Lie To Me (Redemption)

by Chloe Cox

  I didn’t cry over it. I just hugged Harlow close to me, buried my face in her stomach, breathed her in. I remember that she was the one who pushed me back on my bed. I remember that she climbed on top of me, eyes shining like she was going to cry, but smiling softly at the same time.

  And then I finally kissed her, because I understood that maybe I had been good enough the whole damn time.

  ***

  I’m thinking about all this, and how because of all this crap I don’t know how to be any kind of father, and how Alex Wolfe sure as hell hasn’t shown me in the years I’ve been working for him, and how Harlow is sitting there, grateful to Alex for Dill, and it’s a lot. It’s a lot to take in. But I have Harlow next to me. We pull into this grassy lot in the back of this camp all the way up in the Catskills, and I have Harlow, and that makes most things all right.

  I get out of the car before Harlow’s even done parking it, and I walk around the front, keeping my eyes on her, until I get to her door. I open it for her, but I can’t wait for her to get out on her own. I help her out and then I push her against that car and kiss her. I take her face in both of my hands and kiss her gently, kiss her hard, kiss her all the ways I know she likes to be kissed, until her arms are curling around my neck and my hands have found her waist.

  I nip at her bottom lip and pull away, looking at her to let her know I’ll finish this later. She’s flushed and breathless.

  “What did I do to deserve that?” she says.

  “You’re you.”

  I tug at the waist of her skirt, knowing we’re late already, but she looks up at me, blushing.

  “I think I need a minute,” she says.

  “We stay out here another minute and I’m going to take you in the backseat of that car,” I tell her. She bites her lip and it makes my cock jump. “Jesus, I might do it anyway.”

  We stand there like that for too long, and I think about it. I do.

  But damn it, I’m going to show her I can be good for Dill.

  “C’mon,” I say, and take her hand. “Dill is waiting.”

  chapter 16

  HARLOW

  It takes my brain more than a minute to start fully functioning again after that kiss.

  I let Marcus lead me, in a kind of haze, through the parking lot to a tree-covered, sun-dappled lane leading up to the camp’s main building. I don’t know if it’s the beauty of this place, the bliss of this past week with Marcus, or just that intoxication I’ve learned to expect whenever I’m with him, but I’m having trouble believing that any of this is real.

  I mean, I do. I know it’s really happening, and not just some fantasy I’ve cooked up for myself. But there’s a part of me that won’t trust my own senses. Not when it feels too good to be true.

  Ever since that night someone tried to break in, and I let Marcus back in, things have been different, somehow. They’ve felt less chaotic, more settled. Like finally telling him how bad it was really did exorcise it from my life. Not entirely, obviously, but enough—I don’t constantly vacillate between lust and anger anymore. I feel calmer. And I feel like I’m able to see Marcus better.

  And it looks too good to be true.

  I had that once before, after all, a life that was too good to be true. Twice, before, really, though I didn’t fully appreciate how good I had it with my parents until they were gone. I have to tell myself no one appreciates what they have until it’s gone, but I still feel guilty about it. The second time I had it so good was when I finally had Marcus. And then, of course, he left.

  That’s still the thing that haunts me, the thing that keeps me from falling fully for this, like every fiber of my being wants me to: he might do it again. He might leave me again. So that hasn’t changed. I still have like this sober, rational Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder, warning me not to forget.

  I just hate that little cricket.

  Well, no, some things have changed. That’s why Marcus is here today, I guess. Or I don’t know, maybe that’s a rationalization? When it comes down to it, I wanted him here.

  I wanted to see him with Dill.

  Which: sober Jiminy Cricket is freaking out about that, let me tell you.

  So I decided to drive Marcus up here to see my little brother, to get an idea of What That Might Be Like, telling myself the whole time that I’m not falling for it, that I know it’s not that serious, because it can’t be. Because Marcus still hasn’t told me what happened, still hasn’t shown me that I can trust him not to just decide to leave again. But I asked him to come up here with me anyway, and naturally I’m thinking about Dill, and that starts to make me think about what Marcus would be like as a dad-type figure for Dill, and…

  Well, then that kiss.

  And that kiss makes me think of the first time Marcus kissed me.

  And that makes me think about Marcus’s dad and Marcus’s father, who turned out not to be the same person at all.

  ***

  In retrospect, it might have been a little messed up to finally let Marcus know how I felt about him on the same day as his dad’s wake. I mean, if I had thought about it, probably even seventeen-year-old me would have recognized that to be inappropriate, and might have tried to respect a boundary I knew probably existed even if I didn’t know exactly where it was.

  I’m glad I didn’t think about it too much. I’m glad that, at that point, it didn’t seem like there were many boundaries between Marcus and me.

  I’m glad that I recognized that he needed me as much as I needed him.

  Marcus didn’t let me go to the wake. At first I was pretty determined, because after all, Marcus had been right next to me at my parents’ funeral. But I was approaching it as a point of principle, not as an actual experience that I was going to have in the real world, and Marcus knew me well enough to point this out. He zeroed in on the concrete details.

  “There’ll be a coffin.”

  “I know there’ll be a coffin.”

  “Everyone will be in black, crying.”

  “I know.”

  He kept going like that, until I had to picture it in my mind, and I could feel the shape of what it would feel like to be in the middle of that. And, damn it, he was right: It would send me right back to where I was during my parents’ funeral, which was, to put it lightly, not a good place. Marcus would have ended up taking care of me at his own dad’s wake.

  Is that fair? No. It just…it was what it was. I felt terrible about it, but Marcus didn’t. He just kept telling me: it was different with his family. With his dad in particular.

  “We weren’t so close,” he said.

  The understatement to end all understatements, right there.

  So I compromised. I said I wouldn’t go to the wake, as long as he promised to come get me right afterwards, and then we’d go to the fight he had scheduled, and I wasn’t going to leave his side after that.

  About the fights—I mean, I’m not going to lie. I didn’t think they were a great idea, but it was in that way that you know some things aren’t great ideas, but you still find them exciting? Now, being older, having responsibilities, I’d probably be a lot more cautious. They weren’t safe. I mean, I wasn’t worried about Marcus’s safety, because he was so damn good, but at the same time, of course I was worried about Marcus’s safety. He was fighting. Illegally. Seeing him get hit—it was not a good feeling.

  Good thing it didn’t happen often.

  What did happen often was that Marcus won. All the time, actually. He had a perfect record. And every time, here was the guy that I came with, the guy who at the time I thought would stand by me through anything, shirtless and ripped and sweating and owning the ring in front of a crowd of screaming strangers.

  Call me crazy, but I did find it…exciting.

  And frustrating. Because at that point, Marcus still hadn’t touched me sexually. And I didn’t know how to touch him. One day I’d be sure he wanted me as bad as I wanted him, the next I’d be sure he saw me as some kind of little sister, and crossi
ng that line would irrevocably damage the most important relationship in my life. And the one thing I couldn’t afford to lose, ever, was Marcus.

  That was my greatest fear, actually, besides losing Dill. Losing Marcus. It was just easier to manage because Marcus was always there for me.

  So he came by the Mankowskis’ in his dad’s car—I guessed now he’d inherited it—to pick me up for that fight, and I could tell immediately that something was different. I could tell that something had happened. I just assumed, maybe understandably, that it was about his dad’s death, and the way that would bring up all of Marcus’s feelings about his family. I knew better than anyone how grief can take you by surprise, how you’ll never know what form it will take until it’s upon you, and then you just have to figure out a way to deal with it.

  So Marcus comes to pick me up with this expression on his face like I’ve never seen. He was usually so present with me, so attentive, and that day he wasn’t even looking at me. It was like he was looking far ahead in the future, or far back in the past. His big hands gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles were white, boxer’s knuckle evident on all of them, and I could see the corded muscles in his neck twist with tension.

  “You ok?” I asked him.

  “Don’t know.”

  That was fair.

  “You ok to fight?” I asked.

  That’s when he finally looked at me, and when he did it was like being in a spotlight. He looked at me and smiled, kind of slow, kind of sad, kind of sweet.

  “Yeah,” he said. He reached out one of those hands and cupped my face with it, his thumb brushing along my bottom lip.

  I gasped so slightly, I’m not sure he heard. He just put the car in gear and drove on.

  After that, I gripped the rough fabric of my seat the whole way to Queens, with my blood pulsing in my core, my skin heating under my shirt, my whole body extremely aware of the man next to me, and my mind telling it to shut up, his dad just died.

  It was a confusing trip.

  Truthfully, it was incredibly important to me to be there for Marcus like he’d been there for me. So I was going to support him no matter what he felt like he needed to do, underground fighting included. And I tried very, very hard to keep thinking about Marcus and what he actually needed, rather than what I wanted, every time he fought.

  But that night, it was almost impossible.

  I know Marcus doesn’t remember much about that fight, but I do. First, the guy he was fighting was an ogre. I mean, I think they actually got him from some enchanted forest somewhere. He was huge. He was one of the only men I’ve ever seen who was actually bigger than Marcus, though he was softer, his muscle covered in a layer of fat. And he was bald, with scars all over his scalp, one on his cheek, and tattoos I couldn’t decipher all over his body. They were the kind of unfinished, rough, messy tattoos that you know didn’t happen in a tattoo parlor. And the one arm that wasn’t tattooed was covered in this dumb red armband that had this black logo on it of a snarling wolf, something that I think was supposed to be super intimidating in a kind of racist way? I mean, the only places I’d ever seen armbands even remotely like that was in history books on the arms of Nazis. And Marcus was known as a Dominican fighter, even if nobody could ever place his ethnicity when they met him. I doubt the idiots with the armbands were unaware of the implications. Especially since I heard a few of them shout out “spic,” which, really?

  So I didn’t feel great about all of that. Marcus, though, Marcus…when he walked out into that ring, quiet, the way he was, calm, totally confident, it felt different, for me. He looked at me and the look in his eyes…

  Looking back, now I know what that look was. It was that same animal thing that happens when he’s about to take me. The way he looks when we fuck, before we make love.

  Back then? I wouldn’t have known how to describe that look in those terms, but I knew vaguely what it meant. I knew it wasn’t the kind of look a man gave a friend.

  Or a little sister.

  And I recognized my reaction. Purely physical. Purely carnal. I remember thinking it was getting harder and harder to remember to think only about what Marcus needed rather than what I wanted as those desires burned hotter and brighter. By the time they rang the bell I could have lit up that entire smoke filled room myself.

  Everything else fell away except for Marcus.

  The shouts of the people in the crowd, the smell of cigars and cigarettes and beer, the flashes of light as people took pictures—all of it muted while I picked up every little twitch of muscle in Marcus’s chest, every bead of sweat on his brow, every movement of his eyes.

  He looked at me again. And I don’t know how, but it felt like he was just as conscious of me. Like whatever it was that tied us to each other, that way we were aware of each other, read each other, felt each other—it was just extra strong, like a sixth sense, drowning out all the noise around it.

  I’ve never seen him fight like that.

  Marcus was always a smart fighter, always totally unhurried, controlled. He’d play with his opponents a little, rope them in, see what they had, and then move in for a lethal blow. He had a lot of knock-outs, but all of them were technically proficient and beautiful to watch.

  This was beautiful, too, but in a different way. Almost a frightening way. An animal way.

  The bell rang and Marcus unleashed. He charged. Before anyone knew what had happened Marcus landed four, five, six punches, sending the ogre back on his heels and putting his hands up blindly. The big, possibly racist ogre got in a few swings, just desperate, unseeing punches that Marcus easily danced around. Then Marcus just hunted him around the ring, his eyes on fire, his body working in this terrible harmony, muscles flexing, contracting, releasing with explosive power.

  The ogre tried to cheat in a way. I mean, in illegal fights there aren’t a whole lot of rules, but generally you’re not supposed to try to knee a guy in the balls. Bad form.

  Which is why the crowd cheered when Marcus blocked the knee, knocked the ogre flat on his back, and then sat on his chest for a classic ground and pound.

  The ref called it, tapped on Marcus’s shoulder, and tried to haul him off the ogre. But Marcus wouldn’t move. He stopped punching, his hands covered in blood, but he wouldn’t let the man up, just hulking over him with sweat shining on the planes of his chest, his abs, his obliques, as he leaned over this much larger man that he’d just completely decimated.

  I remember the ref actually trying to physically dislodge Marcus, and it was like watching a child try to push over a tree. I’m not sure Marcus even noticed.

  Instead he reached down and ripped that armband right off the ogre’s arm.

  So when Marcus finally stood up, leaning back into the light, his chest heaving, he had that red armband in his hand. His eyes found me, like he knew where I’d been all along, like he didn’t see anything else. And then he cut across that ring, pushing people aside until he got to me, and wordlessly offered it to me.

  It was ridiculous. And it absolutely killed me.

  I remember every detail of that. Every line in his striated shoulders, every shadow playing across his pecs, every drop of sweat and smear of blood on his skin. The exact shade of his gray-green eyes in that light, the way they burned through me, the way they saw nothing else.

  I’m pretty sure that was the exact moment I stopped being able to think clearly around him. I’m not sure I ever started again.

  He drove us back to his family’s apartment, silent, brooding, and it wasn’t until we got upstairs to that dark, empty place where he was now living all by himself that he told me what had happened with Alex Wolfe. There was still that tension, that sexual charge between us, that primal thing. It didn’t go away. But Marcus told me that he’d found out Juan Roma wasn’t his real father, and everything that meant for him, how it all came together, and it added to what we felt. It gave it depth.

  When he let me in like that, told me how it all finally made sense to him, it
somehow made me want him even more. I didn’t just want him physically, I wanted to love him to the best of my ability. I’d never felt closer to anyone. I don’t think I ever will, either.

  It’s always been Marcus.

  I remember him sitting on his bed, saying, “That’s why they hated me. It wasn’t anything I did. It was never anything I did.” Like it was this revelation, like he’d truly believed it was his fault, and I remember my heart breaking for him. I remember walking over to him, not being able to stand any distance between us any longer, and putting my hand through his hair until he looked up at me. I remember the expression of wonder on his face, eyes open, almost childlike. I remember pushing him back on his bed, just wanting to feel him, to hold him the way he’d held me so many times.

  I remember saying, “Lie to me. Tell me you’re ok.”

  “I don’t have to lie,” he said. “I have you.”

  And then he kissed me, and everything changed.

  I felt…God. It felt like this door was opening to an entire world that I’d never seen before, and the ways of feeling, of being, that had been closed off to me now washed over me. All the ways I could love him flowed through me at once and it was overwhelming. I think I wanted all of him, right away, wanted to show him what had been building inside me for the past two years and change, wanted to show him every single thing I’d felt, every single thing that had made me love him.

  Because I knew, even then. I knew I loved him. I knew it was special. I knew there would never be anyone else like him.

  And I knew he felt it, too.

  The way he kissed me, it was almost too much. Too sweet, too powerful, too charged. There was a part of me that shied away from it, like the first time I almost made myself come, and that feeling that came over me suddenly was so powerful that it frightened me. But Marcus made me brave. There were years of emotion distilled into that kiss, and it branded me for life.

  We didn’t go much further than that that night. We just kissed for hours and held each other close. We talked. We were both frightened of it, we both laughed at how long it had taken, we both couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.