Page 29 of Unstable

“You’re drunk, on a roof in the middle of a Goddamn storm! Now stop fucking moving! I’m serious, Henley. You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

“But…I…” my anger instantly dissolves into drunken sorrow. “I’m waiting on her sign. To tell me she loves me and wants me to stay.”

“Oh, Hen,” his voice gentles. “I’m your sign. She sent me, to save you from yourself. Now, give me your hand.”

I hadn’t realized, I’d stopped moving and he caught me.

“She wouldn’t send you. I hate you, remember?”

He laughs. “You keep tellin’ yourself that, Darlin’. But you’re the only one buying it. Get in front of me,” he instructs as he maneuvers us around carefully, “and crawl to the window. Don’t try to stand, it’s too slick up here. I’m right behind ya.”

“Fine,” I snipe, giving in because he won’t give up until I do. “But you are not my sign.”

I KNOW HE’S WAITING right outside the door, pain in my ass, which is why I’m still hiding out in here. He brought me dry clothes, including panties which he made sure to lay right on the top of the pile so I’d have no doubt he saw them, bastard, and somehow bossed me into taking a hot bath…and now I’m done, ready to go back downstairs and sleep on the couch, but he’s looming out there.

I can feel it.

And I’m also now completely sober, which sucks. Seems wine has no staying power and the quick buzz it delivers morphs even faster into just a dull headache.

“I’m not leavin’ ‘til you come out, Hen,” he taunts through the door.

“Keaton, please.” I rest my forehead against the wooden barrier, my voice wrung with emotional exhaustion. “I just want to go to bed. I’m tired. Go home.”

“Then come out and go to bed. As soon as I see you do that, I’ll leave.”

“I’m sober now. I won’t go out on the roof again. Promise. So just go,” I argue back. “And just so you know, this is not a negotiation, Keaton. This is a bitchtatorship. I’m the bitch, especially in my own house, and I’m demanding you leave!”

“You remember that time when you stepped in the fence post hole and damn near broke your ankle, twisted it real bad?”

Of course I remember, it hurt like hell and I felt like a clumsy fool…and he’s bringing it up now because…?

“Tried to act like you were fine, got up and started hobbling home by yourself,” he continues, and I can practically hear him shaking his head and smirking. “What’d I do about that, Hen?”

I can’t hold my tongue any longer, the memory infuriating me as much now as when it happened. “Acted like a damn barbarian! Tossing me over your shoulder and carrying me home!” I yell through the door. “Do you see how long you’ve been a pain in my ass, Keaton? Why do you get off on torturing me? What the hell did I ever do to you?”

“Ha!” He cuts out a sharp laugh. “Henley Calvert, I could ask you the same damn question. In fact, I am askin’. What’d I ever do to you, besides always look out for you and treat you like a queen?”

That’s it. Enough beating around the bush. He’s obviously as sharp as a butter knife, so I’m gonna have to spell it out for him—once and for all.

I fling open the door and meet his wide, shocked eyes with my own, slitted in anger.

“It’s never been about me, Keaton! What you did, or didn’t, do to me!” I slap my own chest. “It was about her. Always. Her. And if you can honestly stand there and look me in the face and try to pretend you didn’t already know that, then I…well…I don’t even know how you’re able to walk and talk at the same time.”

His ice blue eyes pop stark and vibrant in comparison to his darkened expression as he prowls closer. When my back hits the wall in counter retreat, he looks down at me, his gnarled words hot on my face.

“Just because you never put yourself first, doesn’t mean nobody else did. Can’t help what I feel, Hen, what I’ve always felt. Doesn’t make me a bad person. I never, not once, was blatantly inconsiderate of her or her feelings.”

I cross my arms over my chest, a blockade between us, and arch a brow. “Oh really? What about the Sadie Hawkins dance? Do you know how nervous she was to ask you, an upperclassman? And you said no, you had plans. What plans were so important that you couldn’t go with her, huh?”

“You.”

His instant, simple answer confuses me more than anything he’s ever said. My face must tell him exactly that, because he adds, “My plan has always been you, Henley.”

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