by Maisey Yates
He looked confused.
“If you want to get sober, you have to admit that there’s a problem with yourself first. Because you can’t fix something if there’s nothing wrong. So I had to admit there was something wrong. I look at Olivia, and I see a lot of her pain. And I get it. But I’m also not the cause of everything that happened here at home. A lot of what was going on in our house is part of my pain. I’m not sure that she’s recognized that yet.”
“And is that what you want?” he asked. “You want them to acknowledge they hurt you too?”
She took a sharp breath. “Yes. I mean...you can’t fix things when you’re hiding the broken pieces. How can you ever put it back together that way?”
“But your sister doesn’t seem to want to do that?”
“No.”
“All right,” he said slowly. “You might win.”
“Is this a competition?” she asked.
“It could be if you want.”
“Hmm. What do I win?”
“The honor of having had the worst evening, and having the most justified anger.”
She tapped her chin, as if she was weighing it. “Well, I’d like the win. But you should have a chance to state your case. You go.”
“My brother is on a mission to bring all of our long-lost half siblings home. I don’t really care about it. He’s pushing me to care. I told him why I feel responsible for Clint’s death.”
Silence settled between them. “Do you feel responsible or are you responsible?”
His eyes connected with hers, and there was something strange in them. She had been worried, for a moment, that what she’d said would make him angry. But what she saw right now wasn’t anger.
It was relief.
“I am responsible,” he said. “I mean, in that way life and fate and all that intertwine, and you can’t really know how things would have played out if something would’ve gone differently. But what I do know is...if I hadn’t been so selfish... If I hadn’t... He wouldn’t have died. Because I was the one that was supposed to be in the helicopter, not him.”
“Okay. You win.”
“I get to win?”
“That’s a lot. I don’t know how you live with that.”
“You’re not going to reassure me that it wasn’t my fault?” He looked around. “You’re not going to tell me that if I had gone instead of him, I would be dead, and what’s the point of that?”
“You know all that,” Vanessa said. “What’s the point of telling you?”
“I was with a woman,” he said. “I was hungover, and I didn’t want to get out of bed, because I wanted to have sex again.” Silence stretched on between them. “I haven’t had sex since then. I mean, until last night.”
“You’re such a jerk,” she said. “Talking about my dry spell, when you had one of your own.”
“That’s the thing that makes me a jerk?”
“It’s not like you knew,” she said. “If even part of you had known, you could’ve told everybody not to go up in the helicopter. But you know that. You just want to hang on to the guilt because it feels like action. And maybe because it’s what made you change.”
“Are you a psychiatrist?”
She laughed. “No. I just... I just had a lot of stuff to work on. It wasn’t fun.”
“So you’re fully healed and all that?”
“Well, think back to how I acted last night when my sister got in my face and ask me that question again.”
“Right,” he said, tapping his knuckles on the top of the counter. “I guess none of us are ever fully healed.”
“Not on this side of things.” She looked up at the clock and saw there were about two minutes before the kids came in. “So here’s a question for you. Why is it so important for you to believe it’s your fault? Because that’s a question I had to ask myself a lot. And for me, the answer was that if it was my fault, then I could treat myself as badly as I wanted to. Because there was no point saving myself.”
Something in his face went hollow and blank. “Because I...I can’t save anyone. It always happens. I can’t save them.”
Just then the first kid came into the room, followed by the second. And their conversation was cut short. But Vanessa intended to pick it up again at some point.
She looked over at him, as she got the kids settled into painting positions.
She wanted to know more about him. That man with muscular forearms and strong hands. Who had been a cowboy, a paramedic and a firefighter. And still thought he couldn’t save anyone.
She didn’t need or want to be curious about him. But she was. And just looking at him made her body hum with deep, remembered longing. Of the way it had been when he touched her.
Right. You’re interested in him because you think he’s hot. You’re not going to be that stupid again.
And with that, she set her focus firmly on painting. Because she had to keep her mind off him somehow. Though, with him in the room, it was basically impossible.
Still, she had done the impossible in her life. This was just once more.
* * *
JACOB DIDN’T LIKE the honesty that Vanessa managed to mine out of him. It was something to do with the way she went right at him and everyone else. With her trauma right in the front, and everything out in the open. She spurred him in ways that other people didn’t. She also interested him in a way that he couldn’t recall another person ever managing to do. Maybe it was because in some ways, no matter how different they were, they were also alike.
He knew what it was like to walk around using swagger as a shield. To lead with anger, to try to shock people.
Vanessa had done something similar with him that first day at the school.
Of course, when Clint had died, his whole shtick had burned up along with everything else in that helicopter wreckage.
It had carried him through for a long damn time, though.
Through every familial relationship, in every relationship with a woman, every friendship. It had gotten him through every job he’d done and bailed on.
And in the end, even he had started to believe a lot of what he’d said and done. Because he had learned something very early on in his life. If you acted like nothing was wrong, you never had to talk about any of the things that were wrong. If you pretended something hadn’t happened, and no one else knew about it, then it was almost like it hadn’t.
Like it was a dream. But he had already caused one friend’s death, and the behavior he launched himself into after had been protective, and it had gotten him a long way.
But then it had led to the death of another friend, and it made him start asking questions about himself.
Questions he probably should’ve asked a long time ago.
And now here he was, standing in a classroom full of teenage boys, being what?
He didn’t know the answer.
The role model that Clint wouldn’t be able to be for his own child?
Because he related to these kids, who were teenagers, which Gavin had never gotten a chance to be.
He didn’t think about Gavin often. Almost never.
It was the weirdest thing. Because he never had to. Because nobody knew that he’d been involved in it at all. Because he was a liar.
Because he had called for an ambulance, and then he had run away.
Because he had lied and told everyone he’d been by himself that whole day.
Because he had pretended for so long that he didn’t have any idea what had happened, that it had become the truth, even inside himself.
Clint’s death had brought things back up to the surface because there was no way it couldn’t. Because it forced him to confront the fact that living like there were no bad days didn’t keep them from coming back up. Because it didn’t actually change reality, even though it felt like it might.
Because no matter how many people he saved as a paramedic, as a firefighter, it didn’t erase the past.
I’m not a hero.
He wasn’t a hero. He was just a guy trying to pay a spiritual debt that he never could pay back, hiding behind so many damn half-truths and lies, moments of brashly produced honesty, that he didn’t even know what was real.
Except that one bit of truth.
What he wasn’t. What he could never be.
This time, when it came down to it, the boys had all done something in class. Though Aiden had stuck with a stylized fuck this painted all over the canvas. Jacob had to wonder if being given permission to do that made it feel less satisfying. It would have for him. But that was just the kind of asshole he was.
He worked to get his brain focus back on to the present. Because the past was a whole lot of messed-up stuff that he just didn’t want to deal with.
But when he thought about the present, he thought about Vanessa. Naked and soft. Which was all fantasy, since he had never seen her naked.
He wished he had.
He’d felt her. Felt her come all around him up against the wall.
He didn’t know how he managed to make it through the rest of the day without having an inappropriate boner, but somehow he persevered.
And when it was all over, he was ready to get out of there. Because he didn’t feel like it was the best thing in the world for him to be in close proximity with Vanessa. Not while everything was quite so precarious. While everything was still close to the surface.
“Today went better,” she said once the room was empty.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“Aiden still went with his aesthetic.” She frowned. “I suppose he is painting his truth.”
“That’s probably what I would’ve painted when I was a teenage boy. Actually. I think I would have painted my own porn.”
“That seems like a lot of work for a little bit of porn. Even back when you were a teenager surely it was more easily accessible than that.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Maybe.”
“You’re welcome to paint something,” she said, gesturing around. “Anytime.”
He crossed his arms. “I haven’t seen any of your paintings.”
“I...I’m teaching,” she said.
“So you don’t have to actually do any painting, because you’re the teacher?”
“I do paint,” she said. “And I make pottery. I do a bit of decoupage.”
He shook his head. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s when you—”
“I wasn’t asking.”
“Talking about your feelings is hard,” Vanessa said. “Art makes it easier to get all that stuff out. I know not everyone is an artist, but the ability to express yourself in nonverbal ways—”
“Does it ever get old? Talking like a therapist.”
“I...I’m not talking like a therapist. I’m explaining why something matters to me.”
“I don’t think that’s what you’re doing. I can practically see you throwing an arm out between us.”
“It’s better for us to be at arm’s length, don’t you think?” she asked.
“You’re the one with an issue about whether or not something happens between us again, not me.”
“You know, it’s kind of bullshit for you to comment on me using distancing language. I might be using therapy-speak, but you use that kind of ridiculous alpha-male thing. I’m not a hero. I can’t save people. Because you’re just so bad, and yet here you are, showing up for your family, exhibiting guilt over your friend’s death. Helping these boys out, even though you don’t actually want to. All those are things that good people do, Jacob, and I don’t know what to tell you, but I think you might be a good person.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Oh, there it is again. Standard cliché male response. Not a good guy. Not made for commitment. Let me guess, you’re just a lone wolf.”
“Did you notice that I live on top of a mountain? Or did you not?”
Vanessa flung her arms wide. “Great for you and your mountain. Sadly, though, I think you’re just wounded like the rest of us, and a little bit of therapy wouldn’t hurt you. In fact, it might help you. And it might make you see that whatever else has happened in your life—good, bad or bullshit—it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a bad person. Being good or being bad isn’t even about wanting to show up and do the right thing. Sometimes it’s about not wanting to and doing it anyway,” she said. “Do you think that I wanted to be sober every day of my sobriety? No. I didn’t. But the important thing was whether or not I actually shot up. Not if I wanted to. It’s what you do that matters. And sometimes your action has to go before your heart. In fact, I would say the best people, the strongest people do the right thing most especially when they don’t want to.”
“You know, I kind of see why your sister got mad at you,” he said, anger twisting up his gut, making him want to say things that would get her to shut up. Or get her to kiss him. He wasn’t really particular. But he didn’t want to talk. Not really. Not anymore.
This was why he just avoided people to the best of his ability.
“You’re acting like you have all the answers. Acting like you’re so superior.”
“I’ve actually done a lot of work on myself,” she said. “Things that other people have never even thought of. Because I’ve had to.”
“You talk down to people. You talk to people like you have nothing left in yourself to deal with. And it all comes off as a bunch of condescending crap.” He shook his head.
She opened her mouth to argue with him and he cut her off. Because she’d had her say, and he wanted his. “You know what, that’s great. Talk to these boys that way because they need it. Because you’re older than them, and you can teach them something about life. But the problem with you, Vanessa, is that you walk around with the certain knowledge that you have everything figured out, not just the way that you fixed yourself, but the way everyone can fix themselves. You also walk around being angry because you feel like nobody understands why you became what you did. Why you became who you did. You have all these secrets, and you mix it in with honesty.”
He had the realization while he started ranting at her, because it was so close to what he had just thought about himself. Enough brash honesty and people would be absolutely certain you were telling them the whole truth.
Where were you last night, Jacob?
Sneaked out. Got drunk.
Jacob, what were you and the Thomas girl up to last night?
A slow grin. Exactly what you’d think.
And then no one had thought to ask, Jacob, why don’t you like heights?
Jacob, why do you have nightmares?
If you would just admit to things that other people would be embarrassed to ever talk about, they assumed that you were the kind of person who walked around with their guts spilled at all times. And they would never figure out that you were holding up something shiny to distract them from what was really going on.
Yeah, he knew that better than most people. And he could see Vanessa doing the same damn thing.
“It never occurred to you that you might not know someone else’s whole story,” he said. “It makes sense to you that your family could live with you, that your sister could live with you, and not know you, but you don’t think that could be true of her. Everybody hides. And just because you know that, doesn’t mean you see exactly what’s going on with other people.”
“I didn’t say that I did,” Vanessa said. “I never said any of that.”
“But it’s how you act.”
“You know what, you have no room to speak to me about any of this. If I didn’t act like I was good enough, no one would ever treat me like I was. And even still, they don’t. But I have to walk around acting like I’m worth it. No one else is going to give that to you when you come from mistakes like I made. You know what people think. That someone with addiction issues is garbage. Lazy. That we don’t care about things.”
Her eyes glittered, her brows locked together. “I care so much. So very muc
h. And I messed everything up. I messed everything up trying to have a few moments when I didn’t care. Trying to have a few moments when I didn’t feel quite so awful about myself. I never thought that I would become an addict.”
She pushed her hands through her hair and looked up at the ceiling. “I was rich. And everybody liked to party a little bit. I was rebellious, but not any more than any of my friends. But then... But then the miscarriage happened and I couldn’t cope. I thought I could just use a little. Just escape for a while. Because girls like me didn’t turn into addicts. I thought that I was immune to it. I thought it wouldn’t hurt. Everyone else got away with it. A little bit here and there, why can’t I? All of that stuff is for other people. Poor people. Uneducated people. It’s not for you. Until it is. Until it is you, your child, your sister. You’re not immune to it. Nobody is.”
Her words rang with a kind of conviction he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt before. “Some people make bad choices, and they can come back from it a lot cleaner than other people. And you know what? I’m still one of the lucky ones. Because some people make those same bad choices and they die. So I’m sorry if my sense of superiority offends you in some way. But it was my sense of inferiority, my lack of value that brought me down a path I never want to go back down. So I refuse to allow anyone—you, my sister, myself—make me feel small.”
She was so angry at him, her dark eyes glittering. And he supposed if he were a better man he would feel guilty. But he also supposed that she was used to people treating her like she might be fragile. But he knew she was tough. He might feel bad for some of the things she had been through, but he also knew that she wasn’t easily broken. Not after the kind of life she’d had.
“You accused me of being a cliché,” he said. “I have a feeling we could stand here and cliché each other to death.”
“You want me to take you seriously? You want me to listen to you? Take me seriously.”
She picked up a paintbrush and held it out toward him. “Paint me something.” She tilted her head to the side. “Unless you’re afraid.”