Off-Limits Box Set

by Ella James

  He pulls me closer. I can feel him nod.

  “You can’t replace her. And you wouldn’t want to. Can you see her again at some point? Can you have some contact with her?”

  He draws in a shallow breath. “More later.”

  “Good. That’s something.”

  But it isn’t, not really. I feel his pain like a bright glare in the darkness; I can feel his grating want thicken the air around us.

  I take his hands and put them on my breasts. “Do you feel these? Do they feel bigger?”

  He stops breathing for a moment. “Could it happen the first time?”

  “It could, yeah. If both of us are healthy, it might.” I run my hands over his face again. “It probably shouldn’t feel so natural,” I whisper, draping my leg over his.

  “Maybe it should,” he rumbles.

  I smile. “I thought you hated me.”

  He laughs. “When you go there, I was going to pack your truck and drive it off myself.”

  “Right off the bluff, huh? That bad?”

  I hear him swallow. “I didn’t want to get fucked up again.”

  “Again,” I whisper.

  “Yes. Again.” The words are forceful. Almost angry. His hand comes to my shoulder, squeezing it slightly. “Did you think last time was nothing?”

  Tears burn my eyes. “I was afraid it was.”

  “You were afraid of me from day one. You never trusted me, Marley. And not because of my problems.”

  “You’re right,” I whisper. “I thought you were cheating. That you’d leave. Or that you never even wanted me at all. Because of how it happened. I was so worried that I would lose you, I was…”

  “Never happy,” he says, stroking my cheek.

  Shamed tears fill my eyes and fall as I blink.

  “You’re right. I know. I’ve felt bad for years…about it.”

  He laughs, soft and hoarse. “You think I was? I was a fucking train wreck. You did better than me. You held a job down, cooked… You tried to look out for me, even though I acted like a fucking crazy person when you did.”

  “Why did you do that?” I trace one of his curls.

  “I don’t know.” He exhales, leaning slightly away, even now. And then his head burrows under my chin. “I never had a mom, you know? I made my own breakfast and lunch and dinner since I was seven. My dad fell off the back porch once and landed on some fucking lawn mower blade. He almost bled out. I couldn’t remember the phone number for 9-1-1.”

  “Jesus…”

  “I didn’t trust you,” he says in the darkness. “Didn’t want to.”

  “Do you remember that night? When you came home and you had that concussion from that fight night thing? You wouldn’t let me touch you.”

  “I was feeling like an asshole.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He shakes his head.

  “I want to know.”

  He shuts his eyes. “Just couldn’t stand it.”

  “Having me fuss over you?”

  Tears gather in my eyes again as he nods once. “So I left.” I laugh, soft and bitter.

  Gabe urges me on my back. “You’re not going to think about that, Marley.” He kisses my belly, his mouth dragging down, so to my cunt he whispers, “I’m not either.”

  Gabe

  When we’re finished, she sits up and takes my hand and leads me off the bed.

  “Get dressed,” she says. “We’re going to the boardwalk.”

  I laugh. “Are we?”

  “We need to get some fresh air.”

  She looks so damn cute with her hair in a messy bun and those purple glasses magnifying her brown eyes.

  “We’re going to ride our bikes there.”

  “Are we now?” I grin.

  “Yes, city boy. The sidewalk down to there is lit. Once we get down there, we can get a burger and some fries, eat it by the lake, and then go walking on the trails.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Oh no—your feet!”

  I can’t help smiling at as she drops down to her knees in front of me and presses two more Band-Aids on.

  “They’re fine.” I ruffle her hair.

  “No walking on the trails.”

  I stretch a long strand of her hair above her head, rubbing the silky tress. When she looks up at me with her wide, Marley eyes, I pull her to her feet and kiss her temple. “I’m fine, Marley. Thank you for the fixing up.”

  She wraps an arm around my waist. “You’re welcome.”

  “I’ve gotta to grab some cleaner clothes. Meet you out front in a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  With boxer-briefs pressed in front of myself, for when I walk in front of the small, ruby-toned foyer windows, I head upstairs to the green room and put on different boxer-briefs, a ragged out pair of jeans, an off-white sweater my editor gave me last Christmas, some thick socks, and some loafter-ish type shoes that are more casual than loafers. More like low-top boots, I guess.

  I look down at myself, and I hear Marley’s soft sound. She’s standing in the doorway, smirking at me.

  “What?” I give her a mock outraged look.

  “This is your room?” She looks around. I can’t deny it, because this place is fucking messy.

  “Not the cleanest,” I say.

  “Is that your computer?” She walks over toward it.

  “Marley, Marley…”

  “I forgot. You’re super private, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I murmur, taking her hand. “I’m just ready to get going.”

  She turns back toward the door, and I can see her eyes catch on the table: one that’s covered in pictures of Gen.

  “You can look,” I tell her gruffly.

  She walks slowly over, picks a frame up. “Gabe, she’s beautiful,” she whispers.

  I watch as she stands there with her head bowed, studying the only other girl I’ve ever really loved. Been able to. I really tried with Madeline. I cared for her. Sometimes I wonder if the reason it never progressed was because she was always seeing Oliver behind my back.

  “It was more like very close friends with her mother,” I whisper. I’m not sure why I do, because Marley didn’t ask. I feel the need to make her understand, though. “We met after I left Iowa—I went to college there for just a little while, but didn’t like it. Madeline and I were part of the same writers’ group.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I know.” I step beside her and squeeze her hand, hoping that she’ll listen. She nods. “After you…I wanted different things. I knew why…I lost you,” I manage. “Not just drinking.”

  Marley’s eyes on mine are soft…forgiving. So I swallow and continue. “I had the sense that I had wasted all this. All that time we lived together. I would always leave you waiting for me. I’d be out doing those fight nights, or locked in the room writing. The fucked up thing about it is, I think I liked it. I liked knowing you were…there waiting. It made me feel…calm.”

  “It made you feel secure.” She slides her fingers between mine. “So you wanted to really get involved with someone after. Right?”

  I nod. “And Madeline—when I met her, she was on the rebound. From this guy. The one who…”

  When I don’t finish—I can’t fucking say it—Mar nods slowly.

  “She pursued me. By the time her interest in me tapered off, she’d moved into my place.” I rub my head, which suddenly is aching. “From then on, I took care of…” I shake my head.

  I took care of both of them. When Madeline had Gen eleven weeks early, she was on a deadline for a script. So it was me who sat in the NICU most days. “I always thought she looked like me.” I want to reach out and touch one of the pictures of my girl. I want it to be me she looks like.

  Instead, I squeeze Marley’s hand, and we walk downstairs. I can’t tell who’s leading who. Outside, she goes behind the house to get her bike and meets me at the sidewalk with a smile. “You ready?”

  “Yes ma’am.”r />
  It’s only 7:40, but the night is cool and dark. The air bending around me sinks into my skin and gives our ride a charged feeling. Downtown Fate glides by, and I fix my gaze on Marley’s amazing ass. The streetlights cast a gold glow on her between long, dark streaks of shadow. We pass people going into restaurants, stepping out of bookstores, standing beside street lights. I coast down the hill toward the water, speeding up a notch to ride by Marley as the sidewalk widens.

  I wonder, as I pedal, why she hung the swing. Why did I find her there when I got back to the house? I wanted her so fucking much, and there she was.

  Then we’re at the boardwalk, surrounded by people, vendors, lights… It’s a quiet night, but this stone walkway by the lake is always busy.

  Marley locks our bikes and takes my hand and finds a burger booth for us.

  “The whole shebang?” she asks me.

  I smile slightly. “Mayo and cheese for you?”

  She nods. “Always.”

  I order and pay—because dammit, I’m not handing in my man card quite yet—and we drift toward a row of wooden benches tucked between blazing red trees, the ground around them covered in a crimson carpet.

  “This is perfect,” Marley murmurs. She drinks her Dr. Pepper, and I start into my burger.

  “Damn, that’s fucking good.”

  “I think it’s venison,” she says, inhaling near hers with a dreamy face.

  We eat in mostly silence. Marley smiles when a girl maybe ten or twelve bumps over the stone pathway on a hot pink skateboard, but she frowns when she shifts her eyes to me.

  “Everything makes you think about her, doesn’t it?”

  I don’t know what to say, so I just shrug.

  Mar settles back against the bench, and then I feel her forehead lean against my upper arm.

  “I hope you know there’s no strings here,” she says, so soft I almost don’t hear. “I’m in a pretty good place. I’ve got a lot of good friends, and I’m surprised to find this—this thing we’re doing—isn’t even really stressing me.”

  That makes me bark a laugh. “Well that sounds like a ringing endorsement.”

  She laughs, too. “Really, though. I just wanted to spend time with you. I can be your friend, Gabe.”

  I turn to her, and there’s only one thought in my head. “A friend you fuck, who puts your Band-Aids on and remembers how you like your burgers twelve years later? Mar, that’s not a friend.”

  Her eyes close as she tilts her head just slightly. “Maybe not.”

  I lean in and kiss her lips, gently, the way I wish I had back then. And when I pull away, she’s beaming.

  “You’re good for the ego,” I say as I lean over to toss my wrapper in a garbage can.

  She hops up, too, and tosses hers, and looks down the stone pathway.

  “I don’t want to go back over that way toward the dock,” she says, nodding behind us. “Let’s walk toward the beach.”

  Marley

  I’m holding his hand as we walk onto the beach. Or maybe it’s the opposite. Gabe is solemn—his hand big and warm around mine, his face beautiful and still. It’s as if no time has passed between that night when we held hands and wandered down The Strip. What’s between us is a dark pull, more strange than sweet, more like need and less like want, more like fate and less like choice.

  “Why did you come back?” I ask as we stare out at the gleam of moonlight on the lake.

  We’re standing in the damp sand, underneath a gnarled, old oak.

  “I don’t know,” he says, casting his gaze down for a moment. “Victor found out somehow. Probably, I called him drunk. I guess he called my agent. Roy had no idea about what happened. We’re cool enough, but not bros.” I smile at that. “Roy came over. To my place.” He inhales. Lets the breath out. “I don’t know. I guess he didn’t find me well. Somehow he and Victor hatched this plan for me to come stay with my grandmother.”

  Gabe laughs. “One day Victor was just there, like at my door, wearing muddy hunting boots and some old camo hat. He poured out all the liquor, badgered me onto the fucking plane.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know.” I smile. “That doesn’t sound too much like Victor. I think that bossiness sounds more like you.”

  He laughs. “Like me, my ass. Victor is a hen pecker. He thinks everybody is his fucking student. ‘Dry out, Gabe. You have to dry out or your grandmother will worry.’” He makes a snicker sound. “When I got here, I ordered a bunch of shit and had it shipped to Fendall, but I didn’t drink it.”

  “Really? That’s impressive. No rehab or anything?”

  He shrugs. “It was more of a controlled thing.”

  What he means, I think, is that he made the choice to drink. “I do that sometimes with pie. It’s my most successful vice,” I smile. “Of course, my vice is less likely to kill me than yours is.”

  “I’m calling bullshit on that, doctor.” He smirks down at me. The wind makes strands of moss above us sway. I step a little closer to him, and Gabe wraps his arm around my back.

  He holds me close for a few minutes as the wind brushes the water, making tiny squiggles on the moon’s reflection.

  “I thought…I should stay away from you, Marley. Outside of the agreement,” he says quietly.

  My throat tightens. “Why?”

  “I don’t know if I can do something like this.” His voice sounds strangled, low and rough. “You said you can. But…I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not…there like you are. All that glass you saw that night? Those were bottles. I didn’t drink them, but I threw them at the wall.” His eyes on mine look like inky in the darkness. “I’m…not good. I need you too much.”

  “I think that’s the point, though, isn’t it? I mean, it has to be. You need me, and I’m here. I hung the swing because I thought about you all day, Gabe. I heard you up last night and thought about you all day, wanting to help.”

  “You feel like you need to be my friend.”

  I shake my head. “It’s not just that.”

  “What, then?”

  I shake my head. “You’re scared.” I fold my hands around his, looking up into his tired face. “I think you’re scared to get involved with me again. And I don’t blame you, okay? I don’t blame you. After what happened to you recently…” I bring our hands up to my chest and kiss his wrist. My face is so hot, it’s making my eyes water. I feel like I might cry, but I can’t. I have to show him this could work. Because I want it to, I realize like a crashing wave. I really want it to.

  “I’m just being logical,” he says quietly. “We tend to get our wires crossed, Marley. Get in tangles.”

  “And that’s bad?” I let go of his hand and feel the sand shift under my shoes.

  Gabe rubs at his forehead. “I don’t know.”

  And I’m back there again, in Vegas. Gabe’s hurt, but he won’t let me near him. Even at his worst, at his most needy, he won’t let me close. He doesn’t really care about me. Not the way I love him.

  I feel breathless as I wobble back. “Okay, then. Take some time.”

  His head is bowed as he says, “Sorry.”

  I’m sorry, too, but I can’t find the voice to say it. I rush to my bike and flee—my old recourse.

  Twenty-Six

  Gabe

  After Marley leaves, I wander down the beach, which runs for miles under the red clay cliffs. Thick fog is rolling in over the water, cloaking the bluff and seeping between tree trunks. I look up at the old train tracks, and for a second, I want to climb up there and wander back home through the cemetery.

  I think about my feet, though. About Marley’s hands bandaging them up. About her urging me to take care of myself. I think about the way she held my hand between hers, pressing it against her heart—and I can’t do something so foolish.

  In the end, I walk back to the boardwalk, get my bike (‘the lock code is 1989,’ she texted just after she left), and pedal slowly up the hill, onto t
he winding sidewalk path, down Main Street, more deserted now at almost ten. I ride and ride, until I’ve pedaled down all the streets downtown. I ride past the spot where Marley fell and I left her my motorcycle pack. I ride up steep Rudolph Hill and look down on the town—as foggy as my mind feels; I can barely see the grain silos. Then back down, past our old high school, where I stop and stare at the brick building.

  Fuck, I hated that place. Funny how I didn’t even know it at the time. I had no other benchmark. No comparison. And now I have so many. My hands squeeze the handlebars as I realize the last few weeks have been some of the best I’ve had in years. Since right after we married the first time, maybe.

  I remember what I told her—how I’m head fucked right now, and not ready—and I think back on her reply.

  “I think that’s the point, though, isn’t it? I mean, it has to be. You need me, and I’m here…”

  I’m surprised to find a shimmer in my eyes, blurring the street lights. My throat aches, and my chest does, too. Because she’s right. Goddamn, Marley is right. There is no ready.

  And I fucking hate what that means for me. That there’s no barrier to going home and knocking on her door and fucking claiming her. It didn’t work before, but so what? We’re not the same people we were. It might work out now. And if it didn’t, there’s been worse things, many worse things on this earth than trying hard at love and failing.

  Fuck. But I won’t fail. I’m not going to fuck this up again.

  I laugh, and it’s a choking kind of sound, because my throat is tight, but fucking hell, it’s still a laugh. As I start to pedal again, I see Geneva’s face. I see her biggest grin, the one she only gave for after-bedtime hugs or cookies. That little face that always said, “You’re a hero, Daddy. You’re the best person in the world.”

  As I ride back toward Fendall, my eyes are wet because I realize there’s just one person who ever made me feel that way except my little girl, and that person is Marley.

  She makes me feel worth it. Like I’m worth the fucking trouble. I’m not throwing that away. I can’t.