“Of course, Chloe. Take your time. You know I’ll be here.”
The words are the stuff of movies, but his face is flat. He’s like a very bad actor reciting even worse lines.
And I’d like to know who the hell wrote them.
We file back down the stairs. He is all easy civility as he offers me a sideways hug at the door.
“Leaving already?” Mom asks. Her eyes flick nervously between us. Sensing trouble in paradise? Maybe. Dreading said trouble? Definitely.
“Yeah,” he says, scratching the back of his head. He looks more upset now, and somehow I feel like that’s for show too. Like it’s all for her benefit. “I’m suddenly pretty tired.”
“Well, be careful driving,” she says. “Tell Daniel we said hello.”
My eyes go wide as I turn to her, blood running through me like ice water. “Daniel?”
“His father,” she says. “Honestly, Chloe, where is your head these days?”
Stunned by my slipup, I say nothing. Blake’s slipping too, that thin veneer of sadness sliding away to reveal the first expression I’ve believed all night.
Suspicion.
Chapter Fourteen
I pound on the door this time. No delicate knock. No milling around on the welcome mat. Or the place where there would be a welcome mat if this place were in any way welcoming. I just spilled out the biggest whopper of a lie I’ve ever laid on my parents to get here at eleven o’clock on a school night, and my patience has run seriously thin.
I’m just about to shout Adam’s name or throw a rock at the window when the door flings open, an old woman appearing in the entrance. Damn.
She’s wearing a floral polyester shirt, one that hasn’t seen a washing machine in far too long. Her thin white hair is pinned sloppily away from her wide and wrinkled face. This woman doesn’t share a single feature with Adam. From her watery green eyes to her skin, which is so white it’s almost pink, she is the absolute opposite of Adam, who is all sharp, dark lines and piercing eyes.
I finally find my voice. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”
She doesn’t say a thing, just blinks up at me like she can’t even imagine what I want. Or maybe like she doesn’t understand a word I’m saying. Which is possible if the smell of booze coming off her is any indication of how she’s spent her evening.
“Is Adam here?”
He slides into view then, still tugging a shirt down over his torso. I catch a sliver of damp, golden flesh above his jeans and force my eyes to his face.
His hair is still wet from the shower, his feet bare on the carpet.
“I’ve got it, Grandma,” he says.
“Gloria?” she says, looking up at Adam with an expression that’s much sweeter than the one she offered me.
“No, Grandma, it’s me. Adam.”
“Adam,” she says, touching his arm.
“Yes,” he says, turning her gently back toward the house. “You should go in. It’s cold.”
Her face puckers up, lines folding in on lines until she looks like a raisin leached of its color. “Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!”
My mouth drops at her sudden hostility. Her shouts dissolve into a coughing fit, and then she walks away, still swearing as she hobbles deeper into the apartment. Adam watches her for a moment, and then turns to me, looking wholly unaffected.
I must look desperate because Adam holds up a hand and grabs his jacket from a hook by the door. I watch him jam his bare feet into his half-laced boots, and then he’s following me into the night, his breath steaming in the darkness.
“You can’t be here,” Adam says, and God, I thought I was paranoid, but he’s redefining it tonight. He’s searching the parking lot, pacing back and forth on the tiny slab of cement outside his door. “Have you ever heard of a phone?”
Is he looking for a girl? Oh God, he just got out of the shower. He could be getting ready for a date, and I just showed up here.
I feel sick to my stomach. Sick just about everywhere, really.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I couldn’t—I needed—” I can’t even make words anymore. I’m looking around too, dreading the arrival of a girl I never even considered existed. But I should have.
“Just tell me why you’re here. And make it fast, Chloe. It’s not…” He doesn’t finish, just sighs and looks at me expectantly.
I don’t know how to condense all the things that brought me to his door tonight. My call with Maggie? What I overheard Dr. Kirkpatrick say? The fact that I think somehow whatever happened to me wasn’t an accident or a sickness and the fact that I think Blake’s dad, maybe even Blake himself, is in on it?
I have a million reasons to be here tonight.
“I think I broke up with Blake,” I say. Moronically. Because that fact isn’t anywhere on the list of relevant crap I need to say to him.
Except that it obviously is, because Adam stops with the looking around. He looks right at me, until I know beyond a single doubt there isn’t a girl coming. There isn’t a girl at all. Not one that isn’t standing right in front of him.
The air between us feels hot and cold together. Charged the way I’d imagine it would be before lightning strikes.
“You said that’d be a huge mistake,” he says, taking a step toward me.
His eyes flick down to my lips, and God help me, but I feel that look in my knees. Maybe right down into my bones. “I did?”
My voice is breathy, and I’m moving in too. Adam nods, those gorgeous kaleidoscope eyes of his drinking me in like he’s been starved to do it.
It’s wrong. Every part of me knows that you don’t slide into a new guy’s arms a pitiful three hours after breaking up with your boyfriend.
Still, I can’t help this. Or maybe I just don’t want to.
My hands flutter up to his chest, and he’s leaning in so close I can feel the dampness from his hair against my forehead. He closes his eyes, and I curl my fingers in his shirt.
“You have to go,” he says, and there’s this broken twist to his words, like he’s forcing them out.
“I don’t want to go. And I don’t think you want me to either.”
“You have to,” he says, and the words sound like torture, but he pulls back from me. My fingers drop away from his shirt, and he starts looking around again. Checks his phone.
My chest feels too tight, my heart too big. Whatever I’m feeling for him is too much. I hate it. It eclipses everything I’ve ever felt before, and I don’t think I’m ready for that. I don’t know how I got to this place with him.
Probably because someone stole the memory of it from me.
Tears spill hot and slick down my cheeks, but there’s nothing I can do to stop them. “Someone did this to me, Adam. Someone made me forget things, and I know it had something to do with the study group. And with Dr. Kirkpatrick—”
“Chloe, I can’t do this,” he says. I can see the pain in his eyes, but he’s shaking his head and taking a step back. He looks bound and tied. He stands mute, checking the street with a furtive glance.
“Fine, then don’t. But give me something, Adam! At least tell me what happened between us.”
“Nothing,” he says, but the look of anguish on his face tells me otherwise.
“Liar,” I say, and then I rush him, taking both of his hands and pulling him closer to me.
I can smell clean water and soap and cinnamon, and I can see his body go tense beneath my touch. “Not one of the moments I’ve remembered is nothing, and I think you know it.”
His eyes drift closed and he swallows hard. I have never, ever wanted to kiss someone so much in my life. Except it’s more than that.
“Go home, Chloe,” he says, gritting each word out like it’s physically painful. “Please just…go.”
***
I stare at the pictures on the fridge across from me and push the oatmeal around in my bowl. Mom offers me a mug of something steaming, and I shake my head.
She sighs and slouches into the seat across from me. “Did you work it out with Blake last night?”
Work what out? Oh. Right. My ruse for getting out of the house was rushing after my devastated boyfriend.
I shake my head again. It’s about the only move I’ve got this morning.