Page 169 of On His Mind

I shiver as I walk over to him, crossing my arms because I forgot my coat. I didn’t think about the weather when I saw him sitting on the bench. Now I’m shaking harder than I ever have. How is he out here without quivering?

He’s hunched forward with his elbows on his knees and his breath going up white in front of him. I can tell he’s been out here a while because his ears are red, his hands are red, and he’s got frost in his hair. When he hears me, he looks up.

And his blue eyes cut straight through me. I feared this would happen if I ever saw him again –– that I’d forget why I even broke it off in the first place. I have a soft spot for this man, and seeing him like this, like he’s in turmoil, is beyond me. He looks like he’s been crying. And I realize right here, right now that I would do anything for him.

We just stare at each other. And it feels like no time has passed at all, but I can tell he doesn’t feel the same. He’s frozen half to death, looking at me like he can’t believe I exist.

“You’re freezing,” he says, looking down at my arms.

I had actually forgotten I was even cold.

“Percy—”

“Go back inside, Penelope. It’s freezing.”

I stay standing there, watching him.

He’s already standing, shrugging out of his own jacket, and before I can stop him, he’s put it around my shoulders, his hands quick and careful at the collar, and then he steps back, and now he’s in a sweater. I pull it around me, wrapping myself in the heat his body left in the jacket.

“You called,” I say. My voice isn’t steady.

“Yeah.” He sits back down.

I sit next to him, and the jacket takes most of the cold. “What’s that?” I ask. “In your hand.”

He looks down at it like he forgot he was holding it. Then, he hands it to me without saying anything.

It’s a card. Homemade, folded cardstock, and on the front, somebody’s drawn the whiteboard — the actual Hawthorne whiteboard, the rules, in pencil — with a big red line struck through all of the rules.

I flip it open, and the inside is filled with signatures.

All of them. Rule’s repealed. — Benson. And under it, We took a vote. It was unanimous. Be with her. — Rowan. And Stanley’s, enormous, taking up half the space: I enforced the rules and I hereby un-enforce them, by the power vested in me by nobody. GO GET HER. And Blue’s, at the bottom: She waited years. Don’t make her wait more. And the girls have signed it too, all of them, little notes crowded into the margins.

I understand what I’m holding and the significance of it.

I turn around and look up at my window. All of them duck. Gianna bangs into Stanley, and the two of them start arguing. I chuckle at the sight of them rubbing their heads. Percy looks over his shoulder at me, then the window.

“Christ,” he says.

I face forward, letting my laugh die.

This is the thing he was afraid of. This exact group of people, their laughter, their jokes. I look down at the card in my hands. They know. All of them. They signed this card and planned everything that happened upstairs.

“You have your own card,” he says, his breath physically in front of him in a cloud. It disappears within seconds, and I watch it go.

I look down and read it all again.

He was never going to lose them. I cling to his jacket tighter.

“Did you know,” I say. “What they did upstairs? Just now.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“They really love you.”

He looks at the window and shakes his head. “I know.”

“I understand why it mattered to you. I’ve gotten really close with the girls, and they’re great.”