Easy

  After I knocked, I heard the bolt turn and then Lucas’s harsh voice through the door. “Who is it, Carlie? Don’t just open the door—”

  “It’s a girl.” The door swung open and a pretty, blonde, dark-eyed girl was framed in the doorway. She blinked at me, clearly waiting for an explanation of who I was and what I wanted. I couldn’t speak. I was sure my heart had lodged itself in my esophagus and stopped beating.

  Lucas came up next to her, scowling. When he saw me, his brows rose into the hair hanging over his forehead. “Jacqueline? What are you doing here?”

  My heart revved to life and I turned to tear down the stairs. Suddenly I was airborne, my bicep caught in his grip, swinging me from the top step as he brought me against his chest and I almost, almost stomped on his instep.

  “She’s Carlie Heller,” he said into my ear, and I stilled. “Her brother Caleb is inside, too. We’re playing video games.”

  My heart still pounded fight-or-flight as his words sunk in and I slumped against him, feeling like a jealous idiot. I dropped my forehead to his chest. His heart was pounding as hard as mine. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled against his soft t-shirt. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have come without telling me, but I can’t be sorry to see you.”

  I looked up. “But you said…?”

  His eyes were silver under the porch light. “I’m trying to protect you. From myself. I don’t do…” he swung a finger back and forth between us “…this.”

  My teeth chattered when I spoke. “That doesn’t make any sense. Just because you haven’t before doesn’t mean you can’t.” Too late, I apprehended a different, more likely reason for his words. “Unless… you don’t want to.”

  He sighed and released his grip on my arm to run both hands through his hair. “It’s not… that…”

  “Brrr! Are y’all coming in, or what? ’Cause I’m closing this door.” I peeked around Lucas. Carlie Heller looked young, but she didn’t look that young. She didn’t seem resentful, though. And she appeared to be curious.

  “Well, you asked for it.” Threading his fingers through mine, Lucas turned toward the door and pushed it wider. “We’re coming in.”

  Carlie darted to a corner of the sofa where Francis lay across a blanket. Scooping him up, she flopped him over her shoulder like he was an inanimate object. After climbing under the blanket, she rearranged the cat on her lap and picked up the controller. Next to her sat a scowling boy with the same dark eyes, a bit younger than (but just as sullen as) my middle school boys.

  “Take all day,” he mumbled in Lucas’s direction.

  “Rude.” Carlie elbowed him and he rolled his eyes.

  Lucas took his controller from the sofa cushion, gesturing for me to sit in the corner opposite Carlie. “Guys, this is my friend, Jacqueline. Jacqueline, these monkeys are Caleb and Carlie Heller.” Carlie and I exchanged hellos and Caleb mumbled something in my direction. I pulled my feet beneath me and watched the game over Lucas’s head.

  When Carlie ushered Caleb out fifteen minutes later, his sulking hadn’t decreased. He glanced back at me. “I can’t have girls alone in my room.”

  She swatted the back of his head. “Shut it. Lucas is a grown-up, and you are just a horny pre-adolescent.”

  I tried to disguise my laugh as a cough as Caleb’s face flushed red, and he shot through the door and pounded down the steps.

  Carlie turned to hug Lucas and beam at me. “Y’all have a good night,” she chirped, disappearing through the door.

  He watched her walk across the yard and into the house, saying goodnight before shutting and bolting the door. He turned, leaning back against it, and stared at me. “So. I thought we said we were taking a break?” He didn’t seem angry, but he wasn’t happy, either.

  “You said we were taking a break.”

  His lips flattened. “Don’t you have to check out of the dorm for several weeks?”

  I remained in my spot on the sofa, curled up into the corner. “Yes. I’m only here for two more days.”

  He stared at the ground, his palms flat on the door behind him.

  I tried to swallow but couldn’t, my speech turning shaky. “There’s something I need to tell—”

  “It’s not that I don’t want you.” His voice was soft, and he didn’t look at me when he spoke. “I lied, earlier, when I said I was protecting you.” His chin came up and we stared at each other across the room. “I’m protecting myself.” He took a visible breath, his chest rising and falling. “I don’t want to be your rebound, Jacqueline.”

  The memory of Operation Bad Boy Phase crashed into me. Erin and Maggie had hatched the plan for me to use Lucas to get over Kennedy, as though he had no feelings of his own, and I’d gone along with it. I had no idea then that he’d been watching me the whole semester. That once we began talking, his interest would grow stronger. That finally, he would feel the need to turn away from me because of the depth of those feelings, not because he felt nothing.

  “Then why are you assuming that role?” I unfolded myself from the tight little ball I’d become in the corner of his sofa, and walked across the room, slowly. “It’s not what I want, either.” As I approached, he remained frozen in place, sucking the ring on his lower lip into his mouth.

  Straightening, he stared down at me as though he thought I might disappear in front of his eyes. His hands came up to cup my face. “What am I gonna do with you?”

  I smirked up at him. “I can think of a couple of things.”

  ***

  “My mother’s name was Rosemary. She went by Rose.”

  His disclosure brought me back to earth. Lying pressed to his side, I’d been distractedly tracing the dark red petals over his heart, wondering how to tell him what I knew. Or if. “You did this in memory of her?” A lump stuck in my throat as my finger outlined the stem.

  “Yes.” His voice was low and weighty in the dark room. He was so heavy with secrets that I couldn’t imagine how he survived it day after day, never sharing the burden with anyone. “And the poem on my left side. She wrote it. For my dad.”

  My eyes stung. No wonder his father had shut down. From what Dr. Heller told me, Ray Maxfield was a logical, analytical person. His only emotional exception must have been his wife. “She was a poet?”

  “Sometimes.”

  My head on his arm, I watched his ghost smile appear in profile, and it looked different from that angle. His face was scruffy, unshaved, and several places on my body boasted the slightly chafed evidence of it.

  “Usually, she was a painter.”

  I fought to ignore my conscience, which wouldn’t quit babbling that I should tell him what I knew. That I owed him the truth. “So she’s responsible for those artist genes all mixed up with your engineering parts, eh?”

  Turning onto his side, he echoed, “Engineering parts? Which parts might that be?” A mischievous smile tugged at his mouth.

  I arched a brow and he kissed me.

  “Do you have any of her paintings?” My fingers followed an orbit around the rose, and the hard muscle beneath it flexed with my touch. Pressing my hand to his skin, I absorbed the measured thump-thump of his heart.

  “Yeah… but they’re either in storage, or displayed in the Heller’s place, since they were close friends of my parents.”

  “Your dad isn’t still friends with them?”

  He nodded, watching my face. “He is. They were my ride home at Thanksgiving. They can’t get him to come here, so every other year, they all go there.”

  I thought about my parents and the friends and neighbors with whom they socialized. “My parents don’t have any friends close enough to be incorporated into actual holidays.”

  He stared up at the ceiling. “They were all really close—before.”

  His grief was so tangible. I knew in that moment that he’d not worked through it—not at all in the eight years it had been. His protective wall had become a fortress holding him hostage rather t
han giving sanctuary. He might never fully recover from the horror of what happened that night, but there had to be a point where it wouldn’t consume him.

  “Lucas, I need to tell you something.” His heart drummed under my hand, slow and steady.

  Other than shifting his gaze to me, he didn’t move, but I felt his withdrawal as he waited. I assured myself that the disconnection was all in my mind—a product of my guilt and nothing more.

  “I wanted to know how you lost your mother, and I could tell it upset you to talk about it. So… I looked online for her obituary.” My breathing went shallow as the seconds ticked by and he said nothing.

  Finally, he spoke, and his voice was undeniably flat and cold. “Did you find your answer?”

  I swallowed, but my voice was a whisper. “Yes.” I couldn’t hear myself over the rapid thud of my heartbeat.

  He shifted his eyes from me and lay back, biting his lip, hard.

  “There’s one more thing.”

  He inhaled and exhaled, staring at the ceiling, waiting for my next confession.

  I closed my eyes and blurted it out. “I talked to Dr. Heller about it—”

  “What?” His body was like rock against mine.

  “Lucas, I’m sorry if I invaded your privacy—”

  “If?” He shot up, unable to look at me, and I sat, pulling the covers up with me. “Why would you go talk to him? Weren’t the gory details in the news reports sickening enough for you? Or personal enough?” He pulled on his boxers and jeans, his movements rough. “Did you want to know how she looked when they found her? How she’d bled out? How even when my dad ripped out the carpet with his bare hands—” he exhaled harshly “—there was a yard-wide circle of bloodstained flooring underneath that couldn’t be sanded deep enough to get it all?” His voice broke and he stopped talking.

  In shock and out of words, I could hardly breathe. He sat on the edge of the bed, silent, his head in his hands. He was so close that I could have reached out to stroke the cross that ran along his spine, but I didn’t dare. I scooted carefully from the bed and got dressed. I pulled on my UGGs and walked to stand at the foot of the bed.

  His elbows pressed into his thighs, his hands obscuring his face like blinders. I stared at the dark hair grazing his shoulders, the flexed muscles of his arm and the ink circling his bicep and flowing down his forearm, his beautiful, lean torso and the words etched into his side like a brand.

  “Do you want me to leave?” I surprised myself, uttering the words with a steady voice.

  I don’t know why I thought he would say no, or say nothing. I was wrong, either way.

  “Yes.”

  The tears started flowing then, but he couldn’t see them. He didn’t move from his position on the bed. I couldn’t even be angry, because I’d crossed a line and I knew it, and meaning well wasn’t good enough. I grabbed my purse and keys from the kitchen table and my coat from the sofa, ears pricked for the sound of him coming after me, telling me to stay. There was nothing but silence from his room.

  When I opened the door, Francis shot inside, along with a burst of cold air. I pulled the door shut behind me before a sob broke free. Gulping the frigid air and wondering how I’d managed to screw this up so thoroughly, I was determined not to cry until I was in my truck. I slid my hand along the railing as I rushed clumsily down the steps, because I couldn’t see through the combination of a moonless night and my tears. A splinter pierced my hand two steps from the bottom.

  “Ow! Dammit.” The physical pain provided the ideal excuse for the sobbing to start. I sprinted down the long, curved driveway, unsuccessful in my attempt to curb my tears long enough to get into the truck. “Damn. Damn. Damn. Fuck.” I jammed my key into the lock by feel.

  Déjà vu. That was the first thing I thought when I felt myself propelled across the bench seat. That was where the resemblance ended, though.

  Buck shut the door behind him and slapped the automatic lock. His weight immobilized my lower legs and he had my left wrist in his hand before I could make out who he was, though I knew. “Good enough to spread your legs for anybody but me, huh Jackie?”

  Chapter 26

  On my back, with my head at an awkward angle against the passenger door, I jerked at my arm and struggled without success to move my legs. “Get off!” I yelled the words, knowing they would be meaningless to him. I was parked in the street—too far for anyone else to hear me. “Get out of my truck!” I’d dropped my keys onto the truck floor when he’d shoved me into the truck, and I searched the floor with my right hand, intending to use them as a weapon.

  “I don’t think so.” He grabbed my right wrist and shook his head like he could read my mind. “You’re not going anywhere until we’re done talking. You and your lying cunt friend have ruined my fucking life.”

  And then, I heard Ralph’s voice in my head. Your body is already a weapon. You just need to know how to use it. Abruptly, I stopped struggling and took stock: I couldn’t kick. I could possibly get my wrists free by rotating and jerking them straight down, but then what? He would just grab me again, immobilize me further.

  I needed him closer—the last thing I would naturally seek. I turned my eyes away.

  “Listen to me when I’m talking to you, goddammit!” He grabbed my chin roughly, his fingers digging in as he leaned over me and forced me to face him.

  Right hand free.

  While shoving my hand between us, grabbing and twisting his balls and yanking up as hard as I could, I slammed my forehead into his nose with as much force as I could manage in a straight upward trajectory.

  The night in the frat parking lot, everything had happened so quickly that getting my bearings was impossible until it was over. This time, everything was in slow motion—so for an impossibly stretched space of time, I was positive that nothing I’d just done had worked.

  And then he screamed, and his nose started gushing. I had never seen so much blood so close-up. It poured out of him as though I’d opened a faucet full-blast.

  Left hand free.

  He was listing to the side. Still yanking up on his balls, I raised my left knee and turned into him, shoving his shoulder with my left hand. He fell sideways into the cramped crevice in front of my truck’s bench seat. The feeling rushed back into my legs, tremors wracking through me, and I went for the door, shoving it open so violently that it almost bounced all the way back.

  Just before I cleared the door, his right hand shot out and grabbed my wrist, like the never-quite-dead psycho in a horror movie. I spun and smashed my fist down on the sensitive spot on his upper forearm, inches down from his the crook of his arm, and he released me, bellowing angrily and attempting to flail himself into an upright position.

  I didn’t wait to see if he succeeded. I vaulted from my truck and ran.

  This would have been an ideal time to scream, but I could barely gasp breaths. I heard his footsteps pounding unevenly behind me and I focused on Lucas’s door at the top of those steps. I was halfway down the driveway when Buck lunged from behind and grabbed at my hair, yanking me to a stop painfully. I yelped as we went down, immediately turning onto my side as Lucas had taught me, dislodging him.

  Suddenly, Lucas was there. Like a dark avenging angel, he yanked Buck away from me and threw him, and then installed himself between us. I scrambled backwards, crab-like. He spared me one glance, his colorless eyes flaring in the dim light cast by the flood lights at the side of the house, before he turned back to Buck, who’d rolled to his feet. Blood coated the space between his nose and mouth and was smeared on his chin, but there was little on him aside from that.

  A second floodlight at the corner of the house popped on, illuminating the scene.

  Panting, I glanced down at my chest and started. My pink and white knit shirt was stained dark from the neckline to the top of my belly. Because of our positions when I’d slammed Buck’s nose, my chest had caught the majority of blood that gushed from his face.

  I battled the urge to rip
my shirt off in the Heller’s front yard.

  Crouching, he tried to circle Lucas. Rather than turn with him, Lucas moved sideways, remaining with his back to me, blocking Buck from getting any closer to me.

  Buck’s voice was a gruff snarl. “I’m gonna bust that lip wide open, emo-boy. I’m not fucked up this time. I’m stone-cold sober, and I’m gonna kick your ass before I fuck your little whore nine ways from Sunday—again.”

  Lying bastard.

  Lucas didn’t rush him, and didn’t respond at first, and then I heard his very controlled voice. “You’re mistaken, Buck.” Never shifting his eyes from him, Lucas unzipped his leather jacket, shrugged it off and tossed it aside. As he shoved the sleeves of the dark long-sleeved t-shirt above his elbows, I noted the worn jeans he’d pulled on earlier and the shit-kicker cowboy boots he grabbed when he was in a hurry, because they didn’t require the time-suck that lacing his black combat boots involved.

  Buck threw a wide punch and Lucas blocked it. He tried again with the same result, and then rushed forward to pin Lucas in a hold. One kidney punch and left ear cuff later, and Buck staggered to the side, pointing at me. “Bitch. Think you’re too good for me—but you’re nothing but a whore.”

  Lucas tracked him, staying between us. When Buck jabbed, Lucas grabbed his forearm and turned, wrenching Buck’s arm in a direction arms aren’t meant to go before turning him to deliver a quick uppercut to the jaw. Buck’s head rotated so far he was almost looking backward over his shoulder. He turned back and Lucas snapped another blow straight into his lip. Holding his defensive stance and cocking his head once to each side, Lucas’s ghost smile took on a menace it didn’t imply when he turned it on me.

  Buck roared and lunged forward, and they went down. Height-wise, they were evenly matched. Weight-wise, Buck had a clear forty or fifty pound advantage, and he used it to pin Lucas, punching him in the side of the head twice before Lucas twisted, tossing Buck onto the top of his skull. Flopping onto his back, Buck shook his head twice, like he was trying to clear it.