Within This Frame (28 page)

The purr of an engine sounded soon after that, faint but purposeful. Then it was gone.

“He’s nice,” Maggie said tentatively.

“Yep.” He nodded. “The nicest. Best uninvolved dad I could have hoped for. Want a tour of the place? You can’t get the full effect of the atmosphere unless you do.” Lance’s voice was hard, and he shot to his feet before Maggie could respond. He roughly stacked the dishes, the piercing clank of them against one another the only sound in the room.

“Sure,” Maggie responded hesitantly, slowly getting to her feet.

“Well, this is the dining room.” He waved a hand behind him, and then lifted the haphazardly stacked dinnerware into his arms. “Light blue walls, because, well, that was my mom’s favorite color. Made her think of water. Ugly pictures of birds on the walls, because, yep, you guessed it, she liked birds,” Lance said nastily, striding from the room.

He angrily rinsed and stacked dishes in the dishwasher. Maggie silently set dishes on the counter next to him.

“Gray walls. Made her think of an approaching storm, which, incidentally, also has to do with the ocean. You know she died in the ocean, right?” Lance swung around to glare at Maggie, his chest tight, a wildness inside him pushing to be unleashed.

Eyes large and filled with pain, Maggie shook her head.

“Yeah.” He smiled darkly. “Took too many drugs, decided to go for a swim in the middle of the night. Smart lady, that Tammie. I was left alone in the house. I guess it was late and I was supposed to be sleeping, but I woke up. My dad found me in the living room, staring out the windows, screaming my head off. I don’t know, maybe I watched her drown.” Chills cascaded down his spine like the icy fingers of a ghost.

Lance grabbed Maggie’s wrist and pulled her from the room and into another. “This is the bathroom in which she used to make herself pretty, and take her baths. There’s the bottle of perfume my dad sprays every day, and restocks each time it empties, because that’s not seriously messed up or creepy.”

He turned to Maggie, not really seeing her, seeing his past instead. Remembering the fear, the tears. “Do you know how traumatized I was as a kid, being forced to use a bathtub my dead mother once used? I kept imagining her in the bathtub drowning, face turning blue, reaching out to a rescuer that never came. My dad couldn’t understand it, because she’d died in the ocean and not in the house. I was a kid, like it had to make sense.”

Maggie reached for him, her face streaked with tears, mouth trembling. Lance shook her off, needing her and denying himself.

He strode down the hall.

“I hate this house. I hate everything inside it. It’s a shrine to a woman who should never have been a mother, to a kid that never should have been born. My own dad can’t stand the sight of me. I look too much like her. I look like the dead woman he could never stop loving, but he can’t love me enough.”

Lance stopped in front of a closed door and looked at her. “How is that for irony?”

Hands over her mouth, she watched him with her pretty, shattered eyes.

Taking a shaky breath, he lowered his hand to the doorknob, head bowed, and swung open the door. Lance forced himself to enter the room, his skin crawling with unease. Her scent seemed to be the strongest in his bedroom, but he knew he imagined it.

“Lance.”

Lance looked at Maggie. The pain he felt radiated in her.

“You don’t have to do this. I understand now.”

“I do have to do this. I do,” he told her. “I’m going to give you every part of me, and you’re either going to hold on tighter to me, or you’re going to let me go.”

She took a step toward him and he turned from her. Lance couldn’t let her touch him.

The room was painted in stripes of blue and gray and housed a bed and a dresser. It was his bedroom, but it was bare of anything that marked it as such. He used to sleep in the room as little as possible, and when he was old enough, he asked to stay somewhere else, anywhere else. His father had looked appallingly relieved, and Lance felt the pain all the way to his soul. Max was glad when his son left.

“It isn’t your fault—that your mom died, that your dad can’t be what you need,” Maggie said quietly, pleadingly. “It isn’t your fault.”

Instead of looking at the walls of framed photographs, he stared at Maggie. “I know that. It doesn’t change how I feel. Look at the pictures. Lies. Every last one of them. Look at her holding me like she loved me, looking at me like I was her world. What a joke. I grew up looking at these bullshit pictures. My dad thought they would make me feel closer to her. All they did was remind me that a dead woman lived more in this house than me or my dad.”

Lance lifted his head and studied the last picture taken of him with his mom. They were on the beach, the sun outlining them. A green toy bucket and shovel sat in the sand beside them. Her hair was dark and wild, that unruliness duplicated in the blue eyes smiling at the camera lens, her arms around a grinning toddler with matching hair and eyes.

Tears burned his eyes when he turned his gaze to Maggie. “Do you know who hugged me when I was scared, or had bad dreams, or got hurt, or just—just needed to be shown I was loved? A ghost. Not my dad. Not my mom. A ghost.”

A broken sound left him and he lost the fight against tears. He went to his knees on the carpeted floor, and Maggie was there, holding him. Hugging him. His throat closed, heart tight with years of grief welling up and crashing over him. Lance’s arms shook around her frame, clutching her to him, needing her. Needing Maggie’s love.

She stroked his hair, and kissed his face, crying along with him, and imbedded herself more into his being. He lifted his head, staring at a face that was molded right to his heart. The face he saw when he dreamed, the face he saw when he pictured his future. He didn’t know if anyone had ever cried for him before. Because of him, definitely, but for him?

Lance kissed her, his mouth hard on hers. He tasted her tears, mixed with his own. Maggie fell onto his lap as his back hit the dresser. He straightened and she straddled him, the warmth and feel of her body making him crazy. The kiss went from sweet to urgent, her hands under his shirt, his fingers gripping her hips. It wasn’t enough. He craved more, ached for it, especially then, when he felt the most vulnerable.

He’d gone years without feeling loved, and Maggie gave him all of hers, and he wanted to take it, and take it, and take it. Until he was filled with it. Until it was all he knew. Until he believed he had a right to have it.

Maggie pulled back, eyes dilated, face flushed. She said one word.

“
Please
.”

Lance struggled to speak. His chest and throat were tight, clenched so hard it hurt to speak or breathe. “This isn’t how it should be your first time. I need you too much right now.”

She tugged at his shirt, shaking her head before he finished speaking. Lance rocked forward to get ahold of his shirt, his body constricting at the sound of her moan and the feel of her pressed against him, and tore off the garment. Her palms went up and down his chest, air hissing through his teeth at Maggie’s touch.

“It’s going to hurt,” he said in a voice like gravel, wanting to be inside her so badly.

“I don’t care.” Maggie moved to stand, grabbing the hem of her dress and removing it.

He got to his feet, noting the sea green bra and panties before he helped remove them. Blinded by desire, fragmented in a way nothing could heal, Lance took what he could from Maggie. The motions were fast, not enough thought put toward what they were doing. It was instinctual, and primal, and trying to fill the emptiness inside with the use of bodies. It was wrong, and right.

She was naked, then he was naked. Lance turned off the light, put on a condom, and took Maggie’s virginity. She felt so good, smelled like Maggie but more intensely. Better. Her first time, his first time with someone he loved. It didn’t last long, desperation and incontrollable hunger turning Lance into something that was a slave to sensation. He knew he hurt her, her sharp intake of air as he entered her evidence of that. She never pushed him away, she never told him to stop. Maggie pressed her tear-stained face against his and let him take what he needed from her.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

When it was over, shame had him quiet and unreachable. On his back, he stared at the ceiling, pulse wild, body sated but not satisfied. Maggie shifted, intent on leaving the bed, and Lance reached for her, pulling her to his side.

“I hurt you.”

She was stiff beside him, closed off to him in a way that made him ache.

“I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Angrily shoving at him, Maggie twisted away to sit up on his bed. Moonlight cast her naked body under its eerie spotlight and he truly looked at her for the first time. She was beautiful, body fine-boned and slender, breasts round and full. Lance’s body responded and he swallowed, feeling like the biggest of asses for being turned on again so soon after having sex—sex she didn’t even enjoy.

“What is it?” Lance sat up, moving for her. “What’s wrong? Are you in a lot of pain?”

Maggie shrugged off his touch and crossed her arms over her breasts. He could sense her glare through the dark. “I don’t care that it hurt! I knew it was going to hurt. I knew what was happening the whole time.”

“Then what are you so upset about?”

In a small voice, she asked, “Why can’t you tell me you love me?”

“I . . . I do.” Lance swallowed, fisting the sheet in his hands.

“Then say it!” she yelled, slapping her palms to the bed.

A roar formed in his ears as his heartbeats came faster. Sweat broke out on his skin and he swallowed, opening his mouth. “Maggie.”

“Say it.”

He said it, the words pulled from him with relief and regret. “I love you, Maggie,” he said brokenly. “I love you so much.”

“Why was that so hard to say?” she whispered, touching his face.

“Because it . . . it doesn’t just scare me—it petrifies me. The people I love—they don’t love me back. Or I—or I can’t handle it when they do. And . . .” He drove fingers through his hair, the painful tug of it welcome. “I have this fear that you’re going to go away, now that I’ve said it out loud.”

Maggie fell on him, the warm sleekness of her figure against his side making his head fuzzy with desire. “I’m not going away. I won’t go away unless I don’t have a choice.”

Lance held her tightly to him, playing with a lock of hair, touching her cheek. Kissing her forehead. Sweeping his fingers down her arm. He needed to constantly touch her.

“I want to do it again,” he said almost timidly. “I want to do it better. Are you—is that okay?”

“Please,” Maggie said immediately.

Lance laughed. “Was it that bad?”

“It . . . was how I imagined it to be, but also not.”

“I won’t hurt you this time. I’ll take my time,” he promised, and he did, loving her with reverence, loving her with all he had to give.

MAGGIE—2010

“W
E’RE GOING SHOPPING
. You need a dress and I need a suit.”

Maggie set down the book she was reading and looked at Lance. “I have dresses. Go away.”

Lance plopped down on the couch, his leg against hers, and flung his arm around her shoulders, bringing his sweet, masculine scent with him. “Maggie, I have this feeling that the dresses you own are outdated and frumpy.”

Pretending her pulse didn’t speed up at his nearness, she removed his arm from her. “So?”

“So my date can’t wear outdated, frumpy dresses. It’s bad for my image.”

“Your date?” Maggie stood and narrowed her eyes at him. “Who said I was going to be your date for the fundraising dinner?”

“Well, why wouldn’t you want to be?” Egotistical, as always.

“Um . . . because I already have one?”

Lance tilted his head and studied her features, eyes trailing down her previously soft but currently toned form. Instead of feeling self-conscious, she allowed his perusal. Maggie would never be perfectly proportioned or one of those people that had close to no body fat—and she found she was okay with that. She decided to love her curves, and when she saw her reflection in the mirror, she smiled instead of grimacing. Maggie hugged herself, outwardly, inwardly. That acceptance and confidence did wonders for her self-esteem.

Maggie met Lance’s gaze, saw the faint smile on his mouth.

“You do not.”

“I do,” she retorted, her skin heating up.

“Well, you do have one, yes, but you didn’t
already
have one.” Lance stood, purposely brushing against her as he passed. “I’m your date, and you need a dress.”

He offered his arm when she turned.

She stared at the appendage.

“I know, I’d be afraid to touch me too. It’s okay, I’ll let you if you promise to grope me in all the right places.” Lance’s eyes twinkled.

Maggie took his arm, scowling as they walked. “You can’t just tell me that I’m your date, you know. That’s not how it works.”

He patted her arm. “It is with me.”

She grabbed her purse from the entryway and unhinged her arm from his. “Which is probably why you don’t have a date and have to rely on intimidation to get one.”

“Oh, I had options, but I didn’t want anyone else as a date,” Lance said, opening the front door and stepping outside.

Maggie contemplated slamming the door in his face and locking it, but he was right—she did need a dress. And she didn’t have a date. Or she guessed she did. Shaking her head, she walked out the door.

“Our clothing choices are limited on such short notice,” Maggie muttered.

“I don’t need anything fancy,” Lance assured her.

“That’s good, because I will be the least fancy version of a Lance Denton date.”

It was a cool day, the colors of the houses dim and dark without the sun. Maggie zipped up her jacket and started the four-mile walk to the strip mall. Lance gave her a grin as they crossed the street.

“What?”

He shrugged. “I like that you’re taking the initiative and walking. I’m proud of you, Maggie. You’re going to do great on your own.”

Biting back a flippant response, she said stiffly, “Thank you.”