I sighed, setting my phone back on the bedside table. “I’m dying here, babe.”
She snorted. “You don’t have to quit,” she told me. “I’m not going to leave you over it. It’s just healthier.”
Then she climbed up on me, straddling me as I sat on the side of the bed.
“I know.” I ran the backs of my knuckles under her V-neck, over her stomach, touching the soft skin that still wasn’t showing signs that there was a kid in there.
She was only about eight weeks along, and with all the dancing, she was working off a lot of what she ate, and I worried the baby wasn’t getting enough, so everyone was feeding her all the time now. Thankfully, her tour was short, and she only had a few more performances before a nice, long break.
We’d gone ’round about putting herself in danger and the kid in danger with the shows, but she was determined to assure me she could finish it and be safe.
Things had gone well for her the past couple of months, and she already had more projects lined up for after the baby was born.
I tried to be at every performance—no matter where—but after the work I did for Grady MacMiller, jobs started coming in, and I had to work. A couple families sent me to their summer houses down south to build things, and I was busy planning out more projects already booked for spring and summer.
I made sure either Rika, Banks, or Alex was with her if she had to go out of town overnight for a performance that I couldn’t attend.
And although I was paying the bills and building us a future, I did relent when Banks gave the house back to Winter, including ownership of everything in it. Banks advised Winter to keep it solely in her name, though, so she could kick me out whenever she wanted.
They laughed about that one.
And Banks also honored my father’s deal with Margot and Ari for a nice settlement, even though the marriage didn’t make it a year and was now annulled. They’d moved into the city, Ari refusing to ever be in the same room with me again.
Somehow I’d find the strength to go on living.
And we still hadn’t heard anything about her father. I hoped it stayed that way.
Winter planted her forehead on mine, gliding her fingers down my arms.
“It’s snowing,” she whispered.
“How’d you know that?”
We weren’t outside. She couldn’t feel it.
“I can hear it,” she said. “Listen.”
We sat there, so still and quiet, and I closed my eyes, trying to see the world how she did. I inhaled, smelling the cold air, but the silence rang in my ears, and I couldn’t hear it at first.
But then I picked up a hint.
“On the glass,” I told her.
She nodded, smiling. “I love that sound. Like the world is asleep.”
It looked like it, too, remembering the blanket of white over everything outside. How water kind of had a habit of quieting the world around me my entire life, and in one form or another, I sought it out and reveled in hiding behind it.
Looking over her shoulder, out the window, the snow fell, charging the air with a little more beauty, the animation making the Earth look alive even when everything else was still. A little more pretty. A little more peaceful. A little more cover.
She always got that about me. She felt it, too.
Even when we were kids, she knew.
I sit in the fountain, the water spilling over the sides from the bowl above, down around me, and hiding me from her.
My finger stings, dripping with blood where I’d sliced myself on a thorn as I ran through the maze, but I don’t dare make a sound or even breathe.
She’s searching for me, and I just want to be left alone. My chin trembles. Just leave me alone.
Please.
“Hello, sweetheart,” she says, having bumped into a little girl. “Are you having fun?”
I close my eyes, imagining I’m far away. In a cave. Or out at sea. Anywhere away from here. I rub the little scratches on my wrist that I’d put there yesterday, trying to see if I had the balls to do it. Maybe I won’t do it. Maybe I will. If I did, I wouldn’t have to stay here with them. I wouldn’t have to live here. It would be over.
“Have you seen my son?” I hear her say, and I open my eyes, my hair and tears blurring my vision. “He loves parties, and I don’t want him to miss this.”
I don’t like parties. My knee shakes uncontrollably. I don’t like anything.
“No,” the little one says.
But I see her staring at me through the water, and I wait, terrified she’ll tell my mother I’m here.
Don’t, please.
My mother finally leaves, and the little girl moves toward the fountain, checking behind her to see if anyone is still there.
Approaching, she calls my name. “Damon?”
She can leave, too, for all I care. I want to be alone.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
Just fucking go. I don’t want to talk. I won’t say the right thing, and I don’t want to answer questions. Just leave.
“Why are you sitting in there?” She peers through the spills of water, and I shiver, the cold seeping through my clothes. “Can I come in, too?”
I notice she wears a tutu—everything white—and her hair is twisted into a tidy little bun. She’s younger than me, clearly one of the students from my mother’s school. Winter, I think? She’s been here before, and I was in the same grade as her sister.
“I see you at Cathedral sometimes,” she tells me. “You never take the bread, do you? When the whole row goes to receive communion, you stay sitting there. All by yourself.”
The nanny takes me every week—my parents making me attend but never bothering themselves. It’s the one thing that bitch lets me fight her on, too. It all felt so fake, like the makeup women put over their bruises to hide what’s happening to them. It’s an act.
“I have my first communion soon,” she says. “I’m supposed to have it, I mean. You have to go to confession first, and I don’t like that part.”
My lips twitch, my anger fading just a little.
I don’t like that part, either. It never stops me from making the same mistakes. It seems weird to receive forgiveness for repeatedly doing things I know are wrong but I’m not sorry for.
“Do you want me to go?” she finally asks when I don’t say anything. “I’ll go if you want.”
I sit there, not as frustrated as I was a moment ago. I’ve even forgotten about the pain in my hand and my parents for a minute.
“I just don’t like it out there very much,” she explains. “My stupid sister ruins everything.”
I feel like I understand. I don’t like it out there very much, either. We can hide.
Together.
If she wants.
“I’ll go,” she tells me and starts to turn.
But I reach my hand through the water, inviting her in instead.
She stops, seeing me, and turns back around. Her eyes light up, and there’s almost no waiting. She takes my hand and steps in.
The water splashes, and she sucks in a breath as the cold water hits her. She giggles as she comes to sit down next to me.
“Wow, this is cool,” she says, looking around at the space, the shade of the bowl over us and the water spilling around.
I notice her white ballet slippers in the water as she hugs her knees to her chest, and everything on her is so small.
“What happened to your hand?”
I look at it, turning it over and rinsing off the blood in the water and wiping it on my jacket.
“Does it hurt?” she asks.
I still don’t speak. But yeah, it hurts a little.
“My dad taught me something cool. Wanna see?”
Her voice is so…relaxed. Like she doesn’t know how awful things can be.
“It’ll help get rid of the pain,” she informs me. “Let me show you.”
She takes my hand, and I try to pull it back for a second, but then I stop and let her have it.
She holds it up in front of her. “Ready?”
Ready for what?
She finds the cut on the inside of my index finger, toward the knuckle, but puts her teeth on the other side of the finger, pressing down enough to stretch the skin but not break it.