Smother (32 page)

“The way you feel isn’t always your fault.” His gaze drilled into hers and he nodded toward the book. “It helped me, maybe it can help you.”

He hadn’t told her much about his past, but it hurt to think of him as a boy, unwanted and possibly unloved. It tore her heart in two picturing him trying to accept things out of his control, studying the words written by someone who knew nothing about what he’d endured.

Leo should have had something better than a book to help him.

“Thanks, but no.”

The book was heavy in her hands, dragging her down with the possibility of positive enlightenment. Reese didn’t want this from him. She didn’t want to care about him more than she could already help, and taking this would make it so. Even his offering it to her was already linking her heart more to his. Leo’s hold on her was ironclad.

“Keep it.”

“Take the book back.”

“No.”

“I don’t want it.” Reese let the book fall from her hands. It
thunked
loudly against the floor, the sound resonating through the room as the ugliness inside her made a reappearance. She didn’t understand why she was acting the way she was. Because the book was another gift, another piece of Leo freely given to her. Another thing she wanted to feel good about, but wouldn’t allow herself.

Leo’s hand reached out, snagged her wrist, and he leveled that stormy gaze on her. “Stop it.”

Her eyes burned and she hardened herself against all the longing in her heart, wrenching her arm from his grasp. “You stop. Stop making me feel things. Stop making me want things.” She shoved him back. “Stop making me care so much for you.”

When she moved to shove him again, he grabbed her wrists, loosely holding them. “Stop.” He didn’t demand it, and the look he gave her told her he was sad, but not for him—for her.

Reese started crying, not really knowing why. She just hurt inside. She was scared to love, to live without the shadow of her past dictating every single part of her life. She could list all the reasons why she was the way she was, but none of them fixed her or made her whole.

“What is wrong with me? I’m such a mess. Why can’t I be okay with happiness? Why do I have to ruin it?”

There were excuses—black, ugly facts that didn’t necessarily have to define her, but had, because she hadn’t known how to be anything other than what she was. And now here she was, this thing that ruined and destroyed. Struggling, even now. Fighting, even when there was no reason for it.

Leo pulled her into his arms and hugged her to him, his embrace telling her it was okay to hurt, and it was okay to want things. It was okay to mess up. His arms tightened around her. All she wanted was to close her eyes and forget this life, start over, be someone else. Because of that yearning, Reese pulled away from him, and when he tried to stop her with a hand on her wrist, she tugged her arm away.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she told him in a low voice. Pain seeped into her words, distorted them. She wanted the ache to go away.

Reese didn’t know what love was. Any version she’d ever had of it had been paired with knives that stabbed and wounded. When she was offered something good, her first instinct was to mistrust it. Her second was to push it away. Then she wanted to break it. To her, love was ugly, but sometimes she thought it didn’t have to be.

“You’re scared. You’re afraid anything good won’t last. You’re worried you’ll be the one to make it go away. You think if you care about someone, they won’t stay around. You’re trying to protect yourself.”

“Did you read all that in your book?” she joked weakly.

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“It hurts to see you, because then I want to hope.”

Leo stared her down. “You need to see me and I need to see you. And you have to realize it’s good to look forward to things.”

She couldn’t swallow, emotions choking her as they grew and became unavoidable. She wanted them all to go away, she wanted to stop feeling things.

“I want to hate you.” Reese wished she could take the words back as soon as she said them. They were sharp with lies, her heart bleeding from voicing them.

She spun away to put distance between them. Reese could never get far enough away from him. She did hate parts of him—all the parts that made her care for him, want him, revere him, respect him, admire him, long for him, and need him with every beat of her heart. All the parts of him that made her feel—those were the parts she hated.

His jaw clenched as he moved for her, not stopping until he loomed directly above her. “Need someone to hate? Fine. Hate me. I’ve done bad things. You should hate me.”

“I’m the bad one, not you! I’m the one who messes up, and all you do is try to make me feel better about it,” she cried as she fisted her hands and brought them to his hard chest. He took it, not moving, which hurt her heart more. It was a twisted, bloody pulp of remorse.

“Give up,” he said into her ear.

She paused, lifting a tear-stained face to his.

“Can’t keep fighting yourself,” Leo told her in a gentler voice. “Give up.”

Reese didn’t know what to say, and so, she said nothing.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, but no one can convince you of that. You need to believe it. There is nothing wrong with you,” he repeated slowly. Leo’s gray eyes glared into her, right into her being to shatter all the blackness that had made a home inside her. “If you don’t want the book, fine, don’t read the book.”

He shifted his jaw and held her gaze. “I’m not good at saying pretty words. Don’t know how.” He looked down, lines formed around his eyes and mouth as he thought. After a time, Leo met her gaze. “I see you in my drawings. I want you to see yourself in them and know what you are.”

“What?” she asked, voice faint.

“Someone who should be loved.” Leo swallowed thickly and looked away. “Someone I want to love.” As though unable to spare himself the rejection that was sure to follow that declaration, he locked eyes with her and waited for it to come. “I would do anything for you,” he added roughly, finally glancing down. “I have before and will keep doing it. Can’t help it, can’t control it.”

Words spoken in such an inelegant, rough way burned a hole right into her heart, and she could feel it collapse inside her.

“I can’t stop how I feel.” He shrugged. “I saw something sad and wanted to make it happy. That purpose hasn’t left me. It won’t.”

Her breath stuttered as she inhaled.

“You need to know someone won’t hurt you, won’t leave you. Won’t stop believing in you. Won’t give up on you. That someone is me.” Storms brewed in the depths of the eyes trained on her. “You just have to stop fighting us both to see it.”

Reese lowered her face from his view. The weight of his words dragged her shoulders down. She didn’t know if she could do that. No matter what she wanted, she seemed to fail at it. But she could try. That was something she could promise him.

“I’ll try.”

Leo’s face cleared, the unconquerable torrents of his being calmed for the moment. He gently clasped her face between his hands, his mouth coming closer to hers. Inch by inch, he conquered, but it wasn’t a conquest—it was a resurrection. He showed her what she really was, and it wasn’t what she’d always thought she was. She was more than, better than.

She was something to Leo.

Uncorrupted.

Not broken.

Strong.

His lips grazed hers as he moved them back, teeth along with them, and her eyelids slid shut at the pleasure his touch brought. It was a brief brushing of lips, not even really a kiss, but still monumental as it teetered between passionate and tender. When her back became flush with the wall, he barricaded her against it with his forearms on either side of her face, his body pressed completely against hers.

“Going to become familiar to you to the point where us touching is instinctual instead of hesitant. Where being afraid doesn’t cross your thoughts, even subconsciously. And when you’re ready, I’m only going to make love to you. No sex, no fucking. Just love. That’s all you’ll get from me, Reese,” he growled low in his throat and his breath fanned her ear.

Poetry could not be written any better. Leo was wrong. He did know how to say pretty words.

“I don’t even know what that is,” she said with all honesty, opening her eyes when he went still.

His were locked on hers, a promise within them. “I’ll show you.”

She swallowed. Reese wanted to believe him, to dare to think it was possible, but she was scared.

“Trust me.” It was a command and a question.

If there was anyone she could trust, it was him. She nodded jerkily.

“Going to replace all the bad with good.”

His mouth brushed across hers, once, twice, and lingered there before he kissed each corner of her mouth. He pressed his lips to her forehead and held his mouth there. He was so warm, like a living blanket. He dipped his head forward and she rested her cheek against the softness of his, two halves of two beings formed into one by something greater than emotion or thought.

“Never should have been hurt. You didn’t deserve that. Weren’t meant to be broken.” He gently clasped her chin in his hand, holding her gaze in place with his. “You won’t be again.”

His heart knew hers.

“I want all of you, Reese, even the bad.”

Reese believed him.

In the mornings she made coffee, substituting that for the urge to smoke cigarettes. By the time she was done adding flavored creamer to it, it was more like sugary milk with a kick. She went through endless cups of the stuff, which in turn gave her an adrenaline high that only long walks, rapid conversations of indeterminate amounts of time, and working with her hands alleviated. She’d had no idea consuming large quantities of coffee was the key to forming a healthy social life.

When she walked, she looked. She noted the sky, how the clouds seemed to dominate the atmosphere and the blueness was added in streaks. She enjoyed the sound of snow crunching under her boots, the way the wind struck her face with clean frostiness. She looked at houses, decided what styles she liked and didn’t like, and she thought of a future—hers.

She discovered a world she’d never before allowed herself to know.

Reese spent hours at the local coffee shop, chatting up the employees and patrons alike, even finding them likable, and in turn, learning how to make frothy drinks that melted on the tongue like a burst of winter. It got to the point where she helped out behind the counter when they were busy, and then where costumers requested she make their drinks, and wanted the unusual concoctions she made for fun. Her cold banana mocha coffee was a hit and she named it ‘Choco-Monkey.’ Liz put it on the order board and also offered her a job.

Her first inclination was to say no, to run and hide from the sudden possibilities that scared her at the same time they gave her something: purpose.

“I can’t work here. Thank you, but no,” she said as she shook her head and backed away from the temptation of an impossible fantasy of normalcy, and still wanting it.

Liz sighed and tucked a pink curl behind her ear. “Why aren’t you going to take the job? I can see it in your face—you want to say yes. I need you, and more importantly, I need your drinks.” She smiled to soften her words.

Reese struggled to put into words what she felt more than thought. “I’m not . . . from around here.”

A baleful look was aimed her way. “So? Neither am I.”

She grabbed a book from the counter and thumbed through it, not seeing any of the words. “I don’t belong here,” she mumbled.

Liz snatched the book from her hands and tossed it aside. “No one belongs
anywhere. You make a place your home and that’s what it becomes. If you want to stay around here, do it. If you don’t, move on. But I personally think you do belong here, as much as anyone can. At least, here, in this shop, with us. We’re all misfits, Reese. Don’t let anyone ever fool you about that.”

“Not Tina. She’s perfect.”

She snorted and looked over Reese’s shoulder. “Tina, tell Reese what you were called all through middle school.”

Tina’s high voice called from the back room, “Airhead, Plastic, Barbie, Tiny-Tot, No-Brain—”

“Okay, that’s enough. Thank you.” Liz looked at Reese. “Well?” When Reese looked at her, she continued. “I have three rules: don’t lie, don’t steal, and no drama. Anything else and I don’t give a fu—lollipop,” she corrected when a young girl with wide brown eyes and curls walked by, clutching a sugar cookie to her chest and staring at Liz’s pink hair.

She winked at her before turning to Reese. “It doesn’t pay much, but any tips you get are yours and it’s a fun place to work—as you know from already pretending to be an employee. Why not make it official?”

“What if I don’t like it, or get restless, or screw up? I mess up a lot. It’s sort of my unwanted rule.”

“You’re going to screw up. Just don’t screw up really, really bad.” She smiled. “If you don’t like it or need to try something else, you give notice like every other good employee. Right?”

Reese stared at Liz’s crazy hair and blue glasses, her eyes tripping over her yellow shirt and purple leggings. Black combat boots completed the ensemble. She let a smile curve her lips, not even trying to fight it. It was an impulse, brought on by joy, and she should let it flow forward instead of listening to the instinctual bit of the past her that said to force it down. She was learning how this life thing worked, one smile at a time.