“Let me get this straight. I had to answer my phone with my elbows and my nose, thereby endangering the sanctity of my screen and my neighbors’ remaining scraps of belief in my dignity, just so we could play I’m Thinking of an Animal?”
“Uh-huh.” I grin at my windshield. If his hands are too grubby to touch a phone, that means he’s at home working on somebody’s car, which is lucky for me since I didn’t think through that whole part of the “surprise” plan. Besides, he’s insanely sexy when he’s all dirty and elbow-deep in an engine. I shift into gear—smooth as silk since he swapped out my clutch—and hit the gas. “I’ll give you a hint. The animal I’m thinking of is small, with funky-streaky hair, and it died in the midst of a vast desert of Jacob-less-ness.”
He chuckles. There’s a creak of something metal, then the whoosh of a passing car, which probably means I’m on speakerphone, too, so he can keep working while we talk. “Is that a hint I need to get up a little earlier tomorrow morning?”
I gave Jacob the code to open my garage door, and every day when he delivers my paper, he’ll come inside for a few minutes and slide into bed with me. I’ve gotten used to waking up to his big hand rubbing circles on my back through my sweatshirt and wind-chilled lips whispering kisses over the nape of my neck. I get a happy shiver just thinking about it. Still, as much as I like the stolen moments, he’s been so busy lately that moments are all we’ve gotten together. “You can’t get up any earlier. At this point, you’re probably waking up five minutes after you get into bed.” I sigh. “Come on, we’ve only got two more days of Thanksgiving break left. You have to be caught up on homework by now, no matter how crazy ambitious your Design and Manufacturing project is.”
“Well...” His voice goes tight with effort for a second, and something metallic scrapes as it comes loose. “My family obligations are done as of yesterday. Except now I have a line of broken-down cars that goes halfway around the block and a lot of customers who are pissed that I left them without wheels for the holiday weekend.”
I turn onto his street and wow, he was not kidding about the parking issues. I flip a quick U-turn before he can see my car and head for the nearby McDonalds’ parking lot. “They should be grateful they can afford to have wheels at all, which they couldn’t if they were paying a garage to do the work instead of you.”
“Still, if I want to get through the worst of it by Monday, I’m going to have to start pushing them over underneath the streetlight so I can work all night. Look, I’m really sorry, Jera. I know you’re probably sick of dating my text messages. It’s just been a really crazy few days.”
I park and shut off my car, checking my hair in the visor mirror before I stuff my keys in my pocket and get out. “It’s not the text messages that are the problem. It’s those dirty notes you’ve been leaving on my newspaper, Mr. Tate. Highly unprofessional.” I cluck my tongue disapprovingly.
He chuckles, low and deep, and my scalp goes all tingly at the sound. I roll my eyes at my own reaction and switch the phone off speaker as I get out of the car and take it with me.
“The between-class make out sessions aren’t hurting anything, though. Makes me feel like a teenager, sneaking around behind my parents’ backs with a delicious little secret.” I break off when he yelps in pain. “What was that? Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he says, his voice strained. “Barked my knuckles. For about the twentieth time. Engine grease is a sterile wound salve, right?”
I wince in sympathy. “Aww, Jacob...”
“It’s nothing.” Something drops with a clang. “Anyway, if you don’t want to feel like you’re sneaking around, you could introduce me to your mother. Just an idea.”
I snort. “What, you think your life would be improved by being kidnapped by a cougar? Polite, clean-cut, with flawless math transcripts? There’s no way Mom could be trusted around you.”
“Ha! You’re afraid she’ll like me too much. That’s one I haven’t heard before.”
I stride down the sidewalk, dropping my voice because I’m getting close to his apartment and I don’t want him to hear me coming. “I barely get to see you as it is. Are you saying you’d rather spend our time having dinners where my mom quizzes you about your retirement planning and my father makes awkward jokes about our sex life?”
“Consider this: maybe we’d have more time together if you introduced me to your super mechanic mom, because then I could charm her into helping me out with my backlog.”
I don’t answer, rising onto my tiptoes as I sneak up on an old maroon Buick. Jacob’s got his head underneath the hood, phone propped on the battery so the speaker can pick up his voice as he works. I click off my phone and drop it into my bag.
In his oil-stained, ripped jeans, his ass is purely world class. Grinning, I reach forward to give it a pinch. He jerks with surprise but thankfully doesn’t hit his head on the hood when he whips around.
“Whoa, uh, hi.” He glances toward his house. “I have to say, I’m really kind of glad you didn’t do that five minutes ago, or I might have lost a finger.”
“Hey, startling a guy with his head stuck in several thousand pounds of half-dismantled car? What could go wrong?” I prop my hip against the car and cock my head. “You mad?”
“Furious.”
“Would you be less furious after a kiss?”
“Yes,” he answers without hesitation. “Hold on, I’m pretty sure there’s an inch of me here somewhere that’s clean enough to kiss.” He glances down at himself, hands black with streaks of grease, grit-dusted sweat glistening all the way up his arms until it disappears beneath an old Perfect Circle shirt. “Actually no, I don’t think there is. Have I mentioned lately that I hate my life?”
I bite my lip. “Maybe once.”
“Yeah.” He shakes his head, bending forward to brace his hands against the edge of the open hood. He looks exhausted. I duck between his arms and perch my ass on the grill of the car, tilting my head back so I can whisper my next words over his lips.
“Maybe I like you a little dirty...”
He chuckles unevenly. “Jera, if you’re not angling for a public indecency ticket, that may be the wrong approach.”
I lean closer until he stops breathing, and I trace the edge of his lower lip with my tongue. It’s salty and I think it may be the most perfect curve I have ever found in my life. I nip at it and something metallic creaks as his hands tighten to either side of me.
“I want to go inside...” I murmur.
“Okay! Yes, okay, inside.” He stands with a jerk and looks to the left, the right, then leaves all his tools in place as he snatches a rag off the ground and starts to wipe his hands, using it to grab his phone and stuff it in his pocket. I laugh and lead the way, letting my hips sway a little in case he’s looking. I open his door, then pause and look back at him. “Don’t think you’re bringing that shirt in the house. It’s filthy.”
He claws it off over his head, leaving black fingerprints behind on the grey cloth, and drops it into the bush next to the entrance.
Best. Idea. Ever.
I grin and step through the door.
Jacob kicks something under the couch, and then swoops around in a fast, fluid move. It ends with the door slammed shut, my back touching it and his forearms flat on the door to either side of my head in an attempt to keep his stained hands away from my clothes.
I gulp in a breath that is woefully short on oxygen, and he leans down to my mouth.
“I like it when you get bossy,” he growls.
I kiss him with a sharp bite of teeth and deep play of tongues that’s not holding anything back now that we’re alone. The door is hard at my back, his chest deliciously firm against my breasts, his muscles slick with sweat despite the chilly air outside.
“And I like it when you get rough...” I wet my lips.
He exhales a growling moan. I drop a hand to feel his hip muscles flex, and both of us are panting. It’s been way too long since we were alone for more than
a few stolen minutes, and I don’t give a damn whose car doesn’t get fixed; I need to touch him.
“I’ve got to wash my hands,” he groans. “Now. I have never felt such an immediate call to hygiene in my life.”
I laugh and curl my hips a little, and his mouth dives back to mine. The man can do things with his tongue that are fantastically immoral. I sigh against his lips as I think about what else that might mean for me. Every time we’re together it’s like this: a flare of pleasure edged with the low grind of longing. We tease and taste and enjoy each other, but I only ever leave wanting more of him than when I came.
He pulls away and drops his head to the door with a faint thud. “Jera, tell me to go wash my hands.”
I rake my teeth along his neck just beneath his ear, and he moans like he’s suffering. “Don’t wash anything. I want you to take off my shirt. And I want to see the mark of every single place where you put your hands on me.”
Both his fists thump gently against the door above my head. Now I’m certain he’s in some kind of pain, but I’m also pretty darn sure he doesn’t want it to stop. It probably makes me a bad person, but I could never get enough of seeing him like this: wanting me so much he can barely string a sentence together.
He pulls back just a little and his eyes flee from my eyes to my lips. “Ben.” He exhales a groan. “Ben is going to be home in like half an hour.” He catches a glimpse of the clock and chokes back one of the words he refuses to say in front of me. “Or, you know, eight minutes. Have I mentioned I hate my brother?”
“Let’s just go in your room.” I hook a finger inside his waistband. “We’ll be quiet.” But before I even get the button undone, he’s gone utterly still.
My hand hesitates, then drops back to my side, but he doesn’t take his arms away from where they’re braced on the door. He lets his head fall weakly on his neck, forehead coming to rest against mine.
This again. I see something in his eyes sometimes, like guilt, or maybe fear. I know he doesn’t want me to ask, but we pretty much always hang out at my house, and on the rare occasions I come over here, he’s never invited me into his room. Whatever he’s hiding in there, it’s not going to be good news.
“Jacob,” I say, very quietly. “What is in your bedroom?”
There’s a movement of his body in all the subtle places it touches mine. A quiver? A shudder? I’m not sure the exact word for it, just that it’s not right and it claws a line of pain down through my chest in a way I’d like to forget immediately.
He lifts his head enough to kiss my hair.
“I’m going to wash my hands.” He pulls back until his eyes meet mine. “After that, we need to talk. Okay?”
Obviously, nothing is okay. Nobody ever says they “need to talk” unless it’s something bad. But his eyes stay with mine, waiting for my assent.
“Okay.” I exhale the word.
He steps back and something in the movement makes me think he’s desperately sorry he can’t touch me right now. He disappears into the kitchen without a word.
I cross the room and sit, the creak of the couch cushion, the only sound in the room.
It was a Wednesday when Granna died. She was in hospice care, which meant different kinds of nurses came to the house, and they had an odd sort of gravity to them. They didn’t seem like regular people the way the other nurses always had. They were quieter.
We knew she would die. It was years and months and a lifetime in the making and no one was surprised or unprepared. But when my phone vibrated on that Wednesday, my stomach dropped and I sat motionless with all the sounds in the room fading into a metallic ringing in my ears.
I knew it would not be okay.
That same uncompromising dread is in the air now. I figured things with Jacob were going too well, and for a guy with a personality like an open book, Jacob has a lot of oddly blank pages. The family emergency that had him running barefoot away from my house. Texts from Ben that pull him away at odd hours, and phone calls he takes outside where I can’t overhear. His room.
I take off my jacket and set it down along with my messenger bag, as if that simple amount of order will smooth the craziness in my head. Jacob comes back and his hands are clean, though the creases of his fingernails still show black marks. One knuckle wells blood from a torn scrap of flesh. When he sits down, he looks at his oil-streaked jeans, not me, and his face is different. Not distant but maybe older? A tiny thrill of fear runs through me and I wish he would look up so I could see his expression more clearly.
“Listen, Jera. My life is like oil stains. You think you don’t mind them, and they can be fun in the moment, but when you’re done, they don’t wash off.” He looks up and I start to breathe again. His eyes are very dark but steady. “My life is my problem, and I will always take care of it. You’ll never have to worry about that.”
I don’t have a single clue what he’s talking about, but the way he says it makes me feel safe. But that’s crazy. He’s lying to me, and I feel safe? I cross my arms and pretend I don’t want to crawl into his lap right now and forget I ever asked. “Hey, remember the part where relationships were about trust and communication and not crappy metaphors about engine grease?”
“You’re right, and I’m going to explain everything. First, I just want you to understand I’m not asking you for anything.” He cocks his head, lines of strain appearing at the edges of his eyes. “You’re a worrier, Jera. And I don’t want you to carry my baggage for me, okay?”
“A worrier?” I scoff. Maybe I used to be, but not anymore. “I’m an irresponsible musician who can barely remember to comb her hair in any given week.”
“You worry about your mom,” he says immediately. “If she disapproves of your choice of career, if you’re calling her enough, if she feels left out with all the record label stuff you are working on with your dad. You worry if you disappointed him, if you made the same mistake he did with turning down the record label and if your band will pay the price like his did. You worry about your neighbor across the street when she takes her trash out without asking you for help because she fell last winter.” His shoulders sag, just a little. “You worry about me, if I’m getting enough sleep, if I’m working too hard, if I’m sacrificing too much to make time to spend with you. You worry about Jax, all the time, about everything.” He shakes his head, a rueful smile touching his lips. “As far as I can tell, the only person you don’t worry about is Danny.”
I snort, trying to lighten the mood. “It’s Danny. The day he’s not okay, you better start watching for four horsemen and a rain of frogs.”
“Yeah, well, for my family, I’m Danny. And we all need it to be that way.” His head drops. “Listen, Jera, once you know,” he says, “I can’t un-tell you, and if...” He slashes a look at me and all his steadiness is gone. “If it makes you not want me anymore, I need you to leave today. Not tomorrow, not in a week, and not in a month when we still haven’t had sex yet and you’re worried I might freak out on you like that idiot on your voicemail.”
With every sentence, my pulse speeds until every beat feels like a tiny flinch, protesting everything that’s coming. “Jacob, just say it, okay? I was all braced for the I-Have-AIDS or A-Murder-Warrant or A-Pet-Alligator-In-My-Room Talk, but you are scaring the crap out of me right now.”
He reaches for my hand. I pull it away, and his face stiffens. He nods and gets up anyway. The floor creaks as I follow him toward the door of his room, my arms wrapped around my middle like I need to protect myself from whatever is in there. Given the way he’s acting, I probably do.
My imagination sprints ahead, flipping through scenes in quick succession, representing all the possible genres: horror, comedy, tragedy. When he opens the door, I’m still not ready for what’s on the other side.
Chapter 24: The Secret
In Jacob’s room, a purple border of Dora the Explorer and a monkey strides around the top of the wall. There’s a matching nightlight glowing beside a toddler bed with its
purple bedspread made homey by a well-loved village of stuffed animals and a battered, man-sized baseball glove. At one side of the room is a tiny purple velvet beanbag chair, some stacked and labeled tubs of toys, and an extra-long twin-sized bed with a plain wool blanket pulled over the top.
I glance up and Jacob is so close, I can smell the warmth of cedar and motor oil on his skin. “You have a daughter? Where is she? Who—” I almost ask who she is, but that’s a ridiculous question. She’s his daughter, and that in itself is everything. He has a child and that child has a mother. We’ve been dating for a month and he didn’t even trust me enough to tell me they existed. I plant my feet wider, trying to steady myself against the shaft of pain that sends through me. He called me a worrier, said he didn’t want me to carry his baggage for him. Which is probably a nice way of saying he didn’t think I could do it.
“I have three siblings,” Jacob explains. “Ben’s eighteen, Hayden’s twenty-three and Maya is two. Hayden has Maya for half of each month. Ben and I have her the other half, but we can’t afford a three-bedroom right now. I thought Maya needed a room of her own so she would feel at home, even though she’s bouncing back and forth between two apartments all the time. Plus, Maya had a lot of trouble sleeping after the accident and I usually had the best luck at calming her down. I think it’s because of all of us, my voice sounds the most like my dad’s.”
I blink up at him. “Oh, Jacob...” I whisper. This is why he said at first that he couldn’t have a relationship. Not because of Ben, or even all the time he spends helping Hayden. No wonder he thought I couldn’t handle what he’s up against, because I can barely fathom how he does it. I know how hard he works, and he just lost his parents, and on top of that, he’s been raising a toddler. Not only that, he gave up his room for her so he doesn’t even have his own space to retreat to.
And then a thought strikes me.
“Was she ever here? Just in the other room when I came over or something?”
A Cruel Kind of Beautiful Page 21
