Lie to Me (22 page)

He means it. Something inside me flutters awake, like a flock of birds breaking into the air, and I find it hard to breathe. I can hear my own heartbeat, and I can feel my pulse between my legs.

 Oh God.

“You have to sell,” he says.

“What if I don’t?”

“He’ll make you.”

I grip the edge of the kitchen counter. “No one can make me do anything.”

“You don’t know Alex like I do,” Marcus says.

“So tell me about him,” I say, and my voice is so urgent it surprises me. It surprises me realizing how much I want to know about this part of his life. About the part of his life that took him from me. “You work for him, you’ve been working for him, and more than that, he’s your—”

“Don’t say it,” he says, putting a finger to my lips. “Don’t tell me what he is to me. It’s…it’s fucking complicated.”

His finger. On my lips.

It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to suck it into my mouth. Instead I bite my lip, and I can see what that does to him. He shifts his weight, and I can feel his erection against me. It’s not even remotely fair.

“Don’t touch me when you’re trying to tell me what to do,” I say.

He doesn’t say anything. Just exhales powerfully. But he moves his finger.

 “And what if I did sell?” I ask. Why am I bothering to pretend this is some kind of casual question? It’s anything but casual. “What would happen then? You’d be gone, right? ‘Thanks for the lay, see you later?’”

Marcus’s face darkens. “No. I told you I’m not leaving. Not ever again.”

“That doesn’t work, Marcus. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t work for the man who’s trying to destroy my home and be my…what? What do you even think you are?”

Marcus puts those big hands on either side of me on the kitchen counter, penning me in, and leans in until his mouth is only inches from mine.

“I’m the guy who’s going to keep you safe,” he says.

I shiver as I feel his breath on my neck, and my heart breaks as he says those words. “Oh. Is that all?” I ask.

His lips graze my ear, my cheek. He rubs his face against my neck, and then licks it, ever so lightly.

“No,” he says in my ear. “That’s not all.”

Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God. The physicality of this man, and my attraction to him, removes all sense from my brain. I feel like a zombie, or like I’m hypnotized, like he could tell me to strip and my clothes would be half off before I even knew what was happening. Like I’m drunk on him, drunk and deranged and prone to making bad decisions. This should be illegal. You should not be allowed to drive a human body while under this kind of influence.

“Marcus, I can’t do a repeat of this,” I say, and my breath is already ragged. “Please.”

And I push against his chest, gently.

I can’t look at him when he steps back because I know I’ll be right back there, unable to think clearly through my desire for him. Not just for him, but for everything to be right between us. That was the worst part about sleeping with him again—seeing a glimpse of how it could be. Knowing I love him now more than I ever did, knowing that learning more about the world in the last five years has made me realize just how lucky I was to have him in my life at all. And then the hangover: remembering that it’s not all right. That he still hasn’t explained why he left, that he might do it again at any moment. Remembering what happened to me after he left the first time.

How could I bring him back into my life under those circumstances? How could I ever bring him into Dill’s life under those circumstances?

That’s why I kicked him out. Didn’t seem to do any good, though. He’s still in my life. Even if he weren’t standing in my kitchen, looking down at me with such tender concern that it makes me weak, he’d still be in my life. Because I don’t think he’ll ever be out of my thoughts.

“Lo,” he says.

“Goddammit,” I say. I still can’t look at him. I’m actually sweating, I’m so turned on, and I still have to say no. I still have to be responsible. And I am
furious.
“Why can’t you just tell me? Why can’t you just explain? Why can’t you help me to understand so I can maybe, maybe, trust you again?”

He starts to speak, but he’s got me going now. I have to get mad or I’ll start to cry. I think about all those sleepless nights after he left, I think about all those men who treated me like crap, I think about Dylan in the bar. I think about how much I hated myself, how I thought I was just unlovable, if after all that Marcus Roma could leave me so easily.

I push him in the chest again, harder this time.

“Do you have any idea what it did to me when you left?” I ask him.

I can feel the anger roiling through my blood, twisting around the lust, the love, turning it all into something potent and powerful and destructive, and if I thought I was drunk on him before, I had no idea what that meant. I am no longer in the drivers seat. Something else is happening here. All those things I never said, all those things I felt: they’re coming out.

I shove him, hard enough to surprise him.

“Do you know what
happened
to me?” I shout.

Marcus’s eyes glitter softly, so softly, and when he speaks, his voice is gentle. “Tell me,” he says.

It makes me so angry.

“Fuck you,” I say. “Like you deserve to know? You want to know how badly you broke my heart? I drank for six months straight, Marcus, all the time. I hated myself. I hated everything about myself so much that I kept sleeping with guys who made me feel as shitty about myself as
you
did, just because it felt right. I went out with guys who treated me like crap, who made me feel worthless, and one of them tried to fucking
rape
me.”

Time stops.

Oh God. I didn’t mean to say that. I didn’t. I look at Marcus, his face slowly collapsing in agony, and immediately I want to take it back. I never meant to tell him like this, in anger. I don’t know if I ever meant to tell him at all. I want to somehow tell him it’s not his fault, even though I just said it like it was, like I blame him, even though I don’t. And I know he’ll blame himself, no matter what I say, and that this is something I can never, ever take back.

“Harlow,” he whispers.

I have never, ever seen him like this. Not when I’d have a panic attack, not after his father died. Never. He is ashen, his face slack, his mouth open in horror. He walks towards me and then collapses to his knees in front of me, putting his arms around my waist. He pulls me in tight, and when he presses his face into my stomach, I feel his tears soak through the thin material of my shirt.

I’ve never seen him cry before.

“I am so sorry,” he says, his voice strangled, muffled. “I am so, so sorry.”

“Stop,” I say, and my own voice is thick with emotion. “Please, Marcus, it’s not your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but that asshole who… Marcus,
please
.”

He catches the tone in my voice and reacts, the way he always does, when I need something. He stands up, wiping his eyes so no one would ever be able to tell he’d shed a tear, and leans his head against mine. He puts his arms around me again, as though he can’t bear to let go.

“Harlow, I—”

“Wait,” I say. I’m struggling to find the words. I want to tell the truth, but this is one of those things that’s so complicated that there are many parts to the truth. I don’t know how to do all of them justice. “I’ve dealt with it, Marcus. I was so, so lucky, all things considered, and Shantha intervened, and…it didn’t happen the way it could have. I’m over it, I think. I don’t know. As much as anyone’s ever over anything. I don’t know the guy’s last name, or where to find him, or anything, and I don’t want to. It’s just, it’s something that happens to people, and I don’t want it to have changed me, but it did, and now…”

I trail off. Do I tell him this? Do I let him in?

What’s the point in denying the truth?

“What?” he asks me.

I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and feel his arms around me. It shouldn’t help me feel better, it shouldn’t make it feel safer to say what I’m about to say, but it does. Damn him, it does.

“I didn’t want anybody, after that. Even before, I never really felt special about anyone, but afterwards, I couldn’t…I couldn’t feel that way about another person, not even physically. Not until you came back.” I swallow, and force myself to look up at him. “It’s always been you. I thought that part of my life was over. And now I want you so much…”

Marcus brushes against my cheek with the back of his hand while I blink back tears. The look of love on his face is so cosmically unfair, it just reminds me of what we
don’t
have right now, just because I don’t have any reason to trust him.

“Why does it have to be you? Why is it only you who makes me feel this way? You make me feel
alive
again, and you are such an asshole!”

I want to push away from him, but I can’t. Instead I just watch my words hurt him.

“Why can’t you tell me?” I ask again. “Why can’t you just tell me so I know it wasn’t my fault? Why can’t you tell me so I know it wasn’t that you stopped loving me, it wasn’t that I didn’t matter, that I wasn’t…”

Right here, my heart just gives out. This whole night, this whole week, this whole conversation, it’s just become too much. I start to cry, great, big, racking heaves, and Marcus holds me tight and I can’t handle how good it feels. I can’t handle that I want this, that I want him to hold me, to make me safe.

Now I really do push away from him, because I can’t bear it, I can’t bear anymore contact. I feel like if he keeps touching me I will lose all will, all discipline, and I will be lost. I will be head over heels in love, in
need
, with him, and then it will only be a matter of time before he breaks me all over again.

“Why can’t you just
say something
?” I scream at him.

Marcus has looked as close to beaten down as I’ve ever seen him, right up until this moment. He’s been in such obvious pain, and he’s been looking at me like I’m the only thing in his universe, but he hasn’t
done
anything—until now.

“Because you won’t believe me!” he shouts back. He puts both hands on top of his head like he’s going to rip his hair out, every large muscle in his huge body flexing, and he lets out a growl. His eyes still look like he’s about to cry, like he wants to just pick me up and hold me for the rest of his life, but his body…

“Why won’t you fucking
believe
me?” he asks again. “You think you’re the only one who hurt? You don’t know the things I’ve done, Lo, you don’t know what I’ve become for you. You don’t know…”

“What are you talking about?” I say. “Please just tell me what you’re talking about!”

“Fuck!” he shouts, and turns around, slamming his fist down on the kitchen table. It rattles, and for a moment I think it will splinter down the middle, but it holds.

“I can’t fucking tell you!” he shouts again, and he’s angry, angrier than I’ve ever, ever seen him—but not at me. It’s like he’s just mad at the world, at life, looking around for something to take it out on.

“I can’t fucking tell you, and you won’t believe me no matter what I say, and I would have died,” he says, turning back to look at me, those laser eyes spearing me, holding me in place, “I would have
died
to keep that from happening to you, Lo. I would have come back and killed him myself. I would have…Jesus, Lo, I would have done anything, anything…”

The worst part is that I do believe him. I believe that he would have died, rather than let Dylan follow me into that bathroom. I believe that he would have hunted Dylan down. That he still would, if I let him.

I don’t want to believe him about this. It makes the rest too confusing.

“Why can’t you tell me so I’ll stop thinking it was my fault? That I just wasn’t good enough? Why do you have to be so fucking cruel?”

Marcus catches my hand right as I’m about to shove him in the chest again, and his eyes flash at me.  He’s got a crease in his forehead, and the muscles in his jaw are pulsing. He looks like he’s about to explode.

“Why can’t you believe me when I say I’ll tell you as soon as I can?” he rasps. “That the reason I can’t is because I fucking love you?”

This stops me. He says it like that, and it sounds so simple.

I stop thinking about how much he hurt me, and think instead about all he did before that. Hasn’t he earned that from me? The benefit of the doubt?

“Fuck!” he shouts, and releases me. He turns away from me, running a hand through his hair the way he does, and grabs his ruined briefcase from the corner, where it’s been resting on a towel. He slams it on the kitchen table and flips it open, revealing a plain manila folder. He turns back to me and points at it.

“Here. Look at this. See what I’ve been doing with my miserable fucking life the past five years, and then tell me it was because you weren’t good enough.”

I look from him to the briefcase, not really comprehending. He’d said he would prove it, that he never forgot about me, but I kind of thought that wasn’t meant to be taken literally. I mean, who has documented evidence of…whatever this is? I don’t know where my driver’s license is half the time. He has a briefcase of his life.

I look back at Marcus, and he’s just this simmering tower of pent-up emotion. He’s tense, his hands gripping the back of the chair I’d been sitting in, his arms flexing, his shoulders rolled forward. He’s glowering ahead, almost like he’s uncertain of what will happen next.

Marcus is almost never uncertain. Definitely not ever nervous.

I walk toward the folder he’s put on the table, my curiosity overtaking my own apprehension. What I find seems inconsequential at first. A bunch of reports, typed out by an old fashioned typewriter, the kind of thing you never see anymore. They’re styled like memos, written from some guy called M. Winslow to Mr. Roma. Then I see the fine print in the header: “Matthias Winslow, licensed Private Investigator.”

Now I dig through the papers.

I finally manage to focus my eyes on one of these reports long enough to actually read a few lines. “Meanwhile, Dillinger continues to adjust to his new school, and their financial situation is stable. On a personal note, Harlow seems happier. Again, let me know if you’d like me to look further into her personal life; it’s an easy add-on.”