Easy (30 page)

I laughed and he
kissed me, laughing, too. Still smiling, he kissed me again, hands wandering
over my waist and hip. As we started to make out, I panted out the fact that
Erin wasn’t leaving campus until tomorrow—and therefore could walk in any
moment.

“I thought you
said she was leaving today.”

I nodded. “She
was. But her ex-boyfriend is charting a relentless campaign to get her back,
and he wanted to see her tonight.”

His hand wandered
under my shirt, exploring. “So what happened with them? Why did they break up?”

My lips parted
when his hand cupped one breast, molding it to his palm as though it was meant
to fit there.

“Over me.”

His eyes widened
slightly and I smiled.

“No—not like that.
Chaz was… Buck’s best friend.” I hated how my body clenched when I thought of Buck,
how my teeth clenched when I said his name. Without even being present, he
triggered responses I couldn’t quell, and that infuriated me.

“He’s gone now,
right?” he asked. “He’s left campus?” Transferring his arm to my back, Lucas
pressed me closer, his hand at the back of my neck.

Closing my eyes, I
burrowed my head beneath his chin, nodding.

“I doubt he’ll be
allowed to come back next semester, even before the trial,” he said.

I breathed him in,
closing my mouth tight and inhaling the scent of him through my nose. I felt
sheltered by him. Safe. “I’m always looking over my shoulder. He’s like one of
those jack-in-the-box clowns… I never told you about the stairwell, did I?”

I wasn’t the only
one incapable of suppressing physical reactions. His body stiffened, and his
grip on me was suddenly less gentle, more charged. “No.”

Mumbling the story
into his chest, trying to stick to facts and nothing else so I could temper my
own response, I ended with, “He made it look like we’d done it in the
stairwell. And from the looks on everyone’s faces in the hall… from the stories
that circulated after… they believed him.” I forced the tears back. I didn’t
want to cry over Buck anymore. “But at least he didn’t get into my room.”

Quiet for so long
that I thought he wasn’t going to comment, he finally pushed me onto my back,
wedging one knee between mine and kissing me roughly. His hair tickled the side
of my face, and I wrenched my hands—trapped between us—free, plunging them into
his hair as though I could pull him closer.

The way he kissed
me felt like a brand. Like he was tattooing himself under my skin.

He knew all of my
secrets, and I knew his.

But that seeming
reciprocity was a lie—because he hadn’t been the one to reveal his own. I’d excavated
them, and worse, he was unaware of it.

My guilt mushroomed
between us, along with my longing for him to share that part of himself. To
trust me with it. I was going home in three days. I couldn’t bring this up with
miles and hours between us, or keep it to myself for weeks longer.

When we slowed
again, wrapped up in each other and allowing our libidos and heart rates time
to decelerate, I saw an opening.

“So you sort of live
with the Hellers, and they’re family friends?”

He watched me and
nodded.

“How did your
parents meet them?”

Turning onto his
back, his teeth slid over the ring in his lip and he sucked it into his mouth.
I recognized this as his stress-disclosing equivalent of Kennedy’s
neck-rubbing.

“They went to
college together.”

The earbuds had
been dislodged sometime during the last half hour. He turned the iPod off and
wound the wires around it tightly.

“So you’ve known
them
all
of your life.”

He pushed the iPod
into his front pocket. “Yeah.”

Images of what I’d
read, and what Dr. Heller had revealed, flashed in front of my eyes. Lucas
needed comforting—I’d never known anyone who needed it more—but I couldn’t console
him over something he hadn’t shared.

“What was your
mother like?”

He stared up at
the ceiling, and then closed his eyes, unmoving. “Jacqueline—”

The scrape of a
key in the door startled both of us. The room was unlit, except for a low-watt
desk lamp. When the door opened, a block of light, filled with Erin’s
silhouette, fell across the floor in the center of the room.

“J, are you
already asleep?” She whispered, her eyes still adjusting from the bright
hallway, or she’d have seen that I wasn’t alone on the bed.

“Um, no…”

Lucas sat up and
swung his feet to the floor, and I followed.
Timing is everything
, I
thought.

After tossing her
purse on her bed and kicking off her shoes, Erin turned back toward us. “Oh! Hey…
er. I think I might have some laundry I need to do…” She shrugged out of her
coat and grabbed her nearly-empty laundry basket.

“I was just
leaving.” Lucas bent to pull on his black boots and lace them up.

Mouthing,
Oh my
God I’m so sorry!
over his head, Erin was the picture of contrition.

I shrugged and
mouthed back,
It’s okay
.

Following Lucas
into the hall, I gripped my opposite arms, cold after the warmth of lying next
to him. “Tomorrow?”

He zipped his
leather jacket before turning to me, his lips set firm. His eyes slid from mine
and I felt the wall between us then, too late. Our gazes connecting, he sighed.
“It’s officially winter break. We should probably use it to take a break from
each other as well.”

I tried to form an
intelligible protest, but wasn’t sure what to say. I’d just pushed him to this,
after all. “Why?” The word rasped from me.

“You’re leaving
town. I will be, too, for at least a week. You need to pack up, and I’ll be
helping Charles get final grades posted over the next day or so.” His
justification was so logical; there was no concealed thread of emotion I could
wrench free. “Let me know when you’re back in town.” He bent to kiss me,
quickly. “Bye, Jacqueline.”

Chapter 25

As I drove to Lucas’s apartment
Sunday night, I reviewed the numerous reasons why popping up unannounced and
uninvited was a bad idea:
he might not be there, he might be busy, he thinks
he scared me away, he thinks we said goodbye
. On the other hand, I was only
going to be in town until Tuesday morning, and I couldn’t let him dismiss me
without a fight.

After I knocked, I
heard the bolt turn and then Lucas’s harsh voice through the door. “Who is it,
Carlie? Don’t just open the door—”

“It’s a girl.” The
door swung open and a pretty, blonde, dark-eyed girl was framed in the doorway.
She blinked at me, clearly waiting for an explanation of who I was and what I
wanted. I couldn’t speak. I was sure my heart had lodged itself in my esophagus
and stopped beating.

Lucas came up next
to her, scowling. When he saw me, his brows rose into the hair hanging over his
forehead. “Jacqueline? What are you doing here?”

My heart revved to
life and I turned to tear down the stairs. Suddenly I was airborne, my bicep
caught in his grip, swinging me from the top step as he brought me against his
chest and I almost,
almost
stomped on his instep.

“She’s Carlie
Heller,” he said into my ear, and I stilled. “Her brother Caleb is inside, too.
We’re playing video games.”

My heart still
pounded
fight-or-flight
as his words sunk in and I slumped against him,
feeling like a jealous idiot. I dropped my forehead to his chest. His heart was
pounding as hard as mine. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled against his soft t-shirt. “I
shouldn’t have come.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t
have come without telling me, but I can’t be sorry to see you.”

I looked up. “But
you said…?”

His eyes were
silver under the porch light. “I’m trying to protect you. From myself. I don’t
do…” he swung a finger back and forth between us “…this.”

My teeth chattered
when I spoke. “That doesn’t make any sense. Just because you haven’t before doesn’t
mean you can’t.” Too late, I apprehended a different, more likely reason for
his words. “Unless… you don’t want to.”

He sighed and released
his grip on my arm to run both hands through his hair. “It’s not… that…”

“Brrr! Are y’all
coming in, or what? ’Cause I’m closing this door.” I peeked around Lucas.
Carlie Heller looked young, but she didn’t look
that
young. She didn’t seem
resentful, though. And she appeared to be curious.

“Well, you asked
for it.” Threading his fingers through mine, Lucas turned toward the door and
pushed it wider. “We’re coming in.”

Carlie darted to a
corner of the sofa where Francis lay across a blanket. Scooping him up, she
flopped him over her shoulder like he was an inanimate object. After climbing
under the blanket, she rearranged the cat on her lap and picked up the
controller. Next to her sat a scowling boy with the same dark eyes, a bit
younger than (but just as sullen as) my middle school boys.

“Take all day,” he
mumbled in Lucas’s direction.

“
Rude
.” Carlie
elbowed him and he rolled his eyes.

Lucas took his
controller from the sofa cushion, gesturing for me to sit in the corner
opposite Carlie. “Guys, this is my friend, Jacqueline. Jacqueline, these
monkeys are Caleb and Carlie Heller.” Carlie and I exchanged hellos and Caleb
mumbled something in my direction. I pulled my feet beneath me and watched the
game over Lucas’s head.

When Carlie
ushered Caleb out fifteen minutes later, his sulking hadn’t decreased. He
glanced back at me. “I can’t have girls alone in
my
room.”

She swatted the
back of his head. “Shut it. Lucas is a
grown-up
, and you are just a horny
pre-adolescent
.”

I tried to
disguise my laugh as a cough as Caleb’s face flushed red, and he shot through
the door and pounded down the steps.

Carlie turned to
hug Lucas and beam at me. “Y’all have a good night,” she chirped, disappearing
through the door.

He watched her
walk across the yard and into the house, saying goodnight before shutting and
bolting the door. He turned, leaning back against it, and stared at me. “So. I
thought we said we were taking a break?” He didn’t seem angry, but he wasn’t
happy, either.

“
You
said
we were taking a break.”

His lips flattened.
“Don’t you have to check out of the dorm for several weeks?”

I remained in my
spot on the sofa, curled up into the corner. “Yes. I’m only here for two more
days.”

He stared at the
ground, his palms flat on the door behind him.

I tried to swallow
but couldn’t, my speech turning shaky. “There’s something I need to tell—”

“It’s not that I
don’t want you.” His voice was soft, and he didn’t look at me when he spoke. “I
lied, earlier, when I said I was protecting you.” His chin came up and we
stared at each other across the room. “I’m protecting myself.” He took a
visible breath, his chest rising and falling. “I don’t want to be your rebound,
Jacqueline.”

The memory of
Operation
Bad Boy Phase
crashed into me. Erin and Maggie had hatched the plan for me
to use Lucas to get over Kennedy, as though he had no feelings of his own, and
I’d gone along with it. I had no idea then that he’d been watching me the whole
semester. That once we began talking, his interest would grow stronger. That
finally, he would feel the need to turn away from me because of the depth of
those feelings, not because he felt nothing.

“Then why are you
assuming that role?” I unfolded myself from the tight little ball I’d become in
the corner of his sofa, and walked across the room, slowly. “It’s not what I
want, either.” As I approached, he remained frozen in place, sucking the ring on
his lower lip into his mouth.

Straightening, he
stared down at me as though he thought I might disappear in front of his eyes.
His hands came up to cup my face. “What am I gonna do with you?”

I smirked up at him. “I can think of a couple of things.”

***

“My mother’s name was Rosemary. She went by Rose.”

His disclosure
brought me back to earth. Lying pressed to his side, I’d been distractedly
tracing the dark red petals over his heart, wondering how to tell him what I
knew. Or if. “You did this in memory of her?” A lump stuck in my throat as my
finger outlined the stem.

“Yes.” His voice
was low and weighty in the dark room. He was so heavy with secrets that I couldn’t
imagine how he survived it day after day, never sharing the burden with anyone.
“And the poem on my left side. She wrote it. For my dad.”

My eyes stung. No
wonder his father had shut down. From what Dr. Heller told me, Ray Maxfield was
a logical, analytical person. His only emotional exception must have been his
wife. “She was a poet?”

“Sometimes.”

My head on his
arm, I watched his ghost smile appear in profile, and it looked different from that
angle. His face was scruffy, unshaved, and several places on my body boasted
the slightly chafed evidence of it.

“Usually, she was
a painter.”

I fought to ignore
my conscience, which wouldn’t quit babbling that I should tell him what I knew.
That I owed him the truth. “So she’s responsible for those artist genes all
mixed up with your engineering parts, eh?”

Turning onto his
side, he echoed, “Engineering
parts
? Which parts might that be?” A
mischievous smile tugged at his mouth.

I arched a brow
and he kissed me.

“Do you have any
of her paintings?” My fingers followed an orbit around the rose, and the hard
muscle beneath it flexed with my touch. Pressing my hand to his skin, I
absorbed the measured
thump-thump
of his heart.

“Yeah… but they’re
either in storage, or displayed in the Heller’s place, since they were close friends
of my parents.”