Steady as the Snow Falls (8 page)

Beth choked as she inhaled. She’d felt those words. She could see the seasons clashing, competing for dominance. All worthy, none relenting. A bitter fight until the water overtook the snow, or the leaves refused to not flourish. Until all the elements melded into one another and merged, life and death and loss and hope, together, as one.

She could hear his words resonant through her being, promises and confessions whispered to her soul.
I am much more than you see
, they said.
I am much more than you know. Dare to uncover all that I am.
They were Harrison’s words, but they didn’t come from his mouth. They came from his heart, from his center. The part of him untouched by the tragedy inflicting his body and mind, that innocent part of a person that remained unscathed, no matter what happened to the shell. The part that could see beauty even as an ugliness ate away at them.

“What did you want to be when you grew up?” It was a generic question, asked more times by society than should be allowed. Beth didn’t expect an answer, her blue eyes trained on the horizon. It would be dark soon, the nights coming earlier with winter, and it would be time for her to go. She wasn’t ready to go.

“An astronaut.”

Beth turned to Harrison. “And why did that change?”

He shrugged, his head angled down. “It didn’t seem possible, and my dad was big into sports. He had me play anything I could, as early as I was able. Football stuck with me. I liked football. That seemed possible.”

“You were a linebacker, right?”

His answer was softly delivered. “Yeah.”

Beth shifted her feet. The only details she knew about the sport were the ones she’s found online, and she was aware her knowledge was less than lacking. She felt silly talking about things she didn’t understand, but it was better than awkward silence. Maybe—maybe it was better than awkward silence.

“Chicago Bears?” When he didn’t reply, she added, “You went to the Super Bowl a few times, even won one. That’s impressive.”

In a sharp tone, he told her, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Harrison removed the black stocking cap from his head, revealing rumpled red waves. He seemed agitated, and she realized she’d pushed too hard, too soon. Beth stared at the strands of his hair, wondering at their texture. Coarse silk, that’s how she imagined them to feel. Her stomach swirled as she pictured her hand lifting to find out.

“Okay.” Beth blinked, the acidity of his voice stinging her skin. “Sorry.”

He rubbed a hand against his head before resituating the hat. He sighed and glanced at her. “What about you? What did you want to be?”

She shrugged, a self-conscious smile hovering on her lips. “I wanted to be a writer.”

Harrison frowned at her. “Always?”

“Always.” Her smile grew. “Of course, I thought I’d write one book and become famous, all by the age of twenty-two.”

“Why twenty-two?”

“I have no idea.” She laughed softly, feeling him go still beside her. “I must have liked the number. Or I thought I’d be mature and responsible by then. Shows what I knew.”

“You have a nice laugh,” he said in a low voice, and it was her turn to go motionless.

She raised her eyes to his. They were dark, and deep, and said so many things. The snow melted, the sun faded, the cold never existed—all while she looked into Harrison’s eyes. Time was a lock, but it was also a key. She understood that as they studied one another, and time held still. Beth swore she caught a shadow of fear, outlined in the furrow of his eyebrows, in the speed of his pulse at the base of his neck. Fear or something else.

“I’d like to hear your laugh,” she said in a voice that wobbled.

He jerked his head to the side as if to clear it, breaking the stare. “How old are you?”

Beth shot him a look, her pulse racing and her throat tight. She strove for calm as she replied, “What, all your detective work and you don’t even know my age?”

Two red splotches appeared on his cheeks and he turned his head away from her view.

“I’m twenty-six,” she answered, her tone quiet.

“And have you written a book?”

Beth’s face heated up, at odds with her cold cheeks, and it caused a burning sensation. “One or two. Nothing good,” she said vaguely, looking down.

She studied the thick purple laces of her black boots. Her toes were turning into icicles. Beth hoped he wouldn’t ask any more about her previous book endeavors. Writing was about baring her soul, and when others couldn’t see how much of her essence was in her words, it stung. She’d asked Ozzy to read pieces of her work, and he’d always had an excuse. The one time he’d agreed, he’d acted like it was an inconvenience, and his input consisted of a shrug. Beth kept her expectations low. There were fewer chances of being disappointed that way.

“How do you know if your work is good or not?” Harrison questioned.

Snorting, she shoved her hands in the pockets of her jacket and bounced on the balls of her feet, the cold stripping away the layers of her clothes to pierce her skin. She felt naked, as if no barrier at all stood between her and winter. “I know.”

A pause, a glance. “Why did you come up here?”

“Why did you?” Beth retorted.

“Fresh air is good for you.”

“So is being warm.”

He faced her, tall enough to envelop her whole. His eyes were brighter surrounded by the paleness of his skin and the white world around them. Dark chocolate, brimming with unsaid ideas and uncertainties. “Did you stay up all night Googling me?”

Beth wanted to deny it, but she wasn’t good at lying, and she didn’t like it. She nodded, careful to keep from looking directly at him.

“Find out anything interesting? Other than the fact that I was a linebacker for the Bears and I’m sick,” he specified.

It felt like a trap. He was luring her in only to snap at her if she prodded too much. Beth shook her head. She wasn’t falling for it. The questions stayed inside her head, tormenting her. What happened to Nina, his girlfriend of six years? Did she go, or did he? What about his parents? He was cut off from everything, everyone. Everyone but her. That detail shouldn’t seem noteworthy to her, but it was.

“How…” Beth scowled at her timidity around him. It faded at times, but it always came back. Her mettle ran in the opposite direction when she was in Harrison’s company. Straightening her shoulders, she started over. “How does your identity stay hidden? What do you do for groceries and other things you need? You completely stay out of Crystal Lake? I don’t understand how you can live out here without someone knowing you’re here.”

“You know I’m here.”

Her cheeks went unnaturally warm, and she didn’t want to analyze what it meant. “Besides me.”
Oh, come on, Beth, let’s analyze. You feel special. Handpicked.
Beth stared at the white ground so she couldn’t look at him. How easy her mind shifted as she spent more time with Harrison.

“I shop out of town. I see a doctor out of town. My mail does not have my given name on it. My parents get me the things I can’t, and bring them to me when they can. I don’t go into Crystal Lake, no. It’s a pretty town, but I can observe its beauty without entering it. Anything else you’d like to know?” Mockery was in his tone.

Yes. There were many, many more things she’d like to know.

“You see your parents?”

“From time to time, yes. They apparently didn’t get the memo that all contact with me is to be avoided.”

Beth looked at him from the corner of her eye, and then she turned toward the house. He said the words without inflection, and that was a telling sign. He’d secluded himself, yes, but maybe he wasn’t as okay with it as he seemed. She wouldn’t be. If Beth were in Harrison’s position, she would cling to her parents more, not push them away.

“I’m going back.”

She waited a beat, and when it was obvious he was done talking, and wouldn’t be joining her, she started down the walkway her boots and Harrison’s had made in the snow. What was she doing here? She brushed hair from her mouth and quickened her steps, sliding forward when she moved too quickly. She was hired to write a book, and instead she was reading and chasing after a sick man who wanted to be left alone. Life was rarely easy for Beth, and a lot of the time it was of her own doing. She was too curious, and her heart cared without provocation.

Beth didn’t know how to not care.

Back inside the house, she stripped off her wet stuff, including her socks. Her jeans were damp, the chill of them driving right through her skin, but those would have to stay that way. Finding a heat register in the dark foyer where every move she made echoed around her, Beth set her pink socks on top of it, and shivering, she walked with determined steps to the reading room. She was going to finish reading that book, and then she was going to leave.

Reading is not a chore. Stop acting like it is
, she scolded herself.

Book in hand, she stood before the window and watched Harrison carefully navigate down the landscape, repeatedly drawing her eyes back to the pages even as they longed to stay on his form. His voice was harsh, and his eyes were unfeeling, and still he captivated her. He made her think, and wonder, and that made him much too interesting. It was wrong, not only because she was his employee, but obviously because of his declining health. Beth’s skin was ice-cold and yet her cheeks were on fire, more from emotion than her circumstances.

She thought him beautiful, darkly lovely.

Beth stood trembling when he appeared, her hands shaking around the book she gripped, making it hard to read the words. Her legs were icicles, her toes numb. Harrison took one look at her and paused, his face darkening as storms took up residence among his features. He turned and strode from the room, returning with a brown blanket.

Harrison motioned for her to take it, his eyebrows lifted.

She hesitated, and then shook her head. It didn’t seem right to take the offering, and she’d only end up getting the blanket wet along with her. “I’m okay.”

Shutters fell over his eyes and Harrison left the room.

Beth sank her teeth into her lower lip as her eyes shifted from the doorway to the book and back. She’d made him mad. Of course she had. Beth was starting to think her simply breathing was enough to irritate him. Whatever her intentions, she seemed to do everything wrong. Shoulders dropping, with a sigh she set down the book on the bench and went in search of him. If she explained herself, maybe he would understand.

The foyer whispered for her to halt, to step away from the staircase her feet were about to ascend. Beth didn’t listen. This house wasn’t living, and yet it breathed. Spoke. Listened. She wondered what confidences Harrison had unknowingly shared with it. Did the walls know of his pain, his sorrow, his anger? Had the windows watched him break down? Did the stairwell count each time he went up and down its steps, had it witnessed him stumble? And the floor—how many times had it felt him pace its length, alone and bitter?

As she walked up the stairs, they creaked in certain spots, alerting anyone nearby of her presence. Like they wanted to warn Harrison of her approach. No light shone over this part of the room, making the journey dark and foreboding. Beth was stepping toward something she shouldn’t, and it made her want to run before it had the chance to disappear. Her brain told her she was reckless, and her heart told her it didn’t matter.

She crested the stairwell, her heart hammering from the exertion and apprehension over what she would find. Beth paused at the sight of the long hallway lined with doors. The first door on her left was open and she stopped, catching movement from within. It was Harrison, and he was in the process of putting on a shirt. A view of pale skin, corded with muscle, met her vision. She gasped at the unexpected sight of his upper body. Her eyes widened, tightened, and she couldn’t look away. She didn’t want to.

He was beautiful. Flawed, and ravaged, and beautiful.

Seeing him partially unclothed made her insides bunch up and her tongue go thick. She was surprised by her reaction to him. It froze her with its undeniable truth. Beth was attracted to Harrison, not just emotionally, as she’d already suspected. But physically as well.

Thin as he was, his body was smooth muscle. Her hands fisted, her hands that wanted to trace the lines of his shoulders and back. He wasn’t as bulky as he was in the pictures she’d seen, but Harrison had definition to his tall frame she wouldn’t have estimated there to be. And then Beth felt stupid, once more, for passing judgment on something she didn’t understand. She only knew surface details, and until Harrison told her anything—if he told her anything—she should think of him as being a blank piece of paper, free of words. An idea that was easier to think and harder to put forth.

Hearing the noise, he looked up. His cheek muscles flexed and then his expression went through a variety of hostile thoughts, all showcased in his sharply etched features. Harrison stalked toward the door, his eyes holding her in place even as she told herself to move. His face was contorted with fury, reds and blacks taking over the man and turning him into a beast. Without uttering a word, he slammed the door in her face.

Beth flinched and sank against the wall, unsure if she should leave or wait for the inevitable confrontation. When he slammed the door, he took her breath with him. She pressed her hands together and held them under her chin, her eyes glued to the closed door as though hypnotized. Her pulse spiked up in tempo, all the cold incinerated from her body from her overactive nerves.