Page 105 of Lighting the Lamp
“Not unless he slams the door in my face.”
“I’ll be on standby.” He nods solemnly, raising his pizza in salute. “And if he doesn’t answer, I’ll show up in a onesie and dramatically read my poetry about abandonment until he begs for mercy.”
“Darius, no?—”
“Dramatic times call for dramatic rhymes.”
“I’ll text you,” I say, hand already on the doorknob.
“Wait!” Ramona calls after me. “Don’t forget your?—”
Too late. I’m out the door before she finishes the sentence. My body is moving faster than my thoughts, my feet practically flying down the hallway, my heart trying to outrun itself. The air feels colder out here, like the world’s changed and no one warned me.
I take the stairs. Not because the elevator’s slow, but because I need the burn in my legs. I need something to focus on besides the hurricane unraveling in my chest.
Four floors down. Four flights of stairs between me and the truth I’m terrified to hear. Every step echoes in the stairwell, loud and jarring, like my heart is slamming against bone.
He knew about Cooper taking over, and he didn’t say anything, but why? This can’t be something to deal with easily. He’s been sick, just came off of IR, and now his overprotective big brother has all the control over his future. I told him I wanted him to love me whole so I would know he meant it, but I didn’t expect him to hide things from me. Does he think he’s protecting me by pulling away? Did he really think I’d find out and not see the truth and know exactly how hard this is for him to deal with, especially now?
He’s leaving. There’s no way he is going to stay here and play for Cooper. Maybe when he was at 100 percent, but after everything that has happened over the last few months, there’s no way Cooper is going to give him a fair shot. He is going to want to protect Beau from himself, protect him from further injury, as he should, being his head coach and big brother. But that will kill Beau. It’s only been a few months since he’s gotten back on the ice and gotten his life back. If Cooper is going to bench him now… he has to leave.
My vision blurs, and I blink hard. Don’t cry now. You need to see him. You need to ask.
You need to know if the thing he’s building is a future that still has room for you. By the time I reach his floor, my throat is raw from holding back tears. My hands are shaking so hard I have to clench them into fists.
His door is just a few steps away, and suddenly, those last few feet feel like crossing a canyon. What if he doesn’t answer? What if he does, and I see it in his eyes? That he’s already halfway gone. I stop in front of his door, and the silence presses in around me.
My heart pounds so loudly it sounds like footsteps behind me. Like someone sprinting to catch up. But there is no one behind me. It’s just me, terrified of what awaits me on the other side of that door. But I need to know, so I press my knuckles to the door and knock.
Once. Twice. Three times. And then I wait.
Each second stretches impossibly long. The air in the hallway feels still and thick, but it’s the quiet that gets to me first. And for a terrible moment, I wonder if this was a mistake. If showing up means confirming the one thing I’m afraid to hear: that things are different between us. There is no us because he is leaving. I can’t go with him, but god, I want to. Beau knows that, so he’d never ask, effectively closing the door on any chance we had to see where whatever this is between us could go.
I press my palm to the wood, not sure if I want to push it open or pound on it again. “Beau, please be home.”
Please let this mean something.
Please don’t let this be the part where I get left behind.
I close my eyes and rest my forehead against the door and wait.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Beau
The knocking starts like a warning, but then it turns violent.Bang. Bang. Bang.
I haven’t moved from the damn couch in hours. I’m still in yesterday’s clothes, for Christ’s sake. There’s a crusted bowl of cereal on the coffee table that I made myself at some point, an attempt to trick myself into thinking I was hungry, which rests right next to my phone with two unopened texts from Cooper. One of them probably saysI got the job.The other:Where the hell are you?
I send up a silent prayer, begging the powers that be that it is not Cooper at the door because I don’t have the energy to lie to his face again tonight, when a familiar voice slices through the silence like a blade.
“Beau! Open the door!”
Her voice on the other side of that door paralyzes me. Not because I don’t want to see her, but because I want to see her too much. But I don’t want her to see me looking like shit and feeling ten times worse. I don’t want her to know that my body is still a battlefield, even if the bombs stopped two weeks ago. I haven’t called to explain what is going on with me. I haven’t said more than a few clipped words via text to her since I felt myselfslipping and didn’t know how to let her catch me. I’m scared that if she looks at me the way she used to and sees something broken in me, she’ll leave, and I’m not sure I’ll survive it. But now she’s here, and I don’t have a plan. Hell, I barely have a pulse at this point.
I drag myself off the couch and head toward the door, pulse pounding in my ears. My entire body aches as I move with a dull, dragging pain, like my body wants to remind me who’s in charge now. I run a hand over my face, jaw rough with stubble, and check my reflection in the picture near the door. I look like hell, still pale and so worn down that the bags under my eyes feel permanent. Better, but not right.
I open the door, and my heart fucking stops. Alise is standing there, staring at me wide-eyed, flushed, and chest heaving like she ran the entire way here. Her eyes sweep over me, taking in the hoodie that’s swallowed my frame more than usual, the sharp angles of my face that didn’t used to be there, and the sag of my shoulders I can’t quite fake out of existence. All the heat in her expression blows me wide open. I’ve been pretending for weeks that I’m fine, but at this moment, I know she sees everything.
