Lie to Me (31 page)

It was completely baffling. It still is baffling.

And here Marcus is again, brooding, as Alex Wolfe shows back up in my life. I can’t help but wonder about what Marcus will do next.

I turn back to Gus Finney, who’s telling me some story I’m sure I’m supposed to be laughing at, but I can barely see him. Instead I look again for Marcus, and this time I see him talking to Alex Wolfe, the two of them huddled away in a corner, and my stomach cramps. I feel cold. I feel lightheaded. I feel like I can’t breathe at all, like my lungs are frozen in my chest, like my body doesn’t want time to move forward, because it knows what happens next.

This is when Marcus leaves.

But no, dammit, this is exactly what I’ve been fighting against. This is exactly what I’ve been trying to figure out. Trying to find a way that Marcus leaving the way he did makes sense, a way to understand both how he loved me and how he left me. And all I’ve been able to come up with is that there’s something I fundamentally don’t understand. Watching Marcus talk to his father and his brother, the three of them standing there all looking alike, all with that same fierce expression, those same penetrating eyes, it occurs to me that maybe that sense of family belonging was just too important to him. That maybe I didn’t have a right to deny him that. Because that was something I had that Marcus never got, and maybe he needed it.

I might never understand why he left me like that. But maybe I owe it to him—to the man who took care of me—to just believe him. To believe him that it mattered. That he did the best he could.

I want to trust him so badly.

And that’s when Gus Finney leans in and says, “Pay attention, Ms. Chase. I think you’ll like this.”

Gus Finney grabs his shrimp fork and starts tapping away at his glass of prosecco, saying, “Excuse me, everyone! Excuse me!”

Slowly, the room falls silent. I feel myself start to blush under all that attention, because it feels like everyone can see what I’m really thinking about, which is, of course, Marcus. I know that’s ridiculous, and I admonish myself to pay attention. Apparently something important is happening.

“I hope Ms. Chase here won’t mind,” Finney is saying, smiling at me with this patronizing Santa Claus thing he has going on, “but I want to take this opportunity to make what I think is a prescient announcement. Friends and neighbors, I’m going to run for City Council. I’m going to win. And we are going to stop these irresponsible developments right in their tracks!”

Finney raises his glass triumphantly amid some cheers and modest applause. I smile as hard as I can, clapping away, because I know I should be elated. This is the best-case scenario—someone else has taken up the fight, someone with the power to actually annoy the developers. Maybe they’ll move on, even if it’s only a couple of blocks over. Maybe I won’t have to lose Dill’s home.

So why don’t I actually feel happy?

I let myself melt away into the crowd of movers and shakers coming forward to shake Finney’s hand and do whatever it is these people do at moments like this—I don’t know, make appointments for backroom deals? Trade secret handshakes?—because I’m just feeling disoriented. The truth is I can’t get Marcus out of my mind. I turn and look for him again, and when I don’t see him, my stomach drops even further.

He was just there. He was just talking to Alex Wolfe. And then Finney made his announcement, and now he’s gone.

I spin around, totally oblivious to everything else now, desperately searching for any sign of Marcus. I’m so worked up that I miss him approach, and when I turn around again, he’s right behind me.

I don’t care if it makes me look crazy. I lean into him and try to burrow into his chest. I’m not thinking rationally; I’m just feeling the anxiety ebb away the more I touch him.

“Hey,” Marcus says.

I’m almost afraid to look up at him. But I do. I do.

And he’s smiling.

“You won,” he whispers to me.

“Did I?”

“I think so,” Marcus says. “For now. It means maybe we can come to a deal with Alex, and this will all be over.”

I don’t actually know what he means—a deal? But I nod blankly, not even feeling capable of thinking about it. The specter of Alex Wolfe looms too large in my mind.

Marcus touches my cheek with the back of his hand, his brows drawing together.

“Let’s get you home,” he says.

I couldn’t agree more.

Marcus walks me home, going slow so that I can keep up in my ridiculous heels, holding my hand. The farther we get from the sight of Marcus and Alex Wolfe talking secretively in some corner, the better I start to feel, but I know it’s not gone. I can’t seem to shake it. Marcus can tell, but he’s not prying.

I stumble on a broken slab of sidewalk, lost in all these stupid thoughts, and he catches me.

He says, “How are your feet?”

“Heels suck,” I grumble. I never really figured out to how to walk in them, though I love the way they make my legs look in this slinky black thing that Shantha made me wear.

Marcus laughs, and his arm snakes around my waist. We’re only a few feet from the house.

“You can’t keep carrying me everywhere,” I say, knowing what he’s thinking.

“I can and you know it,” he says, tightening that arm. We’re stopped in the street now, and he’s looking down at me. Gentle, smiling. Worried.

“It’s ridiculous,” I say.

“But you like it.”

I smile. “Yeah.”

I really, really do. He knows it. He knows it gives me a little thrill.

I’m just not sure that’s enough right now.

“Lo,” he says. I’m afraid to look at his eyes. I know he’ll see exactly what it is I’m feeling, and I don’t want him to. I don’t want him to know how conflicted I am. I don’t want him to know that I’m struggling.

And yet part of me rages against that, too, because it’s so unfair. I have every right to struggle! He hasn’t explained anything, and I’m still afraid of losing him.

“Lo, tell me,” he says.

I sigh.

So he lifts me up off the ground, grinning as I gasp a little and grab at his neck while he walks to the front steps. God, this is such a weird physical reaction. The second my feet leave the ground, it’s just…somehow easier.

“That is cheating,” I mutter as he carries me inside.

“I’m a ruthless son of a bitch,” he agrees.

He’s not stopping. He’s just walking us both up the stairs.

I can’t help it. I have a physical reaction to that, too.

Marcus sets me down on my bed—the bed we’ve been sharing, like this is a normal thing, like this is something we do now, and I’ve just accepted that— on this bed, our bed, and then he kneels in front of me and gently takes my heels off.

God, that does feel good. Sometimes it’s worth it to wear heels if you have the right person to help you take them off at the end of the night.

I sigh again, leaning back on my palms, and Marcus runs his hands up the front of my legs, making me give a little groan. He’s still watching me. He still looks worried.

“Lo, tell me why you aren’t happy,” he says softly. “You got what you wanted tonight. What’s wrong?”

“Can’t get anything past you, huh?” I say.

“Nope.”

And I can’t do anything about those searching eyes. I pull myself back up and reach for his face, just wanting to hold it in front of me, while he puts his arms around my waist. I wish everything were simple. I wish I could just take the leap of faith and forgive and forget. I wish I could believe in him the way he believed in me back when everybody thought I had lost my mind, that I was irreparably damaged after my parents died. I hate myself for not having that faith, for not bothering to find a way to understand until five years later. I hate that I spent so much time hating him. I hate that I still have this physical fear that he’ll leave, that I’ll lose him, that this fear has taken root in my very core.

“I saw you talking to your father tonight,” I say.

I call him “your father” for a reason. It has an effect.

He starts, “Lo, I was—”

“Wait, please,” I say. “Just let me get it out.”

Marcus falls silent, and now I can barely stand to look at him. He looks at me with so much love, and I don’t know if I know what to do with it right now. I want to be able to accept it unconditionally. I want to feel as fearless as I did five years ago. I want to be brave. It feels like I’m on the edge of this cliff, trying to convince myself that jumping is an excellent idea, that jumping off of a damn cliff with Marcus Roma will heal what happened five years ago and makes us whole.

“I saw you talking to Alex,” I say, trying not to choke up, “and it was like…right before you left—do you remember? You were spending so much time with him, and that was great, I was happy for you. But there was something you weren’t telling me, I could tell, and it felt like…I just know you started talking to Alex Wolfe, and then you left to go work for him, and you didn’t want me anymore.”

I take a deep breath. I still can’t look at him.

“And I’m not…I’m not trying to bring it up again,” I say. “I do want you to tell me why, Marcus, but only when you’re ready. I want to understand. I need to understand. But I want it to be because you’re ready to tell me. I want it to be because you feel like you can tell me.”

Shit, I feel like I’m about to cry. The words “I want to be good enough” almost pass my lips, but I cut them off, strangle them in my throat, because I know that’s not fair. It’s not fair to make it about me. He has to tell me because he wants to, not because I blackmail him into it.

And I have to forgive him because it feels right, not because I feel compelled to by how much I need him.

“I don’t know how to fix this,” I say.

“Damn,” he says.

I finally let myself look at him, and he looks heartbroken. It hurts.

“You should be happy right now,” he says. “And instead, what I did, it’s still making you sad. Still.”

“Marcus, that’s not exactly what I meant.”

“I only ever tried to do the right thing, and I destroyed so much,” he says, shaking his head. His hands move around my waist, his eyes look up. “Lo, listen. I promise you—”

“Shut up a second,” I whisper, and I put one finger on his lips.

What he just said, right there? That he only ever tried to do the right thing? That’s the part where I need to have faith. That’s what I’ve been circling around, in my weird, broken, tortured way. And now I’m having one of those moments, where things fall into place, where all my previous thoughts arrange in a pattern that suddenly makes sense.

I think, in a way, I always kind of expected Marcus to be infallible. That if he did something, it was deliberate; it was because he chose exactly that, and not because he’d made an error in judgment or a mistake. But that’s ridiculous. No one can live up to that standard, even if the reason I thought he could was because he always had.

So I have this choice. I don’t know if I’m ready to make it. The fear pounds in my chest like a caged beast, just screaming to get out, to wreak havoc over my heart, to rule the rest of my life.

Screw that.

I lick my lips and say, “Marcus, I’m just scared you’re going to leave again. That’s it. I don’t… I want you to be able to tell me what happened, but the truth is that’s not what drives me. What drives me is that I’m terrified. I can’t stop myself from loving you, I can’t stop myself from needing you, I can’t stop myself from wanting you. I’m yours, Marcus, even if it’s not good for me. And then I see you talking to Alex, and I think, That’s it, he’s gone. And I can’t take it again. So if that’s what’s happening, I have to find a way to—”

He doesn’t let me finish. Marcus takes my hands in his and says, “I can’t ever leave you again, Harlow. I’d be leaving my heart behind. It would kill me this time.”

Full stop.

His face is steady. Serious. His eyes look straight into mine, and I know. It’s so stupid, but I do, I know. I know he’s telling the truth.

And that’s when I jump off that cliff.

“I believe you,” I say softly. “And I do forgive you, Marcus, even if you don’t want me to. I hope you can forgive me, if I’ve ever failed you.”

This look flashes across his face, like he’s been stricken with something, and then he’s standing over me, lifting me to my feet. He holds me so delicately, so carefully, I feel like he knows how hard that was for me. Like I’ve been broken for so long, and I’ve only just trusted him to catch me as I fall, and he knows it. He knows it.

“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you for letting me love you.”

I smile a little at that and shrug. “I do what I can.”

Marcus grins back, his fingers tracing the edge of jaw, down to my neck.

“Keep doing it,” he says.

His fingertips dance across my collarbone to the spaghetti straps of this slinky little dress and he starts to drag them down over my shoulders. Suddenly he stops, just as he’s holding my dress up by the tips of his fingers.

“I don’t deserve you, Lo,” he says. “But I will.”

Marcus kisses me, his lips warm and soft against mine, and lets my dress fall to the floor. He pulls away gently as he starts to touch me, softly, tenderly, his fingers feather light. He wants to watch me. I want to watch him.

This feels different, all over again.

Every time we’ve been together since he came back there’s been this uncertainty in the background. This pain, this fear haunting me, this thing that would only be temporarily pushed to the corners of my mind by the way Marcus could make me feel when he touched me. But the fear would always come back. I always knew it would come back.

This time it’s gone.

There’s nothing here but us. Nothing between us, nothing hanging over us.

Marcus puts his hands on my naked body and I am truly bared to him. Not in the middle of sex, not in the middle of an orgasm, not because I need to feel something other than what I’ve been feeling. Just because it’s him. He swallows, and for the first time in years I think he looks nervous.

The last time he looked at me like this was the first time we had sex.

“I love you,” he says.

“I know,” I say. I realize I’m smiling, and I can’t stop. I push his suit jacket over his big shoulders and I loosen his tie. I have him out of his clothes in what feels like the longest minute of my life, and when he’s finally naked in front of me, I start to tingle. It starts at my extremities and works it’s way in, and in just a few seconds I’m actually bouncing up and down a little bit, just eager to touch him.