I pulled a towel through my hair and swallowed back the brick in my throat. “Tequila—never again.” I shook my head and sat up. “So you came here rather than face me?”
He busied himself with collecting the damp towels. “I had to make sure the house was storm ready and figured I’d stay.”
“Why you?”
He shrugged. “Why not me?”
He hadn’t answered my question, but as I opened my mouth to call him on it, lightening seared the skies. The room went daylight bright, followed by a crack of thunder so loud, it surely shook both heaven and earth. I sprung from the chair and threw myself at him, fisting his black T-shirt. Seconds later, outside along the walk, there was the sound of electric sizzling and a crackling pop together with another quick burst of light.
Everything went dark.
Without the normal hum of electric, the sound of the weather intensified. I pressed closer until he chuckled at me.
“Relax, Claude. Sounds like the transformer blew, but we’re safe.”
With reluctance, I let him go but shadowed him in the glow of his flashlight. He knew exactly where to look for supplies—in the bottom draw of a mostly empty curio cabinet—and took out a new box of tea light candles. We lit several of the stubby candles and placed them in a row across the distressed white, coffee table. He turned his back to me to light a fire in the fireplace. I dragged my eyes from his strong back to the mantel above him. It was finished, stained, and beautiful, and I felt the immediate desire to run my hands over the polished wood.
“You want something to eat?” Light from the fireplace jumped around his calves, but his face was cast in a shadow. “I have stuff to make sandwiches, or I could make some peanut butter and jelly crackers.”
An image materialized of the last time I’d been at this house with him, devouring PB&J crackers, practically legless after making love with him. I had to look away.
He must have remembered, too.
“I’ll just throw some stuff together.” He rubbed his hands on his jeans and shot out of the room. He came back with a bag of pretzels and water bottles, and a blanket and pillow bundled under his arm. He deposited the foodstuff onto the table and tossed bedding on the couch.
“You can take one of the bedrooms. I plan on sleeping out here.”
I shook my head. “I’m not sleeping in there alone.”
“Suit yourself.” He shifted the coffee table towards the side of the room and assembled a cozy spot on the floor facing the bay window.
Propping myself against the arm of the couch, I drew my knees up to my chest and hugged them while he sprawled out on the floor. My pants were damp and uncomfortable. I would’ve liked to remove them, but I sat there, in silence with him, as the wind howled against the windowpanes.
“When I was a kid, I dug it whenever a big storm was forecasted,” he said. “There’s something about having the shit scared out of you—a reminder that there’s a whole universe of elements greater than us. For a little while, everyone is united in a common thought: just get through it.”
“That’s a poetic way to think about it,” I said, staring at the leaves and other debris whizzing past the window along with torrents of weighted rain.
We lounged, chatting amicably about the weather, as if there were nothing more pertinent to discuss. If a stranger had walked into the room, they might not have discerned any tension between us, but there was an undeniable tightly-corded charge in the air that had nothing to do with the rumbles of thunder and flashes of lightning that breeched the darkness around us.
Before the rift between us, I would've been on the floor curled up next to him, the two of us drifting into a comfortable silence. This past year, we’d stretched and shifted, kneading our routines and habits until we found that sweet spot, a place of comfortable solitude in the presence of the other. I could study at the kitchen table while he tinkered at the counter, making us something to eat. He would watch sports, rubbing my feet, while I had my nose in a book. I loved what we had become, what we had made—all in spite of our differences.
Readying myself to begin the journey back to that place was akin to running into a burning building to save the one you loved. As arduous and scary of a task as it was, there was no standing idly by while the one thing you loved best in the world was being ripped away from you, possibly forever.
I leaned forward, bringing my face into the candlelight, and decided the best way was to get running and pray for the best. “Are we going to talk or what?”
He stared up at the ceiling, the glow of the fire illuminating one side of his face and casting the other into opaque shadows. “We are talking.”
I nearly groaned. “You know what I mean. We need to talk about what happened last night.”
“I thought after you and Pace had your nice chat, you knew everything.”
“Where do you get off being so glib? You remained so damn secretive when you had plenty of opportunities to tell me.” I sat rigid in my annoyance, the harsh truth bouncing between us. “Where do the lies and secrets end, Toby?”
His eyes drifted across the room, watching the flickering shadows of the firelight as they danced on the wall. “The box is finally empty.”
I remembered what Al had told me: Toby hid his pain and came up swinging. My own fear and anxiety had not allowed me to see the protective firewall he’d put up. I’d been blind to the motive behind his reticence as he’d been blind to what made me push him away. Our unique and individual reactions to the fears we harbored, the ones that haunted our pasts, had forced us to respond in our own tried and true, predictable fashions.
“How can I tell you what happened when your life—your traditions, your outlook, your principals—are so different from mine?” He sighed. “How could I ever tell you?”
“You just open your mouth and do it,” I said.
“What if I tell you all the rumors are true?” he asked.
I tried not to flinch, but my breath caught in my throat. The tightness of my ribcage was like a tightly strung corset. I raised my eyes and found him looking at me expectantly.
I had opened the door to his closet and found the skeletons inside. True skeletons were always hidden away from what we could see. The things we hid away in our proverbial closets were embarrassments, missteps, and actions we’d taken that we’d rather forget. But it always seemed like when you shined a light on them, they weren’t actually all that scary. Skeletons were calcium and collagen, a combination that created strength and flexibility—something we needed to survive life’s thumps and bumps that might otherwise destroy us.
His expression said he anticipated my disapproval, expected me to point my judgmental finger and criticize him for what he’d done. The barricade was up.
This was an opportunity to show him I loved and adored the man he was, closeted skeletons and all.
I inhaled deeply and said, “You’ll have to trust I love you enough that it won’t matter.”
Chapter 40 • Toby
She came closer; chin lowered, eyes pleading for my secrets.
“You don’t have to tell me, but I get the feeling whatever happened with Lacie and Jackie has had a lasting effect on you. It hurts you, possibly more than you’d like to admit, and knowing that, I can’t help but want to know more. Please trust me enough to tell me.”
The room was wrapped in our silence, only the strains of far off thunder rumbled, until I rolled onto my back away from her, my arms limp at my sides.
Holding onto a secret even the one that was bound to freak her out was pointless. I mean, I’d already lost her. It couldn’t get any worse, but there was a minuscule chance she might understand the good intentions behind my actions.
“When I started working for Jackie, I’d never laid eyes on Lacie. Didn’t even know she existed.” I was going to tell her the whole story as truthfully as I could. “Since Jackie had shared how her ex-husband had abused her, I told her about my brother, our fighting, and how I’d spent my sixteen
th birthday in the ER getting stitches. More than being sympathetic, she understood, and it became easier to crack the door open a little more and let some of the blackness inside drain out.” I stared up at the dark ceiling, remembering at eighteen how unimportant and detached I’d felt until Jackie. “It was a bad time. Julia had just been diagnosed with the lymphoma, and the fighting between Al and me was at an all-time high.”
“A difficult time,” she agreed. “It makes sense that you related to Jackie’s situation. It was different but not unlike your own.”
I rolled my bottom lip under my teeth and glanced at Claudia. I could see the questions building in her eyes, how she was trying to listen without judging.
“Go on,” she prompted, visibly swallowing.
“After I’d been working a few months, Jackie told me her ex had contacted Lacie and was trying to get her to come home. She was upset, understandably, and I hugged her, Claude—only a hug.”
One sympathetic touch led to another. Our kiss was tentative at first, but then all this energy, raw, angry, and voracious, rushed through me to her. The room capsized with both of us in it. I tugged at her hair; she pulled at my clothes.
“I’d had no expectation it would go any further,” I said. Claudia puckered her lips, inhaling deeply, visually bracing herself as I purged myself of the truth. “But it did.”
She blinked several times and gave me a slight nod to continue.
“Right after it happened, Jackie made me take a week off, a ‘cooling-off’ she called it, and was adamant that it not happen again.”
“Did it?” she asked.
“No. The two of us had been like each other’s Band-Aid, but it was wrong. With free time, I went looking for Lacie.” I squeezed my eyes shut and drew up the memory of meeting Jackie’s daughter, seeing her small timid, grin. She looked like her name, thin and delicate—a wisp of a girl that a gust of wind could blow away with eyes so dark and bottomless, looking into them made me feel like I was falling down an endless hole. “I planned on looking out for her—to shield her from her father—kind of like a big brother. Like Jackie, she had some understandable trust issues, and she didn’t exactly trust a guy like me suddenly showing up to hang out with a quiet wallflower like her.
“It took some time, but I kept showing up until she gradually accepted my presence. Lacie was shy, but she misread my intentions. Given a moment alone, she’d cozy up to me, angling for a kiss. I could usually find a way out of it, but the thing was she had all these hang-ups about herself. When it became obvious I wasn’t going to give her what she wanted, she blamed herself—said she understood why I didn’t want to—because she was ugly.”
Claudia made a sympathetic noise.
“I was in way over my head. I didn’t know how to fix it,” I admitted. “It wasn’t a stretch to kiss her. I mean, she was pretty, and I did actually like her company. So I let it happen. I kissed her. It took so little from me, and it made her so happy. She lit up like a Christmas tree. Everything was good until at work one day Jackie asked me if I knew the guy Lacie claimed she was in love with.”
“Oh, no,” Claudia murmured.
“Yeah. No good intention ever goes unpunished,” I said. “And worse, Lacie was pushing for more.”
“She wanted to be intimate with you,” she assumed correctly.
I nodded. “Jackie was upset. While we both agreed what happened between us wouldn’t happen again, it didn’t change the fact that it had happened, and now, her daughter was practically throwing herself at me.”
“Oh, good lord.” Claudia rubbed her temple. “What a position to be in.”
“Jackie fired me and forbid Lacie to see me anymore,” I said. “I understood. I tried to avoid Lacie, but she wasn’t having it. She fought with Jackie and showed up everywhere I went, pushing harder for sex. I kept putting her off, but since I’d had a number of girlfriends and wasn’t exactly known for being innocent, she knew something was up.” I dropped off, momentarily quiet, building my courage to finish. “She demanded to know why I refused to be with her.”
Claudia exhaled tersely. “You told her about the thing with her mother?”
“I didn’t have to.” I shifted on my elbow. “My sudden firing, her mother’s complete resistance to our relationship—she put it together herself. When she accused me of it, I didn’t deny it.”
Claudia’s eyes softened at my admission, and I had to look away. Unrest filled my stomach like seawater filled a sinking boat. I didn’t want sympathy. I wanted her to understand.
“At first, she wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t look at me, and she made appearances with Pace—walking in the hallway with him, going off in his car with him.” The drowning water turned to a hard lump of ice in my stomach. “She knew I hated that asshole, and I knew it was her way of getting back at me. A few months later, she unexpectedly showed up at my house.” I could easily remember her standing on my doorstep, a mess. “She was crying, saying she was sorry, she’d made a mistake, she loved me and begged me to have sex with her. She was crying so hard I would have tried anything to make her feel better.”
“Did you sleep with her?” she asked.
“You might find it too incredible to believe, but it was the only way I knew how to comfort her.”
She visibly stiffened under the truth. “You tried to do the right thing… as you knew it.”
“It wasn’t enough.” I threw an arm over my eyes, feeling sick to my stomach. “She was hurting, and I… I wanted to take care of her because I…”
“—loved her,” she finished. She dropped onto her knees aside me and pulled my arm away from my face. With tears welling in her eyes, she put her hand on my chest and smoothed the fabric over my heart. “Toby, it’s okay to admit that you loved her.”
“No, Claudia, I had a chance to stop her from ending her life.” I grabbed her hand, holding it tight between mine, mimicking the squeezing sensation around my heart before letting it go. “And I couldn’t. I didn’t know how.”
Chapter 41 • Claudia
Toby got to his feet, leaving me on the floor in front of the fireplace searching for the right words to console him, but before I could find them, he opened the front door. He hesitated on the threshold, refusing to look back at me. “I haven’t changed much. I was as stupid and useless then as I am now.”
Then he was gone; the black velvet curtain of rain swallowing him.
I jammed my feet back into my wet shoes and took off after him. Without my jacket to protect me, the rain soaked through my clothes in seconds flat, plastering the fabric to my skin. About fifty feet ahead of me, Toby was making his way up the rising slope of the boardwalk in the direction of the ocean.
“Toby!” I hollered at his retreating back, but the wind stole his name from my lips and carried it away. If he heard me, he didn’t respond. I dashed after him, skating on the slick planks, watching as his head dipped low and then disappeared from view. He’d gone down to the beach. At the steps, I gripped the handrail, hoisting myself downward, the rain and wind making the descent cumbersome.
He crossed the beach to stand at the water’s edge. Endless waves, one after the other, trounced the shore, slithering up to curl around at his ankles, all the while he stared out into the black, turbulent waters of an endless ocean. I took advantage of his pause to catch up to him and latch onto his arm. “Come back inside. It doesn’t matter what happened.” I yelled over the roar of the waves, knowing it was the truth. “I love you!”
His silence tormented me. I pressed my face to his back, and though the damp salty air clung to the insides of my nostrils, I could smell the scent of his skin. My ache for him made me shake with weakness. Rain poured down over us, and my teeth chattered relentlessly. I knew he needed to get it out, to cleanse himself of it all, and I tried to will the tremors that wracked my body to be still.
“You don’t understand.” He lulled under the weight of his words. “Those rumors of a pregnancy, they’re true. Only it wasn’t Jack
ie who was pregnant. It was Lacie.”
A smothered cry pushed past my lips, and I bowed my head down, trying to catch my breath. This wasn’t the truth I’d been expecting, and it collapsed atop me, undermining the bracing force of my resolve. I leaned against him, burrowing my face into his back, and clung to his arms. We were like two fragile beakers of glass, each holding our own share of pain, and as we bumped up against each other, liquefied anguish spilled out. Eventually one or both of our thin walls of glass would shatter. It needed to. There was no other way to move forward. As disheartened as I was, my main objective was to refocus him and bring him back to the house, so we could finish talking this out.
“Oh, Tobeee.” My jaw continued to shake uncontrollably, making his name judder from my lips. “You were just a kid. No one could expect—”
“Stop, Claude. Don’t make excuses for me.” He ripped himself away from me. “You don’t understand what it was like.”
He faced me, and though his eyes were mostly lost in deep shadows of the night, there was rage in his stance. I knew the anger was not aimed at me but was instead a cover for the crippling pain that pulsated through him. It’s what he did—what he’d always done whenever emotions became too intolerable to bear. A girl had died, and he blamed himself.
Behind his head, something caught my attention—a dark wall rising up behind him. I stared at it too long before I realized it was a rogue wave, substantially larger than the others and much too close to the shore to break at a safe distance from us.
“Watch out!” I screamed, my desperate fingers curling for purchase on his arms, but there was no escaping it. The giant swell broke over us, belting us full blast with its mighty power. The weight and the icy coldness, a complete shock to my system, made me want to scream out. The force snatched our feet out from under us, throwing Toby at me, his body slamming mine. For an instant, our hands gripped each other’s, but the hold was fleeting until there was only me, spinning alone in a dark, watery world.
Keeping Claudia (Toby & Claudia Book 2) Page 39