Page 50 of Across His Line

I look. There’s a guy at the bottom of the stairs with a shaved head and a red cup already in his hand, and three guys behind him, laughing at something he said. He looks like any of them. I think that’s the one Kylie mentioned before, but I never had a face to the name. I don’t know who he is. But Nash’s jaw goes tight, and Koda says something into his ear, and Kylie rolls her eyes hard.

Nash looks at me. “Don’t leave my sight tonight.”

It goes through me like cold water.

I know it isn’t what it sounds like. I know that. He said it to keep me safe. But my body doesn’t know the difference between being looked after and being told where to stand. My body only knows the words. Stand up. Look at me. Don’t look at me. Stay where I can see you. For a second, my shoulders come up around my ears, and my mouth goes dry, and I want to walk straight up those stairs and out into the cold just to prove that I can.

Then Kylie nods at him, easy, like it’s nothing, and wraps herself around his arm, and he lets her, and I watch his hand settle at the small of her back.

And I understand. He isn’t telling me what to do. He’s just telling me where he’ll be because the room is filled with drunk guys.

So I follow them around. The basement. The kitchen upstairs. The basement again. The hockey players get louder, and the party gets louder with them, and Kylie keeps leaning over to give me the backstory in pieces, a fight in the preseason, something about a party at Greeley’s, something about a captain’s skate, and I only catch about half of it over the music. I nod at all of it like I understand. Paige and Kenzie left an hour ago. I don’t mind. I have Kylie. I have two hockey players willing to punch a guy for trying to kiss me.

At some point, I put my cup down and pull on Kylie’s arm. “Dance with me.”

She stares at me. I’ve never asked her to do anything like this. Not once in ten weeks. She’s always been the one pulling, and I’ve always been the one being pulled.

Her whole face lights up.

“Where I can see you,” Nash says.

Kylie rolls her eyes. “Whatever.”

But she lets me pull her into the middle of the basement, under the lights, and we dance.

And it’s different with her. It’s better. There’s nobody to watch out for, nobody leaning down, nobody’s hands. It’s just Kylie with her arms in the air and her hair everywhere, shouting the words to a song, and me laughing at her, and the lights going red and blue and green.

“He’s so protective,” she yells in my ear, swaying. “Did you see him? Did you see his face? I’m going to marry him. I’m going to marry him and have his babies.”

“You should marry him and make lots of babies.”

She smiles. “Lots of them, Tess. We’re practicing.”

I laugh hard at that.

Halfway through the next song, Kylie grabs my arm and laughs right into my ear.

“Oh my God. Look who’s here dressed like a million bucks.”

I look.

And all the air goes out of the room.

He’s at the bottom of the stairs. The lights are going, so I only get him in pieces, one flash at a time. Red, and a white shirt, open at the collar, the sleeves rolled to the elbow. Dark. Blue, and dark dress pants, and a long charcoal coat hanging open almost to his knees. Dark. Green, and his face, his jaw, his eyes catching the light and throwing it back, and something gold on his wrist.

I blink. Slowly. Like if I do it slowly enough, he’ll go away.

He doesn’t.

He was an hour south. He was in a building with no name next to a park. I checked. I checked.

Everybody else in this basement is in jeans and jerseys and skirts and sneakers. He looks like he took a wrong turn out of a movie and ended up here by accident, and he doesn’t care at all. Every girl near the stairs has turned around. I watch them do it. A girl in a Woodbury crop top actually stops talking mid-sentence. Two girls by the dryer lean together and whisper. Their eyes follow him across the room, and I hate it.

He walks straight to Nash and Koda by the washing machine. Koda says something and slaps his shoulder. Nash gives him a look up and down, and says something that’s probably about the suit, and Rafe says something back with his face completely flat.

He doesn’t look at me. Not once. Not a glance. Not the jaw, not the eyes, not that stillness he gets when he’s somewhere on purpose. Nothing. He stands with his back half turned to the dance floor and talks to his teammates like I’m not in the room. Like I’m not in the building. Like I’m nobody, which, for four years, is exactly what I prayed he’d treat me as.

I’ve spent years wishing Rafferty Waleska would ignore my existence. I’m relieved that it’s finally happening.