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I want nothing more in this moment than to escape how restless and uneasy this makes me. Well, besides the ability to scrub the memory of bare-chested, arrogant, smirking Christopher from my brain.
As if he knows I’m sulking about him, Christopher glances over the short, gorgeous blonde’s head. His eyes pin mine, and a jolt of electricity snaps through me. I drop back, disappearing into the hallway’s shadows.
“KitKat?” Bea says, noticing me shrink away. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just hot.” I bring my cocktail glass holding mostly melted ice to my flushed cheeks. “I’m gonna get some fresh air and cool off.”
Before my sister can respond, I skirt the edge of folks gathered around the kitchen and spot a nice Irish whiskey sitting on the bar. I slide it off the counter as subtly as possible, then slink past the crowd again, waiting as I see Bea weave around the other side and get swept into Jamie’s gentle hug.
Making a break for it, I escape down the hallway toward the balcony at the back of the apartment, off the tiny studio where Bea paints. I step over rolls of canvas and wood frames for stretching them, then open the door to—
“Christ on a cracker.” I shudder. Christopher’s sidekick, Nick, cups Bianca’s face as she wraps her arms around his neck and tugs him close, their mouths fused in an impassioned kiss.
They don’t even notice me.
I’m tempted to say something, but what’s the point? I already warned Bianca. I told her what Christopher’s like and said I couldn’t promise anything different about the company he keeps. She made her choice. She sought out Nick. I’m going to respect that choice, even if it makes me want to hurl.
Speaking of hurl, I feel a little nauseous.
I don’t think it’s the alcohol. It’s this night, the realities pressing down on me that everyone’s so fucking happy and well-adjusted. It’s the agitation I can’t shake over that petty showdown with Christopher and our beer-soaked clothes, seeing his body, knowing I made sure he saw mine. It’s the unsettling sensation of the hairs on my neck lifting all night that’s made me feel like I’m being watched, even though I haven’t caught a single person looking my way, the same electric fizz that rocketed through my veins when Christopher’s eyes found mine.
Stomping back through the studio, I make my way down the hallway, hidden in shadow. My gaze slips toward Christopher as he smiles at Jamie’s friend and tips back his beer, his throat working in a long, deep swallow. My stomach churns. It’s definitely not the alcohol.
It’s this claustrophobic, disorienting sensation that the walls are closing in, the floors moving out from beneath me, that time and change have swept by me and now they’re about to knock me on my ass.
I need an escape. I have a bedroom, of course, but it’s at the other end of the apartment. To get there, I’d have to walk by everyone in their domesticated bliss and Christopher fucking Petruchio flirting over tapas with that cute-as-a-button doctor and her three-hundred-dollar haircut and high-quality clothes and eight times more luscious tits than I’ll ever have—not that I’m comparing us. So, I’m just going to slip into this closet with my trusty whiskey, have a few sips for good measure, and curl up with the jumbo roll of recycled paper towels.
Settling in, I prop my feet on the lowest shelf, yank the cork out of the whiskey with my teeth on a satisfyingpop, then spit it into my hand.
And then I drag the closet door shut, letting darkness swallow me up.
•TEN•
Christopher
I’m going to wring Kate’s neck. Once I find her, that is.
It’s a one-thousand-square-foot apartment. It shouldn’t be this hard to locate a grown-ass woman. Which means she’s either in a particularly vindictive mood and left for an unknown destination at midnight without telling anyone or taking her beat-up phone, which sits on the kitchen counter, or she’s hiding somewhere around here.
Either way, so help me God, when I find her.
“Any luck?” Jamie asks, returning from searching the bedrooms—again—at the other end of the apartment. His voice is quiet on account of Bea, who fell asleep on the sofa an hour ago, right around when everyone was leaving and before we realized Kate was nowhere to be seen.
He nudged her awake then and asked if she knew where Kate was, but she just frowned and said, “Here? Right?”
Wisely, Jamie let her drift back off.
Which means we’re the two fools turning the apartment upside down for a woman gone rogue.
I shake my head. “No. And I’ve looked everywhere. She has to have left.”
He sighs, scrubbing his face. But then his hands drop slowly.He peers past me, in the direction of the hall behind me. “Have you checked the hallway closet?”
I blink at him, then glance over my shoulder at the tiny hallway closet that I’ve never actually seen inside. I assumed it was a shallow storage space, too small to hide a person.
Swearing under my breath, I storm down the hallway and yank open the door. “Goddammit.”
There she is, cuddled up against a jumbo pack of paper towels, clutching a bottle of whiskey like it’s her teddy bear. The bands squeezing my ribs pop, and I suck in a deep, steadying breath. Leaning past the door, I call to Jamie, “Found her.”
