Page 34 of Fractured Ice

"Yeah." He's still smiling. "Yeah, you will."

I walk home through the cold and I let myself think about it, all of it, the bruises, the massage, the way he smiled when I said I was coming tomorrow… and I can't make it resolve into anything simple.

Two versions of Ethan Walker and I can't get them to sit still in the same frame. The one I grew up with, who knocked my solar system into a lake and said the wrong thing at every available opportunity. And the one who went back to look for it afterward. The one who looked out for me at a party and then got hit keeping a stranger away from me.

I don't know what to do with the second one.

I'm going to have to figure it out, because he's going to be beside me on a bus tomorrow morning, and I'm running out of ways to keep the two versions separate. Sigh. Maybe I’m going to have to talk to someone about this.

9

Ethan

I'm outside the athletic center forty minutes early, which has never happened in my life.

I tell myself it's because I wanted to get a good seat on the bus. That's the reason. That's the only reason. It has nothing to do with the fact that I don't know when Sienna's arriving and I want to make sure I'm already there when she does so the first thing she sees when she pulls up is me, standing here, having had my life together for at least forty minutes.

Blake gives me a look when I show up. He doesn't say anything because Blake rarely says anything, but the look covers it.

The team filters in over the next half hour and I'm doing a thing where I'm talking to people and watching the direction of the parking lot, behind the bus, where everyone parks, which I'm pretty sure nobody notices and I'm pretty sure everyone notices. Then Sienna walks around the bus and my entire morning recalibrates.

She's in a dark green jacket over a cream sweater and her hair is down and she's got her bag over one shoulder and her camera case in her other hand and she looks so good I forget what I was saying to Declan mid-sentence and have to ask him to repeat it.

Declan follows my eyeline and grins. I ignore him.

I start moving toward her and then Rory appears from somewhere behind me and gets there first.

"Sienna." Rory's already pulling her into a hug, which is exactly the kind of thing Rory does, warm and immediate with people she likes. "I’m so happy you’re coming too."

"It's for the assignment." Sienna's smiling, a real one, and it does what her real smiles always do to me, which is make me feel like I missed a step. "When did you get so hard to get a hold of?"

"I've been around."

"You've been absent from just about every hang out with the girls, but you’re going to make it up to me with a girl’s night soon, roommate."

"I've been busy," Rory says, and she looks slightly guilty about it.

"Suspiciously busy."

"I wouldn't say suspiciously."

"I would." Sienna tilts her head. "Does this have anything to do with the fact that you suddenly have a boyfriend?"

Right on cue, Jace appears behind Rory, wraps one arm around her, and kisses her in the way he always kisses her, like they're alone, like the entire athletic center isn't right there, like the rules surrounding PDA is a concept that was invented for other people and doesn't apply to him. A few guys nearby make sounds of protest. Jace doesn't acknowledge any of it.

"She can't do a girls' night," Jace says, when he surfaces, his chin on top of Rory's head.

"I didn't ask you," Sienna tells him.

"She can't, though."

"One night," Rory says. "I'm allowed one night."

"You can have a night." He presses another kiss to the side of her head. "With me."

Rory laughs and shoves at him.

He grins and gives me a look. “Like I really have a say in what she does. Everyone knows she wears the pants in this relationship of ours.”