“Here.” Sloane lifts my arm and curls my fingers around the glass as if I’m a vegetable or something. “Let’s go.” Her hands are back around my forearm, and she leads me toward the table.
I go, too stunned to know what else to do. She pulls out a chair and sits me down. And then she goes to Harvey.
He forces a smile as he looks up at her. “I’m sorry I missed your wedding, Sloaney.”
Her eyes glisten with unshed tears as she drops a small hand onto his shoulder. “You didn’t miss a wedding, Uncle Harvey. The wedding didn’t happen.”
His gaze swivels between us with a small shake of his head. “I guess . . . I guess that makes sense, since you’re here with Jasper and not your husband. The two of you just look so natural together. I . . . I’m sorry.” One broad palm covers his face. “I’m not thinking straight right now.”
A choked sob lurches from his chest. Followed by a matching one from Sloane.
And then she’s there, wrapping her arms around the man who is my dad. In every way that I needed a father, Harvey was that person to me. He’s known so much pain in his life. So much loss and hardship.
Just like me.
And it seems infuriatingly unfair that something like this should happen to us.
Sloane doesn’t offer him apologies. She doesn’t tell him everything will be okay. “I love you, Uncle Harvey,” is all she says as she wraps her arms around his neck and hugs him fiercely, letting him gasp into her shoulder as a stray tear falls down her cheek.
Again.
Sloane has shed too many tears today.
And yet, she’s here. Drunk. And sad. And lost. She’s got dirty feet and is wearing an expensive, ripped wedding dress for a marriage that didn’t happen. Her life is in shambles, and she’s still here comforting other people.
Sloane is selfless.
She might not look it, but she’s strong.
She’s a got a huge heart. A gentle soul.
And watching her comfort Harvey right now, I let myself admit that the way I love Sloane might not be how one friend loves another at all.
. . . A fist lands on my shoulder, but I just laugh. This shithead punches like a toddler. And he just left himself open for me.
My knuckles crack when they slam into Tristan’s face, and blood sprays from his nose, which seems to function as some sort of signal for all his shark friends to swarm me.
“You’re fucking dead, Gervais! I’m gonna go to the back field and burn that filthy car you live in. Put you on the street where you belong.”
His words hurt a hell of a lot more than his punches. I glance around, feeling the press of new people around me.
Everyone assumes that hockey players are popular, I’m proof that isn’t always true. I’ve been reduced to town trash in the wake of everything that’s happened, and these are the kids at school who’ve been getting a kick out of reminding me where I belong on their totem pole.
Today I boiled over.
When I glance hack at Tristan, it’s the boy standing behind him who catches my attention. Beau Eaton. School Quarterback, honor roll, basically the town prince who everyone loves. Never took him for the type to join in on something like thi—
“Tristan, fuck off.” He gives him a shove and steps up, blocking me from the gathering crowd. “Everyone fuck off! Show’s over!” he announces, crossing his arms and glaring back while our fellow students disperse.
Shame hits me. Not only am I the weird homeless kid whose parents left him behind . . . I’m now the most popular kid’s charity case.
Before I can even think about what I’m doing, I turn and run straight for the stand of trees that divide the schoolyard from the scrubby back field. Straight for the old broken-down Honda I’ve been calling home.
“Hey! Wait up!” I hear Beau call, but I don’t look back. Humiliation drives me forward, and within minutes I’m leaned up against the white hunk of metal trying to catch my breath. It’s a shit place to live. But it’s dry, and it’s close to the hockey rink. And that’s all I care about.
“Are you really living here?”
I groan. Of course, he had to follow me. “Yeah.”
A hush expands between us. I’m too embarrassed to turn around and face him.
“Come to my house.” That’s what he breaks the tense silence with. That’s what has me spinning around to look at this bright, shiny golden boy of a teenager.
“Your house?”
“Yeah.” He nods surely, arms crossing over his chest as he tries to look at me and not the squalor I’ve been living in. “Lots of rooms. Lots of food.”
“I—”
“I’m not taking no for an answer. Grab . . .” He looks behind me now, features pinched. “Whatever you need. My brother Cade will drive us once Rhett is out of detention.”
“You sure?” A small, fragile flame of hope flickers inside of me. “What if your family doesn’t want me there?”
He just scoffs. “I guarantee my family doesn’t want you living here.”
And just like that Beau Eaton cements himself as one of the very best things in my life . . .
“Hi.” Sloane’s voice is quiet and tentative behind me.
“How’d you know I was here?” I don’t turn to look at her head poked out of the window. I’m still frozen, and it has nothing to do with how cold it is out right now.
“Hard to forget our nights out here, to be honest.”
She’s not wrong. Our nights spent out on the roof were some of the best of my life. They usually started out as the worst nights, but then she’d come join me and they were instantly better.
“I could also feel the cold air from the hallway.”
I grunt, not really in the mood for talking. In fact, I feel completely hollowed out.
“You cold, Jas?”
I shrug, not caring if I’m cold. I’m too busy imagining all the awful things that could have happened to my brother.
He told me he would leave the army soon. Of course, he always said that. And every time I wanted to believe him.
We all hated him deploying—it felt like the statistics weren’t stacked in his favor anymore. Like he’d gotten off scot-free too many times. Like he was too sunny and goofy, and the universe would take that away from him at some point.
I hear Sloane clambering out the window of her guest room. The room right beside the one I spent my teenage years in.
I’m about to tell her I want to be alone, but when she wraps a blanket around my shoulders and plops down beside me, tucking herself in against me, my body releases a breath I didn’t even know I’d been holding. She presses close beside me, all downy and comforting. Her sweet scent wafts to my nostrils. Smells like coconut and icing on a cupcake.
Forcing myself to stay staring at the dark fields, I ignore her presence. Until I see an ugly cartoon basset hound pushed up to my face.
“Drink.” It’s not a question. It’s a command.
I shake my head, feeling more like my traumatized teenage self than I have in years.
“Come on. I’m dehydrated from crying in the shower. Please don’t make me drink alone. Beau wouldn’t approve.”
I snort a laugh, but it’s followed by a wounded, keening noise. The sound of Sloane sniffing is the only response. We don’t look at each other.