Page 94 of Hidden

Not tonight.

If I went to her now, I’d break. And if I broke in front of her, there’d be no putting any of it back in the box again.

So I stayed.

I blew the whistle. I waved the glow sticks. I laughed too loudly and danced too hard and made a complete spectacle of myself because the alternative was crossing enemy lines with every last restraint hanging by a thread.

And this time, for once, I chose not to go.

Not because I didn’t want her.

Not because I didn’t need her.

Because Icouldn’t.

And yet I knew if Gabriella got word to me that she needed me, really needed me, I would go. No matter what state I was in or what it would cost me, I would go.

How could I not?

Chapter 26

Gabriella

Now

The thing with disappointment, is knowing you shouldn’t care, but somehow caring about it the most.

That’s how I was feeling right now.

There was an ache low in my stomach. The wine I’d thrown back was still warm in my veins, not enough to make me stop feeling, but enough that I wasn’t sobbing over it.

I was, however, pathetically glancing at the window every few minutes, like something in me still expected him to appear if I willed it hard enough.

I hated that I’d noticed.

On some level, I’d always known he was out there. And I had learned to live with it. I was able to go about my nightly business, comforted in a strange way, but not obsessed with it. But now, now that he had crossed so many boundaries, I missed his presence with an ache that was physical.

Now that he wasn’t here, the silence seemed thicker than normal. Everything felt strange. Tonight, the dark was just thedark. Any noises were just ones that belonged to the night. There were no shadows watching, no hidden figures guarding over me.

For once, it was just me, myself, and I.

Vienna had always been the habit I had never been able to break, and the one constant I had learned to live with—and come to rely on, even if I didn’t want to admit that.

And tonight he hadn’t come. I couldn’t remember the last time he wasn’t here.

I had never truly realised how much of my nights were built around the knowledge that he would be there until he wasn’t. It was stupid and embarrassing, but the truth of it was, I missed him. Even though I had no right to. Even though space was the safest option, I still missed him.

I sat cross-legged in the middle of my bed, my phone loose in one hand, the other wrapped around the stem of a half-empty wineglass. The bottle sat abandoned on the bedside table beside the lamp, already more empty than full, and I knew that I should stop now. That I should drink some water, wash my face, get into bed, and let this mood pass like every other one before it.

Instead, I took another sip and looked at the window again.

But why should I have to? Why couldn’t I have one thing for myself? Why couldn’t I have these stolen, forbidden moments of happiness?

I caught my reflection in the glass, and a laugh escaped me, soft and humourless. “Brilliant,” I muttered to the empty room. “Look at the state of you.”

This was what I had wanted, wasn’t it? Distance?

There was less of a chance for things to go wrong, for everything to spiral into something neither of us could take back. Fewer nights spent standing on opposite sides of glass pretending that wasn’t somehow more intimate than being touched.