Page 18 of Avalanche (Endless Winter #3)
Antoine stares at her, green eyes wide with surprise. When Antoine doesn’t reply, Lily flushes, wringing her hands in her lap.
“I mean, if that’s what you’re asking?” Her teeth catch her lower lip, her chest shuddering on a stuttered exhale. “I don’t… I’m not after your money or anything. I just thought?—”
Her rambling is cut short by Antoine nearly falling off the arm of the couch to get to her, hauling her against him in a burst of excited French.
I catch a few of the words, the familiar mon dieu and merci and ma puce twining with a rush of others.
I don’t have to understand him to hear the gratitude in his voice, the relief.
I don’t have to guess at the look Liam is shooting the pair of them either, sitting in the corner of the couch with a Lily-sized gap between him and Seth.
Jealousy .
I swallow, surprised to find that the feeling is my own, too.
It hits me harder than I would have expected, a sharp, clawing sort of thing that has my shoulders bunching.
It echoes against my earlier doubts, reminding me of the irritation I felt coming home to the smell of sex, of that sense of being outside something while Lily, Liam, Antoine and Matty exchanged love-sick smiles and knowing looks.
Someone makes a pained sound and I blink to awareness, the room sharpening around me.
Matty has risen to his feet, his face contorted, blue eyes shining against reddened skin.
He stares at Lily and Antoine for a long moment, looking like a man who has just watched everything he loves go up in flames.
He stumbles back, big hands flying to his chest as if he can feel his heart ripping out.
“You… you can’t.”
The words sound so contorted, they’re almost inhuman. He shakes his head as the hands clutched to his chest clench into fists.
“You can’t.”
Every part of me tenses at the sound of those words. The look Matty gives Antoine is harsh and dangerous, full of raw, blind anger. There is no soft smile, no embarrassed grin.
Antoine must hear it too, must feel the threat at his back because he releases Lily, putting her behind him as he turns to face Matty.
Matty’s nostrils flare, lips quivering as he bares his teeth. I expect him to lunge, to attack, something. I pull my legs beneath me, ready to move to Antoine’s side, adrenaline rushing through me so fast it makes my head spin.
The couch creaks as Seth rises to stand, placing himself quietly between Matty and Antoine, between Matty and all of us.
He’s taller than Matty, I realize. Bigger too, even though you wouldn’t know it by the gentle way he moves or the way he always seems to compress into someone smaller when he sits down.
Like he’s afraid of taking up too much space.
Awareness flickers behind Matty’s blue eyes, reptilian instinct giving way to humanity. He blinks, color draining from his face as he draws in shallow, rasping breaths.
“You’re okay, man,” Seth tells him, but there is a hardness to his voice I’ve only ever heard once before. A warning. I remember what that warning looked like last time, the dented dry-wall and bloodied tiles of that bathroom. The cuts across the back of Seth’s knuckles. Tom’s broken face.
I rise to my feet, my body humming with the need to move, the need to do something.
“Shoes on, mate.” I push past Seth, knocking my fists against Matty’s chest as I bark the order up at him. I don’t think about how big he is. About the fact that I can feel him vibrating with anger beneath the palms of my hands. “Come on. Get your shoes on.”
I tilt my head to the pile of shoes in front of the door, then give him another push.
He huffs, then yields beneath me, reluctant and slow.
I guide him to the door, moving him like I would one of my sister’s horses.
They’re big too, bigger than him. But even the unruliest of them will fall back if you approach them right.
Keep your voice and body language steady.
Act like you expect them to listen. And never, ever let them see your fear.
I shove my own boots on, socks bunching around my ankles, not bothering to lace them right. “We’re going for a walk,” I tell him, nudging one of his boots towards him. “Come on. I don’t have all day.”
His hands tremble as he pulls on one boot and then the other, fingers unable to tie the laces. I shove his coat at him. “Coat on,” I order, grabbing another coat from the pile. I think it’s Liam’s, but whatever. It fits me well enough.
The evening air hits like a slap when I open the door, but I shove Matty outside before he has a chance to think, then pull the door shut behind both of us.
The darkness that envelops us is almost absolute, punctuated only by the flickering lamplight in the parking lot below.
The concrete stairs glisten with ice, metal handrail white with frost. I draw in a breath, tasting snow on the air.
Matty is halfway down the ice-coated steps when he finally speaks.
“Where—where are we going?”
His voice is raspy, his breath making pale clouds around his face.
“Out,” I tell him decisively. Then, because he probably needs some direction: “We need to get some stuff from the dairy. The convenience store, I mean.” I tilt my chin to the lights glittering beyond the parking lot, to where streetlamps cast haloed light over the sidewalk and the last of the rush-hour traffic winds its way through grey slush.
“We need to pick up a few things for dinner.”
It’s a lie, of course. I have no idea what we’re having for dinner, or whether we need anything to make it. I don’t even know who is cooking tonight, except that it isn’t me.
Matty nods, his bare hands trembling as he grips the ice coated railing, his booted feet threatening to slip out from under him on the steps. I follow behind him, watching with grim trepidation as I mull over what I’m going to say to him, whether I should say anything at all.
Is it even my place to call him out? Is it enough to just take him outside to cool down?
“You gonna explain what the fuck that was all about?”
The words tumble out while I’m still considering what to say, my mouth moving before my brain has a chance to censor anything.
Matty makes a choking sound, his feet skidding beneath him as he turns to look up at me from a few steps below. I blink down at him, at his broad face and that upturned nose and those blue eyes that make him look like a kicked puppy.
No. No, I’m not going to feel sorry for him. I’m not.
“You acted like a fucking asshole back there,” I tell him flatly, continuing down the steps until there is only a step between us, bringing us eye-to-eye. At this angle, the lamplight from the parking lot glows behind him, making his golden waves glow like a halo.
“I know,” he croaks. Even in the dim light, I can see the red splotches of emotion peppered under his eyes, along his cheeks, down his throat. He scrubs at his face. “God. I know.”
I start at his admission, at his bald acceptance. The wall of resolve I’ve built up starts to crumble, melting like ice beneath spring sun.
“I-I love her.” The words burst out of him, cracking and brittle as shattered glass.
I flinch at the feel of them, at the rawness of it.
“I love her, Eddie. Like, really, really love her.” His jaw wobbles, face twisting with the agony of a man trying to hold back his emotions as he pats the breast pocket of his coat with one shaking hand. “She’s—she’s it for me.”
His jaw clenches, lips pressing together around words so pitched with anguish I can barely understand them. He stares at me in desperate silence as he fumbles with his jacket pocket, a wounded sound escaping him when he pulls free what he’s been searching for.
It takes me a moment to realize what he’s holding.
“Fuck,” I whisper when my brain translates the meaning behind that little black box.
Thick fingers peel back the lid, carefully exposing the treasure within. It glints in the pale lamplight, a simple gold band with the tiniest of diamonds set along it.
“This belonged to my grandma,” he says, as if that somehow explains why he’s been carrying a fucking wedding ring around in his jacket. “My grandpa gave it to me after she passed away.”
I can’t look at his face. It seems wrong somehow, like looking at his pain in this moment is too private, too personal. I stare at the ring instead, at those diamonds glinting like hopeful starlight along the band. Five of them, all the same size.
I don’t know much about jewelry, but it seems like the sort of thing Lily would like.
“I’ve been waiting for the right time to ask her.”
He clears his throat, the lid of the box snapping shut as he tucks it back into his pocket then wipes his face on the sleeve of his jacket.
My eyes follow the movement and I instantly regret it, forcing myself to look away.
To stare into the dark, snow-crusted hillside that leads up to the apartment complex, to the lights of the road beyond. But it’s too late.
I’ve seen what he looks like cracked open, with tears streaming down his cheeks and glistening in haunted blue eyes. And I can’t unsee that.
“I know…” he begins, then drags in a shuddering breath.
I try not to hear it. Try to ignore the way the exhale that follows it sounds more like a sob than anything else. I glare into the darkness, blinking angrily at the sting threatening behind my own eyes. He’s not crying. He’s not crying. Just don’t look…
“I know it’s too early to ask her,” he continues, the words coming in a hurried rush, as if he doesn’t trust that he’ll be able to say them for much longer. “I know it hasn’t been that long. But my grandparents didn’t know each other that long before they got married, either. And I love her.”
He says this last bit like it explains everything, like those three words excuse the absolute madness of planning to propose to a girl who he’s only known a few months. Who he’s only dated a few weeks.
I shake my head, not sure whether to laugh or yell at him or both. He loves her. He loves her and so he was just going to propose to her? Just like that? Doesn’t he know how crazy that is?
“And then Antoine… Antoine…”
I scrub at my face, blinking rapidly as I try to shut out the sound of his voice, the way he says Antoine’s name like a man begging for mercy.
“I-I kissed him.” The admission is a cry, soft and sharp as a bird shot out of the sky. “He… we… earlier today… we all… with Lily, and…” The words falter, lost amid harsh, choked sobs and sniffs.
I turn to look at him in alarm, staring at the mess of a man in front of me as if seeing him for the first time.
“Holy shit,” I breathe, because it all makes sense now.
I think of the way the condo smelled, like come and sweat and lube.
I think of Lily’s languid smile and Liam lounging with all the smugness of an overfed cat.
I remember Matty’s dazed, almost guilty expression when I teasingly asked what the hell they’d all been doing.
“Holy shit,” I repeat.
“And now he’s going to marry her,” he rasps.
I take a careful step back, my heels scraping ice from the steps, my bare hands numb as I grip the rail.
What the fuck am I supposed to say to all of this? What am I supposed to do? What do you say to someone who fucked around with a guy for presumably the first time, only to have that guy propose to the girl he wanted to marry?
And who knows what the hell those guys did, but I’ve heard enough of Liam and Antoine through the thin walls of the condo to suspect that whatever they did, Matty wasn’t ready for it.
Matty, who was a virgin about five minutes ago.
Matty, who has been carrying his dead grandma’s wedding ring in his pocket so he could propose to Lily.
I grit my teeth, jaw clenching with irritation at the whole situation.
I didn’t sign up for this. I just wanted to date Lily.
If this was anyone except Matty standing in front of me, I would have told him to get a fucking grip and left him standing in the cold.
But this is Matty.
“Okay.” The word drags out of me on an exhale, clouding in the space between us.
I pat the jacket’s pocket, some of the tightness in my chest relaxing when I feel the bulge of Liam’s wallet inside.
“Change of plans.” I shoot Matty a smile, sharp and fast and forced.
“We’re going out for dinner. You’re going to tell me what happened. Everything.”
I cringe inwardly as I say this, because I’m not entirely sure I want to hear about what the four of them got up to today. But whatever. Fine.
“And then you and I—we’re going to work out a plan.”