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My arms fold over the railing and I bury my face in my elbow, trying and failing to ignore my tears.Only girls cry,Dad would say, and I know it’s all bullshit, but it’s a hard lesson to un-learn.
A hand lands on my back and I jump about a mile as I spin around.
“Émile.” I trip over his name, caught totally off guard by him being here. His blond hair is darkening in the soft rain, hazel eyes hard-edged and assessing.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“I … I …” I shake my head. “It’s … it’s over.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Because I don’t know what to say. Because I don’t know if I should tell you that I’m here because I’m scared. Because it’s raining and I’m lonely and I’m worried I’m going to feel that way forever. That if I didn’t come here, I’d end up in bed for a week or back in my car heading for your place. That I’ve been broken a lot in my life, but I don’t think I’ve ever been as broken as I am right now. Tonight. I don’t know if I can tell you that.”
“Well, it’s lucky for me that you still can’t hold in your thoughts.” He lifts his hand like he means to cup my face but I jerk back away from him.
“Don’t.”
“Christian …”
“Please. I c-can’t.”
Émile’s expression turns to stone. “What did they say to you?”
I’m so prepared to make up some bullshit excuse, that it takes me a second to process his words. “Huh?”
“I know they made you leave, I just don’t know what the hell they could have on you to actually make you do it.”
My shoulders sag. “The play.”
Understanding lights up in his eyes. “Those motherfuckers.”
“I had to.”
“They found your price, love. Tell me everything.”
So I do. One, big, explosive vomit of words I don’t even follow enough to make sense. They just keep coming. A stream of everything. Tonight, forever, the darkness that constantly haunts me. “And now I have no one again. No best friend, no family, no boyfriend or husband, fake or whatever the hell we were. I have nothing.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
I snort, but Émile ignores me, just steps forward and rests his hand on my chest.
“Turn around.”
A splashing noise reaches my ears, almost drowned out by the low rumble from overheard. And then I turn.
And there, jogging along the path through the rain …
Xander and Seven. Rush. Madden. Aunt Agatha. Gabe. Gabe who doesn’t stop when he’s close enough. Gabe who slams into me and covers me in the smell of smoke and of the deodorant he keeps at the station.
“You big, dumb idiot,” he says, voice sounding rough. “You made me worried and shit.”
My eyes are leaking again and when he pulls away, I hurry to wipe them off on my shoulder.
Émile moves in close again as Gabe steps away, and then his fingers are slotting in between mine. Exactly where they belong.
“I thought you said you didn’t have a family,” he says in his best teasing voice.
“Better not have said that,” Aunt Agatha says, and I know exactly what’s coming next. “Otherwise you’ll be out of the will.”
