Score (Gina Watson) (9 page)

“I love you too.” Her voice was hoarse when she echoed him.

Cal grasped her wrist and pushed the shirtsleeve up, kissing her wrist. “I’m glad you’re wearing the bracelet.”

Chloe smiled.

After eating and more sex to celebrate their newly declared love, they lay in bed, just talking. And stroking one another. And smiling. At least he was.

They fell asleep without fuss, with Cal only waking when a clunk sounded in the darkness.

Chloe pulled out of his arms.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“My phone fell from the stand. It’s buzzing on the floor.”

Cal reluctantly let her go. She reached for the phone and he turned on a light. She silently scrolled through the messages. Cal sensed what was coming.

He sat up in the bed behind her. “What is it?”

“Steve passed away. About thirty minutes ago.”

She curled into Cal’s chest. Her cries started as quiet whimpers, eventually becoming agonized gasps. Cal held her while she grieved. Two hours later she’d quieted and lay dozing in his arms. He laid her head on a pillow and got up to make a pot of coffee. He pulled pastries out of the freezer and heated them in the oven. Then he drew a bath and went to Chloe, pulling the shirt from her body. He carried her to the bath and slowly lowered her into the warm water. He slid in behind her.

He gently washed her hair and her face and shoulders, kneading as he went. Then he washed the rest of her. When he was satisfied, he stood, leaning Chloe against the side of the tub. He retrieved a fluffy white towel from the cabinet and helped her out. He dried her with tenderness, leaving kisses all over her body. He even dressed her. He was beginning to worry that she had gone into shock since she was completely unresponsive, but when he placed a coffee cup in front of her, she sipped from it. Cal knew they needed to get to the hospital. He planned to not leave her side for a second in case she needed something. Anything. He would be there for Chloe. Forever.

6

T
HE DAYS AFTER Steve’s death had all rolled into one until Chloe had no idea how long it had been. Cal had been wonderfully attentive to her needs. Steve’s death had breathed new life into his project and she’d watched him diligently work on the video. Mike, his professor, mentor, and lead on his thesis committee, had come to the apartment to view his work and listen to Cal explain the project. It was clear Mike was blown away by the work he’d already done. Chloe didn’t quite understand how it was to all come together since it was still in the editing phase and resembled nothing of a documentary. Mike told him he had a real shot at winning the Independent Film Fest’s documentary feature film category. And then he went on to say that if Cal were to win, it would have Hollywood calling.

As Mike was leaving, he said, “Be sure to upload your video by the fifteenth. I’m serious—you’ve got a real shot with this, Cal. Judges love it when you pull at the heart strings.”

Cal had been understandably excited. But Chloe was confused and upset, not sure what Mike had meant.

Cal, behind Chloe, wrapped his arms around her. He kissed her cheek and pressed close.

“Hey, are you feeling better?” he asked.

“Are you going to enter that film festival?”

“Yeah, I think so. Did you hear what he said? With this story I’ve got a real shot at winning.”

“Cal?”

“Yeah, baby.”

“I don’t want you to enter Steve’s battle in some contest, not for personal gain.”

He released Chloe and moved around her, even as she turned, to look into her face. His eyes were wide. His cheeks flushed.

“How can you even think that’s what I’m doing?” He stepped back and crossed his arms. “Chloe, you should think about what you say before you say it.”

When she didn’t say anything, at least not fast enough to suit him, he turned and started putting on his shoes.

“Where are you going?” Had she mistaken his intentions? It hadn’t sounded as though she had. Mike wanted him to feature the documentary about Steve in a contest. Her ears worked pretty well.

Cal wouldn’t answer her, not even when she asked again. He stood, lips tight and hands clenched at his sides. Then he tilted his head forward and rubbed at his neck. It made a horrible popping sound. He slid his keys from the bowl he kept on a console table by the door and walked out.

He simply walked out.

Chloe cried for a while, but then she got angry. She wondered if Cal had used her yet again, used her to get close to Steve. Now that she thought about it, that was when their relationship had started getting serious—right after he came to the hospital that first time. He’d told her about his thesis project after he’d offered to help with the video editing. Chloe felt sick to her stomach. She ran into the bathroom and spilled the contents of her stomach into the toilet. She collected her things and left his apartment.

Later that evening, there was a knock at Chloe’s door. She knew it would be Cal, but she didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to be reminded of the traitorous things he’d done. Through the door she said, “Go away, Cal.”

“Chloe, don’t be childish. Open the door. We need to talk.”

“Childish!” Chloe yelled, yanking at the door handle.

Cal strode inside. “Have you come to your senses?”

“Not even close.”

“So you agree that you’re being unreasonable.”

Chloe shook her head, slamming her hands to her hips. “What? No. You mixed up my words.”

“The video isn’t about the contest, it’s about telling Steve’s story. If you don’t think I’m professional enough to do that, then you don’t know me. And maybe we shouldn’t be together.”

Chloe threw her hands in the air. “If it isn’t
about
the contest, then why do you need to enter the contest?”

His voice was louder, his temper evident, when he said, “Are you listening to me? I said it’s about telling Steve’s story. The contest is a way to reach millions of people.”

“It’s not the only way.” Chloe was getting louder too. “The contest is about you exploiting Steve just like you exploited me for your own personal benefit.”

Cal’s brows drew together and his lips tightened. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered, throwing his arms wide. “I can’t win here. I’ve bent over backwards trying to undo the wrong I’ve done to you.” He glared at her with a fixed gaze. “Yet you still haven’t forgiven me. What do I have to do? And now… Now you accuse me of exploiting a dead friend for gain.” He threw his hands over his head. “I can’t remember a time when someone insulted me—no, hurt me—more than you just have.”

He pressed his palm to her cheek. “I deserved your anger, but it’s clear the damage has been done and is irreparable. For the record, I’m not the kind of man who would take advantage of people he loves for his own gain. I would rather have nothing than to get ahead in that way. I saw enough of Dad’s competitors take that route—it sickened me as a kid and it sickens me now. And it cuts me deep that you, of all people, don’t believe that.” He headed to the door. “That you don’t know that about me. That you… that you believe me capable of such betrayal and deceit.” He dropped his head with his hand on the door, and took in a long breath. Then he looked over his shoulder with glassy eyes. “Goodbye, Chloe. I hope your future is better for you than the past has been. I hope the next man who loves you does it right, right from the beginning. I wish it would have been me.”

He opened the door and walked out.

Chloe stood in the center of her living room in a state of shock. The man she loved with everything she had just walked out on her. For the last time. She’d read the resolve in his face. He wasn’t coming back.

She cried herself to sleep on the floor of her living room.

The next few weeks at work were bleak for Chloe. Memories of Steve were everywhere. To make matters worse, memories of Cal plagued her body. Visions of him from the mirror above his bed as he plowed into her would come to her at the most inopportune times, like when she was out to lunch with her mother. She would daydream about the erotic movements made by the flex of his hips and the way the light rolled off his taut muscles whenever he thrust into her.

And when she huddled in her bed, unable to sleep, visions of him smiling and laughing and working hard on his thesis haunted her.

But it was his eyes, his eyes filled not only with tears but with pain, that really haunted her. She couldn’t get that final image of him, that picture of him standing at her door and suffering from her betrayal, out of her mind.

Chloe was finishing up her charts at the nurses station when Nancy, the head nurse, stepped up next to her and laid her laptop on the counter. “Caleb St. Martin brought this by. He asked me to give it to you.”

It was the last blow. Chloe gathered up her laptop and left. She was in for a night of gut-wrenching grief. She stopped by a local wine store and selected four bottles to keep on hand. She planned to down the first one tonight. With a king-sized bar of chocolate.

Chloe was utterly devastated that Cal had returned her laptop via Nancy. She’d seen the smirk on the woman’s face. Everyone knew they’d broken up.

She’d thought in these last weeks that she might have been wrong about Cal, so she just couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t pull the damned film. She wondered if the situation were reversed if she would have let it come between them. She hoped she wouldn’t have.

Once she got home, she opened her returned laptop and loaded Netflix. She wanted to watch a good comedy. That was when the file on the top right of the screen caught her eye.

Click Me.

Chloe clicked the icon. Aqualung’s “Thin Air” played as pictures of her flashed on the screen; he’d found photos from her childhood, pictures of them together: a fall hayride, a Christmas parade, and her birthday party. She remembered that picture. He’d given her a Polly Pocket and she was ecstatic. There were pictures of her on his eighteenth birthday wearing her black strapless dress. He’d taken them on the front porch of his home. One showed her on the swing with her legs drawn up underneath her—there were eight candid shots of her from that night. She hadn’t known he’d taken them. He’d added captions. The one on the swing read: “The moment I knew Chloe Mills would be burned into my memory forever.” There was one of her walking in the high grass as she carried her pumps wedged between her index and middle fingers: “Genuine beauty comes in only one form—Chloe.” There was a picture he’d scanned in, one he’d taken with the novelty camera she’d given him that night. It was a close-up of their heads together. He’d held the camera in front of their faces and taken the shot: “The moment Cal knew he loved Chloe.”

He’d been right about that camera, it was shit.

Chloe cried, howling like a baby. The pictures changed to more recent ones. He’d included pictures of her with Steve and the girls and of her teaching them how to communicate with Steve.

The song’s crescendo accompanied the footage of him making love to her on his bed. This was video, not stills, but he’d made it black and white. Her hair, the white oxford shirt of his that she’d worn, and her light skin were in stark contrast to the dark colors of his bedroom and his bronzed body and dark hair. The video was tastefully edited and showed no objectionable nudity, just unbridled passion and lust. She saw herself through his eyes and she was beautiful.

She writhed beneath him, and her eyes were darker than she’d ever seen them. She wouldn’t have recognized herself. She was sexy and passionate, and for the first time, she realized why he could have been attracted to her. She was desirable. She saw it in herself but more than that, she saw it in him, in his eyes. They held admiration and reverence. They held love.

There were more pictures, of them attending the funeral and of her working with Steve. There was even a picture of her asleep. In fact there were several pictures of her in various sleepy poses. The video ended with her reading the Berenstain Bears to Sarah and Riley above the melodious hum of Matt Hales.

Chloe plugged in her headphones and listened to the Aqualung song over and over as she fell asleep. The words begin to seep through her skin and she felt them deep in her bones. She held no doubt that Cal had always been in love with her. His videos were not exploitive. They told a story just as clearly as if he’d written out the words.