The Last House Guest(44)

From the edge of the front lawn, I saw a quick flash of red at the end of the road. Brake lights receding and then disappearing. I kept my focus on the distance, just to make sure the car wasn’t coming back. That it hadn’t been turning around and parking. I stared for a long string of moments, but no one reappeared.

My hope: Maybe the police did come. Maybe they got the call and drove up the street and realized this was just a party, just a house. The Plus-One party, they must’ve realized. And when they saw the street and realized the house belonged to the Lomans, they left it well enough alone.

Worst case, I had the key for Sunset Retreat. I could move everyone if needed.

Back inside, I saw exactly what needed to be done, could see everything playing out, three steps forward. The liquor coursing through my veins only heightened my sense of control. I had this. Everything was okay.

“Hey, can I talk to you?” Connor shifted a step so he was blocking my path. His breath was so close I shivered. His hands hovered just beside my upper arms, like he had meant to touch me before thinking better of it.

Connor standing before me could go one of two ways. There could be the slide to nostalgia, where he turned his head to the side and I caught a glimpse of the old him, the old us; or there could be the slide to irritation—this feeling that he had secrets I could no longer understand, an exterior I could not decipher. An entire second life he was living in the gap.

He held my gaze like he could read my thoughts.

Look again, and now I couldn’t see Connor without picturing Sadie. The arch of her spine, the smile she’d give, the scent of her conditioner as her hair fell over his face. And him—the way he’d look at her. The crooked grin when he was trying to hide what he was thinking, giving way as she leaned closer.

I started to turn but felt his hand drop onto my shoulder. I shrugged it off, more violently than necessary. “Don’t,” I said. This was the first time we’d touched in over six years, but there was something about it that felt so familiar—the emotion snapping between us.

He stood there, eyes wide and hands held up in surrender.



* * *




SIX YEARS EARLIER, CONNOR had found me on Breaker Beach kissing another guy. I’d stumbled after him, clothes and skin covered in wet sand, soles of my feet numb from the night. I reached a hand for his shoulder, to get him to stop, to wait. But when he spun, I didn’t recognize his expression. His voice dropped lower, and a chill ran down my spine. “If you wanted me to see this,” he said, “mission accomplished. But you could’ve just said, Hey, Connor, I don’t think this is going to work out.”

I’d licked my lips, the salt water and the shame mixing together, and, my head still swimming, said, “Hey, Connor, I don’t think this is going to work out.” Trying to get him to laugh, to crack a smile and see how ridiculous the whole thing was.

But all he heard was the cruelty, and he nodded once, leaving me there.

The first time I saw him after that night was at Faith’s, when she broke her arm. The second time, at the bonfire at Breaker Beach, where Sadie found me and our friendship began. After that, for a small town, it had been surprisingly easy to avoid each other. I kept away from the docks and the inland edge of town, where he lived. He kept away from my grandmother’s place at Stone Hollow and from the world the Lomans occupied—the orbit in which I soon found myself.

After a while, it was less an active process than a passive one. We didn’t call, didn’t seek each other out, so that eventually, we didn’t even nod in passing on the street. Like a wound that had thickened as it healed. Nothing but rough skin where nerve endings once existed.

But on this night, at the Plus-One party, when I’d just learned he’d been seen with Sadie earlier in the week, it was harder to feel nothing when his hand dropped on my shoulder. Suddenly, his interest in Sadie felt like a personal slight meant to hurt me.

And maybe it was. But it worked both ways; Sadie knew exactly who Connor was. We’d crossed paths a few times over the years. I’d glanced in his direction, then looked away, and she’d done the same; when I’d fallen silent, so had she, in a show of understanding. Though maybe I had understated his importance. She should’ve read it on my face, seen me then as I had seen her. I felt my teeth grinding, because she must have. She must have known. And she’d done it anyway. Taking everything, even this—owning it all.

Connor looked around the party and shook his head to himself. “I should go. I don’t belong here,” he said, but I had to lean in to hear him. Could feel the blade press against my ribs the closer I got.

Then leave, I wanted to say. Before Sadie gets here. Before I have to see it, too.

“I’m sorry,” I said. What I should’ve said the first time but never did.

Connor frowned but didn’t respond.

I heard voices from the second floor, the sound of something dropping. “I have to . . .” I gestured toward the staircase, turning away. “Just—” But the word was lost in the chaos, and when I turned around to try again, he was already gone.

Upstairs, there were three doors set back from the open loft. The door to the bedroom on the left was open but the light was off. Inside, a heap of jackets and bags were piled on top of the bed. The second bedroom door was closed, though a strip of light escaped from the gap between the door and the floorboard. In between the two rooms, the door to the bathroom was slightly ajar, and I heard a whispered “Shit.”