Fractured Love

by Ella James

  I move more quietly into the room, watching her for signs of wakefulness. Her breathing looks steady. I think she’s asleep.

  I look at the armchair. It’s leather, its back draped with a white blanket. I wonder, if I sit there, if I could go to sleep. I tell myself, if I sit down, I’ll only stay for a few minutes. Even if I could sleep here, it’s not safe to, but I’m here, I reason, so I might as well sit down for just a second. Search for flaws.

  I can’t believe I once thought Ev was plain. Now all I see, as I lower myself quietly into the chair, is her smooth skin, flawless and milky in the moonlight. I can see her long, thick lashes resting on her cheeks. Her soft lips. God, they’re soft. I can feel her slick, hot tongue—so tentative, and later, eager. The way her tears felt on my fingers. I can smell her hair: some sort of fruit. I can feel the weight of her against me when I had my arm around her.

  I like how she drives, and how she walks, and how she talks (like she’s driving a race car, like she’s walking on stage at a concert, like she’s thought of every word before she says it).

  I like how she tells me to shut up.

  What I really like is how she opens her eyes. She blinks a little, and I know this is my cue to go.

  But I’m so stupid.

  I’m still there when her gaze shifts my way. Her blue eyes widen, and her lips form a little “o.”

  “Hey.” She looks surprised, but gives me one of her sweet smiles. “You’re here.” She sits up a little bit, or tries to, as she peers around the room again, and then, again, at me. “What time is it?” Her voice is hoarse from sleep, making me want to kiss her.

  “Nighttime.”

  She grins. “Smartass.” Ev sits up more fully, then winces. I’m opening my mouth to ask if she needs something when she leans down to the floor, grabbing two cups I hadn’t even noticed: one with Advil in it, and another with water. I watch as she swallows the pills.

  Then she stares straight through me for the longest, quietest moment. “I haven’t told, Landon. I’m not going to. So you can stop avoiding me.”

  “I’m not avoiding you.”

  She lifts her brows.

  “Okay,” I mutter, looking down.

  “Are you nervous?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “Well, what are you?”

  “Landon.” I can’t help the smile that takes over my mouth. Evie returns it.

  “Why are you in here with me, Landon Who’s Not Nervous?”

  I look at her, and she says, “Yeah. I kind of figured.”

  What? I don’t think I said a word—but Evie’s eyes are knowing. That, and sympathetic. “You want to sit on the couch by me? I promise I’ll keep my lips far away.”

  I shake my head and make myself stand up. “It’s cool. Sorry if I woke you up.”

  “I miss you,” she says, as I near the doorway.

  I guess that’s all I needed. Half an hour later, I’m asleep.

  Nine

  Evie

  Silly Landon.

  I guess he thinks I don’t notice his midnight drop-ins. He’ll come in sometime between midnight and two, stand in the doorway while I feel his eyes on me, and then, when he seems sure that I’m asleep, he’ll sink into the chair beside me.

  Maybe it’s strange—the way he watches me, the way I let him—but if he knows I’m awake, he won’t come sit with me. He’ll toss in bed all night. I can’t stand to think about him tangled in his nightmares, in his lonely bed. I wish he’d talk to me again. I wish one night as he sits by the couch that he’d touch me.

  But I can sense his reserve. Even when we ride to and from school together, he stays quiet and distant, flitting nearer to me only to do tiny things, like open a vent I hadn’t noticed had been pushed shut, or, one time, wipe some waffle syrup from my lip. Even that was quick and neat: utilitarian. When we arrive at school, he gets my crutches from the back of the car and brings them to my door. He holds his hands out, and I wrap mine around his, and he helps me out of my low-sitting Focus. Is it wrong that it’s the best part of my day, when Landon touches me?

  He carries my bag to homeroom and pulls a spare chair up to my desk for me to prop my foot in. At lunch, he sits beside me, dealing with my crutches, which he props on the other side of him, and getting me napkins or condiments if I forget.

  My good friends notice, and Makayla asks me twice about it, but I feign surprise both times.

  “I think he’s just a really nice guy.”

  Mak knows I’m full of shit.

  I go to soccer practice, sitting on the bench, and later—after Dad gives me a boot for my ankle—doing stretches in the grass. I can’t keep my gaze away from Landon. The feeling I get when I watch him run, his strong body moving in a pack, when I hear a swatch of conversation with his low voice braided into the chorus, when I catch him glance over at me—it’s like a drug. I crave him.

  When I reach my car and find him leaned against the passenger side door, my body sings with pure elation. Mine.

  And every night, he reinforces that. Every night, he comes and sits there in the chair beside me. As time passes, he grows bolder, covering himself with a blanket, resting his forehead on the side of the chair, getting me more water before he disappears downstairs.

  It’s not until one night when I wrinkle my nose to try to alleviate an itch that my eyes open accidentally, and I find his gaze on me.

  I try to feign sleep, but Landon grins.

  “How long have you known…”

  “That you’re awake?” He laughs. I cover my face with my hand, and he says, “How long have you known that I come in here?”

  I laugh. “For a while, maybe.”

  His face is warm, his eyes alight. “Me too. Maybe.”

  “You’re a rat.” I sit up, leaning slightly toward him.

  “You use stairs at school.” His face goes solemn.

  I nod.

  “And yet…”

  And yet, I’m still down here on the couch at night. “I know.”

  He steeples his fingers, looking over them at me like an old-school psychoanalyst. “Why is that?”

  My heart beats wildly. I whisper, “Because I want to see you.”

  I can see my words hit his face. He looks surprised—and happy—and then, right thereafter, grave. “You can’t want that,” he says softly.

  I’m surprised to find that I feel angry. “Why not? You do.”

  “Yes, and I’m discreet, Evie. No one knows how much I need you. That I can’t sleep unless I sit here with you first. That I need the ride to school and home with you. I need to be near you. No one knows that. No one will ever find out.”

  I reach for him, and Landon stares down at my hand before he takes it, cradling it in both of his.

  “I know,” I whisper, looking into his gray eyes.

  “I know you know. Because you know me.”

  He leans down then, wrapping his arm around me, pulling me slightly up against his chest. He doesn’t kiss me, doesn’t even move, he just holds me up against him. I can feel his heart beat through the fabric of his T-shirt.

  “Evie… Please,” he murmurs into my hair. “We have to be so smart about this.” His arms hold me tighter, even as he says, “There shouldn’t be a ‘this.’”

  I urge him closer to me, and because he can’t—there’s space between his chair and the couch—Landon shifts onto the couch’s edge. He pulls me closer to him, and we sit there, wrapped up in each other, hugging with our cheeks side by side.

  “I feel good with you,” I whisper.

  “It’s not supposed to feel so good.” His words are groaned.

  And then our mouths meet, frantic, our hands grasping, our chests panting. His hands cup my head and mine latch onto his thick arms. He kisses like a starving man, like he can’t wait another second—and it’s okay, because I can’t either. We kiss until my body is boiling, and his hand is underneath my shirt, stroking my lower belly, and he’s gasping. Then I start to moan and Landon rocks
away from me. He puts some couch between us and regards me with strange, hypnotized gray eyes. His lids are low, and he looks almost drunk.

  “Evie…” He looks down at his hands. They look like they’re shaking. When his gaze rises to mine, it’s somber. “Go upstairs tomorrow night. I can’t stay away from you.”

  I feel like I’ve come undone. When he hugs me, tight and hard, then quickly leaves the room, I let him go.

  Landon

  For several days, we hardly talk. The rides to school and back are strained, and in the silence of the car, I ache for Evie. To have met her somewhere, anywhere, but here. To be able to touch her, talk to her, to know her, without consequences.

  The first Monday in November, Evie’s father, Dean, takes me to get my driver’s license. He pays the fees and pats me on the back when I pass, and then buys me a burger and a milkshake. I feel like I’m being strangled by my guilt.

  I might be stupid, but I’m not ignorant. I know it’s unwise, what I’m doing. And yet…it’s as if I’m living in an alternate reality where I can’t control myself. Where I don’t have real choices. Hell—where I don’t even want them.

  I’m driving Evie’s car to school on Friday morning when I can’t stop myself: I pull over behind a gas station, look over at her, and, when I see her looking the same way at me, I lean over and wrap my arms around her.

  “Evie…”

  “Landon.”

  We kiss out days of pent-up tension, clinging to each other as our mouths dance and our bodies ache. When our panting fills the cab, Evie pulls away, laughing. She smooths my shirt and takes a tissue from her purse to try to get the lipstick off my jaw.

  “I’m sorry,” I say as she wipes my cheek. “That was stupid.”

  “I like stupid.” Her soft voice is sultry. “Be more stupid.”

  During soccer practice, my eyes boomerang to Evie on her bench no matter where I am. I’m playing for her, practicing harder than I need to in the hopes that Ev will watch me and she’ll be impressed.

  After soccer, I rush to her car. I want to touch her, but I can’t. Not in the parking lot. On the drive home, I find a car wash, and when the water starts to pelt the car, I kiss her gently, showing Evie with my mouth that this is not just frantic need for me. I let my mouth linger on hers while I stroke her neck and back. I make Evie pant with need, and then I kiss her throat and chuckle darkly as she squirms.

  “Landon,” she groans.

  “What do you want?” I ask, loving the tease.

  “I want you to touch me.”

  “Later…”

  Later, after dinner, Evie goes upstairs, and I go down into the basement, where I take a cold shower. Then I wrestle with myself, with what I want, and what’s smart. Can I be smart? I don’t know. Fucking hell, but I don’t know.

  I pace around the room and when I hear her knock, I’m not surprised at all. I find her in soft, green shorts and a white shirt that’s cropped above her belly button. Her hair is down around her shoulders, and her eyes are twinkling.

  She gives me a little grin and reaches for me. “I just want to be with you.”

  What ignites such flames? I don’t understand, and I don’t give a fuck.

  Stupid it is.

  We kiss on my bed, fast and fearless, until my body shakes with want and need, and I push her away.

  “Why’d you do that?” she whispers.

  Fucking Evie.

  I get up and pace to the bookshelf, where the kid toys they bought for the little boy they were expecting have been replaced by books from Evie’s father’s shelves.

  “Come back to the bed. Both of my parents are asleep…”

  I kiss her like I want to, confining my hands to her upper back and shoulders. Evie rubs my pecs and down my abs until I pull her hands away. I lean my forehead against hers. She kisses my cheek.

  “It’s late. Are you sleepy?” she whispers.

  I shake my head, laughing. She kisses me again, then shifts away. “Put your head in my lap.” She pulls a pillow into her lap, and I stretch out with my head there. Evie strokes my hair.

  “My lonely boy…”

  I blink at the white walls. Do I like it that she sees that? That I’m so transparent to her? Maybe so, I decide. Maybe it feels good to…be known.

  “Not now,” I say after a minute.

  She trails a fingertip over my face, atop my ear, and then she kisses my lips. Fuck. I flip the tables, getting Evie under me and straddling her hips. So dangerous. Oh God, I’m so damn hard.

  “You have to go upstairs.” I press my cheek against her cheek. “You have to. Please.”

  She does.

  Tomorrow, we can’t even make it to school. We onto a dirt road off a county road, and we get further with our hands and mouths. So far, I have to change into my soccer shorts.

  It’s wrong—but it feels so damn right.

  Ten

  Evie

  I don’t realize there’s a party Friday night until Makayla tells me at the end of band class.

  “Jake’s dad is in South America.”

  “Um, what?” I’m taking my clarinet apart.

  “Yep. Gone the whole week, so he’s throwing a party.”

  Jake’s dad is a pediatric neurosurgeon who gives conferences all over the world. The Yahns’ house is big and beautiful, in the Asheville hills, not far from mine.

  “Anyway,” Makayla says, snapping her flute case closed, “you have to go. Landon is going.”

  “He is?”

  She smiles wickedly. “Jake’s forward-thinking ass invited some of the guys over for a fishing thing last week. He didn’t mention his parents’ absence, so none of the guys had to play it off to their parents. Now everyone has permission to be gone that night—so all you need is to spend the night with me and we’re golden.”

  I think this over while I spread some oil on one of my clarinet’s corks.

  “Oh, come on, you giant square. No one’s going to pour liquor down your throat. You can be my handler. And Landon’s.”

  My stomach tightens as she says that, and my best friend leans toward me. “Evie, I know you. Since we were two,” she whispers. “If nothing’s happened yet, I’d be surprised.”

  I look down at my shoes, a gray suede boot on my right foot, and the black plastic boot on my left. Makayla throws her arms around me. “Okay, Eeyore. I’m sorry that I said something. But you’re coming tonight. You are.”

  Of course I am.

  Mom and Dad have no problem letting me stay with Makayla, whose parents they trust. And Makayla’s parents have no problem letting her stay with me. Neither of us has ever given them any reason to distrust us—that they know of.

  Landon leaves with Jake and the guys shortly after school lets out, for a weekend of fishing at the Yahns’. Their property is beautiful and fairly big: a hundred or so acres of prime hill country. So the fishing/camping story is a good one.

  I feel a little bad for lying to my parents, but I mostly feel excited as I pack my overnight bag. I get into Makayla’s car in jean shorts and a light blue top. She takes one look at me and shakes her head. We make a pit stop at a gas station while Makayla sends me inside to change into a dress she brought me.

  “It’s going to be too short,” I tell her. (Makayla is only five feet tall; I’m five-four and a half). She shakes her head.

  “It’s too long for me.”

  I emerge feeling surprisingly confident. The dress is navy blue, with fun, flouncy sleeves and a cheer-skirt type of hemline. It’s casual and cotton, so it looks fine with my plain sandal and big black boot.

  “It’s perfect. You’re still low-key, but you look less ‘just bounced on a trampoline.’”

  “I have a cast, you dweeb. I never looked like I bounced on a trampoline.”

  Makayla sticks her tongue out, and we head to Jake’s house. Because she is my best friend, she doesn’t say a word about Landon. I’m telling her via ESP to stick a sock in it, and Makayla hears me.

&nbs
p; Jake’s house is…insane. Cars everywhere, the whole lawn lit up with white holiday lights. We find out once we’re inside the massive graystone that Tia had her older sister, a professional real estate stager, come do the yard up for the night, so she could take pictures of it for a magazine.

  Within thirty minutes of milling around inside the house, I’ve see everyone from school, kids from other schools I only know from the country club and summer camps, and a whole gaggle of people I’ve never seen in my life.

  But I haven’t seen Landon. That is, until I spot him by the fireplace in the living room, chatting with some skinny, black-haired girl who’s wearing butt-short jean shorts.

  I look them over from across the room. She might notice me staring, but Landon doesn’t; his back is to me. He’s wearing a hunter green T-shirt, khaki shorts, and leather flip-flops. And a hat. I didn’t even know he had a ball cap.

  Landon talks to this hussy for forever. And ever. So long that I leave the room with a twisting feeling in my stomach and a heavy lump in my throat. What if he gets a girlfriend? What if he’s trying to?

  When I see him again, I’m in the kitchen, pouring myself lemonade from a pitcher on the table.

  I see Landon walk into the kitchen from the other side of the room, and watch him walk to the refrigerator. He’s alone—thank God. He’s opening the fridge when another guy, a shorter dude with thick, fluffy brown hair and a popped collar, slaps him on the arm. Landon turns to him, and I can see his face go slack with…shock?

  I stop eating so I can watch as Landon looks down at the guy. He nods a few times, says something, and leaves the room without getting anything out of the refrigerator.

  Weird.

  I wonder why he hasn’t talked to me yet. Maybe he’s just being smart. We should avoid each other out in public, I guess.

  My night unfolds in normal party fashion, which is to say, I talk to all my tipsy friends, struggle to finish one gross-tasting cup of beer, and laugh at all the antics going on around me.