Page 50 of Broken Pieces
The hit is immediate. My chest caves around the slam of my heart, pounding a rhythm I do not recognize. It’s too fast. Too frantic.
I know what it means.
I’m in fucking trouble, because I’m falling for the boy carved from fists and fury. The boy made of bricks and bruises. And I can’t stop.
I wonder what he’s doing here. If he still comes to this rooftop and waits me out, hiding in the dark until I leave.
The notion burns. Because if that is true, then he has been haunting this place the whole time, letting me cling to the lie it was mine.
The roof creaks under my steps, each sound carrying in the quiet. My skirt moves against my legs in the breeze.
Zane takes a drag from his cigarette, chest rising slowly before he tips his head back toward the sky. Smoke spills past his lips, drawn out, controlled, the kind of move meant to hold my attention.
He stays quiet.
The burn of his silence wrapping tighter around me than anything he could say.
His eyes lock on mine. Heavy. Unreadable.
Heat coils low in my stomach. Whatever it is burning there, it’s dangerous. And it has me.
I lower myself onto the roof beside him. Not close enough to brush against him, but near enough that the warmth radiating from his body slips under my skin.
It teases, taunts, makes me restless.
His gaze cuts sideways, one brow lifting with that careless edge, as if the last four weeks of silence never touched him.
“Thought you wouldn’t want to be here with me.”
I shrug, my voice flat, steady. “You think too much of yourself. I came here for the rooftop, not for you.”
The corner of his mouth twitches.
A long pause stretches between us, too long.
Then I move without asking. I reach out and pluck the cigarette straight from his lips.
The filter is warm against my fingers. It still carries the taste of him.
I take a drag. The smoke burns on the way down, scraping my throat until my lungs ache. I do not cough. I do not break. I hold his stare as the smoke settles inside me and let it spread until it’s burning me alive.
His mouth quirks again, but there is no humor in it.
“Did not peg you for a smoker.”
“There are a lot of things you do not know about me,” I answer, flicking the ash from the end with a steady hand, as if I have been doing this my whole life. I let the smoke slip slow from my lips, eyes locked on his. “You bring out the worst in me.”
That earns me a smirk.
A real one this time. For half a second, I feel like I’ve won something. Then it’s gone, his face hardening again, like it cost him too much to let that slip.
He leans over and takes the cigarette from my fingers.
I tilt my head back, eyes tracing the sky.
Stars scatter above us, sharp as broken glass, glittering in patterns that pretend to mean something. They shimmer with the shine of promises no one ever keeps. Fragile. Untouchable.
The words hesitate at my throat, but the need for answers drags them out anyway.
