Volition (23 page)

I slide the window open as far as it will go, so the bug can fly out if it wants to. The windows don’t open very far because the building owners don’t want any jumpers. They don’t want to clean up my splattered body on the pavement below, so they cage me in here and give me an inch to open the window for air.

The bug doesn’t understand that if only it goes backward, it can move over to where the window is open. It’s going to die here because it doesn’t understand. I can’t help it along. I’ll only kill it in the process.

Colin looks over at me out of the corner of his eye, and I swallow hard.

“Don’t be that bug,” he says under his breath.

That scares me.

Because as of right now, I’m not letting Hayden in. I’m not setting myself free. Right now, I’m that bug.

Catherine and Colin excuse themselves to leave shortly after Colin and I get back.

As they walk out the door, Colin shoots a pointed look at Hayden that everyone in the room catches. I know it’s on purpose.

Then, I’m left alone with him, and it’s like the particles in the air aren’t charged right. There are too many electrons or too few. It’s like when you walk around on carpet in slippers gathering static electricity, but you don’t quite know that it’s there until you touch someone, and it releases. It hurts, but at least it discharges.

That’s how it is with Hayden and me.

I know that if I touch him, it’s all over. That’s why I haven’t touched him since the elevator. I’ve made sure of it because I’m afraid of the hurt.

He’s looking at me now.

He’s looking at me in a way that reminds me of Jesse, but it doesn’t at the same time because it’s different.

He’s looking at me the way that every woman wants to be looked at by a man.

“Hayden,” I say his name softly, tasting the way each letter comes out of my mouth one by one and then as a whole. “Hayden.”

When I speak, he doesn’t come out of his daydream like I expect him to.

This is dangerous.

He’s dangerous right now.

“Tate.”

That word comes out of his mouth, and I don’t even know what it means. It’s what I’m called, but right now, it’s something else, like when you stare at a word too long and it loses its meaning. It has an entirely new meaning when it’s coming out of those lips.

“You should go,” I tell him, breaking our stare. I can’t handle it.

He doesn’t want to go, and I don’t want him to either, but my stone heart won’t have it.

I don’t even know him.

Yes, I do.

No, I don’t.

“I’ll have Al pick you up and bring you to my apartment on the night of the third,” he tells me.

“Oh, not in the morning on the fourth?”

The third is tomorrow. I wasn’t planning on being ready that fast. I also wasn’t planning on spending the night with him because that static electricity would have to go somewhere.

“All right,” I agree. It’s like my brain and my mouth aren’t mine anymore. Who let me say that?

It’s time to walk him out.

I know what comes next.

That elevator.

I’m in a different mood than I was the last time we were in this position a few days ago, but I’m the same person.

Right?

We’re approaching the elevator, and Hayden’s fingers are trailing down my arm. They get to my hand, and his fingers thread through mine.

He grips my hand like he’s gathering a sheet below his fingertips.

They’re just hands.

No, they’re not.

They’re his hands.

I reach out and press the elevator button because he hasn’t yet. I know he doesn’t want to go, and he’s intentionally prolonging it.

The doors open quickly, and it’s time for him to go inside. He’s still holding my hand, so he pulls me toward the threshold. He’s on one side of it, and I’m on the other.

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that these elevator doors don’t stay open very long. It’s a high-tech one, and it’s built for speed. Damn modern technology.

He’s still got my hand, and he’s pulling me forward ever so slightly.

If I let myself go, I’m going to fall into the elevator with him.

If I don’t let go, I’m going to get my head crushed between two metal doors any second here.

I hear the ding that means they’re closing, and before I can step back and out of his grasp, his lips are on mine.

In two seconds, he’s letting go.

Without a word, he steps back into the elevator and smirks at me, and then he’s gone.

I exhale, but no air replenishes what comes out.

I’m left breathless on floor seventy, and I think I’ve met my match.

Now

I HAVE A job interview at
The New York Times
today. They liked my short story so much that their editor-in-chief called me and asked me to come in.

That’s a big deal.

I know it’s a big deal.

I can’t help but think that I’m going over to Hayden’s apartment tonight. Then, tomorrow, I’m going to meet his family. I can’t focus on this job interview.

Colin would laugh if he were here.

Tate McKenna, nervous over something like this.

Over
someone
like this.

I put on my favorite dress, take the subway there, and hope for the best.

I take the elevator up to the floor that’s been provided to me, and I can’t help but think of Hayden’s good-bye last night. I haven’t spoken to him since, and that puts another knot in my stomach.

The doors open and spit me out into a waiting room where a woman asks for my name.

Before I can answer her, I hear a familiar voice behind me.

“Tate McKenna,” she says.

I feel as though someone’s stuck a samurai blade through my heart. My blood runs cold, and my eyes want to pop out of their sockets before I turn around and see her.

The receptionist turns her attention to the woman behind me, who is now approaching me based on the sound of her heels on the marble floors.

I turn as smoothly as I’m able, and I put on the face Lara taught me to have—the one she wanted me to have at cotillion, but my emotions got the best of me.

I’m going to throw up even though I haven’t had breakfast.

“Jasmine,” I say as she leans in to air kiss my cheeks.

She smells vile, like cheap perfume, and I wonder how he puts up with this, why he would want
this
over me.

She asks me how I am, and I’m forced to tell her. I try to keep it clipped. I can’t help but notice the smirk that’s been plastered on her face ever since I turned around.

She remembers the last time I saw her.

She knows how much I hate her and why I left Charleston.

What I would like to know is why she followed me.

“Well,” she says, “Daddy called me because they’re just swamped. He needs me to handle some of our productions while he acquires new clients.”

Jasmine Saro, New York City bitch and publishing heiress.

I think that’s what her business cards read anyway.

Jasmine Saro won’t have to work for anything in her life because she’s not going to run away from her fortune like I did.

I hate Jasmine Saro more than any human being on this planet.

I hate her because Jasmine thinks her strings pull her to Jesse, but they don’t. Mine do, and mine alone. I wanted it to be Casper just like Jasmine wants it to be Jesse, but I am his, and he is mine whether we like it or not. We’re puppets of fate, and I wonder why Jasmine’s strings are free-floating.

Did her soul mate die?

Did she ever have one?

Does she deserve a soul mate?

Do I?

I want to understand what got her to this point where she is so very clearly confused, but she’s blissfully unaware. Jesse doesn’t acknowledge any of the strings, and I’d like lessons in how he does it because I can’t do anything without feeling them pulling me all over.

I can’t kiss Hayden because I think of Jesse. I can’t think of Hayden because my stomach is killing me from the separation from Jesse.

I want him out. I want him gone.

I want to give him to Jasmine, but I can’t.

I can’t.

I have no idea what she’s saying now, but I’ve caught her mid-sentence.

“He asked about you, you know.”

I shake my head to clear it. “I’m sorry. What?”

She knows she’s flustered me, and her face shows small signs of triumph. “Jesse. He asked about you.”

Do I have a heart anymore? It’s stopped beating if so.

“Is he here?”

“No, silly.” She waves her hands at me as if I’m a child. “He’s in Charleston.”

They’re not traveling together. That’s good.

Or bad?

I don’t know anymore, but I’m going to fail my interview if she isn’t removed from my sight in the next ten seconds.

“Good seeing you, Jasmine,” I say, giving her a Lara-approved smile.

She looks startled, but she composes herself because we’re in public. She smooths her dress down and pats her hair. “You, too, Tate. Always a pleasure.”

“It’s never a pleasure,” I whisper under my breath as she leaves.

Her body might be gone, but her presence isn’t. She’s managed to ruin my whole day. I wonder if this is how she felt when she was out of her element in Charleston when I first met her.

I have no sympathy for the way I treated her. She wanted Jesse from the start, but she went for Casper first. Then, she went for my jugular.

And I bled.

I bled out.

Then, I died.

And then, I flew to New York.

“Tate McKenna.”

My name is being called, but I don’t care.

Suddenly, I don’t care at all.

I have no idea if I got the job or not.

He says he’ll call me.

I don’t care though.

I don’t care about anything.

I’m walking around outside now, and I’m numb. It’s starting to drizzle, so I duck inside the nearest building.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

I’m standing outside the enormous regal doors, underneath the overhang of the building. I could go in, but I might also get struck down by God because I’m not a good person.

Then again, I could get struck by lightning out here because it’s starting to storm.

The rain.

I can’t be in the rain.

Then, I’ll have two reasons to be numb instead of just one.

I walk in, and I’m immediately soothed. There’s scaffolding everywhere as if it’s trying to hold the whole building together before it falls apart and crushes all of us.

There are candles everywhere, too. I can’t hear the rain from in here, only some soft organ music. There’s not a service, but people are reverently sitting in the pews.

I decide to become one of them.

Someone checks my bag to make sure I’m not a terrorist like in that Angelina Jolie movie, and I sit down in one of the back rows.

I sit there.

I just sit.

I have no idea how long I sit there—feeling numb and thinking about nothing, but thinking about everything.

I have to go home.

The air is humid, so I know it’s still raining outside.

New York rain smells putrid. It hits the pavement and brings out whatever has been on there since the last time it rained, and then it’s all in the air.