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A couple of turns down the hall and I find a door marked Stairs. It’ll do. I just need space. Too many thoughts in my head today. The stairwell is narrow, dimly lit, and carpeted. It’s empty, though, and given what Elliot told me about renting this entire place for the wedding party and their guests, I don’t expect to see anybody. One flight up, there’s a landing with a tall, elegantly decorated window. I prop myself up alongside it to watch the waves roll in and retreat in the moonlight.
The sounds of the party just downstairs get louder for a moment, and I realize somebody else came through the same door as me. I yank out my phone, ready to pretend I’m up here to take a phone call—it’s probably creepy or weird or something that I left a party to come stare out the window at the ocean—when I see West standing at the foot of the stairs.
“Oh. Hello,” I say lamely, dropping my phone back in my pocket. My heart does something stupid and my breath catches.
“Hiding?” West asks. He braces his hands on the railing, but doesn’t ascend the stairs.
“No. Just, you know.” I shrug.
“What?”
“Getting some air.”
West’s lips quirk. “In a stairwell? Next to a closed window?”
“Hah,” I say. “Funny.”
West tucks his tongue in his cheek.
“You look nice,” I say, wanting to smack myself in the face. Could I possibly be any more lame? That’s a thing guys say to each other. Compliments aren’t weird. It’s fine.
“Thanks,” he says. He starts walking up the stairs. Slowly. Or maybe I only see it in slow motion.
“What are you doing out here, then?”
“Saw you leave,” he says. My heart pounds harder. He noticed me leaving.
Like it matters.
It doesn’t matter.
“You and Callie having a good time?”
A shadow passes over his face, but I can’t figure out why.
“More or less,” he says. “She’s happy for her friends. That’s the point of this whole weekend, right?”
“Well, yes,” I say. “They’re not called wedding celebrations for nothing.”
He almost smiles at that. I wonder if I can get him to smile for real.
West reaches the landing and stops, leaning back against the wall, his lean hips cocked forward, hands in his pockets. He looks like a goddamned model, and I’m beginning to think he knows it. If I tried that, I’d probably fall down the stairs.
“How come you’re not celebrating?”
“Hmm?”
“You said Callie’s happy for her friends,” I point out. “You’re not?”
It’s West’s turn to shrug. “Sure,” he says. “But I can think of at least two other things I’d rather be doing tonight than hanging out with a bunch of strangers in a ballroom.”
My heartbeat triples.
“Like what?”
West stops moving—hell, I don’t think he’s breathing. A long beat later, he wets his lips.
“Let’s try it this way,” he says, standing up slowly, decisively, walking toward me. “Why don’t you tell me what you’d rather be doing right now?”
