Unmistakable

  My cheeks flush. I want to kill him. Or throw my arms around his neck and touch my lips to his. Either would work.

  He must sense my indecision, my weakness, because he reaches over and flicks the light on. The fluorescent sting hits my eyes, but before he can conduct a thorough examination of my flaws, I promptly flick them off again.

  “Little Stella. Afraid of the light?”

  Despite the tenderness in his voice, the diminutive nickname rankles me. For the thousandth time tonight, I wish I was wearing my combat boots. The delicate heels aren’t exactly ass kicking shoes, and that’s what I feel like doing. Still, I refuse to let him win. I turn a lamp on and fight the desperate urge to say, “So there.” Baby steps.

  His eyes travel the full length of my body, and while I want to throw the blanket over my head and hide, I straighten my shoulders and throw my head back. I may be afraid of the light, but I refuse to cower in the corner.

  His eyes pierce all the way through mine, until all of my old fears and small devastations threaten to tumble over.

  “Seen enough?” I mutter finally, unwilling to let the heat of his gaze consume me.

  “It was you in the hallway, wasn’t it?” he asks finally. “After the psych class and before breakouts? I ran into you.”

  If he wants an apology, he’s come to the wrong room. I’m not apologizing for shit. I raise my chin and give him a defiant stare.

  “Why didn’t you say something to me? Christ, Stels.”

  My throat is dry and cracked, and the words don’t come easily. Apparently, after three and a half years of thinking about it, I’m still at a loss for something to say.

  “You didn’t recognize me. I just figured it was better to leave it alone.” It’s a half-truth. Then again, isn’t everything?

  “That’s bloody brilliant, then, isn’t it, Stella? Just leave it alone. Sounds like a fantastic idea.”

  My legs wobble precariously, and I’m not sure how long they’re going to support me, so I fall into the couch. There’s always a chance that he’ll take pity on me. He can smell weakness, and my feeble attempts at verbal sparring aren’t even close to full strength. Vulnerability disgusts him. Maybe he’ll leave. I watch him fight for control over his temper. He clenches his fist and loses the battle, but in time, he wins the war. He raises himself to his full height and gives me a cold glare.

  This is what judgment day must feel like, if you’re meeting a less-than-beneficent god.

  “Where did you go, Stella?”

  I don’t think that’s really what he wants to know, but I take the words at face value. “I’ve been here. At Greenview.”

  He lets out an impatient grunt. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. What happened to you? Where did my Stella go?”

  His Stella?

  “The girl I knew wouldn’t go to places like Phillips. She wouldn’t run into an old friend and blatantly ignore him. She wouldn’t run away.”

  The accusation stings. “We all grow up sometime, Luke.” I can’t match the scrutiny of his gaze, so I pick lamely at my fingernails. “And I’m fine. Don’t you see that? Completely fine.”

  “Oh, yeah, you look completely fine to me. Certainly fine. More than fine.” His eyes, the ones that see too much and nothing at all, sweep the length of my body. “You dyed your hair, changed your last name, stopped wearing those stupid cardigans, and started going to clubs that you have no business in. There’s nothing about you that is remotely fine.”

  In a matter of seconds, he’s broken through the walls that have taken me three years to construct. No one’s ever had the nerve to say those words to my face. “You are not fine.”

  Of course, he’s entirely correct. I am not fine. But I didn’t want or need him to know that.

  My anger flares, and I feel the irresistible urge to fight back. “Fuck you, Luke,” I spit. “Lots of people dye their hair. The cardigans were ugly. I am twenty-one years old, not eleven, which means that I can go to any club that I want to go to. And no one else seems to have a problem with how I’m doing.”

  “Who? Tom and Caroline? I’m sure they’re whispering into your ear, ‘Oh Stella, we’re so proud of you for being so strong, for making it through another day.’ What’s that bullshit that they always say? One day at a time?” He shakes his head violently. “I’m not going to lie to you like they do, Stels.”

  “It’s none of your business.” My lower lip wobbles, but I am not going to fall apart right now. Not until he leaves this room. “This is my room and I didn’t invite you here. Get out.”

  I’m ready for a snappy retort. We’ve slipped into our old game, well-crafted insults and veiled threats. I hate that being with him fills the ache inside me. I hate that I want more of his biting cruelty.

  “I don’t give a damn if you invited me.” His lips curl into a sneer. “Do you really think I need an invitation, Stella? Come on. You can do better than that. And it is my business. You are my business.”

  “No, I’m not.” I wish I was. “What happens if we turn the tables, Luke? Where have you been? My mother practically lost her mind with worry when she couldn’t find you. She sent a private investigator after you, for chrissakes. Where were all of your texts and e-mails about my business three years ago?”

  There’s an unacknowledged danger lurking below the surface of our words, but I want to walk on the edge. He disappeared without a trace, leaving my mother half-mad with worry and all of us sick with grief. I have to know why.

  When he finally speaks, his voice is stripped of all emotion. A belligerent roar would be less terrifying.

  “I was in England.”

  I don’t believe him. Luke’s father is British, and that’s the only possible reason that he would have gone there. It’s unthinkable. Luke tolerates his mother and even treats her like a cossetted and very stupid family pet, but his hatred for his father runs deep.

  “England?” I ask, incredulous.

  “Cambridge. Then I headed off to London and worked with my dear old dad for a bit.”

  “Seriously?”

  “No, Stella. I’m lying to you.”

  His sarcasm is laced with an undercurrent of self-loathing that I recognize immediately—I’ve heard it enough times in my own voice. At that small admission of his own vulnerability, my defenses start to disintegrate.

  It must have taken an act of god for him to go there.

  Not an act of god. An act of man. He wanted to punish himself for what happened.

  The pieces start to fall into place. Except for one.

  “How did you wind up in academia?”

  “The only thing more disappointing than a son who wants to be a rock star is a son who wants to go into academia instead of international finance.” He gives me a wry look. “Studying psychology was the last straw. I needn’t have bothered with the rest of it. Could have saved me a fortune in tattoo cash.”

  I can’t completely stifle my laughter as I try to picture the showdown between Liam Dixon and his son. To my surprise, Luke laughs, too, and the air fills with the sounds of mingled pleasure. For a moment, we both forget where we are and that we’ve become combatants rather than childhood playmates.

  He remembers first and his scowl sucks all of the laughter from my throat.

  “Tit for tat, Stella,” he says eventually. “Why didn’t you call? Write?”

  A dozen answers dance at the end of my tongue: you are a living reminder of hell and I couldn’t face it; I’ve been running away for a very long time and all I wanted was for you to find me; I was afraid of what you would find when you saw the sham that is now my life.

  None of them manages to escape my lips.

  “You were in England, remember? I guess I forgot to order the international calling plan. It’s what, like five bucks a minute? Wasteful.”

  “You cheeky, stubborn little prat.”

  “Takes one to know one.” I cringe, inwardly, when those words actually enter the air. Again, I’m reverting to kind
ergarten insults. I can’t seem to string a coherent word together, let alone an entire thought. I stare at the patterned afghan on the couch, as if it might suddenly morph into a black hole that will suck me in.

  Luke grabs my hand, roughly, and spins me to face him. I want to yank my flesh from his, but my body refuses to follow my brain’s commands. I let my hand linger in his calloused palm for just a second too long, and without warning, the words spill over, along with the pent-up emotion that I’ve been holding back forever. There’s nothing I can do about the fact that my voice no longer holds any trace of a tease. It’s been replaced by pure and undisguised longing. I’ve hanging by the slimmest of threads here.

  “Why didn’t you call me? Try to find me?”

  For three interminable years, I’ve wanted the real answer to that question, and not the half-truth. After a brief disappearance, he made amends with my parents. He talks to them. He even sees them on holidays, which is more than I can say for myself.

  But never me. He never tried to find me.

  “You were gone, Stella.” His face contorts in pain and he’s forced to choke out his next words. “Even if I had found you…I was afraid that you would still be gone.”

  I can’t completely deny his accusation. I did disappear. I was gone. I just never expected him to let me stay that way. The blur of emotions—regret, anger, blame—become too much. I bury my face in my hands.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  “It’s not your fault,” he snaps.

  I can see the rage lying just beneath his skin. I’m powerless to take away his anger. Jack, my beautiful, blond, gloriously blessed brother, had always been the one who could talk Luke back from the edge. I was usually the one who drove him there. But Jack isn’t here, and he’ll never be here again.

  Luke paces back and forth across the tiny room, and as I watch him, my eyes catch on the reverse side of his forearm. There’s intricate, black script running up and down his skin, but the darkness obscures my vision, and I can’t make out the words.

  I take a step towards him, willing to do anything to stop his mindless pacing, but without my heels on, I barely reach his the bottom of his chin. I’m afraid of his thunderous temper, of what might happen if I push him too far, but I can’t stop.

  Proximity changes everything. I’m enveloped in a force field of our own creation, and the air pulses with a tingling electricity that overtakes both of our bodies. The shock in his face tells me that he feels it too.

  “Don’t do that, Stella,” he whispers sharply. “Back up.”

  He’s not even bothering to disguise the pain in his face anymore, and that display of naked emotion shatters my final defenses. I would do anything, be anything, to take it away.

  “Luke, stop. Stop. It’s going to be fine. I’m sorry. I am so sorry for everything. I should have…”

  I bite back my words, because there are a lot of things that I should have done. But ultimately, these are all things that I didn’t do. I can’t wind the clock and force time to play in reverse, no matter how much I might wish for it.

  “You should have what?” His voice is low and soft and dangerously vulnerable.

  “I should have…” I stumble over the words, so long unsaid to anyone but myself. “It should have been him, not me,” I say eventually.

  Although he must know what I mean, I clarify my words.

  “You should have saved his life and not mine.”

  There’s a violent struggle in his eyes, a second of indecision, a moment where I think he’s going to lose the crusade to ebb the flow of his rage. I run my fingers up and down his arm, trying to comfort, to heal, to help in some small way, but he winces as if I’ve burned him. His eyes wild, he pushes me away.

  “Stella…” His voice is strangled and strangely beautiful. I want him to say it again, just like that.

  “Luke, please. Please. I’m so sorry.”

  He buries his head in his hands, barely muffling an animalistic groan, and his fingers grip his hair as if he wants to eradicate himself from the spot. Finally, he slides down the wall until I tower over him.

  “I’m so sorry,” I repeat.

  When he looks up at me, there’s no sign of the torture he’s just put himself though. I can tell that whatever battle he’s been having, he’s obviously just surrendered. I open my mouth to apologize again, to offer an explanation, a real one this time, but he shakes his head fiercely, locks his gaze on my face, and hauls himself up to his full height.

  In one smooth, effortless motion, he pulls me into his arms, tangling his fingers into my hair and pressing my face tightly to his chest. I can’t see anything, feel anything, do anything but breathe in the sweat and whiskey-scented skin.

  There’s no softness to his body, just the rigid strength of muscle and flesh stretched tightly against solid steel. He could crush me, body and soul and spirit, with just one blow.

  I can’t tell where I end and he begins, at least until he bends my head back and crushes his lips to mine.

  There’s nothing gentle about his bruising, powerful mouth, or the seemingly unbreakable stronghold he has on my body. He’s resolute, his hands wrapped around me so tightly that I don’t think he ever plans to let me go.

  It’s the last thing I expected him to do. And, I realize suddenly, the last thing he expected himself to do.

  Still, there’s no hesitation, no gentle fumbling, no yield to his strength. Even when his lips brush against mine, they’re rough and wild and harsh, his tongue twisting against my lips. Forcing them open.

  I part my mouth slightly. He was right—he doesn’t need an invitation, and he’s not asking for one. As his lips vibrate against mine, I wrap my legs around him and kiss him harder, needing the fierceness of his embrace, the full measure of him.

  I turn my head to the side and shift my body so that we’re again wrapped so deeply into each other that it’s impossible to disentangle myself. I run my fingers through his slightly damp hair, smoothing the rough edges and then mussing them again, grasping for any part of him that I don’t already have. He runs his tongue over every inch of my mouth, brushing his lips against mine again. It’s too brief, and I let out an involuntary moan, mournful for the loss of the certain weight.

  Being here, with Luke, is like falling into a void that I’m not sure I can ever crawl out of. Despite the knowledge of that, there’s no choice for me, not in this. I lose myself in his darkness.

  Just as abruptly as it began, I lose him, too. His arms loosen and he spins around so that I can’t see his face. I’m too afraid to make even the faintest noise, out of fear that I’ll break whatever spell possessed him to do this.

  Kissing has always been on my list of life’s grand disappointments. I’ve kissed boys and there have been mutually agreed-upon moments where kissing was totally expected and natural, but they’ve always been gentle, kind, chivalrous, as if demanding more could actually break me. “I’m not a porcelain doll,” I’ve screamed, at least in my head.

  Luke’s kisses are neither kind nor chivalrous. Instead, they’re laced with a dangerous desire that threatens to eat me alive. I should be glad that he stopped. I should be, but I’m not.

  When I realize that I am, in fact, made of flesh and bone and I haven’t been transported to some other world where nothing exists but the two of us, I make a decision.

  For the last three years, I’ve built a fortress of dispensable things. Except for Izzy, everything in my life can be replaced. It’s safer that way. Luke is not dispensable. Possessing Luke’s lips, feeling the heat of his body against mine, is the one thing I’m not willing to let go. He is not leaving this room until I get all of him.

  I slide my arms around his back. The thickness of his muscles provide a rebuff to my advances, but I refuse to lose. I fit myself into the space between his body and the wall and I take his face between my hands, his beautiful face that has unbearable pain written in every crease.

  The aloofness that once dominated his expr
ession has transformed into a depth of understanding, the knowledge of loss and evil and never-ending sorrow that I’ve never been able to put voice or even thought to. It’s the worst kind of pain—a throbbing ache that never abates, never breaks, never stops its endless thundering.

  I know it, I’ve felt it, I’ve lived inside its skin.

  I’m a selfish monster. I’ve thought about Luke every day. I’ve imagined his lips possessing mine in the tiny moments of tenderness that hide beneath all of his bluster, but it never occurred to me that his agony might be as great as my own.

  There’s only one gift that I have left to give, one thing that he might not be able to reject. Without thinking, I plunge myself headfirst into madness.

  “I love you.”

  It’s my hail mary. I never meant to say those words. I didn’t mean to feel them. I have no hope that he will reciprocate. I know that he doesn’t love me, maybe not at all, and definitely not in the way that I want him to. Loving and being loved aren’t the same thing, unless you were born under a lucky star. Despite all of the reasons why I shouldn’t have said it, the love I have for him is a gift and not a burden, and if he understands nothing else, I have to believe that he will understand that.

  I had to say the words aloud. For a fleeting moment, the snake of fear in my stomach loosens and I feel blessedly free. And then my instincts for self-preservation kick in. Despite the unending truth of my words, I know that I’ve laid my heart bare in front of him. He will rip me into tiny shreds. I cover my mouth with my hands, like I could swallow my declaration whole, and I look up into his eyes.

  I expect unrelenting, merciless, brooding mockery, but his blue eyes have melted into a softness that leaves me completely undone.

  His face darkens. He’s going to scream and rage and pretend I didn’t say it. My words stick in the air between us, but he can’t find the right contradiction, the right insult. Instinct tells me to keep my gaze steady. Finally, when I can’t stand the silence for one moment longer, I tilt my head and give him a helpless shrug.