I hold it in my hand, testing its weight.
Sophie with a scar to prove how much I mean to her.
Sophie. Sophie. Sophie.
It’s entirely possible he sees something I don’t. Something I haven’t seen in a while.
“I don’t—” I start, but I don’t trust myself anymore. “Chase
, please.”
“Don’t make this harder than it already is.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “I’m giving you permission to pick her. Okay? She wins.”
Those words cut deep. He says them so matter-of-factly. “I don’t need your permission,” I fire back.
Behind his glasses, his eyes blaze. “I know that. I was trying to be civil about all of this. But it doesn’t seem like that’s possible anymore.”
My heart is racing. “Wait. Are we broken up? Is that what’s happening?”
A beat. Then: “Yeah,” he says, softly now. “Yeah. I guess we are.”
Your first boyfriend is supposed to break your heart, Chase said all those weeks ago, and then shattered mine in a parking lot at midnight. A freaking premonition, that’s what it was.
I don’t respond. Can’t. The cold has fused my jaw shut. I stand frozen in the parking lot as he gets in his car and pulls away. It’s only after he’s gone that I fumble on my phone for the bus schedule.
I’m going home, but not to my house. There’s only one person I want to—need to—see after all this. The force of it is so strong, a buzzing beneath my skin. And it makes me wonder if Chase was right.
CHAPTER 29
SOPHIE
I NEED TO SEE YOU.
The text from Peter sends sparks through my body.
He needs me.
He needs me.
It’s past midnight and the house is quiet. Tabby, Josh, and Luna are at his place, and my parents went to sleep downstairs shortly after they thought I did. I’ve been in bed, but I haven’t been sleeping. For a while the pain kept me awake, but eventually it faded.
I missed Montana’s dance sleepover because of Peter, and he missed his set because of me. There’s an odd poetry to that. We’ve always been intertwined, our lives tangled. And now we are a great big knot.
Come over, I message Peter, and then I creep out of bed and into the bathroom across the hall, certain there’s enough electricity in my body to make my hair stand on end. Quietly I brush my teeth. I put my hair up and then back down. I change out of pajamas and into cuter pajamas.
Peter messages me when he arrives, about twenty minutes later. My heart is thudding in my throat as I tiptoe downstairs and let him in, and then, as silently as possibly, lead him up to my room.
It’s only when I close the door and switch on a small bedside lamp that I see he’s a complete mess.
My Peter, falling apart.
He’s trembling, crying, making an effort to do it softly so my parents don’t hear him. He’s never been shy about crying in front of me, or about crying in general. Not when we were kids, and not now.
He follows me into my bed without me even asking him to join me there. I prop the pillows against the headboard so we can lean against them. He’s much taller than I am, but he feels limp, smaller than usual. And he is so cold. I run my hands over his ears and his cheeks, trying to warm him up. He’s still wearing a coat, and I’m in shorts and a tank top. His skin chills mine, and I help him out of the coat so we can be even closer.
“Can you—hold me for a while?” he whispers, and my heart breaks in half. It’s what I asked him to do for me earlier tonight.
It’s all I want to do, but I have to know. “What happened?”