Lie to Me (8 page)

I still can’t believe my physical reaction to him. It’s somehow more intense than it was years ago, if that’s even possible—and I was sure it wasn’t possible, because of what happened after he left during what I refer to as my Dark Period. I’m frankly astonished. It’s like my sexuality has been partially defined by Marcus Roma, and now I need him to…I just
need
him.

It fucking
sucks
. Why does it have to be him?

Because he’s going to leave again. I don’t care what he says to me in a bar when he’s trying to be charming. And he’s still the guy who left and broke my heart, and he still hasn’t offered a damn explanation.

And I’m still going to take him up on his offer.

I sigh, admitting the truth. What choice do I have? Dill needs to go to camp, and I need answers and closure. And I need to make him suffer. The only real question is whether I’ll be able to resist Marcus Roma and end up on top in the end.

“On top” was not a helpful phrase.

I sink back into the water and try to think of whether I’ve ever been able to resist Marcus. Not just the man himself, but his influence. It’s a question I’ve thought about before, when trying to get over him. If my parents hadn’t gotten into that car to go on their first getaway weekend in years and gotten run off the road by a drunk, would he have been the same force in my life?

I always think about the one day I went back to the gym after school with Katya and Rosa to watch the fighters after Marcus and I started training. It was after we’d gotten kind of close, Marcus coming to check on me when I as sick, stuff like that.

Anyway, we showed up, hung around the gate, trying to pretend we weren’t looking and being looked at. Same as always.

Marcus didn’t make any pretense about anything. The second he saw me there, leaning against the fence with the other girls, he ripped off his gloves and walked right over, ignoring everyone else, his gray-green eyes boring into me. He unlatched the gate, came outside, grabbed me by the elbow, and walked me down the block while the other girls watched in hushed, jealous silence.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he said. He was almost angry. It was the first time I’d seen him register any kind of strong emotion at all.

“What do you mean, what am I doing?” I asked. “I’m, you know, whatever. Hanging out. What people do.”

“With them?” he said, tilting his head towards the girls by the gate.

“Yeah. So?”

I was already defensive, because, truth be told? It was kind of lame. I was definitely kind of bored, even if watching Marcus work out had its merits.

“You know what they’re here for?” he said.

I thought about his question. On the one hand, it was obvious. They were here to flirt, to be seen. But what was the harm in that? Who cared?

Marcus answered for me, pointing at them. “They’re here because they don’t have anything better to do than hope someone wants to fuck them. That’s all they’re here for.”

I didn’t say anything. He was right. And when he said it out loud like that it was impossible to deny how dumb it was.

Marcus leaned in closer, his hand still on my elbow. I could feel his hot breath on me, and I stopped breathing.

“You know how these guys talk about them?” Marcus said.

“I don’t care,” I said, defiant, almost glad to have something to argue. “Those guys are assholes.”

“Yeah, they are,” Marcus said. “And I don’t want them being assholes to you.”

I was speechless.

Marcus wasn’t.

He looked at me, hard. Right in the eyes.

“I don’t want them talking about you like that,” he said, his hand hot on my arm, his voice gruff. “I don’t want them thinking about you like that. I don’t want them thinking you’re an easy fuck because you don’t have anything better to do than come around and walk the damn street in front of them after school. You’re better than that, Lo. You can do damn near anything. What the hell are you doing here?”

Oh God, I was so overwhelmed by him. First time I felt like I was drowning in him, right there, on the hot sidewalk, in front of everybody. I scrabbled for purchase, for my next breath, for anything that would keep me from just melting in front of him.

“Then tell them I’m not an easy fuck,” I said, and pulled away. I put my chin up and walked right back over to Rosa and Katya, determined to hang around for a while just to piss Marcus off. Just to show him he couldn’t tell me what to do.

Because while his macho thing made me feel good, it also made me want to fight him, just to prove a point. And yet, standing out there in the hot sun, watching those girls flirt with new eyes? Man, did he have a point of his own. It did look like none of us had our own interests, like all we could think to do was hang out and watch a bunch of guys, hoping they liked us.

So for a while I watched Marcus pound the bag like I’d never seen, knowing I was the one who’d pissed him off. I didn’t totally mind that, watching him sweat, his muscles roiling, churning in the glare of the sun. But then I started to feel stupid, standing out there like that, proving him right.

And eventually I asked this girl Lisa, the quietest one, if she wanted to go see a movie or something.

Which was how I started to make a new group of friends. I mean, never mind that they all of those friends kind of faded away later, after the accident, because they just couldn’t handle it; the point is that I made the choice. And it’s how I decided I wanted to be more than a woman who defined herself by what men wanted her, even if I was too stubborn to admit it at the time. All because Marcus annoyed me into it with his macho protective crap.

I didn’t understand how much that meant at the time. So yeah, it’s kind of funny that I used to think that maybe if it wasn’t for the accident, if my parents hadn’t died, maybe I could have avoided Marcus. Maybe he just would have been the boy who taught me how to box and nothing more. If not for that one stupid accident, if not for the one day my life was wrecked beyond all repair, maybe it all would have turned out differently.

But probably not, and it’s this memory that tells me that. Marcus helped to shape who I was even before my world ended. He was always destined to ruin me. Fate just helped him to do it quicker.

***

So I’m thinking about all this in the bath while I’m pretending to debate my options, because it’s a lot easier to think about harmless high school drama than it is to think about what came later, when the shit really hit the fan. I still can’t go there. That’s fine. I don’t particularly want to.

But I’m in the hot water, naked, with the awareness of Marcus sliding over my skin like a living thing. He moves differently now. I noticed in the bar. Just a subtle difference, like he’s grown into himself, more relaxed about being an apex predator type. Supple. Confident. Leonine.

It was sexy as hell when he pulled that guy off the bar. I have my own cavewoman instincts.

I can’t help but think about the other things Marcus taught me. But so many of those are walled off in the garden of Things I Can’t Bear To Think About, buried deep next to a grief that I don’t want to dig up, so that as my mind sifts through all my memories of Marcus in search of something that will help me to understand what I feel, what I want, I come back to the first night we had sex.

Sometimes this memory is in the walled-off garden, too. Sometimes I can’t bear to remember what I’ve lost.

Would it be different now? Of course it would. It would have to be. I was so nervous, wound so tight, even though I wasn’t quite scared, because it was Marcus. And he was so huge above me, so overwhelming, and that was the final time I felt like I drowned in him, his shoulders blotting out the light, his arms cradling me on either side. He was so gentle, stretching me softly, treating me like I might break even as he stoked a fever in me that drove me nearly insane with wanting him.

Oh God, the intensity of that. Wanting him so badly, all at once, in a rush, like I just couldn’t wait anymore. And he made me wait. Later, I learned that I liked it when he took control, even when he was rough.

It is so weird to be thinking about this. Part of me is horrified. I know what rough actually means now; I know how scary it can get in the real world, and it’s turned me off men and relationships. Until now.

I can’t help it.

My hand moves south, over my stomach, down between my legs, almost of its own accord. I’m not even totally conscious of it; it’s just something that feels right, the more I think about him. But the Marcus in my mind isn’t the Marcus I remember from that first time; he’s different, darker. Rougher.

My mind shies away now every time I flash on the tenderness of that first night. I don’t want tenderness from him anymore. Or I can’t bear it. It hurts too much to imagine him touching me softly.

I want him hard.

And when I come, splashing water on the clean marble floors, I realize I’m crying. Because I do want him. Because I do need something from him, no matter how much that frightens me. I need those answers. I need that closure.

And Marcus helped make me into the kind of person who takes control of their life. I’m not just someone who watches on the sidelines. I take charge.

I get up from the bath, soaking the floor in water, not caring even a little bit, and walk over to where I put my phone on the vanity. I put Marcus’s number in it, just in case. I don’t hesitate. I send a simple text: “You have a deal.”

And only then do I realize that I’ve stopped breathing again. I suck in a huge gulp of air and promise myself that I will get answers. I will learn why he left like that, why he hurt me.

And that will make it better. After that, I’ll be able to move on.

Thinking about this starts to make me crazy, as it inevitably does when I think about people I’ve lost or could lose, and I pad quickly down the hall on wet feet so I can pull some sweatpants and a t-shirt on. I don’t even bother to towel off my hair before I’m tiptoeing to Dill’s room.

I know it’s not fair, but I won’t be able to sleep until I see that he’s safe.

Which he is, of course. The sliver of light from where I’ve cracked the door open falls right on his bed, and he’s curled up on his side, sleeping soundly. Or he is until I sneak into his room—I can see the shift in his shoulders, the change in breathing, and I know I’ve woken him up. I feel like a jerk, but it’s not like I can stop myself once the anxiety takes hold. I will be up all night, paralyzed with fear, unless I check up on him.

He’s kind of gotten used to it a little bit. Something else I feel bad about.

“You can’t sleep?” he murmurs into his pillow.

My heart breaks a little bit. Dill shouldn’t have to worry about me. I walk over to him, no longer worrying about the sound I make, and bend down to kiss him on the forehead. He makes a face without opening his eyes, registering little boy disgust at any of that mushy stuff, and so I reach down to give him the world’s gentlest noogie on the top of his head.

“Just getting my noogies in before you go away to camp,” I whisper.

He smiles sleepily, excited by programming camp even when he’s half-asleep. “’S not for two days.”

“You’ll be gone for six weeks. I’ve got a lot of noogies to make up for,” I say. “Go back to sleep, little man.”

I close Dill’s door on my way out so I don’t keep him awake, because I’m worried I’ll be up for a while. I’ve taken a massive gamble with that text. Because if I don’t end up on top? If I don’t find the answers I think I need, if I don’t get the closure I want? Then what? I can’t afford to go back to that place Marcus put me in the first time he broke my heart. I can’t do that to Dill.

Marcus leveled me with just one phrase, back at the bar. “Lie to me.” What’s he going to do with six weeks?

chapter 6

MARCUS

I’m standing on an unnamed corner on Kent Avenue, a place that used to be just abandoned warehouses and is now all expensive lofts, watching a bunch of little rich kids get ready to board the bus to go to their computer camp. I’m waiting for Harlow and Dill and the first day of the deal we made. I don’t know if Dill will remember me. I doubt it. I don’t know if Harlow will be able to look at me without wanting to punch me in the face. I doubt that, too.

The last time I felt like this, this out of whack, this out of my element, was the morning I walked to Harlow’s house to beg her forgiveness and found a cop car rolling up the drive, bearing bad news.

Let me explain.

That fight I had against Manny Dolan, the guy who was going pro? The one I trained day and night for, the one I was sure I was going to win in front of my asshole father, the fight that would make my dad finally say he was proud of me?

My old man didn’t show up.

Now, in retrospect, I understand the how and why of this. But I still don’t get the sheer cold-bloodedness of the man, the cowardice of choosing simply not to show. In one sense, I was crushed. In another, deeper way, I wasn’t surprised at all.

You know who did show up? Harlow. And she brought her entire family. For real, all the Chases, cheering me on in a damn blood sport. Imagine that? My head was twisted, I’ll tell you that.

I fought hard.

And the thing is, I won.

I was not supposed to win.

I won’t lie, I wasn’t feeling good going into that fight. It had been childish to expect that my dad’s interest in boxing would overcome his lifelong disinterest in me, and it had been stupid to fixate on that, but I had done both of those things, and realizing my folks didn’t show was a giant mindfuck five minutes before the bell. It knocked my focus.

But I followed Pops out into that high school gym with the ring set up in the middle of what was usually a basketball court, people filling the bleachers on one side, sitting in folding chairs on all the others, yelling and drinking out of paper bags, and I heard one voice above all the others. Screaming my name.

Yeah, Harlow, screaming my name. You better believe I heard that.