Page 93 of Wreckage and Rain

Awe.

I hold his gaze. One second. Two.

Then I walk offstage and collapse into Sam's arms, laughing and crying, and he holds me and says nothing.

Lucia presents me with a crayon drawing. "Because you were pretty."

I hold it against my chest.

Chapter 27: Wreckage

Colt

She finds me in the crowd.

I'm standing at the back wall. Not in a seat. My legs won't hold me through this sitting.

The music ends. She walks downstage. The lights come up halfway. She holds her hand over her eyes against them and she looks. She finds me where I am, where I've been standing my whole life, which is at the edge of every room she's in.

She holds my eyes. One second. Two.

Then she goes to Sam.

She steps offstage and into his arms and the part of me that's been preparing to lose her takes the blow. I lose sight of them both in the wings. I don't need to see it. She fits there. She's been fitting there for months.

I've had four weeks of preparation for this. I've been getting used to it. I've been telling myself I'll stay in Chicago either way. That I'll do the work. That I'll tear down Sonny whether she comes back or not. That I owe her the demolition independent of the outcome. The part of tonight I'm proudest of, in this moment, is that I don't move. She's not mine to cross the room and claim. She goes into his arms because she wants to. They are friends and this is not something I get a say in. I keep my feet where they are and my face quiet so she doesn't feel me watching. The crowd starts to move and I head backstage.

I'd told myself I would not wait. I told myself I'd leave through the front door and go to the apartment in Logan Square and let her have her night. I go backstage anyway. The corridor is concrete. I can feel the bass. The dressing room door is closed. Through it I can hear Marisol and Autumn. Autumn is half-shrieking, half-crying, which is what Autumn does when she'soverwhelmed and trying to be funny about it. I stand in the corridor with my hands in my pockets and my heart trying to climb my throat.

Sam comes out first.

He sees me.

We've done this once already, three weeks ago at his bar. We've both gotten quieter about it.

"She'll come find you, if she wants to. I'm telling you so you don't ambush her in the corridor."

I nod.

He nods once. He looks at me for a beat longer than the average man would and there's no aggression in it. Just measurement. Two men who've agreed without speaking what the rules are.

He goes the other way.

The door opens and she comes out alone. She's changed, her stage makeup is gone and her hair is down. She is wearing jeans, a soft black sweater I've never seen before. I'm going to think about her in this every time I see her in soft black anything for the rest of my life. She's got a canvas bag over her shoulder that I assume is the costume.

She stops abruptly in the corridor when she sees me, and I don't move.

"I told them I'd find my own way home." Her voice is hoarse from the show. "They argued. I overrode them."

"I'm glad you did."

Her eyes are still bright from the stage. She's standing differently than she was at the lake. Like whatever she went out there to prove, she proved it, and she isn't carrying the question anymore.

"Walk with me?"

She smirks, shrugs her shoulder and says "Yes."

My heart jumps in my chest and I can't help but feel something like hope float to the surface. The club spits us out a side dooronto the street. The night is cold. The kind of blue that means the cloud's cleared off the city. Streetlights every twenty feet. Her face in and out of them as we walk.