13
When the day finally came, I felt nothing.
I’d taken to sleeping on the couch, not only because I’d been staying up watching movies later and later into the night in an effort to make the days last longer, to stop tomorrow from coming, but because it was like an island in the middle of my apartment. From the vantage point of the couch, I had a good view of the two biggest windows so I could watch for intruders with ease. And since it was only five feet from the door, I could more quickly make an escape if I needed to. But I wasn’t paranoid or anything.
It had been days since I’d gotten a text from the unknown number, which didn’t fool me one bit. There was always a calm before the storm. But it had been a nice little break. A girl could only be called a “motherf*ckinglyingbitchwhore” so many times before she developed a complex. And I was already sporting a pretty big complex of my own. I didn’t need any extras.
Now, as I sat up on the couch on the day of days, I gently palmed my cell from the coffee table and took a breath before turning it on. Nothing.
Phew.
Well, no threats from the unknown number anyway. There were three calls from my mother and a call and two texts from Emily, all of which I ignored.
Lying back on the cushions, I gazed out the window across from the couch at the gray day outside and marveled at my own calm. I felt numb, really. I felt nothing. It reminded me of an article I’d read once about a Japanese man from Osaka who’d been the only person to survive the bombing of his neighbourhood during World War Two. He’d described how he’d walked aimlessly through the rubble afterwards, all alone, and that for many hours that day he’d believed that he had died while everyone else had survived. He’d thought he was a ghost.
That’s how I felt when I woke up that day. As though I wasn’t real. As though I hadn’t survived, although I had. As though I was nothing.
I walked to school through a drizzle that left my hair in a frazzled mess. I’d left my phone at home for the day, marveling that I’d never thought of this solution before. Let Mom and Em worry about me if they wanted to—I was going incognito. To someone passing me on the street I’m sure I looked like any other person rushing to get out of the rain, going about their errands and daily life, as if the day had no meaning at all, which was amazing to me. The only difference in myself I could really feel was a trembling, not of my limbs, but deep inside me. I felt as though a strong wind could bowl me right over.
All the rules were in place today. This was, after all, the day they were made for. I avoided my coffee shop, knowing it might have the radio playing, wore my biggest noise-cutting earphones just in case, and inside the school buildings I kept my eyes averted from every TV screen. I spoke to no one, took copious engrossing notes in class, and tried to emulate my morning self as much as possible: say nothing, feel nothing, be nothing. Before I knew it, my school day was over and I was on my way home.
My only mistake was stopping at the newsagent at the edge of campus to buy a Snickers bar—my reward for not staying home all day hiding under the covers. The daily papers were all stacked neatly on the counter, ready to be taken away to wherever unpurchased newspapers went at the end of the day, and as I struggled to fit my change into my wallet I happened to glance down at them. The headlines jumped out at me, all reporting the same thing, all in bold, block type. Because this was the biggest news story of the year. And it was right there in front of me.
Evil Gets Cut Loose
Killer Walks Free
Kid Killer Comes Home
The coins fell through my fingers and scattered on the pavement.
“Are you all right, miss?” the old man behind the counter asked, glancing down at the change that I hadn’t bothered to pick up.
My inner tremor threatened to take over my entire body as the awful memories pulled at me, trying to drag me back there—Brandon’s dirty fingernails as he gripped the knife. Tommy’s high-pitched scream ringing in my ears. My dirty running shoes pounding on the forest path as I ran and ran and ran—but I resisted with all my strength. I didn’t want to go back there ever again. I wouldn’t.
“I’m great!” I said with forced enthusiasm, jamming a bite of chocolate into my mouth and chewing as though my life depended on it. Then I turned away and left the headlines and the memories behind me, where they belonged.
As I pulled open the door to my building I noticed the sun was going down. I’d made it through the day in one piece. Nobody had attacked me. Nobody had found me out. I’d survived this day just as I’d survived every day leading up to it, and I was going to keep surviving. The day had just been one long boring bout of nothing.
In a sick way, it was kind of a letdown.
In the doorway I quickly checked my mail slot, spying a manila envelope waiting for me through the little holes in the metal door. My name was printed in small, neat writing on the front, and there was no stamp, which meant that whoever had left this for me had been inside the building. I set the envelope down on the table in the lobby, staring at my pale face in the mirror hanging above it.
Evil Gets Cut Loose.
Maybe Brandon hadn’t sent me a text today because he’d planned to leave this for me instead? I knew logically that this wasn’t possible. It would mean his travelling all the way from Vancouver to Kingston in just a few hours. He’d only been let out this afternoon, and I was pretty sure the terms of his release barred him from leaving the province. My nagging worry that he had an accomplice made my fingers shake as I picked up the envelope again. I knew I was being silly. What danger could an envelope possibly pose? It was light enough that I felt nearly certain it contained nothing other than paper. So no bomb to blow me to bits, then. Another empty threat, maybe, written out by hand this time? I’d never know unless I opened it, and yet I couldn’t seem to convince my fingers to tear the seal.
As I approached the stairs, dragging my feet now, all my earlier excitement doused in anxiety, I squinted down at my own name. The handwriting seemed familiar to me, which meant it couldn’t be Brandon’s. I’d never seen him write anything down. I puzzled over this for a moment until the photo of Turner I’d taken on my phone flashed through my mind and I suddenly knew whom the envelope was from. All that extra anxiety lifted from my shoulders and floated away. I knew his handwriting because I’d watched him writing out his name on the missing cat flyers we’d plastered all over town. The envelope was from Lucas.
It had been nearly two weeks since the moment Lucas and I had shared in the hall outside of class. Since then we hadn’t spoken once, and he hadn’t called or texted me, either. I was back to my old tricks, avoiding any places on campus where I thought he might be and keeping my head down in class so as to not catch his eye. But this time I noticed he was doing the same. He’d even skipped class last Friday. And earlier this week when we’d had our closest call, somehow managing to end up at the door to the art studio at the same moment—keeping your eyes down all the time did have its drawbacks—I’d stepped back, murmuring an apology, my eyes drifting up to his face, but he’d kept his averted. His demeanour had been one of annoyance, as though I’d been holding him up. His face has been stonily blank as I’d walked passed him through the door, just inches from his chest. The gravity that always pulled me toward him had screamed at me to throw myself into his arms, but I’d held back. Gut-wrenching as it had been to have Lucas look at me like I was a stranger, it would’ve been like an actual knife in the stomach to have had him peel me off his body, that same stony expression telling me he wasn’t interested, he never had been.
When his coldness came back to me, freezing my heart solid, I had to remind myself that I was the one who’d told Lucas to stay away from me. He was just doing as I asked. And when I was out grabbing a bite Sunday night with Em and her friends and spotted him across the room with that redheaded vixen Taylor plastered to his side, I had to remind myself again. And again and again and again. This was what I’d wanted. This was what I’d asked for. He was moving on. He was doing just what I’d told him to.
“That Taylor’s so full of herself,” Melissa offered, pushing her basket of fries my way. “I’m sure he doesn’t want her around.”
“She throws herself at everyone,” Sally agreed. Then, in a moment of real clarity, she added, “I should know, so do I.”
“I know he misses you,” Em said.
But it really didn’t seem like it. Later that night Anita accidentally mentioned that she’d seen him at a couple of parties, hanging out with Eric and Oleg. He was out with his old friends, whatever had been holding him back apparently no longer an issue. It occurred to me that maybe what had been keeping him from his other friends was me. Now that I was out of the picture he was free to go back to his real life, the life he fit into just right, the life that had been waiting for him.
I thought bitterly, He’s probably glad to be rid of me.
So then what the heck was in this envelope, and why had he sent it to me?
I still hadn’t opened it when I reached the top of the stairs and found Mariella and Ethan at my door.
“Oh thank God, Katie!” Mariella said as she looked up from her phone. “I’ve been texting you like crazy. Stefano’s totally going to fire me. I’m already thirty minutes late and you know how he gets.” I did know. Mariella was always going on about her Nazi boss at the spa where she worked as a masseuse. She was sure he had it out for her.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” I said, glancing nervously at Ethan, who looked back at me with a blank expression of extreme boredom. Count on a five year old to find his mother’s hysteria totally uninteresting.
Mariella hefted her enormous purse back onto her shoulder. I was always wondering what the heck she kept in there to make it so heavy.
“I know it’s a total imposition,” she said, “but my mama’s sick and my stupid brother, Ray, took off on a road trip to the Maritimes—like winter’s the best time to go sightseeing—and if I don’t make it to my shift, Stefano’s going to fire me for sure and give all my shifts to that skinny biatch Cecily. So I’m begging you.”
She looked at me pleadingly as I tried not to show the rising panic I was feeling inside. She hadn’t actually said the words yet but I could see where it was going. I felt my windpipe closing up, my ability to breathe dwindling as I gripped Lucas’s envelope in my fingers, crinkling the paper. Today had been going so well. I might have even called it a raging success. I’d planned on spending the evening sketching and eating cookie batter and maybe, if I felt up to it, calling my mother back. My grand plans shattered at my feet as I looked into Mariella’s pinched and worried face.
Please don’t do this to me.
“Save my life?” she said with a grateful smile as Ethan stepped forward and took my hand. He stuck his tongue through the hole a missing tooth had left in his smile and wiggled it at me as his mother put a bag of toys down at my feet.
His hand felt like a grenade in mine. My palm was so sweaty against his that I was sure his fingers would slip right out of my grip and we’d both be blown to bits.
“I’ll be back at nine thirty, ten o’clock at the latest,” Mariella said, slapping a Post-It on Ethan’s forehead that had her work number on it. “He’ll eat anything you put in front of him and his bedtime’s at eight. Just leave him on your couch or whatever. I can just come and grab him when I get home.”
Before I had fully processed what was happening, she was already going down the stairs, waving goodbye.
“Wait, Mariella,” I cried. “I don’t know if I can—”
I heard the door in the lobby closing behind her with a click and just like that Ethan and I were standing in the hallway, alone. Nine thirty…that was four and a half hours from now.
I swallowed hard and stared at my front door, because it was better than staring at Ethan. Just looking at him made me feel as though I might pass out.
“Did you forget your keys?” Ethan asked, pulling his hand from my grip and reaching for the zipper of my purse. “My mom always finds hers hiding right at the bottom in the same old place, but she swears a lot before she remembers to look there.”
“Right, keys,” I whispered, shakily pawing through my purse until I found them.
I swung the door open and Ethan ran inside with his bag of toys, bouncing onto the couch and turning on the TV. “Do you have Treehouse? Do you have Nickelodeon?” he asked, already clicking the remote, though the screen remained blank.
He gave me a horrified look. No TV?
I grabbed a DVD off my bookcase, thanking Jesus that I had a childish taste in movies, and threw it into his hands. “Here, watch this,” I said as I practically jogged down the hall away from him. “I just have to make a phone call, okay?”
“Okay,” Ethan called back. I heard the opening music to Toy Story drifting down the hallway to my room just before I shoved the door shut.
Throwing my purse onto the bed—where it promptly exploded because I hadn’t zipped it shut—I started pacing with my hands over my face. From his perch on my desk chair, Turner’s eyes followed me around the room. The tips of my fingers were tingling and my stomach was churning, a sure sign I was about to have a panic attack. Though I desperately wanted to keep moving, I shooed the cat off my chair and sat down, putting my head between my knees.
Think, I urged myself, think. Who can I call?
I didn’t even consider the alternative. I couldn’t be here alone with Ethan. That was out of the question. I hadn’t babysat a child, not in six years. And there was a very, very good reason for that. I clutched my thighs, squeezing them so hard I left bruises. This was not happening, not again. I couldn’t let it happen. I needed somebody to come and take care of this kid right now, but who?
Emily.
Burrowing through the pile of purse crap on my bed, I finally located my phone and dialed Em’s number, trying to think of where she might be at that moment. What day was it? Wednesday? Didn’t she have yoga at dinnertime on Wednesdays? But sometimes she skipped. A lot of the time, actually. She and Anita sometimes went out for burgers instead. But apparently not today. I left several incredibly frantic and probably alarming messages on both of their phones and then started pacing the room again, tapping my cell against my stomach. As I passed the door I pressed my ear up against it, but I could only hear the movie playing from the other room. Good, good. He was fine. Unless he’d already choked to death.
Who else could I call?
I didn’t have Melissa’s number. Sally would probably set the place on fire herself. My parents were too far away. I shook my fist in the air, cursing myself for insisting on running four thousand kilometers from my past. Wouldn’t thirty have been enough? Then they could have been here in half an hour. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d wanted my mommy this much. I thumbed through the measly list of contacts on my phone. There was only one name left.
I stared down at his number then pressed my forehead into the windowpane, gazing out at the dark street below. He was my only option. I could either call him or spend the evening with Ethan by myself. Just the thought of it made my breath hitch in my throat and I had to spend five minutes with my head between my legs again.
I didn’t consider what he would think when he saw my number on his phone. I didn’t think about how pathetic it was that I was calling him now, or how pathetic he would think I was, or how pathetic I thought I was. I didn’t think about anything at all. I just closed my eyes, pressed my thumb down on his number, and listened to it ring.
“Hello?” Lucas said, speaking loudly due to the background noise. Just the sound of his voice made tears spring to my eyes.
“Lucas?” I squeaked, holding the phone with both hands. “Lucas, I’m sorry to be calling. I—”
“Katie?” he said, and the noise around him receded. I wondered if he’d stepped into a closet or something.
Silence spread between us as I tried to think of the right words to say that would make him come. How could I explain this? I’d sound like a lunatic. He had no reason to care about my problems now, after I’d left him standing on the street alone in a storm and then ignored him for two weeks straight. What could I possibly say to fix all of that and express my desperation at the same time? There weren’t words enough in the English language.
“Lucas,” I repeated, my voice breaking, “I need you. Please come.”
There was a pause. I held my breath, waiting for his reply.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said, and then hung up.
They were the longest ten minutes of my entire life. I spent them pacing around the kitchen eating marshmallows and peeking over the back of the couch at Ethan playing with his dinosaurs on the coffee table. Every time the toy dinosaur came on the screen, he cheered and held up his Tyrannosaurus rex and I ate another marshmallow. The only time we interacted was when he asked me if he could have some marshmallows, too, and I gave him ten. His eyes lit up like it was his birthday, and he’d been quietly stuffing his face ever since.
Finally the front door buzzer went off and I rushed over to press the button. Standing in the living room, I noticed all my dark paintings hanging on the wall in an alarming cluster and quickly pulled them off the wall, leaving them in a pile by the couch. That done, I swung open the door and stood with one foot in the hall and one in my apartment. I didn’t really start breathing freely until I saw him hurrying down the hall toward me. I’d never seen him hurry anywhere before. At the sight of him, my chest started heaving as though I was the one who’d just run up the stairs.
He stopped in front of me, his eyes full of questions, and before I realized what I’d done, I was pressing my cheek into his chest and breathing in his Lucas smell.
Oh my God, I was throwing myself at him, just like I’d said I wouldn’t do. And now he was going to push me away.
But, surprisingly, he didn’t. His strong arms came around me, the fingers of his right hand running down my back, his chin resting on the top of my head. I noticed he wasn’t wearing a jacket, and it was barely five degrees outside. His arms were cool, but they heated up quickly as I stood inside them. I heard him make a hmm noise, kind of like a sigh, and it had an amazing calming effect on me. Barely a minute had passed, but a minute in Lucas’s arms was like a lifetime in anyone else’s. They were magic healing arms.
“What’s wrong, Katie?” Lucas said into my hair, and I shook myself back into the present moment, remembering there was a five year old in the room with us.
Pulling out of Lucas’s arms, I pointed at Ethan, who, thank God, didn’t seem to have been paying us any attention.
“Th-this this is Ethan,” I stuttered, and Lucas glanced at the kid, who waved a dinosaur, then back at me. “He belongs to Mariella.” Had I ever mentioned Mariella to Lucas? “She’s my neighbour and she had to work and I’m watching him until nine thirty or maybe ten and these are his dinosaurs,” I finished in a rush.
Lucas looked back and forth between me and Ethan a few more times, then his eyes settled on my face and I stared at him, shaking my head because I knew none of this made any sense to him. Wordlessly I begged him just to put up with my craziness one last time and he’d never have to do it again. He gazed at me a few minutes more, blinking thoughtfully, then nodded once and turned and closed the door.
“Can I be the stegosaurus?” he asked Ethan as he sat down beside him on the rug.
The little boy nodded and handed over the toy, then started to telling him the names of all the characters in the movie, pointing at the screen.
I closed my eyes and let out a long sigh of relief.
Somehow we made it through the night. Like a real trooper, Lucas sat with Ethan and played dinosaurs and built a fort and harassed Turner while I made us a dinner of chocolate chip cookies—I had the dough, after all—French toast, and apple slices, using up all the fresh ingredients I had in my fridge. We watched the rest of Toy Story and made it halfway through A Bug’s Life without Ethan bursting into tears, which he finally did only because I reminded him that it was already ten minutes past his bedtime. Though the sight of those tears nearly sent me over the edge again, Lucas dealt with them like a pro. He got the kid to stop crying and brush his teeth and put on his pajamas, all for the promise of being able to go to sleep inside the fort.
When it came time to go to sleep, Lucas lay down on the floor next to Ethan’s cushion fort and they whispered secrets into each other’s ears while I watched from my perch on a kitchen stool. I hadn’t really known if my rescuer would be good with kids when I’d called him in a panic, but he really was. It was really precious to watch, and kind of a turn on in a weird way, although I tried to ignore that. He would make a great dad one day.
We retreated to my pillowless bedroom once Ethan was asleep so as to not wake him up. I collapsed facedown onto the mattress, nearly delirious with happiness that the nightmare was finally over. Then I felt the mattress sag next to me as Lucas sat down on my bed and I scrambled into a sitting position, all of a sudden very aware that there was a guy in my room. I’d never had a guy in my room before, or on my bed, or leaning back on my headboard watching me with his legs splayed. Or grinning at me because I’d been staring at him, speechless, for five minutes.
“Thanks for coming,” I said. “I guess I just got a little…” Upset? Overwhelmed? Maniacally hysterical? There didn’t seem to be any adequate word to finish the sentence.
“Are you going to thank me from over there,” Lucas said, gesturing at my perch on the corner of the bed, “or over here?” He patted the bedspread beside him.
Uh-oh.
“Uhhh…” I stalled, glancing around the room for something to distract him, but there was nothing but art supplies and books. Why the hell was my room so boring? Then I felt two hands grab me by the waist and suddenly I was sprawling, my butt on one side of his legs and my feet on the other, not quite sitting in his lap, but pretty close.
“Over here—that’s what you said, right?” Lucas said, pulling at my hip so my side was pressed up against his chest. “That’s what I thought.” He rested his arm around my shoulder, coaxing my head onto his chest. I resisted at first, but it was the scent of him and the all-encompassing warmth of his arms—they were intoxicating. I let my head fall against him, just for a minute, I promised myself.
“Are you going to tell me what tonight was all about?” he asked.
A band of anxiety wrapped itself around my chest, but I forced it loose. “Maybe another time,” I said, hoping that would be enough.
“Mmmhmm,” Lucas said. He was rubbing his hand up and down my arm in a way that was incredibly distracting. Then his other hand, which I’d lost track of, brushed against my cheek and I felt the beating of my heart begin to speed up.
His fingers reached farther, grazing against the skin of my neck and easing into my hair. I let my eyes fall closed at the tantalizing feeling.
“I missed you,” I murmured into his shirt, and suddenly I felt the beating of Lucas’s heart pick up, as well, the pounding precisely even with my own.
He removed his arm from my shoulders and I felt him guiding me backwards until I was lying flat on the bed and there he was next to me, propped up on his side. Our bodies weren’t exactly touching. His hand was braced against the mattress beside my hip, his chin in the palm of his other hand as he gazed down at me.
I swallowed and tried to catch my breath as my heart went completely crazy, beating a mile a minute. Whoa, I said in my head, and a second later I realized I’d also said it out loud.
“Katie Archer,” Lucas said, and I couldn’t believe how much I loved hearing him say my name, “you are driving me crazy.”
I wanted to protest, but then his lips were on my neck and all possibility of thought was lost. From somewhere in the back of my brain where I was still aware of what was going on, I heard myself breathing hard as I let my head fall back, baring more of my neck to his insistent lips. Then I twisted to face him, feeling the tight curve of his waist through his shirt as my hands pressed against his body. When he found the sweet spot where my neck met my shoulder, I felt something blossom to life inside me and pressed my hips against his. He reacted by making a sound like a growl deep in his throat.
How had this happened? A minute ago I was just sitting beside him on the bed and now suddenly his hand was caressing my hip and I was wishing he would let it move higher up. He leaned over me, feathering kisses across my jaw as he moved to the other side of my neck, and I felt him against my leg, warm and hard. All the fuzziness cleared from my head in an instant as my eyes flew wide open.
“Wait,” I said, gently pushing him away. His eyes, which had been clouded over, cleared just a little as they focused on my face.
He leaned back so we were essentially lying down facing each other, our faces just inches apart.
“Wait?” he said, his hand cupping the side of my face as his thumb slid over my bottom lip. I felt my eyes begin to roll back in my head.
“Stop it!” I snapped, swatting his hand away, and he let it rest on my waist instead, which wasn’t exactly better, but at least I could mostly think clearly.
“Am I stopping for a reason?” he asked, and I saw his dimples make their first appearance of the night. My God, it had been a while since I’d seen them, and they were looking good.
I tried to articulate my thoughts, but the emotions that were rushing around in my body had me all turned around. Why exactly had I asked him to stop? Did I even know?
“What about Taylor?” I asked abruptly, and watched Lucas’s eyes narrow as though he were trying to place her name.”
“Don’t act like you don’t know who she is,” I said with irritation. “Redhead, perfect body, big red lips planted on your cheek whenever she gets the chance.”
“Right, Taylor,” Lucas said, looking amused. “Sounds like you don’t like Taylor’s lips touching me, Hero.”
My temper flaring, I grabbed his arms and wrestled him back until he was pressed against the headboard. “Stop. Calling. Me. Hero,” I said though gritted teeth. He held up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “I promise,” he said seriously. “I will never call you Hero again…unless I want you to press your whole body up against me like that. ‘Cause that was kind of great.”
“Ugh!” I pummeled his arms with my fists and he fended me off until we were both lying on our backs, spent.
“So what’s all this about Taylor?” Lucas said.
“Well, you two are obviously—”
“Obviously?” Lucas said with interest, rising up on his side again.
I sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “I know you said you’re not like that anymore, but I also know your reputation, Lucas,” I said. “You’ve got Taylor and Monica and Jenny and God knows how many other girls waiting in line.”
Lucas made a strange sound and my eyes snapped to his face. Was he actually laughing at me? I stared at him, as he struggled to get himself under control.
“First of all,” he began, his face still red with laughter, “I don’t have Jenny. She’s an old family friend. We grew up together, but there’s absolutely nothing going on there. I’m just really fond of the kid.”
“She’s not a kid, she’s the same age as me,” I said, frowning at him.
“Jenny will always be a kid to me,” Lucas said, pressing his finger into the frown line between my eyebrows, trying to smooth it away. “I will never have feelings like that for her, trust me.”
I wanted to bring up the moment I’d seen on the bench, but I didn’t want to invade his privacy or embarrass him. I was willing to concede that maybe I’d misconstrued what I’d seen, though I still didn’t see how. Did Lucas really go around caressing the cheeks of his childhood friends? Then I remembered that she’d been yelling at him that night and for the first time it occurred to me to wonder what she’d been yelling about.
“Monica is in the past, and I mean the distant past,” Lucas went on, “and Taylor…Taylor is the type of girl who’s used to getting what she wants. That’s all I can really say about her.”
“And what she wants is you,” I said, realizing after the words were out of my mouth how pouty they sounded.
“Just because she wants me doesn’t mean she gets me,” Lucas said gently. “I have to want her, too, don’t I?”
“I saw the two of you out together last weekend.”
“Keeping tabs on me, are you?” Lucas said, raising his eyebrows.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “By coincidence we happened to be in the same restaurant Sunday night. And don’t dodge the question.”
“My roommates dragged me out for dinner and Taylor and her friends joined us,” he said. “I admit she was coming on pretty strong that night. She’s not used to hearing the word no, like I said. But I didn’t encourage her and I didn’t go home with her. I didn’t want to.”
“Didn’t you?” I challenged. Taylor was every guy’s fantasy—gorgeous, experienced, and a little naughty. She was everything I knew I could never be.
Lucas groaned loudly and then his body was on the move. He braced his body over mine, putting his weight on his forearms, both his hands cupping my face.
Oh, wow.
“What do I have to do to convince you how crazy I am about you, Katie?” he said. His eyes were drawn to my lips and I thought for sure he was going to kiss me, but he held back. I suppressed a whine of disapproval.
My God, he was so beautiful. Looking at him just never got old. A few locks of his hair hung down over his forehead and I pushed them back with my fingers. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and there was a little bit of scruff across his cheeks, which only made him look deliciously disheveled, as if he’d just rolled out of bed, still warm from sleep, and naked, of course—because when I imagined Lucas in bed, and this wasn’t the first time, he was always naked. The very idea made me flush. And he wanted to know why I couldn’t believe he was interested in me?
He was still looking at me expectantly, waiting for an answer. “I’m just going to stay here until you’re convinced,” he said, settling in with a smile. Was this supposed to get me talking? If it were up to me, he could stay here all day.
“It’s just…” I picked at the sleeve of his shirt, avoiding his eyes. “These last couple of weeks you’ve been acting like… When we ran into each other in the art studio, you looked at me like… I thought you were sick of me.”
“You rejected me, Katie, in case you forgot,” Lucas reminded me. “What was making me sick was running into you all the time, seeing you in class and knowing I could never have you. Though, I’m beginning to think that’s not exactly true…”
“It’s not true,” I said quickly, a little too quickly.
Real smooth, Archer.
Liking this answer, Lucas eased himself higher until his face was level with mine, but I couldn’t let myself be distracted. I clamped my eyes shut and said, “But why would you want to be with me when you could have any girl you wanted?” I cringed inwardly. This was so humiliating. “You need to make it make sense. Because it doesn’t make sense to me.”
Lucas paused before answering. I sensed that something I’d said was bothering him, but he didn’t want to say what.
“I want to be with you instead of all the other girls because you’re not like all the other girls,” he said.
Thanks. Way to be vague.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m way less outgoing, way less adventurous, way less—”
“If you say beautiful, we’re going to have words, Archer,” Lucas warned.
“Fine,” I said uncomfortably, squirming a little under his body. “So what do you mean, then? How am I different?”
He thought about this for a minute, letting his eyes roam over me. “You don’t expect anything of me,” he answered finally. “And you don’t play games. You’re just you, and when I’m with you, I guess I feel like I can just be me.”
It was a nice thing to say, and flattering, but something still clenched inside me at his words. He thought I was just being myself when I was with him, that I wasn’t playing any games, wearing any masks. But my whole life was a mask. The girl he thought he knew wasn’t me at all. I was glad the Lucas I knew was the real him, that he felt he could be himself with me, but what would he do when he saw the real Katie Archer? Would he still call her Hero? Would he still want to kiss her?
And even if he did, who would he become with her?
What would happen to the grinning, playful Lucas? What would I make him into?
Lowering my eyes, I rolled out from under him and lay on my side with my back to him. Gradually I felt him cuddle up behind me, curling his arm around me so my back was pressed into his front.
“Don’t push me away, Katie,” he whispered. “I want to be with you, only you. I haven’t been with any other girls since last semester.”
“Really?” I said, surprised by how desperately I wanted to believe him. He found my hand and laced my fingers with his.
“When exactly do you think I’ve had the time to chase after other girls? All I do is go to class and work and hang out with you!”
“I don’t know, in class? At work?”
“I’m not as good at multi-tasking as you might think,” he said, and I snickered.
Hugging me closer to him, he pressed his face into my hair and breathed deeply, just as I breathed him in whenever I saw him. It felt strange to be on the other end of it, like we’d suddenly switched lives. I wondered what life as Lucas Matthews would be like. As I thought about certain body parts that I’d definitely like to get a better look at, I was glad my back was turned, because I was suddenly blushing furiously.
“I want to take you out on a date,” Lucas announced, and I half-spun around, a protest ready on my lips. He pressed a finger against them before I could speak. “If I don’t take you out properly, how will you ever believe that I’m serious about you?”
“I believe you, Lucas,” I said lamely. “I’m just not sure…”
I’m not sure I won’t break you into pieces. I’m not sure I deserve you. I’m not sure I won’t ruin your life forever.
“Katie,” Lucas said, pulling at my arm until I turned to face him again, “there’s nothing you could ever tell me that would make me stop wanting you.”
My eyes rose to his as he said this. How did he know that was what I’d been thinking? And how could I tell him that it wasn’t only that I was afraid he would stop wanting me? I was afraid that eventually, when I was done with him, I wouldn’t want him, either.
“What if you’re wrong?” I said sadly.
“I’m not,” he replied simply. “Want me to show you how I know?”
He pushed his face forward, letting his lips come dangerously close to mine. He hadn’t kissed me yet tonight and my body had clearly been yearning for it, because it was as though he’d flipped a switch. Every nerve ending in me flared to life as I felt his bottom lip pressing against mine and I leaned forward to meet him. Then there was a loud knocking on the door and we both froze in place.
“Oh no, it’s Mom!” Lucas whispered. I let out a combination of a laugh and a groan as inwardly I cursed Mariella’s punctuality. Lucas gave me a quick and thoroughly unsatisfying peck on the lips before he launched himself off the bed and helped me up, too.
Looking back at the wrinkled sheets on the mattress, I realized we’d been lying right next to the pile of junk from my purse. Lucas reached forward and pulled his envelope out of the pile. “Didn’t you open this yet?” he asked.
“I didn’t have the chance,” I admitted, my curiosity piqued now. I tried to grab it out of his hands, but he held it out of my reach.
Mariella knocked on the door again.
“Better not keep Mom waiting,” Lucas warned, and we both went down the hall to answer the door.
Mariella was all smiles and thanks as we gathered Ethan’s toys and she carried him back to her apartment. Before she closed her door she gave me a big-eyed look that told me I’d better spill tomorrow, and I shrugged my shoulders at her like I had no idea what she meant.
When I came back to my own apartment, Lucas was clearing the dirty dishes off the coffee table, which was basically the hottest thing I’d ever seen a man do with dishes.
Then he walked over to the door and my heart gave a dispirited thud as I realized he was leaving.
“Why didn’t you wear a jacket?” I asked. “It’s freezing out.”
Lucas shrugged. “I guess I forgot it,” he said. “The minute I heard your voice I ran out the door.” He patted his jeans pockets. “I don’t even have my wallet on me.”
I tried not to show how much his words warmed my heart.
“So tomorrow,” he said.
“Tomorrow?” I replied.
“Date night,” he explained. “Say you’ll go with me and I’ll let you have this.” He held up the envelope.
“You already gave it to me; now you’re using it as blackmail?” I protested.
“Wow, I’ve never heard a girl call a date with me blackmail before,” Lucas mused as I tried in vain to snatch at the envelope.
Finally I gave up. “All right, Lucas,” I said. “I will go out with you, just once.”
“Just once with a chance of more?” he asked, lowering the envelope.
“A very small chance,” I said wickedly, grabbing it out of his hands. “And no guarantees!”
Lucas smiled the big smile all guys reserve for the moment when they know they’ve won. He leaned in and whispered in my ear, “You know how I love a challenge, Hero.”
Then he kissed me, pressing me backwards until I was against the door, his tongue probing my mouth with delicious intensity. He kissed me until I felt thoroughly kissed, until I felt breathless. He kissed the breath right out of me.
I followed him out to the stairs and watched him cross the lobby and go out the door before I opened the envelope.
It was a sketch, a view of what I assumed had to be his apartment window. He’d drawn the bare trees and the building across the street. There was a shaggy dog framed in one window looking totally forlorn. Beneath the drawing he’d written, “Without You.”
I hugged the sketch to my chest, a grin spreading across my lips as I followed the hallway back to my door. I’d dreaded this day for so long. It stunned me to realize how differently it had turned out than how I’d feared it would.
Or maybe no differently at all.
My door had drifted partly shut, and I noticed a paper tacked to the outside of it, a paper that hadn’t been there when Ethan and I had come in five hours earlier.
My eyes ran over the two words as my body broke out in a cold sweat.
FOUND YOU