by Chloe Cox
And the way he kissed me just now, in the freaking parking lot of Dill’s camp, it was like that. Full of promise. Full of everything Marcus has to offer me, good and bad. Full of our history together.
Full of lust, too.
So maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself for feeling unsteady on my feet as Marcus leads me into the mess hall, where all the parents are having juice and cookies or something while finding their kids. I won’t be too hard on myself, but I have to be careful.
And not just for myself, and not just for Dill.
Because now, as I watch Dill give Marcus a high five, and the two of them start talking about video games like old friends (I got a hug, barely, in the way of eleven-year-old boys), I realize that maybe I should have been more careful for Marcus, too.
Maybe I should be thinking more about what it might have been like for Marcus, who’d been looking for a father his entire life, to have Alex Wolfe show up and claim him as a son. And what it might have been like to have Alex Wolfe ask him to come join his company, even if that meant being far away from me.
“Lo, come on, I wanna show Marcus the game!”
Dill’s already scampering away, and Marcus puts his hand on the small of my back, guiding me through the mess of parents. We follow Dill to one of the computer labs and I’m grateful that Dill doesn’t need much from me, because I am almost on another planet.
Watching the two of them.
Watching them tease each other, make each other laugh.
I realize I would kill for Dill to have another parent-type presence in his life. Maybe part of that is because I’m always afraid that I have no idea what I’m doing, that I am royally screwing it up and screwing Dill over in the process and I don’t even know it. I mean, I’m making this up as I go along. Some people rock being single parents, or big sisters, or whatever, but I’m not sure I’m one of them. I constantly feel overwhelmed, even if I know that it’s better for Dill to be with me, who loves him more than anything, than an aunt who only barely tolerates him. But it’s not just that. I want Dill to think the whole world loves him, not just me. I want him to grow up knowing he’s important to more than just me.
I realize how important that could be for him, and for the first time I really feel what the absence of that must have done to Marcus. I see it in how attentive he is with Dill, how he puts so much effort into this small interaction, how he treats Dill’s every rambling, over-excited conversational offshoot like it’s the most important thing anyone’s ever said to him. How it all makes Dill shine even brighter than he usually does.
I want to say, “Lie to me. Tell me this isn’t perfect.”
And I wonder if Alex Wolfe promised Marcus something like this just by showing up and saying, “You’re my son.” I wonder if that was something that Marcus needed. Something I shouldn’t begrudge him, even if he should have told me, if that’s why he needed to leave.
I wonder if Marcus needed that more than he needed me. And it hurts.
God, does it hurt.
And it hurts to know that I’m really that selfish.
But I suck it up and do my best to join Dill and Marcus, who are already totally engrossed in Dill’s game. Pretty soon I am, too, because Dill has punched it up a lot in a short time. Genius Boy has added some new puzzles to a few of the levels and is talking nonstop about commissioning artwork—oh God, how am I going to pay for that?—and having me do more music, and his excitement is absolutely infectious.
Marcus is smiling ear to ear. And I can tell when he looks at me that I must be, too.
“You are the most amazing kid,” I say to Dill, punching him in the arm.
“I know.” Dill shrugs, smiling, like he doesn’t care. But he lets me ruffle his hair and kind of leans into me, and when we’re about to leave he gives me this fierce little hug and says, “Thank you.”
“This is what big sisters do,” I say into the top of his head, and ruffle his hair again. I wonder what I’ll do when he’s bigger than me and I can’t ruffle his hair or give him gentle noogies. The thought puts my stomach in knots.
And then the clever little man looks up at me, smiling. He says, “I like Marcus, Lo.”
Seriously, what am I supposed to say to that? There’s probably an appropriate response in some parenting handbook somewhere, but I’m pretty sure that, whatever it is, it’s not getting flustered because your little brother is more perceptive than you gave him credit for.
I finally settle on this: “Me, too.”
“So we’ll hang out some more when I get home?”
Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. This exactly what I don’t know how to handle. So I flub it.
“Maybe,” I say. “We’ll see.”
Thank God Dill is already on to other things. I can see his mind whirling around in there, probably thinking up other games he wants to make or stories he wants to tell.
“Ok,” Dill says, already with that faraway look in his eyes. “I love you, Lo.”
He’s already off running to join a bunch of other little boys as I shout after him, “I love you, too, little man!”
Dill shoots me this horrified look over his shoulder, and Marcus laughs, walking back over to me. He was off talking to the camp director about I don’t know what, giving me some time with Dill. Now he’s shaking his head.
“Oh man, he is going to get it for that,” Marcus says.
I cringe. He’s right. I just made a serious mom-type mistake. I kind of can’t believe I called Dill “little man” in front of all his new camp friends.
“Bad?” I ask.
Marcus is still smiling at me as we walk out to the parking lot, but now he shakes his head. “He’s a tough kid. He’ll be fine. Also, I call shotgun.”
“Marcus, it’s just the two of us. Where else were you going to sit, in the back?”
“I called shotgun for you. I have to drive this car, Lo.”
I laugh, looking at his suddenly intense face, and then throw him the keys. Let the alpha male do whatever he needs to do with the car. I’m probably going to enjoy watching him drive it anyway.
And I do.
A lot.
But I also feel kind of pensive, thinking about all the stuff I saw between Marcus and Dill and the way it made me feel. The way it made me reevaluate how Marcus left. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s an excuse for just up and leaving one night and sending me a freaking text message saying he’s gone, then refusing to explain why. Even thinking about it now makes me angry, so I try to let it go, because, well, I’m already in deep.
But maybe he had a reason to leave.
Maybe he needed something I couldn’t give him.
Maybe I wasn’t enough family for him, even if he was enough for me.
“Baby, I need you to put those legs down,” Marcus eventually says.
We’re only about twenty minutes from home and I’ve been riding with my legs propped up on the dashboard because it’s my car and it’s comfortable, damn it. But they are my bare legs, and I am wearing a skirt. I grin.
“What are you talking about?” I say.
“If you don’t want me to pull over and drag you into the backseat, I need you to put those legs down,” he says. His voice is icy calm, which, for some reason, combined with the words he’s saying to me, really does it for me.
Unfortunately, we’re not on some isolated highway. There’s other cars, people everywhere.
“I’m comfortable,” I say. “And there are cops in speed traps all along this stretch.”
He growls and flexes those arms. I smile, and decide to torture him a little bit. Might as well stretch those legs.
We get home a lot faster than twenty minutes.
He’s out of the car practically before it’s stopped moving, walking around to my side again, even more determined than he was before. I can’t keep the smile off my face. Even with all the heavy stuff I’ve been thinking about today, Marcus Roma can still make me feel positively giddy about the t
hings he’s about to do to me.
He yanks open my door and immediately reaches in to undo my seatbelt, which makes me laugh as he hauls me out of the car.
“Marcus!”
He pays me no mind, dragging me up to the kitchen door and unlocking it in record time. “Stretching your legs out like that? No one rubs their legs together like that when they’re stretching, Lo. That was straight up cruel,” he says. “You’re lucky I didn’t just throw you down on the hood.”
And then to prove the point, he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder as he walks inside, kicking the door closed behind him. I kind of squeal, though secretly I love it.
“Pick a room,” he says.
“Oh my God, you’re kidding.”
“Living room it is,” he says, slapping my ass before he sets me down on the arm of the couch. He towers over me as he turns my face up to his, and I love that, too. I love everything about this.
“I made a promise in that parking lot,” he says, his hands starting to work up my bare thighs.
I shiver.
“You did?” I say.
His hands are already under my skirt, toying with the edge of my underwear.
“An implied promise,” he says.
He’s started stroking me along the length of me, through my underwear, where I’m already embarrassingly wet, and I feel my eyelids flutter.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“I’m going to spend the rest of the day making you come,” he says. Then with his free hand he tilts my chin up again, his pale eyes looking seriously into mine.
Oh God.
I have to say something. I can’t not say something. I don’t know where it comes from, and I don’t know what it means, but I’m suddenly assaulted by a wave of guilt.
“Marcus,” I say, and I put my hands on his arms, stopping him. “Marcus, I’m sorry for not understanding why you wanted to go work for Alex Wolfe.”
Marcus stiffens, and for a moment I’m afraid I might have said the wrong thing. There’s something in his face I can’t quite read, and that feels so strange, so alienating and frightening to me. But then his eyes soften and it’s the Marcus I know, the man who loves me, despite the ways he’s hurt me.
“I love you, Lo,” he says.
I’m breathless while he removes my clothes, item by item. I’m trying so hard not to think about how I might not be enough for him, how if I’m not enough for him he might leave again, but it’s this persistent pain in the back of my mind, this worry.
And then, once he has me naked and panting for him, Marcus leans in and says, “Thank you for wanting me to be there today, Lo.”
And it just about kills me.
I want him, even if I’m not enough for him, even if I’ll never be enough for him. I want to believe in him. I want to believe he won’t hurt me again.
“I want you to stay,” I whisper back.
And I want him inside me, to push back the last of my doubts.
chapter 17
MARCUS
I don’t know how I’ve let things get this far, this fast. The fundraiser that Harlow and Shantha dreamed up is scheduled for tomorrow night at Shantha’s bar, and I haven’t done jack shit about any of it yet. Still haven’t talked to Alex. Still haven’t figured out how to protect Harlow while the whole thing plays out.
Instead I’ve let myself get distracted by Lo. By Lo and Dill. I didn’t expect to be that affected, I’ll be honest. I didn’t think that going to see Dill would be such a big deal. You think about those moments in your life, the ones that mark lines in the sand, where everything is fundamentally different afterwards, and some of them you can see coming. Death of a loved one is pretty obvious, I guess, for Lo and me, but there’s also falling in love, having a kid—stuff like that. But some of them are stealth moments. Some of them just sneak up on you when you least expect it and change everything.
That’s what happened to me when we went up to visit Dill.
I knew I was in love with Lo. I’ve known that for a long time. But I didn’t know I had such a limited understanding of what being in love could mean.
That day? Jesus. It was like some giant reality show, This Could Be Your Life. Just a glimpse of what it would be like, and I fell even more in love with Harlow Chase, and I fell in love with the idea of being there for both her and Dill. Of being their family. Because it felt like this was the family I was supposed to have. Maybe the family I would have had, if I hadn’t left.
Except I know it’s not that simple.
That’s what I have to keep reminding myself, when the guilt gets too bad. That I did what I had to do. That I took the only path available to me.
Except if my choice was all about noble sacrifice, I wouldn’t feel this guilty, would I?
This is the kind of thing I’ve got swimming around in my head as I’m walking over to the bar to pick Harlow up after her shift. She’s helping Shantha close a little bit early tonight, so they can get some sleep before they have to set up for the fundraiser tomorrow. Even so, I don’t know how Harlow just pulled a bartending shift. I know I’m bone tired. I kept her in bed all night and then most of the day.
And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. In fact, I probably will. I can’t help it. I’m getting worked up all over again just knowing I’m about to see her.
I got to keep it in check, though, because I know she needs to be on her game for this fundraiser. And so do I. Because if they pull this event off tomorrow, if they manage to convince some of the members of the zoning board who’ve said they’d come by, then they become a real problem for Alex. And Alex doesn’t just let problems slide.
That’s the other reason I’m going to pick up Harlow. I don’t like how quiet it’s been.
I don’t like that Alex has stopped calling me, looking for updates.
I don’t like how, when I get in sight of the bar, I can see a few men hanging around outside the bar even though it’s just closed, the tips of their cigarettes glowing in the wet night air, bobbing up and down while they drunkenly pace. Drunks don’t normally pace. They talk, they argue, they laugh, and they do it all a little too much, a little too emphatically, a little too loudly, but they don’t goddamn pace.
And then the guys disappear around the corner all at once. Together.
I really don’t like that.
That’s when I start jogging. I don’t know, maybe it’s just that instinct again, maybe all the stuff I’ve seen working for Alex. But when I see Brison Wolfe across the street when I hit the corner, I know my instincts were right. I curse and head down the cross street, running now, and see the alley that gives the bar its name, where the back door opens and there’s a dumpster. And I see at least three guys beating the shit out of a woman.
I flash all red for a second.
And then I bring it back down, because I need to keep my head on me. There are three of them. No, four. And Brison. But just one of me.
I will kill them all.
I charge in, my vision narrowed by all that adrenaline, and hit the first one hard, feeling his teeth crack under my fist. The next I pick up and throw against the wall, and by the time he hits the brick I’m already on the third, breaking his nose in three places with three straight rights.
I drop that one and turn, looking for the fourth, and that’s when I see Brison again.
Brison, raining down body blows on the fourth guy, until the woman-beating piece of shit folds over himself and collapses to the floor, crying.
I did not expect that.
But I also don’t have time for it. He’s not on the wrong side, so he’s not my problem. And the scumfuck bastards are already running away, scrambling down the alley, choking on their own blood. It’s done. Only one thing left. I turn my head, looking for the woman they were beating on, more terrified than I’ve ever been or ever will be of what I’m about to see.
It’s Shantha.
***
Shantha picks herself up off the dirty, wet pavement, stumbli
ng only once before Brison steps in and puts a hand under her arm. She’s got a cut lip, an eye that’s already swelling up, and she’s walking with a limp while she holds her ribs.
“You’ve got to go to the hospital,” I say.
She shakes her head no, and Brison looks at me. Shantha just looks pissed.
“They’d call the police,” she says. “I’m not dealing with that.”
“Why the fuck not?” I shout.
Shantha just shakes her head, like there’s something obvious I just don’t get, and pounds on the back door to the bar. It must have closed in the scuffle. They got her while she was taking out the trash.
It’s Harlow who opens the door, and as soon as she does her eyes go wide and she pulls Shantha inside.
“Oh Jesus, what happened?”
“Can you get the first aid kit in the office?” Shantha asks, and limps over to a table, taking a chair down so she can sit. Just steady as all hell. The rest of us are more shaken up than she is.
Harlow moves to go to the office, but I stop her. I have to. I put my arms around her and just feel her warmth against me, feel her heart beat, safe and sound, against mine. Harlow is surprised but lets me hold her, and I can feel her look up at me before she buries her face in my chest. I don’t know if everyone actually goes quiet, but I know I don’t hear anything else for a second or two.
Then I guess Brison goes to get the first aid kit while I keep hold of Lo, unable to let go of her while the adrenaline still flows through me, and things start to move again.
“Marcus,” Lo whispers, and she pushes off my chest gently. I know she wants to go check on her best friend. I don’t want to let her go, but I know I have to.
“Yeah,” I say, forcing my arms to unwind. “Will you tell her to go get checked out?”
I think that’s the first time Harlow gets a really, really good look at her friend without any distractions. Her eyes start to fill up.
“Oh my God,” she says.
