by Viv Daniels
I unlocked the door and opened it. “Maybe…?” I asked, hand on hip.
He took two steps inside and shut the door behind us. “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe we have this chemistry because we know we’re exactly what each other needs.”
I held my hands up as if to ward him off. “No. I can’t do this again, Boone. It’s just sex. And it’s great…it’s great. But we have to stop pretending it’s anything more.”
“I’m not pretending anything.” He set down the bag of leftovers. “Fine. You want proof? I’ll prove it. I’m not going to touch you.”
My body cried out, with relief or regret, I wasn’t sure. I watched, warily, as Boone made a wide circle around me and sat down on the couch. He leaned back, put his hands firmly on his knees, and looked up at me, expectantly.
I stood in front of him, feeling like nothing more than a student giving an oral report. “Did you Uber over here?”
“Dylan and Tess gave me a ride.”
I nodded. After they paid for dinner. God, to be a fly on the wall of that car trip. “Then I assume they told you the whole story.”
“I want to hear your story.”
My story? My story was horrible. My story was I wasn’t brave enough to tell my father what he could do with his dirty money and his lack of morals. I’d just run off to Europe and pretended to forget the whole thing.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have told you earlier.”
He cocked his head. “That sounds familiar. Let me guess: ‘You could never find the right time’?”
I looked away.
“I guess now we’re really even.” He studied me. “Why don’t we just start from the beginning?”
“I have no defense, Boone.” I shrugged, helpless. “I promised my father that if he paid for Tess’s school, then I wouldn’t tell my mother, or anyone else, that he had been hiding a mistress and a bastard daughter for the last twenty years. So now I’m part of it. The lie. The big fat lie about my family. The one I’m telling for the sake of money.” I spat the words at him.
And he just stared at me, his expression incredulous. “Hannah…are you under the impression I… I don’t know. That I disapprove of this?”
“The impression?” I scoffed. “That you don’t approve covering up the horrible things rich men do in the name of money? Yeah. I think I remember you having it tattooed on your body somewhere.”
“That’s—” He started to rise then sat back down. For a moment, I thought he was going to leave, then I realized he was just keeping his promise not to touch me. “That’s not even remotely what is going on here.”
“Yes, well, my father could think of a few other choice words for it, too. Like blackmail.”
“Is that what he said to you?”
I would never forget Dad’s face that night, when I told him what I knew, and what I wanted. “Yes.”
Boone grinned. He grinned so wide the stars exploded in the heavens, and the shock waves made me shiver down here on Earth. “That’s fucking incredible.”
I rolled my eyes and plopped down on the couch, across from him. “But I’m lying to people. I thought that was a no-no in Booneland.”
“No, you’re sticking it to your asshole dad, and you’re doing it on behalf of some bitch who stole your boyfriend…because it’s the right thing to do. You honestly expect me to find that anything other than absolutely extraordinary?”
I clasped my hands in front of me. “She’s not a bitch,” I murmured. “It would have been easier if she was.”
“Interesting,” Boone said.
I raised my head. “What?”
“You didn’t jump in to say your father’s not an asshole.”
I gave a mirthless laugh. “Because he is. Any man who would do what he did—try to control his own daughter’s future, squash her potential, just to protect his own reputation…” I shut up. Suddenly, I didn’t know if I was talking about Tess or myself.
“It’s funny,” he said, his tone thoughtful. “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve let me run with this impression of you as this poor little rich girl who can’t figure out what she wants to do with her life.”
That’s because that’s exactly what I was.
“But how can you even start to figure something like that out, when you’re busy dealing with everything they dumped on you last winter. Hell, Hannah, it took me years to get my act even a little bit together.”
“What happened to us does not compare, Boone. You were abused. You were living on the streets. I’ve been given everything. If anything, you should be amazed at what Tess has managed to do—”
“Let me ask you something,” Boone said now. “Do you think it’s your job not to be mad at Tess to make up for your dad’s treatment of her?”
I blinked in response.
“Because let me tell you, it doesn’t work. You can’t tell yourself what to feel.”
“Yes, I’ve learned that.” I rolled my eyes. “Dylan and Tess couldn’t keep themselves from falling in love with each other.”
“And you shouldn’t try to stop yourself from being pissed about it.”
“I didn’t! I was so pissed I dropped out of school and ran away to Europe.”
“Yeah,” said Boone sarcastically. “That’ll show them.”
“I don’t want to show them,” I cried. “I just want to be okay with it.”
He considered this for a long moment. “Why?”
“If I’m not okay with it, then I can never be okay with Tess. And if I’m never okay with Tess, then I’m just as bad as him!” I stood up from the couch then and walked away, desperate to put space, furniture, anything between me and Boone. I made it all the way to the window by the bed before I could breathe again. “Also, if I’m not okay with her, then I never get to have her as a sister.”
Boone was silent as he thought over what I had said. At last, he replied. “I’m not okay with what my mother did to me when I was a kid. I will never be okay with it. But I’m still trying to get to know her now.”
“Right,” I scoffed. “That sounds like it’s going swimmingly.”
The silence was shorter this time, but it was still there, as if he carefully weighed each word. “My mother…is difficult. She is who she is and it’s taken me years to find a way to even speak to her again. Maybe you shouldn’t try to rush things.”
“I’m not like you. You had a miserable childhood and your family was the cause. But my childhood was perfect. My family was loving. Our lives were wonderful.” I stopped. It was all grand, until…
Tess.
Until I learned that my opportunities had been paid for by denying Tess the life she deserved. She was like a whipping boy from an old storybook, made to bear the punishments of the spoiled, perfect prince.
“How can I be mad at her?” I asked, breathless. “I had everything, and she had to fight for the scraps.”
Boone smirked. “I’m glad you’re putting Dylan in the correct context.”
“Don’t be jealous of him.”
“I’m not. He’s with your sister, and I’m here with you.”
I snorted. Yeah, and what a prize I was. What a stupid, messed up prize.
He was standing by the couch now, his chin lifted defensively. “Were you in love?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you weren’t in love.”
Something in his tone made me pause and look at him. Really look at him. He still hadn’t come closer, but he was staring at me the way a cat might, right before it pounced.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because I’m in love.”
I was struck dumb. For a moment, so was Boone, as if he hadn’t realized he was about to say it.
But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Boone, who had carefully considered every syllable he’d uttered since he’d walked through that door. Boone, who had promised this was all more than simple chemistry. Boone, who was even now rounding the couch and heading toward me.
/> “Hannah, I—” he raised his hands hesitantly. “That’s not what—”
I kept retreating. The back of my knees hit the bed. To cover my awkward flail, I sat down. “Boone, I don’t—”
“That’s not what I meant.” He was standing right there, at the edge of the bed.
I leaned back on my elbows to look up at him accusingly. “Right, so you know you’re in love, except when you don’t mean it.”
“Fine.” He took a breath. “I meant it.”
I stared at him in stunned silence. Was I supposed to say something now?
“I’ve been meaning it this whole time, in a dozen different ways. When I can’t walk away from you, even though I know I should, because my life is so thorny and complicated and baggage-ridden that I have no right to have a girlfriend? When I keep chasing you, because from the very first night we were together it’s like I knew—I knew—how right it was, even if I didn’t know why? When I’m right here, right now, not touching you even though we both really, really want me to? That’s what I mean.”
My heart pounded, my chest rose and fell in rapid bursts. His gaze was pale fire as it traveled up and down my body, igniting every inch. How did he know me so well?
For a moment I thought he was going to fall on top of me and start kissing me. My back arched up of its own accord, defiantly begging for the contact I didn’t dare request.
He placed his hands flat on either side of mine, and gave a short, growly little laugh that sent a flood of heat through my body. “I’m not going to touch you, baby. I promised, remember?”
“I release you from that promise,” I said, my voice sounding a bit more desperate than I’d intended.
“No,” he replied. “No, I don’t think so.” He leaned farther over me and I lay flat down on the bed, waiting for his weight to press me into the covers.
But he didn’t. He hovered there, a few inches above me, his breath as he whispered stirring the hair near my temple. “I do know you, Hannah.”
God, did I know it. My body was an instrument, and he could play every note.
But that wasn’t love. That was sex. Just sex.
“I know what happens to your body when I get this close.” His gaze dropped to my chest. “I know your nipples are hard, I know you’re getting wet.”
I groaned. He was right, he was right about all of it. “Shut up and do something about it.”
His hand swept the length of my body, never quite making contact, and I squeezed my eyes shut in agony of a touch that never came. “If I did, it would prove every single thing you claim about us. That this is only sex.”
Holy hell, was he reading my mind, now? My eyes flew open to meet his gaze, and in his face was an unexpected sadness, an agony that was more than the delicious torture he’d just put me through.
“But I can’t.” He looked away.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because… I told you that I loved you, Hannah. And you—you didn’t even hear it.”
I gasped and his gaze flew back up to my face and held me there, pinned.
“It’s not me who doesn’t know you, Hannah,” he said, sadly. “It’s you.”
“What?” I said, my mind unable to grasp whatever it was he was getting at. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
But he was backing away from he bed now, and his expression was pained.
“Whatever they did to you—whatever you’ve gone through—you have no idea what you want.”
I sat up. “Okay, fine, we’re both ridiculously screwed up by our parents.”
“Yes.” He was nodding as if to himself. “Your mother and her setups that you can’t seem to say no to, the fact that you freaked out the second you discovered I may not fit entirely on the wrong side of the tracks, how scared you look whenever I tell you how much I…like you—”
Now who couldn’t say it!
“—because you know that you aren’t feeling anything remotely like that.”
“That’s not—”
“And your major,” he pointed out. He was on a roll now. “And your classes. And your secret blog that you clearly love and don’t ever tell anyone about.” He cocked his head to the side. “What would your mother think? What would Dylan think?”
“You’re one to talk,” I snapped back. “You dress up in your tuxedo for your mother’s fundraisers. You go out of your way to take me out on the perfect date and then you push me away.” My eyes burned. Oh my God, was I crying over this?
“You’re right, I screwed up there. I had to figure out what I wanted, and what I was willing to give up to get it. And I did. I wanted you, Hannah, and if that meant playing nice with my mom and putting on a stupid suit a few times a year, then fine. Because I thought you wanted me, too. Me. Not some bad boy to parade around in front of your father or some trust fund brat to show off in front of your ex.”
“I did.” At least, I thought I did. Isn’t that what any girl would want, some hot, sweet guy saying he would do anything for her, that she was the sexiest, coolest, most wonderful person he’d ever met? “I mean, I do.”
“You don’t know what you want,” he repeated.
I opened my mouth to deny it, but nothing came out.
“It’s okay,” said Boone. “I’ve been there. I’ve been there recently. But you’re right, after all. Sleeping with me isn’t going to help you.”
I snorted in derision. “Two minutes ago, you were saying that’s what made us perfect for each other.”
He backed away. “Two minutes ago, I thought you were feeling the same thing as me. But you’re not ready.”
“Fine. Then we just fuck.”
He shook his head. “Hannah,” he said softly. “I can’t. I want you too much. I’m sorry.”
Then he turned and left without another word.
And he must have been right. Because if I really wanted him, if I really loved him, I would have raced after him. I would have stopped him before he got to the door. Before he left my apartment and the lock clicked behind him and I stood there, alone, breathing like I’d run a marathon and not moving an inch.
There was no one I could call, no one I could ask for advice. No one knew the truth about me.
Not even myself.
Twenty-Five
Once upon a time, I’d loved the first day of school. I’d pick out my favorite outfit from the raft of clothes my mother and I had bought for me that season, I’d pack up all my new notebooks and pens and highlighters into my brand new backpack, and I’d head off to meet my friends and figure out my schedule with excitement and anticipation.
Even when things hadn’t been great in college, I was always excited to begin. Every semester had been a chance to start fresh, with a new major and a new focus that this time, hopefully, would be the trick.
I felt none of that as I parked my silver BMW in the Canton student parking lot, shouldered my messenger bag, checked my schedule one more time, and headed off to my first class: Mid-Twentieth-Century French Literature.
Goody. Proust. Just what I always wanted to read.
I tried to remember my parents’ advice. Just get through college. Get the degree. It doesn’t have to be in something important to you. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with what you want out of the rest of your life.
But there was another voice, too. Boone’s voice, telling me I had no idea what I wanted.
I sat in class. I took notes. I smiled at the students around me, most of whom were sophomores that I didn’t even recognize. Canton wasn’t a large school, but it didn’t seem like my junior year marketing major circles from last fall overlapped at all with whatever classes these focused comp lit folks must have taken last year. I didn’t know any of them.
I met up with Caitlin and the other girls at lunch and picked idly at my salad, laughing and nodding politely as they compared notes from classes and planned out what parties we’d all go to this week.
I checked The Final Girl’s blog. The comment and hit brigade had
finally slowed to a trickle as folks moved on to other films and other topics. So that was my fifteen minutes. Not bad. I considered writing back to Sam Rowland and thanking him for the bump his movie gave to my blog. Would that be rude? After all, he was the writer and director of a movie that was receiving all kinds of buzz and I was…nothing. A blogger. A Comp Lit student. Nobody who had anything at all to do with him or his work.
“Hannah?” Caitlin asked. “Did you hear me?”
“Sorry?” I looked up from my lunch.
“You’re so out of it today!” she complained. “I haven’t seen you like this since you were sleeping with that homeless guy.”
The two girls at the table who had not been privy to the more sordid details of my summer romance looked over in shock.
“He wasn’t homeless,” I said, trying to unclench my teeth.
“Whatever, he was sketchy,” she said, and waved her hand. “Tell Ashley and Rebecca the story.”
“There’s no story.” At least not one I was ready to share. “I was seeing this guy for a while this summer. He’s estranged from his family and temporarily,” I glared at Caitlin, “living on a boat he’s fixing up.”
“Ooh, that sounds romantic,” Ashley cooed.
“It depends,” Becca said. “Is it a yacht or like, a dinghy?”
“It’s a small sailboat,” I said. “With a small cabin, and…whatever, it doesn’t matter. It didn’t work out.”
“Don’t worry about him,” Caitlin said. “School’s back in session, and that means there are plenty of more appropriate men around.”
Appropriate. She sounded like my mom. I dropped my fork. “I should go. I have some errands to run before my next class.”
“Okay!” Caitlin trilled. She was already checking her phone. I waved to my friends, ditched my uneaten lunch, and started off across the campus. I had no errands to run. No classes until two-thirty. Nothing at all to do. My steps wound through the quad, past the Swift Building, the dormitory that bore my family name. I’d never lived there myself—I’d always taken an off-campus apartment, but Dylan had nabbed one of the studios there last fall. I wondered if he was still living in it—this time, with Tess.
