Leah opened her eyes to the unnerving, disoriented feeling of waking up in a strange place. As soon as she remembered where she was and why, she bolted upright on the couch, swiping the hair from her eyes as she looked around.
The clock on the cable box said eleven forty-six.
“Jesus,” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes before she stood from the couch and threw the afghan over the back of it again. After placing the throw pillow back where it belonged, she sat on the arm of the couch, chewing on her bottom lip as details of the night came flooding back to her.
Danny, completely wasted and clearly upset in her car. Danny’s lips in her hair. I lied to you. About so many things. His hands clasping hers as he told her he couldn’t be with her. That it wouldn’t be fair to either of them. My sweet girl. That soft, chaste kiss that once again left her reeling.
Leah ran her hands down her face as she exhaled, and then she stood from the couch and padded over to the doorway of his bedroom. She leaned against the doorframe, folding her arms over her chest as she looked at him.
He was lying on his stomach with his head turned away from her, his arms up at his sides and his hands shoved under the pillow. Leah noticed that the bottle of water on the nightstand was empty, and she tiptoed over to the pail, cringing as she peeked inside.
All clear.
Her shoulders dropped in relief, and she watched the rise and fall of his back for another minute before she left his bedroom.
Leah went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, using some toothpaste on her finger to brush her teeth as best she could.
When she was through, she walked back out to the living room and stood in the center of it.
She didn’t know what she should do.
She didn’t want to just leave without talking to him about everything, but she knew he needed sleep right now. She couldn’t hang around his apartment all day waiting for him to wake up, and even if she could, trying to have a serious conversation with someone who was hung over was just a bad idea, plain and simple.
But she did need to talk to him. She needed to make sense of everything once and for all, because as much as he’d told her last night, so much was still left unsaid. If anything, Leah felt more confused than she was before he confessed his feelings to her.
Go home. Call him tomorrow, after he’s had some time to recover.
With a plan in place, Leah felt a little better as she stepped into her shoes and scanned the apartment once more. She knew he would be hurting when he woke up, whenever that was, so she tried to anticipate anything he might need. She went to the fridge and got another bottle of water, quietly placing it on his nightstand as she grabbed the empty one.
As Leah tossed the bottle in the trash, her eye landed on his coffee maker, and she decided she would set up a pot of coffee for him before she left.
She opened a few cabinets, finding the coffee on the third try, and just as she brought it to the counter and popped off the lid, she gasped.
Realization washed over her, bringing a rush of nausea with it as the puzzle pieces clicked into place.
How could she not have seen it earlier?
“I had no right to ask you out.”
“I can’t see you. It’s not fair to you.”
“I lied to you.”
And then, something he had said to her a while back:
“I don’t have a girlfriend, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
Leah stood there unmoving, the lid of the coffee still in her hand.
It was so obvious.
How close had she come to being the other woman? There was some girl out there who was with Danny, who maybe even loved him, completely oblivious to their phone calls, their texting, their kisses.
Oh my God, I kissed him. I kissed another girl’s boyfriend.
Her heart started racing, and she felt as if she might be sick. This was all hitting far too close to home for her, and she knew she needed to get out of there.
Immediately.
With trembling hands Leah snapped the lid back on the coffee and turned, gasping loudly as the can slipped from her fingers and crashed at her feet. The top popped off, spraying coffee grounds across the floor.
Danny stood in the doorway, his arms stretched above his head as he gripped the frame. The way his arms were lifted caused his T-shirt to ride up, revealing the faint trail of hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of the flannel pajama bottoms he had put on. His hair was a rumpled mess, and his eyes were squinted against the light.
He looked at her, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smile as he brought one of his hands down and touched his finger to his nose.
“Not it for cleaning that up,” he said, his voice husky with sleep.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
Confusion instantly marred the playful look on his face, and he took his finger off his nose and slid his hand up into his hair. She didn’t plan on blurting it out that way, but she couldn’t stand this any longer.
“No,” he said. “I already told you I didn’t.”
“You also told me you lied to me.”
Danny’s eyes fell closed as he shook his head gently, and then he dropped his head back, covering his face with both hands. “F*ck,” he said, his voice muffled behind them. He slid them down his face before he met her eyes again. “What did I tell you last night?”
“Do. You. Have. A. Girlfriend?” she asked, her voice livid. “Yes or no?”
“No. I swear to you, Leah. No, I don’t.”
She stared at him and he stared right back, never breaking eye contact. He seemed completely sincere, which ironically only made things worse, because now she was more confused than ever.
“What did you lie to me about, then?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
She laughed bitterly, shaking her head. “I can’t do this. I can’t play these games.” She walked toward him and twisted her body, squeezing between him and the doorframe before she stormed into the living room and grabbed her purse. She turned and came to an abrupt halt, nearly walking right into his chest. Danny reached out and steadied her, gently grasping the tops of her arms.
“Leah, please,” he said, and she shook her head, refusing to make eye contact.
“I can’t take lying, Danny. It’s the one thing I can’t take.” She went to step around him, and his grip on her arms tightened.
“Please. Can you just let me explain?”
Leah closed her eyes, exhaling softly. Part of her just wanted to distance herself from the whole situation as soon as possible, but the other part of her desperately wanted to hear what he had to say. If she left now, she knew a piece of her would always wonder if she’d made the right decision, and in a way, she was almost more afraid of that than of being vulnerable with him.
She opened her eyes, keeping them trained on the floor, but she nodded slightly, and Danny exhaled as she felt his grip on her arms loosen.
She turned her back on him, walking over to the couch and taking a seat, and he sat on the coffee table in front of her, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. He dropped his head and took a deep breath before he lifted his eyes back to hers.
“First of all, thank you for taking care of me last night. I’m sorry you had to deal with me like that.”
“Don’t apologize for that. I didn’t mind taking care of you. That’s not why I’m upset.”
He nodded gently as he wet his lips. “I just…I want to make this better, but I don’t even know what I said to you last night.”
She sat up a bit straighter, running both hands through her hair. This was it. She was going to put it all on the line, and hope he would do the same in return.
“Look,” she said. “I don’t want to play games with you. You’re always so back and forth, and I don’t like that I never know what to expect from you.”
He pulled his brow together before dropping his eyes to the floor, and Leah chewed on the corner of her lip, summoning the courage to say the rest.
“I mean, can we just be real with each other? I like you. I really do. And if you don’t or you can’t feel the same way, for whatever reason, then just tell me.”
He lifted his eyes back to hers, a defeated expression on his face. “I do like you, Leah. A lot. That’s the problem.”
“Why is that a problem?”
Danny looked down again, shaking his head slightly. She waited for him to speak for nearly a minute before she broke the silence, trying her luck with a different question.
“What did you lie to me about?”
He sat up, gripping the edge of the coffee table. “I never lied to you. Everything I’ve told you about myself is true. It’s just…there are things I haven’t told you.”
“Lies of omission, then.”
Danny looked up to the ceiling, inhaling deeply. “It’s not lying. It’s just…not sharing everything.” His eyes met hers as he said, “You’ve done it too.”
“What are you talking about? What haven’t I told you?”
Danny shrugged. “Lots of things, I’m sure. What happened to your mom, for instance.”
Leah pursed her lips as his point hit home. There were things he didn’t know about her either. Things she chose not to share. How could she condemn him for something she herself had done?
“Okay,” she said, kicking her shoes off before sitting cross-legged on the couch. Leah pulled the throw pillow onto her lap as she said, “She died in a car accident. Some guy was driving drunk and came over the divider. Hit her head on.”
Danny closed his eyes and shook his head slightly. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “Recently?”
“About fifteen years ago.”
The room fell silent, and Leah kept her eyes on the throw pillow as she picked at a fraying thread. After a few seconds, she saw him lean forward, and she looked up to see him resting his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped in front of his mouth.
“Does it get easier?” he asked.
The second the words left his mouth, something passed between them, and she smiled sadly. “In some ways yes, and in others, not even remotely.”
He nodded, his eyes dropping to watch her fingers play with the loose thread on the pillow.
“Who did you lose?”
He swallowed hard, and it was a moment before he said, “My best friend.”
“Bryan?” she asked, and his eyes flashed to hers as he straightened abruptly.
“How did you know that?”
She shrugged. “It was just a guess. The round of shots at the bar. Tommy said they were for Bryan, and you seemed to get upset.”
Danny took a breath, his shoulders relaxing before he nodded. “Yeah. Bryan.”
The room fell silent again, and Danny scooted forward, finding a frayed string on the other side of the pillow and mimicking Leah’s actions.
“How long ago?” she asked, pretty sure she already knew the answer.
“Yesterday was a year.”
Leah nodded. They both knew he didn’t need to say anything else, and it was a moment before he spoke the words that were like a slap to her face. “He was Catherine’s grandson.”
Her head snapped up, and unexpectedly, her eyes filled with tears. She had no idea why that affected her the way it did, but the idea of that woman burying her grandson absolutely crushed her. An image of Catherine flashed in her mind: the oversized jacket, the big bulky gloves, the man’s ring hanging from a chain on her neck.
Was it possible those things were Bryan’s?
She closed her eyes, forcing a tear to spill over, and before she could react, she felt the pad of his thumb brush under her eye, sweeping it away.
Leah opened her eyes and looked at him; he had the most tender expression on his face, and she suddenly realized how backward it was, that he was comforting her over the death of his friend. She reached up and took his hand, sandwiching it between both of hers as she brought them to rest on the pillow in her lap.
“What happened to him?” she asked, running her thumbs over the back of his hand.
Danny wet his lips and looked down. “Head injury.”
That was incredibly vague, but Leah knew enough not to push the issue. Instead, she kept running her thumbs over the rough, damaged skin of his knuckles.
“That’s why I got so freaked over the flowers,” he said, and her thumbs stopped abruptly as she looked up.
“Why did that make you so mad?”
He shook his head with a sigh. “I wasn’t mad. It’s just…she keeps those things all over the house because when we were little, Bryan used to pick them from other people’s gardens and bring them home to her.” He laughed lightly. “She kept telling him that it was stealing and that it wasn’t a nice thing to do, but he could never understand how bringing his grandmother flowers was a bad thing. And she always put them in water. Always. Even after lecturing him about stealing, she’d put them up in a vase. Every f*cking time.”
He looked down, a smile on his face as he shook his head at the memory. “When you sent them, it just freaked me out. I didn’t know how you knew to get those for her. I didn’t even think about the possibility that you’d seen them in her house.” He lifted his eyes to her face. “I’m sorry about that, by the way. That was so shitty of me.”
She shook her head. “It’s fine.”
It was quiet as they sat there, his hand in both of hers.
“Losing Bryan,” she finally said, and he looked up at her. “That’s not the reason you keep pulling away from me.”
He pulled his hand from hers and Leah straightened, instantly lamenting the loss. Danny gripped the edge of the table and closed his eyes. “I don’t know how to explain this to you.”
“Just say it. Whatever it is, just say it.”
He sat completely still for a moment before he pushed off the table with a huff, walking around to the other side. He stood there, blinking up at the ceiling with his hands clasped on top of his head. “F*ck…I just…” He let his hands fall, shaking his head before he looked back at her.
It hurt to watch the struggle on his face. She could see that he wanted to tell her, but fear, or embarrassment, or both, were stopping the words in his throat, and she had no idea how to make it easier for him.
Tell him something. Something about you. Something you’re not proud of.
“You want to hear something awful?” Leah said gently, and Danny stopped pacing as he looked at her. “About two years ago, my father had a heart attack.”
She twirled the loose thread around the tip of her finger until she felt it ache with the cut-off circulation.
Tell him. Tell him something you’re ashamed of, so he knows it’s okay.
Leah exhaled. “Before that night I hadn’t spoken to him for a year.”
She stared at the throw pillow on her lap until it was a mass of jumbled colors before her eyes, and she felt the couch dip under his weight as he sat beside her.
“Why?” he asked softly, reaching over and pulling the thread until it unraveled from her finger.
She curled and uncurled her aching finger as she shook her head sadly. “You have to understand something, Danny. After my mom died, I did my best to take on her role. I mean, there I was—twelve years old—cooking dinners and doing laundry, making sure my little sister took her bath, reminding my father of doctor’s appointments.”
She turned her head to see that he was watching her intently. “Nobody asked me to do it. I wanted to. I wanted our family to be normal again, and a normal family needs a mother.”
Leah looked back down, playing with the same thread on the pillow. “Everyone relied on me, you know? My dad was so frazzled for a while after, and he couldn’t do it all on his own. So I stepped up. I was basically a really young mother. Or a really old teenager, however you want to look at it,” she said with a tiny laugh, and then she lifted her head, looking at him. “But I never felt like I was losing anything, you know? I had good friends. I played sports. I never felt like I’d given anything up. I loved my family. I wanted to take care of them.”
Danny reached over, swiping a stray hair away from her face, and instinctively she leaned into his touch.
“Everything was fine until I went away to college. I mean, you would think I would have been good at being independent, right? But I was miserable. I felt so guilty being away from them that I couldn’t enjoy any of it.
“So after the first semester, I came home and enrolled in a local college. My father didn’t ask any questions; he just welcomed me back with open arms, and everything went back to the way it was before.”
Danny was watching her carefully as she spoke, but she could see in his face that he was confused; that he didn’t understand how any of this fit in with her being estranged from her father.
Here we go.
Leah inhaled deeply. “The year after I graduated, I met Scott. He was funny and sweet and handsome and just…perfect,” she said, her voice trailing off as she shook her head. It was so hard to say those words, to view him in that light now. “He was so good to me. And it was nice to be the one being taken care of for once. I didn’t realize how badly I’d needed that.”
She stopped as her chin began trembling, and she pressed her lips together.
“Hey,” Danny said softly, running his hand over the back of her hair. “You don’t have to do this.”
Leah turned so that she was fully facing him on the couch. “I want to,” she said.
He looked down before he nodded, and then he took one of her hands, interlocking their fingers before resting it on the pillow between them.
She gave it a gentle squeeze before she said, “About six months after Scott and I began dating, he started getting upset over the amount of time I spent with my family. In a twisted way, part of me thought it was really sweet that he wanted that much of my time, that he didn’t want to share me with anyone,” she said, shaking her head. “God, I sound so stupid when I say that out loud.”
“You don’t,” Danny said. “You’re allowed to make mistakes, Leah.”
She smiled sadly. “It went far beyond a mistake. Because the more time I spent with him, the more I started looking at things differently. He would plant these little seeds in my mind—it was so gradual, so smooth, I didn’t see it. He would talk about how much it upset him that I lost my childhood—how it wasn’t my fault my mother died, and that I shouldn’t have had to pay for it. How it wasn’t the job of a teenager to take care of a family.”
Leah could feel her embarrassment growing, but she forced herself to keep her eyes on him as she said, “He told me that my father shouldn’t have let it happen, that he watched me grow up too fast and didn’t do anything to stop it. He said he shouldn’t have allowed me to come home from college either—that if he truly wanted what was best for me, he would have done everything in his power to make sure I got to experience life. He said my family took advantage of my kindness. And after a while, I believed him.” She shook her head. “And I was so thankful that I found someone who cared about me that much. Someone who was looking out for me, and not the other way around.”
Danny leaned over and ran the backs of his fingers across her cheek, wiping away the tear she hadn’t realized had fallen. Leah reached up, swiping at her cheeks quickly before she exhaled.
“My family didn’t like him. They said he wasn’t good for me, and of course Scott said that was because he was revealing truths they didn’t want to acknowledge. He said they were mad because he opened my eyes to what was really going on. Everything he said made sense, you know?”
Danny nodded; he was trying to keep his expression smooth, but she could see something brewing just below the surface.
Leah bit her lip as she looked down at their hands clasped on the pillow. “So, I distanced myself from them. I would argue with them over stupid things. I’d get mad when my father called to check in with me. I refused to call and check in with him. It was disgusting. Most people go through their rebellious stage when they’re fifteen or sixteen, and there I was, a grown woman, acting like a child.”
Another tear slipped over her lash line, but she was quicker this time, swiping at it before it had a chance to fall.
“So one night my father and I got in a huge fight over Scott, and I told him I wasn’t going to let him control my life anymore. I left, and that was that. I wouldn’t answer his calls or his texts. I wouldn’t go see him. Almost a whole year went by, and I refused every attempt he made at reconciling with me. My whole life was centered around Scott, the one person I thought really cared about me and wanted what was best for me. And he had me all to himself, just the way he wanted.”
She turned to Danny, her cheeks heating with embarrassment. “The night of my father’s heart attack was the first time I’d seen him in months. And when I saw him in that hospital bed, with all the wires and machines, all I wanted to do was apologize to him.” She shook her head. “But he was unconscious. They didn’t even know if he would make it.”
Leah shrugged as she said, “After I left the hospital that night, I went to Scott’s apartment and found him in bed with another girl.”
Danny’s head whipped up, and the initial shock on his face transitioned into sympathy before settling on anger.
She nodded slowly. “So there it is. I threw my family away for a controlling, manipulative liar. If my father had died that night, he would have died thinking I resented him, after everything he’d done to try to hold my family together, after how hard he worked to take care of us all.”
He stared at her, his eyes swimming with pain and something else Leah couldn’t quite place.
She used the end of her sleeve to wipe her nose. “I’m pretty awful, huh?”
Danny didn’t say a word. Instead he unclasped their hands and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her against his chest. She stilled for only a second before she relaxed against him, her face buried in the crook of his neck. He brought his lips to the top of her head, leaving them pressed there as he gently played with the ends of her hair.
Leah closed her eyes and exhaled. She would relive that story again and again if it ended with being in his arms, because the way he was holding her made her feel like she was someone worthy of forgiveness.
It was some time before Danny finally spoke, and when he did, she could feel the gentle vibrations in his chest.
“Leah?”
“Hmm?” she said, her eyes still closed.
“The guy who killed your mother. Do you hate him?”
Leah’s eyes opened as she sat up, looking at him. It seemed like such a strange thing to ask, but his expression was smooth as he waited for her answer.
“Um…I don’t know. I mean, I never really think about him. He died on impact.”
He looked down and nodded. “Do you think he got what he deserved?”
Leah chewed on the inside of her lip. Did she think he got what was coming to him when he lost his life? She looked up sheepishly as she asked, “Would it make me a terrible person if I said yes?”
Danny looked down before closing his eyes. “No. It wouldn’t.”
She sat there staring at him, trying to comprehend what he was really asking her. His questions seemed completely irrelevant to their discussion, and yet she knew there must have been some connection she was missing.
“I will tell you, Leah,” Danny said after a long silence. When he finally looked back up at her, his expression was a mix of sincerity and fear. “I have to tell you, because I don’t want to stop spending time with you.” He rubbed his hands over his eyes as he said, “It’s just…I don’t even know what I’m up against right now. I need just a little more time.”
“Okay,” she said softly, and his eyes met hers.
“Really?”
She nodded. “You can take whatever time you need. I just can’t be lied to. I don’t ever want to be lied to.”
“I won’t ever lie to you, I promise you that.”
She smiled softly. “That’s all I ask.”
They sat there for a moment, looking at each other, and then Danny closed his eyes as he brought his fingertips to his temples, massaging slow circles.
“You’re feeling it, huh?” Leah asked.
“I think I’m gonna be feeling this shit for days,” he said, wincing slightly as he continued to rub.
She laughed as she stood from the couch, and his eyes flew open. “Where are you going?”
“You need aspirin,” she said. “Bathroom?”
He nodded, closing his eyes again. “Medicine chest above the sink. On the bottom shelf.”
Leah got him the aspirin and stopped in his bedroom to get him the bottle of water she’d left there earlier before returning to the couch and handing them both to him. After he had swallowed the pills and about half the bottle of water, he looked over at her.
“Thanks. I’m still not cleaning up those coffee grounds.”
She laughed and he smiled up at her, revealing the dimples that made her chest flutter. Danny grabbed the pillow and positioned it behind his head as he lay back onto the couch.
And then he lifted his arm, inviting her into the space beside him.
She probably should have shown some hesitation, just to maintain some semblance of dignity, but instead she immediately crawled over to him, laying her head on his chest. He exhaled contentedly as his hand came to the back of her hair, lazily running his fingers through it, and Leah closed her eyes.
It felt so perfect to be lying with him this way, like they had done it a million times before. And she knew she would crave it now, like an addiction that weakened her until it was fed.
Leah sighed softly as she curled her fingers into his shirt, and she felt him kiss the top of her head as he continued playing with her hair.
She didn’t have all her answers yet, but she would. And it was enough to know that for now—to believe that whatever he had to tell her wouldn’t be significant enough to change what was happening between them.
Because she didn’t want to have to walk away from him now.