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Waving goodbye.
“You’re free. Do whatever the hell you want. Just do it back in New York.” His voice is low, quiet. But each syllable is said with precision. And each one is like a bullet in my chest.
“Don’t do this.” My eyes sting, and I blink rapidly as he pulls his phone out of his pocket and taps something into it.
My own phone vibrates in my hoodie, and I pull it out and open the email from him. It’s a copy of a plane ticket to New York. Just one ticket. With one name on it.
Mine.
He walks past me, his arm brushing mine and forcing a sob from me that I claw back in before it fills the surrounding air on the roof terrace.
“Don’t come crawling back to me when you’ve finished your pity party for one!” I spin and scream at his back as he walks to the stairway door. “Whatever shitty denial you’re living in right now is your own fault. I am here, Dax. I am here. For you.” My chest heaves as I gasp in air before screaming again. “You don’t fucking deserve me right now. But I am here, like you have been for me. But if you walk down those stairs and shut me out, then that’s it!”
He stops, his hand wrapped around the door handle.
My heart lifts, and I take a step toward him. Ready to run to him. Because even though this is fucked up, it’s Dax. He is Dax. I know him. There has to be a reason he would take drugs to New York. He isn’t a criminal. He’s good. He has a huge heart. Just like Jasmin told me.
She isn’t wrong about her own brother.
Ican’tbe wrong about him.
I can’t.
He inclines his chin over his shoulder, but not far enough for our eyes to meet.
“You need to forget about me, Sunbeam.”
Sunbeam.
“Your flight leaves at nine.”
Then he walks through the open door.
I stand in shock for a few minutes, until the sound of an engine roaring into life snaps me from my trance and I rush to the edge of the roof.
Dax’s Range Rover tears down the main driveway, leaving me alone on the roof terrace.
I grip the stone railing until my palms sting. The view reaches far across the estate up here. It’s almost like being up in the clouds, looking down at everything like this. I used to love being up high. Walking up that hill with Dad. He’d say our troubles were far below us.
But what if the cause of my trouble was up here with me until just a few minutes ago? What if that trouble was the thing that was stopping me from crashing all this time? Holding me up?
And now it’s gone.
Chapter 36
Rose
“I’vemadeyouacoffee.” Mom’s voice carries through my bedroom door. “I’ll leave it out here.”
There’s a shuffling, and then her footsteps retreat back downstairs again.
I roll onto my side on my bed. Three days. It’s been three days since I had that fight with Dax on his roof terrace. Three days since I ran out of his apartment and tore down the driveway to the cottage. Three days since I yanked my suitcase out from under the bed so hard that it swung into the giant mirror he gave me and smashed it.
Jasmin told me not to worry. That it was just the glass, and it could be replaced.
I found a tiny shard of it that must have gotten caught up in my clothes when I threw them in during my angry, hurt-fueled packing. The jagged edge of it sliced right through the skin of my forearm when I was unpacking back at Mom’s house—I can’t even call it home anymore. I don’t know where I belong now. I didn’t even react when the blood started pulsing from the cut. I stood and reveled in the sensation. I welcomed it. Because although it was pain, it wasn’t the pain I’ve felt in my heart since Dax left me alone on that roof. It was a relief to feel a different pain for a change.
“Rose?” Mom calls up the stairs to me as I’m running my fingers over the edge of the thin dressing that’s covering the cut. “There’s someone here to see you.”
