Chapter 13

13

His mouth is cold, and he tastes like tobacco. Right now, that’s all I know. All I’m aware of. The universe is this. A cold mouth. Tobacco.

He kisses me harder, reverses us, puts my back to the wall.

Is this happening?

Are my hands in his hair? It’s a greasy nest and I want to live in it.

Are my legs wrapped around him? Is he holding me up? Pressing me into the glass wall?

This unfamiliar sensation arrives, racing through my whole body. It’s powerful and overwhelming and revelatory, so vital I fear that if it stops, if it goes away, I might die. I really might die. This electric feeling, this blissful burning, is as essential to my survival as oxygen.

I pull him closer to me.

He carries me to a love seat, which is even mustier than the chair but I couldn’t care less. He’s on top of me. His shoulder blades are like the edge of a cliff I’m hanging off of. What’ll happen if I let go?

I don’t want to find out. I can’t.

I can’t.

I can’t.

I—

“Wait,” I say, coming up for air. “Sorry.”

I take a gasping breath and apologize again. I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for, or to whom. To him, to Joel, to myself.

Henry sits back on the love seat, giving me space. He tucks his hands under his thighs, either to show that he’s respecting my boundaries, or to restrain himself.

I pull myself upright, attempt to pull myself together. Once I wrestle my breathing back under control, I look over at him, and he’s staring straight ahead, wearing his wiliest grin yet. I can’t think of anything clever to say, so I say nothing, and we sit in silence for I don’t know how long. So long, it stops snowing.

Finally, he speaks. “I like you, Sloane.”

“You don’t know me,” I say. And in the impulsive, temporary fog of post–making out optimism, I add, “Yet.”

“Yet,” he repeats. “Might I hope to know you better?”

I’m flattered, but I can’t help wondering why he’s bothering with me. He could go find someone else to sleep with. Easily. He looks like a grungy nineties rock star, like a Renaissance portrait of Kurt Cobain or Gavin Rossdale. Like the rogue prince in a dark, lesser-known fairy tale.

Why me? Because I’m here in front of him? Because Naomi is preoccupied?

I was maybe pretty when I was younger, but I can’t remember the last time I looked at my reflection and saw anything but flaws. Time has etched itself into my face and made my own body a foe, fickle and unforgiving, more a cage than a vessel.

What is there about me to desire, other than my proximity, my availability? That I’m close and have a pulse.

“What do you like about me?” I ask, even though I’m nervous about the answer.

His grin inverts and his expression goes grave, and my worry spoils to terror.

“You don’t need to lie to get me to…Nothing’s going to happen between us tonight. Nothing more.”

“That’s not what I’m after,” he says.

“Tell the truth.”

“You won’t believe the truth. Any of it,” he says, looking forlorn. “And I want you to stay.”

Ominous but intriguing. “I don’t think I can leave. The roads…”

“I don’t mean stay the night. Just tonight. I mean stay with me.”

“Oh,” I say. Of all the turns this night has taken, this might be the most unexpected. He’s a romantic. Or he’s messing with me. Probably that.

He stands, goes over to the wall, and presses a hand to the glass. “What you said, about feeling different. Lonely. Imagine that sustained over years. Lifetimes.”

He paces now, swaying from side to side, his cadence as measured and steady as a pendulum’s.

“I made decisions long ago, when I was someone else, that I cannot take back. I’ve made mistakes that I cannot erase. I live with the consequences every day. They’re a burden. One I deserve, I’m sure. But I’m tired, and I’ve been tired for so long. For so long tired of being tired.”

It’s happening again. That thing with his accent.

He laughs. Not his nerd laugh. A tricky laugh. “And then last night, when I saw you, I felt…if I could articulate it, I promise I would.”

He smiles sweetly at me, looking at me that way he does, with sincere affection. I do believe him. I do trust that he’s being honest.

I wish he weren’t.

“Last night?” I ask, a tremor I can’t disguise in my voice. “You were at the bar?”

I remember now. The man in the corner. Half in shadow, half in the red glow of the neon sign. The man I thought might be watching me.

“Yes, I was at the bar,” he says, his big eyes getting bigger. “And…and at your window.”

A bomb goes off in the dark pit of my gut.

He must be joking. How could he know about my nightmare? That I dreamt of a figure outside the cottage, two stories up? That I woke to find a handprint on the glass? How could he possibly know?

I clear my throat. “Right. Watching me sleep. How brooding.”

“You weren’t asleep,” he says, and my body goes numb, and I feel like I’m floating, like I’m a loose astronaut tumbling around in an inescapable doom.

“What?” I ask, hoping he’ll say something to reel me back in. That he’ll laugh. Admit he’s not serious.

“You weren’t asleep,” he repeats. “I want you to trust me. To know I will be honest with you. Always tell you the truth, even if that truth sounds like fiction. It is a cruel misfortune that I cannot hope to see you again without revealing what will almost certainly make you never want to see me again.”

“Right.” I look around the room. There’s the collection of sad, dying plants, the musty furniture, the magazines. The Power Broker . I clear my throat again. “Whose house is this?”

Henry sighs. “This house belongs to someone who calls himself Roger McLaren. Though that was not always his name.”

“Okay. And where is Roger now?”

Henry rubs his jaw, gives a hollow laugh, then says, “If there was a right way to go about this, this wasn’t it.”

“Where is he?”

“If you stay, I’ll explain it all. You told me your story. Your secrets. Only fair that I tell you mine. Every last one,” he says.

I thought the part of me that was susceptible to the charms of danger died when I hit the pavement on St. Marks, when I was still young. But I guess not, because I consider what it would be like to ignore every waving bright red flag and welcome Henry back to the love seat. Let him kiss my neck and pretend nothing else exists. Fall back into that vacuum of euphoria.

Admire the view before the zeppelin catches fire. Smile before screaming.

Instead, I ask again, “Where is he?”

“Sloane.”

“Where?”

He takes a deep breath. “If you leave, you cannot speak of this. You must swear it. Or they won’t let you leave.”

“Wha—what?”

“I didn’t lie to you, Sloane. I’ll never lie to you. Everything I’ve said has been true.” He hangs a hand on the back of his neck. “The cellar really is drafty.”

It takes me a second.

Why bring up the cellar? I wonder, assuming for a bittersweet moment that he dodged my question instead of answering it.

But then it clicks into place, and the horror of it sends bile bubbling up my throat. My hands cover my mouth and I’m stumbling off the love seat, over to the stairs, swallowing down acidic, gin-flavored vomit.

“Sloane,” Henry says. “Sloane, wait. Please.”

I don’t stop to see if he’s following me. My heel slips on the winding stairs, and I land hard at the bottom. I crawl forward until I gain enough momentum to get to my feet. I scramble past the cellar door, still rattling, the groaning louder now. If I were stupid, or kind, I’d stop to open it, try to help the man behind it being held captive in his own house. But the danger here is real and I’m not taking any risks.

The danger is real.

I sprint down the hall, yelling for Naomi.

“Nay? Nay!”

I trip over myself as I make it to the living room, where there’s a pile of naked bodies writhing around on the floor. I avert my eyes.

“Naomi. Naomi!”

It’s too late to be subtle, to make a quiet exit.

“Sloane?” Naomi says, out of breath.

“Naomi, we need to go. Now. Hurry. Get your clothes.” I’m winded, too. For a very different reason.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Don’t go,” I hear Ilie say. “The night is young!”

“Sloane…” It’s Henry. He calls my name from down the hall.

“Please, stay,” Elisa says. I look over and see she’s grabbing at Naomi, who stands in front of the fireplace, slipping on her lace thong. Naomi’s hot tip for random hookups was always to tie your underwear around your wrist so you wouldn’t lose it. Elisa tugs Naomi’s arm, nearly pulling her down.

“Hey!” I bark. Feeling like cornered prey has turned me into an animal. I leap forward, and suddenly the fire poker is in my clammy hands. I’m holding it up like a weapon, like a goddamn lightsaber. “Let go of her! Everyone, get back. We’re leaving. We’re going.”

“Sloane!” Naomi shrieks. “What are you doing?”

“This isn’t their house! I—I think they’ve got the owner locked in the fucking basement!”

“What? Sloane, just calm down. I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding,” she says, picking up her bra and clasping it behind her back.

“Don’t! Don’t you dare! We’re in real trouble, Nay, so don’t tell me to calm down! I need you to listen to me for once. Get your shit and let’s go!”

There’s stunned silence.

Tatiana, who was in the middle of blowing Costel, lets his dick fall out of her mouth, which is wide with shock or maybe just frozen in position. Miri is spread-eagle on the floor, Ilie’s fingers still inside her.

It is very, very awkward to interrupt group sex, and for a split second I forget the menace of the situation and have to stifle a laugh.

But then there’s a lurid bang in the hall. The sound of a door breaking open.