by Lexi Scott
I click her “information,” but I already know her gender and birthday and the fact that she loves Eleanor Roosevelt quotes and zombies and is scared of sharks.
She has no photo albums set up.
Her last update was months before, something about naked Ewoks. So she’s a Star Wars geek? And aren’t Ewoks always naked? I’ll have to find a non-incriminating way to bring it up.
The rest of her page is mind-numbingly boring. A tiny part of me feels let down that I threw my morals to the wind for this disappointing lack of anything substantial.
Then I click on her wall.
And people I’ve never met fill in the blanks Whit never told me about.
RIP Wakefield. <3 You were the brother I never had.
Thoughts prayers and love to your family whit.
I know no words can ever make the hurt go away, but time heals all wounds. It’s the truth.
God bless your brother and all the brave men and women who gave their life for this country. Forever in our hearts.
I can’t believe he’s really gone. I was just gonna call and ask him to a drag race. I hate the days when I forget and have to remember again.
Whit, if you need me, I’m here. I know we grew apart this summer, but you’re never alone.
Luv to you and yours Whit. Wakefield was one of a kind. Never be another one like him.
There’s a picture someone tagged her in. Her arm is around a guy with her same brown eyes and wicked smile. He’s in an army uniform and he’s hugging her close. Whit’s face is glowing in a way it never, ever has in all the time I’ve been with her. The caption underneath says, You two were always so tight. I know what he meant to you, Whit. Wakefield will always be in your heart.
The W behind her ear isn’t for her own name.
I push the lid on the laptop closed and jump up, pacing from wall to wall.
The day at the beach, in my Jeep, when I insulted the Army guys jogging past.
I punch the doorframe, scraping my knuckles and leaving the imprint of my fist in the dozens of layers of paint.
The lack of pictures. The lack of phone calls. Running away from her home. Avoiding any talk about her past, her family.
I pace to her room and fall into the bed. I cover my eyes with the back of my hand and it’s warm and damp. When I pull it away, I see the blood on my knuckles. I rinse off the blood in the bathroom sink and go to dry them but the hand towels are white and I don’t want to risk getting blood on them. So I walk into the hall and open the small linen closet. There are rows of neatly stacked towels and I grab a dark blue one for my hand. That’s all I was going to do. I’ve opened this cabinet a few times to grab fresh towels or sheets, but I never noticed the wooden box shoved to the back before.
I should ignore it. I should close the cabinet and walk away.
But this night. This fucking night has made me crazy, so I reach into the back of the closet and grab it. I expect it to be empty, honestly. But it’s not.
It’s stuffed full of photos. I flip through stack after stack. Recognizing the places in each. The beach. The boardwalk. The café with mediocre food that Whit drags my ass to. And I recognize the man in them. The one from the Facebook photos, with Whit’s matching eyes and smile. It’s him sitting in Rocko’s tattoo shop getting ink.
The pieces finally click into place.
Whit is living the life that Wakefield left behind.
But for some reason, she’s refusing to let go and try to be happy in it. She’s doing it as some sort of penance. For what? That part doesn’t make any sense to me.
I go back to our room—her room—and lie back in the bed that smells exactly like her and feels as cold and empty as the Arctic without her. I spread across the entire bed and roll myself into the covers. All of the covers. No one sweats, snores, or kicks me. And I’m miserable. Too many thoughts and worries crowd and jumble for space in my head.
Sometime in the early dawn, I hear the door creak open. Keys drop on the counter. Feet tiptoe to the room. I watch between my eyelashes as she shimmies out of her jeans, unhooks her bra and pulls it through the armhole of her tank top and starts for the bed, the smell of my mother’s lavender on her body and hair.
“I was worried.”
Whit jumps and slaps her hand over her heart. “Deo,” she hisses in a whisper, even though we’re both wide awake. “You scared the shit out of me.”
I hold my hand out to her, and she takes it. I pull her onto the bed, and she moves toward me on her knees. “I’m sorry about last night,” she says, her voice low and dark. “I was in a shitty mood. I didn’t want to talk about things. I had no idea I left without my phone. I would have called.”
She runs a hand over my jaw, but I don’t nuzzle against her skin like I normally would.
“I’m sorry. Very, very sorry.” Her voice goes sexy, and I know how totally upset I am by my ability to resist this amazing, irresistible girl. “Can I make it up to you?”
“I don’t just want to fuck and pretend everything’s all right,” I grind out.
She had been lying half on top of me, her arms limp around my neck, her mouth hovering above my face, but she stiffens and sits up. “I said I’m sorry.”
“I heard you,” I snap, my patience fried, my conscience on fire, my brain addled from zero sleep. “It’s what you didn’t say that pisses me off.”
She swallows hard, and I watch the way her neck moves, the way her fists ball at her sides.
“I opened your laptop. I snooped like a pathetic dirtbag,” I admit, ashamed of myself.
Her perfect little mouth drops open. “You went through my files?”
I don’t tell her about the photos. Something stops me. It feels too raw.
“I just logged onto your Facebook page.” I watch her face and see her eyes go wide. “How could you keep that from me? How could we be together all this time, and you never felt like you wanted to tell me? You really didn’t think I’d understand? C’mon, Whit, you know me.”
Her cheeks go bright red, bloomed with rage. “I kept it from you because it was none of your goddamn business. You have no right snooping through my shit, Deo!” Her voice gets louder and shriller with every word.
“Sorry,” I growl. “Sorry I had no choice but to snoop around like some deviant on your computer to learn a single damn fact about you. I tried talking to you, I tried asking you questions, I tried giving you time and space and getting close to you. Not a single thing worked, and I was worried about you. Do you realize you spend most nights crying or screaming in your sleep? You’re petrified of the dark and being alone, you don’t eat enough, you run yourself ragged. And I had no fucking clue why! How the hell do you expect me to hold you in my arms, comfort you, cook for you, and not even know who you are or what’s making you so upset?”
“Don’t do any of that if you don’t want to.” Her voice is mechanical, and she’s staring at her hands. “No one’s forcing you to be here and do all that.”
I move across the bed, because the pull of her is more than I can resist. She feels so small and fragile in my arms, like she’ll explode into thousands of pieces if I don’t hold onto her. “I want to. But I want you to tell me why you hurt so bad.” I run my hand over her hair, damp from the bath I know my mother made her take. “Tell me.”
“You already know,” she whispers.
“Not from you. I don’t know your story, so I don’t know anything. Tell me.” I pull back to look at her and she jumps at me, her hands and mouth everywhere at once.
I’m not made of stone. She’s gorgeous, so sexy, so ready, and I want her. My entire body is jumping and stomping with a crazed need to take her, now, while we’re both wild and relieved and sorry and horny as hell. On top of all the excitement is a sense of total relief. Last night I was honestly afraid I’d never hold her again, and that fear is finally melting away.
But I know what it’s like with us, how we fall back on sex and that’s all it is. So I hold her at arm’s length
.
“I want you,” she breathes, reaching for me again. “Let me touch you.”
“No, Whit.” I rub my hands on her shoulders. “Not this time.”
She looks at me for a minute and her warm brown eyes go hard. “I want to fuck you. Are you saying you’re not interested?”
Everything in my pants screams mutiny, but I swallow hard and shake my head. “Not interested in sex. Talking, yeah. Sex, no way.”
She chews on her bottom lip before she looks at me, a cool dare in her eyes. “Get out then.”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “You’d rather have me leave than agree to tell me what’s going on with you?”
Her voice shakes hard around her next words, despite their bravado. “I told you pretty clearly what I want. If you can’t give it to me, I’ll call someone who can.”
It’s a sucker punch. A low-down kick to my balls. It’s spit in my face.
I get up off the bed and nod. “All right. If that’s what you want, I guess I got the message.” If it was still dark, I’d hit the couch. No matter how much this girl is breaking my damn heart, I wouldn’t leave her alone in the dark. But dawn is breaking. She can sleep in the room. It’ll be lit up in no time.
“You don’t have to leave, you know.” She pulls her knees up to her chest and looks up at me, her face so gorgeous and sweet, it rips at my heart.
“You wanna tell me? You wanna talk?” I ask. She scowls in response. “All right.” I pause in the doorway and turn to look at her, flopped over in the fetal position on the bed. “Call me if you need anything. I’m pissed as hell at you, but I…I love you, Whit. I mean that.”
I take the long, slow walk down the hallway, grab my wallet and keys, stuff my feet in my shoes, and, maybe, a little part of me waits for Whit to come flying down the hall after me, telling me she’s ready to open up and tell me everything and that she loves me too, so much, and has been afraid to say it and that she wants to use my body in deviant ways after we spill our guts.
But it doesn’t happen. When I’m in the parking lot, I swear I hear wild, screaming sobs, but it’s got to be my overtired brain and my wild imagination. Whit’s apartment is three stories up and the windows are always closed tight and locked. Plus that, Whit never loses it like that, not even when she’s at her lowest, I realize as I get in the Jeep and pull out of the apartment parking lot. Whit is cool and totally in control unless she’s sleeping.
That’s one thing I know about her, no question.
That and the fact that she never really needed me.
Chapter Fourteen
WHIT
“You heading out, Whit?” Rocko calls from the back of the shop.
“Yeah, in a minute! I want to run the broom over this floor one more time.” Or eleventy-billion more times, because, really, I’ve got nowhere to be but my quiet-ass, depressing apartment. And nothing to do except lie in my bed. Which should have a place carved out neatly for Deo next to me, but, instead, is empty.
There’s something strange about coming home to an empty apartment after having someone there with me round the clock. I never really thought about it before, because I never really had anyone before. It was just me, on my own, when I first moved out here, and that was kind of the big independent plan. And now, it’s just me again, and it’s taking some getting used to.
Even though it’s been a couple of weeks since Deo stormed out on me, being so alone again hasn’t gotten any less weird. I still come home from the shop at night and expect him to be sitting there on the couch, waiting for me to tell him about all the inane details of my workday. And maybe even rub my aching feet.
But he’s not there anymore. Because he screwed up. He couldn’t just leave it alone. He had to keep pushing and pushing. I gave him a clear warning, and he made his decision.
Rocko shakes his head and shoos me away. “Get out of here, kid. I’m sure you’ve got something else to do.”
I shrug and my sweater falls off my shoulder.
“Not really.” I yank it back up, feeling a chill. I don’t know if it’s because Rocko has the air cranked as usual, or if it’s that I’m just exhausted and susceptible to chills. I don’t dwell on the fact that I’ve been chilly alone in my bed at night to the point where I haven’t even wanted to leave the fan on. This does not have to do with Deo. I had a life before him, and I sure as hell have one now that he’s gone. One that doesn’t need to revolve around how much I miss him.
“How about getting something to eat? No one’s come in for ink since this morning. Let’s close up early. I’m headed over to Marigold’s now, why don’t you come with me? You look like you could use a decent meal.” Rocko eyes my gorgeous jade dress, which fit all my curves a few weeks ago, but now seems to bag in all the wrong places.
I don’t know how much of Marigold’s food would be considered a “decent meal,” but I’ll take it. By the time I get home at night, I’m so beat from working all day that I haven’t been eating much. I ended up taking the assistant job I’d told Deo about with my anthropology professor, so I work there till four, then I come into Rocko’s shop till closing. When I get home, I’m completely wiped out. And, okay, maybe a little, tiny bit depressed.
“Sounds perfect,” I tell Rocko, and he looks both surprised and relieved by my acceptance of his invitation. I have to try to be more upbeat. I don’t want to worry Rocko, who’s always a little nervous about me no matter how well everything in my life is going.
Marigold is serving tofu scramble. I guess there are worse things in life. At least the company is good. Marigold and Rocko sit next to each other at the small bamboo table and clutch hands while they talk. Of course, being here makes me think of Deo. It makes me wonder, and maybe even secretly hope a little bit, that he’ll come over unannounced like he did that time before. That he’s in desperate need of chopped-up tofu and veggies…and maybe even me.
But that’s far-fetched. Because I know for a fact that Deo is a hardcore carnivore and is probably chowing down on some Flintstone-sized chicken leg with his grandpa. And there’s also the fact that he hasn’t so much as texted me since he walked out. I knew he was mad. I maybe even knew I deserved it. But to not come back? All he’s doing is proving all of the reasons I should’ve kept my distance in the first place.
I wish he could just understand all of the reasons I can’t open up…without me having to actually open up. But if he knew—if my sweet, honest Deo knew what a callous jerk I’m capable of being when the chips are down, all the love in his eyes would be stripped away. If Deo had any clue how selfish and immature I can be, even to the people I love the most, I have a feeling it would be a game changer.
I’ve never felt safer than I feel in Deo’s arms. And I’ve never been more afraid of anything than I am of disappointing him with my ugly truth.
“So, you and that son of mine still playing hide-and-go-seek?” Marigold asks, tossing her long, dark hair behind her shoulder. I pause for a moment to consider what she’s said, and realize that, for once, she isn’t making some sexual innuendo.
Still, I tense up at the mention of Deo. All night I’ve wanted to fish for information about what he’s been up to, but have been biting my tongue over and over to keep from mentioning him.
I swallow hard and get my voice under control before I make my cool, calm, full-of-shit declaration. “I’m not avoiding him, I’ve just been busy.”
Marigold nods her head and widens her eyes, the exact soft brown Deo’s are, though hers look at me with an extra dose of sympathy. Deo’s always had an extra dose of starved, sexy hunger. Her face pretty much says that she doesn’t believe me.
“Well, he’s been avoiding you,” she says with a laugh.
She claps her hands together and she’s all sorts of clanging bangles and charms and flying hair.
“Nice,” I mutter. Even though it’s obvious, and she hasn’t said anything wrong, I find myself tapping my foot manically, because I’m annoyed as hell. Like, was Deo over here talking about
how he can’t stand to be around me? Maybe he and his brand-new girlfriend laughed about the time he wasted with the dour girl from Pennsylvania. Maybe he’s been out surfing and drinking and dragging random girls who have drawers filled with tiny bikinis into his Jeep. My imagination gets wilder and angrier with every second that ticks by.
“Easy, Marigold. The kid is really broken up over this.” Rocko’s voice is low and calm as he smooths the sleeve of her paisley print dress.
“I’m just playing with her.” Marigold winks at me and gives me a soft smile, and I know she didn’t say it to hurt my feelings in any way.
“I’m not, for the record. Broken up about it. Deo and I had fun. It didn’t work out. It’s not a big deal.” I push the gelatinous blobs of tofu from one end of my plate to the other, trying to spread it around so it looks like I actually ate some of it.
Marigold glances at Rocko and gives him a quick look before she leans close to me. “Did Deo ever tell you about his father?” she asks.
I nod, remembering the few details he gave me, always tinged with disgust and barely buried, seething anger.
“Then you know he’s a worthless son of a bitch. Sure I loved him, but the best thing he ever did for us was walk out on Deo and me,” Marigold says matter-of-factly. “He wanted more than this little town. He wanted to see the world and build a big name for himself. Me? I just wanted to stay here in this beautiful little place and put down roots. I wanted my son to fall in love with his home as much as I did, so that he never wanted to leave, either. But Deo has fought both parts. He’s been stuck in the middle of both of our passions. Deo ignores that pull that makes him want to do big things that might take him away from here, I’m sure, in part, because he wants to prove that he is not his father in any way, shape, or form. But, on the other hand, he refuses to put down any sort of roots or even lay a small foundation, because that would mean he’s stuck here. Like his silly old mama.”
I stuff a bite of soggy vegetables into my mouth because I don’t know what to say. They don’t require any chewing, but I chew and chew and chew some more, because I’m clueless about what to do next.
