarterback on the varsity football team. I liked to think the serious, dark-haired boy who took out the trash shirtless was the reason for my teenage sexual awakening. I’d gone from thinking boys were gross—which, at twelve and thirteen, was absolutely accurate—to wondering what it would be like to be kissed by the bad boy next door.
Lucian was gorgeous, athletic, and popular.
I, on the other hand, was a four-eyed, busty, almost sixteen-year-old who would rather spend a Friday night curled up with a good book than drink warm beer by a bonfire in the field known as Third Base. I was not in his league. That league was occupied by cheerleaders and class presidents and beautiful teens who somehow escaped the desperate lack of self-confidence that had been bestowed on the rest of us.
I excelled at a not-sexy sport and had spent last week in detention thanks to my “strong objections” to dress code enforcement when my friend Sherry Salama Fiasco had gotten detention over a skirt that was one inch too short.
“Instead of policing the fashion choices of girls, why don’t you put that energy into teaching boys how to control themselves?” I’d argued. Loudly. I’d even earned some enthusiastic applause and a nod of approval from one of the senior cheerleaders in my study hall.
I didn’t hate the street cred. And my parents had refused to ground me for standing up for what was right.
I heard a creak and a slam next door. My book fell off my lap as I craned my neck for a better look.
My favorite thing about my room—besides the fact that it had its own bathroom, library-worthy bookshelves, and an awesome window seat for reading—was the view. From my window seat, I could see the entire side of Lucian’s house, including his bedroom window.
There he was.
Lucian stalked into the backyard. Unfortunately, he was wearing a shirt. His shoulders were hunched, and he was absently rubbing his right arm while staring pensively at the ground.
Our backyard, thanks to Dad’s green thumb, was a fenced-in wonderland of flowers and trees and shrubs. It was late March, and the cherry trees were blooming, an official announcement of the arrival of spring.