“What?” Mal said.
“Are you down so bad that you’re willing to share her with Adelman?” she asked. “Because that’s what this is giving.”
Mal sputtered back his response. “What?” he said. “No. Never.”
Now that he’d held Jo close, the thought of the man she’d confessed she hadfeelings forever doing the same inspired a howling fury that he couldn’t examine too closely for fear of getting sucked too far into it. But even if Kelechi was off, she’d scratched right at the surface of his greatest worry. It would be one thing if he could no longer reach Josephine Boateng because she’d run out of his arms, but another thing entirely if she’d fallen right into Ezra’s.
Ezra, who per her own admission, had already earned her trust.
“Oof, hit a sore spot,” Kelechi said gently. “Look, Mal. You’re clearly preoccupied. Maybe take a break. Detox. We can do this later.”
Mal shook his head, his hands hovering over his keyboard. Writing had always been his escape. He’d buried himself in it before and come up with gold. And besides, he had deadlines. The event at Em-Dash. A career that required his attention.
“No,” he said. “No, let’s do this now.”
Chapter Twenty
Jo
It had taken three days for Ezra to be weaned off the ventilator.
Before my first day at Elion University’s campus, I had sworn to myself that I would never let a boy derail my studies. But for those three days, I didn’t go to class, didn’t study for my looming midterms, just sat at Ezra’s bedside, the numb, silent girl who haunted his hospital room like a ghost while international supermodel/entrepreneur Renata Kovalenko wept beside me.
For three days, I had watched the stilting, artificial rise and fall of his chest, thinking about how, when I first found him, it had been so eerily still. Breathing wasn’t something I’d noticed before this. But now I watched for it in everyone, taking note of the subtle expansion of ribs beneath the scrubs of the respiratory therapist who suctioned out Ezra’s secretions, the slight rise of shoulders of the nurse looking over her IV pumps.
The doctors tried to be optimistic.He’s young, they’d said.He’ll pull through.But they also said that he’d been “down” for a long time. That his brain might not have gotten enough oxygen, and that even though he seemed to follow simple commandslike “wiggle your toes,” “squeeze my hand,” they couldn’t be sure what he would do with more complex ones. If he would be able to talk, walk,actagain. So when, on the fourth day, the team stopped by his room to announce that they were going to pull his breathing tube, I grasped Renata’s hand and led her out into the hallway.
“He’s still in there,” I assured her.
Renata nodded, tears trailing down her face. She cut an imposing figure against the hospital’s wheat-colored walls, her jutting hip bones, angular cheeks, and arched nose a study in geometry, and it struck me that, despite her incredible looks and absurdly wealthy husband, her employees and her millions, she was alone. That the only person here to share in her horror was me, a surly, poorly dressed teenager her son knew from class, who was alone too.
When we walked back into the room, Ezra was watching for us. He gave his mother a chagrined wave, like he was greeting her after a weekend road trip, and she launched herself, sobbing, into his arms.
I watched them, knowing that my part in this had ended. I had three days of lectures to catch up on, an email to send to my Chemistry TA begging to make up my missed lab. A life that I was still yet to build. Quietly, I crept for the door.
“Jo, wait,” a voice croaked behind me. Ezra, peeking out from over his mother’s shoulder, his skin pale, the circles under his eyes dark, his gaze clear and direct. “Stay. Please.”
Then, he extended his hand, and without missing a beat, Renata did too.
I understood, in that moment, that they were offering mesomething that I’d never had. I understood, too, that I might never be able to give it back.
“I won’t,” I promised.
It had been weeks since I’d last seen Ezra, and in that time, he’d let his facial hair grow. I’d never seen him with more than a five-o’clock shadow, but today he was rocking more week-old scruff, and it had a strange effect on his appearance, making him less billionaire playboy and more front man of an indie rock band. It didn’t suit him, but that didn’t stop him from being more beautiful than I remembered.
“Long time no see,” he said.
I could feel eyes settling on our table, snapping to Ezra like magnets to metal. Probably trying to place him, wondering where they’d seen him before, or perhaps just checking him out. People like Renata and Ezra could hardly escape notice, but today, Ezra didn’t seem to care. His focus was homed on me.
“Yeah,” I said weakly.
It hadn’t been that long since Ezra and I had last sat in a restaurant like this, stuffing our faces with the carbs he’d deprived himself of while shooting shirtless scenes forOne True Kiss, before heading to our next stop: a concert we’d seen advertised on a streetlamp, a secret magic show in the basement of a bar, an overpriced speakeasy where I would try the cocktails and he would make fun of my expressions while sipping a club soda. Afterward, we would hobble back home to his Gold Coast apartment and, after forcing me to chug his mom’s weird electrolyte water, collapse on either side of his California king. I’d wake up before him, like I always did, and draw a mustache on his face with washable marker, and he would enact his own revenge by wearingit the next morning to brunch, twirling the corner like a cartoon villain while reading through the menu.
And yet now, he felt like a stranger.
“Did you change your number?” Ezra said. “I tried to call you, but it said the line was disconnected.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe I just blocked you.”
