by Nicole Helm
“I didn’t invite you in,” she snarled.
“I know.”
“Look,” she began, and he could see all the ways she was trying to unclench. “I know I was a little uptight about it, and I still am. Help freaks me out, okay? I just need . . . Just give me some space.”
“I’m not so sure space is what you need.”
She whirled on him, a million storms in those ocean eyes. “You will not even begin to pretend like you can tell me what I need.”
“It occurs to me that we’re an awful lot alike.”
She snorted. “Yes, we are exactly alike.”
“We bury it. All of the things we don’t want. We bury them.”
She stilled then, and he knew he’d hit a point. So he kept going. “I’m not telling you to not feel like you feel. I’m just saying that maybe the function of friends is that when you do feel those things, you let it out. You talk to them about it, and then, because you talked to someone who cares about you and wants the best for you, you figure it out.”
“Is that what friendship is?”
He thought maybe she meant for it to be sarcastic, but it didn’t quite hit the mark.
“You know, I actually helped Lilly and Brandon get together.”
“You did not. She swept in, he fell head over heels. That is the only possible story.”
“Oh no. We hired Lilly, against Brandon’s wishes, but regardless that made her off-limits in Brandon’s head, of course. So they fought, and argued, and fought, and then they had sex and Lilly got pregnant. For a variety of reasons, she was ready to have nothing to do with Brandon.”
“You’re lying.” But she was paying attention, and she was relaxing.
“In the beginning, when she was trying to cut Brandon out, I think it was her own fear, her own insecurities—they do exist, believe it or not. But Brandon was really struggling with how to deal with that. How to handle it. Because she’d hurt him. You know Brandon and how much it would hurt if someone told him that his responsibility wasn’t his to take care of.”
“It’d kill him,” she said softly.
“Exactly. And I got in there, and I told him some things about my marriage that made him realize he needed to fight, and he was probably not seeing things any more clearly than she was. Then they made up. Happily ever after.”
Tori cocked her head and studied him. “What things in your marriage?”
It was always amazing how any hint at having to talk about those things could freeze his insides into sharp shards of ice. He’d prepared himself for this, told himself if she asked, he would tell her. He would tell her because friendship and shit like that. Because he was trying to change.
Still, he froze and everything hurt. Still, it sent a wave of panic through him, to explain it. Discuss it. To have to put his feelings on the matter on display like that, because they weren’t ones he was any good at hiding.
“If I tell you,” he managed to croak out, “then you have to promise to do the same.”
“I’ve never been married.”
“You know what I mean. If I tell you that, then you have to tell me why friends trying to help makes you so angry.”
“You said it yourself, you already know why.”
“But I want you to tell me.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Those are my terms, Tori. Tit for tat, so to speak.”
She blew out a breath, rolling her eyes, but she was curling and uncurling her hands into fists and then out. “Fine,” she muttered. “Give me your tit.” She managed to smirk at him, but something like fear lingered in her eyes.
But she wanted to know. She wanted to know this about him enough to give a piece of herself, and he would take that. He glanced at his watch. They probably had about fifteen minutes before anyone wondered why they weren’t at the pizza place.
“Let’s sit,” he said, nodding toward the living room.
Tori led the way and settled herself on the edge of the dark blue couch. He knew she would’ve preferred he sit anywhere else, but he took a seat right next to her. Close enough that their hips touched. If he was going to tell her this, he wasn’t doing it half a room away. He wasn’t going to pretend like it wasn’t important. Because telling her this definitely mattered to him.
“A while ago, Courtney was in between modeling jobs, and a little worried she wouldn’t find a new one. But we did what we always did. We drank, we partied, we had fun. She got irritated I was spending so much time helping Brandon with Mile High, but mostly it was . . . okay.”
He clasped his hands together, trying not to get lost in the details. He needed to focus on the facts. The simple story. “Then she got a job, and she happily jetted off to Italy or France or some such. I didn’t pay much attention, furthering my excellent husband reputation. But that was . . . That was our marriage. Fun while we were together, pretty much not interested when we weren’t.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a marriage.”
“Yeah, well, exactly. I mean we were . . .” How to explain it? “It never bothered me when she was gone. Every once in a while if I heard something through a friend or saw a guy on her Instagram page or whatever, it was a little infuriating, but mostly I didn’t care enough to know. I liked spending time with her. I liked certain aspects of her company, but it was no great love match of the century. It just was what it was.”
He kept his gaze on his hands because he wouldn’t get through it if he looked at Tori. If he saw sympathy or the lack of it. If he saw anything, he would break. He wouldn’t break now.
“Her sister called me out of the blue one day asking why I hadn’t come up to Boulder. She tried to cover up her mistake, but I realized Courtney was home and she hadn’t come to Gracely or even told me she was with her family.”
The problem with telling people about it was that he remembered it. Too clearly, too harshly. The shock and the horror. The pain, and the betrayal, and the realization Courtney hadn’t seen it as one, and he couldn’t even blame her.
“It came out, as things do, that she’d been pregnant.” He squeezed his hands tighter. “She . . . wasn’t . . .” He cleared his throat.
“Will.”
It was too soft, something like a plea, so he had to spit it out. “She had an abortion. Which, you know, that was her choice to make and all that, but I realized . . . I realized that’s not a marriage. When your wife does that without telling you. Without thinking of telling you. So I filed for divorce, and when Brandon was uncertain about Lilly, I told him that story and . . . That’s that.”
“You told him . . . after the fact? You didn’t tell him when it was going on?” Tori asked, shock and outrage in her voice.
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
* * *
Tori didn’t know how to absorb that. He’d gone through something patently awful, because how did you deal with something so intangible? So detached, and yet so important? But he hadn’t told anyone. He’d been in this horrible misery without telling anyone. He had a brother who loved him, and a friend in Sam, and he hadn’t told anyone.
“Aren’t there things you’ve never told anyone about?” he asked, that kind of deadly calm question that could lead nowhere good.
Maybe if he wasn’t staring right at her with those all-too-insightful hazel eyes, she might have been able to sidestep the question. But he’d just told her this horrible thing, and he was staring at her like . . .
She knew better than to fall into this trap. To think she mattered. To think things would be different. She had to claw her way out of it. She had to . . .
“I can’t think of anything offhand,” she lied. Of course there were things she’d never told anyone. There had been no one to talk to about Toby because she hadn’t had any friends outside of his influence. She didn’t talk to her family about her personal life. She barely talked to her family at all.
She supposed, if she was being really, really, horribly honest with herself, there were bit
s and pieces of things Tim had done to her she’d never told anyone in glaring detail. Nothing drastic, just trying to protect her parents. Trying to protect herself.
“Tell me something. Anything. Just open up a little.”
She got off the couch. This was too much. She wanted to do whatever it would take to comfort him, tell him whatever he wanted. But she’d been here and done this and gotten clobbered when she’d asked for more.
“We should go. People are waiting on us.”
“But it was a deal, Tori. I tell you, you tell me.”
“Yes, well, I don’t want to make someone wait on . . . whatever this is.”
“Why are getting so upset?”
“I am not upset!” she yelled, which of course completely undercut the words. “I just . . . I’m not doing this with you,” she said. “I don’t do this with anyone.” Which was a sad, sad truth, but honest nonetheless. “There are people waiting for us.”
“And they’ll keep waiting for us. What happens if you tell me? What is it that you’re afraid of happening if you tell me?” he demanded, and though his voice was still calm, there was an edge of frustration to it.
Good. But when did he get so insightful? He’d never been like this. Oh, she’d fooled herself into thinking he saw through her back then, but he’d never pushed. Never demanded.
“You didn’t used to do this shit,” she grumbled.
“Yeah, that’s kind of the point. I skated. I kept it all inside and I didn’t tell anyone about anything. But it doesn’t work anymore. I’m not . . . It doesn’t feel the way it’s supposed to feel. So I am trying to change.”
“You can’t force me to change with you.” It scared her more than anything that part of her wanted to try.
“But don’t you want to?” he asked, his voice soft and full of . . . care. He took her hand, this horrible habit he’d developed, because it was hard to fight something when someone was touching you. When someone was looking at you with earnest eyes and something like care in them.
His big, warm hands covering her small one. She closed her eyes.
“It’s scary to change, and it’s hard. I’ve spent the past few months somehow watching Sam and Brandon do it. Open up and get something out of it. Change into someone stronger and sure. And I want that. For both of us.”
“What does it matter if I change?”
He blew out a breath, still holding her hand. “It’s nice to do it with somebody,” he said, his voice low. “I think that makes it maybe not easier but . . . They all did it with somebody. This change.”
She bit her cheek so she wouldn’t say the things she wanted to say. That Sam had opened up because Hayley had come into his life. That whatever issues Lilly and Brandon had resolved came because they were in a romantic relationship. And that was not her and Will.
This wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t love, and it couldn’t ever be.
She was afraid if she pointed that out, he’d have far too many things to say about it. That would be worse. That would be worse than sharing pieces of herself. Introducing love into a conversation with him.
“My brother tried to kill me once.” Which she realized too late was not how you blurted something like that out. “That sounds worse than it was. It was just that he’s sick. I can’t remember the labels, but mentally ill. So it wasn’t like . . . meaningful. He just fixated on me sort of, and toward the end he, uh, locked me in a room. And he told me he was going to sacrifice me. But you know, he didn’t, obviously.” Oh God, she was babbling. Was this really better than mentioning romantic relationships?
Yup.
“My older brother found me and rescued me, so to speak, and I didn’t quite ever . . . tell anyone the whole of what was said to me.”
“Why the fuck not?”
The fury in his tone surprised her. Such an old wound, it felt more like an old nightmare than reality with all this space of years and distance between them. “I just . . . They already knew he was sick. He’d been threatening me for years. So . . . Mom and Dad would just say he was sick and didn’t mean it.” Why was there a lump in her throat? She had never meant to tell Will this. What was he doing to her?
“They’d already chosen him so further details didn’t matter,” she forced herself to say as dispassionately as she could. She forced herself to look away from his hand clutching hers. “That was when I decided to run away and everything’s been fine since then. There. I told you. Can we go now?” She looked at him as defiantly as possible.
He dropped her hands and she breathed a sigh of relief. They could go and forget this whole stupid thing had ever happened.
But then he was pulling her into him, wrapping his strong arms around her and holding her tight against his chest. So tight she couldn’t move. One hand stroked her hair as though . . . as though he were offering her some kind of comfort?
“It was a long time ago. It’s no big deal,” she said muffled into his chest.
“Baby, I don’t think so. That’s a hell of a thing to go through. Worse when you’re a teenager and even worse when your parents don’t care.”
“It’s not that they didn’t care. It was just . . . He was sick. And they . . . he was their priority because he was sick. It wasn’t his fault. He’s sick.” What everyone always said.
He jerked her away from him, but he didn’t let her go. His hands were tight on her shoulders as he looked her in the eye.
“I get that to an extent, but my God you were threatened. He locked you in a room. How could . . . that isn’t care.”
Which was possibly the worst thing he could have said because it confirmed all her deepest fears. No one had ever cared about her. Not really. And no one ever would.
“We have to go,” she said, her throat too tight, the tears too close to the surface.
“You can cry in front of me,” he said with a gentleness that made her bristle.
“Fuck you. I don’t cry in front of anybody. Now I’m going, and you can either stay here and do whatever, or you can come with me. We’re done here with this.”
He studied her for the longest time, his tight grip on her shoulders slowly loosening.
“All right,” he said at last. But though his grip had loosened, it hadn’t fallen away, and he pulled her to him again. He brushed his mouth against her temple, a sweet, comforting gesture.
“Let’s go,” he said simply, and took her hand as they walked to the car.
Chapter Seventeen
They drove in silence to The Slice Is Right. There were too many things running around in his head and he needed to get a handle on something before he pushed her further.
That’s what it would take. Pushing it, because there was so much here. In both of them—pushed down and hidden.
Maybe if he wasn’t the same, he might not have understood it. But he understood her. He pushed away with charm and pretending like things didn’t matter, and she pushed away with anger while pretending things didn’t matter.
Underneath it all, it was the same. Which meant, deep down, she was hurting the same way he hurt. Was probably, though he was loath to admit it about himself, lonely.
He’d always figured he was supposed to be lonely, or something, but if he thought that, then she thought that and...
He couldn’t work it all out quite yet, but it was twisting around in his head.
Tori was stiff in the passenger seat, clearly vibrating with repressed energy as they got out of the Jeep and walked into the pizza place. Doing her own version of working through it.
Well, more likely pushing it down, but it wouldn’t be that easy. He wouldn’t let it be that easy.
As the night went on, and they sat with Sam, Hayley, Brandon, Lilly, Cora, and Micah, Will relaxed. Every time he glanced at Tori, she seemed as though she had too. He saw it in the set of her shoulders and the way she laughed at Cora, or teased Brandon.
This was the thing he’d always taken for granted. Any night he wanted, he could surround himself with people who
cared. Tori might not realize that, she might not admit it, but this relaxed her. He had to wonder where she’d been for seven years, and if she’d had any of this.
He doubted it, and it was a little shameful to realize he always had. His parents were shit, sure, but he’d always had Brandon. For so long he’d had friends who could mean something even if he didn’t give over his whole self to them. Brandon, then Sam and Lilly and Hayley, were a soft place to land, to heal, to center himself.
Tori wouldn’t let him drive her home. She’d go with Cora and Micah as it made the most sense. He should probably give her space anyway. She needed time to deal with telling him about her brother.
She’d never told anybody about that. Not a soul. Her brother had locked her in a room and threatened to kill her, and she hadn’t told anyone because she’d been so certain her parents wouldn’t take her side.
It was unfathomable. Even if his parents hadn’t loved him, Will had never experienced danger as a child. He’d been safe. Wholly.
Will glanced around as shuffling began, people standing up and making their good-byes. He didn’t miss when Tori shot him a glance, because he’d been watching.
She quickly glanced away, some of that tension returning to her shoulders. He could feel bad about it, but mostly he knew it wasn’t as simple as that.
She wasn’t angry with him anyway. She was uncomfortable that he’d seen some piece of her she didn’t particularly want people to see. She never wanted anyone to see her cry, and he understood it so deeply. He was never comfortable with people seeing him hurt because it showed too much. It hurt to have someone else care because what did you do with sympathy when it only made you feel worse?
So he understood. He got it. The more he understood and the more he got, the more he realized this wasn’t so simple as friendship. It wasn’t even as simple as friendship with some attraction underneath. Everything about Tori and who she was and who she was to him was complicated, and doing anything with that was only going to be hard. It was only going to be everything he’d shied away from his entire life.