Alice's POV

The evening mist in the air was cold, carrying the feel of a late storm, the dew in the air, and the muffled cheerful festivities all around.

It was nostalgia and it was melancholy; it was something I remembered and something that was so out of reach.

My phone buzzed for the second time in my hand as I leaned against the glass balcony railing and tried to look past the hundreds of tall buildings scattered around the city. The sun was about to go down. The night was just within reach.

Sighing, I looked down at the screen and watched Alyssa's name flashing on it. She'd only called once before and I'd missed it. Not wanting to call her back myself for more than one reason, I had been waiting for her to call again.

The tense silence between Ryder and me back in the lounge had been too much. Rafael had started looking a little guilty for speaking, though he hadn't looked like he was going to back down before the furious look on Ryder's face. I'd tried to look for a way out because my head had started aching again, the tea had gone cold, and I was having feelings.

Lots of them.

Mostly, I just felt sad.

Nobody wanted Sad Alice around because she got pathetic and needy and clingy. So I'd looked for a way out and was only relieved when I saw the flash of a missed call on my phone. I had excused myself and walked upstairs, thinking I should head to the guest room I'd taken a shower at earlier but when Gem had followed me upstairs and nudged me to go after her to the end of the hallway--towards the balcony doors--I'd thought that maybe Gem wouldn't mind having Sad Alice around.

"Alice," Alyssa spoke the moment I answered her call. "Alice, for God's sake, are you all right? What's going on? Should I come there? Are you still at the hospital?"

I straightened up a little. "Hey. The hospital?"

"I got a call from the StateView Hospital. You had me under your emergency contacts. Is everything all right, Alice? I've been worried sick for hours! I would've come there but there's... I'm at home. I didn't think you'd want Mom to know about this."

There was a lot to unpack in what she'd just said. I looked around the huge balcony, near the chaise lounge chairs where Gem currently lounged, and asked, "Mom? I'm fine. You don't have to...You don't have to worry. I'm sorry."

Alyssa let out a pained noise. "But Alice, why did I get a call from the hospital?"

I almost nearly winced. "I'm so sorry. I must've mistakenly put you under my emergency contacts."

"No, that's not what I mean." She responded abruptly, and I heard the evident alarm in her voice. "Not the emergency contacts, Alice. I'm glad I got the call! What I want to know is why were you at the hospital. Were you hurt? They said something about a...about a concussion? God, I wasn't listening clearly right then."

"I'm all right."

"You're not answering my question." She sounded a whole lot more worried now. I was trying to keep the situation from getting more worrying but nothing I said was helping. "Where are you now? If you've got a concussion, you can't just stay at your dorm. Have you got friends there or--"

"Alyssa." I cut her off gently. "I swear, I'm fine. It was just a tiny knock on the head. I didn't even lose consciousness." I think. "It was purely an accident."

I didn't like lying to her when she was just being so kind and honest with me. But what else could I have told her? The truth?

"An accident?" She asked in a small voice. "Were you... I'm so sorry, it's just... Were you drunk?"

I blinked once, twice, and chose to ignore the stabbing pain in my head when I flinched at her words.

"No," I replied softly, way too softly.

She must've heard it in my voice--the disbelief or maybe the acceptance. "I didn't mean to insinuate anything by that, Alice. I'm so sorry. It's just that Mom keeps saying that and--and when I heard you were hurt and at the hospital, that's what I instantly thought. I know how wrong some college parties could go."

I wondered how much Mom still relayed my day-to-day failures to everyone in my family. I wondered how often they were and how harsh she portrayed them to be.

"I wasn't at a party, Alyssa. Or drunk." I made sure to keep my voice light because I didn't want her to think I was getting mad at her. That's the last thing I would be towards her. "I was just there in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Which wasn't true. Couldn't have been when I'd seen Brooke being pushed off the bridge railing and when I could still hear everything that gas-masked person--Santiago--had whispered so harshly in my ear. Every word he'd said had been a harsh truth.

"That doesn't make me worry less, Alice." She sounded like she was shaking her head. "I can come down there. Do you want me to--"

"No."

"But--"

"I'm really all right, Alyssa." If her not coming here could be avoided, then I was going to try my best to make that happen. It was for the best. "I promise. I got all checked up at the hospital too. They've let me go on their own terms. I'm not even at my dorm. I'm at a...friend's house."

"Why did you say it like that?"

"Say what like that?"

"Friend." She sounded doubtful. "Are you lying to me?"

"No." I breathed out a laugh this time, shaking my head slowly. Gem meowed and started pawing at the leathering cushioning of one of the sofas. I grimaced and moved towards her. "I wasn't lying. I am at Ry--Soren's house." Shitshitshit.

Alyssa was silent for a moment too long. I thought she'd somehow caught on the slip of names I'd let loose.

"Oh." She said, surprisingly not sounding so doubtful anymore. "Soren? You're still with him."

She sounded surprised, taken aback, and like she hoped I didn't hear it in her voice. I couldn't blame her. Really, I couldn't.

"Yeah." I grabbed Gem in my free arm and cradled her to my chest.

"That's good. That's amazing! I'm so glad, Alice. He was so nice and polite with everyone back at that family get-together. I just...I was happy and was having this feeling that he'd be it for you, you know. You've been having bad luck with boyfriends for way too long. I didn't tell you that because you already looked stressed enough." She laughed. "But maybe I was right."

I didn't say anything to her. How could I have? There was this hot lump in my throat and I wished I could ignore the genuine happiness in her voice, tell her again and again that I was sorry--really, really sorry--and maybe just tell her the truth. All of it.

I didn't deserve happiness. Alyssa did.

"You're sure you're all right?" She asked again. "I'm just worried, is all. Maybe you should let me see you with my own eyes. Michael and I were already thinking of visiting down there since we've got some things to take care of in the city. All the wedding preparations have just kept me occupied so much. But I can come down there early and..."

I tuned out Alyssa but not on purpose. It was just one of my many insane, unconscious reactions when I heard that name. My brain had heard Michael's name and everything, for a long second, went hot and cold and blinding. It was pure terror.

"Alice? You there?"

I swallowed and looked down at Gem, noticing that my left hand was trembling a little. "I...yeah. Um, you were coming down here? With Michael?"

"Yeah." She answered. "In a week or two. Michael was the one who suggested it too--to catch up with you there. I've been adding these cute decor ideas for our house--the house we bought out at MountVille Street, remember? It's been hard choosing between options so Michael suggested to ask you for help. You know me pretty well. And we can catch up too on lots of things."

It wasn't a good idea. It was a horrible idea. Not good. Not good at all.

I leaned my back against the glass railing and tried to swallow back the sudden wave of nausea. Michael would be here. He'd suggested coming here, to visit me along with Alyssa. At my dorm. At university. The only place I considered safe from him.

"I...I don't think that's a good idea." My voice sounded too far away. The only grounding thing was the chilly air on my back and Gem's soft fur beneath my fingertips.

"Oh." Alyssa sounded surprised, concerned, and sad. "Really? But I was hoping we could spend some time together."

Not with Michael. Not with you when I know I'd just feel guilty every second I spend with you.

"You're my sister, Alice." She spoke softly, sadly. "It feels like, sometimes it feels like we've grown apart ever since you left for college. You don't talk to me like you did back during high school and middle school. We used to...talk about everything, didn't we? I feel like if you didn't have my number saved under your emergency contacts, you wouldn't have even told me, or anyone, that you were at the hospital."

I felt the hurt in her voice, the one she was trying to conceal so badly--because Alyssa was kind and she didn't want me to feel the blame of it all. Guilt and shame were heavy on my shoulders. Because she was right. She was right about it all.

"I would've told you." I lied.

"You wouldn't have, Alice."

I wouldn't have. Because I'm scared. And I'm a coward.

A quiet moment of silence went by, with me sliding down on the floor, pressing my head back against the glass, and Alyssa breathing softly on the other end.

"Do you talk to him?" She asked me, her tone carefully cautious. "To Soren? Tell him the things you don't tell us?"

I closed my eyes because everything about it was wrong. There was no Soren. The only Soren there was had cheated on me with my best friend and was maybe still at the hospital, looking after Brooke and loving her and being there for her. There was no precious fucking Soren of mine.

There wasn't.

"Yeah," I told her and a lone, cold tear rolled down from the corner of my eye.

"Then it's all right." She murmured. "At least you do talk to someone. Friends, boyfriend, anyone as long as you have someone to talk to. Even though you must know I'm always here for you. Sisters forever, remember?"

I squeezed my eyes close.

"You...you should come by actually." I blurted out, feeling the guilt churning in my gut, knotting around with fear and dread and every other ugly emotion residing inside me. "We can catch up."

She sounded hesitant when she spoke, "Yeah? You sure? I would love that actually. Michael and I can reach there by afternoon and we can spend the whole day out, eat at that Italian diner downtown, totally my treat, and catch up on all that you haven't told me and all that I haven't told you?"

I nodded, throat clogging up, and wiped my face hastily. "Yeah. Yeah, sure."

Maybe by then, I'll finally find the courage to tell her everything, everything that I'd been hiding from her before Santiago got to it first. I'd thought only Michael and I were the ones who knew. But we weren't.

I needed to be honest with Alyssa. I needed to own up to all my faults. Because I needed her to be happy, even if telling her the truth might take it all away.

"Call me again at midnight, okay?" Alyssa said. "A video call. I wish you'd have come home for Christmas, but a video call would have to do."

"Okay," I promised her. "I will."

And I knew I would.

•••••

Ryder found me there on the balcony a few moments after I'd ended the call. Gem had decided by then that sitting with me wasn't much worth it when I wasn't even doing anything other than just holding her. She loved ear scratches but I was too into my head to give any to her.

Maybe that's also why I didn't notice Ryder coming up near the doors until he broke the silence, "Alice."

I snapped out of it and looked up at him, startled at hearing my name on his lips, and tried to clear my head out of the foggy daze I'd gotten myself under.

"What?" I asked and got up from the floor, stumbling just a little. My right leg had gone numb.

He stepped inside and came towards me, expression dark and exhausted even though he looked downright ready to commit murder. He looked murderous but in control, eyes darting from my face and to the rest of me--like a bow strung too tight, a volcano ready to erupt and destroy everything in its wake.

I wondered what had happened downstairs when I'd left him with Rafael.

I expected him to yell at me for some reason. And I waited for it with bated breath, but it never came.

He stared at me for a moment too long, expression undecipherable, before shaking his head. "Sit," he said and walked out once again.

Bewildered at the strange display, I did sit down on one of the incredibly soft and large lounge chairs. Gem meowed and followed Ryder outside.

It took him a short moment to return but when he did, he had a gauze wrap in his hand and a few other things that one might need to clean up a wound. It didn't make sense to me, not at first, until he dragged the other chair right in front of me, uncaring that it completely blocked the entrance and trapped me against the edge of the balcony in the process.

Only when he took my hand in his--my left hand--and turned it around, that I noticed the bandage wrapped around it earlier was gone. The thin long scar on my wrist looked red and painful and speckled with blood. It was bleeding a little.

I swallowed convulsively and felt heat full of shame crawling up my neck. I expected him to ask me about it, demand why the hell I'd taken it off, and quite possibly clawed at it like someone deranged. I expected him to ask, but once again he just didn't.

"Rafael was right." He spoke, not looking at me, but that didn't leave the tense scowl on his face hidden. "I solely showed up at your house, under the false pretense of being your boyfriend, to go through your phone."

I stared at him, hurt. "I know."

"But I didn't." He lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. "I did see an opportunity more than once, especially since you mostly don't ever see what's coming up right in front of you, but I didn't go through your phone."

I blinked, surprised, and then winced as he cleaned the smudged blood from my wrist.

"I...I don't understand. You knew the passcode of my phone, though."

"I'm pretty sure everyone around you knows your passcode." He glanced up at me, the scowl momentarily gone. "You're not exactly trying to hide it when you type it on your phone."

I gnawed on the inside of my cheek. "I'm not a fool, Ryder."

"You're not." He agreed. "You just trust people too easily."

The simple way he said it, displayed it all out to the open so easily, it left me reeling from the very edge and trying to crawl my way back. It left me shaken and off balance. It wasn't something well hidden about me, but hearing it out loud by him still left me stunned.

"Rafael told me that you left because you were hurt, because I hurt your feelings back there in the lounge, which I don't quite understand." He did that shrug thing again. "But he said I should apologize to you."

As much as he didn't like Rafael, I found myself thinking, he did strangely listen to whatever that he said. I smiled, because I couldn't not, and shook my head. "No. It's fine. You don't have to apologize."

He finished bandaging but when I made a move to pull my hand away, because I was still embarrassed for wasting the first aid supplies for no apparent reason, he didn't let go. Ryder only held onto my hand a little tighter.

"Why did it hurt your feelings?" He asked, his voice somehow clipped. "To know that I showed up at your house solely for my own gain?"

I looked up at him, eyes wide, and only saw that he genuinely seemed curious to know. I want you to be honest with me, he'd said.

"I thought you had helped me there, with my family, just because," I whispered, heart nearly in my throat. "I suppose I had known there must be something for you in it because you didn't know me and I didn't know you, but as time passed I just thought you'd shown up there, outside my house, to help me."

"I was there to help you."

"Without knowing what I needed help with." The smile on my lips tugged down sadly.

He stared, blinked once, and nodded. "Yes. But I did figure it out pretty quickly that it must be your mother's comments about you, which you wished to avoid, that made you accept my offer."

Of course, he figured that one out. It must not have been difficult since it was my mom we were talking about. Even her usual bragging comments managed to carry disdain for me.

I looked down at our hands, his warm fingers loosely wrapped around my bandaged wrist from below, and felt his piercing stare on me all the while.

"And then there was that violin." He added almost a little too curiously.

I cleared my throat and looked over at the balcony entrance. "Is Rafael still here?"

"Why?" He scowled, tightening his grip on my wrist but not enough for it to hurt too much. "You wish to speak to him and not me?"

I blinked, alarmed, and darted my gaze from his angry eyes and to the empty dark hallway I could peek at from the opened doors.

"No." I shook my head. "I was just wondering where he was."

His scowl deepened. "I threw him out of this goddamned house because I was this close," he brought up his other hand to hold his thumb and index finger way too close to each other, with the tiniest sliver of gap between them, "this close to bashing his head into one of my own fucking windows."

My eyes widened in alarm, shoulders locking with fear, and my mind told me, begged me to back off. Back away from the threat. Back away before I got hurt under all this sudden anger.

"Did you?" I asked, eyes wide. "Hurt him?"

"I was fucking going to." He seethed.

"But you...didn't," I said, hesitated, and reached out with my other hand, slow and cautious as I curled my fingers around his free hand, his sleeve, and the sliver of bare skin beneath his sleeve. I gave it a gentle squeeze. "You didn't."

He scowled at me with dark brows pulled together, dark and dangerous, grip tightening even more around my bandaged wrist, and there was this sting of pain but he wasn't hurting me. Just angry and confused and maybe he didn't like me touching him right then, when he was scowling and furious and ready to snap someone's neck with his bare hands, kill someone under the barrel of his pistol. But I couldn't make myself pull away right then, and he seemed like he didn't know what to do with it.

With all that anger and confusion and murderous intent. Perturbed at the fact that he'd found me here with my bandaged wrist bleeding and with no bandage on it anymore, not knowing how to ask me about it, bewildered at the fact that something he'd done had hurt me, and angry at his childhood best friend because that, at least, was a familiar emotion.

I think...I think I was starting to figure him out a little. What went behind those ever-calculating, beautiful eyes of his.

The thought made me smile--hesitant, unsure, but a smile nonetheless. And his scowl faltered, unsure, then vanished.

We continued staring at each other, into each other's eyes, into the blue of his eyes that held nothing because he didn't know how to show everything. I saw his gaze dropping down to my lips, to the elated smile lingering there that seemed to chase the very few remnants of happiness around, because my heart was sometimes drenched in fear and sadness but it went away when he was near. I watched him swallow. Clearly angry with himself as he muttered something under his breath. A word that I didn't even think was English, before he tugged on my wrist, a sharp, insistent pull that made me lurch towards him.

A surprised sound escaped me and he grabbed my face with both of his hands, growled that one word again, and kissed me.

He kissed me.

Warm, soft lips pressed so firmly onto my own. Harsh and cold and insistent. Punishing. He pressed and pressed closer and pulled me closer until I felt it against my teeth, raw and harsh and painful, until he relented. And then I was like a sunflower in his hands. He was the sun and I was his.

He didn't let go of me, not even the slightest bit, but he did pull away a little, and then he was kissing me much more properly. It was raw, it was desperate, and it was perhaps fueled with anger.

But I'd said before that I knew how to handle harsh. If he'd been gentle, I might've had to pull away. And that, I registered in all the dizzy parts of my brain, would break me. Tear me apart. Pulling away now was something I couldn't do--didn't want to do.

I shuddered in his hands, against him, hands scrambling up to get a grip on him, his shirt, his shoulders, him, before I let myself get lost in the taste of him.

Because he was simply divine, sweet and hot and burning. I pulled at his shirt, closer closer closer--God, I needed him to be closer.

A soft whisper of a sound left me and it made him pull away, eyes as dark as the night sky finding mine and lips raw and kissed that I couldn't help but chase. For more. For everything.

He held me back by fingers digging so sweetly underneath my jaw. A slow second ticked by. And then he pulled me close, looking more curious than angry, and ran the tip of his tongue on the seam of my lips. I made that very sound again and he pulled away. Again. Looked down at me with dark hunger in his eyes and pulled me closer by my waist.

I stumbled closer, nearly straddling him, and didn't let go. His hands ran up my thighs and I breathed heavily, shakily, when they gently caressed the spot. I melted against him, hands digging into his shoulders, and squeezed my eyes shut when he grabbed me by the nape of my neck, tipping my head up, lips trailing fire where they touched my throat and the side of my jaw, teeth grazing the sensitive skin before tugging on my earlobe.

I trembled.

"Let me hear it again." He whispered.

I didn't understand what he meant by that, but he got it out of me anyway. When he tugged at the collar of the shirt I wore--his shirt, I remembered dazedly--and sucked on the sensitive skin just above my collarbone, I quite literally lost it. Another one of those desperate, needy noises left my lips and I felt the tug of his lips against my skin.

"Ryder," I spoke, raw and broken and begging. My fingers dug into his shoulders, trying to push him so that he'd stop torturing me and kiss me. Please.

"Again, querida."

I swallowed and he kissed my throat and I panted because I couldn't--couldn't take this anymore. "Ryder," I hissed, eyes stinging with the sweetest pleasure as he bit my collarbone.

My hands fisted in his long-sleeved tee, tugging at it obscenely because I was going insane with the barest of touches from him, and I needed to touch him too, feel him too. It was a moment, a second, a wrong movement when my hands touched his back. He stiffened. I stopped and so did he, his lips stilling against my throat.

And then it was gone just as quickly--for a moment I thought I'd imagined it all--and he grabbed me by the hips, swiftly maneuvered me back on the lounge chair I'd been sitting on earlier, until I was lying on it and he was looming above me.

I blinked once, twice, and stared up at him, wondering with a sweet, suffocating lump in my throat how I had ended up here, looking up at him--so devastatingly beautiful under the pale blue sky. Like someone who'd always be out of reach, who I didn't deserve to reach for. Those blue eyes weren't mine to live in.

As if reading my mind and my morose thoughts, Ryder whispered my name and pulled me lower by the grip on my waist, making me gasp and kissing all my thoughts away. His tongue pushed past my lips, the heat of his body burning and pressing into my own, and my mind went blank.

I raked my hands up his neck and into his hair, the soft dark strands of his hair, and tugged on them. Wanting more. Wanting everything.

And maybe I might possibly have gotten it, because Ryder didn't seem like he'd be stopping anytime soon--because the kiss was fervent and his hold on me wasn't anywhere near letting go--urgent maybe, but still too torturously slow. But then an insistent ringing of a phone broke us off and we both heard it at the same time.

I blinked, dazed, when Ryder pulled away. It took me a few seconds to realize that it wasn't my phone, and too late at that anyway since Ryder was already reaching for his back pocket, taking out his phone.

I exhaled shakily, running my tongue over my kiss-bruised lips and watching him frown at the screen.

He looked down at me, and stared into my eyes, before speaking, "I have to take this." And his voice came out flat, confused, and maybe even a little alarmed.

Although maybe I was just high up in the clouds, on his touch and his kisses, and was imagining every single second of this.

I nodded because my throat wasn't working and I didn't think my tongue would be cooperating either.

Ryder seemed to stare at me for a long second. Then he reached out, wiped the corner of my mouth with his thumb, and zeroed his stare in on me once again, before lifting himself from on top of me.

"Don't play with your bandages." He told me--the few last words before he pushed aside the lounge chair he'd been sitting at and walked out of the balcony.

I watched his back retreating and then directed my gaze back up at the sky. The phantom touch of his thumb against my lips tingled, and I closed my eyes.

I was fucked, wasn't I? So many kisses I'd had in my lifetime and yet this--the kisses that came from his lips--the way he'd touched me, it wasn't the same.

Ryder, I thought and my heart jackhammered in my chest. When will you stop knocking me off balance?

As if trying to prove a point, something cold and wet fell softly on my forehead, a trickle of water running down the side of my face.

I blinked open my eyes, lips parting in surprise, only to see several more following the first one from the cloudy sky. Could've been rain, but they were cold. Way too cold.

A pretty snowflake hit my nose and I inhaled sharply.

It was snowing.

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