Off-Limits Box Set

by Ella James

  I close my eyes and try to focus on the feeling of my hand wrapped up in his. Because, even right now, in the soft grass, on this moon-drenched night, I have the strange sensation that it’s all about to end. I’m going to lose him. I can feel it coming.

  “I don’t think it matters why, do you?” I draw his hand nearer to me, up against my lower belly. “I just want to be near you. I’ve never wanted anything this much, Landon. Never.”

  And I know somehow, I’ll never want anything like this again.

  “You shouldn’t say that,” he says softly.

  “Why?” I’m surprised to see I’m peering at him through the gleam of tears. “Is it just one-sided? Just me?”

  His mouth tightens. “You know it’s not.”

  He lets go of my hand and wraps his arm around me—tight.

  “I want you all the time, Evie. It’s like…a thirst. I saw Gabe, but I had seen you in the kitchen, too. All I fucking wanted was to tell you. I can’t even talk to you without losing a hold on myself. So,” he says—inhaling, then exhaling. “I tried to dull it, but it didn’t—getting drunk. Now it’s so much worse. Now all I can think about is how much I want to touch you… Evie, go now. I’ll walk back behind you.”

  “No.”

  I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want Landon’s mouth on mine. I want to feel him, hear him…touch him.

  “I want your hands on me,” he rasps, “my hands on you. I want to do things I shouldn’t want to do, keep you out here in this field for hours, just the two of us, so I can— Ev, I’m telling you, you have to go.”

  My body is aflame. “I couldn’t if I wanted to,” I hear myself tell him.

  Landon groans, and that is all the warning I have before his mouth covers my own, his hands stroking behind my neck and clenching in my hair. He holds me to him as he kisses me. My body thrums, as if begging his mouth to visit every part of me.

  I know—as he holds me in his hard, strong arms, as our frantic mouths wage tender war—why they call it falling.

  I feel as if I’m in a free-fall, grasping at him reflexively. Needing to hold onto him.

  We take gasping breaks between our frenzy. Words pour out.

  “Oh, Landon.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  We kiss so long and hard, I wind up on his lap, and I can feel the fire between our bodies even in my lungs. I can’t remember how to breathe without gasping his name.

  “Evie,” he whispers between the onslaught. “Evie…” And I love the way he says it. Like a prayer.

  I’m on top of him, and his lips are on my throat; his hands are on my shoulders, and they’re sliding down. My hands are rubbing his muscular belly, and he’s jolting, groaning, stretching out beneath me.

  “Oh God, Evie…”

  I kiss his neck, and Landon jerks away. “Evie—you can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…I’ll— Evie…” he swallows. “I can’t help it,” he says hoarsely. “Being near you, it will make me—”

  “What?” I whisper.

  His eyes shut. “You overwhelm me, Evie.”

  “I want to overwhelm you.”

  So he shows me—with my hands and with the best part of him.

  It doesn’t end that night. Because we just keep falling—on through weeks.

  In his better moments, Landon tries his best to keep me from forbidden fruit, but it’s as if the more he tries, the more I want it. Need it.

  He stays far away from me for nearly a whole day after the night at Jake’s house, and after that, I see him every night in his bedroom. Our bodies come together—and our hearts do, too.

  I kiss him until he can’t endure it anymore, and he drives me over the same ledge, and then we’re tired enough to sleep.

  As fall turns into winter, we meet on the basement stairs at odd hours, at all hours. Nothing can dampen our flames. It’s like a forest fire that grows and grows, consuming everything.

  I lie to everyone except Makayla; even to my best friend, I give little.

  Everything for Landon.

  I learn him better than I know my own poor, thirsty heart. We lie in his bed in the deepest part of night, our gazes flitting toward the floorboards over our heads and our hands busy, our hearts pumping, our words turning the old basement into a place of heady magic.

  It happens on the airplane sheets I picked for him. It happens in my parents’ house. It happens on the days we’re both at home with flu, and on the weekend that my Mom and Dad go out of town for their anniversary—instead of going to our friends’ houses, we both stay home.

  I feel as if I’ve been half-dead for sixteen years, and now my heart beats. Overnight, and weeks, then months, I come to understand why people fight in wars. Why people leave their families and get on ships and sail to far sides of the world. I understand why crimes of passion happen, and why sometimes, there are tales of married couples who die hours apart.

  Loving Landon is like breathing. My lungs expand, and my head spins.

  Eleven

  Landon

  “What kind of doctor?” I ask, the question muffled against her hair.

  “I’m not sure yet. Maybe one that deals with brains.” As she speaks, her hair tickles my chin.

  “Brains, hm?” I lean back a little, not loosening my grip on her, but just enough so I can look into her eyes.

  “What’s so appealing about brains?” I ask her.

  Evie snorts. I feel her little breath against my throat, where her lips rest.

  It’s the middle of the night one snowy evening just after our Thanksgiving break. We’re in my bed, on our sides, facing each other.

  “They seem like the most important part, you know,” she tells me. “Cardiology is considered so glamorous, at least it is from what I gather, but the heart is just a big ol’ boring muscle.”

  That makes me chuckle. “I’d say you’re under-rating it a bit.”

  She tilts her head back, so she can see me better. “Meh. Brains are everything. They make you who you are. To me the brain is like the computer, and the rest of the body is basically a stupid, plastic case.”

  “Evie…” I go to thump her nose, then decide to stroke it instead. “You’re just plain wrong. The plastic is the skin, and even then, the skin is more dynamic than a plastic case. You’re going to be one very snobby brain surgeon.”

  She grins, making me laugh.

  “I think you know you are,” I tell her, mock accusingly.

  Her hand strokes my cheek. “What about you, Mr. Smarty Pants? What type of doctor do you want to be?”

  I’ve told her in the past that I, too, want to be a doctor. Evie knows me so well now, I don’t think it surprised her. She never once asked if it had anything to do with living here in this house, or with her parents. It has everything to do with me, and nothing to do with the Rutherfords.

  I chuckle. “What if I say heart surgeon?”

  She kisses my chin. “I don’t think you will. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you said surgeon. I’ve seen you at the dinner table.”

  I roll my eyes. Evie loves to talk about my precision with a steak knife, which I think is slightly silly.

  I shrug. “Oncology, maybe. I’ve always thought of doing something with kids.”

  “Kids?” She looks aghast.

  “I know, so crazy. Why would anyone want to save children? Evil little bastards.”

  “It’s just...so sad.”

  I shrug the shoulder I’m not lying on. “Sometimes shit is sad.”

  “Not oncology. Landon, I’d need to prescribe you antidepressants.”

  “I don’t think it takes a neurosurgeon to do that.” I nip at her throat, bring one hand up to stroke her through her soft camisole. “In any event,” I say as I trace the smooth line of her collarbone, “you seem a little not yourself tonight. A bit…heartless, one might say. Maybe I should examine you right now…just to be sure everything seems normal…”


  Evie

  We drive to and from school together, holding hands, exchanging kisses, sometimes leaving the house early for some made-up something—which turns out to be a stop in one of those gas station car washes, where we get dirty instead of clean.

  At school, we have to play it cooler, which bothers us both. Makayla knows the truth, and Tia has suspicions, but she’d never ask. We try to act like good friends and nothing more, and hope the truth of the good friends part will shine through.

  Parties, football games, field trips…everything and anything that comes up hurts, because we can’t be who we are. We save it all for nighttime—and those wonderful car washes.

  I wonder sometimes whether it’s so good because we have to save it up. But I know better. Landon is mine, and I’m his. It’s an objective fact, in the same way the heart has four chambers and the spine thirty-three vertebrae.

  For all the hiding we have to do, we’re such a natural fit. Sometimes it makes me sad that I can’t tell my parents. They already love Landon, and I know they want me happy.

  Of course, we have to hide. If my mom and dad found out, Landon would get moved to another house. So we make do. I learn the rhythm of my parents’ sleep and even Emmaline’s. I learn the path to Landon’s room in pitch black night. I learn how to walk quietly down the stairs.

  Sometimes, Landon reads to me, and I lie on the bed beside his. He likes classic literature, especially Steinbeck and Hemingway. When he’s tired of reading, he’ll come kneel beside the bed I’m on and kiss me, from my toes up.

  Some nights, when only one of my parents is home, I stay almost all night downstairs with him, the two of us crammed into his twin bed like sardines. We hold each other, breathe each other, touch each other. Every moment I am more convinced that Landon is my miracle. As for Landon’s part, he sleeps well, dreams well, and loves me oh-so-well.

  This is how it goes with all things sweet and lovely. It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever known before it has to end.

  It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m lying on my bed, staring at the snow-heaped skylights in my ceiling. At eleven o’clock, the house is quiet in the cozy way it’s only ever quiet on winter nights, when you’re wearing fuzzy socks and staring up at snowy skylights.

  Today was one of my favorite days in years. Maybe ever. We built snow people with Oreo cookie eyes and Chick-O-Stick noses. Emmaline used her homemade cotton candy maker to spin pink hair for the snowwoman and blue for the snowman. After we got tired of that, we had a snowball war, and after that, we used pool floats as sleds and sailed down the slope beside our neighbor’s house.

  Landon was there. I got to see him smile a lot, and hear him laugh in the cold air. He wore a flannel shirt, some insulated jeans Mom bought him a few weeks back, and his new snow boots, plus a gray beanie, his new black down jacket, and a maroon scarf.

  There is nothing better than seeing your guy in winter wear, flashing a rosy-cheeked grin.

  More so than any other day, on this day, Landon really seemed at home. Like he belongs here with us. Once, when Em crashed on her “sled” and Landon hauled her back up to the top of the hill, I couldn’t help but think in centuries past, I’d be old enough to wed right now and welcome him into our family in a much more fitting way. The Oregon Trail, the Revolutionary War, even the early 1900s when the stock market crashed…we’d have been happy to welcome another able-bodied person into the family, and if I partnered off with him, all the better. Make some babies, and they’d help us plow the farm.

  I know I’m over-simplifying (no doubt we’d all have died of typhoid), but I want it so much. I want Landon in our family, but I also want to love him without lying.

  Why is it so wrong to love him? I know that we’re young, but why does youth disqualify us from something so essential? I know he’s living in our house, but didn’t people live in tribes in close proximity to people of the opposite gender for like, most of humanity? I don’t know. I don’t know my history that well. I just want to hug him in the snow.

  Finally, around noon, Mom and Dad run to the grocery store, and we get our moment in the laundry room. We kiss, and then he hugs me to him. He feels so good against me—warm and solid and familiar. Merry Christmas.

  We go to the candlelight service at church, and all I can think about as I watch the families, with their faces all aglow, holding hands and whispering to children, is that someday, it will be our turn. We won’t always have to be a secret. In just over a year, we can go to college together. I can go where Landon gets a scholarship, and over time, we’ll be able to tell my parents. I hate sneaking around behind their backs. But this will all be worth it.

  After we come home, we initiate Landon into the holiday tradition of roasting marshmallows on the back porch, sipping hot chocolate, and leaving cookies and milk for Santa. Emmaline is swinging from the ceiling by the time Mom ushers her to bed. But Landon seems a little quiet to me. Preoccupied.

  He hasn’t said so in as many words, but I feel like the holidays are extra hard for him. I know him so well now, I think I can feel him struggling, even if he’s across the room and even if we haven’t really talked all day.

  I think of texting him once I get up to bed, but I decide not to. We’ve had to cut back on our texting, lest my parents notice it on the cell phone bill, and anyway, what’s he going to tell me over text?

  Before bedtime, my mom told me to be sure Em stays in bed all night.

  “Don’t let her sneak downstairs,” she whispered. “We’re setting our alarms and getting up at three.”

  It’s only eleven now, so I have plenty of time to sneak downstairs myself, snuggle with Landon, and get back up to bed before my parents wake up to do Santa. I only think about it for a minute. Then I’m pulling my red robe on, rubbing vanilla-scented lotion on my legs, and sneaking downstairs to the main floor.

  All the lights are off. I’m all clear—and elated to race down the stairs to him.

  I find Landon sitting up in bed, with all the lights off. From his basement room, he can’t see the lawn or street from his windows anymore than I can out of my skylights. Snow is piled along the bottom of his egress windows. In the gray light spilling from a moon that we can’t see, the snow looks like it’s glowing.

  “Hi, you.” I smile as I drop my robe and sashay through the shadows. Landon’s eyes burn as they follow me, as I pull my shirt over my head and climb into his bed beside him.

  Landon wraps me in his arms without a word. I feel his kisses near my ear, before he lays me down and wraps himself around me. We kiss until my lips hurt from the pressure of his mouth on mine, until my body is lit up and burning under his. When he stops kissing me, I peer up at him, panting slightly as his head hangs. “Why’d she leave me?”

  He lies beside me, arms around me tightening as his ribs expand. His face is up against my neck, his words right by my ear as he says, “Was I trouble, Evie? Was she sick?” I feel his body slacken, then go tense again, his arms taut as they wrap me closer still to him.

  I catch a brief glimpse of his eyes—silver and ink—before they shut and his forehead nuzzles my upper arm. “I wish that I could think she didn’t want to go. That someone made her. But that name…”

  Ash Ville.

  The way she left her name has always made him think his mother didn’t want to be found. That she planned to leave him. That it’s why she went there to begin with.

  I run my fingers through the back of his hair, hating that he bears this burden. Hating her, this woman I don’t even know, for hurting Landon. Making him feel unworthy, unwanted.

  “Maybe she was troubled,” I say softly. “She could have worried that she’d get found out for something. Who knows? It’s impossible.”

  I feel his wet cheek up against mine as he shakes his head.

  “I’m sorry.” I hug Landon tight, with all my strength. I even wrap my leg around him. I can feel his desolation, feel the way the darkness swallows him, the mystery haunts him.

 
“I want you,” I whisper. “I love you.” I tuck his head against my cheek and whisper, “If you want to, we’ll go look for her one day.”

  His cheek presses against my jaw. His hand strokes through my hair. “Stay with me forever, okay,” he says softly. “I don’t ever want to live without you, Evie.”

  “You won’t have to.”

  “Never leave me.”

  “Never. I’ll be here until you send me packing. You’ll be begging me to leave,” I murmur.

  I’m kissing his damp temple, smoothing back his hair, when I hear creaking. Floorboards groaning under weight.

  That’s footsteps.

  My jaw drops as Landon’s body tightens.

  “Fuck—Evie.”

  We push away from each other, and I start flailing in the covers. “Oh my God, Landy, where’s my shirt?” I sit up more fully, then hop off the bed as I shake the duvet.

  “Go into the bathroom,” he growls.

  “No, I can’t! I need my shirt. If she comes in and I don’t have my shirt—” I’m such a moron. Why did I take off my shirt? How stupid!

  “It’s okay,” I say as I sift through his sheets. “Sometimes my mom gets water.”

  The footsteps get louder. Faster. Oh my God, they’re coming down the stairs. I’m frozen there without my shirt, my heart in my knees.

  “Shower, Evie! Go.” Landon shoves me, and right then I see my shirt: I must have thrown it, and it landed on the footboard. I swipe it and swivel. I am lunging for the bathroom when the door opens.

  The light flicks on, and I can’t see, but I can hear my mother’s gasp.

  My eyes adjust as her face slackens. She’s aghast as she says, “What on earth is going on? Evie, why are you down here? And where’s your shirt?”

  She says it like she thinks it might have gotten lost by accident.

  Her tone drops lower. “Landon.”

  “It’s right here,” I say, about my shirt. I pull it over my head. “I just—”