by Maisey Yates
Why was it her? Why, on such a perfect, sunny day, with nothing remotely sinister flashing up as a warning? Why was she the one in the path of a drunk guy who was wasted at six in the evening? Why was it her side of the car? Life didn’t make sense.
Why was Jill gone when the world needed her? She was the sort of person who would have made an impact. Who had the resources and the drive. And he was…
He was the one who was still here. And he couldn’t figure it out. Not then, not ten years on.
Even so, he wasn’t sure why he’d spilled his guts to Evie, then clung to her like a needy child.
He’d begged her to stay, how sad was that?
He stood up and rubbed his hands over his face, and back over his hair.
“Morning, buttercup.” He turned and saw Evie, staring up at him, looking rumpled and sleepy and sexy. So sexy he wanted to climb back into her head, back into bed, back into her arms, and never get up again. The world sucked; he would rather spend the rest of his life in this bedroom with Evie. Spanking her and kissing her and being inside her.
The realization hit him with the force of a wrecking ball to the chest. He needed her. He’d known it was starting, but he hadn’t done what he should have right when he’d realized it. He couldn’t need her, because he had nothing to give back to her. He couldn’t stay with her because…
She deserved more than he was. More than a playboy who did nothing but sit on his ass and spend his father’s money.
You could be more.
Everything in him rebelled at the thought. He could do what? Step into the place Jill was supposed to occupy? The thought made him feel like he was on the verge of a panic attack. Jill, cool, composed, brilliant Jill’s place couldn’t be filled that easily.
And it certainly couldn’t be filled by him.
You’re assuming Dad would even want you to try. You’re assuming Evie would want you.
Big assumptions.
Probably incorrect assumptions. And just as well.
“Morning,” he said, his voice as broken and graveled as he felt inside.
She sat up, not bothering to pull the blankets up over her pale breasts, the morning light casting a golden glow over her bare body. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay?” she asked, frowning.
He didn’t like that he was so transparent to her. BS was his game. He was better at hiding his feelings than this. He’d gone out the night of the accident, straight from the hospital, and picked up a woman, laughed, smiled, screwed her senseless. Then he’d given her a kiss, walked out of her apartment, got into his car, laid in the backseat and cried for two hours. Alone. Not in front of anyone. Not ever.
He’d done much the same most nights since. Minus the crying. He didn’t do that every night. But sometimes.
So why did it feel hard now? Why did it feel like he couldn’t hide this from her? Because she’d been able to tell something was wrong the moment she’d arrived yesterday. And he hadn’t been able to hold it in. He hadn’t been able to protect himself.
Just like now.
“I’m fine,” he said. “But I think you’d better get up and get ready to leave, I have some things I need to do.”
She frowned. “It’s Sunday and you don’t do anything.”
“Well, I have plans today.”
“What plans?”
“Maybe take a bloody hint, Evie. I’m not busy. I want you to go home.”
She jerked back like he’d slapped her across the face, and he felt like he had. He felt like the absolute worthless bastard he knew he was. But the alternative was baring his soul and he was damn sure not going to do that.
“What the hell is your problem, Caleb?” she asked, sliding out of bed, naked, beautiful and making his legs weak.
“Look, this is why I don’t have women spend the night. I want sex when I want sex, then I want to get on with my day.”
“Oh don’t hand me your bullshit and expect me to say thanks. That’s not what we have.”
“And you know that?” he asked, something dark and powerful driving him now. Something that tasted a lot like fear. “You know that because you’ve been with one other guy and had a long-term relationship? Wake up, baby, this is a game for grown-ups. And I thought you knew the rules.”
“What? GTFO when you say and not a moment sooner? Hold you and make sure you aren’t alone when you beg me to, but then don’t get all needy?”
“Don’t bring that up. Don’t use it like that.”
“Why? Because you get to conveniently ignore that it happened and then act like I’m overstepping? No. No no no.” She started collecting her clothes. “I don’t know what your problem is.”
“This isn’t what I do,” he said, his heart raging. “I don’t do fights and feelings and responsibility to another person.”
“Too bad. I have feelings. I have feelings for you and I’m all up in your bedroom, so they’re your problem.”
“I didn’t sign on for this.”
“You did! You walked into my office so confident you were going to have another night with me. You took a job so you could be with me. You signed on. So don’t give me your shit now that you’re all scared.”
Her breasts were rising and falling with her breath, her eyes bright and fierce. He’d never seen a more beautiful, terrifying thing in his life. She was going to ask things of him. Big things. He could feel it. And he knew he would let her down. Shit, he hated that he would let her down.
“Sure, that’s it,” he said, using every bit of nerve he had to turn and face her, stark naked, his mask firmly in place. He knew this mask. His Caleb mask. “It’s that I’m scared, baby, not that I’m just not that into you.”
“Fuck off,” she said, tugging her clothes on, a tear spilling down her cheek.
Dammit. This was that open emotion of hers. Didn’t she know what she was giving away? Exposed like this. Why was she doing it? Why could she do it?
Why the hell was he too afraid to do it?
“Nah, I think I’m done with the fucking, why don’t you get out.”
He watched her expression change, the color leeching from her face, like the blood had drained from her body. The funny thing was, he felt it in his chest, right where her hair had been, a slash of red over his heart. He felt it all bleed from him, as he saw it injuring her.
And he hated himself. But that was nothing new.
“Fine. Great. I’m out. Enjoy the tuna, asshole, it’s still sitting in the basket in the living room. And I bet the ice pack didn’t hold all night. Oh, and I finished the app, so I’ll just send it all on to Flirt and you can never darken my door again. If you left any crap at your cubicle it will be on the street waiting for you, or stolen and sold on Craigslist by the time you get there. It doesn’t really matter to me.” She held up both hands, middle fingers high, then turned and started to walk away, then stopped. “You know what’s stupid, Caleb? I just figured it out.”
“What?” he asked, feeling like his body was slowly turning to stone, his head, his face, too heavy for his neck.
“The feelings. I knew I had feelings for you, but I wasn’t sure what they were. But now…with all these feelings you’ve just given me with your complete dismissal of me, I know. I love you. I hope I don’t for much longer.” She stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind her. And he listened until he heard the front door slam behind her.
And he just stood, rigid, heavy. A statue. He wanted to crumble. To give in to the unbearable pressure that was threatening to break him apart. But he couldn’t. He just felt like his heart had turned into a hard lump of granite that was going to crack off the veins holding it in place and plummet through his chest cavity, blowing out all his other organs on the way down.
Which would be fine, really. Because it might mean a swifter death.
Which would just be pointless, because it wouldn’t bring Jill back. It wouldn’t fix anything. But then, him being here hardly di
d.
He didn’t know why he was thinking that way. But he wasn’t really sure why anything at the moment.
He’d looked it all up once. The thoughts he had. The desire to change places with his dead sister. Survivor’s guilt, they called it. Which was stupid because he hadn’t survived anything. He was just breathing still.
He’d gone from worthless asshole to greater worthless asshole because it had seemed like the thing to do. Because…because he didn’t know why.
Because it had seemed like the thing to do. Because he hadn’t known what else to do. If he could do anything else.
He did know one thing, though.
Evie was gone, and he didn’t want her to be. But he didn’t think he had the right to ask her to come back, either.
Chapter Ten
Heartbreak was the worst. It was worse than a cord wrapped around the wheel on your computer chair. Worse than a hangnail. Worse than when a fast food place put half a tub of mayonnaise on your hamburger.
This was what had been missing when Jason cheated on her. What had been missing when she’d ditched the man she’d shared her life with for ten years.
This was, apparently, love. Love blew chunks.
But at least she’d been right this time. At least she’d gone the whole hog. What did they say? It is better to have loved and lost than to be eaten by a velociraptor. Okay, maybe they didn’t say that, but being eaten by a velociraptor was about the only thing that sounded worse than what she was going through now.
Either way, at least she knew this was the real deal. Cold comfort when you were lying facedown on your desk on a Monday afternoon feeling like you were going to die of heart failure.
There was a soft knock on her door and Raj and Cassie appeared. “Evie…we brought you a burrito.”
“Thanks,” she said, “but I’m not hungry.”
“But it’s better than just a burrito,” Raj said. “It’s a unicorn.”
Cassie held it out and smiled hugely. It was a large burrito on a tray, with a face made of olives and a jalapeño horn. “Because we finished ‘Unicorn Strike’ and it’s going to be a hit! And because you’re down. So I thought you needed a smiling burrito.”
“It’s…unique,” she said. “You can put it on my desk.”
“You okay?” Raj asked. “You seemed…”
“Sad?” she asked.
“Like you might cut one of our heads off, put it on a pike and roast it over an open flame.” Cassie said.
Evie frowned. “Have I been that horrible?”
“Pretty vile,” Raj said.
“Oh. Well. I’m sorry.”
Cassie shrugged. “We’re just worried. You weren’t like this when you and Jason the Horrible broke up. We were afraid something happened with the Flirt app. I mean, with that corporate stooge hanging out…”
“Caleb,” she said. “His name was Caleb.”
Cassie frowned. “Yeah, Caleb. He was really…” She got a dreamy look on her face.
“Yeah,” Evie said, scowling. “And no, everything’s fine with the app.”
“Well…good, then…I guess.”
“Happy unicorn eating,” Raj said, and he and Cassie scurried out of the room.
She didn’t mean to be a jerk. She picked up the fork that was on the tray and stabbed the unicorn in the back. Or maybe she did and she didn’t care.
She was fine without love. Or, she had been. Then Caleb had torn down a partition in herself she hadn’t even known she’d put up. And she’d suddenly had access to all this stuff. Desire, and bravery and this deep, deep emotion she hadn’t realized she was capable of.
What a bastard.
So now that she had access to all that stuff, all the good and bad things that went with it. That brave new Evie who wanted the whole world and felt like it was okay to demand it…well, now she just had to decide what she was going to do with it.
* * *
He didn’t want to pick up a woman. He’d approached two of them tonight. With the full intent of taking one to bed. It didn’t matter how he felt—like shit, incidentally—he knew this game. He could do it in the midst of grief. He could certainly do it after breaking up with someone.
No, it wasn’t even a breakup. They’d never really been together. It had been just another of his physical-only affairs. It had been sex. Sex and only sex.
Liar.
Yeah, so what? He’d been lying to himself for years. It was what he did. It was right up there with breathing.
One of the biggest lies was that he liked to go out to bars. He hated it. He didn’t want to be here. He wasn’t sure he’d ever wanted to be here. He put his beer down on the table and called his driver.
He got into the car and closed the door, shutting his eyes.
“Home, Mr. Anderson?”
“No,” Caleb said. “No.”
“Where to?”
“Westwood Memorial,” he said, and he really wasn’t sure why. But Dave didn’t ask why, so Caleb didn’t even have to fake a reason, which was great. Because he couldn’t think. He couldn’t do anything but feel. Horrible, horrible feelings.
Why the hell was he going there twice in the space of a week? There was no answer there. He already knew that. There was nothing but stone.
Of course, since his heart felt a bit like stone, maybe that was fitting.
“Just stop here,” he said when they got to the gates.
He walked through and took the well-worn path to Jill’s grave and just stood, his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I feel like it should have been me.” He said it out loud for the first time. “I don’t know why it wasn’t. And I don’t know what to do about it.”
There wasn’t an answer. Of course there wasn’t.
Though, he supposed that was an answer all its own. There was nothing he could do to bring her back. And he was still here. He was still here and he was wasting it, and suddenly he hated himself for it.
The stone was never going to talk back. It was never going to change. And this wasn’t the place he needed to be.
No, he wasn’t good enough for Evie. He was a broken mess.
But he wanted to try. He needed to try.
Because he had survived. And for the first time since then, he really wanted to live.
* * *
A buzzing on her intercom moved her from her slothful position on the couch. She got up and walked over to the front door and hit the button. “Yes?”
“It’s me.”
“What?”
“Caleb.”
“I know but…why are you here?”
“Can you buzz me in?”
“Are you going to say horrible things to me again? Because if so, I think I’ll pass.” Her heart was pounding hard and she felt dizzy. She’d never expected to hear his voice again, and there it was. No mistaking it.
Caleb. And she still loved him. Damn his eyes.
“I’m not going to say anything horrible. At least, I don’t think it’s horrible. I guess…I guess the final verdict on that is up to you.”
She buzzed him in and stepped away from the door, going back to the couch, her hands folded in her lap while she waited for his knock at the door.
When it came, she almost changed her mind. She almost didn’t answer.
“Evie.”
It was his voice again, and she couldn’t not go to him. Even if she should ignore him. Even if she should throw live lobsters on him and hope they pinched dangly bits.
She got up and walked to the door, her hands shaking. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.
She flung it open and put a hand on her hip. “What do you want?” she asked, trying to play it cool. And suddenly very aware that the sweatpants, ratty hair and vague odor of cheesepuffs probably negated the cool facade.
“You,” he said.
The word hung there, and she was sure she must have misheard it. But she didn’t see how she could because it was so simple. Because it could hardly be anything else.
<
br /> “What?”
“I want you, Evie. I was…I was being a dick.”
“Well…yeah, but please define what you mean by want me. Do you want to have more sex with me? Because I enjoyed the sex, Caleb, but it can’t just be that. Not anymore.”
“It’s not enough for me either.”
“Well…what is?”
“I… Can I come in?”
“Sure.” She backed away from the door and swept her hand grandly across the space. “Welcome to my home. Do not touch my Lord of the Rings stuff—it’s mint. Now, tell me,” she said, turning to face him, her heart in her throat, “what do you want? Don’t play with me, Caleb, please. I can’t take it.”
“I don’t want to play with you. I…I need you. I need you so much it terrifies me. Not just because of what it means to me, but because of what it means to you.”
“Tell me about it,” she said, sure her heart had stopped altogether.
“I am so screwed up. I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve always been the lazy one. The player. The one who would never amount to much. But it was okay because there was Jill. She was smarter, more driven, more…everything. And then she died. I was in the accident, too.”
“Oh…Caleb.”
“I saw her die. Or…you know, I didn’t even see it, I just…the accident happened. I was fine. I looked over at her…she was already gone.”
“No, Caleb. I’m so sorry.”
“For ten years I’ve wondered why it was her and not me. I’ve been stuck wondering that. Feeling like I wasn’t worthy of this extra shot I got. Proving I wasn’t worthy of it. I realized something tonight.”
“What?” she asked, the word a choked whisper.
“It’s not changing. It’s done. It’s done and I’m still wishing it wasn’t, but it won’t change anything. I have to go on. And I haven’t. I never have. But…but this is the scary thing. I need you and I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to give you back what you need. I just feel like all I can do is take. I feel like…I’ll let you down.”
“Caleb.” She took a step toward him, fighting to keep her emotions in check, just long enough to say what she needed to say. “It’s okay to need me. It’s okay to need other people.”
