Legacy (12 page)

Chapter 15

S
omehow, she was back on the couch, and Wes was sitting next to her. Corinne could remember a sinking feeling, a sponginess in her legs and then Wes’s arms, but the rest was just a racing heartbeat and a cold sweat.

“You’re okay,” he whispered, and it was then that she felt his hands moving up and down her sleeves.

She was shivering. And Wes’s hands were warm.

As soon as that thought registered, she scooted away, hugging herself. Wes dropped his hands immediately and sat a little further back, but he didn’t take his eyes off her. Corinne could only look at her knees. How could she face him when he knew all her secrets? He had to think she was the most pathetic creature on earth.

What if he tells Morgan and Dad?

This new horror forced her to look up.

“Are you going to tell anyone?” she blurted. She hated how juvenile she sounded. How weak. But Wes just frowned—not unkindly—and shook his head.

“No, I’m not going to tell anyone.”

Corinne closed her eyes and let herself sigh. At least she would be spared further humiliation. Everything sucked. Everything. But Corinne knew that things could always suck worse.

“Thank you,” she forced herself to say.

“I won’t tell anyone...” Wes repeated, but something in his voice made her look up again. “But things need to change.”

He spoke with absolute conviction. When had that happened? Corinne regarded him, the cast of his eyes, the line of his jaw. When had he become so...
mature?
He had never struck her as someone with authority. And other than his vanity, she’d never understood the personal training thing. But now she did. Wes knew how to tell people what to do, and she could believe that they’d listen. That they’d
want
to listen.

“I know,” she allowed.

She knew things needed to change. Corinne figured that if she wanted to, she could just go out and buy another bottle of ZzzQuil, hide it somewhere clever—in a box of tampons in the bathroom—and keep dosing all of the time, but she couldn’t fool herself; that was no way to live. It was almost a relief that Wes had caught her.

But how would she get to sleep?

And how would she face all of the hours in between?

This time, she sighed a deeper, more bottomless sigh.

“Talk to me,” Wes said, still eyeing her relentlessly.

“I’m never going to sleep,” she declared. “I’m going to lie awake for the rest of my life and probably go nuts in the process.”

Wes cracked a smile, but his brown eyes were shadowed with sadness.

“Tonight’s gonna be rough,” he conceded with a nod. “But after tomorrow, it’ll get better.”

Corinne raised a brow at him.

“How do you know?” she challenged.

He raised a brow to mimic her, but he couldn’t keep a straight face.

“Because you are going to be too worn out.”

The grin Wes wore was downright evil, and Corinne bit her lip.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Wes reached across the coffee table and picked up a plastic card.

“I don’t have to be at the health club until 8:00 tomorrow. And you’re coming with me.” He said it with the same authority he’d asserted a moment before. “You’ll go to the 8 a.m. yoga class, and then at 9:30, you have a personal training appointment with me. Here’s your membership card.”

He handed her the card bearing the fitness club logo, her name, and a membership ID number.

“What the hell—”

“After that, you’ll chill by the pool with your sketchpad.” Wes thrust the 9 x 12 spiral bound pad into her hands. “And, just so you know, I’m not taking you home until there’s new stuff in it, so you’d better use your time wisely. I’ll join you for lunch, and later you can check out the sauna and the hot tub and all of that. I don’t get off until 4, but that’s enough to keep you pretty busy.”

Corinne blinked at him.

“You’ll probably want to pack a bag with your swimsuit and a change of clothes,” he said, nodding. “Oh, and I didn’t know what pencils you’d want to take, so you should pack some of those, too.”

Corinne looked from him to the sketchpad to the membership card.

“Wes, I can’t afford a membership,” she said, flatly.

Wes shook his head, dismissing her concern.

“I put you on my account. I get a discount. It’s all good,” he said, smiling.

Corinne held her expression as still as possible. A part of her wanted to smile back. She was lucky that anyone thought about her enough to plan a whole day for her. But then again, he was pretty much telling her what to do, and the other part of her was a little pissed off. Since when did she let anyone tell her what to do?

Since Wes decided to move in,
she realized.

Still, his plan was better than any she had, and while the prospect of spending the whole day trapped at the health club kind of terrified her, she was also curious to see how it would feel to be out of the house that long. Corinne promised herself that she could always decide to hate it and refuse to go back.

She took a deep breath to settle her nerves.

“Okay, I guess.”

Wes kept it in check, but she could see that her assent made him happy. The muscles in his cheeks fought against an all-out smile, but his brown eyes grew boyish, the light in them turning all the way up.

This time she did smile back. His delight in his triumph was just a little contagious, and at the same time, the fact that it was in an effort to help her challenged her understanding of Wes Clarkson. Was this a side that Michael had known all along? A willful, even stubborn Good Samaritan? Bossy as hell? Had he come to Michael’s aid like this in the years they’d been friends?

Corinne hoped so because she’d seen the reverse on more than one occasion.

“Enough about tomorrow,” Wes said, gracefully moving the attention from her issues. “Tell me about today. About your new niece.”

So she did. She told him about Clementine’s arrival in the world and how amazing and terrifying it was to hold her and bathe her, how Granddad Clement was fit to burst with pride.

They talked over sandwiches for lunch, and when Wes excused himself later, saying that the lawn needed mowing and he wouldn’t have a free afternoon for a while, Corinne followed suit, joining him outside to pull weeds from the neglected front beds. Once or twice when she’d straighten up to shove a handful of weeds into a lawn bag, she found Wes’s eyes on her. From his expression, she didn’t feel leered at or self-conscious; she felt watched over.

They walked Buck that evening and ordered Chinese for dinner.

“
House of Cards
marathon,” Wes suggested, sitting down next to her on the couch and opening the container of Kung Pao Chicken. “I’ll stay up with you until you get tired.”

Corinne gave him a sheepish smile. It was sweet and surprising, but she knew she wouldn’t sleep for a while. If at all.

“Thanks, but you don’t have to do that.” She helped herself to the fried rice and one of the egg rolls. “I’m probably not going to be able to sleep, but I’ll take the
House of Cards
marathon.”

“I’ll stay,” Wes said, almost inaudibly, passing the Kung Pao container to Corinne, but not meeting her eyes.

It was humbling, Corinne thought, only half paying attention to Kevin Spacey’s scheming. Wes was forcing her to redraw her definition of him. All afternoon, she had shied away from the unpleasant realization that she had long ago dismissed Wes Clarkson as something less than a fully-realized adult, one encompassing depth and complexity. She was guilty of labeling him. Mocking him. She had—aloud to Michael many times—called him names:
Overgrown Frat Boy, Arrested Development, Maximum Density.

Corinne watched him out of the corner of her eye and wanted to cover her head in shame. He had moved in with her so she could stay in this house. He had stocked her fridge and pantry with food that
he
cooked for
her.
He had made her take care of her body. He’d tried, anyway.

He’d woken her up during the night after she’d taken enough diphenhydramine to stagger a horse, and he’d driven her across town so that she could be there for the birth of her niece.

That thought pricked her. Had it not been for Wes, she probably would have slept through the whole thing. She thought about little Clementine and swallowed against the bitter lump in her throat.

What had she done to deserve any of it?

And now, Wes had made it his mission to bring her back to the world. To get out of the house. Exercise. Draw?

The last possibility sent a chill of fear through her. What if she couldn’t?

Corinne glanced at Wes again. She watched, amused, as he took a bite of egg roll and hummed to himself. Wes
loved
to eat. Corinne suspected that it was because all of his exercising left him perpetually hungry. Of course, running to and from work that day probably had something to do with it.

He had done that for her, too. With a resolving nod to herself, Corinne decided that she would give the sketchbook her best shot in the morning. If Wes could do all that he’d done for her in the last month—even in the last day—she could face some charcoal and paper.

After they finished one episode of
House of Cards
, Corinne cleared the dishes, ignoring Wes’s protests. When she got back to the living room, Wes had changed into the cotton t-shirt and shorts she’d noticed him wearing on Saturday mornings. Those had been the only days she’d woken up in time to find him still at the house, still in his pajamas.

“You look tired,” she acknowledged, knowing that he’d been up since 2 a.m. “You can go to bed, you know. It’s a lost cause.”

Wes shook his head.

“I’m good.”

They settled onto the couch and started the next episode before Wes grabbed her right foot and pulled it into his lap. When she tensed and made to pull away, he gripped tighter.

“Try to relax,” he said, giving her a half-smile. “Nothing weird, I swear.”

Corinne glared at him for a whole second until he squeezed her foot in his hands and started to massage.

“Holy hell!” she gasped as pure ecstasy flooded through the sole of her foot. Wes chuckled and used his thumbs to mold her arch and heel. Corinne fell against the arm of the couch and sighed.

“Jesus Christ…” She closed her eyes and felt his fingers find all of the bones that fanned out to her toes, tracing each one with exquisite pressure. Her muscles unspooled. Even Corinne’s jaw relaxed under his touch.

“Why?...Why are you doing this?” she managed to ask, succumbing to a kind of delirium she could not remember ever experiencing.

Wes watched her, smiling, clearly pleased with himself.

“Because you need it,” he said, simply.

She began to protest.

“But you don’t even—” But just then, he began rolling her toes between his fingers, and she melted even more. Corinne closed her eyes against the tears that had suddenly formed.

Her body had not felt such pleasure in months. She had not been touched like this in months.

Stop it,
she scolded herself, not wanting to break down in front of him yet again. Corinne swallowed her tears and mastered her voice.

“But you don’t even like me,” she finished.

Wes’s hands stilled, and she kept her eyes closed, fearing that she’d forced him to agree with her.

“Corinne,...look at me,” Wes whispered.

She slowly opened her eyes. Wes still smiled at her, but his eyes had narrowed in confusion.

“Aren’t we friends now?” he asked her, gently. Then he shrugged. “I’ve never given a foot rub to someone I didn’t like.”

At this, she laughed, and if it was possible, she relaxed even more. Wes surrendered her right foot and reached for her left.

“Oh heavenly day…” she murmured.

“Stop talking,” he mock scolded. “And could you rewind it? I just missed that whole scene.”

Corinne was completely limp by the time Wes finished with her left foot.

“Thank you,” she whispered, kind of in awe.

“Mmm Hmm. And after my next marathon, you’ll do mine, right?” he teased. “I warn you, though, the post-race funk is pret-ty bad!”

Corinne’s feet were still in his lap, and she playfully kicked at his knee, making him laugh.

“Yeah...Sure…” she deadpanned.

He grabbed a foot and squeezed.

“Stop talking! You’re ruining the show!” he hissed, trying to scowl at her, but his smile killed the effect.

Corinne tried to concentrate on the plot, but the events of the day made it a challenge. It was clear to her that she really didn’t know very much about Wes Clarkson.