Page 5 of New Year

I move my hand, the back of my fingers brushing against his. I have to close my eyes and take a slow breath to still the quaking in my soul from the contact.

“What do you hold onto because of your mom?” I whisper, barely daring to speak the words. I told him about Dad last summer, but he’s never told me about his mom. I fully expect him to pull away and slide off the car and say it’s time to go, and I wait for it, for him to slam the door and make a joke, to smile like he did at my house. Or even to snap at me, to tell me I have no right to compare the way I lost my dad to the way he lost his mom.

Instead, he moves the back of his fingers against mine, making the whole earth tremble, and then he hooks his little finger around mine and answers in one word that makes my heart shatter into a million pieces.

“Lindsey.”

“Chase…”

“Sky.”

He rolls over to look down at me, his fingertips ghosting over my cheek, his gaze locked on my mouth. I stare at his lips, my heart beating so hard I can’t think straight. I wish he’d kiss me, and I’m scared that he will.

“You’re my type,” he says. “My type is you. You’ve got me so fucked up I can’t think straight, I can’t… Fuck. I’ve never…”

He buries his hand in my hair, and my heart hammers so hard I can’t breathe. He rolls over on top of me, kneeing my leg aside so he’s lying between my thighs. He rests on his elbows and looks down at me. I’m going to faint. I tear my gaze from his beautiful lips, only inches from mine, to his even more beautiful eyes, and any defense I had left melts away.

He leans in, and some distant part of me is screaming for me to stop him, but I can’t move.

Just before our lips meet, he turns his face away, his cheek brushing over mine, cold against cold. “I’m going to kiss you,” he murmurs into my ear, sending shivers through my already melted body. He pulls one hand above my head, gripping my wrist, his other hand finding my waist under my jacket and shirt, fingers digging into my bare skin. “I’m going to kiss you and never stop. Tell me I don’t have to stop. Tell me I can kiss you forever, kiss every part of you like you were made for it, like the only reason you exist is to be tasted by my tongue. That I can kiss you until you forget I’ve ever been anything but yours.”

I want to tell him that I’ve already forgotten, that I’ve never been anything but his, either, that I still want him to kiss me more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. But my throat closes around itself, holding back the words that would leave me as vulnerable as him, as raw, as hurt. Wordlessly, I push myself against him, wanting him with a yearning so big it eclipses everything. There is only Chase, and me, and the want.

“Oh fuck.” He rolls away and leaps off the hood of the car, somehow making it look effortless and graceful as he lands on his feet. He stares at me for one wild, crackling moment, and it feels like anything could happen. His breath fogs around him as if he’s a ghost seen through a cloudy windowpane, and he’ll be gone when I blink.

Then he drops my gaze and bends to rest his hands on his knees, his head down and his breathing measured as he winds in his control one slow inhalation at a time. I sit up, coming back to reality with a dull, cold thud.

“You can’t keep doing this,” I say, my voice as numb as my empty chest.

“I know,” he says, his voice rough but quiet. “I can’t keep doing it, and I can’t stop doing it. I couldn’t stop thinking aboutyou the whole time I was gone. I was going to do it, just say fuck the consequences and be done with it.”

“Done with what?” I whisper.

“I was going to break up with her when we got back.”

All the air leaves the night around us, and I can’t breathe. This is the moment, the thing I’ve been waiting for since the day I found out they were together. For him to want me enough, to lose something for me, to choose me.

“I had this one thing left,” he says, his voice filled with the weight of misery as he stares at the ground at his feet. “There’s this New Years party the Darlings throw every year, and she needed a date. I care about her, I do. I don’t want to hurt her. But I never felt like this about her. Never.”

I swallow so hard I nearly choke on it.

“I told myself it was the last thing we’d do together. I wouldn’t leave her in the lurch. She’s my friend. I told… I promised I’d take care of her. So I took her to this stupid party, and—”

His voice breaks off, and he sucks in an audible breath and shakes his head back and forth slowly.

“What happened?” I ask, my voice dull.

“Her brother got in a fight with those Dolce kids,” he says. “He’s in bad shape, Sky. They don’t know if he’ll pull through.”

My throat constricts, and a flash of something so ugly and awful passes through me, and then all I can think about is Lindsey. Because even if Preston’s a complete sociopath, even if he’s been a total creep to me, and even if they’re not close, he’s her brother. He’s still her brother.

And even though I don’t have a brother, I know. I know what it’s like to be related to a monster. I know all the warring thoughts and conflicting feelings that come with it, and that even after you know everything, the love doesn’t just disappear.

“Is she okay?” I ask finally, when he straightens and looks at me with all the regret that hangs over someone who waited too long, who was waiting for the right moment and it never came, and now they’re realizing that it never will. I know about that too. I saw that look on Dad’s face when it was too late for him too.

In two strides, Chase is in front of me, grabbing both my hands in his. “I don’t want to do this anymore, Sky. I wantyou. I want to be withyou.The way I feel—but no. She’s not okay. She needs me right now, and I promised… I’m sorry. I have to be there for her.” He leans forwards, resting his forehead against mine, his voice raw with pain when he speaks. “It was almost over.”

My mind is tumbling with the words he’s saying, the things I’ve heard, and landing every time on what it means. Everyone telling me the power the Darlings and all the founding families wield. Elaine saying he’s only with Lindsey because he promised his dead mother. Daria saying they’re practically in an arranged marriage. And what he’s telling right now, that wants me, but she needs him, and that will always come first for him. She will always come first, and I refuse to come second, which means I don’t have a place at all.

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