Harder (15 page)

“You can’t be friends with a ten-year-old.”

“I can if you’ll let me.”

“What if I won’t?”

“Why wouldn’t you? Your sister deserves a friend, don’t you think?”

“Maybe a friend her age.”

“What if she made one at school? She couldn’t bring her friend over here. She couldn’t go to the friend’s house for a playdate, not with your work schedule the way it is. She’s stuck hanging out alone for hours every day.”

“Laurie keeps her company sometimes.”

“He’s got to be fifty, though. Are you honestly saying it’s better for her to be with him than to do stuff with me?”

Begrudgingly, he says, “No.”

“Good. Because I’m good for your sister, and I think you know it.”

West turns his head away to look out over the drive. My vision is better now, sharp enough to pick out the shape of his profile against the sky. His Adam’s apple.

I can feel how tired he is. His tiredness is tangible, a statement his body makes to mine, and my arms want to reach out and touch him. My heavy head wants to find his shoulder.

He used to feel this way after a Wednesday-night shift at the bakery—dead on his feet by the time we stumbled through the door to his apartment. He’d flop back on the bed still kicking his boots off, pull me against his side, nudge his face into my hair, and fall asleep in his clothes.

There was something so trusting in it, so precious about being that close to him at his most vulnerable.

He taps the toe of his boot against the step. “I don’t get what you’re doing here.”

“I think I’m helping.”

“I don’t see why you’d want to.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“I told you I’d keep away from you,” he says. “I meant it.”

“Is that really what you want?”

I hear him swallow. I wonder if his throat is as sticky as mine. If his heart is beating as fast.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

He doesn’t answer for so long, I think he won’t. But when he does, I wish he hadn’t, because all he says is, “What I did to you …”

Like fingers snapping—those words ignite my anger in an instant. “I already told you what I thought about what you did.”

“Right,” he says. “And it’s because of what you said that I knew to keep away from you when I came back here.”

“I never imagined you
would
come back here.”

“It doesn’t change anything.”

“For fuck’s sake, West, it changes
everything
!”

“It doesn’t have to, though.”

“What if I want it to?”

“Caro …” He leans closer. I think he’s going to touch me.
All he has to do is reach out his hand—find my waist or my shoulder—but he doesn’t. He sighs. Descends a step. “It’s better this way.”

“I don’t believe that. For me, nothing is better.”

He crosses his arms. “It’ll get better.”

“You’re so full of shit.”

Then he’s quiet for a long time.

He looks at me hard and long, so I look right back at him. I wonder if my face is any easier to read in the dark than his.

I wonder if he misses me in his bed at night the way I miss him in mine.

I don’t understand what’s in his head anymore. What he thinks he’s doing and why he thinks he’s doing it. He pushed me away as hard as he could, but now he’s come back to Putnam, so why doesn’t he come back to me?

What I did to you …

That memory, so raw for me. I avoid thinking about it.

It must be the same for him.

But if it’s just that memory that keeps him from me—if it’s his sense of honor, as if I’m a princess in a tower and he’s soiled my gown so that’s the end of it—fuck that.

Fuck that with a tire iron, is my feeling. If he’s going to deny himself what he wants, deny me what I want, there’s nothing honorable in that. It’s just pigheaded stubborn idiocy, and I won’t stand for it.

Which is the sort of thing it’s easy enough to think. But what do you do?

West and I, we look at each other.

It’s heartbreaking. His pretty cheekbones, the scar in his eyebrow, his nose slightly off center, his ears too small, his mouth so wide and expressive and perfect.

It’s heartbreaking, knowing there was a time when I
could’ve taken him inside and put him to bed, given him some ease, given him something. But that time came and went, and this is the time we’re in now.

The waste of it makes my throat tight.

“I feel guilty,” he says. “Like I’m taking advantage of you when you’re watching Frankie, only I can’t stop taking advantage because I never fucking
asked
you to watch her, and when I tell you to quit, you don’t.”

“That must be tough for you.”

He laughs. “Fuck you, Caro.”

“Wish you would.”

“Christ Jesus.” His hand comes up to brush over his hair and hang up at the back of his neck. He exhales, rough, and I love it. Love getting under his skin.

I love the confirmation and the hit of truth, lust spiking like nicotine through my blood.

It feels like a game, although I know for West it’s dead serious. It’s just that we’ve played this way before. The Caroline who played this game last year was scared and damaged and cautious, but I’m not any of those things anymore. I’m winning, and we’ve barely even started.

“Keep it to once or twice a week, all right?” he says. “You’ve got your own shit to be taking care of. And I don’t want you spending money on her. Leave me your receipts and I’ll pay you back.”

“Really? We’re going to do accounting on this?”

“Cut me some minuscule fucking piece of slack. You’re getting your way on everything else.”

“Not hardly.”

“Caroline.” He recrosses his arms.

“West.” I cross mine.

“What do you want me to say?” he asks.

“I’m going to be around. You’re going to have to deal with it. Deal with me. Stop pretending I don’t exist or that everything’s going to be fine if you say so.”

He makes me wait for his reply. It drags out of his chest, rumbling and low. “Fine.”

I lean down to pick up my bag. My knees threaten to buckle. I’m a cocktail of adrenaline and desire, my body dangerous and stupid.

When I return to standing, he’s still looking, and it’s worse. Better-worse.

Always better-worse, with West.

“What?” I ask.

“I’m trying to figure out your strategy.”

“Who, me? Why would you think I have a strategy?”

“You’re a politician, Caro. You’ve always got a strategy.”

“You make me sound so sneaky.”

“No, not sneaky. But you gotta admit, you’re not always direct.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re not so amenable to the direct approach.”

“Amenable, huh?” His smile races through me.

“Don’t even pretend not to know what it means.”

He shakes his head, slow and weary. “I’m not the one who’s pretending.”

“Being indirect isn’t the same as pretending. Especially when you know if you ask straight up, you’ll get shot down.”

“Why don’t you try it and find out?”

“Not tonight.”

“You already got what you wanted tonight.”

I readjust the strap of my bag on my shoulder. Rise up on my toes, bringing my face a little closer to his. My mouth a little closer. “Not even close.”

The breath explodes out of him. He turns his head away.
“There’s no reason you have to hang around till I’m home, you know.”

“I can’t lock the door behind me.”

That gets me another smile, slower and wider, though he still won’t look my way. “Now you’re gonna tell me you need a key.”

“I don’t mind hanging around until you get back.”

“Some nights I’m on till two.”

“I know. Frankie said.”

Now he looks me over, head to toe. “You sleeping bad again?”

“Sometimes.” Most of the time. I stay up late, sleep a few hours, wake up and work, take a nap late in the day if I don’t have meetings.

My vampire schedule. It was one thing West and I used to have in common.

Still do, I guess.

“I’ll get you a key,” he says. “You can leave when you want.”

“Thanks.”

I brush past him, hyper-aware of his body and the narrowness of the staircase. Conscious that he could reach out, put his hands on me, touch me anywhere, and I’d let him.

Does he feel that, too? He must. It’s right here between us, that knowledge, that love song our bodies never stopped singing.

Even mad at him, I’d kill to be able to go with him to his room, help him get his boots off. I’d die to be able to crawl into the crook of his arm so he could sleep and I could keep him safe.

Keep vigil over him.

“Goodnight, West.”

“ ’Night, Caro.”

I hold that image of us in my head when I get into the car and start driving through the tunnel of my headlights down the deserted country road. Me and West in his bed together.

Me and West, wandering through a wilderness of stars with our hands clasped.

Me leading him out.

The morning after Caroline told me she was back in my life whether I liked it or not, I quit smoking.

She was just going to keep hounding me if I didn’t.

I missed the hit I got from those cigarettes, though, and the way the smoke went all the way down to the bottom of my lungs and made it possible for me to breathe when it felt like I couldn’t get a full breath in Putnam any other way.

After she left that night, I stared after her taillights until they winked around the corner and disappeared. I locked up the apartment and ate leftovers from the dinner I’d made my sister.

I thought about Caroline spending afternoons and evenings with Frankie.

Thought about her in my place, in my kitchen, in my life.

I pulled the rest of my cigarettes out of the freezer, opened every pack, broke them apart, and threw them away.

Then I leaned a hip against the counter and sparked my lighter in the dark.

Spark. Spark. Flame
.

The whole time, I was trying to convince myself that the flame didn’t look like hope, didn’t feel like it, but I’ve never been any good at that kind of self-deception.

That spark in the dark, that wavering flicker—Caroline. Hope.

For me, they were always the same thing.

Impossible girl. That’s what I thought when I first met her. She was exactly what I wanted, everything I wanted, and she was impossible.

What made her impossible was only my fear.

Last time I came to Putnam, I fell in love with her. I claimed a life for myself, then lost it. I didn’t want to take that kind of risk again—not with my sister, and not with my own heart.

But Caroline lost her future once. She lost everything she believed about herself when her ex put her pictures online. Then she fought to reclaim it. She bit and clawed and scrabbled and took it back. It was the most beautiful thing I ever witnessed.

So how stupid was I to think after what I did to her, she would just let me go? Caroline doesn’t let things go. I was the last person on earth she should have wanted anything to do with, but try telling that woman what she’s supposed to want.

Just try it. I’ll be over here laughing.

She wanted me, so there she was on my porch. There she was with my sister.

There she was destroying my cigarettes and pissing me off, telling me I was going to give myself cancer like I didn’t fucking know it already. Like I was supposed to care.

She was trying to make me care, and I resisted for no reason.

Except that’s not true.

I resisted because I was afraid.

What if I couldn’t fix what I’d done to her?

What if I fixed it and lost her anyway, and I found I couldn’t come back from losing her a second time?

What if I claimed Caroline and discovered all over again that hope is a luxury I don’t get to claim?

I was afraid.

But it didn’t matter.

Me and Caroline—it was going to happen anyway. I was going to let it. That last week of September, that first week of October, I tried to keep my distance, stalling, when all the while I was trying to remember how I’d ever done it in the first place.

How I’d given myself permission to take what I wanted.

It sounds easy—telling yourself you deserve good things. Letting yourself want them. Letting yourself claim them.

It sounds easy, but it’s not. For a guy like me, it’s right next door to impossible.

I was stuck in Silt. Not just the Silt on the map, but the Silt in my head. The Silt that made me, trained me to survive, and taught me my life was worth precisely nothing.

The path that led out of Silt was the one that took me back to Caroline. Once I found it, it was easy.

All I had to do was follow the flame.

Halfway through the next week, I stand outside the art building before class.