Everything Between Us (7 page)

After I dry the last dish and put it away, I sit in front of the TV with Mom and watch her instead of the screen. Then I kiss her and drive back to my apartment. I sketch, I watch more TV, I play Assassin’s Creed, I jack off, I take a shower, I go to bed. I’m fine. Just like always.

I get up before the sun and go to the gym, where I lift weights and push myself until my spotter gives me this look that says I’m scaring him. But I need the fatigue, the heaviness in my muscles that weighs me down and keeps me from wanting to make any sudden moves. On the way to Stella’s, I flip through channels on the radio. There’s supposed to be a major storm coming in a few days, but it’s late January in Michigan, so what else is new? I pull up to the side entrance and go in, my heart already thumping a little harder, but Liza meets me in the breezeway. Her hair is loose and she’s dressed more casually than usual. She grins when she sees me. “I was hoping I’d see you before I left.”

I stand still as she wraps her arms around my neck and presses her hips to mine. It does nothing for me, but she doesn’t notice. She kisses me, sliding her tongue between my teeth and squeezing my ass. Still holding my sketchpad and toolbox, I do my best to give her what she wants. Finally, she pulls back and smears her thumb along my lips, telling me I’m wearing her lipstick now. “The car’s coming for me in a few minutes.”

“Where are you going?”

“Spa. Just for a week. Lou’s off to Germany with one of his little playthings, and I really need to get away. But don’t worry …” Her hands slide down my sides. “I’ll be back in plenty of time for your gallery opening.”

I smile, hoping it fools her. “Cool. So … is Stella going with you? I mean, you seemed pretty worried about her.”

She gives me this
are you insane?
look. “I told you she won’t leave the house.”

“Yeah, but … she’s okay to be here alone?”

“Stella wants to be left alone so she can spend her days making banana bread and chocolate cupcakes,” she says in this hard, condescending way. “I’m sure she’s thrilled.”

“Really?”

She rolls her eyes. “I thought you’d be the one upset about me going.”

Oh, there it is. The pouting,
please tell me you care
voice. “Well, of course I am. I’m glad you’ll be back for the opening.”

She lets me go. “Good. Because I’ll be looking fabulous.”
And I need someone to notice
, I add for her. Poor Liza.

She kisses me for a while longer, and I make all the right moves but don’t push it, because it’s after ten, and Stella’s waiting.

I can’t believe that thought just went through my head. Stella’s probably grateful for every Daniel-free moment she gets. Maybe I simply enjoy ruining her day. “Have a great trip, Liza.”

A honk from the driveway saves me. Her car is here. She heads out, and I duck into the powder room to scrub her lipstick off my face. Then I stride down to the enclosed porch, and as I approach, I find myself walking softly, wanting to catch Stella in one of those moments. Wanting to watch her. But when I peek around the corner, she looks up immediately.

“Hey,” I say. “Sorry I’m late.” It just comes out of me, before I realize I’m handing her another bullet.

But like yesterday, she doesn’t pull the trigger. “It’s all right. My mom said she wanted to say goodbye to you.”

I set my box down and lay my sketchpad on the table. “She said she’d be gone for a week. Aren’t you going to miss her?”

Her dark eyes meet mine. “No. Are you?”

“No.” Holy shit, did I just say that? What the fuck?

She blinks. “Okay.”

I have no idea how to translate her
okay
. So I grab my pencil and sit down. She hasn’t turned away yet, and I’m wondering if today will be like yesterday, if she’ll watch me. The idea stirs within my blood, raising my temperature. I clear my throat, trying to figure out how Stella manages this when she’s twenty feet away—her mom was grinding against me a few minutes ago, and I ran cool as ever. I stand up suddenly and walk over to the windows. It’s because I’ve been thrown off. What’s going on with my mom has made me jump the rails.

Stella moves in my periphery, and I turn my head. She’s standing in front of the glass now, too. “Did you see something out there?”

I wait for the barb that usually comes at the end of her questions, the ones meant to tear my ego away piece by piece. It’s like she somehow
knows
I’m nothing special underneath the slick exterior, and she’s eager to work her way in there and splash around. I get ready to repel the attack with a glib comment, maybe a counterjab to throw her off balance for a moment, but again, she doesn’t go for it. She’s simply waiting for my answer.

“Oh. I thought … a possum, maybe,” I stammer.

She snorts. “Possums are nocturnal.” Her laughter is raspy, like her voice sometimes. It’s low and husky, a seductive kind of sound. This would be the moment when she makes a crack about how stupid I am, but instead, she says, “But maybe there was one doing the walk of shame across our lawn. It could happen.”

Out of nowhere, I’m grinning. I didn’t even know I had it in me today. “Just trying to get back to its own tree without being spotted.”

She nods solemnly. “Possums can be so judgmental.” There’s a hint of an apology in her tone.

“Yeah, but they’re damn cute, so it’s easy to forgive them.”

It’s there and gone in an instant, this flash of surprise and warmth. “So …” she says slowly. “What are we doing today?”

I lean against the metal frame between the floor-to-ceiling panes of glass. “It seems like we’re starting with playful banter before we move on to thinly veiled threats and open insults. I like this change in routine.”

She takes a full step back from me, her arms rising to wrap around her middle. In the moment it takes for me to mentally kick myself, her eyes drift back out to the lawn. “I’m sorry for being so mean, Daniel,” she says to the glass. “You didn’t deserve that at all.” Then she sighs and returns to her chaise.

I stand there, stunned. That was an honest to God peace offering if I’ve ever heard one, and I’m shocked at how much it means to me, how happy I am to hear it. “I’m sorry for being so callous,” I reply.

She gives me a questioning look, but I don’t know how to explain how bad I feel about drawing her at her worst and shoving it in her face. I don’t know how to apologize for dismissing her fear. I’m afraid if I try, I’ll make her feel worse. So instead, I stride over to my toolbox and pluck an extra charcoal pencil from the case. I grab my sketchpad and sit down on the end of the chaise. She pulls her knees to her chest, but she keeps her head up and her eyes on me. I put the large pad of paper between us.

“When you first start a sketch,” I begin, “keep your strokes light. It’s just an outline. A shadow of what’s to come.” I hold a pencil out to her, working hard to keep my hand steady. My heart’s thundering, enough for me to feel it through my whole body.

Stella gazes at the pencil. Taking it means she’s giving in, and she knows it. Her tongue darts out and wets her bottom lip, which she catches between her teeth a moment later. I wait, wondering why it means so much to me, why I want her surrender more than I’ve wanted anything for a long time. Is it just the idea of winning? Because this doesn’t feel like a game.

Her fingers twitch around her ankles. Her eyes meet mine, full of questions, pleading almost, for what I don’t know. Her fingers brush mine as she takes the pencil, and that tiny touch is seismic.

I want her
.

I want to run my hand up her leg and feel the curves and dips of her muscles and sinew, her skin beneath my palm. I want to see the look in her eyes, and if it changes when I do that to her. I want her to feel as naked beneath my touch as I do beneath her gaze.

“I don’t know what I want to draw,” she says, her raspy voice punching straight through the haze of my fantasy.

I hunch, my elbows on my knees, because I’m so fucking hard right now that I could drive nails with my dick. “Ahh, how about that tree?” I ask unsteadily, flailing toward a patch of woods at the edge of the lawn.

She squints. I breathe. She nods. I relax a little.

“So am I just supposed to …” She waves the tip of her pencil over the blank page.

“Yes. I’ll draw one, too.”

She chuckles. “Okay, but you’re my teacher, so you’re not allowed to laugh, right?”

“Right,” I say firmly. I glance over at her and her smile does it to me all over again, so I turn back to my paper. “Let’s get to work.”

I draw a tree, and she draws something that looks vaguely like a tree. I give her a few pointers about perspective, and she actually listens. She’s not exactly a natural, but she’s not hopeless, either. I get a little distracted watching her hands move, so I force myself to focus on my own sketch, adding foliage and branches to keep myself occupied. I’ve never really done this, sharing a paper with someone else, side by side, building something together. I’ve always done my own thing, because I wanted to control it. But this is kind of fun. Her shoulder is almost touching mine. She smells really good, like vanilla with a hint of cinnamon. It makes me want to press my nose to her skin.

I need to move away from her. I get up and pretend to be looking through my box for something, just to give myself a chance to calm down. Now that I know what this is, maybe I can control it. I can’t afford to be this attracted to Liza’s daughter. And even if I can’t control that, I can control what I do about it: nothing.

When I’ve got that intention firmly in place, I go back over to see Stella huddled over the drawing. She leans back as I sit down again, a tiny, eager, mischievous smile playing on her lips.
Dammit
. She should not be allowed to smile at me that way.

“What are you up to?” I ask.

She gestures at the drawing. In the center, between our two trees, is a … “Is that a cat?”

She groans. “It’s supposed to be a possum. I totally suck.”

I crack up. Stella’s drawn a possum doing the walk of shame. Its head is bowed, and she’s even drawn a little blush on its cheek. “No, not at all.” I lean over and hastily sketch my own possum, huddled next to her tree.

She puts her face close enough to it that I wonder if she needs glasses. “Is it sad?”

“Are you kidding? He’s just had the night of his life. He’s exhausted—and hoping she’ll come back tonight.”

We both laugh, but as her cheeks flush I have to wonder if Stella has much experience with guys. She goes pink every time I make jokes like that. She holds up our creation, probably trying to pull my attention toward the drawing. “I think we did a pretty good job,” she says. “Possums at dawn.”

“Possums at dawn,” I repeat. “It’s funny, actually. I did a painting once where—” I pause, watching her expression. Forget pink—now her cheeks are crimson. “You looked me up, didn’t you?”

Her eyes are huge. Holy shit. She looked me up. Which means she was thinking about me when I wasn’t here. “I … was curious.”

I grin. “Looking for blackmail material?” Why am I so thrilled about that?

She sits back. “What good would that do? We’ve already established you have no shame.” It’s the kind of thing she would have said to me a few days ago, except then it would have been razor-edged and dipped in poison, and now her voice is trembling with laughter.

“Good point. So what did you find?”

“Your big secret,” she says, the corner of her mouth curling.

“Which is what?”

She gives me this innocent look. “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret.”

I laugh. “How convenient.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

Still chuckling, I start to pack up. I keep my movements slow, but I need to get out of here. She’s tying me in knots, and no one is allowed to do that.

“Daniel?”

“Hmm?” I put my pencils back in their case, close my toolbox, and look over my shoulder.

She’s sitting on the end of the chaise, and her expression isn’t teasing anymore. It’s utterly serious. Concerned. “Are you feeling any better? I know you were worried about something yesterday.”

Boom
. Right in the gut. I lean on my toolbox, looking down at my hands spread white across the top of it. “Yeah,” I say hoarsely. “I’m good.”

Her footsteps on the carpet are nearly silent, but I feel her presence behind me because I’m so aware of her, because she’s fucking dangerous, because she goes back and forth between sharp and soft too quickly for me to keep up—and then goes straight for the jugular. “Are you sure?” she asks. She sounds like she wants to touch me, and I can’t let that happen.

I draw in a sharp breath and get to my feet, keeping my back to her. “Totally. See you tomorrow?”

“Okay,” she says softly.

I head for the door and don’t look back.

Chapter Six: Stella

Our phone starts to ring early Friday morning, and I hear Willa, our housekeeper, answering as I help myself to the last slice of the coffee cake I made yesterday morning. “Of course,” she says to the person on the other end. “Stay safe.”

She hangs up and comes to me, a strained look on her face. “They say this storm is going to be bad.”

I glance out the window. Tiny pellets of ice are bouncing off the panes. “That was the workers calling to cancel?”

She nods. “Miss, I …” Her brow furrows and she gazes out the window.

“Go home, Willa,” I say. “Don’t wait.”

She sags with relief. “Oh, thank you.” Concern creeps onto her face immediately, though. “Will you be all right?”

“Sure I will. You don’t have to worry about me.” Even as I say it, my heart’s beating a little faster. I’m safe here, right?

“There’s plenty of food in the fridge and pantry. I went shopping yesterday,” she says eagerly, as if she can see the anxiety written all over my face.

Shivering as cold prickles of panic course over my skin, I nod. “I’ll be totally fine. Go home to your family.”

She gives me a grateful smile and heads out. I am alone. Daniel’s supposed to be here at ten, but why would he show? In fact, if I had his number, I’d call him and tell him to stay home. He shouldn’t drive all the way out here in this weather, not when everyone else is scurrying for cover. I go to my computer and look up the number for the co-op, but when I call, it rings and rings before switching over to a generic message. I’m feeling too stupid and embarrassed to actually leave one, so I hang up and then spend a solid hour chastising myself for not being able to do it. Why does everything have to be so hard?