Crosbie ignores him, eyes on me. “Red Corset,” he utters. “Is you?”
I can’t say a single thing to defend myself. I don’t want to admit it but I don’t want to lie anymore, either. In any case, it doesn’t really matter what I do, because he knows the truth, even if he can’t believe it.
“Did you know?” he asks, turning to look at Kellan. His eyes are pleading, begging his friend not to have known, not to have betrayed him. “Did you know it was her?”
Kellan’s shaking his head helplessly. “I just… I didn’t remember…”
I’m numb. Every part of me. I don’t even feel the tears, just see them splash onto my plate, the untouched cake, the ruined everything.
“What am I missing?” Celestia asks, breaking the spell.
But it’s already too late, because when I finally look up Crosbie’s seat is empty and his jacket is gone and the front door is slamming shut.
“No!” The word sounds strangled as I lunge from my seat to go after him. I stumble around the table and down the stairs, yanking open the door to a face full of freezing rain. My feet slip on the wet stone as I run to the sidewalk, but I can’t see him. In seconds my hair is soaked and plastered to my head, my teeth chattering, temples aching from the cold. The streets are dark, abandoned on this miserable night, and when I call his name the only answer is a car starting up somewhere out of sight, the squeal of wheels on slush and ice, and then the fading growl of him leaving me.
chapter twenty
I stumble back into the house and close the door behind me, resting against it when I can’t bear the thought of climbing the stairs and facing everyone. I’m numb from both the cold and the shock of what just happened. Of course he would find out this way. Of course he would find out at all. Of course. The truth always finds a way out, in the end.
“Nora.”
I hadn’t realized I’d closed my eyes, but now I open them to find Kellan standing at the base of the steps, a towel in his hand, his face a miserable mirror image of mine.
“He’s gone,” I whisper, taking the towel. I can’t stop shaking, even as I try to do the responsible thing and wring the icy water from my hair.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“It’s not your fault.” The words come out automatically, but as soon as I hear them, I want to take them back. Of course it’s his fault. It’s his fault for pretending to be Matthew; I never would have shown up here that day had I known it was Kellan McVey’s apartment. It’s his fault for offering me free rent; I never would have moved in if I’d had to pay. It’s his fault for saving that stupid list; Nate never would have seen it if we’d burned it with the rest.
But even as I try my best to get angry at him, I can’t. Smarter, grown up Nora knows where the blame belongs, and unfortunately, it’s on my wet, slumped shoulders. “I should have told him,” I mumble, slouching onto the steps. Kellan hesitates a second before joining me, and though there’s a foot between us, the distance is quickly covered by the pool of water seeping out of my sodden wool dress.
“When?” Kellan asks ruefully. “When would have been a good time to tell him something like this?”
I shrug and think about it. When, exactly? When we first met in this very entryway? When there was no earthly reason to believe he’d ever want to know—or even care? Should I have told him when I started to realize there was some kind of spark between us, even though the news would have most definitely extinguished any potential flame? Should I have told him when things got more serious, when the news was bound to hurt impossibly more?
“I don’t know,” I answer eventually. “I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have done worse than this.”
“Our first and last Chrisgiving,” Kellan says with a sigh.
We quickly run out of commiserating things to say, but the silence lasts all of four seconds before angry voices begin to filter down from the living room.
“…obsessed!” Marcela is shouting. “Why couldn’t you just drop it? Why are you even here?”
“I was invited!”
“We were invited,” Celestia corrects.
“Who brings their own dinner to a dinner party?” Marcela demands. “And who, under the age of ninety, wears fur coats?”
“Would you get over the fur coat thing?” This is Nate. “You never gave her a chance. You’re like a toddler who doesn’t want a toy, but doesn’t want anybody else to have it. It’s time to move on, Marcela.”
“Move on?” she squawks, outraged. “Move on from what, exactly?”
“This unrequited love you two have going,” Celestia replies calmly.
A shocked pause, then both Nate and Marcela start sputtering. “We don’t—We’re not—There’s no—”
“Stop kidding yourselves,” she interrupts. “Because you’re certainly not fooling anyone else. Have a nice life, Nate.”
“Cece—you don’t—”
“You call her Cece?”