by Roni Loren
“’Night.”
Before he made it to his door, he heard the lock turn on her side and the beep of the alarm.
A sense of loss moved through him as he stepped into his empty half of the house, but he was thankful that at least he hadn’t acted on his stupid instinct to kiss her. He really would’ve ruined things then. He needed to get it through his head that Andi wasn’t looking to kiss him or touch him or do anything else with him besides hang out. Hell, she might have just been making him feel better by telling him she thought he was attractive.
His stomach turned at the thought.
Either way, he needed to keep his head on straight around her.
Chapter Twelve
Andi was lying in bed two hours after Hill left, still wide awake. She’d almost kissed him. When he’d held her, had been so kind and gentle about her fear instead of dismissing it, that frazzled part inside her had settled for a moment. She’d had the thought, Maybe him. Like maybe this was the guy who could finally help her push past her anxiety about getting physical with someone. That maybe she could have a normal night where she’d had a cute guy over and ended the date with a kiss.
But the minute she’d pushed up on her toes, intending to kiss him, a surge of panic had nearly knocked her on her ass. Flashes of terrifying things had flickered through her mind like a horror movie on fast-forward. She was alone in a house with a man—one she barely knew. She’d stopped checking in with Eliza hours ago, so no one knew he was still there. If she kissed him and he wanted to take it further than she did, she’d have no way to physically stop him. All of it had flooded her brain, dousing any desire she’d had with cold water.
She’d kissed his cheek and backed away, hoping to God he wouldn’t be able to see the panic coursing through her. She’d been stupid to think she could just decide that she could do this now. That she could handle interacting with a guy in that way. She’d been telling herself a story that when she felt ready, when she found a man she was comfortable with, she could do this. Like it was an actual decision she had control over. Her brain and nervous system had reminded her tonight who was really in control. Anxiety was a fucking dictator, not an elected official. You couldn’t simply vote it out of office. Anxiety grinned its evil grin and told you to take a seat.
And that realization had made her…furious.
Furious with herself. Furious with the situation. And furious with the disgusting bastard who had broken these things inside her. Even in jail, Evan Longdale was still stealing things from her—her sense of safety, her chance at a normal life, the simple pleasure of being able to kiss a man she’d shared a nice night with.
It made her want to throw things.
It made her want to cry.
It had her feeling trapped in a way that made it hard to breathe.
If she were the star in her own horror movie, the villain was winning. He had been for a really long time. She often liked to think of herself as the badass final girl—that was the kind of heroine she wrote in her books—but she’d been faced with the hard truth tonight. She was no Laurie Strode or Ellen Ripley or Sidney Prescott. She wasn’t standing up and facing her fears and telling those fears to fuck off. She was carefully orchestrating a life around them.
And she was fucking tired of it.
She sat up, pushed her blankets off, and got out of bed to grab her laptop. By the time the first rays of dawn started to peek through her windows, she’d already consumed two cups of coffee and had finished a long email to Eliza. Then she took a breath and opened up a new document in the program she used to outline her novels. She clicked to the spot meant for the title of the book.
Here goes nothing.
Before thinking too hard about it, she typed in The Revenge of Andrea Lockley.
Time to write a story no one else would see, a new story for herself.
***
Eliza flipped through the mostly blank pages Andi had plopped in front of her at their favorite Mexican place a few hours later. Andi was bouncing her knee beneath the table, hyped up on lack of sleep and too much caffeine. She put another tortilla chip in her mouth, trying to absorb some of the coffee she’d had.
“Well,” Eliza said, finally looking up, “I always knew you were smart, chica, but you just inadvertently outlined a type of therapy that already exists—with what I’m guessing is no prior knowledge of it.”
Andi swallowed her mouthful of tortilla chip. “What do you mean?”
“You wanting to rewrite your own story—making yourself an external character and writing her book—it’s a version of something called narrative therapy. I’m not trained in it, but I know the general overview.”
“You’re shitting me,” Andi said, leaning forward on her forearms. “This is a thing?”
“I shit you not,” Eliza said with a little smile. “I should’ve thought of it before. You’re a writer. Telling stories is what you do. Recasting yourself as the heroine in the story, modeling yourself after those heroines in the books and movies you like so much, might be really powerful for you.”
A little spark of hope went through Andi. “I was lying in bed last night after everything and I was so mad, Eliza. So freaking mad.”
“Mad is good,” she said, dragging a chip through the salsa.
“And I realized that if I were reading the book of my life, I’d be really frustrated with the heroine. She’s overcome a lot, but she’s letting what happened to her as a teenager define her life. If I turned in that kind of story to my editor, she’d send it back with red marks about a weak lead who doesn’t transform. She’s not on the hero’s journey.”
Eliza gave her an empathetic look. “She’s not weak, Andi. Maybe she’s just in the early part of her story. Maybe this is only Act One.”
The thought buoyed Andi, and she appreciated Eliza talking about her in the third person like she was a separate person, a character. That was the flash of insight she’d had last night. If she could step outside herself and see herself as a character in one of her books, it would be easier to map out a plan. Easier not to get caught up in the anxiety of imagining those moves for herself. “So, do you think this could work?”
Eliza considered her, a little wrinkle in her brow. “I think…that you’re capable of anything. Let’s get that out of the way first. But”—she flattened a hand against the table as if bracing herself—“I really worry about you doing this without a therapist to guide you. Part of the narrative-therapy thing is that sometimes we tell negative stories about ourselves that aren’t necessarily true. A therapist can offer another perspective.”
Andi frowned and sagged back in her chair. “I see what you’re saying, but therapy is out of the question right now. What little insurance I have doesn’t cover it, and this is the first time in a long time I’ve felt motivated to tackle this, so I don’t want to wait until I can afford therapy.”
Eliza rolled her lips together and nodded, then a little smirk peeked out. “Well, therapist me will tell you to be careful and that you know you can always talk to me. But friend me is really proud of you and pulling for you. I think you already are a badass movie heroine.”
Andi reached out and gave her friend’s hand a squeeze. “Thanks, girl. But I was definitely not a badass last night. I had a hot, sweet man who knows how to cook in my kitchen, and I sent him off with a kiss on the cheek and a don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out goodbye.” She took a long sip from her margarita—one that wasn’t nearly as good as Hill’s had been last night. “I wish I could rewrite that chapter for sure.”
Eliza lifted a brow. “So do it.”
“What?”
Eliza slid the pages Andi had given her across the table. “You’re the author. Delete last night’s chapter and start over. What would Book Andi do?”
“Is that like WWJD—what would Jesus do?” she asked. “WWBAD? Ha, it spells ‘bad’.�
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“I definitely don’t think Book Andi would do what Jesus would do in this situation,” Eliza said with a knowing look.
Andi inhaled a deep, fortifying breath and grinned. WWBAD? She pulled a pen from her purse and scrawled something on the page.
When she held it up for Eliza to read, Eliza picked up her mojito and clinked it with Andi’s margarita glass. “I can’t wait to read this book.”
“Me too. Hope it doesn’t totally suck.”
“I hope there are dirty parts.”
Andi laughed. “Same, girl. Same.”
***
Hill pulled into his driveway after a grocery run and was surprised to see Andi sitting on their shared porch, reading a book in the weather-beaten rocking chair that had come with the house. When she noticed him pull up, she stood and lifted her hand in a wave.
He returned the greeting and took in the view. She had her Doc Martens on again, but today she was wearing aviator sunglasses and a blue flowery sundress that was fluttering in the breeze. Damn it all. He groaned, his mind going to places it shouldn’t—like what her skin would feel like beneath his fingertips, like what flavor her lip gloss was, like how easy it would be to unbutton that dress and find every spot that made her sigh. She was temptation personified.
And she’d kissed him on the cheek. Fucking hell.
He schooled his expression into one of neighborly appropriateness and climbed out of the car. After grabbing his grocery bags, he headed up the walk.
Andi slid her sunglasses to the top of her head and smiled. “Hey there, neighbor. Need some help?”
His knee-jerk instinct was to say no, that he needed no help, but he stopped himself. Help meant more time with Andi. “Yeah, sure.”
She set her book down on the rocking chair and then met him at the top of the stairs. He off-loaded two bags to her and then unlocked the door. She followed him inside, trailing him to the kitchen.
He set his bags down and took the others from her. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” She leaned over and peeked into one of the bags. “Cooking anything interesting, Chef?”
“Just got the basics today. I keep it pretty straightforward. It’s not as fun cooking for one.” He started pulling out the things that needed to be refrigerated.
“You know, I’m happy to be your test subject,” she said, leaning against the counter and smiling. “I mean, I can probably find time in between my gourmet dinners of grilled cheese and frozen burritos to fit in a meal or two.”
He put a carton of eggs in the fridge and peeked back over his shoulder, surprised by the comment. “That can be arranged, but I hope you’re not really surviving by grilled cheese and burrito alone.”
She winced. “Boxed mac and cheese makes an appearance sometimes, too. And hot dogs if I’m feeling fancy.”
He shut the fridge and turned fully to her, trying to read if she was joking. She wasn’t. Knowing that she was living on cheap, food-type products disturbed him more than it should. “No one in your family ever taught you how to cook for yourself?”
She shrugged. “This is going to sound super pretentious, but my parents had hired help, so meals just appeared. If I went into the kitchen while Ms. Jenkins was cooking, she’d shoo me out. Even she knew what a hazard I was in the kitchen.”
“Well, of course you were a hazard if no one ever bothered to show you how to cook. It’s not something anyone’s born knowing how to do.” He pulled a few other items from the bags, an idea poking at his brain. He cleared his throat. “I could teach you a few things if you want.”
Her expression brightened. “Really? Do you have a death wish?”
He laughed. “I have full faith that I could teach you how to cook something other than boxed cheesy things without anyone dying in the process. It’s an important life skill. Cooking and not dying, I mean.”
She cocked her head in a playful tilt. “The Horror Virgin teaches the Cooking Virgin?”
“Sounds like a fair exchange to me,” he said, glad to hear she still wanted to meet up for movies. “We could add a cooking session to our movie nights.”
“So I get food and a movie buddy?” she asked. “I’m in.”
“Yeah?” The answer pleased him more than he wanted to admit, a buoyant feeling moving through him. “Great.”
“But that actually wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.” She bit her lip like she was fighting a cringe.
“Oh? I didn’t realize you wanted to talk. I thought you were just a benevolent grocery-carrying neighbor.” He quickly put the rest of the cold things in the fridge. He’d organize them later. Right now, he felt like whatever she wanted to talk about was something he needed to pay full attention to.
She scuffed the toe of her Doc Martens on the floor, stalling. He got the impression he was seeing a flashback of what Andi had looked like as a teenager—Andi without her trademark self-assurance. “So about last night. Specifically, about how it ended.”
He braced his hands on the small butcher-block table he used for an island, his knee aching. “What about it?”
This was the part where she was going to say he acted weird or inappropriately, that he’d let the lines blur with that hug.
“I think I may have given you mixed signals.”
He shook his head. “No, that was my—”
“Because I was,” she said, cutting him off. “The signals were mixed because I was mixed up.”
He swallowed down his retort, not fully understanding. “Okay.”
She took a breath, her shoulders lifting and falling with it. “We talked about how it wasn’t a date. We set up expectations. Neither of us are dating. We’re both in weird places. All true.” She wet her lips. “But when we hugged last night, I… Well, I wanted to kiss you.”
The floor seemed to tilt beneath him. So he hadn’t read her wrong. That had been a kiss-me expression. His brain gave a little fist pump. “Oh.”
She looked down, color coming into her cheeks. “I wanted to kiss you, but I freaked out at the last minute.” She glanced up, her gaze serious. “I panicked. That’s what happens when I try to get close—physically—with a guy.”
A pang went through him at her somber tone. “Did I do something to scare you?”
She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t you. I… It’s aftereffects from what I went through in my past.”
That knocked the wind out of him. Last night he’d suspected what she’d been through, but now she’d practically confirmed it. At some point in her life, she’d been abused or assaulted. God. “I’m sorry, Andi.”
She wouldn’t look at him. “It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t. And he needed her to hear that from him, not to have her feel so alone and vulnerable. “I don’t know what you’ve been through, but if it helps, I can tell you that I’m not unfamiliar with post-traumatic stress.” He swallowed past the dryness in his throat. “I’m dealing with that, too.”
Her attention snapped upward. “You are?”
He pointed at his prosthesis. “I lost my leg and suffered some serious burns when a building collapsed on me during a fire rescue. I get flashbacks if I hear anything that sounds like snapping wood. And I wake up from nightmares pretty often. It’s why you hear me moving around here so late at night.”
He left out the part about his crushing depression. He didn’t want her to see that side of him. Andi made him act more like his old self, and he wanted to keep it that way.
Empathy crossed her face. “I’m so sorry, Hill.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I’m dealing with it and am seeing someone about it, but I’m only telling you because I don’t want you to feel like you owe me some kind of explanation. You wanted to kiss me and then decided you weren’t comfortable doing that. That’s okay.”
She rocked back on her heels. “Would you have kissed
me back? We talked about just being friends.”
The question sent a ripple of electricity through him. “I stand by wanting to be friends. But that doesn’t mean that friends don’t sometimes add benefits to that relationship.”
She held the eye contact. “So…”
He let out a breath. “Of course I would’ve kissed you back, Andi. I’d been stopping myself from kissing you all night.”
Her shoulders seemed to sag in shared relief. “I don’t know what to do with this…this attraction thing. Friends with benefits sounds like such a cliché, and I don’t even know that I won’t freak out if you did kiss me, but…”
“But what?” he asked, voice quiet, heartbeat loud.
She gave him a helpless look. “But I still want to kiss you.”
The words were so honest and raw, so familiar to him. He knew what that feeling was—wanting something but not knowing if you were capable of having it without your demons getting in the way. He fought those wars, too.
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be so complicated or defined,” he said, the words tumbling out.
“Maybe.” She wet her lips, and he found himself transfixed as she pushed away from the counter and stepped closer. “Maybe it could be two people in a weird place who could keep each other company until they find their way out of it?”
Hill swallowed hard and stepped around the island, stopping an arm’s length away from her. “I’d like that.”
He watched as Andi’s throat worked. She was nervous as hell, but there was a determined look in her eyes. She moved into his space and put her hands on his waist. “I think I can work with that.”
Hill gave in to the urge to touch her and gently cupped the back of her neck. He felt like he was holding a robin’s egg in his palm—something beautiful and special but fragile. He wanted to kiss Andi so badly he ached, but he also sensed if he made one wrong move, he’d crush the egg in his fist. He needed her to be clear. “Tell me what you’re asking for.”
Her hands were resting lightly on his hips, and her fingers twitched against him. “I need something fun and light with no pressure of any kind. Taking it slow with someone I can feel safe with. A friend. That I can watch movies and cook with but also maybe kiss and touch sometimes.” She met his gaze. “And honestly, I don’t know if it would move beyond that. I need you to know that. This is basically going to be…an experiment. I may freak out sometimes. Will probably freak out sometimes.”