Eighteen

ARIANA 

Skylark moved first.

She walked past me like I wasn't standing there, her robe trailing behind her, and stopped a few feet from where Jack was on the floor. She looked down at him the way you look at something the wind blew in.

She took one last drag off her cigarette. Held it. Let it out slow through her nose.

Then she dropped it.

It hit the marble and rolled. She didn't put it out. She just watched it smolder.

Then she spat. Not at him — near him. Close enough that he'd see it if he ever looked up. He didn't.

She turned back to me.

"See this?" She gestured at him with one open hand, like she was showing me a piece of furniture that had broken. "This is what Jack is like."

I didn't say anything.

"Ten years," she said. "Ten years I've watched him do this. Big man at the table. Can't hold his liquor past midnight." She tilted her head. "Worthless."

I stayed where I was. My arms hung at my sides. My hands were loose, but I could feel my fingers starting to curl, and I made myself stop. If I moved — if I went to him — she'd see it. She'd file it away and use it later.

She was already filing anyway.

"His yours to handle," she said.

She stepped past me. Her shoulder brushed mine. On purpose. She didn't look back.

Her footsteps went down the corridor, soft on the marble, and then the door at the end opened and closed and she was gone.

Jack was still on the floor.

"Mom," he said again. Smaller this time. "Where are you?"

I looked at him. His hand slipped off the wall and he caught himself on his elbow. His tie was dragging on the floor. He tried to sit up. Got halfway. His head dropped forward and his shoulders shook once, hard, and then he stopped moving altogether.

"Mom."

I crouched down.

Not fast. Not close. Just low enough that we were on the same level, and I stayed a foot away and waited.

"Jack."

He didn't look up.

"Jack."

His head lifted. Slowly. His eyes found me, and for a second there was nothing in them — no recognition, no focus, just the flat grey-blue of a man who wasn't awake and wasn't asleep.

Then something clicked.

"Ariana."

"Yeah."

He tried to stand. His knee slid. He caught the wall with both hands and hung there, breathing hard, like standing was a thing he had to do one piece at a time.

"I'm fine," he said.

"You're on the floor."

"I'm fine."

He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the cigarette still burning on the marble. Smoke drifting up toward the chandeliers.

He didn't ask who it belonged to.

He knew.

ARIANA 

I reached down and got my arms under his.

"Come on."

He didn't move. Just hung there, dead weight, one hand still braced against the wall like it was the only thing holding him up.

I tried again. Pulled harder. Nothing.

"Why are you so heavy," I muttered.

His hand closed around my wrist and pulled.

I went down hard. My knee hit the marble and I caught myself with one palm, and suddenly I was sitting on the floor next to him, close enough to feel the heat coming off his skin.

I grunted. "I'm trying to help you. Stay still."

He didn't answer. His head was down. His breathing was slow and uneven, the way it gets when someone's been drinking for hours and the alcohol has finally caught up with everything they've been holding back all night.

"Call Mom," he said.

I looked at him.

"What?"

"The kitchen's on fire."

I sat there for a second, staring at the side of his face, waiting for the rest of it.

"I didn't hear you," I said.

He bowed his head. His shoulders dropped. He looked smaller than I'd ever seen him — this man who filled rooms, who made people straighten their backs when he walked in, sitting on the cold floor of his father's house with his tie dragging and his shirt untucked.

"She promised she'd be back," he said.

My chest went tight.

I didn't move. I didn't breathe for a second. I just sat there on the marble with my knee still stinging and my wrist still warm where he'd grabbed it, and I heard it — that same sentence, in a different voice, on a different night, from a man who never came home.

I'll be back before you know it, sweetheart. Wait for me.

I swallowed hard. My eyes burned. I blinked it back and hated myself for it.

Not now.

I stood up.

I didn't reach for him again right away. I just looked down at him — the heir, the weapon, the man who'd bought my grandmother's medicine and put a contract in front of me and called me his insurance — and I told myself he was just drunk. That was all. Just drunk. Nothing else.

"Get up," I said.

He didn't move.

"Jack."

His head lifted. Slowly. His eyes found mine and stayed there.

"We have to get to the room," I said. "Now."

He blinked.

"Room," he repeated.

"Yeah."

I held out my hand.

He looked at it for a while. Then he took it.