PPS: You’re like Manhattan snow, beautiful but cold.
PPPS: I’m going to shred your fancy YSL raincoat into a million little pieces. You’re welcome.
PAST.
Three and a Half Years Prior.
NYE London and Tate are turning fourteen.
It’s been one-thousand, two-hundred, and seventy-seven days since I last saw London Héroux.
I know because I’ve been counting.
Yeah, I know. I’m fucked.
I didn’t have it in me to return to the lake the night after the thunderstorm. I didn’t know what to say to her. How to act. How to simply be. So I didn’t return until a week later. The nights by the lake without London feel different. I don’t know how exactly, but they just do.
Colder.
That’s how they feel.
It’s crazy how one single night can change your life forever… Like tonight.
The piercing echo of crashing glass has my heart jolting up my throat. It scares me so much that the sewing needle slips from my hand, getting lost in the sea of my bedsheets.
God.
That broken glass.
I always know it’s coming, especially this late at night. I just never know when…
That’s the part that startles me the most.
In fact, it all does. But I just have to put on a brave face.
My father is an alcoholic, and there’s nothing in the whole world I can do to change it.
My stepmom always pleads with him to stop. To not hurt her. To not hurt me. But when he’s in one of his violent outrage moments, anything can happen. Just ask the scar on my forearm.
It’s why I wish I could see London every night, to ease the hurt my father supplies.
Except… she never returned to the lake.
Not since the very first night.
Three and a half years ago.
I thought it could be our hideaway. Our secret. Our escape. I was wrong.
“Oh my God! What is wrong with you, Mirko?” My stepmom’s scream echoes through the walls of our luxurious Manhattan brownstone.
Everything echoes.
We moved in last week after less than six months of living in our previous house. Unopened boxes are scattered everywhere. I’m in middle school now, and my father was supposed to be better in this district. Everything was supposed to be better.
But it’s New Year’s Eve, and everything seems to be the same.
My birthday is in less than an hour, and my parents locked me in my bedroom so I wouldn’t ruin their New Year’s party. The one they hold every year to keep up appearances and create a fake fantasy that the Meadowses are perfect, when the truth is, they’re not.
We’re not.
Champagne. Caviar. Millionaires. It’s all happening outside my bedroom wall.
The lives of the New York City elites.
My father and stepmom don’t care about me. They never did. They never will. All they care about is golf, diamonds, and the latest Rolex. Sometimes, I even question if my father remembers he has a son, and my stepmom a daughter. It’s why I find myself sitting on that bench by that lake every night, wishing upon a freaking star that London Héroux will appear and save me.
I’m terrified to admit I’ve held onto Mr. Bunny for more nights than I’d ever thought I would to ease the pain in my chest that comes with every one of my parents’ arguments. My best friend, Levi, would kill me if I told him that a teddy bear belonging to London Héroux is my comfort. As much as I love him, he’d tease me for being the upcoming star quarterback holding a bear that belongs to a forbidden blonde angel to sleep.
It doesn’t matter how much time has passed. I can still smell the hint of rosy vanilla submerged in its fur. The same scent I caught a whiff of the night I told London the moon could be ours.
I’ve gone to sleep for the past three and a half years staring outside my bedroom window at the moon, wondering if London ever does the same. If she replays that night as much as I do.
Gulping down, I find the needle in my bed with the chocolate brown thread and continue sewing the little button on Mr. Bunny. His eye.
When London gave the bear to me, he only had one button eye, and I was going to keep it that way until the other came undone this morning. I managed to find two antique buttons at a thrift shop and thought Mr. Bunny deserved a facelift.
Smiling softly, I finish off his last eye and hold Mr. Bunny back, satisfied with the results. My room is dim, the wall sconces I have on above my bed providing little light, and just as I pack my grandma’s sewing kit away and set it on my bedside table, breaking glass pierces the air again.
And then the shouts resume.
“Are you serious, Mirko? What is wrong with you?” My stepmom gasps as the lively music comes to a screeching halt. “I’m so sorry, everybody. I think my husband has had one too many for one night… and it isn’t even the New Year yet.”
The guests laugh.
Laugh.
Because the Meadowses are perfect, and nothing could break us. Right?
Wrong.
There have to be at least three hundred and fifty people out there. My stepsister, Maddie, is sleeping over at one of her friend’s houses, which leaves just me to witness the carnage that is my parents’ broken marriage. A marriage holding on by a thin thread of rehab, therapy, and lies.
They think I don’t see anything. They’re wrong. I see it all. Every. Single. Thing.
So I do the one thing I always do whenever it feels like too much…
I switch off my light.
Slip out of bed and smooth out the sheets.
Get dressed and tuck Mr. Bunny into my raincoat’s deep pocket.
Slowly, I climb out of my first-floor bedroom window with steady hands.
And when crushed rock rumbles beneath the soles of my canvas runners, I run.
I run through the front porch. Through the streets. Through the city that never sleeps. Until my lungs are burning and my heart floods with the hope that perhaps tonight will be different.
Rushing past the crowds of people already partying the incoming year, I finally make it into Central Park. I feel calmer here. Safer with the smell of fresh greenery, holistic plants, and warmth of the familiarity of this place, no matter how violently the chilly winter air kisses my face.
It feels like all the air has been knocked out of my lungs as I come to a stop, inches from my bench.
Oh.
My.
God.
My grip on Mr. Bunny tightens.
Honey-blonde.
Honey-blonde is all I see.
I know how wrong it is. How wrong the relieved grin on my lips is, because for a little while, I believed something bad had happened to her, so seeing her tonight feels like a miracle. A real-life miracle. That is until I step closer, snow flattening beneath my feet, and the soft sounds of sobs have my grin falling.
London has her back to me on the bench and hasn’t seen me yet.
Tension clenches around my heart at her hands, which rush up to her face as she cries out to the cold, cold, world.
There’s not a soul who passes by that notices her.
That cares.
Nobody but me.
It takes three strides, and I’m right behind her. Without thinking, I do the only thing that comes naturally and round the bench. The second I sit beside London and pull her into my arms, her entire body tenses up.
And mine? My body?
Well, it goes into shock.