by Tracy Wolff
I take the back stairs and climb up and up and up, until I arrive at the highest tower. Most of it is taken up by whatever room lies behind the closed door, but there’s a tiny alcove right off the stairs with a huge window—the first one in the castle that I’ve actually seen with the curtains open—that looks out over the front of the school. It’s dark out right now, but the view is still gorgeous: the snow lit up by lampposts and the midnight-blue sky filled with stars as far as the eye can see.
The room itself has built-in bookshelves that go all the way around it and a couple of comfy, overstuffed chairs to lounge in. It’s obviously a reading nook—everything from the classics to modern-day Stephen King fill up the shelves—but I’m not here to read, no matter how much I usually love it.
Instead, I sink down on one of the chairs and finally, finally let the tears come.
There are a lot of them—I haven’t cried, really cried, since the funeral, and now that I’ve started, I’m not sure I’ll ever stop. Grief is a wild thing within me, a rabid animal tearing at my insides and making everything hurt.
I’m trying to be quiet—the last thing I want is to draw more attention to myself—but it’s hard when it hurts this much. In self-defense, I wrap my arms around myself and start to rock, desperate to ease the pain. Even more desperate to find a way to hold myself together when everything inside me feels like it’s falling apart.
It doesn’t work. Nothing does, and the tears just keep coming, as do the harsh, wrenching sobs tearing from my chest.
I don’t know how long I stay here, battling the pain and loneliness that comes from losing my parents in the blink of an eye and then everything familiar in my life less than a month later, but it’s long enough for the sky to turn from the dark blue of civil twilight to pitch black.
Long enough for my chest to hurt.
More than long enough for the tears to run dry.
Somehow, running out of tears only makes everything hurt worse.
But sitting here isn’t going to change that. Nothing is, which means I might as well get up. Macy should be done with dance practice soon, and the last thing I want is for her to come looking for me.
Having her see me like this—having anyone see me like this—is the threat that finally galvanizes me. Except that when I climb to my feet and turn around, it’s to find that someone already has.
Jaxon.
32
It’s Not a
Coincidence that
Denali and Denial
Use All the Same Letters
Jaxon’s standing at the head of the stairs, face blank but eyes searching as he stares at me.
Embarrassment slams through me, makes my face hot and my breath stutter. I start to ask him how long he’s been there, but it doesn’t really matter. He’s been there long enough.
I wait for him to say something, to ask if I’m okay again or to tell me to stop whining or to say one of the million and three things that fall somewhere in between those two reactions.
He doesn’t, though.
Instead, he just stands there, watching me with those black-magic eyes of his until I lose my breath again…this time for a whole different reason.
“I-I’m sorry,” I finally stumble out. “I should go.”
He doesn’t respond, so I move toward the stairs, but he keeps blocking them. And keeps watching me, head tilted just a little, like he’s trying to figure something out while I pray for the ground to open up and swallow me.
Now would be a perfect time for another one of those earthquakes, is all I’m saying.
When he finally speaks, his voice sounds a little rusty. “Why?”
“Why should I leave? Or why was I crying?”
“Neither.”
“I…have no idea what I’m supposed to say to that.” I blow out a long breath. “Look, I’m sorry I threatened to hit you in the art studio today. You’re just…a lot sometimes.”
He lifts a brow, but other than that, his blank expression doesn’t change. “So are you.”
“Yeah.” I give a watery laugh, gesture to my still-wet cheeks. “Yeah, I can see why you might think that.”
I’m only a few steps from him, but he closes the gap, moving in until he’s only inches away from me. My mouth goes desert dry.
I wait for him to say something, but he doesn’t. I wait for him to touch me, but he doesn’t do that, either. Instead, he just stands there, so close that I can feel his breath on my cheek. So close that I’m sure he can feel my breath on his.
And still his eyes are dark, empty, blank.
More seconds that feel like minutes tick by until finally, finally he whispers, “What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?” I’m baffled, and a little afraid that I’m setting myself up to be the punch line of some joke.
“What’s it like to just be able to let go like that?”
“Like what? My crying jag?” Embarrassment swamps me again, and I wipe at my cheeks, trying to disappear even the remnants of my tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for anyone to see me. I—”
“Not just that. I mean, what’s it like to be able to show what you feel and how you feel, whenever you want, without having to worry about…” He trails off.
“What?” I ask. “Without having to worry about what?”
For long seconds, he just looks at me. Then he kind of shakes his head and says, “Never mind.” He walks past me, opens the door to the room that lays just beyond the alcove, and walks inside.
I stare after him, not sure what I’m supposed to do. It feels like our conversation is over, like he just dismissed me, but he left his door open in what looks like an invitation.
I stand there for another minute or so, undecided, before he finally sticks his head back out the door. “Coming?” he asks.
I follow him inside—of course I do. But I’m completely unprepared for what I find when I walk into the room, a room I can’t help thinking of as my own private wonderland.
Books are everywhere, stacked haphazardly on nearly every available surface.
There are three guitars in the corner, along with a drum kit that has my mouth watering and my fingers itching to touch it. To play it, like I used to play mine back when I still had one.
Back when I still had a lot of things.
In the center of the room is a giant black leather couch, covered with piles of thick, soft pillows that all but beg to be napped on.
I want to touch everything, want to run my hands over the drum kit just so I can feel its soul. I have just enough self-control left not to follow my impulses, but it’s hard. So hard that I can’t help but tuck my hands in my blazer pockets, just to be on the safe side.
Because I’ve only just now realized that this is Jaxon’s dorm room, and to say it’s unexpected is pretty much the understatement of the century.
Jaxon seems completely uninterested in his surroundings, which seems bizarre to me even though I know it’s because this is his stuff. He sees and touches and uses it every day. But there’s a part of me that still wants to know how he can just ignore the pile of art books by the couch or the giant purple crystal on his desk. It’s the same part of me all but screaming that, no matter what Jaxon thinks, I’m nowhere near cool enough to be in here with him.
Since he’s not talking, I turn to look at the art on the wall, big, wild paintings with bold colors and strokes that excite all kinds of ideas inside me. And hanging next to his desk—even more unbelievably—is a small pencil sketch of a woman with wild hair and sly eyes, dressed in a voluminous kimono.
I recognize it, or at least I think I do, so I walk closer, trying to get a better look. And sure enough—
“This is a Klimt!” I tell him.
“Yes,” he affirms.
“That wasn’t a question.” It’s under glass, so I reach out and tap
the artist’s signature in the bottom right corner. “This is an original Klimt, not a reproduction.”
This time he doesn’t say anything, not even yes.
“So you’re just going to stand there with your hands in your pockets?” I demand. “You’re not even going to answer me?”
“You just told me you weren’t asking questions.”
“I’m not. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear the story.”
He shrugs. “There’s no story.”
“You have an original Klimt hanging next to your desk. Believe me, there’s a story there.” My hands are shaking as I trace the lines through the glass once again. I’ve never been this close to one of his pieces before.
“I liked it. It reminded me of someone. I bought it.”
“That’s it? That’s your story?” I stare at him incredulously.
“I told you there wasn’t a story. You insisted there was.” He cocks his head to the side, watches me through narrowed eyes. “Did you want me to lie?”
“I want you to…” I shake my head, blow out another long breath. “I don’t know what I want you to do.”
At that, he lets out a small laugh—the very first sign of emotion he’s shown since that one frantic are you okay in the art room. “I know the feeling.”
He’s halfway across the room, and there’s a part of me that wishes he were closer. That wishes we were touching right now.
Of course, there’s another part of me that’s still terrified of touching him, even more terrified of having him touch me. Being in his room is too much. Looking at him worry his lower lip in the first show of nerves I’ve ever seen from him is too much.
Being touched by him, held by him, kissed by him, would be so, so, so too much that I’m afraid I’ll implode at the first brush of his lips against mine. Afraid I’ll just burn up where I’m standing. No warning, no chance to stop it. Just a brush of his hand against mine and poof, I’m a goner. I swear it almost happened when he carried me back to my room the other night, and that was before he sent me waffles and walked me to class and charmed me with his text messages. Way before I saw this place.
I wonder if he’s afraid of the same thing, because instead of answering, he turns around and enters what I assume is his bedroom. At least until he realizes I’m still staring at the Klimt—and every other fabulous thing in the room—to be following him.
He kind of rolls his eyes, but then he comes back and gently herds me toward his bedroom, all without laying a finger on me.
“Come on. There’s something I want you to see.”
I follow him without question. With Flint earlier, I had moments of concern, of worry that it wasn’t safe to be alone with him. Everything inside me warns that Jaxon is a million times more dangerous than Flint, and still I have not an ounce of trepidation when it comes to being alone in his bedroom with him. When it comes to being anywhere, or doing anything, with him.
I don’t know if that makes me foolish or a good judge of character. Not that it really matters, because it is what it is.
Jaxon stops near the edge of his bed and picks up the heavy red blanket folded across the edge of it. Then he reaches into his top dresser drawer and pulls out a pair of faux fur–lined gloves and tosses them to me. “Put those on and come on.”
“Come on where?” I ask, baffled. But I do as he asks and slide my hands into the gloves.
He opens the window, and frigid air rushes in.
“You can’t be serious. No way am I going out there. I’ll freeze.”
He looks over his shoulder at me and winks. He winks.
“What was that?” I demand. “Since when do you wink?”
He doesn’t answer beyond a quick twist of his lips. And then climbs out the window and drops three feet onto the parapet just below the tower.
I should ignore him, should simply turn around and walk out of this room, away from any boy who thinks I’m dumb enough to hang out on an Alaskan roof in November with nothing more than a blazer to keep me warm. That’s what I should do.
Of course, just because I should do it doesn’t mean I will.
Because, apparently, when I’m with this boy, I lose all common sense. And part of losing that common sense means doing exactly what I shouldn’t—in this case, following Jaxon straight out the window and onto the parapet.
33
Madonna’s
Not the Only One
with a Lucky Star
The second I drop down beside him—or should I say the second he helps me down, being super careful of my still tender ankle—Jaxon wraps the blanket around me, head and all, so that only my eyes stick out. And I have to say, I’m not sure what the blanket is made of, but the moment it’s wrapped around me, I stop shivering. I’m not exactly warm, but I’m definitely not going to be dying of hypothermia anytime soon, either.
“What about you?” I ask when I realize he’s wearing only his hoodie. It’s a heavy hoodie, the same one he was wearing when I saw him outside yesterday with Lia, but still, nowhere near enough protection for the weather. “We can share the blanket.”
I break off when he laughs. “I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Of course I’m going to worry about you. The weather is frigid.”
He shrugs. “I’m used to it.”
“That’s it. I have to ask.”
Everything about him turns wary. “Ask what?”
“Are you an alien?”
Both his brows go up this time, all the way to his hairline. “Excuse me?”
“Are. You. An. Alien? I can’t believe it’s that shocking of a question. I mean, look at you.” I wave an arm up and down under the blanket, my way of encompassing everything that is Jaxon in one fell swoop.
“I can’t look at myself.” For the first time, he sounds amused.
“You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t.” He leans down so there’s only a couple of inches separating our faces. “You’re going to have to explain it to me.”
“Like you don’t already know you’re pretty much the hottest person alive.”
He rears back like I’ve struck him, and I don’t think he even realizes that he touches his scar as he says, “Yeah, right.”
Which…come on. “You have to know that scar makes you sexy as hell, right?”
“No.” It’s a short answer. Simple. Succinct, even. And yet it reveals so much more than he’d ever want anyone to see.
“Well, it does. Sexy. As. Hell,” I repeat. “Plus, there’s the way everyone pretty much kisses your ass all the time.”
“Not everyone.” He gives me a pointed look.
“Almost everyone. And you never get cold.”
“I get cold.” He burrows a hand inside the blanket, presses his fingers to my arm. And he’s right; he is cold. But he’s also nowhere close to being frostbitten, which is what I would be if I’d stood out here this long in just a hoodie.
I give him a look and try to pretend that, despite the chill, his hand on my arm doesn’t flood every cell of my body with heat. “You know what I mean.”
“So let me get this straight. Because I: one, am the hottest person alive”—he smirks as he says it—“two, make everyone genuflect, and three, don’t get cold very often, you’ve decided I’m an alien.”
“Do you have a better explanation?”
He pauses, considers. “I do, actually.”
“And it is what exactly?”
“I could tell you…”
“But then you’d have to kill me?” I roll my eyes. “Seriously? We’ve reverted to tired old Top Gun lines?”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“Oh yeah?” It’s my turn to cock my head to the side. “So what were you going to say?”
“I was going to say, ‘Y
ou can’t handle the truth.’”
He totally deadpans it, but I burst out laughing anyway. Because how can I not when he’s quoting A Few Good Men to me? “So you’re an old-movie buff? Or just an old-Tom Cruise-movie buff?”
“Ugh.” He makes a face. “Definitely not the second. As for old movies, I’ve seen a few.”
“So if I mentioned starving women and making a dress out of their skin, you’d know I meant—”
“Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs? Yeah.”
I grin at him. “So maybe not an alien after all.”
“Definitely not an alien.”
Silence stretches between us for a while. It’s not awkward. In fact, it’s kind of nice to just be able to be for a little while. But eventually the cold works its way through his magic blanket. I pull it more closely around myself and ask, “Are you going to tell me what we’re doing out here?”
“I told you I was going to show you my favorite place today.”
“This is your favorite place?” I look around with new eyes, determined to figure out what he likes about it.
“I can see for miles up here, and no one ever bothers me. Plus…” He glances at his phone, then very deliberately looks up at the sky. “You’ll figure it out in about three minutes.”
“Is it the aurora borealis?” I ask, trepidation replaced instantly by excitement. “I’ve been dying to see it.”
“Sorry. You’ve got to be up in the middle of the night to get a look at the northern lights.”
“So then what—?” I break off as what appears to be a giant fireball streaks its way across the sky. Seconds later, another one follows it.
“What’s going on?” I wonder aloud.
“A meteor shower. We don’t get many up here because they tend to take place in the summer, when we’ve got daylight most of the time and can’t see them. But when we do have one in the winter, it’s pretty spectacular.”
I gasp as another three meteors fly by, leaving long, glowing tails in their wake. “That’s an understatement. This is incredible.”