CONNOR HAD BY NO MEANS used the word “busy” in a hyperbolic sense. The warehouse hummed with activity, overflowed with people and smells and intensely focused scowls. Five of the easels were occupied, each artist wielding a different medium, each looking a hairbreadth from total insanity. The beadwork room sparkled with nimble hands and scattered stones. The fiber room was a mess—a woman crouched in a sea of yarn and fabric, winding two skeins into a single length around her bent arm, while a pale, sweat-stained man worked the spinning wheel like Rumpelstiltskin’s bitch. Metal screeched on metal. Chisels met wood. The air reeked of fixative and sawdust and the sting of turpentine. No one even looked up as Connor led me through the chaos to the living space, past the crates and materials and the hum of the wheel.
Paul waved at us from his footstool, then refocused his energy into coaxing life from a block of wood almost as tall as me. I shed my coat, pulled off my muddy boots, and perched cross-legged on the futon, accepting the hand towel Connor tossed my way.
He settled next to me, blotting rain from his hair and face as I watched Paul work, mesmerized by the lines that emerged like magic with every tap of his chisel.
“He’s great, isn’t he?”
I turned toward the voice and met Connor’s grin, returned the nudge of his shoulder with my own.
“Incredible. How do people learn to do that?”
“Skin-clawing obsession, coupled with years of practice. Here, check it out.” He sat forward and shrugged out of his shirt. “My parents used to call me their little angel. I’m sure this isn’t quite what they had in mind … but then again, neither am I.”
His back was a canvas. Skeletal wings sprouted from his shoulder blades—scraps of shredded, ragged skin, strung and hung on a mosaic of bones. Rendered in such perfect detail, they threatened to launch him into sudden flight. A finger appeared on the line of a phalanx, brushed over the curve of a scapula—my finger, bold against his skin.
“Oh my God, this is beautiful. And Paul drew it?”
“He did. Talent like that can’t be taught. Mmmm.” His head rolled to the side, shoulders flexing at the drag of my fingernail. “Keep doing that.”
“Oh. Are you sure?”
“Very.”
“Okay.” I continued sketching over every joint and shadow, forced normal-sounding words out around the catch of my breath. What the fuck, Lane. “I remember you from back then, you know.”
“You remember me? Shit. I’m afraid to ask.”
“Vaguely. You were that church kid from the public-access channel. Had that Hall family accent: ‘Y’all should come out to our youth group.’ Et cetera.”
“The ‘y’all’s and the youth group. Christ.” His laugh was low and soft, ending in a sigh. “In reality, that family was done with me the moment I said ‘atheist.’ My father had me out the door within the hour—haven’t seen him since.”
“I’m sorry.” I stilled my fingers, pressed my palm against the space between his shoulder blades. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
“Doesn’t bother me. The road here sucked, but it made me tough in a way they’ll never understand. Made me learn how to prioritize, and go without. Taught me to fight. This”—he reached over his shoulder and tapped the tattoo—“is my way of owning who I am: not the me they wanted, but the me they got. So, do me a favor and forget Church Kid existed, huh? He was about as real as these wings.”
“Should I be worried about Sadie?” I hedged. “She seems happy enough, but—”
“It’s not as bad for her. She’s a true believer—one of them, in a way I’ll never be. Plus, if she leaves, they lose face in the church, and they lose their control, so she gets away with the wild hair, and the attitude, and the whole pagan boyfriend thing.”
Right. That. The evening returned in bits and pieces—Grey’s hand, strong around mine; Sadie’s smile in my mirror, juxtaposed over her later, rain-streaked fury; Connor’s face, furrowed and focused, as he carved his pumpkin; his hair and mouth, wet with raindrops; his ink-lined spine, warm and steady beneath my palm.
He turned to face me, lips quirking as I gazed back, every one of those thoughts buzzing through me in a hornet-sting swarm, and why. Why was I such an utter car crash.
“Don’t look at me like that, Lane.”
It was a challenge, not a request—a dare, demanding the opposite of everything it had meant to us before. I tried to stare him down. I failed so hard.
“Don’t you look at me,” I breathed.
“Is there a better view in this place?”
“Depends on what you’re trying to see, Connor.”
“Okay. I can’t. I simply cannot, for even one more second of my life.” Paul’s outburst yanked us back into the warehouse. We watched, wordlessly, as he stowed his chisel and made a beeline for the door. It swung shut behind him, then opened again, just enough to admit his leer. “I love you, Laney, but not enough to sit here and watch you eye-fuck my boy straight on into November.”
The door slammed on his cackle, sucking the air, and my will to live, right out of the room. My eyes slid closed, tried their best to dissolve into my skull, so I’d never again have to look another human in the face. Maybe, if I stayed perfectly still, the world would do me a favor and cease to be.
“He has quite a way with words, huh?”
So. Connor still sitting there, existing beside me—flame and stardust, caught in the fabric of space—that was still a thing. Fuck. I steeled myself, cracked a lid, and peeked sideways; he was staring at the place where Paul had been, smirk gone weary with resignation.
“Connor, I swear, I wasn’t—”
“Yeah.” He turned to me, and it was every near miss and broken glance. Every time we’d almost touched, seething in the space between us. “Are we still doing the total honesty thing?”
“God. I—don’t know. I don’t know what we’re doing.”
“I know I’m not the McIntyre type.” He took my hand and ran his thumb over my knuckles, as if tracing an invisible thread mark. “But you’ve been on my mind. Ever since that day.”
“Mine too. I mean—” I swallowed the end of that blunder, floundering for something more coherent. Something safer. As if the thought of his scars against my skin hadn’t already knocked Grey to the edge of the world. “You’re my friend. If we let this happen—what would it be? What would we be?”
“It’s your call. We could be nothing, or everything. A one-night thing, or the start of something more, or—”
“There is no ‘more’ for me,” I snapped. “I told you, I don’t do relationships.”
“I remember.” He gave me a wicked smile, wild and lovely as the shiver it sent across my shoulders. “You do distractions.”
His words swept the wind from my lungs. He’d listened a bit too closely that day in the parking lot, kept that detail stored at the ready, even all these weeks later. Threw it back my way, waiting to see if I’d bite.
“I also mind my business, Connor.”
“Fair enough.” The smile re-formed into half a smirk, pursed and pensive. My eyes dropped to our hands, still twined together on my knee, as he spoke. “Look, Lane, I know you have your feelings, and your reasons and all, but honestly? That kid couldn’t handle you even if he was free to try.”
“And you think you could?”
“That’s a question that goes both ways.” His thumb left a trail of sparks along my cheekbone. “How badly do you want it answered?”
I searched his face, seeking and finding that steady, reassuring familiarity. Connor knew my issues; he wouldn’t expect a commitment. He wouldn’t pout, or get jealous, or any dumb shit like that, so what did it matter if we carved a slightly skewed facet into our friendship?
It wouldn’t have to change a thing.
So, I let my eyelids drop and my eyebrow quirk, let the corners of my lips tilt upward, slow and sultry. Let myself trip on the answering curve of his mouth as I leaned in.
It wasn’t a kiss so much as an ignition—the sun lost behind the moon, the white-hot melt of flame and silver. It was the world flipped sideways, tilting us into chaos.
It was working. Grey was far away, finally fading. Finally stumbling off the edge of my thoughts.
“Hey.” The word was a gasp, raw in the airless space between us. “You’re okay with this, right? We don’t have to—”
“Connor.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t stop.”
His answer trailed off to a low, wordless hum around the edges of my lips—a hum that turned to a growl as I rose to my knees, dragged my fingers through his hair. Descended upon him.
Shoved Grey McIntyre into oblivion.
I barely noticed the buzz of the warehouse, or the creak of the mattress beneath our shifting weight; didn’t notice anything beyond Connor’s hands moving over my jaw, through my hair, down my neck, pausing at the top button of my cardigan. I drew away, caught his eyes. Slid that button free, and then the next, and then I was on my back.
It wasn’t even a question. There was no more doubt or hesitation, not in the drag of my fingers across his shoulders, or in the way he breathed against me as the world fell in splinters around us. And yes, it was a distraction, offered and accepted; it did begin, and end, as nothing. But as we lay together on his shitty futon—as he drew back to look at me, somewhere between a kiss and half a ragged breath—in that instant, for me, it was that much closer to everything.
In that moment, he was all I saw.