Pulled Within (23 page)

He squeezed tighter. “Yeah, well…I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be. I’m fine.”

“Twenty-two days. I don’t know if I’ll be out in time.”

Save me
, I screamed silently.

“I’ll be okay,” I lied.

He kissed the top of my head, gripped my arms and held me
back a few inches, looking into my face. “Promise me that?”

I nodded. “Don’t worry about me. Just concentrate on getting healthy so I can have my best friend back.”

His lips softly touched my forehead. He was giving me whatever was in him
—
his strength, his warmth. His brotherly love.

I knew I depended on him and Shane. They had become my surrogate
family, so having him back for the briefest moment only made me miss him more. I felt his absence in my bones. I felt it every time I took a breath.

Shane’s arms circled around me, and together we watched Brady
walk through the door and away from us yet again. It closed
completely and locked into place. We still hadn’t moved. We just watched the space that had held him, and the door he’d disappeared behind.

“He’s going to be just fine,” Shane said softly, “and so are you.” His grip tightened. I rested my head on his shoulder.

I wanted Brady to be in here, where he was safe. But part of me wanted to break him out and keep him with me for the next twenty-two days. He understood what I was going through, what happened
within me every year at this time, and he had always given me
exactly
what I needed. It might not have been enough to fix what was
broken, though it had been enough to get me past the seventeenth.

I needed my best friend back.

It was so selfish of me to want that now. I had Hart; my feelings for him were real, and he was good for me. I had Shane, too; he was
the closest thing I had to a dad. As for my past, he knew almost as much as Brady. He just didn’t know about those dark nights…the moments when I’d curled into a ball at the end of Brady’s bed and sobbed until I couldn’t breathe. I’d cried so hard I’d made myself
sick. No matter
how much of a mess I was or how many times I threw up, or how I
couldn’t stop my body from rocking back and forth, Brady still wouldn’t let me go.

He was a real friend and a true part of my family. He didn’t do
my hair or paint makeup over my scar like a girlfriend would, and we
didn’t take pictures of each other and post them all over some
bullshit website. He meant more to me than any of those things.

Besides the month he was gone, he never left me when I needed him, he never made promises he couldn’t keep, and he always made me believe that someday there would be a safe harbor on the other side of my storm.

And now, he was finding that for himself, on the other side of
his.

“ARE YOU DRIVING HOME?”

Hart’s voice jumped through the phone as soon as I answered
his call. I glanced at my dashboard to check the time. I had just
clocked out and wasn’t even at the Bangor city limits quite yet. I was actually surprised to be hearing from him. I’d sent him a text as I was leaving the rehab center; during my shift, sometime around ten, he’d finally replied, telling me to call when I was on my way home.

I hadn’t done that.

“Yes, I’m driving,” I said. “Do you want me there?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” His words were clipped.

I rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see me. “Cut the
bullshit,
Hart. You had all day to reach out to me and you didn’t. You weren’t even at the spa when I went there to meet Shane, and now you suddenly want me at your house? Your words and your actions
aren’t lining up.”

“It was a busy day.”

He hadn’t appreciated that dead phone excuse I’d used not that long ago. I felt the same about what he’d just said.

“Busy doesn’t work for me,” I told him rudely. “I need
something better than that.”

He was silent for a while. “It won’t happen again, Rae.” His tone was stern, business-like. I imagined this was how he addressed the guys who worked for him.

I adjusted the seatbelt a little and relaxed my grip on the steering
wheel. “That’s better.” It didn’t make up for the way he had acted
earlier, but at least he recognized that ignoring me all day was
wrong.

“I’ll see you soon?”

I tried to match my tone to his. “Yes, you will.”

And he did, but this time I didn’t smell breakfast when I walked in the door, and he didn’t hand me a mug of coffee when I got to the kitchen. He was freshly showered again, using the island as a desk
and reading something on his laptop while he sipped a glass of juice. He had sprayed on too much cologne, and he looked tired. A little messy, even.

“How was your visit with Brady?” he asked, finally looking up
to greet me as I walked past him.

I took a bottle of water from the fridge and gulped most of it down. “It was good. I think he’s finding what he needs. Or learning to, at least.”

He shut the screen of his laptop and straightened up. I stood in front of the coffeemaker, several feet separating us, and waited for
him to speak. I wasn’t able to dive into his eyes and read his
thoughts
like he could do with mine. Still, I could feel the tension crackling
between
us, like the charge in the air just before a lightning strike. “If you
want to know something, ask me. I can’t promise I’ll answer, but I’ll try.”

“Brady…”

I stayed clear-eyed. “What about him?”

“There’s more there than just a friendship. Tell me the truth, Rae. Whenever you talk about him, you get this look on your face. I don’t like it.”

I took a deep breath to calm the swirl of anger that was building inside me. I’d had this same conversation with Saint, and I was tired of talking about it. I couldn’t stand the automatic assumption made
by the men in my life that two people of the opposite sex weren’t capable of being friends. I didn’t feel the need to justify my
relationship
with Brady. But for Hart’s sake, I would explain it. “Brady and I
were
already best friends when you and I dated in high school. Nothing more has ever happened between us, and it never will. He’s like
family to me. Shane, too.” I moved to the island and stood directly across from him, not dropping my gaze for even a second. “I haven’t lied to you, Hart. You have no reason not to believe me.”

His shoulders relaxed. His stare lost its intensity. “You’re right.”

I wasn’t used to hearing that from a man. “If you want to be in my life, you’re going to have to accept that Brady is a part of me, and
he always will be. I won’t choose you over him just because you
don’t understand what he means to me. So don’t ever ask me to.”

“I can accept that.” He glanced down at his fingers, the tips
turning white from his grip. “What bothers me about your relationship is
that I can’t touch your face…and he knows why that is. That I see
pain
in your eyes and I don’t know what caused it, but he does. He has
the
answers to all my questions, and it doesn’t feel like you’re getting
any closer to telling me what they are.”

I held the bottle of water against the counter to steady my hands.
“You’re wrong. I
am
getting closer. But Brady has earned those
answers; he’s been with me since the beginning, and he’s never left my side.”

“You’re still punishing me because I left Bar Harbor.” It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t phrase it as one.

As soon as the words hit me, I recognized the sadness in his
eyes,
the regret. He hadn’t been given a choice to stay; I understood that,
and
I wasn’t blaming him for that anymore. But there was no way I could reach down into my memory and pull out every storm-darkened moment that had happened between the time he left and when he
returned.

It was too much pain to relive.

“No,” I whispered, “I’m not. I’m just protecting myself.”

“You don’t have to.” He moved to my side of the island,
reaching
for my shoulders and slowly pulling me closer. “I’m not going to
hurt
you, Rae, but you’ve got to let me in. You’ve got to show me the girl
behind the smile I keep seeing. She’s the one I’m after.”

I looked away, filling my lungs with air and rubbing my
stomach
to calm it. Slowly, I met his steely gaze, blinking away whatever was clouding my vision. “I’m going to give you exactly what you’re
asking for, but you’ve got to give me something first.”

He kept his hands on my waist as he kissed my eyelids. “Anything.”

He may not have intended on hurting me, but digging up the truth again would do just that. I had to know that I was ready.
“Time. That’s all I’m asking for.”

I needed to get through the next
twenty-one days
.

He smiled, the thickness of his lips covering only the edges of his teeth, so straight and white. It was the first time he had done that
since
I’d gotten to the house. It was so warm as it shone on me. “You got
it.”

I pushed myself up on my toes and brushed my lips over his smile. “I have tonight off.”

His fingers tightened and his breathing sped up.
“Mmm…finally.”
He checked his watch without letting me go. I saw the corners of his
smile drop. “I don’t know what time I’ll be home.”

I ran my tongue over his lips. “Doesn’t matter,” I told him. “I’ll be up whenever you get back.”

IT WAS THE FIRST
day off I’d had during which Hart wasn’t at the
house, so I only rested for a few hours. I needed to get my things organized. All of my clothes had to be washed, and most of my
cosmetics were close to being empty. I made a quick trip into town to restock everything,
and then began setting up my things in the guest room. I had no
intention
of sleeping in there, but it gave me a place to spread out. It was
almost
like my own little apartment, which was something I’d never had
before but had always wanted.

Instead of being crammed into trash bags, my clothes were now
either hung neatly on different racks in the closet, or folded inside
the
dresser. My new cosmetics were in a single row next to the sink.
None
of the plastic bottles had a filmy haze over them, and there wasn’t
thick,
curly black hair on the counter or inside the shower…or used
condoms in the trash.

Most of the guys I’d lived with were about as grimy as Jeremy
and Caleb. Saint had been much better. But Hart’s house was
spotless.
His housekeeper kept it that way and made sure the fridge and pantry were stocked. He also had a gardener, and someone who
shoveled his snow. He even had a service that delivered his dry cleaning.

He was on a whole different level than what I was used to.

I was so far from reaching the things he had accomplished. Still, I was proud of the job I’d gotten; it afforded me to start making my monthly deposits again. I just knew at some point my lack of success would matter to him. It was important to be proud of the person you chose to be with; maybe that was part of the reason my relationships
in the past hadn’t lasted. Saint couldn’t be proud of someone who
worked for him. And there was no way Hart would be proud of the girl who served him drinks at the casino.

A better career was waiting for me.

I knew what I wanted it to be, too.

I knew reaching for it would require me to go back to school. But first, I had to establish a permanent place to live. Portland was really too far of a commute regardless of what Hart had said, therefore I
knew he’d be leaving after he finished the Bar Harbor and Bangor
spas. I didn’t want to go back to Caleb’s, and although I had always liked staying with Brady, I couldn’t crash on his couch when he got out of rehab. It would be especially awkward if he started dating
someone, which I really hoped would happen. All that really meant
was I needed
to get my own place. If I continued making the money I was, I’d
probably
be able to afford something fairly soon. I needed to start thinking
about that option.

I had about an hour before Hart left work, so I stepped into the shower. The showerhead had multiple settings, which was
something I
wasn’t used to. I tried each one and stopped when the water began to pulse and massage. For once, I wasn’t in a rush. The tub was
clean; my feet didn’t stick to the bottom. There wasn’t anyone waiting to use the bathroom, or any drugged-out peepers lurking around. It was a welcome change.

The scent of the shampoo mixed with the steam. It smelled like
the beach on a day with a perfectly clear sky and the warmest water. I moved under the stream to wash out the suds and closed my eyes. My hands pushed against the wall in front of me. My hair fell
around my
face, clinging to my cheeks. The scent passed through me, relaxed
me; it washed me clean in a way I hadn’t been before. Slowly, I was letting
go of it all—every thought, every memory, every scar. I was letting
them be cleansed from my skin and my soul, and allowing the water to bring me to a place of peace, of total white.

Cloud white.

It didn’t last long.

Strong, determined hands had found their way to my sides,
rubbing up to my ribs and down to the base of my ass. Soft, firm lips pressed
into the back of my neck. My breathing sped up in response. The
wetness
that covered me from within thickened, especially when his fingers
grazed my nipples.