In Too Hard (Freshman Roommates Trilogy, Book 3) (23 page)

“Oh yeah,” I said, lifting a hand, waving it, and then dropping it, like it was a very breezy decision for my mom to keep her daughter’s rapist in the house all through my high school years. “When she was pregnant with Liam a couple of years later I made myself scarce through the last few months of her pregnancy, and when I
did
sleep at home, I made Duncan sleep with me.”

“And when you didn’t sleep at home?”

Fork in the road time. Tell him everything and taint his vision of me? Or fudge over the truth and let him think of me as just another Bribury Basic who easily overcame a tough break in her early teens?

“Well, for the first year after the rape, I really acted out. Grades went down in school. I became sexually promiscuous. A self-destructive streak really took over.”

“I would image that’s common behavior after something like that. Especially if you weren’t able to talk about it,” he said.

“Textbook, actually. Which I learned later.”

“I am so sorry that happened to you, Syd. I know I can’t take away any of that pain, but, I…”

He didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t blame him. I just continued to tell my story. “A year into that kind of shit, when I was fourteen, I was held back because I’d failed all my classes. They had me work with a counselor, Ms. Francis, and she…” How to explain how much Ms. Francis had done for me? And mainly by giving me one book to read. “She pulled me out of it. Really worked with me that year to make me see that it wasn’t my fault. She tried to help legally too, but my mother called me a liar. They would have removed me from the house, but by that time I was so in love with little Duncan that I couldn’t bear the thought of being away from him. I was doing a lot of his care by that point.”

“Thank God for Ms. Francis,” he said, giving me another kiss, this time on the shoulder. It felt good, warm and comforting.

“Yeah, she was great. I don’t know where I’d be without her. My grades went back up. Skyrocketed, actually.”

“Your true genius being unlocked by Ms. Francis.”

“Well, she was wonderful, but the thing that really turned me around was a book she gave me. I really think reading that book was the turning point for me. I was so in tune with it, it spoke to me so much. It pulled me out of myself, out of my situation and allowed me to see life as it could be, not as it was. It, literally,” I jabbed him at the use of that word, and he chuckled, “saved my life.”

“Wow. The power of a good book, right?”

“Yes. It changed everything for me. I read it over and over, still do. And besides the book itself, it instilled in me my love of all books, which of course is a gift in and of itself.”

“What was it?”

I took a deep breath. Another damn fork. In for a penny, in for a pound. “
Gangster’s Folly
.”

I felt Billy’s entire body stiffen behind me. And not in a good way.

“Seriously? My book?” he said, and moved to sit up.
 

A chill rippled through me, and not just because he’d removed his body heat. He slid to the end of the couch, and I pulled my legs from his lap and sat up myself, pulling the blanket around me, the end of it long enough to still cover most of Billy.
 

I loved his body, but I had a feeling we would need to be covered for where this conversation was headed.

As if he was thinking the same thing, he rose from the couch and pulled his jeans on in the dark. He tiptoed through the papers still on the floor and turned on his desk lamp, casting the whole room in a soft glow. He then returned and sat down on the arm of the couch, further away from me.

“Okay, let’s…can we talk about this? My book?”

“Yes,” I said, not really wanting to. But I’d said all I’d wanted to say on the subject of that bastard Steven, my heartless mother, and my long road to finding myself again. I’d happily talk about how much Billy’s book meant to me, even though I sensed it probably weirded him out a little.

“I mean, I knew you’d read
Folly
, we talked about it when we were FaceTiming, but I guess I thought that was fairly recently. Like, because you were taking my class or something.”

“Well, I did reread it right before fall semester started. Because I was taking your class.” I rose from the couch and dropped the blanket, reveling in the soft moan Billy let out. I didn’t hide myself from him as I dressed.

“Reread,” he said from behind me. “You said you read it more than once?”

I fastened my bra and slid my shirt over my head. “Yes. Although not as often as that first year.” I looked over my shoulder at him, trying to let him see the significance of what his words did for me back then. “That year when I was…recovering, I read it over and over. Probably twenty times.”

I was expecting a softness on his face, a look of…
something
to tell me he got it. Got what I was trying to do. Thank him.

But that was not the look he had on his face. His gaze followed me as I, now fully dressed, moved back to the couch and sat on the arm opposite him, bringing my bare feet up to land on the place where our heads had been moments ago.

I shrugged while he continued to stare at me. “I’ve probably reread it a couple of times a year since then.”

A strangled sound came out of him, part laugh and part…I wasn’t really sure. His strong chest heaved with a huge breath and he put his head down. I admired his body in the dim light. The way his muscles bunched in his shoulders, the long sinewy arms that held me so tight. The hands on his knees, which had done indescribable things to my body all afternoon.

“
Gangster’s Folly
saved my life, Billy,” I said only loudly enough for him to hear me. Scrubbing his hand across his chin he looked up at me, and the look on his face made me flinch.

Pain. There was such…pain. It was almost as if someone had hit him. Or hurt him very, very badly.

“What…?” I whispered, but he held up a hand to stop me.

“One question,” he said, and I nodded. “Did you come to Bribury because I was going to be here?”

It was complicated, and I tried to parse my thoughts on the best way to word it, but my pause, momentary as it was, was too much for him.

“You did, didn’t you?” he said, the pain from his face now clearly in his voice. “Syd,” he whispered, but it wasn’t directed at me. Instead, my name floated in the air like some kind of smoke signal. But I wasn’t sure what it meant. It was like I didn’t know the code. There was something missing here, that I wasn’t getting.

“That’s not exactly how it happened,” I said, about to explain that Bribury was in my final three, and that his being here seemed like more of a tipping point than a sign from above.

Although, that wouldn’t be totally truthful—I had taken Billy being at Bribury for a year as a sign that it was the place for me.

But not in the creepy stalker way that I now realized he was imagining.

He was shaking his head as I opened my mouth, so I stopped. “I think…I think we might have found the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said with such sweetness, such melancholy in his voice, that I instantly knew that I was going to walk out of this office no longer having Billy Montrose as my Valentine.

The pain wracked through my body, almost physically pushing me back so that I had to put my hand on the back of the couch to steady myself. But I kept my voice firm and unemotional as I said, “Explain that, please.”

He didn’t look at me as he rattled off points that I’d thought we’d come to terms with long ago. “You’re a student. You were
my
student. You
are
my employee.” He looked back at me, then hung his head and said softly, “And you’re a Folly Dolly.” There was such sadness in his voice that I had to stop myself from crawling across the couch and comforting him.

Yeah, comfort
him
, when I was the one getting dumped. And for what? Being a fan of his writing?

“What’s a Folly Dolly?” I asked.

He waved a hand of dismissal, which then dropped to his thigh. The thigh I’d rested my head against a couple of hours ago after I’d taken him in my mouth. “Nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

As he continued, I looked away from him, toward the pile of papers I’d laid out earlier. Could this be about them? Had he held his peace at the time, but the more he thought about it, the more pissed he’d become thinking that a lowly college freshman deigned to tell him how to structure his story?

While I’d been drifting asleep in his arms, had he been silently stewing?

“I mean, it’s just not healthy—you and I. And I might have overlooked that in the beginning because I, selfish bastard that I am, desperately wanted you. But, knowing your history, what you’ve been through, you deserve to be in a good, solid relationship. One that—”

“Are you comparing what we have with what Steven did to me?” I snapped at him, my head coming up from looking at my handiwork to meet his stunned face.

“No. No. Jesus, no.” He was shaking his head. He raised a hand, as if he wanted to reach out to me, but instead he dropped it and rose from the couch, stepping to the other side of the arm, as if to distance himself even further from me.

Like just breaking up with me wasn’t distance enough.
 

“I just think that maybe we need to end things now. There are only a couple of months left before I leave anyway. I want you to be happy, Syd, but I don’t think I can give you what you need.”

My mind was whirling with trying to figure out just what exactly was freaking him out. Was it me taking it upon myself to basically re-write his work in progress? The fact that I’d been a fan of his book before I knew him? Or the fact that I’d been raped? Or that I’d dealt with that for a time by sleeping around?

Christ, piled together like that, it was a wonder he’d want to be with me at all.

The shame I’d felt all those years ago came creeping back. I tried to stuff it down, but it wrapped itself around the insecurity I had about even being here at Bribury, about being where I didn’t belong, and together they stood arm in arm and attempted to destroy me.

But I wasn’t the person I was at thirteen. And I wasn’t even the same scared, insecure girl who stood in front of a rack of combat boots only months ago.

In the end, it didn’t matter which of the facts was the silver bullet in my relationship with Billy. The truth was I didn’t even care.

He didn’t want to be with me anymore.

Some semblance of courage and strength, which I hadn’t even realized I possessed, bubbled up in me.

“Okay. If you don’t want to be with me, I’m not going to beg,” I said. I slid off the couch (that glorious old, creaky couch where I had learned what sex with someone you love could be) and started packing up my stuff, getting my socks and shoes on.

“It’s just that I—” He thankfully stopped when I held up my hand, very Queens talk-to-the-hand style.

I had my stuff packed and my coat halfway on when I turned to him. Pointing at the box on the credenza I said, “How many more are at your apartment?”

He shook his head, bringing his focus back to what I was saying. Just like he used to do in class. My throat tightened as I remembered watching him speak to us three days a week. I’d had so much more than that these past three months.

And now I wouldn’t even have that much.

“Umm…two.”

I nodded as I slid my backpack strap over my shoulder. “Bring them in for Monday. We’ll go back to the old schedule. I’ll come in the evenings after dinner. After you’re gone.”

He nodded his agreement, and my heart, secretly hoping that he’d balk at that idea, broke a little bit more.

“I should finish up next week, or the week after. Then my work on the project is done.”

“I can ask payroll to move up your last payment to coincide—”

“No. It’s fine for the direct deposits to come on April and May first. Let’s just keep it that way, even though I’m going to finish up early.”

“Okay,” he said.

He’d set up my employment with HR and payroll so that my two thousand dollars (what was left after taxes) was deposited directly in my bank just like my paycheck for my admin job.

It took away any awkwardness of him paying me directly each month. When we weren’t…us, it allowed us to not interact, not see each other. When we
were
…us, it took away the dynamic of him handing money to the woman he was sleeping with.

“Syd,” he said as I had my hand on the doorknob. I turned. “I’m sorry. So, sorry. The last thing I want to do is to hurt you. I…” He still stood at the couch, and didn’t move closer to me. Didn’t try to reach out to me, and he certainly didn’t try to get me to stay.

The work he’d done, the pages he’d so eloquently written, stretched like a white sea of snow between us. As cold and frosty as the remains of Montrose and me.

Ha. How was that for a goddamned metaphor! I was learning from the best.

“Goodbye, Billy,” I said and walked out the door.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Montrose

A
month later I pushed “send” on the email to Nora with
Down In Flames
attached.