Chapter 16 Chapter 16

Chapter 16 Chapter 16


I chose the garden, I don't know why I'm surprised by that. Some part of me already knew since Jax whispered it in my ear with the music loud and his hand warm at my back. Some part of me had already decided before I opened my mouth.

Maybe I needed to see it.

Not the way I'd seen it the first time, at the dark corridor, four-inch gap, the blur of shock doing most of the work. This time I needed to see it clearly. No blur. No shock to hide behind. Just the truth, standing in front of me with nowhere to go.

I told Jax yes with my eyes.

He didn't say anything. He just stepped back, let the space between us open, and tilted his head slightly toward the east corridor.

This way.

I followed him out through the side door while the lights were still coming up behind us and the crowd was still finding itself after the Switch Dance. Nobody noticed. Or if they did, they filed it away as two people getting fresh air, nothing more.

The east corridor was quiet. Marble floors, the school's annual Valentine's flower arrangements along the windowsills, red roses in white vases, petals already dropping at the edges because cut flowers never lasted as long as they were supposed to.

The garden door was at the end.

Jax pushed it open and stepped aside.

I went through first.

Silver Ridge's east garden was small and formal, trimmed hedges, a stone path, two benches facing each other across a low fountain that wasn't running in winter. Strings of white lights had been wound through the hedges for the dance, which gave the whole space a soft, cold glow.

I heard them before I saw them.

Laughter.

It was an easy quite laughter between two people who were comfortable, who had been comfortable for a while, who were not thinking about anyone else in the world.

They were near the far hedge. Liam with his back against the stone wall, his mask hanging from his hand, his jacket collar up against the cold. Mia beside him, her shoulder against his arm, her red dress catching the fairy lights.

I stopped on the path.

Jax stopped behind me. Close enough that I could feel the warmth of him at my back. Not touching me though, just there.

"She's honestly so easy," Liam was saying.

He had a particular voice when he thought nobody was listening. Looser. Less polished. The golden-boy charm peeled back to show whatever was underneath.

"Easy how?" Mia asked.

"Easy to manage." He said just like he talked about a problem that wasn't really a problem anymore, something he has already handled and solved. "She never pushes back. Never questions anything. I tell her she looks perfect and she smiles and says thank you. Tell her I'm at practice and she believes it." He made a small sound. Almost a laugh. "Honestly, Mi. I could do anything."

Mia laughed. Her shoulder pressing slightly into his arm. "She doesn't suspect?"

"Sienna?" He said my name just ordinary like it has been overuse, no weight to it. "No. She's too worried about looking perfect to look at anything else. That's her whole thing. Keep the image together, keep everything in its box." He shook his head. "Boring. Honestly. Beautiful, sure. But boring. Like dating a photo."

Mia said something too low for me to catch.

Liam laughed. Full and easy.

Dating a photo.

The garden was very cold.

I was standing on the stone path with the white lights blurring slightly at the edges of my vision and the sound of Liam's laugh fading into the night air and I was thinking very clearly, very calmly, in that stone-floor place inside me that had no windows, that this was what eleven months had been worth.

Boring. Easy to control. Like dating a photo all that was me.

Behind me, Jax was still. I couldn't hear him breathing. I couldn't hear anything except the blood in my own ears and the distant music from the gymnasium and the quiet in the garden that had become a specific kind of loud.

My hands were at my sides.

They were not shaking.

That surprised me, actually, the stillness of myself. I had expected myself to shake. I had expected to feel the thing crack open that I had been holding closed with both hands for weeks. I had expected to stand here in this garden and finally fall apart the way I had been slowly falling apart for a month.

But my hands were still.

My face was still.

The only thing moving was something deep in my chest, shifting and rearranging itself like furniture being moved in a dark room, slowly, carefully, making space for something new.

Liam laughed again at something Mia said.

I stood there and listened to the laugh and thought about the party where he had angled his body for the cameras. The four-second exchange at practice. The text “you're the best, babe” sent twelve minutes after I'd found two identical necklaces in his bag.

Now me hearing him calling me boring.

Easy to control.

Like dating a photo.

A photo didn't bleed. A photo didn't feel things or want things or stand in a cold garden at midnight listening to the boy who had called her his for eleven months explain to his side girl exactly how simple she was to manage.

I was not a photo, I told myself that trying to change my own believe even though Liam word hurt

I turned around.

Jax was right there, closer than I expected, his face unreadable in the fairy-light glow. His eyes moved across mine, reading me as always, looking for the thing underneath the surface.

He was waiting for me to cry.

I could see it in the way he held himself, the particular careful stillness of him trying to braced me up.

I didn't cry.

"Do you have your phone?" I said.

His eyes shifted in surprise, maybe, though Jax kept surprise brief.

"Yeah," he said.

"Unlock it."

He pulled it from his jacket pocket and unlocked it without asking why and held it out.

I took it.

Opened the camera.

Turned back toward the hedge.

My hands were still not shaking.

I pressed record.