Page 111 of Thrown for a Loop
He looks away. “Nah. You don’t.”
“Yes, I do. And not for stupid mistakes—like wanting to break all the rules with you when I was eighteen, or for interfering with a fan in a bar. And not for taking this job, either. I did all those things out of love.”
He glances quickly at me but then away again.
“But you were right about me and my family. I never held my ground. And I never asked the tough questions. If I’d had a backbone, then I could have loved you out in the open. I wouldn’t have made you lie and get fired and maybe lose your place on my uncle’s team. I still don’t really know what happened there.”
He tips his head back and looks up at the sky. “It’s okay, Zoe.”
“No, it isn’t.” My voice chokes up, catching me by surprise. “I broke our agreement, just like you said. I told myself I was trying to save you, but it was more complicated than that. I’ve spent my whole life trying to win her approval. I could have told my mom to get lost when she caught us eating ice cream on the roof. We could have just asked for a night off together.”
“Or here’s an idea,” he says, suddenly meeting my gaze. “What if your mother looked at two kids playing Battleship on a roof and thought,How nice for my daughter. She has someone who makes her laugh.We weren’t exactly doing heroin up there, Zoe.”
The idea stops me cold because it’s such a wild departure from the way things work in my life. But it shouldn’t be.
“Look,” he says. “I feel like an ass for running out on you tonight.But I’ve been at war with myself since the moment you showed your face in New York.”
“Why?”
“Because you stirred up some things for me. I’ve spent years clinging tightly to my righteous anger, but maybe some of it was bullshit.”
“My family was horrible to you,” I insist. “My mother treated you like a criminal. And my uncle… I don’t know exactly what he did, but it must have been bad. And I’ve never stood up to them. For either of us.”
“That’s all true,” he says. “But intentions matter. And here you come rolling into town, determined to fix everything. You fixed my skating.”
“I fixed your pelvis.”
He grins. “That will never not be funny. You also started a bar fight in my honor.”
“It was a barshove, not a fight. I will die on this hill.”
Chase smiles at me for a second, and in spite of the cold, my heart melts a little. Because that smile is a potent thing. Then he lifts the edge of the comforter up and pats the spot on the sofa beside him in a clear invitation.
Since my ass is already a Popsicle, I quickly shift over there and sit beside him. And he lowers the comforter over the two of us. Now we’re hip to hip, and I breathe in the same scent that was once my whole world—spicy cologne and fabric softener and just plain Chase.
A silence descends over us like the comforter has, and it isn’t uncomfortable. I gaze up at the sky, which has the typical New York City glow. “Back then? I panicked, Chase. When my mother questioned me, she had a cop with her. They were trying to tracethe drugs that Joon-ho had taken, and my mom was ranting about how the whole thing would end her career.”
“The cops searched me,” he says dully. “They searched my room and my truck. I heard a cop talking about her interview with you. She said, ‘Figure out if Chase gave something to Ethan. Zoe might have seen something.’”
My heart stops. “But you didn’t give Joon-ho the stimulants! That was Melanie.” We eventually learned that she’d been selling her Adderall to other campers, and Joon-ho took too much.
“We all know that now,” he says in a low voice. “But they treated me like a criminal, and I felt like you caused it. Joon-ho refused to give up Melanie’s name until he heard they were accusing me. And then your uncle…” He sighs.
“My unclewhat? Just tell me. It must have been bad.”
He finds my hand beneath the comforter and squeezes it. I have to close my eyes, because I’ve missed him so much. And here we are, sitting on a rooftop together. The way we used to.
“First tell me this,” he says quietly. “Why is the internet obsessed with the idea that I can figure skate with you?”
“Can you, though?”
He chuckles, low in his chest. “Yeah. We’ll figure it out. But answer the question—why did that old video break the internet?”
“Because you’re a hockey player? And hockey players can’t do pretty spins.”
“Any of them could,” he argues. “After a five-minute lesson with you. But theydon’tdo spins. They’re not supposed to.”
“Yeah, okay. Hockey players don’t twirl and jump. They knock people over instead.”
