The Beautiful Now

by M. Leighton

  This was not.

  When I didn’t answer, Dane asked another question, one that made me feel even worse about my jealous streak. “You were with someone else tonight. Did you kiss him?”

  I swallowed hard. “Yes, but I didn’t want to.”

  “But you did. Kiss him, I mean.”

  “That’s different.”

  “The hell it is. Do you think I like picturing you with other guys?” His voice was harsh and a little breathless. I could tell he was getting worked up. Just like I was.

  “Why do you picture me at all?”

  The silence that followed my question was filled with Dane’s deep pants as he decided whether to let his temper rev up or forced it to throttle down.

  He didn’t answer until he could do so calmly. He had more control than I did. “Maybe because I had a crush on you when I was a little boy and part of me wishes you were still that little girl.”

  Dane James had a crush on me? And he still did? Is that what he was saying?

  My heart stuttered along in my chest, every ounce of my being clinging to the happy hope that I was understanding him correctly.

  “What makes you think I’m so different now?”

  “You don’t even talk to me now, Brinkley. You haven’t in years.”

  “You don’t talk to me either.”

  He couldn’t deny that, so he just shrugged. The gesture that I normally loved, I suddenly didn’t love so much.

  Dane wrapped his arms loosely around his bent legs and looked straight out into the dark field surrounding us. “You’ve been here long enough to know how it works. Hell, you already knew that day at the river. You’re an insider, the cream of the social crop. I’m an outsider, the son of a worker. Why would I waste my time trying to talk to you in public when I know what will happen?”

  A stab of intense guilt and shame sliced through my heart. I wanted to deny it. I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t true. But I couldn’t. As unfair and ridiculous and archaic as it was, that was the way of society in Shepherd’s Mill. To those who lived here, this was the whole world. And what Dane had described was the way the world worked. You either lived here and abided by the rules, spoken and unspoken, or you left and didn’t come back. There was no in-between.

  And for the next three years, until we turned eighteen, we were trapped here. Prisoners to a caste system we had no say in and no way around. Not even a rebel like Dane James could buck the structure of it. He could fight it, but only so much. For the most part, he’d just be banging his head against an unforgiving brick wall.

  The only escape for people like us, people who were reluctant hostages rather than willing participants, was the night. It hid a multitude of sins. And out here on our rock, in the middle of a field of wheat, we could be anyone. Or no one. We were the only people who existed.

  At least until the sun came up.

  I determined in that very minute that I would make the most of my time with Dane James. Whether a night or an hour or a stolen moment at a football game, I knew he was worth every second I could get with him.

  “Do you ever think about kissing me, Dane James?”

  I asked the question impulsively, and the instant the words were out, I could’ve just crawled into a hole to die. I was the stepdaughter of one of the wealthiest and most influential men in town, I was friend to all the most popular people in school, yet I felt as insecure as I’d ever been a day in my life. And all because I was asking a worker’s son if he ever thought about kissing me.

  Maybe it was because I knew he was better than me.

  He was better than all of us.

  His answer was soft, but it hit me hard. “All the time.”

  “Then where have you been these last three years?”

  “Right here. Where I’ve always been. Where I always will be.”

  “Always will be? I thought you had dreams bigger than this town.”

  “They’re just dreams, Brinkley. Reality is a whole different story.”

  “You could leave, you know. When you graduate high school.”

  “I could,” he agreed noncommittally.

  “But you won’t.”

  He shrugged again. This time that shrug made me feel sad. “I can try.”

  “Dane,” I said and then stopped.

  I didn’t have anything to say. At least nothing that I was brave enough to say. I had no more questions that had pat answers, no more observations that I could make. I had nothing but the desire that danced through my veins.

  I wanted him to look at me. And I wanted to look at him. Just for a little while.

  When I didn’t continue, Dane James turned to face me, his autumn eyes flashing onyx in the dark. At night they were different. He was different. We were different. And so was the world.

  “If we do this, it won’t change anything.” Rational, mature words from a rational, mature guy.

  I knew it.

  He knew it.

  But it still made my chest ache to acknowledge it.

  I nodded. “I know. So why did you come to my window?”

  His chin rested on his deltoid, his eyes still glued to mine. “I couldn’t not come.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged that one shoulder again. “I don’t really know. Why did you come with me?”

  I mirrored his words and his action. “I don’t really know.”

  But that was a lie. I did know. I came because I had to come. Because he saved me three years ago and he saved me again that night. And every second that I was with him, he saved another teeny tiny part of me from dying in that town. He saved me from being suffocated, converted, brainwashed. He saved me from Shepherd’s Mill. He saved me from my mother.

  He saved me from myself.

  “Brinkley?” He leaned back on his hand, stretching one leg out in front of him. His body, bigger than life in that moment, listed toward mine the slightest bit.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think about kissing me?”

  I gulped. For a split second, I considered lying again, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not over this. “Sometimes it’s all I can think about.”

  And it was.

  I tried not to think about him, but I did anyway. I thought about him a lot. More than I would ever have admitted to myself until right then. I couldn’t seem to help myself.

  I watched him at school when no one was looking. I watched him at the bus stop when he couldn’t see me. I looked for him in the fields when I went out into the front yard. And I dreamed of him.

  More nights than I could count, I dreamed of him.

  So yes, I thought about kissing Dane James. I thought about being with Dane James. For real. In public. But those were just dreams, too. Different than reality.

  But this—tonight, right now—isn’t a dream.

  I was there, alone in the night, with the object of my forbidden desires, and all I wanted was to feel his mouth against mine.

  As if he knew the directions of my thoughts, Dane leaned toward me. I couldn’t take my eyes off him as he drew closer. Just before our noses touched, he turned his head enough that his lips brushed mine. Softly. Chastely. Almost like he was testing the waters.

  The fit was perfect, like our mouths were made to be right there, just like that. Melded together. Giving and taking. Sharing.

  We stayed that way for more heartbeats than I could count, and when he pulled away, I almost begged him not to. He only sat up to change the angle of his mouth, though, and when he returned to me, it was so that he could give me my first real kiss. The only real kiss that mattered.

  Dane James’ beautiful lips were firm and warm and just the right amount of persuasive when he urged mine apart. I relaxed into his chest and opened for him, shivering at the feel of his silky tongue slipping in to explore mine.

  I inhaled, breathing him in with the night air and the freedom I could only fantasize about, and I promised myself that I’d sneak out with this boy as many times as he came to my w
indow. We didn’t have a future. We couldn’t possibly. We both knew it. But we had the now. The beautiful now. And that was better than nothing.

  Chapter 8

  I couldn’t stop smiling. Despite the way the night had ended with Taylor, despite my mother’s twisted views on love and marriage, despite the hopelessness I’d felt earlier, I was on cloud nine when I walked back through the door just before dawn.

  Dane and I had spent what felt like hours kissing on the rock in the field.

  Our rock.

  We hadn’t talked much after I accidentally touched him below the waist. Well, maybe it wasn’t so accidental. I wanted to touch him. Maybe more than I could ever remember wanting anything. And so I had. Just the memory of his fierceness, of his control, of how much he wanted me made me shiver.

  But he’d resisted.

  Me.

  Us.

  That.

  For both our sakes. And I appreciated that. I think, in a way, that’s why we didn’t talk much after that point. We hadn’t needed to. Everything else in the world had sort of faded into the background, seeming far less significant when his lips were on mine. I think we’d both discovered that it was infinitely more pleasurable to battle our attraction to each other than to think about and talk about all the other battles we couldn’t win.

  When he’d told me that he had to get me back, that the sun would be rising soon, he’d walked me right up to the kitchen door, brave as always. He’d kissed me there, too. Bold as hell. He didn’t appear to care that we could get caught or that he and his father could lose their livelihood as well as their home if my stepfather found out. It seemed that Dane wanted his lips on mine one last time more than he wanted assurances about tomorrow.

  And I knew exactly how he felt.

  I wanted the same thing.

  I drifted through the door, closing it silently behind me and making my way through the kitchen. I stopped at the edge of the den to take off my shoes and carry them with me to my room. I tiptoed quietly up the stairs, stepping on the outside edges of each riser to avoid the squeaks that I’d memorized over the years. I turned right at the landing and eased open my bedroom door, slipping through and leaning back against it once I was safe inside.

  I gasped in surprise when I heard my stepfather’s voice. I jumped so violently that I dropped my shoes. “Have fun out there?”

  I scanned the dimly lit interior until I located Alton Peterson sitting in the papasan chair in the corner. He flicked on the small lamp that sat on the edge of my dresser. It cast a wedge of light across his face so I could see his expression.

  My heart sped up, pounding on my chest wall like hoofbeats on packed dirt. “I…I don’t…I didn’t… What are you doing in here?”

  I watched as he slowly pushed to his feet. He stood staring at me for a few seconds before he moved. I watched, nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, as he started toward me. He skirted the bed, his tread silent as his toes dug into the thick carpeting. He didn’t stop until he was only a couple of inches from me.

  Too close.

  Way too close.

  “Did you sneak out to see Dane James?”

  “I didn’t sneak out,” I replied, jacking my chin up rebelliously to give truth to the lie.

  “Don’t lie to me. I’m not your mother.” His voice was soft, but held a thread of…something that made me want to shrink away from him as he edged in closer.

  His eyes held mine, making me increasingly uncomfortable. I held my breath when he reached toward me and took a strand of hair from the side of my neck, lifting it to rub between his fingers.

  “I…I didn’t sneak out. It’s hot in here. I went outside where it’s cooler. I didn’t realize that was against the law.”

  My stepfather bent his head enough to bring my hair to his nose and inhale deeply. It was a long, slow, creepy sound, like he was trying to inhale me. “Good. Because I told you to stay away from him, didn’t I?”

  I would’ve backed farther away, but the door was behind me. I had nowhere to go. In the back of my mind, I realized that not all things in the night were fun and hot and sexy.

  Some things were oddly terrifying.

  And I was oddly terrified.

  I nodded. “I still don’t know why, though. There’s nothing wrong with him.”

  “Some girls have a nose for trash. It’s a shame, really. A pretty girl like you, you could have a bright future. You just have to control yourself. Put your…charms to use on better men.” He laid the strand of hair down on my chest, the backs of his fingers grazing the swell of my breast. “If you care anything about yourself, your mother, your future, about him, you’ll stay away from Dane James. He could ruin you. And I could ruin him. That’s too many lives down the tubes for a crush. For him.” He paused before breathing extra emphasis on the next word. “Sex with him isn’t worth all that, now is it?”

  My mouth had gone dry as a bone and my knees literally shook trying to hold me upright when they really just wanted to buckle.

  I stared up at my stepfather’s face, into his cold blue eyes, and I prayed that he’d leave. Just go. I saw something in them that made my stomach clench in fear, and I knew that if he stayed, I was in trouble. He was looking at me the same way Taylor Kraus had looked at me earlier in the evening. Only there was a ruthless streak in this man.

  Ruthless and perverse.

  I held my breath, making every muscle in my body as still as I possibly could. We stood like that for a long time—me quaking in my skin, him watching me like I was dinner. When he finally spoke again, I jerked, accidentally banging my head against the door.

  “Next time,” he said, letting his eyes travel down to my chest. Purposely and so slowly it made my skin crawl, my stepfather brushed the backs of his fingers over my nipple. In a low steely voice, he growled, “Wear a bra.”

  He leaned away, reaching around me to twist the knob. He glanced over and raised his eyebrows, like he was asking if I was going to move. I shuffled clumsily to one side to let him out.

  Breathing had become a challenge, but I managed to hold it together until he’d closed the door behind him. Once he was gone, however, I let my legs give up the fight and I crumbled to the floor.

  I don’t really know how long I stayed that way, but Dane was right. Sunrise hadn’t been far away. It wasn’t until hues of gold and pink and orange were pouring onto the pale carpet that I relaxed enough to fall apart. I slumped over onto my side, a boneless heap of fear and anger, and I cried myself to sleep.

  2004

  32 Years Old

  Chapter 9

  I don’t have to go far looking for my mother. She’s standing in the living room doorway, waiting to pounce when I come down the steps.

  “What is the mean—”

  I shush her with a finger to my lips and crook that same one for her to follow me. Thankfully she does. I don’t need her going off and running her mouth where Celina could hear her. Could hear us.

  I walk through the dining room and make a right before I reach the kitchen. Alton’s study, which is blissfully empty of the man. I doubt my mother would agree, but the world is a much better place without him in it.

  Before I close my eyes, I take a deep breath and cast a look of gratitude heavenward. And then I turn to face my seething mother.

  “How dare you put me in this position? How dare you show up here, after all this time, after all that’s happened, unannounced, and put me on the spot like that? How dare you—”

  “She’s sick, Momma.”

  That shuts her up. I can almost hear the click of her teeth as her mouth slams closed. After a few seconds, she asks much more calmly, “What?”

  “She’s really sick.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  All of a sudden I feel drained. Utterly drained.

  I’ve dreaded this day, this reunion for weeks. As soon as I talked to the doctor and made the decision to come here, I began to dread it. I just don’t think I knew
how much it was affecting me. I feel as though every muscle in my body has been clenched for fifteen years and now I’m too weak to hold them taut anymore.

  My lungs deflate and I more or less dissolve into the chair in front of Alton’s desk. “She has aplastic anemia.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s complicated. A bunch of medical terms and scary, depressing shit.”

  “Brinkley!” she warns.

  “Basically, last year, she got cut on some glass at the park and contracted a staph infection in the wound. The only drug it was sensitive to was chloramphenicol. One of its rare side effects is aplastic anemia, which is when your bone marrow stops producing blood cells. That means she’s very susceptible to bleeding and infections. She stays really tired all the time, short of breath, has a lot of headaches. Stuff like that, and when she gets sick with something a healthy kid would kick in a few days, Celina has it for weeks or months. Something like the flu is potentially life-threatening for her.”

  “Is it contagious?”

  My mouth falls open and I gape at my mother. It takes me several astonished seconds to even find my tongue, which is normally the first thing to work in any situation. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Why not?”

  Fire explodes in my belly and my own fatigue is forgotten. Rage burns through me in a wild, hot blaze.

  “You disgust me.” The words are out before I can stop them. I’m genuinely appalled. I’m also pretty proud of myself for only saying that. A long train of insults flitted through my mind, but I didn’t say even one of them. And the only reason is because of my daughter. We do need to stay here. For at least a little while. And I’d do anything for Celina, even if it means biting my tongue when I’d really like to cut my mother to shreds with it.

  Momma raises a hand to her throat like I just dealt her a grave and completely unexpected insult. “You can’t talk to me that way in my own home. Don’t forget that it’s you who came to me.” She pauses imperiously before demanding, “Apologize. Right this minute.”