The cigarette falls from his fingers, crushed beneath his heel like evidence he wants destroyed.
We stand there in the cold air biting through the thin silk of my dress, and I am pathetically, disgustingly ready to forgive him everything if he just…
If he just what, exactly?
Apologizes with sincerity I'd actually believe? Explains the unexplainable? Turns back time and becomes someone worthy of the ache carved into my chest?
The city glitters beneath us, indifferent to our drama unfolding on this stone balcony.
Caleb steps closer, and my heart lurches traitorously toward him despite every rational objection my brain is screaming into the void.
"Does Lucas know?" His voice cuts through the cold air like a blade wrapped in velvet.
"Know what?" I demand, crossing my arms against both the chill and his proximity.
"That you're only with him because of me."
The accusation lands like a slap across my frozen cheeks, stinging with truth I refuse to acknowledge.
"You're delusional." I force the words out through numb lips. "I chose Lucas because he's everything you're not."
"And what exactly am I not?" He tilts his head, moonlight catching the sharp angles of his jaw.
"Kind." I tick the qualities off on trembling fingers. "Honest. Attentive. Capable of basic human decency without ulterior motives attached."
"Sounds like a golden retriever." His mouth curves into that infuriating smirk. "Very exciting."
"Excitement isn't everything, Caleb." I step back, but the railing stops my retreat. "Some of us prefer stability over chaos."
"You don't want stability." He closes the distance I just created. "You want to feel safe wanting what terrifies you."
"What terrifies me is your complete inability to take responsibility for anything you've done."
"I've taken responsibility." His voice drops lower, intimate despite the open air. "I told you the truth about Bennett, about Halloween, about the photo, about all of it."
"After I discovered the mask in your closet!" The words escape louder than I intended. "That's not confession, that's damage control."
"And yet here you are." He gestures between us, at the shrinking space. "Alone with me on a balcony instead of inside with your puppy."
"I came out here for air, not for you."
"Keep telling yourself that." The words land soft and devastating, stripped of mockery.
Silence stretches between us, thick with everything we're not saying. The tension crackles like static before a storm, electric and dangerous and impossibly charged.
His eyes drop to my mouth, and neither of us breathes.
My heart pounds so loud I'm certain he can hear it through the cold air, beating out a rhythm that sounds suspiciously like his name.
Every rational thought I possess screams at me to move, to break this spell, to remember what he's done and who he is beneath the beautiful surface.
But my feet stay rooted to the stone, and my lips part without permission. He leans closer, breath warm against my frozen skin, and I think—
The balcony door opens with a sound like a gunshot. Lucas appears in the doorway, concern shifting to wariness when he sees Caleb, then bleeding into something territorial that hardens his jaw.
"There you are." Lucas crosses the balcony toward me, gaze never leaving Caleb. "I've been looking everywhere for you."
"Just getting some air." My voice sounds strange to my own ears. "The ballroom was getting stuffy."
"I can imagine." His arm slides around my waist, pulling me against his side. "Caleb. Still here?"
"Just leaving." Caleb's expression goes carefully blank, walls slamming into place. "The view got less interesting."
He turns toward the door, dismissing us both, and recklessness unfolds in my chest like a dark flower blooming.
I want to hurt him the way he hurt me.
I want to feel something other than this constant, exhausting ache that follows me everywhere he's been.
I want him to watch and suffer and understand what it feels like when someone you want chooses someone else.
"Lucas." I turn in his arms before my brain can intervene, sliding my hands up his chest.
"Serena?" Confusion flickers across his handsome face, replaced quickly by hope.
I wind my arms around his neck, fingers threading through his sandy hair, and I kiss him. Not a polite kiss, not the careful and tentative press of lips we've shared before my house.
This kiss is deep and lingering, my body pressed against his, my mouth demanding a response I don't actually want but desperately need him to give.
I keep my eyes open just long enough to see Caleb's expression shatter. His face crumbles like a city under siege, devastation writing itself across every feature before he can reconstruct his defenses.
Then he turns away, broad shoulders rigid beneath his perfectly tailored jacket, and disappears through the balcony door without looking back.
Lucas responds eagerly, pulling me closer, one hand cupping the back of my head like I'm precious and wanted and exactly what he's been waiting for. When we finally break apart, he's flushed and pleased, eyes bright with satisfaction.
"What was that for?" His thumb traces my cheekbone with unbearable tenderness.
"I just wanted to." The lie tastes like copper on my tongue, bitter and wrong.
"I'm not complaining." He grins, boyish and uncomplicated, everything I should want. "Feel free to want that anytime."
"We should go back inside." I extract myself from his arms gently. "People will talk."
"Let them." But he offers his arm like a gentleman and leads me toward the door.
I glance back at the railing one final time.
Caleb is gone, but his cigarette still smolders on the stone, abandoned mid-smoke. The ember glows orange against the darkness, slowly dying, and I watch it consume itself until Lucas pulls me inside.
That night, I lie awake in my childhood bedroom, staring at a ceiling that holds no answers.
Funny how memory works—you'd think I'd be savoring Lucas's eager response, his pleased surprise, the warmth of his body against mine. But my traitorous mind has other plans, circling Caleb's face like a vulture over carrion.
The moment before he turned away plays on a loop behind my closed eyelids.
Devastated doesn't cover it, though that word comes closest to the wreckage I witnessed. He looked destroyed, the foundation cracked and walls collapsed, everything he hid so carefully was suddenly visible.
I tell myself this is what I wanted—punishment for every lie, every manipulation, every wound he inflicted. This is justice served cold on a stone balcony while the city sparkled beneath us.
So why does victory taste like ash coating my tongue?
Why does hurting him feel like hurting myself twice over?
The clock reads three in the morning when sleep finally claims me, but even in dreams, I can't escape the blue of his eyes right before they went hollow.