Steady as the Snow Falls (23 page)

“I don’t believe in impossibilities,” she told him, her bravery growing now that she’d said the words she’d been harboring, locked deep inside her. “And you just told me I could do anything. I want to be with you.”

“Beth. You don’t understand what you’re asking, what you would be welcoming into your life.” Harrison’s eyes tightened.

“I do know. I researched it.” She shook her head, a self-deprecating smile tugging at her mouth. “I researched it
over and over
. I know the risks. I know all I need to know, and I’m telling you, I’ll do it. Whatever I have to, I’ll do it. I’ll take a pill, I’ll get routine check-ups. Whatever. I’m all in. All you have to do is say yes.”

A sliver of hope touched his face, raw and real, and it broke a piece of her heart. He looked so sad, so unbelievably shattered a lot of the time. He was stiff and dark and silent, holding it all in. Fighting. Pretending. She was telling him he didn’t have to. Beth was holding the invisible key to unlock all he was afraid to. He just had to take it.

“You talk about the bad things that could happen, but what about all the good? You feel it too—what I feel for you.” Beth watched his features tighten. “I know you do. If you tell me you don’t, I’ll know you’re lying.”

“There could never be anything physical between us. I wouldn’t let you risk it.”

“There could, if we were careful.”

“If we were careful.” His lips twisted in a sneer. “What kind of a relationship is that? Every day I would carry fear that I was unintentionally harming you in some way. Nothing could be spontaneous. Everything would have to be planned out, tested. It would be sterile, lacking. I would never know the feel of you wrapped around me. There would always be something between us. Figuratively. Literally.”

The room turned hollow, devoid of life and laughter. It went back to the emptiness she found in the house on her first day in Harrison’s employ. A bitter scent entered the air, and it was that of her heart crushing. She felt the pieces of it crumble. Harrison told her she could dream, as long it didn’t involve him. Harrison told her she could do anything she wanted, as long as she kept him out of it. Harrison was a hypocrite.

Harrison wasn’t done twisting her insides.

“And what if something happened, things got out of hand, and we weren’t careful? What then? You might be okay with putting your health at risk, but I’m not okay with allowing you to do so.”

He put space between them, and he kept putting more, until he was at the door, and then he was in the hallway. He didn’t have to move at all to reconstruct the wall. She felt it fall into place. He turned back once, to utter a single, catastrophic word.

“No.”

ELEVEN

A WEEK PASSED. A week of awkward conversations, prolonged silences, and darted looks that turned into lingering ones when the recipient wasn’t paying attention. She wanted more, and his slanted looks said the same. But Beth was willing to take a chance, a leap—
yes
, a risk, and Harrison was not. It was making her edgy, short-tempered. All she could think about was time, and how they were wasting it.

What would he say if she told him she’d already met with and discussed her options with a doctor? What would he say when he found out that she’d already gotten and started a regimen of prophylactic pills? Knowing what she’d done made her heart spin inside her chest, and her pulse shot up and down and side to side. Part in anxiety, part in anticipation. He would tell her she was crazy, that she was stepping into unknown territory she was not allowed to walk. Beth would tell him she was removing all the obstacles set before her, before them.

When Beth made up her mind about something, she couldn’t be dissuaded. Her mom found that out when she was thirteen, and one of her friends got in a car accident and had to have their long hair cut off. Beth was adamant that her hair be cut in a similar way to keep Britney Zalinski from feeling bad about her unwanted short hair. When her mom said it wasn’t necessary to cut her hair to let her friend know she was thinking of her, Beth cut it herself. Badly.

“Let’s go for a drive,” she suggested, keeping her eyes trained on the notepad on her lap. She didn’t want to see Harrison’s reaction—feared it, in actuality. He would tell her no, and Beth would feel small. It seemed to be one of his favorite words.

“Where?” Harrison sat in his customary spot, always with a book in hand.

She wondered if he’d already read through his collection of books and was rereading them. She wondered if he was really reading, or if he was staring at the words, like she was. So many letters, shoved together into words, into sentences, into paragraphs that were supposed to mean something. They were in her handwriting, written by her, and Beth looked at them and saw gibberish.

With a frown pinching the skin between her eyebrows, she looked up. It wasn’t a direct no. “I don’t know. Anywhere. I can show you the town.”

“No,” was the immediate answer, and she bristled at the sound of it.

“Have you actually ever been to Crystal Lake?”

“Yes. I had a meeting with Michael Peck, remember?”

Beth swallowed and dropped her eyes. Ozzy. He was suspiciously quiet lately. She didn’t think it was because of Harrison’s talk with him—she thought it was because he was up to something. It wasn’t like him to step back, give up, let go until he said it was time. She didn’t trust him to keep Harrison’s secret. He had no reason to, and more reason to not. Every day she woke up waiting for Ozzy’s next move.

“The fewer people who know who I am, the better,” Harrison continued. “I want peace, and that leaves you once you’re around civilization.”

“Then how about we take a drive around the countryside?”

“No.”

Beth’s face burned, and her lips went into a line. “Why not?” she said through her teeth.

He shrugged one shoulder, looking unruffled by her irritation, even looking like he was glad for it.

She set down the notebook and stood. “You’re always telling me no, and don’t, and stop. Screw you, Harrison.” She swiped the paper and pen from the couch cushion and stormed from the reading room, her feet loud and angry against the hardwood floor.

Yanking her coat from the hook, she shoved her arms through the sleeves and hopped around as she tugged on her boots. Beth grabbed the pen and notepad from where she’d tossed them on the floor and slammed the door after her. She was over halfway through his story. Soon there would be no reason for them to spend time together. Soon she would be gone from his life.

Blinking at the paper and pen like she didn’t know what they were doing in her hand, she chucked them into the Blazer and shut the door.

Beth squinted her eyes against the fierce rays of the sun and turned toward the driveway, pretending her heart didn’t lurch at the thought of no longer seeing Harrison. She shivered, more from her emotions than the chill in the air. Never hearing his voice, or feeling his presence, never seeing the glimpse of a smile he couldn’t help. No. She refused.

They were getting somewhere, day by day. He was seeing possibilities where he’d only allowed himself to see nothing. Now…now he purposely closed off his eyes to her. He looked at her, but he didn’t
see
her. He said he was going straight ahead, but somehow in recent days he’d bypassed her, taken a different path. One that didn’t make sense, one that went nowhere. Because Beth was right before him, and he abandoned her.

Beth inhaled raggedly, shoving hair from her mouth and eyes as she aimed her feet in the direction of the road that steeply swooped down. She braced herself against the dip in the earth and carefully stepped on the packed snow and ice.

“Beth. Beth!”

Tightness formed in her jaw, and she kept going, not really having a destination in mind. That Harrison went after her meant something, but it was paltry in comparison to what she wanted of him.

“
Beth
.” He caught up with her, out of breath. Fingers brushed along the back of her jacket, a touch she shouldn’t be able to feel through the fabric. Her nerves were heightened with every aspect of Harrison. “Where are you going?”

She spun around, angry and frustrated. “Time is something you could lose, at any second. Right now, there are so many better things we should be doing than…than
nothing
. Than this.” Beth gestured to the space separating them. It was invisible, merely air, and it felt like a hundred steel walls. “Time is a gift, and it’s being wasted on us. I don’t want to waste any more.”

Harrison took a step back at the look on her face, his eyebrows slamming together. His cheeks were two patches of color on a pale face. A face she had memorized, a face she saw in her dreams. A face Beth never wanted to stop seeing.

“If you don’t want to be together, then all of this is pointless. I shouldn’t even
be
here. It just makes it harder. I should go. I can write your book from my home. Being here with you, but not really being with you, hurts, Harrison.” Saying that hurt her, and the thought of Harrison agreeing hurt her more. Breathing hurt her, and waiting for him to respond hurt her too. Everything
hurt
.

Harrison swallowed, the motion seemingly painful to him. Maybe he hurt as much as she did.

“I can deal with your illness. I can deal with the days of hopelessness and sadness and anger. I can deal with it all, if I know you won’t shut me out. I know you want to be with me too. I see it in your eyes.” Beth clasped her hands together, her eyes telling him to believe her. To have faith—if not in him, then in her. “You’re allowed to be happy.”

Shards of pain, like sharp daggers of glass, filled his eyes. Cut the light from them. Deadened them. But he didn’t say anything. Harrison looked at her, and said nothing.

Words spewed forth. Words she hadn’t been aware she thought, until they were leaving her mouth. “You’re not the only one in the world with HIV, you know? And it could stay HIV. You don’t even know that it will progress to AIDS. And you’re just out here, pretending not to exist, and for what? So people talk, and people look at you funny, and people write stupid articles about you. People talk about
everyone
! People talk about me getting my hair done! People talk about
everything
. So what?” She threw her arms up over her head.

“You could be doing something good with your knowledge of this disease, and instead you’re doing
nothing
. You’re a public figure. People listen to public figures. You could be helping people who are struggling to understand what’s going on with their bodies, their lives, their futures. Suicidal people, angry people, depressed people.”

She stood in the driveway, a small figure with a loud voice, and Beth forgot about Harrison’s feelings, and his anger. She forgot about everything except what she needed to say, and he needed to hear. He looked back, a tall, voiceless figure made of granite. He didn’t try to talk, or move, or look away.

“You could be talking to kids, explaining how important it is to use caution, and condoms, and how even when you think you know someone, you still need to be smart about things. Explain to them the danger of needles, and drugs, and how one seemingly unimportant moment can be life-changing. What about the kids born with it? The ones who are even less blameless than you? They need someone to look up to, someone who understands what they’re going through.”

Beth sucked in a ragged breath, her body shaking with emotion. “Who are you helping right now?
No one
. You say it doesn’t bother you, and I know it does. You say you want this isolated life, and I know you don’t. You’re scared, but you don’t have to be.
Do
something about it.”

“You don’t,” he began in a voice that shook. “Get to tell me how to feel.” His eyes were cold, filled with deadly resentment. “You have no idea,
none
, what I’m going through, or how I feel, or what I’m thinking.” Harrison’s voice grew, lashed out in quiet destruction.

“Then tell me,” she beseeched, wrapping her arms around herself in a desperate attempt to get warmer, to not feel quite as lonely as she did right now.

His jaw hardened.

Harrison drove her to create, to be something better. And what did he do? He kept himself in a prison of his own making, cut off from a million beautiful moments. It didn’t have to be this way. It could be different. Not perfect, but who really needed perfection? She didn’t want perfection; she wanted Harrison. That was all. That was it. A simple request with all kinds of ramifications. The unfairness of it stung her eyes with the promise of tears and Beth looked away from his form, the sight of him painful to her.

“You gave up,” Beth choked out. “You said you didn’t, but you did.”

His reaction was instantaneous, and explosive.

“I didn’t give up,” he roared, flinging his arms in the air.

Harrison cursed as he watched her, as she felt the color leave her face. Snarling, he tugged the stocking cap from his head and flung it across the snow. Harrison’s chest heaved and his face twisted with fury as his control snapped.

“I didn’t give up, Beth. The world gave up on me.
Me.
” He slammed a hand to his heart. “What was I supposed to do after that? Huh?
What?
”

Beth blinked, all of her crumpling inward under the haze of his pain, and rage, and injustice.

“They judged, and they ridiculed, and they made me feel like a
piece of shit
.” Harrison turned and stalked away, whipping around to face her. His eyes were lightning, and his face was the storm. “I didn’t give up. I didn’t choose this. All right? I just—I couldn’t stand it anymore. I couldn’t be around my friends, knowing they couldn’t understand. I couldn’t be around my family, seeing the fucking sadness in their eyes,
every day
, like I was already dead.”

Harrison took a shuddering inhalation and looked at the ground. Bleak and quiet, he said, “They put me in the ground before they ever knew if it would come to that.”

Beth took a breath, and her heart rejected the motion, squeezing, squeezing. Until she couldn’t breathe anymore, and her chest ached, and she feared it would never stop aching. She didn’t understand. He was right. Beth didn’t know what he went through, what he was still going through.

She couldn’t imagine having everything figured out, and then being told there were no more certainties. She placed a hand on her heart and pressed down, trying to alleviate the pain it throbbed for Harrison. And then she stopped, her hand falling away. It was okay for it to hurt. It should hurt. Harrison needed it to hurt for him.

Cracks lined his face, heartache oozing out of them. Harrison stood like he was being attacked on all sides, outwardly, inwardly, his body curved in around itself. He should never stand in such a way, never feel so beat down for being who he was. “I thought I’d make it easier on everyone and just be alone.”

“But you’re not alone,” she whispered in a wobbly voice. “I’m here. You have me.”

Harrison stared at the ground, looking up with eyes brightened by tears to ask, “What should I do then? Since you seem to have all the right answers. What do I do?”

Beth shook her head. “I don’t have the
right
answers. There are no right answers. But I have hope, and you don’t even allow yourself to have that.”

“And you? What are you going to do, Beth?” He took a step closer, snow crunching beneath his boots.

“What do you mean?” Her throat burned from all the words that earlier catapulted from it, and in the absence of anger, came apprehension of the unknown. Where would she and Harrison go from here?

Harrison’s eyes took on the sun, captured it inside the irises, and annihilated it. His expression mocked, demanded. “All these things you tell me I should be doing, you see yourself standing by my side as I do them, right? You, with your big heart, and your big dreams—what are you going to do? Live in the castle with the moat full of alligators with me?”