Page 151 of Broken Pieces
I pull back just enough to look at him. “What?”
His eyes crack open, still heavy with sleep, but there’s something in them. A flicker of mischief. That spark I only ever catch in the quiet, when he lets his guard slip for half a second.
He looks boyish for a moment. Not broken or guarded. Not the guy who’s spent his whole life surviving instead of living. Just… him. Stripped down. Soft in a way he never lets the world see.
“Roof,” he says again, like it’s obvious.
I blink up at him. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“Exactly,” he says, grinning slowly. “Best time.”
He gets up, boxers hanging low on his hips, muscles flexing as he stretches. He goes across the room and gets the bottle of whiskey from the floor close to the desk, and pivots towards me.
His free hand reaches out.
I take it.
His fingers close around mine, and we move together toward the roof.
The tin roof creaks under our feet as we get to our usual spot.
We sit side by side, legs stretched out, the whiskey bottle between us, catching the moonlight.
The city hums below. Lights blink. Somewhere, a siren cries out. But none of it touches us.
Up here, it feels as if the world doesn’t exist beyond this rooftop. It’s just us. Two fucked-up people holding onto something neither of us knows how to name.
He tilts the bottle toward me.
I take it, sip once, let the burn slide down my throat. He watches me, mouth twitching at the corner.
Zane’s head tilts back, eyes on the sky. “I used to come up here when I needed to think.”
I hand him back the bottle and rest my hands behind me.
“What about now?”
“Now I come up here to breathe.”
For a while, we sit there in silence; the bottle moving between us.
“You ever think about what comes next?” He asks, breaking the stillness.
I glance at him, catching the way his thumb rolls over the glass, slow and distracted.
“What do you mean?”
He shrugs. “Tomorrow. Next week. When this all goes to shit.”
My heart loses its rhythm. The ease of the moment slips, and I feel the familiar pull of anxiety clawing at my ribs.
“You think it will?” I ask.
“Everything does eventually.”
I shake my head. “You don’t know that.”
“I do,” he says with no hesitation.
