Chapter 32

Chase

Late in the party, I escape to the edge of the yard and stand, nursing my beer. I’m tired of doing the polite host gig, and all the small talk, and I just want to watch for a few minutes. So I do. I watch Katie, playing some elaborate make-believe game with her friend Cho, and it already feels hard to imagine a time when she wasn’t in my life every day. I watch Brooks chat up Eve, the two of them leaning in toward each other, faces bright. I watch Rodro say something to his girlfriend that makes her blush. There’s a lot of sex in the air. You can feel the charge. Or maybe it’s just me. This week, I feel like I’m constantly on simmer.

Mostly, though, I’m watching Liv. She’s wearing a red dress covered with daisies and those yellow daisy-things with black centers and black sandals with straps that criss-and-cross her ankles and make me want to peel them away.

I wonder what she’s wearing underneath her dress.

Simmer to boil in two seconds flat. Now that I know what she smells and tastes and sounds like, what her face looks like when she comes—I’m a man obsessed.

“She’s amazing, right?”

It’s Eve. She’s come up beside me, a glass of wine in her hand, and her eyes are on Liv, too.

“I’m going to miss her so much when she goes.”

She says it casually, but I know there’s subtext. She’s baiting me. I don’t say anything.

“Chase. Can I give you some advice?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Eve laughs. I’ve only met Eve a couple of times, but she’s a real straight shooter.

“She’s more complicated than she seems. She’s very tough, which I think you know. But she’s also—I hate it when people say broken, so I won’t say it. Healing. She’s healing. Five foster families in eleven years, and they were good people, but nothing stuck…”

“Yeah. She told me.”

“Ever noticed how when she talks about them, she ticks them off on her fingers? Like it’s the only way she can remember all of them?” She demonstrates, counting off on her fingers. “And she’s still moving around. Two different colleges, jumping from house to house in her nanny job. Can I ask you something?”

I nod.

“Has she ever mentioned Zeke?” She watches my face carefully. “You don’t know that story, huh? Ask her. Just—” She holds up a finger. “Brace yourself. You’ll want to rip his guts out afterward. I just think you should know the whole big picture, before—”

She turns and looks at me. Eve has these dark-gold eyes, eerie. They look like they can see right through you. Through me. And maybe she can, because she says, “—before someone gets hurt.”

It wasn’t what I thought she was going to say.

“I’m not going to hurt her.”

My eyes find Liv again, kneeling to hug Katie, kissing Katie’s head, her copper-penny hair bright against Katie’s gold, and my chest splits down the middle at the sight of them together. Damn it, I was never going to do this again.

I turn back to find Eve watching me. And I suddenly understand what she’s trying to say.

“You’re not worried I’m going to hurt her, are you?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“You’re worried she’s going to hurt me.”

“She won’t do it on purpose,” she says, quietly. “It’s just—when you’ve never really had a place to call your own, it can be hard to stay put.”

“You don’t think she’ll stay.”

She watches Liv, who has taken both Katie’s hands and is dancing her around to Journey’s “Any Way You Want It.” Then she turns back to me, those eerie eyes steady on mine.

“I think if anyone could make her want to stay, it would be you.”