Page 75 of A Heart of Bluestone

I hang, backwards, just above the steps under me.

“Careful, Liv!”

The familiar shout of my brother stills me.

I hug the railing and pull myself up. My jaw is tensed so tight that my teeth creak, and I stumble off the last step, onto the snow.

Once my boots are firm enough on the snow, I feel safe to take my eyes off the ground.

I look up.

My brother jogs towards me.

The rolled joint is gone from his hand and, with a flickered glance over his shoulder, I see that Dray has it now, pinched between his fingers, but his attention is on us.

The frown he wears burns into the back of my brother’s head.

But Oliver doesn’t feel it the way I always do, or he doesn’t give a shit. He makes for me, slowing his jog the closer he gets.

His thick gloves are dusted with snow, but gone is his hat, and so the brown of his hair is darkened with dampness. Strands stick to his face, his temples, and for a moment, he looks young again. Suppose he is young, still. I mean, we’re only twenty-two.But young in the way of flushed cheeks and wide grin and no malice in his eyes. Youthful.

“What?” I hiss, unkind. “What do you want?”

He slows to a stop, and his breaths heave his chest, so I think he has been out here in the snow a while. Maybe earlier on the slopes with Serena, since he, too, wears his black snowpants.

“A lot of things, now that you ask,” he says with a one-shouldered shrug.

I swerve my gaze over his shoulder.

Still, Dray frowns at Oliver’s back for a moment—and then slides his gaze to me. He lifts the joint to his lips and, softly, lures a deep inhale. Vapours lick up his face, but do nothing to dull the sharp blue of his eyes.

I turn my cheek to him.

Oliver leans his shoulder on the pillar at the foot of the steps. Blocking my way, he towers over me.

I back up onto the bottom step just to be a bit taller.

His grin tugs wider. “Have you started your gift buying for New Year?”

I sniff, but the red of my nose hasn’t started to leak yet. “What’s it to you?”

Butyes, the answer is.

All I do is sift through magazines and brochures and think up gift ideas and ways to get through my miserable existence.

He reaches into the chest of his jacket, then tugs out a rolled stack of glossy paper. “If you are in need of inspiration…”

It’s a thin, slick brochure of timepieces.Art.

I take it with both hands.

The cover glistens up at me.

That lovely familiar fragrance of glossed pages wafts up at me. I draw in a deeper breath. When I was little, I used to lick the pages. Doesn’t taste as good as it smells. Still, I once got Dray to taste a corner, forever ago. He spat it out.

Oliver taps his gloved fingertips on the brochure. “I circled all the pieces I like. But the one circled red, with a few exclamation marks for pizzaz, I am extra fond of.”

I arch a brow at him, and find that it’s always easier to sass him than Dray, though I manage both, but I’m sure that’s nothing more than sheer pride.

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