The Promise Between Us

by White, Barbara Claypole

  I need him.

  “No.” She tugged up her towel. “You can’t move out of the studio, I won’t let you.”

  He made a strange sound that could’ve been a laugh. “You can’t stop me. The studio’s too social. School groups come through, long-lost daughters show up. I don’t even believe kids should be in that space. I get twitchy enough when Delaney drops by wearing flip-flops. And I want to get serious about my art, not follow every distraction.”

  “You don’t get distracted. You have the focus of a rhinoceros.”

  “Rhinos have focus?”

  “Who knows? Are you sleeping with the blonde?”

  He blushed. “My sex life is none of your business.”

  “Yes, it is, because you brought up Cupid. And I need to know if it’s too late to say I’m sorry. Sorry about everything. Sorry for last night. Sorry for every crappy thing I’ve ever done to you, but please. Don’t do this. I know I screwed up, I know I’ve taken you for granted, I know I have no one to blame but myself. I know I’ve treated you badly, been self-absorbed. But I’ve lost so much, and I can’t lose you, too—I can’t. Please, please don’t leave me. I need you.”

  “I’m not leaving you.” He looked at the floor. “Just the studio.”

  “And us?”

  He raised his eyes. His beautiful gray eyes. “There is no us. You made that clear.”

  “Who is she, the blonde?”

  “A friend set us up. She’s recovering from a bad breakup, and she’s lonely. I am, too.”

  “Are you in a sexual relationship?”

  He closed his eyes, breathed in and out, and opened them. “No. I had high hopes for last night, but—”

  Act, don’t think. Pushing down on his thighs again, she eased herself on top of him and straddled his lap. His arms moved quickly to secure her.

  “Jesus, Katie. Now what are you doing?”

  The towel started slipping, but he held her gaze.

  “I’m making a move.” She leaned forward, her breasts brushing against his chest. I’m such a fraud. I don’t know how to make a move. “I ran away once when I should have stood my ground, and once is enough. Unless—” She pulled back and her finger shot to her mouth.

  “Katie—” Laughter reflected in his eyes. “Stop chewing on your fingers.”

  “Sorry, sorry. Gross habit, I know, but I’m a mess right now. You don’t want this? You hate me?”

  “No. Any idiot can see that I’m . . . Damnit, Katie. That’s not the problem.” He leaned back against the breakfast bar again, but his arms stayed in place. “Please go and get dressed.”

  She pulled farther up his body, and he groaned.

  “I thought you liked to be surprised by your works in progress,” she said.

  “Only if the conversation is flowing. You don’t want this. Not in the way I do. Please, Katie. I’m trying to walk away. Let me go.”

  What if I hate him? What if I break his heart? “No.”

  “No?” A smile tugged at the corner of those lips. Those gorgeous full lips.

  “Leaving Asheville wasn’t about the welding. It was about working with you. It was about you.” She ran her fingers through his hair and touched his scar. Then she looped her arms around his neck. This, I want this. “Because I think we could survive the throw test. I think that if we were welded together and thrown against the wall, we’d hold fast.”

  “You’re comparing us to a basic weld?” With slow, stroking movements, his hands slid to the edges of her breasts. “That’s the most bizarre thing a woman has ever said to me.”

  She stared at his lips and imagined kissing them. “How about this, then? When you came into the studio with the tall blonde, I was completely undone. You’re the reason I got drunk last night, because when I think about you with her, about you not being in my life, the doubt that you hate me is real. I can’t function without you, Ben. Not having you around this week, I’ve been drifting. I can’t focus, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. It’s not just all the little things you do for me. It’s you. Your presence, your energy, your laugh. Do you know I can tell when you’re in the studio even if I can’t see you? Do you know what it means to not have that? To not be able to look up and see your smile, to not be able to hear your voice, to not have the safety of knowing where you are?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “So I’m a weld and your safety net?”

  “No. You’re the guy I can’t live without. And this”—she looked around her living room—“isn’t my home, and neither’s the studio. You are. And I can’t risk that you like the blonde enough to sleep with her. Because I really don’t want that to happen.”

  “What do you want to happen?”

  “You. All of it. With you. Also, I’m naked and we’re still talking. And I haven’t had sex in a very, very long time, and none of this is helping my self-esteem. Do you like her, the blonde?”

  He brushed her lips with a kiss. She shivered, and he pulled up the towel to cover her shoulders.

  “Nothing’s happened between us. We talk about her ex and you. Do you really mean this, Katie, or are you going to break my heart?”

  “You going to break mine?” She held out her arm. “Feel my pulse. It’s racing to shutdown.”

  He kissed the inside of her wrist.

  “My OCD’s trying to drag me back into hell and using you to get me there. Telling me awful things could happen to you, showing me, and I can’t fight back when it latches on to you because of how much you matter. That’s what it does. Goes after whoever matters most.”

  “Would it help if I got naked, too? An exposure to prove I’m indestructible?”

  Ben smiled a slow, intimate smile that landed in the middle of her chest. Aftershocks flickered through her body like a thousand trapped fireflies set free.

  “I don’t know when it happened or how,” she said. “Or maybe it’s always been there and I was too scared to drag it out into the daylight.”

  “It’s daylight now.” He placed her hand on his cheek.

  “I love you. I love you fiercely, Ben Holt. Please love me back.”

  “Can I come with you next time you see Maisie?”

  She nodded. Tell me you love me.

  “No more shutting me out from the OCD?”

  She shook her head. Tell me you love me.

  “Will you come and see the house I’ve found? It’s out in Orange County, about ten minutes from Jake’s. There’s an old barn with potential for a studio. We could create one together, from scratch.”

  “I thought you wanted out?”

  “From the studio, not you.” He brushed her hair behind her right ear. “I love you fiercely, too. Jesus, it’s been driving me crazy—not allowing myself to hope for this moment.”

  “Why? Why do you love me?”

  “Katie, you’ve bewitched me since you stormed into my world in skintight jeans and a Dead Sara T-shirt and said, ‘Teach me how to make steel dance in the wind.’ You were a fireball of determination, but the more time we spent together, the less I understood what drove you. You made it clear we’d never be anything more than friends, and I took what you offered. But I’ve always wanted to unlock the mystery of you, and when you told me about everything you’ve overcome, there was no turning back. I wanted in all the way.”

  “Will you”—she watched his lips again—“teach me how to do this right?”

  “Let me show you.”

  “What happened to the steel delivery?”

  “Us happened, and it’s going to be huge.”

  “Text Trent, tell him to—”

  But then he was kissing her and hoisting her up, and as he carried her back to the bedroom, she imagined dancing in the wind.

  FORTY-TWO

  KATIE

  October and November came and went, bringing drought, burnished and rusty foliage, and patches of smoky fog from forest fires in the mountains. Thinking ahead to spring, Katie started to plan her new garden with Ben’s bottle tree as the centerpiece. />
  Between them they had moved everything out to his new property: their work, their belongings, even the support group. The first meeting was small—four people plus Katie—held in front of the wood-burning stove at the heart of her new home.

  The open-plan, solar-powered house understood cold weather. It closed around her and Ben, making it easy to huddle and stay put in their very own igloo created from wood and glass. She fell for the stained glass windows on the east side of the house; Ben fell for the wrought-iron staircase that wound up to the loft area they had turned into a shared office.

  Every morning the house flooded with sunlight. Katie loved to pad out of their bedroom to make her tea, step down onto the tiled area with Ben’s fifties dinette table and chairs, and look through the wall of glass to their deck with the forest beyond. In front of the tree line, rising from a small strip of grass, were the two sculptures they’d moved from outside the Durham Sculpture Workshop. Life should have been idyllic, and yet . . .

  As the winter solstice approached, Katie curled in on herself. Darkness whispered, targeting her new relationship. The voice became a perpetrator of hate:

  You’re happy, are you? This matters to you, does it? Well, we can’t have that, can we?

  The OCD shouted that she was meant to be alone; taunted her about running away and told her if she didn’t, she’d get pregnant and fail at motherhood a second time; demanded certainty about her feelings and his; showed her how she could hurt him. How she could make him bleed. When she retreated, Ben made no demands. One Sunday evening, after he found her lying on the bathroom floor in the fetal position, he picked her up—muttering she was easier to move than a twelve-foot steel sculpture—carried her to their bed, and spooned behind her. On their two-month anniversary, she asked why he stayed with her.

  “I love you,” Ben said. “Doubt isn’t part of my equation.”

  He had enough certainty for two.

  Ben also began putting aside money from his commissions so she could upgrade to weekly sessions with her new psychologist. When she tried to refuse, he insisted it was an investment in their future. Our future—she liked the sound of those two words.

  Thanksgiving with Delaney and Patrick had been memorable. Delaney showed off the large sapphire on her fourth finger, and the four of them christened the new fire pit Ben had built as an early Christmas present. Sitting in lawn chairs around the bonfire of brush and old wood from the new studio, Katie watched sparks fly up to the stars and wondered if here—in this moment, in this house—she could find peace. When an owl hooted greetings from the forest, she had tried to believe the answer was yes—despite OCD. And now it was the third week of December. Whitmore was hosting a Christmas party fundraiser for the International OCD Foundation and auctioning off Katie’s piece from the group show, the piece created from bullets and buckshot.

  “Do we need to brainstorm coping strategies for tonight?” Ben said as he parked the truck outside the Chocolate Factory.

  “You mean other than—” She started singing “I Got You Babe.”

  “Not really an answer, but I’ll take it.” He smiled his sexy little smirk and kissed her.

  A long, gentle kiss that made her wish they were alone in his house. Their house. Every morning when she awoke to a tangle of limbs, she worried they’d become too insular. Even in sleep, they found each other. But everything about Ben surprised her. An adventurous lover, he treated her, his bike, and his art with meticulous care, insisted on absolute order in their new studio—which was still evolving—and yet his side of the bedroom said, I’m a slob. And when he cooked? A gargantuan disaster.

  Ben leaned his forehead against hers. “FYI, I’ll be mentally undressing you all night. You in that dress? The stuff of my fantasies.”

  “You mean this little ol’ thing?” She opened her big black coat and tugged down on the cleavage of her red dress. With a low growl, he moved in for a quick kiss and a quick grope. She had found the dress at the PTA thrift store for five dollars. When she came home and modeled it for him, he reached for her and flicked up the short skirt, and they had made love on the rug in front of the wood-burning stove.

  “Right.” He pulled his jeans away from his groin. “Time to go and pretend we enjoy spending time with other people before we get arrested for indecent exposure.”

  After they clambered out of the truck, Katie buttoned up her coat against the temperature that had dipped in the last twenty-four hours, and Ben draped an arm over her shoulder. Even in four-inch wedges, she was lost in the sheer size of him. As they walked down the street toward CAM, someone gave a wolf whistle. Ben stopped and they turned together.

  “How’s it going, lovebirds?” Jake said.

  “Hey, man.” Keeping his left arm in place, Ben shook Jake’s hand. “You still on for Christmas Eve dinner?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Where’s our other star?” Ben said.

  “Already inside. Callum texted me a while ago. Maisie insisted they get here ridiculously early, but I’m not sure how long he and Lilah will stay. Depends on Theo. I’ve been assigned the onerous task of driving ’Mazing Maisie home after the show.”

  “Gotcha.” Ben squeezed her shoulder before she could say, They could have asked us.

  When they reached CAM, Ben held open the huge yellow door. Warm air, laughter, and live music hit as they stepped inside. Ben helped her off with her coat, Jake complimented her on the dress, and, with his hand wrapped around hers, Ben led them into the main exhibition space.

  A cluster of people surrounded her buckshot piece. Servers circulated with trays of appetizers and filled champagne flutes. On the floor below, a jazz band played in the spot where she had accidentally reunited with Maisie. Katie shook her head. She had come so close to backing out, to passing on the chance. Sometimes spontaneity was a gift, not a curse.

  Whitmore came over, his eyes lingering on Jake for a second too long. A young woman, less subtle, sashayed over with a tray of canapés. Jake flashed his eyes at Katie as if to say, So many choices, so little time. Then he spotted Maisie and announced, “There’s my number-one girl. Come on, y’all, let’s go pay homage to Maisie MacDonald, the leading authority on Katie Mack.”

  Maisie, pad clasped to her chest, chatted away to her father. Next to him, in an ankle-length velvet dress, Lilah swayed, one hand under the baby snuggled in the sling. Her smile was bright, and her hair, loosely twisted off her face, was a mass of gleaming ringlets. Lilah wore motherhood well.

  “I was telling Callum earlier”—Whitmore cast another glance at Jake—“that Maisie was the star of our docent program. I hope she’ll consider returning in the spring.”

  “Oh, I would like that very much,” Maisie said, and then bobbed up on tiptoe to kiss Theo gently. Theo slept on.

  Cal turned to Lilah. “We can leave whenever you’re ready, darling.”

  “As if,” Lilah said. “I’m out of pj pants, and I’m having a grown-up conversation. I’m not leaving unless our little man starts bawling his head off.”

  “Mom,” Maisie said, “my brother never bawls his head off.”

  Katie smiled. Mom. Now when Maisie used the word, it didn’t feel as if someone were pulling her chest apart with rib spreaders. She and Ben had become a small but important part of Maisie’s life, and nothing mattered more these days than gratitude.

  The band stopped playing. “Katie,” Lilah said. “Can I have a word in private?”

  Cal glanced at his wife, and Ben gave Katie’s hand a quick squeeze.

  “Of course. Let’s go over there.” Katie indicated a quiet spot by a mixed-media sculpture of cement and rusted iron.

  When they reached it, Katie nodded at Theo. “He’s a good sleeper?”

  “It appears so,” Lilah said.

  “Maisie had horrible sleep patterns.” Katie searched for the server with the champagne, but he was trapped at the far end of the room.

  “So I heard. You know, I was hoping you could teach me how to b
ecome Maisie’s mother.”

  “What?” Katie stared at Lilah. “I—I don’t understand. You are her mom.”

  “Not with the thing that counts most: her anxiety. Theo takes all my time, and I’m worried Maisie’s needs will get lost. I was hoping the three of us could start a regular date. Maybe every Sunday afternoon at the house. Would you be game?”

  “Lilah, I would do that in a heartbeat, but I’m not sure Cal will approve.”

  “I can handle Callum. It’s amazing what happens after you come back from the dead. I could ask him for the moon right now, and it would be mine.”

  “That’s a lot of power.”

  “Which I intend to use wisely to help Maisie.”

  Katie glanced toward Ben as a tic developed in her right eye.

  We won’t stay together. I don’t love him enough; I was definitely checking out that cute guy at the supermarket last week. What if I break Ben’s heart even though I promised I wouldn’t? What if I’m lying? I should leave him tonight. Get it over with before I wreck his life.

  A thought isn’t a fact, and I won’t assign meaning to this. I can’t predict the future, but I know one fact: I need Ben. I’m going to love him the best I can and live with uncertainty.

  “You okay?” Lilah touched her arm.

  “OCD messing.” Katie tried to smile. “It hates that I’m finally happy.”

  “He seems lovely, your Ben. I think Maisie has a bit of a crush on him. Having met him, I understand why.”

  “Our relationship’s been a slow burn, but he’s the love of my life.”

  Am I saying that for Lilah’s benefit? What if I don’t believe it? What if I don’t love Ben? What if we argue in the truck driving home, and I distract him and we crash and he dies, dies because of me?

  I control fire; I am strong.

  “I’m not saying that for your benefit,” Katie said. “He is. I’ve always had intimacy issues, but not with Ben.”

  Lilah nodded and swayed, looking down to check on Theo. “If you could give me one piece of advice on how to be a good mother to a kid with OCD, what would it be?”