16
I slept right there on the floor, my cheek pressed into the hardwood, shivering long into the night in my flimsy dress. I didn’t even consider moving to the bed, and not only because it was a god-awful mess and my pillow—which I would be throwing out later—had a knife cut right through it. Not only because I didn’t want to lie down under those four letters, dripping with malice. The real reason I didn’t at least pull a blanket off the mattress to cover myself was that I didn’t think I deserved it.
My past had finally, completely caught up with me. My shame had nowhere to hide.
The sun woke me up the next morning, an errant ray of light falling through the window I’d failed to cover the night before to pierce my eyelids. I dragged myself off the floor and Turner did the same, uncurling himself from his position beside me on the floor. It was the first time he’d ever slept beside me.
Great. I’m so pathetic even my cat feels sorry for me.
Grabbing my glasses from my dresser, I stood in the middle of my room facing my reflection in the mirror. My face was a disaster, my eyes raw and red, my skin a wan yellow, my cheek inflamed from spending the night shoved into the uneven wooden floor. I’d forgotten to take out my contacts the night before, but it didn’t matter; I’d cried them out. My bedraggled hair fell over my shoulders in knots I knew it would take me hours to brush out. Anita’s dress, now so wrinkled I doubted it would ever be the same, hung on me weirdly, making me look about fifty years old. I realized it was because I was stooping, as though fifty years of sorrow were piled on my back. Overall, I looked like a homeless widow, or a mad feral girl. What was most frightening was that I recognized myself in these figures.
That’s me, I thought. That horror is me.
I didn’t know where Lucas had gotten to. For a long time, far longer than I would have expected, he’d stayed by the door, pleading with me to let him in. After a while I could tell he’d sat down with his back against it, because his voice had seemed to be calling right into my ear. As I sat there, still crying, I could almost feel the heat of him through the door, just a thin plank of wood separating his back from mine. Eventually I cried myself to sleep.
Peeling off the dress, I yanked on a pair of yoga pants and a Queen’s sweatshirt and pulled my nightmare hair into a ponytail, all the while peering at the crack at the bottom of the door to try to discern a shadow. But there wasn’t one. I assumed he’d gone home. Maybe he’d left a note.
My glance moved to the bed.
Or maybe not.
I didn’t touch the bed. I didn’t go anywhere near the bed. I stepped close enough to see that the red letters were not painted in blood, but in red paint, the paintbrush and tube pilfered from my supplies on the floor by my desk. Having seen this, I turned and left the room.
When I walked into the living room I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye and started, ready to scream, but it was only Lucas getting up from the couch. We stared at each other for a moment. His hair was sort of sticking up and his clothes were rumpled, but he was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Even if his expression was unreadable. The emotions that bubbled up in me at the sight of him were so strong they were almost frightening, mainly because I didn’t feel as though I had the right to them anymore. I’d never really felt like I had a right to be with Lucas. It figured that I was about to lose him.
“I didn’t think you’d stay,” I said. It was the only thought in my head.
Lucas practically gaped at me. “You thought I would leave you here alone after seeing that?” He gestured in the direction of my bedroom. “Katie, what the hell is going on?”
He stared at me as I tried to avoid his gaze. He hadn’t exactly raised his voice, but he was as worked up as I’d ever seen him, his every muscle tense as if he expected some nameless enemy to come crashing out of my room at any moment.
“Nothing, it’s fine,” I answered, though since my voice was shaking when I said it I think it was pretty unconvincing. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lucas flexing his fingers as though he was considering strangling me.
But he’s not going to strangle me, I reminded myself. Lucas is not Brandon.
Still, when he moved toward me I took a step back automatically. It seemed important to keep some space between us. I felt shaky and easily startled, like a wounded animal that has to be trained to trust again. I wasn’t ready to be touched. I didn’t mean to upset him, but the look of hurt that passed over his face said it all.
“Tell me you’re okay,” he said tensely.
“I’m really fine,” I answered, remembering how I’d said the same thing to my mother just a few weeks ago. It was as much a lie now as it had been then. “I just…overreacted a little about…something, but I’m really fine. Everything’s fine.”
“You’re fine,” he repeated, his tone fully implying how little he believed me. He picked up his cell phone from the coffee table. “Are we calling the cops?” he said. His thumb was poised over the call button and I could see that the numbers 9-1-1 had already been entered. I wondered how long he’d been sitting on the couch staring at those numbers.
“No,” I practically yelled, lunging forward and taking the phone out of his hands. He let me do it. “No cops.”
He stared at me.
“I’ll make some coffee,” I said, trying to sound normal, chipper, but I suspected I came off as mildly deranged instead. “Do you want eggs?”
I heard him make an exasperated noise, and when I stepped toward him to get to the kitchen, steadily avoiding his eyes, he took my arm and pulled me down onto the couch. He wasn’t forceful about it, but the way his hand was clamped on my arm definitely indicated he wasn’t about to let me go anywhere.
“Katie, you just spent about ten straight hours crying while I listened to you through the door, basically losing my mind with worry. You say you’re fine? You are about as far from fine as you could possibly be, and I’m not feeling exactly ship-shape myself. We are not going to sit down and have breakfast like everything is normal right now, okay? That is not going to happen.”
I could feel him peering down to get a look at my face as he’d done to me so many times before, but I’d tucked my chin in so tightly there was no way he was getting a glimpse. Taking a different tack, he leaned forward and placed one hand on the armrest and one on the cushion behind my back, forcing me to lean back and raise my head.
“There she is,” he said as my eyes met his at last. His gaze was steady and unflinching and it hurt like hell. I didn’t want him to see me now, like this. I didn’t want him to know the girl who’d spent the night lying on the floor. I wanted to get away, to hide, but he had me pinned. Ducking under his arm and scurrying back to my room was a little too pathetic even for me, but that didn’t mean I didn’t consider it.
He reached for my face and I had to grit my teeth to stop myself from turning away. Ever so gently he removed my glasses then smoothed his thumb over my throbbing eye. His palm cupped my cheek and a current of warmth flowed through it and into my body; it felt so good, so safe and comforting that I felt tears welling under my eyelashes. I clamped my eyes shut, trying desperately to keep those tears from falling, but one escaped anyway. Lucas’s thumb brushed across my cheek and smoothed it away.
Then I was in his arms, though I wasn’t sure exactly how I’d gotten there. His body finally seemed to relax, the strain in his muscles disappearing as I buried my face in his shirt and his hand smoothed my hair. I heard him let out a long sigh. Though no more tears came, I felt an aching deep inside, as though I was still weeping. A desperate need I’d been ignoring for such a long time was rearing its head at last—the need to be held, to be known, to be loved.
Tucking my head under his chin, Lucas said, “Do you know how hard it was for me to sit outside your door and listen to you crying for hours,” he said, “when all I wanted to do was hold you like this?”
I wanted to tell him that he could hold me forever if he wanted to, but the words stuck in my throat. I could only stare up at him mutely as he pressed his lips to my eyelids and my forehead and my cheeks, and when more tears began to fall, this time without my even realizing it, he kissed those away, as well.
“I know you don’t need a protector. You don’t need me to take care of you. But I need you to promise never to do that to me again.” He looked down at me, his eyes so full of pain I would have agreed to anything. “If you’re hurting, I need to be with you. I need to hold you. Last night…it almost drove me mad. I would have kicked the door down except I was pretty sure you were leaning against it.”
“I was,” I admitted.
“I don’t ever want to feel that way again,” Lucas went on. “You have to promise me you won’t lock me out again. Can you do that for me?”
Could I? Could Katie Archer, the girl who kept everyone out, the girl who prided herself on not needing anyone, ever, the girl who wore her solitude like a protective cloak, could she promise to let someone in? His request was so much larger than he knew, but I felt too spent to resist it. I wanted to give this to him. I wanted to let myself need him and be needed in return.
I wanted to let Lucas in.
“I’ll try,” I croaked. It was the most honest thing I’d ever said to him.
I worried that it wouldn’t be enough, but it earned me a small smile and the whisper of a kiss on my lips, so I guessed it was good enough for him, for now, anyway.
“Did you touch anything in there?” Lucas asked as I got up to finally make us that pot of coffee.
I shook my head once. Funnily enough, I’d almost forgotten about the mess in my room and what it meant. Remembering wasn’t pleasant.
“Good,” he said. “I’m going to make a call, and then I’m going to take you somewhere. You don’t have any plans today, do you?”
“No,” I replied as he walked toward the front door to go make his call in the hall.
“Just to be with you,” I whispered once he was out of earshot. “My only plan is to be with you.”
The words thrilled me as they came out of my mouth. It was like the first time I said a dirty word—so exciting, and yet still a little bit scary. Forbidden.
And most thrilling of all, I knew they were true.
A spring breeze blew through the car window, ruffling my hair, as we drove out of town. The snow had mostly melted away and brown grass stretched away from the highway to meet bare trees, their branches swaying. Coming from Vancouver, this year I’d experienced my first real winter—with snowstorms and freezing rain and icy streets, as promised—and I could already tell spring was becoming my favourite season in this part of the country. The wonderful release of being able to go outdoors without bundling up, to roll down the window, to wear shoes again, was intoxicating. If the world could start anew—leaves growing, plants waking up from their slumber, crocuses blooming—then maybe I could, too.
I looked over at Lucas as he stared out at the road. He’d been oddly quiet since we’d gotten into the car, which should have worried me, but it didn’t. A really determined part of me insisted I couldn’t doubt him every time he frowned, that I take my newfound trust in him seriously. He’d caught a glimpse of my demons and he hadn’t run away. It was more than I’d ever hoped for from him, from anyone. Of course, he still didn’t know the whole story, but I was trying to put that out of my mind.
“Who’d you call?” I asked as we passed the empty fields of a farm.
“Eric,” Lucas answered. “I had to ask him if I could keep his car for the day…and tell him I never returned it last night.
“Did he ask why?” I said as I gazed out at the barren landscape. Though I trusted Lucas not to judge me for spending the night weeping, I didn’t trust anyone else. I wondered what he’d told his roommate about last night. The idea than anyone else might know about the chaos in my bedroom made my stomach knot.
“Why I stayed over last night?” Lucas said. “He didn’t have to ask. Eric knows how I feel about you.”
“He does?” There was something exciting about knowing that Lucas liked me so much he’d even told his friends about it, but at the same time I couldn’t picture that scene. Had he admitted his feelings for me during a gossip session over margaritas at the local bar? Or had he whispered it across the room when they were all lying in their beds, confiding secrets under cover of dark? I realized I had no idea how guys interacted with one another when they were alone.
Then it occurred to me what “staying over” usually meant.
I said, “So he probably thinks we…” Though we’d been headed in the general direction of sex the night before, I still didn’t have the nerve to finish the sentence.
“Eric doesn’t think much,” Lucas reassured me, “so I wouldn’t worry about it.” Seeing the frown of worry on my face he took his hand off the wheel and pulled a lock of my hair playfully. “You should stop thinking, too! Besides, we’re almost there.”
I hadn’t asked him where we were going and I didn’t ask now. Instead, I took his advice and let my mind go blank for the rest of the ride, staring out the window, watching spring come rolling in. Eventually, we took an exit and entered a small town, though I didn’t see the “Welcome To” sign, so I wasn’t sure where we were. I only clued in when Lucas slowed the car to a stop on a residential street in front of a neat bungalow.
“That’s my parents’ house,” he said, looking past me out the window.
“Oh, are we going in?” I said, taking off my seatbelt and immediately worrying about my choice of clothes. If I’d known I was going to meet his parents, I would never have worn yoga pants, my glasses, or this puffy face.
“Not today,” Lucas replied, and there was a heaviness in his voice that implied this statement was non-negotiable. Not that I was about to fight him on it.
We sat a little longer looking at the house with its brown-shingled roof and flower boxes that were empty now but would be filled with cheerful blooms in a month’s time, I was sure. There was a great climbing tree in the front yard. I wondered if little Lucas had ever sat in those branches. Through the front window’s sheer curtains I saw someone moving around inside, probably his mother. When I turned to Lucas again, he was putting the car back into drive.
“That’s Jenny’s house,” he said, pointing, as we passed a similar bungalow with a red door on our way down the street.
So Jenny was literally the girl next door. Yeah, that didn’t make me jealous. Not at all.
Lucas pulled the car into a lot beside a large park about two blocks from his house. We walked across the dead grass to an empty basketball court dotted with puddles from newly melted snow. I thought maybe we’d sit down on one of the benches that ran along the sides of the court, but Lucas passed those and sat down right on the centre circle on a patch of dry cement. I sat down beside him.
He was quiet for a while, thoughtful, and it began to dawn on me that this trip might not be about last night at all. There was something else making Lucas so serious and melancholy, something that I suspected had nothing to do with me. Not wanting to question him in this moment, I looked out at the little wood overlooking the court and felt a spark of recognition. These were the trees Lucas had painted when I’d told him to paint from the gut. He must have taken the photograph from the exact spot I was standing in. This was the place Lucas loved.
“I used to play ball here almost every day after school,” Lucas said finally. “Sometimes my dad and I would come by on the weekends and play together. He was better than me. He almost made it to the pros, but then…”
“But then?” I prompted gently.
“But then I came along,” he finished. There was so much sadness in his eyes as he gazed out at his beloved playground. I wanted so much to wipe that pain away, to make it better, even if I didn’t understand it. I wondered if this was how Lucas had felt all last night while I’d been alone in my room crying myself out, and I felt a hard tug of guilt in my chest. This was agony.
I took one of his hands in mine and kissed it, holding it tight.
When Lucas spoke again, he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking out at those trees. “Katie, I wish you would tell me what happened yesterday, who broke into your place, who this person is that you’re so afraid of that you don’t even want to call the police. I’m guessing it’s the same person you were referring to when you got so upset that I nearly beat up Buck Mullard.”
He glanced at me for confirmation, I could feel it, but I could only stare at my feet.
“But I also know it’s not fair of me to expect you to tell me all your secrets when I’m keeping so many myself,” he went on.
“You don’t have to tell me anything, Lucas,” I said, running my fingers over his hand. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“But I want to,” he said. “No, I have to. I need you to know this. I need to get it out of me.”
I looked up at him and nodded. I knew what it felt like to keep something inside of you for too long, to want desperately to tell someone, to be rid of it. I’d just never tried.
Lucas was braver than me.
“It was the end of last summer when my dad got sick, just a few weeks before the start of classes,” he began. “Stomach cancer, stage four. It came on all of a sudden. One day he was fine and the next he was confined to his bed, crippled by this disease he didn’t understand. He was so outraged about it. He kept working for a little while, but pretty soon he had to stay home. The money for my tuition had to go to pay for the drugs that weren’t covered by insurance, and to pay the mortgage because my mother had gone down to part-time so she could take care of him.”
“So that’s why you had to quit the team,” I said, thinking out loud. “So you could get a job to pay for your tuition.”
Lucas nodded. “But it wasn’t just that,” he said. “I didn’t really want to play anymore. It was like the love I had for the game just left me when he got sick. He was the one who’d wanted me to play in the first place. Basketball was the thing he loved, and I came to love it, too, but without him calling me to ask me how practice went and coming to all the games…there didn’t seem to be much point in playing anymore.”
I tried to think of giving up painting, of losing interest in it, but I couldn’t. My art was what got me through. Before Lucas, and especially in high school, I often felt like it was the only thing I had. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like if this thing I was so good at, the only thing I had to hold on to, were suddenly taken from me.
“I offered to take a year off from school, get a job to pay for the bills, but they wouldn’t hear of it. They didn’t even want me to quit the team, but there was no way I could keep up with practice, work, and my schoolwork. So I came back to school in the fall, and the truth is, I was relieved to get the hell out of there. Being in that house with my dying father was destroying me. I just wanted to get back to my carefree life of girls and partying and forget any of it was happening.”
He spat out those last words, looking completely disgusted with himself.
I touched his arm. “It’s natural to want to escape something like that, to deny it. There are some things the mind just isn’t equipped to handle.” I hoped he couldn’t tell I was speaking from personal experience.
“But he needed me,” he said, his weary eyes searching mine like he was trying to find in them the solace he couldn’t give his father. He looked so forlorn I couldn’t bear to be separated from him, so I leaned into him, wrapping my arms around his chest, and he locked a grateful arm around me.
“I didn’t go home to visit all semester,” Lucas said. “I avoided his calls, but the guilt weighed on me. I stopped partying. I hooked up with a few girls, just out of habit, I guess, but…”
I could feel his hesitation. He didn’t want to talk about other girls with me. “It’s okay,” I said quietly.
He cleared his throat. “Afterward I realized I couldn’t even remember their names. I was just going through the motions, and although the sex was great…” He paused here again. “It wasn’t making me feel any better, so I just stopped dating altogether. I guess I got a little depressed. Nothing really seemed to matter—not my classes, not my friends. The only thing that mattered what happening somewhere else, and I couldn’t go there.”
I ran my hand up and down his back, thinking of the two of us last semester, both locked in our own secret miseries. “I wish I’d been there,” I said sadly. “I wish I could have helped you.”
“You’re helping me now,” he said, planting a kiss on the top of my head. I reached up and kissed his stubbly cheek before he went on.
“By the time Christmas break came along, I was dreading going back home, sure they’d both be furious with me. But they weren’t. I think my dad was just glad he could see me at all before… The cancer had spread into his lungs and his pancreas. He didn’t even look like himself anymore. The strong, healthy, barrel-chested father I remembered was gone forever, and then…”
I placed a hand on Lucas’s chest, right over his heart. If I could have, I would have reached into his chest and held his heart in my hands, held it together. Because I was pretty sure it was about to break.
“He died just after New Year’s,” Lucas said, his voice cracking on those last words. Beneath my hand, his lungs stuttered as they expanded and collapsed. He was trying to hold in his tears.
Getting onto my knees, I took his face in my hands as he’d done mine this morning, and though there were no tears to wipe away, there were cheeks to kiss, and eyelids and lips. I covered his face with kisses as he held my arms tight. “I’m so sorry, Lucas,” I whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Me, too,” he said, then pulled me right into his lap and wrapped both his arms around me, placing his chin on my shoulder so his cheek was right next to mine. “You’re the only one I’ve told.”
“You didn’t tell your friends, your roommates, Oleg, Tim?” I asked.
He shook his head. “At first I didn’t want them to know. I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone. And then…I knew what they wanted of me. They want me to be the same old Lucas, always ready to party, easygoing and fun. The basketball star. The stud. They wouldn’t have understood.”
“You never gave them the chance,” I said, trying my best to be delicate. “They might have surprised you. I bet they would have wanted to be there for you.”
I frowned, realizing how hypocritical it was of me to preach openness when I’d been lying about my pain to the people closest to me for much longer than a couple of months. Try six years.
“I’m not so sure,” Lucas replied, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “But that’s why I was so glad when I met you.”
“What do you mean?” I said as I interwove my fingers with his.
“You didn’t know me before,” he answered. “You don’t expect anything of me. I can be quiet with you, or even sad, and you don’t question it. You don’t need me to be the old Lucas. When I’m with you it’s like I can breathe again.”
I pulled my hands away from his. “So that’s why you like me? Because I didn’t know you before this?” I said, his words stirring up something I didn’t like in my stomach. “Then I could be anyone, any girl you happened to stumble upon. It’s not really me that you want.”
I shifted in his lap, trying to dislodge his arms, but he wouldn’t let me go. “You’re not just any girl,” Lucas said steadily, his lips warm against my ear. “You’re the girl who didn’t even know what sport I used to play, who never noticed me in class, who doesn’t care about the next big party. You’re the girl who almost got into a fight with three guys twice her size to save a cat, who punched Buck Mullard in the face, who got me through a panic attack and then handed me, a jock, a sketchbook and expected me to draw. You’re the girl who would never even think of chasing me, who doesn’t care what I look like.” I wasn’t so sure about that one. “You’re the girl who told me she just wanted to be friends. Do you know the last time a girl said something like that to me?”
“A while?” I said timidly.
He squeezed me tight. “Try never,” he said. “And as much as I loved it, I don’t want to be your friend, Hero. I want to be with you. Only you. The girl wearing glasses and sweatpants with wild hair flying everywhere and a cat inside her jacket. The girl I can’t stop myself from wanting to kiss and hold in my arms and do everything else with. The girl who makes me feel like I might get through this if she’s there next to me. That’s the girl I want.”
Suddenly I was the one whose chest was heaving with unshed tears, whose heart felt like it might burst. I only had to turn my head slightly to find his lips waiting for me, those sweet, soft lips and that moan-inducing tongue. Before long we were lying back on the cement and neither of us felt much like crying anymore. Breaking our kiss before things got too out of hand—we were in the middle of a playground, after all—I lay my head on his shoulder and we both looked up at the cloudy sky.
“So I’m the only one who knows?” I said.
“Well, family, too,” Lucas said. “And there’s Jenny. She came to the funeral with her family. They’ve lived next door since I was six.”
“I’m glad you have her,” I said, and it was the honest truth. “It must be comforting to have somebody from home so close by.”
“She’d actually pretty pissed at me most of the time,” Lucas admitted. “I haven’t come back here to see Mom since the semester began. It’s just…too painful. But Jenny comes every few weeks and she checks in on my mom. She thinks I’m neglecting her. She keeps telling me how much she needs me now, how she’s all alone. She yells at me a lot.”
The scene on the bench suddenly made a lot more sense and I wanted to kick myself for reading it so incorrectly. I’d thought they were having a lovers’ quarrel and really she’d been scolding him for not visiting his grieving mother.
“You’ll go see her when you’re ready,” I said.
“I will,” he said. “Soon. Just not today. Maybe I’ll call her tonight instead. I could tell her about you.”
“Telling your mother about me?” I said teasingly, pinching his stomach. “That sounds pretty serious.”
“Well, that’s how serious I am about you,” Lucas said, and there was no teasing in his voice at all. It made my heart ache. My heart was really getting a workout today.
Lucas rolled onto his side and I adjusted my head so his arm cushioned it and we were lying face to face.
“That’s why it’s so hard for me to see what I did last night and not want to jump into action. I care so much about you, Katie. If someone’s trying to hurt you—”
“Nobody’s trying to hurt me,” I said quickly, the lie turning sour on my lips as I said it. He’d been so incredibly honest with me, so vulnerable. This was the moment when I had to decide if I was going to be just as honest back.
“But you know who broke into your apartment. That’s why you didn’t want to call the cops,” Lucas said. His eyes were fastened on my face. I could tell he’d been holding in these questions all morning, though he’d been dying to ask them. I wished he would look away, just for a moment, so I could think straight, compose my thoughts.
Compose my thoughts, I wondered, or compose my lies?
“I-I think it’s…an old boyfriend,” I forced out.
“Does he go to Queen's?” Lucas asked.
“No…” I said. “I’m not even sure if he’s the one who broke in. It might have been one of his friends. He’s been…contacting me lately. Texting me. He might be sort of…stalking me.”
All at once Lucas sat up, pulling me up with him. His eyes were wide and serious, his expression tense. He pulled out his cell.
“I’m calling the cops,” he said.
“No, don’t,” I said, covering the screen with my hand before he could dial. “It’s not as bad as you think!”
“Katie, you’re telling me an old boyfriend is stalking you, that he broke into your apartment, and you expect me just to do nothing? I’m not going to let this guy hurt you!”
“But I’m not hurt,” I protested. “He hasn’t done anything to me except rip up a couple of my paintings. Please, if you call the cops it’ll do more damage to me than to him.” If the police got involved the whole story would come out, I knew it. And then everyone would know I was a liar, Lucas included. I pictured myself being led away in handcuffs. I pictured the look on my mother’s face, on Emily’s face.
All of a sudden I couldn’t catch my breath. I pressed my palm to my chest as I struggled to get in some air. Lucas’s face was narrowing to a pinpoint.
“Okay, we won’t call the cops,” Lucas said, dropping his phone in his lap as he put an arm around my shoulders. “Just breathe, Katie. It’s okay. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” I pressed my cheek into Lucas’s chest as my heartbeat slowed and air came rushing into my lungs.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled into his shirt. “It’s just that everything that’s happened between Brandon and me…the story is long and complicated. I just—”
“You don’t have to tell me everything,” Lucas said, smoothing a hand over my hair. “Just promise me if you’re ever in trouble you’ll come to me. If you see him anywhere, if you hear from him, if you just think you see him, or if you feel scared, I’m the guy you call, got it?”
“Yeah,” I said weakly, trying to imagine what that would be like. If I really did as Lucas asked, I’d probably be on the phone with him twenty-four seven.
We stayed a little while longer, snuggled in each other’s arms, watching the clouds rushing by as the wind picked up. Then Lucas helped me up off the ground and we started walking back to his car. It had only been about an hour, but I felt like days had passed since our drive into Christie. This morning was a distant memory. My mind was full of everything I knew now, and everything he didn’t know, my brain working so hard to keep it all straight I was starting to get a headache.
“So his name’s Brandon?” Lucas said as he unlocked the passenger’s side door for me.
I nodded.
“Will it freak you out if I say I wish I could find Brandon and pummel him in the face?” Lucas said. “I won’t, I promise. But I really, really want to.”
I smiled weakly as we got into the car, but the truth was his words did freak me out. Now that Lucas was involved in my life, I worried that he’d also get involved in my past. I didn’t want to pull him into that mess. I didn’t want him to defend me. I didn’t want to make those same old mistakes again.
Lucas had said he wanted to be with me, only me. I tried to cheer myself up with this thought as he drove us back to Kingston, but the lies I’d told him kept popping up in my mind, dampening my mood. Well, I hadn’t lied exactly. Every word I’d said to him was true. I just hadn’t told him the whole story.
That’s right, Katie, said the familiar voice inside my head. That’s how you lie without lying. That’s how you make sure he never, ever knows the real you. Because when he does, he won’t want you anymore, you can count on that.
“What does he think you lied to him about?” Lucas asked as we approached campus. “I saw what he wrote on your wall.”
Keep lying, girl, the voice said.
“Just something that happened a long time ago,” I said.
Once upon a time I’d thought of the truth was my enemy. I’d lied without question, without even thinking about it, the lies ready and waiting on my tongue, prepared ahead of time for easy use. Now, as I butchered the truth to suit my purposes, I found that lies, even lies of omission, were starting to take their toll.
I’d didn’t want to lie to Lucas ever again.
I just wasn’t sure I was ready to face the truth.