Within This Frame

by Zart, Lindy

  Jaw taut, Maggie listened as Lance told her what turns to take, when to speed up, when to slow down. With the moon above them and the cop car finally turning off and heading back to town, he led her up a winding path to a small mountain, more a hill than anything.

  Lance let out a deep sigh and told Maggie to pull over.

  When they reached the lookout point, she killed the engine, fumbled with the door as she angrily mumbled to herself, and stormed from the car—after banging shut the door.

  Lance was slower to remove himself from the Jeep. Maggie was furious with him, and yeah, rightly so. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and ambled over to her, careful to keep a good amount of distance between them. Back stiff, Maggie stood near the fence that separated visitors from the roughened terrain below. She stared into a blackened night with the concentration of one who hoped if they ignored something for long enough—namely Lance—it would disappear.

  “You did a good job driving,” he offered as a compromise.

  The moon haloed her as she spun around, face slashed with shadows and light. “You purposely pushed me to do that. You knew I didn’t want to, and you wouldn’t stop until I did. You’re a-a bully,” Maggie told him.

  It would be pointless to contest that, and his reasoning wouldn’t make it justified either. Lance looked at the trees surrounding them, their appearance that of dead, black-stained creatures, spindly branches reaching out like ghoulish arms. An owl hooted and he listened to the sound, finding it eerily beautiful. Peaceful. He looked at Maggie. Unlike her.

  “I want to hit you,” Maggie announced, fingers pointed out like her control on them was slipping and she was about to gash out his eyes.

  He cocked his head, turning to train his gaze on her. “Twice in one night? Could be a record.”

  “Only, I think, that if I start, I might not stop.”

  “Hmm. It was a nice thought anyway, right?”

  “I hate you,” she vowed in a wavering voice. Maggie’s words should have flayed him.

  “No, you don’t.” Lance’s voice was quiet. “You wish you did, but you don’t.”

  “How do you know?” Her eyes were large with pain, her heart-shaped mouth tipped down with it.

  “Because it’s the same for me.”

  Her face fell. “You wish . . . you hated me?”

  “Yeah.” He showed her his back as he watched the wind pick up dead leaves and swirl them around on the ground. “Couldn’t you tell? The first month or so I had myself convinced I did hate you. And then . . . then I couldn’t keep pretending.” Lance turned back to face her.

  “Why would you want to hate me?” Maggie’s eyes shone with hurt, and it was sad and lovely.

  “Because I can’t—I don’t know how to . . .” Lance swallowed and shook his head.

  Maggie clasped her hands together and waited. When he failed to elaborate because he couldn’t explain what he didn’t understand, she said, “My favorite season is fall. For a lot of people in Iowa, it’s winter. I do find winter to be beautiful, with the snow and all the decorations and lights, but fall is my favorite.”

  Her smile was sweet and faraway. “There are so many different colors in the leaves. Maybe it should make me sad that the falling of them symbolizes a death of sorts, but I’m not. Even if it means the end for a single leaf, it also means the tree will have regrowth in the spring, something to replace the fallen leaves. I used to walk around town, just counting how many different colors I could find within the leaves of the trees.”

  Maggie focused on him. “What’s your favorite time of the year?”

  It had to be the stupidest, most random thing she could say, and Lance’s eyes pricked with gratefulness. He took a deep breath, trying to smile around a hurting heart. “I don’t have one. I have a least favorite, though, if you really want to know.”

  After a brief pause, she nodded. “Yes. Tell me.”

  “Summer. I hate summer.”

  She walked closer. “Why?”

  “It’s when my mom died. Sort of puts a dark taint on the whole thing, you know? Especially my birthday. My dad gets depressed every summer. It used to be a real bummer, celebrating my birthday with a guy who could barely be around me without thinking of the woman I looked so much like. He’s better now, but . . .” He shrugged and looked at his shoes. “It helps that I’m not around him that much.”

  When he lifted his head, Maggie was before him. Eyes dark with an unreadable emotion, she shook her head when he opened his mouth to ask her what she was doing, and then her mouth locked with his. Instant heat scorched him, inside and out. He reached around her and palmed her back, pushing his lower half against hers. The taste of her mouth, the scent of her skin—one touch and Maggie owned him.

  Maggie would be a virgin. Hell, she hadn’t even been kissed before a few months ago. Her first—Lance would be her first everything. He would be her first love, the one she would never forget, not even when she wished she could. The knowledge of that had his fingers digging hard into her hips, his mouth making promises he would keep and destroy.

  Lance moved back, but she followed, her small but strong fingers holding his jaw on either side. Maggie’s body demanded what she didn’t know how to say, or couldn’t. He had to take things slow with her. His body screamed its disapproval of that, but it was irrelevant. She pushed against him, her breasts pressed against his chest, and he moaned low in his throat.

  Before he knew what was happening, they were alongside the hood of the Jeep, Maggie’s bottom wedged against it with Lance between her legs. Even with their clothes on, he felt the heat of her desire, her body a furnace of want. While his mouth trailed across the features of her face, his hands learned the contours of her back, the dips of her shoulders, the curve of her neck. Lance felt Maggie in a way he’d never cared to know a girl before.

  “I want to make summer your favorite,” she gasped when they paused to catch their breath.

  “This past one was,” he confessed.

  Maggie cupped Lance’s face, their mouths close but not touching. Her fingertips were little pulses of sensation against his skin, and he placed his hand over her heart as their eyes met, needing to know its erratic beat was for him, and what he made her feel.

  “You don’t understand,” Maggie said softly. “I want to . . . to . . .” She twisted away and Lance stepped back. Maggie got to her feet, tugging at her skirt to straighten it. Her hair waved in disarrayed locks around her face and shoulders.

  She wouldn’t look at him as she said, “I want to find every broken thing inside of you, and I want to heal them all.”

  Time paused, the only sound registering in his brain that of his wildly beating heart. Unsteadiness hit him and he closed his eyes against it. Without acknowledging her or her words, Lance strode for the Jeep.

  “Let’s go,” he commanded shortly, his gaze locked on the ground. A piece of glass glinted when the moon caught it and he focused on that, forcing his breaths to stay level as he listened to Maggie get into the Jeep and shut the door.

  The ride back was tense, Lance purposely driving like an ass. He went too fast, took corners too sharp, wanting a reaction out of Maggie, and getting none. She quietly sat, fingers locked together in her lap, her head bowed. She couldn’t say things like that to him. She couldn’t think them. He didn’t want that from her. Lance’s jaw tightened. No—he did want that from her. That was the problem.

  When they reached the apartments, he got out and headed toward his, not bothering to wait for her, or open her door, or any of the chivalrous things a nice guy would do. He wasn’t a nice guy. Eyes burning with anger and something else, hands fisted to the point they ached, Lance ground his teeth together and swung around, backtracking to Maggie. She stared at him as he approached, eyes guarded, sparks of anger in hers just as he knew there were in his.

  “You don’t get to say things like that to me,” he growled, pointing a finger at her.

  Maggie slapped his finger away,
giving him a small shove. He staggered back as she told him, “You don’t get to boss me around. I’ll say whatever I want. You don’t own me.”

  Lance opened his mouth, then closed it. He threw up his hands in frustration. “This was a stupid idea. I’m going to bed.”

  He was halfway to his apartment when her tremulous voice broke the air. “What was a stupid idea? I was a stupid idea? Kissing me was a stupid idea? Getting me to like you was a stupid idea? What was a stupid idea?”

  Lance halted his footsteps, not turning around. “I don’t need anyone to fix me, all right?”

  “I didn’t say you needed it! That isn’t what it’s about. It’s about . . . it’s about . . .”

  Unable to keep his gaze from her any longer, Lance turned in a slow half-circle.

  Chin up, eyes steady on his, Maggie said a sentence that crushed him, and built him back up. “That I care enough for you to want to, that’s all.”

  He left her there, racing toward his apartment like he could escape her words. His chest throbbed at hearing them. Lance put a hand to it as he vaulted up the stairs, half expecting a bruise to appear on his flesh. Coward. You’re a coward. Lance burst through the door, startling Mitch and his latest conquest in the middle of making out on the couch. Mouth twisted with disgust, he flew past them to reach his bedroom.

  Slamming shut the door, he immediately flipped the lock. Lance snorted. As if that could keep him from replaying her words in his head, as if a door had the power to block her from his heart. He climbed onto his bed in the dark and held his head. He was scared, proof of that in the trembling of his hands where they were pressed to his temples. Lance laughed, the sound unusually loud in the blackness and silence of his room.

  Lance Denton, hiding from a girl.

  That was rich.

  MAGGIE—2010

  “WHAT ARE YOU doing?” he demanded as he entered the kitchen. Perspiration glinted off his tanned skin and he rubbed a hand towel against his damp black locks.

  Maggie quickly swallowed the food in her mouth. “How many times a day do you work out?”

  Lance gave her plate of food a pointed look.

  “Are you crabby? You seem crabby.”

  “Maggie. Answer the damn question!”

  “You can see what I’m doing!” Her face was hot, and she fought the urge to grab her plate and hide.

  Lance eyed the plate and then scowled at her.

  “It’s my cheat day,” she grumbled like a petulant child.

  “Maggie, love, yesterday was your cheat day,” Lance said evenly.

  She tried not to react to the endearment said with sarcasm, but her heart pounded an extra beat anyway. “Maybe it should be on a calendar then, so I don’t forget.”

  Without removing his eyes from hers, he tapped the calendar on the refrigerator. “Busted,” he whispered.

  “You’re not my parent, you know.” Maggie inwardly rolled her eyes at her juvenile behavior. The plan was to be out of the kitchen with all evidence of her meal disposed of before Lance decided to make an appearance. She should have known that wouldn’t happen.

  “Yes. I am aware of that. I’m your personal trainer . . . that you hired . . . to train you to make better food and exercise choices.”

  Sighing, she constructed her features to guiltlessness. “I’m only eating a salad.”

  “Really? With chocolate?”

  Maggie froze. “What?”

  “You have chocolate on your face.” Laughter twinkled in his eyes even as a frown marred his face. Lance reached out and brushed a thumb across her mouth, making her lips itch.

  “Oh, um, how did that get there?” Lame. That was lame. She tried another tactic. “Why can’t I have a salad and a candy bar? Isn’t that balancing? Right? I mean, I eat something not so healthy, and then I eat something healthy, so really, it’s like I didn’t eat anything, because they cancel each other out,” she said in a rush.

  He stared at her for a long time, and then he shook his head as though to clear it. “Maggie,” he chided. “For one thing, you drowned your salad in dressing.” He put his head next to the plate and looked up at her. “Do you hear that?”

  Maggie blinked, wondering if Lance was mentally sound. Maybe the lack of sex was messing with his head. “Hear what? I don’t hear anything.”

  “That’s the sound of your lettuce dying. You don’t hear anything because it’s dead. Are you taking notes?” He straightened. “Don’t kill the lettuce.” Each word was punctuated with a finger jab to the air.

  “You’re being slightly melodramatic.”

  “There is no slightly about it.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly, wondering if he realized he’d agreed with her. “It’s only dressing.”

  “Only—let me show you something.” Lance opened the refrigerator door and grabbed the ranch dressing Maggie purchased yesterday, along with her cookies and chocolate and other various foods that Lance didn’t know about. The vinaigrettes he’d been forcing her to use were getting redundant. She needed substance, fat, calories.

  He shoved the bottle in front of her face. “Read the back. Tell me what you see that’s good in this bottle.”

  She crossed her arms, refusing to look. “I know what’s on the back.”

  “Then you know you shouldn’t be using it.” He dropped the full bottle of ranch salad dressing in the wastebasket, and Maggie’s stomach went with it. “Where is it?” Lance searched the cupboards and drawers, the sound of them opening and closing the only noise in the room.

  “Where is what?” Maggie averted her eyes when he spun around to glare at her.

  “You can’t keep junk food in the house. If you want to have a treat, that’s fine, you go out and get a single serving of something, because if you keep the stuff here, you’re going to eat it.”

  “You’re being rude.”

  Lance closed his eyes and took deep breaths. Eyes opened once more, he said, “I’m not trying to be rude. I’m trying to make you see why hoarding junk food is not a good idea. Case in point: two cheat days in a row. You don’t get two cheat days in a row. No one does. Now . . .” He crossed the floor to her. “Where is the junk food?”

  “Is this because of yesterday?” She really didn’t want him to find her stash, but he was overreacting.

  He went still, slowly tilted his head to the side, and stared, daring her to say it.

  “With the bed . . . and the . . . and you . . .” She trailed off, unable to say the words.

  “Oh, you’re wondering if I’m sexually frustrated and taking it out on you.” His tone of voice was scarily cheerful.

  Maggie took a step back.

  His features went hard. “If that was the case, I’d be in a much better mood, wouldn’t I?”

  “What?”

  Lance closed the distance between them and cupped the back of her neck, holding her in place so that she had no choice but to look into his lethal gaze, lips a mere inch from hers. “If I was taking my sexual frustration out on you . . . I’d be in a much better mood, wouldn’t I?” His words seduced her as well as any touch could. Sweat fought with the clean scent of his deodorant, a rich aroma that made her head spin.

  She wanted him to kiss her, to do more, to do anything he desired.

  “In the cupboard to the left of the fridge,” she gasped, needing space. “There are cookies behind the canned goods.”

  He held her a moment longer, looking into her soul with hunger while smugness adorned his features. Lance moved away, taking the air she needed to breathe with him, and found the cookies. He opened the package and let the cookies fall into the garbage can. Luckily for the cookies, she’d eaten most of them by then. Only a few would endure the tragic death of being tossed away instead of consumed.

  “What else?”

  Head bowed in shame, Maggie told him where the chocolate was, and the chips, and the ice cream—that one she’d hidden in the freezer downstairs.

  He pushed everything into the wastebasket, rem
oved the bag, and tied it. “I’ll take this out.” He paused on his way to the door that led to the attached garage. “Do you need a moment to say your goodbyes?”

  Maggie crossed her arms, lips pressed firmly together.

  Lance chuckled as he walked from the room.

  No longer hungry, Maggie dumped her partially eaten salad down the garbage disposal and turned it on. It sounded like needles being shredded, and she found it oddly soothing.

  When Lance came back, Maggie surprised him by asking, “How are you really doing? With everything.”

  He gave her a suspicious look and pulled out a chair from the table, contorting his tall frame into a sitting position. “What do you mean, with everything?”

  “Olivia, Ivy, life.” She shrugged.

  “Why?”

  Maggie leaned her hips against the counter near the sink and eyed him. “You’re keeping things from me. I want to know what they are.”

  “You sound like you care.” His gaze was a slice of dark disdain.

  Maggie swallowed, not responding.

  “You want the truth?”

  She waited.

  “I need this show, and I need it to have a phenomenal debut, or I’m screwed. The divorce did not end well for me financially. Half of everything I own is gone.” Lance looked at her. “I’m struggling.”

  “Is that the real reason you wanted to help me? So you could wiggle your way back into my life to use me again?”

  “No, and I never used you,” he answered harshly. “You know I didn’t.”

  “Then why did you agree to help me?” Maggie wanted him to tell her all kinds of lies, even if they were exactly what she wanted to hear. He couldn’t stand to be away, he thought of her all the time, he cried himself to sleep every night at the guilt he felt from hurting her the way he had . . . she was brilliant and he was a jackass. Stuff like that.

  Shaking his head, he said, “Being on my show could be the comeback you mentioned, the chance to let everyone know you are not done until you decide to be.”

  “Being on your show is not acting, that’s just me being me.”