HARDER

by Olivia Hawthorne

  “You’ve got to try the deep fried jalapenos,” Addy told me as I poured over the menu searching for something that wasn’t too greasy.

  We ended up ordering a pitcher of beer and an appy platter to share. Since Addy was paying, I decided to go along with whatever she wanted. It seemed fairer that way.

  “Have you seen much of Caleb this week?” Addy asked as I poured us each a glass of beer.

  “No, he didn’t order lunch the last part of the week. Somebody said he was out of town, but somebody else said he was taking care of his dad so who really knows?”

  “I don’t mean to sound rude, but are you sure you’re not spending too much time with him?”

  “How do you mean? We’re just friends.”

  “You’d have to be blind and stupid to believe that, Brooke,” she said with a frustrated look on her face. “You two obviously care for each other but I worry about you. I know I’ve never asked you where you’re from or about Lucy’s dad, but I think you’re very vulnerable right now.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. I like him as a friend and the rest of it is none of your business really,” I said as nonchalantly as I could manage given the fact that she was upsetting the hell out of me. I hated it when people poked around my past looking for answers.

  “I know which is why I never bring it up. And if you really are just friends with Caleb then I’ll back off. He’s a complicated man and might hurt you without even meaning to.”

  “You went on one date with him,” I said quickly, “I don’t think that qualifies you as being an expert on Caleb Harder.”

  “I might not be, but I’ve been in town longer than you and I know his history. He’s a complicated guy with a lot going on.”

  “As long as he’s kind to me and Lucy, I don’t care what he’s done in his past,” I snapped.

  I took a long draw on my beer and glared at Addy over the edge of the glass.

  “Fine, you know what? You’re right. What the hell do I know? I’ll drop it.”

  “Thank you,” I said quietly.

  Conversation was stilted for a few minutes after that but soon enough we began to flow as easily as usual. When Addy and I were out there were always lots of giggles and inappropriate jokes made about pretty much anything and everything.

  Gary showed up a little after nine and I stuck around for an hour or so just to get to know him. In spite of some rough patches it seemed like Gary and Addy were going to be together for a while.

  He was a nice guy, good looking and hard working and let’s face it…for being a random bar hookup, Addy had really scored with him.

  I let them make fun of me for being old and bored as I said my goodbyes and headed to the parking lot.

  I made it home in time for the late night news and a bowl of ice cream on the couch.

  It was weird without Lucy around. Even though she was usually asleep by this time of night, I couldn’t feel her in the house and that made it feel too quiet, too sterile.

  I passed some time looking up Rolland on Facebook and was beyond pleased to see him posing with a young, gorgeous blonde woman. He’d always been stupid and cocky about his privacy settings so I was able to determine that they’d been dating for a while, in fact they’d started before Lucy and I had left.

  Good riddance to bad rubbish as they say. I was just glad that he might end up too distracted with somebody new that he forgot about us and let us go once and for all. All I had to do was file for full custody and hope that he let it happen without a fuss.

  On a whim I looked up my mom and dad to see if they’d joined in on social media like a lot of people their age these days.

  My heart skipped a few beats when I found my mom. I hadn’t seen her face in so long, but there she was laughing with my brother and my dad.

  I dug through every bit of public information but unfortunately she was more private than my ex. There wasn’t much to see beyond shared motivational posts and Candy Crush achievements.

  My heart hurt seeing her there, so close and yet so far.

  I don’t know what came over me; I clicked on the button and let the message screen pop up. I was incognito with a fake name to hide out from Rolland, but I had to message her.

  I kept it short and sweet.

  Hey mom, I hope you guys are doing well. Lucy and I left Rolland and we’re living down south. I’d sure love for you to meet her, she has Grandma’s smile and stubborn personality. Love, Brooke

  I must have read it a thousand times over looking for things to rewrite or things to improve, but finally hit send.

  I half expected her to reply right away, but knew she’d either be in bed or up watching some late night action movie with dad. I hadn’t realized how much I missed my family until I’d seen her face and now my heart felt empty and hollow somehow.

  Rolland had given me Lucy, and I wouldn’t change a thing because of that, but he’d taken so much from me I couldn’t even begin to add it all up.

  I must have fallen asleep on the couch because I woke up with a start with my phone buzzing and the TV blaring some infomercial for a vegetable cutting system that was guaranteed to change my life.

  I looked at my phone and saw Addy’s number.

  “Addy?” I said sleepily. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “You gotta get down here,” she said with her voice slightly slurred.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine but you gotta come get him.”

  “Who? What’s going on?”

  “Caleb. He’s lost his fucking mind. It’s the anniversary and he’s drunk off his block.”

  “Caleb Harder?”

  “Yes, Caleb Harder! He’s trying to start fights and he tore up the jukebox. Just get down here now! He’s asking for you!”

  She hung up and I was left holding my phone and staring at it like it was an alien object.

  Caleb Harder was drunk and asking for me? And what the hell did Addy mean by an anniversary?

  I slipped on an oversized jacket and flat sneakers, grabbed my purse and key and headed to Murphy’s pub.

  When I got there the parking lot had thinned out quite a bit but I recognized Addy’s SUV.

  I walked inside and found the place a maelstrom of activity with Caleb Harder in the center of a group of people.

  They were all trying to get him to calm down but he was holding his fists and his face was an almost unrecognizable mask of rage

  “Who was it?” he roared. “Which one of you did it?”

  “It wasn’t anybody from around here,” Rod, the bartender told him and walked towards Caleb with his arms held out as if Caleb were a rabid dog. “The police told you that, they never did figure out who did it.”

  “One of you fucking did,” Caleb snarled. “One of you fucking cowards did it and now you walk around here and look me in the eye like you don’t deserve to fucking burn for the shit you’ve done.”

  “Caleb?” I asked and pushed through the people. “What’s happening here?”

  “Brooke,” he exclaimed and looked at me, the rage replaced with raw pain. “I never wanted you to see me like this but it’s too fucking hard. I can’t stand it, I can’t fucking take it anymore.”

  “Come on, Caleb,” I said, glancing nervously at the people clotted around us. I put my hand on his arm and stroked him like I would a wild mustang. “It’s okay, we’re gonna get you out of here so we can talk.”

  Addy nodded her head and Gary stood next to her with his arm slung casually over her shoulder. I smiled and grabbed Caleb’s hand and he let me lead him from Murphy’s.

  In the cool night air he seemed to calm down a little. He was miserable though, one minute he had rage cycling across his face and the next I thought he was going to break down sobbing in my arms.

  “I’m going to take you home,” I told him and helped him into the van.

  “No, not there,” he said pleading with me. “I can’t go back there right now.”

  “My place?�
� I asked.

  “Not yet. I need fresh air. My head is so fucking stuffed with shit right now. I’m sorry, Brooke. I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”

  “That’s what friends are for,” I told him and helped him buckle his seatbelt.

  “What a fucking mistake,” he said softly. “What a stupid fucking mistake.”

  “What’s that?” I asked him just inches from his face.

  “Thinking I could ever be your friend, Brooke.”

  My stomach sunk. “What do you mean?”

  “I want so much more from you, isn’t it obvious? I fucking want you Brooke, but I don’t want to ruin you.”

  “Maybe I should be part of this decision,” I smiled but my heart was racing a million miles a minute and I felt adrenaline rushing through my body. “We’ll talk about it later though, when you’re feeling better.”

  I got into the driver’s side and let him direct me to a park across town.

  We got out and he took my hand and led me to a wide clearing. We lay down on the grass and stared at the stars for a long time, hand in hand. I figured he’d talk when he needed to.

  After a while he took a deep breath and said, “I miss them sometimes so much it hurts me, Brooke. It physically hurts me. It’s been three years.”

  “Who?” I asked, squeezing his hand and almost dreading the reply.

  “My wife and little boy,” he said and I felt as though a damn broke free as the weight of his grief washed over me. “They were killed three years ago today.”

  I’d known there was something damaged with Caleb Harder, and I’d assumed it was something similar to mine.

  But his was worse, so much worse.

  “I’m sorry,” was all I could say, but somehow that seemed like it was enough.

  Chapter 16

  It felt strange for me to see Caleb Harder so vulnerable in my arms. In the short time I’d known him, he’d seemed emotionally impenetrable and completely in control.

  I held him as he raged, then calmed and talked to me quietly, and then raged again. I wanted to cry for him, to weep for everything he’d gone through but didn’t want to scare him with my own outpouring. I remained stoic, keeping my own bubbling grief deep inside. I knew I would have time to express it to him at some point, but that night it was all about his heartbreak.

  His anger didn’t frighten me though. It wasn’t directed at me, but at life in general along with the cruel and horrible fates that had taken his wife and child from him.

  After some time I began to feel the cold and needed to warm up. I extricated myself from his arms and said, “We should get you home.”

  “I don’t want to go home,” he said again and held onto my hand. He was still drunk but I could tell he was sobering up a little.

  “My home,” I said with a smile. “I’m taking you home. You need to sober up and we both need to get warm.”

  He remained on the grass, looked off into the distance and said, “Sometimes I feel like I shouldn’t be happy, you know?”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “Because they’re dead and I’m here without them. It feels wrong to live without them.”

  “I didn’t know them but I can guarantee that they would want you to be warm and comfortable at the very least. You’re not proving anything or showing your love by catching pneumonia,” I said and tugged at his hand.

  He still sat and stared. “They’re so cold, I should be cold.”

  “They’re not cold,” I said. And even though I wasn’t necessarily a religious person, I said the only thing I could think of to comfort him. “They’re in a better place, Caleb. A warm and happy place where they get to relive your love every single day. Every day they celebrate the time they had with you because that’s become their entire world. You deserve to be warm, and you deserve love too. Loving and living down here on earth doesn’t diminish what you feel for them, in fact it honors them and their memory.”

  He looked up at me with a startled look. “Do you really believe that?”

  “I do with all my heart,” I told him. “Now let me help you, Caleb Harder. Let me honor their memory by taking care of you when you so obviously desperately need it.”

  He stood then and looked down at me, reminding me again how impossibly tall and muscular and bloody good looking he was. He gave me a crooked smile and said, “What is it about you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You make everything better,” he said. He grew serious and brought his fingers up to brush against my jawline. “The past three years have been like living in a nightmare. I haven’t even been living, just existing. The moment I saw Lucy standing in my flowerbed, things have been changing. And the moment I saw you there, god…nothing has been the same.”

  My mind was racing a million miles a minute trying to process exactly what he was telling me. He’d already confessed that he wanted more than just friendship from me, but he was so vulnerable just then that I didn’t know how to react. I decided I’d play it safe. “That’s what friends do,” I told him and thrust my jaw out defiantly as if challenging him to say otherwise.

  “Yes, that’s true,” he said and seemed to refocus his eyes on my face. “But if I weren’t so drunk and fucked up I would show you exactly what I want out of our friendship, Brooke.”

  My breath caught in my throat and I could see his pulse throbbing in a vein on his neck seeming to match the fluttering of my own heart. “And what would that be?”

  He drew in a long breath, ran his hand through his thick hair and looked back down at me. “This,” he said softly and dipped towards me to lock his mouth on mine and kiss me deeply.

  I could taste the alcohol on his tongue and normally that would be an anxiety trigger for me. Whenever Rolland drank he became even more horrible than usual, so the smell and taste of booze shut me down.

  But everything else about Caleb made that one thing disappear. His scent, even under the alcohol, was powerful and masculine. The way his lips felt on mine, the way his tongue commanded mine and made me feel like he was claiming me…all of that meant more to me than the taste of him.

  And god, the noises he made in the back of his throat. Deep little growls like he wanted to tear my clothes off and plunge into me, split me open and release his lust on my body. The way his hands traveled along my back, the way his huge hand grabbed the back of my head and wove his fingers in my hair.

  All the time I’d been with Rolland had never felt this right or this real.

  That’s what it was with Caleb Harder. Everything about him just felt right, and right meant it felt like home. Like touching him was touching back down to earth and finding my place in the universe right there in his arms.

  My arms were prickled with goose bumps; from the cold or the sensations Caleb was sending through my body I didn’t know. I shivered though and he noticed, broke away and looked down at me with concern. “You’re cold, we need to get you home.”

  “I thought I was getting you home,” I smiled.

  “We’re getting each other home, Brooke,” he said and stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. “We’re caring for each other.”

  “That’s the way frien—“

  He cut me off. “Not friends, you know there’s more to this than that.”

  I drew in a long breath, looked him in the eyes, past the pain and the sadness that lingered there, and I said, “I know. So much more than friends.”

  “Good, now that we at least agree on that let’s get us home,” he smiled and pulled me towards him as he kissed the top of my head tenderly. That small gesture wasn’t erotic, but it was sensual and sent tingles through my limbs.

  Caleb Harder cared for me. That much was true.

  * * *

  We walked hand in hand through the park back to the van that Caleb had lent me indefinitely. I was even starting to think of it as my van, but that thought frightened me somewhat.

  How could I grow so attached to something that wasn’t mine? Then aga
in, how could I grow so attached to somebody who wasn’t mine?

  And Caleb Harder wasn’t mine. Not yet anyhow, but there was something almost electric crackling between the two of us that promised something would happen if we let it. If the world let it.

  My hand fit too perfectly in his for this to be a coincidence. My stomach fluttered as if filled with butterflies desperately trying to fly free and declare their undying love and devotion to the man walking beside me. This was no passing fancy.

  As surely as my blood was beating through my pulsating heart, my destiny felt wrapped up with his.

  “I can drive,” he said and swiped at my hand for the keys. “I’m sobering up.”

  “I think the keyword there is sobering, not sober,” I said and jerked my hand back. “I don’t know how much you’ve had to drink. Hell, I don’t think you know how much you’ve had to drink.”

  “That is true,” he said and his good humor disappeared as he raced back inside himself. A dark shadow flickered across his handsome face and he grimaced. “I never wanted you to see me like that.”

  “But you called for me,” I said and touched his arm. “Why did you call for me?”

  “I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d rather be with,” he replied and put his hand on mine. “I’m sorry though, that you had to see that.”

  “Don’t ever apologize for showing me that you’re human,” I told him. “You are allowed to show emotions.”

  He looked at me with a surprised expression, smiled and said, “Where did you come from, Brooke?”

  It was my turn to shut down and let that darkness flicker across my face. I could feel it in my skin and see it in Caleb’s eyes. I wasn’t ready to tell him about me yet.

  “That’s not important right now,” I told him. “We need to get you home to sleep this off.”

  He looked puzzled by my response but he got in the van with me. I drove of course and by the time we made it to my modest apartment, he was nodding off in the passenger seat beside me. It had been a good call to not let him drive, he was still drunker than either one of us had thought.