Page 34 of The Triangle

Fair enough.

But not the point.

“We don’t need your help.”

“I disagree,” he says. It comes out solemn. A little bit sad, maybe.

“What the fuck is happening?”

Alec and I both turn our heads to look up to the top of the stairs. Christine is standing there wearing only a too-large t-shirt. She steps lightly down the metal stairs just the way I did, trembling in the frigid air.

How long was she standing up there? What did she hear?

She trains her eyes on me. Then Alec. Then back to me.

I worry about her cold, bare feet. I worry about her shivering in the frigid morning air. I want her back upstairs. I want her back in bed. I want her anywhere but here with us.

Because I can deny it all I want. Won’t make it true.

There is an us.

There has been since that morning I met Alec at the gym. Since that same night when I introduced him to Christine.

You can’t undo the past.

We are the triangle etched on the top of that metal box.

There will always be an us.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - CHRISTINE

“Morning, bru. Good to see you, man.”

I hear him speak. Even lost in the depths of dreams there’s no way I can’t. His voice is like music I’ve been programmed to respond to. A code that unlocks something deep and dark. A fix for that part of me that is irrevocably broken.

“Shhhhhh…”

But the arms that held me all night don’t belong to him. They belong to Danny. And Danny evokes all the same emotions, only on the gut level as well as the heart.

There’s some kind of string that connects us. Some bond that attracts us.

But the voice. Alec’s voice. Just a few simple words—they’re enough to rouse me out of the fantasy life I’m living in my dreams. A life of parties, and planes, and money.

A life I was too young to really appreciate.

Or make the most of, if I’m being honest.

The bed moves, things get lighter.

I don’t want the dream to end.

It’s only then that I realize it’s not a dream. It’s my reality. And there are good parts, sure. But there’s a lot more wrong with the life I’ve tried to forget than there is right.

That’s a choice though.

I can see things one way or another.

I can choose. I can remember the good, or the bad, or both. And seriously. Who in their right mind chooses bad over good? Or both, for that matter.