Page 176 of Wait for Him

Now I need to figure out why it still feels like I'm practicing.

Rose

I've been back in Los Angeles for five hours.

I packed a small bag when Blaire called, got on the next ferry to the Long Beach terminal, and checked into The Sutton House, the hotel that sits right next door to the Sullivan building, which is either convenience or masochism, and I've decided not to examine which.

I'm dressed. I've been dressed for an hour. What I'm actually doing is sitting on the edge of this hotel bed blotting away sweat and the occasional escaped tear, because the last year of my life has been building toward this exact evening. The return. My people. Me walking back through a door healed.

Well.

Maybe not healed. That's not how trauma works, and Dr. Knowles would dock me points for using the word. Better, then. Sturdier. Capable of walking into a building full of people I love without immediately reverting to the woman who ran out of it.

In theory.

The party started forty-five minutes ago, so by now they must assume I'm not coming. And God, how easy it would be to prove them right. I could slip back down to the terminal, catch the late ferry and be home before midnight.

Home.

Yeah. I've started calling Catalina home, because I was reborn on that island. I arrived there barely able to get through a day without someone telling me how, and now I have a life there. A routine. Friends. A cello class. A gym where people routinely try to choke me unconscious and I pay them for the privilege. It's mine.

There's nothing left for me here anyway.

Jackson is engaged.

My heart sank straight through the floor when I read the article. Once I let myself out of social media prison, he and James were the only two searches my fingers knew. The boy I gave up and the man I gave up. My two open tabs.

I found the announcement on a Friday night, read it four times, closed the laptop and went to the gym. I hit the bag until my wraps soaked through, came home, sat with it, cried until my face hurt and didn’t go under.

That's the silver lining that matters most.

It broke my heart, and I stayed on my feet.

A year ago, it would've put me in bed for weeks. It has before. This time I got up the next morning, made coffee, went to yoga and continued being alive. So I suppose the obscene amount of money I've spent on ferry-delivered therapy was worth it.

I stand and cross to the floor-length mirror for one final look, and a stranger looks back at me. A good stranger.

I grab my bag before she can object.

The walk from the hotel to the Sullivan building takes three minutes and eighteen seconds. Not that I timed it. I absolutely timed it.

I still own a piece of this building, and my key card still lives in my wallet, so nobody stops me when I move through security toward the elevators. The familiarity of it is almost worse than if everything had changed. Same lobby. Same marble. Same security desk. Same elevators I rode every fucking day for years.

I'm aware of every step.

Janine, the night security guard, rounds the corridor just as I'm stepping into the elevator. She sees me and stops dead, one hand flying to her mouth. Well, fuck. We're recognizable now. I give her a small smile and wave before the doors slide shut.

Then I'm alone, and suddenly I'm questioning the building itself. Were these doors always this loud? Did this elevator always take six fiscal quarters to reach Michael's floor? And did they stop running air-conditioning in this fucking heat box, or is my nervous system staging another coup?

I pull in a slow breath through my nose, hold it and let it out through my mouth. Then I do it again while the elevator keeps climbing.

When the doors finally open, I take one more deep breath and step out.

Eighty-seven steps. I know because I count every single one, and then I'm standing in front of a door I've walked through hundreds of times.

It's cracked open. That hasn't changed. They always leave it cracked during dinner parties so people can come and go without somebody playing doorman all night. But for the first time in my life, walking into my brother's home without knocking feels wrong. Like I gave that right up when I left.

Fuck that. He's still my brother.