AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My hand flew out and smacked him across the cheek before I could contain the action. He covered the red handprint I’d left, his eyes burning brightly.
“Why the fuck do you keep doing that?” Brandon demanded.
“Why do you keep deserving it?” I spat back. “You don’t get to talk to me like that. Like having me is some right you’re entitled to, you spoiled, selfish prick!”
“Not a right, baby, aneed. I need you like I need air to breathe, so I’m fighting for you! For us!”
We were chest to chest, so close that if I had been a few inches taller, our noses might have brushed. He inhaled deeply, and his eyes drifted south to rest on my lips. His fingers twitched impatiently at his sides. He was fighting every instinct he had, as was I, and our bodies were literally vibrating with the urge to collide.
With immense effort, I took a step back.
“This was a mistake. This lunch, this meeting, you, me.” I yanked off the bracelet and dropped it at his feet. It bounced in the wet grass and rolled to the side. “It was all a fucking mistake.”
I hoisted my purse over my shoulder and scrambled back up to the path toward campus before I could be drawn further into his magnetic gaze. Whatever I was looking for by seeing him today, it didn’t matter. I was leaving. Closure accomplished.
“Shit. Skylar! I’m sorry!”
The crack in his voice almost had me turning back around, but his comments still burned in my ears. I tossed an errant hand into the air with more bravado than I felt and continued to stride away, willing myself not to look back. Just a few more steps until I was out of the park and could get lost in the crowded sidewalk. Just a few more steps until I could start the long process of forgetting that Brandon Sterling ever existed.
Forty-Four
Aknock on my bedroom door pulled me out of my daze, the same daze I’d been drifting in all week.
Five days since that explosive fight by the river. “You’re it for me,” he’d said, over and over again. But it was also just six weeks since those monumental words had drifted out of Miranda’s mouth. “His wife.” Who knew such small phrases could pack such a punch?
“Skylar? You ready to go?”
Jane pulled me out of my ugly daydreams, just as she had been doing all week, forcing me to pack and get ready for graduation. I hadn’t even started studying for the bar, with just under two months to go until the exam. I gave the D.A.’s office a verbal commitment directly after seeing Brandon, but I hadn’t had the heart to think about anything law-related since. The new-hire paperwork was in my messenger bag, still unsigned. Two hefty study guides for the bar exam were packed into my suitcases, and the rest of my belongings were shoved into hefty cardboard boxes, ready to ship to a Brooklyn storage unit.
The moving company I’d hired would be here at five. While studying for the bar, I’d be back in my attic in Flatbush, subject to Bubbe’s cooking and the small comforts of home that would help me and my dad recover from our traumatic spring. The knowledge I’d have that kind of solace and space to heal should have been a relief. But my heart felt like lead every time I looked at the brown boxes that said I was leaving Boston for good.
I turned around from the mirror on my closet door.
“Well?” I asked Jane. “How am I?”
Jane looked me over in a way that had become routine over the last week as she made sure I didn’t have any obvious creases in my clothes or crumbs sticking to my face. She pushed a lock of hair behind my ear and reached up to adjust the black graduation cap that matched her own. Then she arranged the tassel so it dangled down the correct side of my face.
“There,” she said. “Perfect. Where are your dad and grandmother meeting you again?”
“On the lawn after the ceremony,” I said. “He had a therapy appointment last night, so they couldn’t leave until early this morning. They should be here in time to see us walk.”
Dad was still taking his therapy seriously, according to Bubbe. He attended group sessions more than once a week and also met weekly for an individual appointment with the psychologist running the rehabilitation program. He’d also started doing physical therapy for his hand, and seemed to be happy with his doctors.
I let Jane tug me out of the room, past several large bouquets of flowers that had been arriving like clockwork all week. There had been no more letters, just a few handwritten notes, usually scrawled with some version of “Forgive me.” I hadn’t looked at them, knowing exactly who they were from, but I didn’t have the heart to throw them out either. Crimson and white peonies to match Harvard colors.
“Tea,” Jane said, handing me a to-go cup.
We had missed the graduate breakfast since neither of us wanted to get up at six in the morning to eat with all the legacy families. Jane’s parents had flown in from Chicago, but had been more interested in sightseeing around Boston than attending stuffy Harvard events. Jane, whose hair had coincidentally been combed respectably for the three days her mother was around, had been happy to oblige.
“Granola bar for later,” she said, handing me sustenance. “And a chocolate lobster tail for right now.”
“Oh, you peach, you went to Mike’s, didn’t you?”
I shoved the bar into the pockets of my graduation gown and immediately tucked into the flaky pastry, careful not to let the chocolate cream on the inside drip onto my gown. We gobbled them down, hunched over the sink to avoid making a mess. The pastries were gone in seconds.
“I feel so official in this getup,” I remarked. “So old-fashioned.”
“I feel like a Harry Potter character.” Jane looked up and down her robes, pulling out the sides at least two feet on either side. “No one in that book ever gets laid, you know.”
