I want to blame the raging storm—I want to say it’s the threat outside that feels greater than the threat of her, therefore, justifying the way I’m letting her cling to me.
Justifying the way I’m clinging right back.
Only… there was no threat yesterday when I let her touch me—when I let her take my hand between her palms and drag a lazy finger across the creases, like she was carving herself into me somehow. Branding me with sunshine.
There was no danger earlier today when some sort of fucked-up possessive feeling shot through me like a drug, and I felt the need to stake some sort of claim over her.
It’s maddening.
It’s confusing, nonsensical, and fucking maddening how I hate everything she stands for, everything she represents, and yet… I don’t hate her at all.
“You’re not shaking anymore.” Melody’s voice infiltrates my dark musings as she continues to invade me. She continues to trespass. “My father used to tell me that the dark is the very best secret-keeper. The things we say in the dark never have to leave it.”
Her cheek dips back to my chest, her words muffled by my shirt, and the fine hairs on her head tickle my nose as I inhale a shuddering breath. Thoroughly entwined and swallowed by darkness, reckless thoughts spill out of me. “When I was a kid… some real bad shit happened to me. I spent a lot of time in the dark, and it fucked with my head. Played tricks on me.”
I feel her head lift slowly from my chest, her eyes searching for me through the thick shroud of darkness, trying to see me.
She’s always trying to see me.
“Parker,” she whispers delicately, her face close, too close. Her hands start moving again in a skyward journey from my chest to my neck, trailing up to my face until both palms are cradling my jaw.
My body tenses at the contact, wanting to reject the tenderness of her touch—like it’s some kind of foreign entity that doesn’t belong. I snatch her wrists up. “Don’t. I don’t want your pity.”
“It’s not pity.” Melody wriggles her arms free of my grip and returns them to my face, her fingertips featherlight against my rough jaw. “It’s empathy.”
“I don’t want that either.”
The whooshing sound from outside, almost like a runaway train, seems to die down, and I wonder if the threat has passed. I wonder if this will all be over soon, so I can get the hell out of here and never look back. The lights flicker for a brief moment, just enough for me to catch the glaze over her eyes and the pink stain in her cheeks.
And then it’s dark again. Our secrets are still safe.
The soft pads of her fingers graze the bristles along my chin, and she inhales slowly. “Tell me more.”
I try to swipe her arms away, but she actually fights back, maintaining her grip, cupping my face between her palms.
“Keep going, Parker.”
A growl escapes me, and I fist her hair again as a wave of anger surges through me. “Fucking intrusive,” I spit out, our foreheads knocking together when she arches into me.
Melody makes that sound again, a squeaky mewl, as I tighten my hold on her hair, and her sharp nails dig into my cheeks.
And fuck, this is the damn wrong time to be getting turned on.
“Keep going,” she says raggedly, echoing my own words from that night in the rain. “Get mad. Let it out.”
Her body bows against me, our groins pressing together and a hiss expelling between gritted teeth. “You don’t want to know what I’m feeling right now.”
“Yes, I do,” she insists, her knees clamping around my hips. “You can talk to me. We’re just two people taking cover from the storm.”
“Is that what this is?”
“Yes.”
I tug on her hair, my opposite hand grazing down her spine and curling around her hip until I’m grinding my erection into the apex of her thighs, and she knows exactly what I’m feeling. “Feels like something else to me,” I reply in a low voice.
Melody’s hands drop to my shoulders with a whimper, squeezing tight, her nails surely leaving little half-moons in my skin. She sucks in a sharp breath, her whole body tensing as her forehead falls against mine and rests there. She whispers my name as if she can’t seem to muster anything more. “Parker…”
Jesus, this is fucked.
I haven’t had sex in ages. I haven’t even thought about it—not until her. Not until that night beneath the rainclouds when I watched her dance atop the hood of her car, weightless and free, her wet clothes stuck to ivory skin that I suddenly wanted to feel beneath my fingertips.
But that was just a fluke.
And this…
This is just the dark, playing tricks on me. Playing tricks on both of us.
I can hardly make out her outline through the black veil between us, but I can picture her flushed cheeks, wild hair, and wide green eyes, like two emerald arrows to my chest.
All I want to do is pull them out, but they’re embedded, lodged too deep, and it’ll only make it worse. I’ll bleed out.
Instead, I strengthen my hold on Melody’s hip as her nose grazes mine. Our breaths intermingle, and my head falls back against the wall, her breasts flush with my torso. I feel her inching in, getting closer, her lips almost touching mine.
It’s the dark. This isn’t real.
I’m choking on her scent, dizzy and light-headed.
Melody’s palms slide up to my neck, her thumbs dusting gently, and she breathes against my mouth, “You’re shaking again.”
Fuck.
It’s not the dark this time, and it’s not the storm—it’s all her. She’s twisting me up inside, smelling like lemons and grapefruit, feeling warm and supple in my hands, and making these little squeaky sounds that shoot straight to my groin. And I know I should pull away because her lips are far too fucking close to mine, but it feels like she’s breathing life into me, and I don’t know how to pull away from something like that.
Melody leans in, just a centimeter more, and our lips brush together. So soft, so light, hardly anything at all, but it feels electric.
Catastrophic.
I don’t move. I’m barely breathing.
I just hold onto her so tight, I’m afraid I might break her.
But I’m more afraid she’ll break me first.
She doesn’t press any harder, though, she just lingers there, memorizing the shape of my mouth with her own. Melody grazes her lips gently across mine, inhaling a deep, tremoring breath, and applies the most delicate kiss to my bottom lip.
But before we can cross anymore lines, before she crashes through anymore of my steel walls, the lights flicker back to life.
Melody jolts back with a sharp gasp, her hand lifting as she presses her fingertips to her lips, like she’s in shock. She blinks against the harsh fluorescents with bright red cheeks, her straw blonde hair a knotted mess, and her expression… wide-eyed and mortified.
My chest tightens with lightning rage, and I ground out through clenched teeth, “Get off me.”
Her eyebrows dip, hesitation seizing her.
“Fucking get off me, Melody.”
Her own features grow taut and hard as she scrambles off my lap, pulling herself to trembling legs. “You don’t have to be such a jerk,” she bites out with a husky rasp.
“I don’t kiss. I’ve never kissed.” I move to find my own footing, internally scolding my dick to calm the fuck down.
“What?”
“I don’t fucking kiss, okay? I never have. Not once.”
Melody blinks at me through a mask of incredulity. “How is that possible?”
Smoothing out my t-shirt and ruffling my hair, I spare her a scathing glance. “I don’t particularly care for women, that’s how.”
Her eyes pop, and she repeats, “What?”
Jesus Christ.
What a fucking mess.
I don’t bother replying to her and storm out the door, practically kicking it open, kind of hoping the tornado is still lurking around somewhere so I
can dive in, headfirst.
“Parker.”
Melody calls after me as I stomp up the staircase, but I quicken my gait and move to collect my tools so I can get the fuck out of here. A brief glance out her front window pauses my feet. “Shit…”
There are downed trees everywhere, one taking out a roof. Window shutters, glass, gutters, all lay strewn across the dusty street.
Debris, destruction, ruin.
I pace towards the window, my eyes taking in the wreckage as I scan her neighborhood, an eerie chill coasting across my skin. There’s an elderly woman wandering her front yard in a floral nightgown, looking completely lost, in a daze.
I feel Melody come up behind me, so I turn to her, noting the tears welling as she stares out in silent horror at the scene before us—a scene that looks like it came straight out of an apocalyptic movie set. When she lifts her eyes to me, misted and gutted, my heart stutters.
Her anguish blindsides me because I feel it, too, and I’ve never given a shit about anything before. Not really. I do care about Bree, and I care enough about my dog to have had the decency to drop him off with her on my way over here, so he wouldn’t be alone during the storm.
But my sister’s pain has never been my pain. Her heartbreaks and setbacks have never kept me up at night. I’m desensitized to other people’s misery because I’ve always been too wrapped up in my own.
Not now, though. Not right now while she gazes up at me with those wounded, green eyes, like her whole world is nothing but shambles and faded embers.
I feel it, too.
And it’s kind of a sickly feeling—a kick to my gut, a searing lump in the back of my throat. I want to cut it out of me. Reject it.
Reject her, just like I’ve been trying to do since the day she stumbled into that meeting like my own personal tornado, determined to wreak havoc on me with her endless smiles and happy little sunbeams.
We hold our stare for another beat before Melody turns her attention back to the front window and zeros in on the elderly woman. She inhales sharply. “Mrs. Porter…”
I watch as Melody doesn’t think twice, doesn’t even fucking hesitate, before slipping into her shoes and running out the front door and across the street, dodging scattered debris and fallen tree branches along the way. My own feet carry me to the open doorway, my eyes following her petite figure as she meets Mrs. Porter on her front lawn and envelops the frail woman in a tight hug. No faltering, no indecision, no thought to herself or her own burdens.
Just empathy.
As I linger in the entryway, my fingers tapping restlessly against the frame and my insides humming with feelings I don’t recognize, I do something I’ve never done before.
I make my way into Melody’s kitchen, and instead of packing up my shit and bolting, I sift through her cabinets until I find a box of garbage bags.
Then I step out her front door and get to work.
—SEVENTEEN—
Bree barrels through my foyer later that week with a box of doughnuts, interrupting my afternoon nap on the couch with Walden, who is curled up in a ball near my feet. I’m pretty sure it’s the first time he’s ever actually made the effort to hop up here with me.
The backside of my arm is draped over my forehead as I grumble a hello to my sister, peering over at her with only one eye open. This is the first day off I’ve had in months, so I kind of just want to go back to sleep.
“Oh, my God… look at your dog, Parker.”
Bree’s chipper voice has me blinking both eyes open as I pull myself halfway up by the arms. I glance at the black and white furball at the end of the couch, all withered and bony, with dark moles and skin tags casing his skin. “He looks old as fuck,” I mumble, then scrub a palm down my face.
“His hair is growing in,” Bree beams. “I thought he looked different when you dropped him off the other day.”
She dashes—legitimately dashes—over to us, her brown curls bouncing with each step. My eyebrow arches with skepticism. “Doubtful.”
“I’m serious. Look at these fresh patches of hair. Did you change his diet?”
“No. He eats the kibble you bought a psychotic amount of, and sometimes that nasty shit in a can that looks like gelatinous slug guts.”
“Seems to be working. Keep it up.”
“Slug guts noted.”
Bree leans over the back of the couch, giving Walden a scratch between his ears that causes the poor animal to startle awake because he’s deaf as bricks. “Sorry, pup. Didn’t mean to scare you,” she coos, her smile wide.
Walden lets out a heavy sigh and goes back to sleep. Lucky bastard.
Heaving my legs over the side of the couch, I scratch at my overgrown stubble and throw my sister a quick glance. I do a double-take when I discover her studying me with that knowing smirk, her chestnut eyes glittering. “What?”
“You’re finally getting laid, aren’t you?”
“What the fuck?”
Bree puckers her lips, staring at me, all squinty and scrutinizing. “You are.”
“You’re clearly under the influence of something.”
“So are you,” she quips. “What’s her name?”
“Bye.”
“Parker, come on. Your house is the cleanest it’s probably ever been, your dog is suddenly sprouting fur like a Chia Pet, and…” She paces over to my side of the couch and twirls a manicured finger in front of my face. “This.”
“My perpetual scowl?”
“You look… different.”
An aggravated groan escapes me as I push myself up from the couch cushions and storm away, already knowing she’s going to follow. Relentless. “Wishful thinking, Bree. I’m still the same old joyless curmudgeon you’ve come to know, and for some unknown reason, love.”
Bree trails me into the kitchen, her never-ending optimism trailing with her. She coils her fingers around my wrist to stop my intentional avoidance. “Hey. Stop for a second.”
Closing my eyes, my jaw tight, I slowly spin to face her.
“Parker.”
“Bree,” I drawl.
“Will you look at me, please?”
Fucking hell. I appease her request, but make sure I do it as miserably as possible—eyebrows pinched, lips pressed together, glare indignant. Bree’s gaze slides over me like she’s studying for a final exam, soaking up each line and crease, memorizing every detail. She’s in research mode. Her little nose scrunches up, making it look like the freckles peppering her high cheekbones scatter and spread. Her thick, dark eyebrows wrinkle with curiosity. I let out something that falls between a sigh and a huff, laced with exasperation, and fold my arms over my chest. “Are you done?”
Bree’s taupe-tinged lips curl up. “Who is she?”
“I’m not sleeping with anyone.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I open my mouth to speak, then clamp it shut. My teeth grind and grate, the muscles in my arms twitching. I’m not planning on indulging Bree because it means nothing—she means nothing—but it slips out anyway. “She’s just someone I met at those dumb fucking meetings you forced me into.”
“Oh, my God…”
I’m appalled when she starts to cry. “What are you doing? Don’t fucking do that. Why are you doing that?”
Bree throws herself at me with a strained whimper, wrapping me up in a bone-crushing hug and weeping into the front of my shirt. Her hair smells like it did when we were kids, something like baby powder and wild orchids, and I can’t help but deflate a little as the crimpy curls tickle my nose. “It’s nothing… and it’s not going anywhere.”
“It’s not nothing, Parker. It’s not.” She pulls her cheek from my chest, wiping away tearstains with the back of her wrist, then she presses her palm up against my heart. “One year ago, I thought I was going to lose you, but you were given a second chance. A chance I never thought you’d ever learn to appreciate.”
I stiffen, glancing away and blowing out a hard breath. “You’re making t
his a bigger deal than it is.”
“Your happiness is a big deal, little brother. It’s a huge freakin’ deal.” Bree gifts me with a watery smile, sniffling as she takes a step back. “I won’t hound you for details. I don’t think you’re ready for that yet.”
“Good. There are no details, and also, I’d rather jump into a pit of ravenous beavers than have that conversation with you.”
She knocks me on the shoulder with a playful fist. “I’ll break you down eventually,” she says, traipsing towards the box of assorted doughnuts and plucking a glazed blueberry from the mix. Bree takes a big bite and mumbles through the crumbs, “Just stay away from beaver pits until then.”
Evening falls, and I make my way over to my rolling chair when my cell phone pings with a message notification: Magnolia.
It’s been a few days since the tornado touched down in Delavan—when Melody and I cleaned up the debris littering her neighborhood street, mostly in silence, not sure what to say to one another after what transpired between us in that darkened den. But I caught her staring at me from time to time, lost in her thoughts with a somewhat dreamy look in her eyes. Pensive, yet whimsical. It was unnerving. That whole goddamn day was unnerving, so I haven’t spoken to her since, and I’m dreading our next meeting together.
I’ve talked to Magnolia, though.
She’s my outlet. She’s an anonymous stranger I can vent to, joke with, and even get vulnerable with—all things I can’t do in my day-to-day life.
I can be myself with her. I can be the person I would likely be right now if life hadn’t completely fucked me over.
Pulling up my Gmail account, I click on her little message box.
Magnolia: Tell me a confession.
Me: The pink Starburst is by far the worst flavor.
Magnolia: We’re no longer friends.
Friends. Is that what we are?
I’m pretty sure I have no friends—except maybe Owen, but I don’t think an eight-year-old boy I just met really counts.
Is this widowed stranger in my computer screen that I’ve never even seen considered a… friend? The notion seems ludicrous, but I don’t correct her because I don’t fucking know.
The Wrong Heart Page 14