One Last Time (Loveless Brothers 5)

“Is everything okay?” Thad shouts.

I turn and look at Delilah. There’s a single streak down her face, her eyes brimming with fury.

“Delilah?” calls Ava.

Delilah looks away, takes a deep breath. Shoves her hands into her eyes.

“I’m going to answer the door and tell them you had an emergency,” she says, voice wavering with forced calm. She puts her hands down, looks at me. “And then you’re going to take my car, and you’re going to leave. I don’t give a shit where you go, I just want you gone.”

“Del —"

“I don’t want you here!” she says, voice rising. “You don’t belong here. Is that what you want me to say? You don’t belong here. Get out.”

She walks past me to the door, an angry blur. Stops in front of it, takes a deep breath, and before she opens it I walk away from her, into the bedroom. Throw my suitcase on the bed.

“Hey, sorry,” I hear her saying. “Seth had some kind of beer emergency, so he has to go back right now…”

Less than five minutes later, I’m gone.Chapter Forty-ThreeDelilahI fold my legs onto the chair, watching the mountain. There’s a mug of coffee cradled in my hands, though it’s already ice-cold. The mountain’s blue, then silver, then pale yellow as the sun comes up behind me, washes it with light.

I take a sip of the disgusting coffee and make myself the colors change, committing myself to it even though I don’t like sunrises.

I’m not a morning person. I’m not getting up early t0 rejoice in the promise of a new day while breathing in hope and light or whatever shit morning people do. If I’m seeing a sunrise, it’s probably because something’s gone wrong and I never went to bed.

For instance, right now.

I take another sip — ugh — pull my feet up further, onto the cushion covering the metal chair. It doesn’t help the cold but it gives me something to think about it, at least.

I couldn’t sleep after Seth left. I didn’t bother trying. I put all the shit back in my box. I put the box back. I stormed around the condo for a little while before remembering that the lobby has free coffee starting at five in the morning, so I threw a robe on over my sweater and came down here.

And now I’m sitting on the balcony, overlooking the town, watching the sun come up in the freezing cold because it feels like what I want right now.

I want to sit here until I can’t stand it, then go roast myself by a fire. I want to get drunk and just off a ski lift, just to see what happens. Get a full-face tattoo. Run naked through town. I want to do something reckless and destructive and transformative, because right now I’m so fucking tired of myself I can’t stand it.

Behind me, the balcony door opens, and I sigh into the coffee mug.

“Hey, Freckles,” my dad says.

I turn, surprised.

“You’re not cold?”

“Hey,” I say.

“Well, here’s a blanket,” he says, and hands me one, thick and woolen with a geometric pattern. I recognize it from the penthouse.

“Thanks,” I say.

He settles in the chair next to me, fully dressed in slacks and sneakers, a puffy parka, coffee in a travel mug. I’m still in pajamas, a giant sweater, a robe, and slippers. We must make a hell of a pair right now.

“Your mom and I got into a fight up here once,” he says, leaning back, sneakered feet crossing at the ankle. “We were here for our first wedding anniversary. I think you were about six months old.”

I was born about six months after my parents’ wedding, and yes, that’s why they got married.

“What about?” I ask, eyes still on the mountain.

He sighs, laces his fingers together around the mug he’s holding.

“I don’t even remember,” he says, thoughtfully. “That might have been the one over the eggbeater.”

They divorced before I was two, so it’s not exactly a secret that they didn’t get along.

“Sounds travels, huh?” I say, looking into the mug. I don’t want to have this conversation, but at least it’s with my dad, who’ll relay it to Vera, not with Vera herself.

“A bit,” he says.

“Sorry,” I say, and tilt my head back against the glass wall behind me. “I know it’s… I know I’m me. Sorry you had to hear that.”

He reaches out, over the arms of our chairs, and puts an arm around me.

“It’s great that you’re you,” he says, punctuating it with a shoulder squeeze.

“It doesn’t feel like it,” I say, too tired and spent to do anything but tell the truth. “It mostly feels like…”

I trail off, my mind blank as the morning sky.

“… I do everything a little bit wrong, and that spirals into me doing everything a lot wrong,” I finish.