by Chloe Cox
So there’s that moment when she’s just looking at me raw and exposed, and believe me when I say it takes all my strength not to jump over that bar and take her in my arms. Just to hold her. Just to feel her skin against mine. Just to say I’m sorry in the one moment in time when she might actually believe me.
But then it’s over just as soon as it came on, and Lo is pissed. She’s mad that I can still get to her like that, that I can still pierce her defenses, all the way through to the parts of her she keeps hidden away. And she’s right, it wasn’t fair.
But love isn’t fair.
“Go to hell,” she says.
“Already there,” I shoot back.
She laughs bitterly and turns to get a rack of glasses out of a Hobart machine, steam billowing out, swallowing up her face and giving her a little break. I can see the muscles in her arms flex as she lifts the rack and sets it on the bar, not looking at me, like she’s just going to go on with her shift.
“I’m not going anywhere, Lo,” I say. “And I know you’re not gonna call the bouncers on me.”
“Yeah?” she says, looking up. “How do you know?”
“Because I do. I know you.”
Harlow slams the door to the Hobart closed and she’s even more mad because I’m right again. She would never ask someone else to take care of her problem. That, and part of her doesn’t really want me to leave.
I can see that part fighting to get out.
“Just tell me, Lo,” I say. “I can help.”
Harlow spins back around, her face all twisted up, tears in her eyes. “Fine, you unbelievable asshole. It’s Dill,” she says. “The money was for Dill, Marcus. For this special genius programming camp he got into so he can finish the video game he’s been making. I saved up all year. And now instead he’s going to get indoor plumbing. Hooray for me.”
When I see how upset she is, I know immediately that I’m going to take care of it. The only question is how I’m going to convince her to let me do it. She won’t take my money. Under no circumstances will she just take my money and give nothing in return; it’s not how she’s wired. And that pride, that toughness would rear up all over again. The idea that she owed me anything at all would keep her up nights.
Even worse, I can’t tell her the truth about what I think might have happened to her septic system, or she’d really go ballistic. I wouldn’t blame her, either. But that’s why I came here, right?
To lie to her in order to help her.
It’s just that now I have the opportunity to get something out of it, too.
“I’ll pay for it,” I say.
She rolls her eyes.
“You didn’t let me finish,” I smile. “I’ll pay for it, on one condition.”
There. Now she’s taking me seriously. She’s looking at me like she’s about three seconds away from jumping me, but there’s that shine in her eyes, too. She understands this kind of game. Maybe even misses it. When fighting, arguing, becomes like a dance.
“What?” she says.
“You see me every day until Dill comes back from his camp,” I say. “Not for five minutes or anything like that, either. All day, as much as you’re off. Every day.”
Harlow stares at me. She laughs a little, shaking her head.
“Unbelievable,” she says.
“Nah,” I say. “You knew I’d do something like that.”
She nods. I’m right. I can see she hates it. And I know she hates even more that maybe she kind of wanted me to say something like that.
Then Harlow comes right up close to the bar, so there’s only this thin plank of wood separating us, and she leans right over it, and I have to try damn hard not to look at her perfect breasts pressed up against the bar.
She looks me dead in the eye and says, “Marcus, do you really think there’s even the tiniest chance I’ll ever forgive you? That I’ll ever, ever trust you again?”
“Yes, I do,” I say, and dig my fingers into the wood in front of me. God, I want her. I want to be her everything. “Do you?”
She says nothing. Just chews her lip, and watches me.
I lean closer, and rest my hand on hers, the first time I’ve touched her in five years. She feels warm and magnetic, my hand more alive than any other part of my body, my fingers tingling. I put everything I have into it when I say, “So then lie to me, Lo.”
She doesn’t move her hand.
She almost looks like she’s going to cry.
And then we’re interrupted, some woman coming in behind Harlow, penciled on eyebrows raised to the sky, saying, “Harlow, everything ok?”
Harlow snatches her hand back like she needs to keep it safe, rubbing the skin where I touched her. “It’s cool, Shantha. Just someone I used to know.”
That was for my benefit. Yeah. That’s ok. I’ll be someone she knows again. I nod at this woman called Shantha, who’s looking at me like I might be a criminal, and reach over to grab some napkins. I write my phone number down in big black letters, because I know Harlow deleted my number a long time ago, and give it back to her, folded up.
“Think about it, Lo,” I say, knowing she won’t be able to resist in the end. Even if she didn’t need house repairs, even if it weren’t for the way she needs to be the best mother Dill never had, she wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to make me pay, to make me tell her the one thing I can’t tell her—why I left. She’s going to torture me, especially when she finds out I won’t tell her. I’ll deserve all of it.
I hold onto the napkin one second too long, making her look back up at me, just so I can say this: “I’m not going anywhere.”
When I walk out of there, it’s with the knowledge that I’m walking on the razor’s edge. Alex Wolfe and everything he’s capable of on one side. The love of my life on the other.
chapter 5
HARLOW
I only lasted about half an hour after Marcus left before Shantha sent me home from the bar.
“You’re useless.” She smiled at me.
“I’m sorry, I just—”
“Go home, get some sleep. Or call that unbelievable hunk of man and don’t get some sleep, whatever works.”
I had to try to force a smile. Shantha saw through it. But she didn’t pry, because Shantha’s always looking out for me, just hugged me and sent me on my way.
Which is why I’m home early with nothing to do but think about Marcus’s offer.
And think about Marcus himself.
Seeing him up close, talking to him—it feels like I’ve been drugged. My head is swimming in memories of Marcus, in sensations of Marcus, and it’s outrageously unfair because what I should be thinking about is how I’m supposed to provide for Dill. And about how I’m evidently failing at that.
I made myself a promise when I got custody: I would not touch our inheritance except for medical emergencies or similar, because otherwise it would be gone way too soon, and it’s not like I had a lot of career prospects at the time. I still don’t. You make decent money bartending at some places, but one, I don’t work at those places, and two, I don’t pick up enough shifts, since I want to be home when Dill is at least some of the time.
So we get by, and my life is made immeasurably easier knowing we have a cushion in case disaster strikes again, but I will not break those rules. I will not.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about it, though, before Marcus’s offer.
Marcus. I thought I almost caught his scent when he leaned across the bar to get close to me. It made my heart stop.
I shake my head and pry the bottle cap off a beer, expertly hitting the garbage can on the other side of the kitchen. Dill’s asleep, has been for a few hours. The house is quiet. I kick off my shoes, take a swig of my beer, and head to the master bath.
I never moved into my parents’ master bedroom when I took possession of the house. Just couldn’t do it. So I’m still in my old room, and Dill’s in his. That doesn’t mean I don’t take advantage, from time to tim
e, of the swank bathroom my mom insisted on having put in. I mean, my mother would kill me if she thought I was letting all that marble go to waste.
I run the water and strip, saving the rest of my cold beer for when I’m submerged in the hot water, and the brief chill on my bare skin reminds me of what I felt when he put his hand on mine.
Damn it. I can’t even be naked without thinking about Marcus.
I still can’t believe my physical reaction to him. It’s somehow more intense than it was years ago, if that’s even possible—and I was sure it wasn’t possible, because of what happened after he left during what I refer to as my Dark Period. I’m frankly astonished. It’s like my sexuality has been partially defined by Marcus Roma, and now I need him to…I just need him.
It fucking sucks. Why does it have to be him?
Because he’s going to leave again. I don’t care what he says to me in a bar when he’s trying to be charming. And he’s still the guy who left and broke my heart, and he still hasn’t offered a damn explanation.
And I’m still going to take him up on his offer.
I sigh, admitting the truth. What choice do I have? Dill needs to go to camp, and I need answers and closure. And I need to make him suffer. The only real question is whether I’ll be able to resist Marcus Roma and end up on top in the end.
“On top” was not a helpful phrase.
I sink back into the water and try to think of whether I’ve ever been able to resist Marcus. Not just the man himself, but his influence. It’s a question I’ve thought about before, when trying to get over him. If my parents hadn’t gotten into that car to go on their first getaway weekend in years and gotten run off the road by a drunk, would he have been the same force in my life?
I always think about the one day I went back to the gym after school with Katya and Rosa to watch the fighters after Marcus and I started training. It was after we’d gotten kind of close, Marcus coming to check on me when I as sick, stuff like that.
Anyway, we showed up, hung around the gate, trying to pretend we weren’t looking and being looked at. Same as always.
Marcus didn’t make any pretense about anything. The second he saw me there, leaning against the fence with the other girls, he ripped off his gloves and walked right over, ignoring everyone else, his gray-green eyes boring into me. He unlatched the gate, came outside, grabbed me by the elbow, and walked me down the block while the other girls watched in hushed, jealous silence.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he said. He was almost angry. It was the first time I’d seen him register any kind of strong emotion at all.
“What do you mean, what am I doing?” I asked. “I’m, you know, whatever. Hanging out. What people do.”
“With them?” he said, tilting his head towards the girls by the gate.
“Yeah. So?”
I was already defensive, because, truth be told? It was kind of lame. I was definitely kind of bored, even if watching Marcus work out had its merits.
“You know what they’re here for?” he said.
I thought about his question. On the one hand, it was obvious. They were here to flirt, to be seen. But what was the harm in that? Who cared?
Marcus answered for me, pointing at them. “They’re here because they don’t have anything better to do than hope someone wants to fuck them. That’s all they’re here for.”
I didn’t say anything. He was right. And when he said it out loud like that it was impossible to deny how dumb it was.
Marcus leaned in closer, his hand still on my elbow. I could feel his hot breath on me, and I stopped breathing.
“You know how these guys talk about them?” Marcus said.
“I don’t care,” I said, defiant, almost glad to have something to argue. “Those guys are assholes.”
“Yeah, they are,” Marcus said. “And I don’t want them being assholes to you.”
I was speechless.
Marcus wasn’t.
He looked at me, hard. Right in the eyes.
“I don’t want them talking about you like that,” he said, his hand hot on my arm, his voice gruff. “I don’t want them thinking about you like that. I don’t want them thinking you’re an easy fuck because you don’t have anything better to do than come around and walk the damn street in front of them after school. You’re better than that, Lo. You can do damn near anything. What the hell are you doing here?”
Oh God, I was so overwhelmed by him. First time I felt like I was drowning in him, right there, on the hot sidewalk, in front of everybody. I scrabbled for purchase, for my next breath, for anything that would keep me from just melting in front of him.
“Then tell them I’m not an easy fuck,” I said, and pulled away. I put my chin up and walked right back over to Rosa and Katya, determined to hang around for a while just to piss Marcus off. Just to show him he couldn’t tell me what to do.
Because while his macho thing made me feel good, it also made me want to fight him, just to prove a point. And yet, standing out there in the hot sun, watching those girls flirt with new eyes? Man, did he have a point of his own. It did look like none of us had our own interests, like all we could think to do was hang out and watch a bunch of guys, hoping they liked us.
So for a while I watched Marcus pound the bag like I’d never seen, knowing I was the one who’d pissed him off. I didn’t totally mind that, watching him sweat, his muscles roiling, churning in the glare of the sun. But then I started to feel stupid, standing out there like that, proving him right.
And eventually I asked this girl Lisa, the quietest one, if she wanted to go see a movie or something.
Which was how I started to make a new group of friends. I mean, never mind that they all of those friends kind of faded away later, after the accident, because they just couldn’t handle it; the point is that I made the choice. And it’s how I decided I wanted to be more than a woman who defined herself by what men wanted her, even if I was too stubborn to admit it at the time. All because Marcus annoyed me into it with his macho protective crap.
I didn’t understand how much that meant at the time. So yeah, it’s kind of funny that I used to think that maybe if it wasn’t for the accident, if my parents hadn’t died, maybe I could have avoided Marcus. Maybe he just would have been the boy who taught me how to box and nothing more. If not for that one stupid accident, if not for the one day my life was wrecked beyond all repair, maybe it all would have turned out differently.
But probably not, and it’s this memory that tells me that. Marcus helped to shape who I was even before my world ended. He was always destined to ruin me. Fate just helped him to do it quicker.
***
So I’m thinking about all this in the bath while I’m pretending to debate my options, because it’s a lot easier to think about harmless high school drama than it is to think about what came later, when the shit really hit the fan. I still can’t go there. That’s fine. I don’t particularly want to.
But I’m in the hot water, naked, with the awareness of Marcus sliding over my skin like a living thing. He moves differently now. I noticed in the bar. Just a subtle difference, like he’s grown into himself, more relaxed about being an apex predator type. Supple. Confident. Leonine.
It was sexy as hell when he pulled that guy off the bar. I have my own cavewoman instincts.
I can’t help but think about the other things Marcus taught me. But so many of those are walled off in the garden of Things I Can’t Bear To Think About, buried deep next to a grief that I don’t want to dig up, so that as my mind sifts through all my memories of Marcus in search of something that will help me to understand what I feel, what I want, I come back to the first night we had sex.
Sometimes this memory is in the walled-off garden, too. Sometimes I can’t bear to remember what I’ve lost.
Would it be different now? Of course it would. It would have to be. I was so nervous, wound so tight, even though I wasn’t quite scared, because it was Marcus. And he was so hug
e above me, so overwhelming, and that was the final time I felt like I drowned in him, his shoulders blotting out the light, his arms cradling me on either side. He was so gentle, stretching me softly, treating me like I might break even as he stoked a fever in me that drove me nearly insane with wanting him.
Oh God, the intensity of that. Wanting him so badly, all at once, in a rush, like I just couldn’t wait anymore. And he made me wait. Later, I learned that I liked it when he took control, even when he was rough.
It is so weird to be thinking about this. Part of me is horrified. I know what rough actually means now; I know how scary it can get in the real world, and it’s turned me off men and relationships. Until now.
I can’t help it.
My hand moves south, over my stomach, down between my legs, almost of its own accord. I’m not even totally conscious of it; it’s just something that feels right, the more I think about him. But the Marcus in my mind isn’t the Marcus I remember from that first time; he’s different, darker. Rougher.
My mind shies away now every time I flash on the tenderness of that first night. I don’t want tenderness from him anymore. Or I can’t bear it. It hurts too much to imagine him touching me softly.
I want him hard.
And when I come, splashing water on the clean marble floors, I realize I’m crying. Because I do want him. Because I do need something from him, no matter how much that frightens me. I need those answers. I need that closure.
And Marcus helped make me into the kind of person who takes control of their life. I’m not just someone who watches on the sidelines. I take charge.
I get up from the bath, soaking the floor in water, not caring even a little bit, and walk over to where I put my phone on the vanity. I put Marcus’s number in it, just in case. I don’t hesitate. I send a simple text: “You have a deal.”
And only then do I realize that I’ve stopped breathing again. I suck in a huge gulp of air and promise myself that I will get answers. I will learn why he left like that, why he hurt me.
And that will make it better. After that, I’ll be able to move on.