Steady as the Snow Falls

by Lindy Zart

  “Find out anything interesting? Other than the fact that I was a linebacker for the Bears and I’m sick,” he specified.

  It felt like a trap. He was luring her in only to snap at her if she prodded too much. Beth shook her head. She wasn’t falling for it. The questions stayed inside her head, tormenting her. What happened to Nina, his girlfriend of six years? Did she go, or did he? What about his parents? He was cut off from everything, everyone. Everyone but her. That detail shouldn’t seem noteworthy to her, but it was.

  “How…” Beth scowled at her timidity around him. It faded at times, but it always came back. Her mettle ran in the opposite direction when she was in Harrison’s company. Straightening her shoulders, she started over. “How does your identity stay hidden? What do you do for groceries and other things you need? You completely stay out of Crystal Lake? I don’t understand how you can live out here without someone knowing you’re here.”

  “You know I’m here.”

  Her cheeks went unnaturally warm, and she didn’t want to analyze what it meant. “Besides me.” Oh, come on, Beth, let’s analyze. You feel special. Handpicked. Beth stared at the white ground so she couldn’t look at him. How easy her mind shifted as she spent more time with Harrison.

  “I shop out of town. I see a doctor out of town. My mail does not have my given name on it. My parents get me the things I can’t, and bring them to me when they can. I don’t go into Crystal Lake, no. It’s a pretty town, but I can observe its beauty without entering it. Anything else you’d like to know?” Mockery was in his tone.

  Yes. There were many, many more things she’d like to know.

  “You see your parents?”

  “From time to time, yes. They apparently didn’t get the memo that all contact with me is to be avoided.”

  Beth looked at him from the corner of her eye, and then she turned toward the house. He said the words without inflection, and that was a telling sign. He’d secluded himself, yes, but maybe he wasn’t as okay with it as he seemed. She wouldn’t be. If Beth were in Harrison’s position, she would cling to her parents more, not push them away.

  “I’m going back.”

  She waited a beat, and when it was obvious he was done talking, and wouldn’t be joining her, she started down the walkway her boots and Harrison’s had made in the snow. What was she doing here? She brushed hair from her mouth and quickened her steps, sliding forward when she moved too quickly. She was hired to write a book, and instead she was reading and chasing after a sick man who wanted to be left alone. Life was rarely easy for Beth, and a lot of the time it was of her own doing. She was too curious, and her heart cared without provocation.

  Beth didn’t know how to not care.

  Back inside the house, she stripped off her wet stuff, including her socks. Her jeans were damp, the chill of them driving right through her skin, but those would have to stay that way. Finding a heat register in the dark foyer where every move she made echoed around her, Beth set her pink socks on top of it, and shivering, she walked with determined steps to the reading room. She was going to finish reading that book, and then she was going to leave.

  Reading is not a chore. Stop acting like it is, she scolded herself.

  Book in hand, she stood before the window and watched Harrison carefully navigate down the landscape, repeatedly drawing her eyes back to the pages even as they longed to stay on his form. His voice was harsh, and his eyes were unfeeling, and still he captivated her. He made her think, and wonder, and that made him much too interesting. It was wrong, not only because she was his employee, but obviously because of his declining health. Beth’s skin was ice-cold and yet her cheeks were on fire, more from emotion than her circumstances.

  She thought him beautiful, darkly lovely.

  Beth stood trembling when he appeared, her hands shaking around the book she gripped, making it hard to read the words. Her legs were icicles, her toes numb. Harrison took one look at her and paused, his face darkening as storms took up residence among his features. He turned and strode from the room, returning with a brown blanket.

  Harrison motioned for her to take it, his eyebrows lifted.

  She hesitated, and then shook her head. It didn’t seem right to take the offering, and she’d only end up getting the blanket wet along with her. “I’m okay.”

  Shutters fell over his eyes and Harrison left the room.

  Beth sank her teeth into her lower lip as her eyes shifted from the doorway to the book and back. She’d made him mad. Of course she had. Beth was starting to think her simply breathing was enough to irritate him. Whatever her intentions, she seemed to do everything wrong. Shoulders dropping, with a sigh she set down the book on the bench and went in search of him. If she explained herself, maybe he would understand.

  The foyer whispered for her to halt, to step away from the staircase her feet were about to ascend. Beth didn’t listen. This house wasn’t living, and yet it breathed. Spoke. Listened. She wondered what confidences Harrison had unknowingly shared with it. Did the walls know of his pain, his sorrow, his anger? Had the windows watched him break down? Did the stairwell count each time he went up and down its steps, had it witnessed him stumble? And the floor—how many times had it felt him pace its length, alone and bitter?

  As she walked up the stairs, they creaked in certain spots, alerting anyone nearby of her presence. Like they wanted to warn Harrison of her approach. No light shone over this part of the room, making the journey dark and foreboding. Beth was stepping toward something she shouldn’t, and it made her want to run before it had the chance to disappear. Her brain told her she was reckless, and her heart told her it didn’t matter.

  She crested the stairwell, her heart hammering from the exertion and apprehension over what she would find. Beth paused at the sight of the long hallway lined with doors. The first door on her left was open and she stopped, catching movement from within. It was Harrison, and he was in the process of putting on a shirt. A view of pale skin, corded with muscle, met her vision. She gasped at the unexpected sight of his upper body. Her eyes widened, tightened, and she couldn’t look away. She didn’t want to.

  He was beautiful. Flawed, and ravaged, and beautiful.

  Seeing him partially unclothed made her insides bunch up and her tongue go thick. She was surprised by her reaction to him. It froze her with its undeniable truth. Beth was attracted to Harrison, not just emotionally, as she’d already suspected. But physically as well.

  Thin as he was, his body was smooth muscle. Her hands fisted, her hands that wanted to trace the lines of his shoulders and back. He wasn’t as bulky as he was in the pictures she’d seen, but Harrison had definition to his tall frame she wouldn’t have estimated there to be. And then Beth felt stupid, once more, for passing judgment on something she didn’t understand. She only knew surface details, and until Harrison told her anything—if he told her anything—she should think of him as being a blank piece of paper, free of words. An idea that was easier to think and harder to put forth.

  Hearing the noise, he looked up. His cheek muscles flexed and then his expression went through a variety of hostile thoughts, all showcased in his sharply etched features. Harrison stalked toward the door, his eyes holding her in place even as she told herself to move. His face was contorted with fury, reds and blacks taking over the man and turning him into a beast. Without uttering a word, he slammed the door in her face.

  Beth flinched and sank against the wall, unsure if she should leave or wait for the inevitable confrontation. When he slammed the door, he took her breath with him. She pressed her hands together and held them under her chin, her eyes glued to the closed door as though hypnotized. Her pulse spiked up in tempo, all the cold incinerated from her body from her overactive nerves.

  The door opened a moment later. Harrison was in dry clothes, his hair matted down from the stocking cap, two black abysses passing for eyes. He looked lethal, awe-inspiring. “You are not here to gawk at me,” he said in a deceptively qu
iet voice. It was cold, lacking any form of warmth.

  “I…I know. I just…” she trailed off, words turning to mush in her head before she could get them out.

  Something went flying at her, and she reflexively caught a pair of black pajama pants, clutching them to her chest as if they could lessen the force of his dark mood.

  “Put those on,” he commanded, moving past her and down the stairs.

  FOUR

  ON THE WAY back to the reading room, Beth decided some things. The first was that they needed to have a better form of communication. Constant misinterpretations of what each other meant was not the way to go about understanding one another. The second was that she needed to stop acting scared of him. Harrison was a man—a formidable, edgy, intense man; a sick man, but still a man—and it wasn’t doing either of them any good for her to act like he was anything else.

  The third, and the one that made her breath hitch and her palms sweaty, was that he had to be upfront with her about what he was battling. If she was going to be indefinitely spending her afternoons with him, he had to give her something of him. Beth needed her questions answered, because in spite of him saying his health had nothing to do with what he wanted of her, it did. She couldn’t write a story without knowing all of him, even that unwell part he wanted her to pretend she didn’t know existed.

  Harrison wasn’t in the reading room.

  Beth sighed and stood indecisively in the doorway before turning and heading back to the entryway. Goose bumps covered her arms and legs, and she held the pants closer to her body. It would probably be in her best interest to not worry about Harrison and focus on the book she’d been assigned to read, but Beth feared if she waited to talk to him, she wouldn’t. Her bravery was already diminishing, and she was trembling at the thought of standing up to him. Trembling, but resolved.

  Once again she found herself traipsing through unknown parts of a lifeless, dark house. Beth entered the dining room, her eyes dipping to the table that mocked family dinners and what they represented. Life, love, a connection. It was uncanny, and she wondered why Harrison even bothered to have the table and chairs put in the room.

  She stepped past the door that led to the trophy room, and walked the length of the hallway. At the end of it was a window, a beacon of light in a somber reality. The low thrum of sound pulled her to the last room on the right. Through the closed door, she picked out faint instruments playing a hauntingly slow tune. There were no words, no voices.

  Beth carefully turned the doorknob and walked inside, gently shutting the door behind her. Her ears were assaulted by sound, it vibrating through her body like she was a piece of it instead of separate. Midnight blue curtains kept out the sun, darkening the tan walls. Harrison didn’t have a radio—he had an entire sound system. The walls had to be soundproof, because inside the room was an orchestra so fierce she feared her ears would bleed. As she listened, it changed its beat, alternating its rhythm.

  In the center of the room was a chair, and sitting on it was Harrison, his profile in view. Features cut from stone were alluringly resplendent in peace. His form was relaxed, molded to the chair in quiet, oblivious seduction. Beth swallowed, her heartbeat fast and forceful. Witnessing his soul splayed open for all to see, and her eyes alone permitted to view it, made her veins tighten and release. She felt possessive, protective. She wanted to shield him from anything that tried to break him down. Even himself.

  The music was loud, powerful. Instruments flowing like magic, pounding like the beat of a million hands. It floated through the room, sad and fast, slow and sweet, ripping open Beth’s heart as she listened. Repairing it. Building her up and crashing her back down. She stared at Harrison, entranced by his stillness. His eyes were closed, his head tilted back, as he breathed in the melody, living in the music. He was breathtaking, a half man made whole in the storm of the song.

  Lost in the rapture of the song and Harrison, Beth became unaware of time. She was no longer cold; the nervousness disappeared. She was an ember of life, on fire in the heat of the blaze. There was only Harrison, and he was a masterpiece. When the music abruptly shut off, her eardrums protested the silence. She fought to blink away the fog covering her eyes and mind.

  The only part of her not blurred was her heart. It beat—clearly, ravenously—it beat.

  Harrison was sitting up, his eyes on her.

  Beth met his gaze, felt her pulse jump.

  A small black remote was in his hand. He stood, his attention dropping to her arms. Harrison clenched his jaw and focused on her. “You refused the blanket and you’re refusing the pants as well? You insult me, Beth.”

  “No. That isn’t it.” Flustered, she lowered her eyes and squeezed her fingers around the article of clothing. It smelled freshly laundered, the scent of snow and rain emanating from it. “I just…I didn’t know where to change. I don’t know where your bathroom is.” Her words were dipped in wariness and embarrassment.

  Harrison paused, scrutinizing her with his all-seeing eyes. “And yet you managed to find me, upstairs and in here.”

  Beth’s jaw jutted forward as she lifted her eyes to take in his derisive countenance. “I didn’t want to get your blanket wet. That’s all it was.”

  Time hesitated as he studied her, and then he gave a short nod. “There are two bathrooms.” Harrison moved for the door. “One upstairs and one on this level. I’ll show you where the downstairs one is—if you aren’t too afraid to use it, that is.”

  She wanted to shout at him that he was wrong, she wanted to scream her denial through all the rooms, but he was right. She had thought about it, and she had questioned the smartness of using the same facilities as him. Beth cringed from the suffocating shame as it washed over her in streams of scalding heat. She hated that about herself, loathed the ingrained prejudices she didn’t want to feel. Enough time had passed, enough medical progression had taken place that people didn’t have the fears they once had, and still they acted as if no time at all had passed. As if the disease were new, and as deadly as it once was.

  Beth followed him, silent and stricken.

  He stopped near a door at the start of the hallway, opening it and flipping up a light switch while remaining outside the room. Harrison turned to her. “I clean as needed, and someone my mom knows comes over weekly to do a better job.”

  “It’s—” Beth began, her face burning, but he cut her off with a look that told her not to bother with whatever she was going to say.

  She hovered in the doorway of the spacious room, taking in the gray and white tiled walls and floor. There was a large, square-shaped tub near the far wall, illuminated by the light shining through from a high window. A shower with glass doors took up a corner. Everything sparkled as if recently washed. Even the toilet gleamed bright white, scorning her weak disposition.

  Harrison opened a cupboard door and set a bottle of cleaning solution and a roll of paper towels on the counter. Glancing at her, he said, “We might as well be open about it. It’s an ugly disease. No point in trying to pretty up the unpleasant facts. If it eases your conscience to clean everything before you touch it, go ahead.”

  Without waiting for her reply, Harrison left, closing the door after him.

  Beth set her back to the door and covered her face with her hands, the pants sliding from her grasp. The coldness of the floor leached into the soles of her feet and up her legs. Her shoulders shook against the emotion coursing through her like an inescapable curse. She felt sick, not only in her stomach, but in her soul, and erroneous in a way she couldn’t brush aside with an apology. Harrison was living with the illness, and her presence shouldn’t make him feel worse about it.

  Stop it. Stop reacting negatively to something you don’t understand.

  Straightening, she slowly removed her jeans, her skin cold to the touch. Beth slid on the soft cotton pants, tightening the drawstring around her waist. They were too long and too big, but they were warm, and they were dry. She folded her jeans and set th
em on the counter and looked at her reflection. Remorse pinched her features, made her blue eyes dark with the reality of the kind of person she was. Beth choked on air as she brought it into her lungs, turning from the image of someone she didn’t entirely want to claim as hers. She didn’t think he would accept it, but she owed Harrison an apology.

  Harrison waited outside the door, on the opposite wall of the hallway. His face was angled down, his eyes lifting to hers as she stepped out of the bathroom. The darkness of his gaze pulsed with emotion. A single glance from him and her mouth turned to dust. He offered a pair of white socks and she gladly took them, his fingers unconsciously brushing across hers at the exchange. Harrison’s fingers were long and warm and Beth blinked in surprise at the pleasant sensation of contact.

  He snatched back his hand, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. He stood partially turned from her, as if to protect one of them from the other. The air around them radiated with tension, thick with everything kept unrevealed. She quickly leaned over and pulled on the socks, the material ending halfway up her calves. Beth straightened, catching the direction of Harrison’s attention.

  Pulling his eyes from her legs in a way that suggested it took substantial effort, Harrison said, “I can put your jeans and socks in the dryer.”

  Beth bit back the need to tell him she could do it herself, not wanting him to do any more for her than was necessary, and instead nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”

  She gathered up her damp clothes, including the socks from the foyer, and was led by Harrison to a laundry room located off the kitchen. Trying to keep her eyes from his shoulders and back proved difficult as she remembered the sculpted terrain beneath his cobalt blue shirt, but Harrison didn’t comment on her inability to look elsewhere, and it was a small reprieve.

  The laundry room had wood flooring like the majority of the house, and the walls were painted cream, lined with windows and cupboards. When he tried to take the clothes without touching her, Beth purposely made their hands touch. Convincing herself or him that it was okay, she didn’t know which. Both. Dark eyes flickered to hers and away, a spark of light glowing tiny and distant in their depths. Beth wanted to grab his hands, and hold them, and force him to look into her eyes and see that her prejudices weren’t by design. That she was trying, that she would understand, if he let her.