Steady as the Snow Falls (9 page)

The door opened a moment later. Harrison was in dry clothes, his hair matted down from the stocking cap, two black abysses passing for eyes. He looked lethal, awe-inspiring. “You are not here to gawk at me,” he said in a deceptively quiet voice. It was cold, lacking any form of warmth.

“I…I know. I just…” she trailed off, words turning to mush in her head before she could get them out.

Something went flying at her, and she reflexively caught a pair of black pajama pants, clutching them to her chest as if they could lessen the force of his dark mood.

“Put those on,” he commanded, moving past her and down the stairs.

FOUR

ON THE WAY back to the reading room, Beth decided some things. The first was that they needed to have a better form of communication. Constant misinterpretations of what each other meant was not the way to go about understanding one another. The second was that she needed to stop acting scared of him. Harrison was a man—a formidable, edgy, intense man; a sick man, but still a man—and it wasn’t doing either of them any good for her to act like he was anything else.

The third, and the one that made her breath hitch and her palms sweaty, was that he had to be upfront with her about what he was battling. If she was going to be indefinitely spending her afternoons with him, he had to give her something of him. Beth needed her questions answered, because in spite of him saying his health had nothing to do with what he wanted of her, it did. She couldn’t write a story without knowing all of him, even that unwell part he wanted her to pretend she didn’t know existed.

Harrison wasn’t in the reading room.

Beth sighed and stood indecisively in the doorway before turning and heading back to the entryway. Goose bumps covered her arms and legs, and she held the pants closer to her body. It would probably be in her best interest to not worry about Harrison and focus on the book she’d been assigned to read, but Beth feared if she waited to talk to him, she wouldn’t. Her bravery was already diminishing, and she was trembling at the thought of standing up to him. Trembling, but resolved.

Once again she found herself traipsing through unknown parts of a lifeless, dark house. Beth entered the dining room, her eyes dipping to the table that mocked family dinners and what they represented. Life, love, a connection. It was uncanny, and she wondered why Harrison even bothered to have the table and chairs put in the room.

She stepped past the door that led to the trophy room, and walked the length of the hallway. At the end of it was a window, a beacon of light in a somber reality. The low thrum of sound pulled her to the last room on the right. Through the closed door, she picked out faint instruments playing a hauntingly slow tune. There were no words, no voices.

Beth carefully turned the doorknob and walked inside, gently shutting the door behind her. Her ears were assaulted by sound, it vibrating through her body like she was a piece of it instead of separate. Midnight blue curtains kept out the sun, darkening the tan walls. Harrison didn’t have a radio—he had an entire sound system. The walls had to be soundproof, because inside the room was an orchestra so fierce she feared her ears would bleed. As she listened, it changed its beat, alternating its rhythm.

In the center of the room was a chair, and sitting on it was Harrison, his profile in view. Features cut from stone were alluringly resplendent in peace. His form was relaxed, molded to the chair in quiet, oblivious seduction. Beth swallowed, her heartbeat fast and forceful. Witnessing his soul splayed open for all to see, and her eyes alone permitted to view it, made her veins tighten and release. She felt possessive, protective. She wanted to shield him from anything that tried to break him down. Even himself.

The music was loud, powerful. Instruments flowing like magic, pounding like the beat of a million hands. It floated through the room, sad and fast, slow and sweet, ripping open Beth’s heart as she listened. Repairing it. Building her up and crashing her back down. She stared at Harrison, entranced by his stillness. His eyes were closed, his head tilted back, as he breathed in the melody, living in the music. He was breathtaking, a half man made whole in the storm of the song.

Lost in the rapture of the song and Harrison, Beth became unaware of time. She was no longer cold; the nervousness disappeared. She was an ember of life, on fire in the heat of the blaze. There was only Harrison, and he was a masterpiece. When the music abruptly shut off, her eardrums protested the silence. She fought to blink away the fog covering her eyes and mind.

The only part of her not blurred was her heart. It beat—clearly, ravenously—it beat.

Harrison was sitting up, his eyes on her.

Beth met his gaze, felt her pulse jump.

A small black remote was in his hand. He stood, his attention dropping to her arms. Harrison clenched his jaw and focused on her. “You refused the blanket and you’re refusing the pants as well? You insult me, Beth.”

“No. That isn’t it.” Flustered, she lowered her eyes and squeezed her fingers around the article of clothing. It smelled freshly laundered, the scent of snow and rain emanating from it. “I just…I didn’t know where to change. I don’t know where your bathroom is.” Her words were dipped in wariness and embarrassment.

Harrison paused, scrutinizing her with his all-seeing eyes. “And yet you managed to find me, upstairs and in here.”

Beth’s jaw jutted forward as she lifted her eyes to take in his derisive countenance. “I didn’t want to get your blanket wet. That’s all it was.”

Time hesitated as he studied her, and then he gave a short nod. “There are two bathrooms.” Harrison moved for the door. “One upstairs and one on this level. I’ll show you where the downstairs one is—if you aren’t too afraid to use it, that is.”

She wanted to shout at him that he was wrong, she wanted to scream her denial through all the rooms, but he was right. She had thought about it, and she had questioned the smartness of using the same facilities as him. Beth cringed from the suffocating shame as it washed over her in streams of scalding heat. She hated that about herself, loathed the ingrained prejudices she didn’t want to feel. Enough time had passed, enough medical progression had taken place that people didn’t have the fears they once had, and still they acted as if no time at all had passed. As if the disease were new, and as deadly as it once was.

Beth followed him, silent and stricken.

He stopped near a door at the start of the hallway, opening it and flipping up a light switch while remaining outside the room. Harrison turned to her. “I clean as needed, and someone my mom knows comes over weekly to do a better job.”

“It’s—” Beth began, her face burning, but he cut her off with a look that told her not to bother with whatever she was going to say.

She hovered in the doorway of the spacious room, taking in the gray and white tiled walls and floor. There was a large, square-shaped tub near the far wall, illuminated by the light shining through from a high window. A shower with glass doors took up a corner. Everything sparkled as if recently washed. Even the toilet gleamed bright white, scorning her weak disposition.

Harrison opened a cupboard door and set a bottle of cleaning solution and a roll of paper towels on the counter. Glancing at her, he said, “We might as well be open about it. It’s an ugly disease. No point in trying to pretty up the unpleasant facts. If it eases your conscience to clean everything before you touch it, go ahead.”

Without waiting for her reply, Harrison left, closing the door after him.

Beth set her back to the door and covered her face with her hands, the pants sliding from her grasp. The coldness of the floor leached into the soles of her feet and up her legs. Her shoulders shook against the emotion coursing through her like an inescapable curse. She felt sick, not only in her stomach, but in her soul, and erroneous in a way she couldn’t brush aside with an apology. Harrison was living with the illness, and her presence shouldn’t make him feel worse about it.

Stop it. Stop reacting negatively to something you don’t understand.

Straightening, she slowly removed her jeans, her skin cold to the touch. Beth slid on the soft cotton pants, tightening the drawstring around her waist. They were too long and too big, but they were warm, and they were dry. She folded her jeans and set them on the counter and looked at her reflection. Remorse pinched her features, made her blue eyes dark with the reality of the kind of person she was. Beth choked on air as she brought it into her lungs, turning from the image of someone she didn’t entirely want to claim as hers. She didn’t think he would accept it, but she owed Harrison an apology.

Harrison waited outside the door, on the opposite wall of the hallway. His face was angled down, his eyes lifting to hers as she stepped out of the bathroom. The darkness of his gaze pulsed with emotion. A single glance from him and her mouth turned to dust. He offered a pair of white socks and she gladly took them, his fingers unconsciously brushing across hers at the exchange. Harrison’s fingers were long and warm and Beth blinked in surprise at the pleasant sensation of contact.

He snatched back his hand, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. He stood partially turned from her, as if to protect one of them from the other. The air around them radiated with tension, thick with everything kept unrevealed. She quickly leaned over and pulled on the socks, the material ending halfway up her calves. Beth straightened, catching the direction of Harrison’s attention.

Pulling his eyes from her legs in a way that suggested it took substantial effort, Harrison said, “I can put your jeans and socks in the dryer.”

Beth bit back the need to tell him she could do it herself, not wanting him to do any more for her than was necessary, and instead nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”

She gathered up her damp clothes, including the socks from the foyer, and was led by Harrison to a laundry room located off the kitchen. Trying to keep her eyes from his shoulders and back proved difficult as she remembered the sculpted terrain beneath his cobalt blue shirt, but Harrison didn’t comment on her inability to look elsewhere, and it was a small reprieve.

The laundry room had wood flooring like the majority of the house, and the walls were painted cream, lined with windows and cupboards. When he tried to take the clothes without touching her, Beth purposely made their hands touch. Convincing herself or him that it was okay, she didn’t know which. Both. Dark eyes flickered to hers and away, a spark of light glowing tiny and distant in their depths. Beth wanted to grab his hands, and hold them, and force him to look into her eyes and see that her prejudices weren’t by design. That she was trying, that she would understand, if he let her.

He paused before the dryer with his back to her. “I understand your reservations. I have them as well. I am a monster with poison living inside me. One wrong touch, one innocent mistake, and someone else is compromised.”

The breath she exhaled was ragged and profound, unseen parts of her hurting for Harrison, for the way he saw himself.
Monster.
Beth flinched from the word, and what it implied. How could he think of himself that way? He was no more a monster than she.

“Don’t call yourself that,” she told him, her voice quaking around the words she almost didn’t say.

Harrison looked to the side and down, a bitter smile caressing his mouth.

“You know it isn’t that easily contracted.”

“I don’t know anything.” Harrison turned back to the dryer. He closed the door and started the dryer. The clothes thumped around inside as the machine hummed. He faced her and crossed his arms. “You say you know it isn’t easily contracted and yet you act like it is. Why should I think differently?”

“People react negatively to things they don’t understand.” Beth’s voice was quiet, a silent apology for her actions clear in her tone, if he wanted to hear it.

“People react negatively to things that can harm them,” Harrison corrected.

“Tell me how you got it,” she implored. “Tell me what you thought, how you felt, how others acted around you. Tell me everything.”

“No.”

“You have to, Harrison,” Beth insisted, the unknown bottled up inside her and scratching to be discovered. It seemed as if she was on a panicked, frustrated quest with no positive outcome. Even so, she couldn’t abandon it—just in case there was a positive outcome. “Not because I want to know about it, but because I need to know about you. I need to understand what you’re going through. Please tell me.”

When he looked back, his expression indifferent, Beth continued, “You can’t really expect me to be here with you when you won’t divulge any of what you’re going through to me. It isn’t fair of you, and it isn’t fair
to
you.”

Tainted humor flared to life on his features, casting the facial bones in derision. “I see. You want me to dig out my heart for
my
benefit. Thank you for your selflessness. I appreciate it. Truly.”

Irritation thinned her lips and brought heat to her cheeks. “It might be good for you to talk about it with someone. Do you have anyone to talk to?”

“Didn’t you see the line of concerned people standing outside the front door?”

“Fine,” she said, determination adding rigidity to her tone.

Harrison dropped his arms and straightened. “Fine?”

Beth nodded and turned to leave the laundry room. “Fine. If you won’t talk to me, I won’t be here anymore. I can’t write about someone who won’t tell me anything about them. I didn’t say the information had to go in the book, but I need to know it, for me.”

“Go ahead and sue me,” she called over her shoulder. The hallway was fading away, the door and her exit out of Harrison’s life getting closer.
Don’t let me leave, give me a reason to stay.
I want to stay. Why do I want to stay? I need to stay.
Beth’s heartbeat was too hard, the forceful beat of it making her dizzy and disoriented.