Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
LEO
The little crow’s been sheltering on my porch since the rain started. I went outside earlier to shoo it away and realized it only had one leg. And then guilt took over.
I have no cat food, but it seemed to enjoy the peanuts I put out, and the blueberries that were just on the verge of turning. It picked at the small pile, then settled in the corner of the porch under the awning, where it’s now staring at me through the window.
“I can’t let you in,” I murmur. I have no idea how well crows can hear. I could ask North, but I think I’d die from embarrassment after admitting I cared about one of the devil birds.
Besides, I don’t ever want to see North again. Not after the way he left me. The humiliation of watching him walk away is too much, so I pull out my phone, scroll to Easton’s name, and hit the call button.
It rings for so long, I think maybe he’s not going to pick up, but then he does, and I hear laughter in the background, which means he’s at the station.
“Hey, Leo. You okay?” He always answers every one of my calls that way.
“I’m fine. If you get a chance, can you swing by and pick a few things up from me?”
“For you or from you?” he clarifies.
I grimace. It’s a fair question, thanks to my aphasia. “From me. I have a few more food containers that are taking up too much space. Also, I need you to stop bringing me food, okay? Especially if it’s North’s.”
“What? Why? He doesn’t care. He actually said—”
“I don’t care what he said. I don’t want it anymore. I’m…” My brow furrows as I search for some kind of lie that’ll get Easton off my back. “I’m taking a cooking class.”
He goes dead silent for a moment, then coughs. “You’re taking a cooking class?”
“Yes. And thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“I’m not…” He groans. “It’s just, you were never into cooking even before the Incident.”
“Yes, well, I need to learn to take care of myself, and it means you won’t need to steal food from the station anymore.”
“It’s not stealing,” he says tiredly. “It’s for you.”
“Whatever. My point stands. I don’t want you to bring me his food anymore.”
He sighs, sounding irritated. “Fine. Whatever you want.”
“Thank you. I hope you have a good shift.”
“Sure. And hey, Leo—”
I hang up before he can go on. I don’t have it in me to hear that he’s proud of me or some other platitude that would be kind if I weren’t a grown man who really should be capable of feeding himself.
With a sigh, I gather the bags of empty food containers and walk them to the front door just as the room lights up with lightning so bright it burns my eyes. And before I can suck in a breath, thunder hits…
And then the room goes black.
It takes me a second to realize I can still see with how bright the night clouds are shining through the front window.
I have a little box of emergency candles, and I grab a few, setting them out on the coffee table, and I get them all lit with a single match.
The glow seems to match my mood: melancholy and a little lost.
I feel pathetic. I am pathetic. And not in a self-deprecating way. I let myself get comfortable in a solitude I never actually wanted.
But I don’t want to confront the idea that I might not be interesting or unique enough to be loved again. And even back then, I wasn’t quite enough. I could tell Liam had lived with one foot out the door for a long time.
“Why didn’t you just leave?” I whisper to the ghost that isn’t here.
Even if I did believe in afterlife spirits, I know Liam wouldn’t be here. Small towns scared the shit out of him. Commitment scared the shit out of him.
He was willing to be married so long as there were always options open. So long as we didn’t plant roots anywhere. So long as I was willing to pack up and leave at a moment’s notice.
It was why he wanted me to give up the archives. Why he wanted me to be a writer. To be able to conform to the life he envisioned—fuck anything I wanted.
BAM BAM BAM!
My heart nearly flies out of my chest as I realize the sound is coming from the front door. I peer out of the living room window, but I can’t see anything through the sheets of rain coming down like Noah’s fucking flood. But god, who could possibly be at my door right now?
BAM BAM BAM!
It has to be Easton. I told him to come get the fucking plastic containers, and only that moron would drive in the pouring rain to do what I asked.
I hurry to the door and whip it open, and against the pale, cloudy sky, all I see is a soaked hoodie holding something in its arms.
“Can I come in?”
It isn’t Easton. It’s fucking North, and there’s nothing I can do as he brushes past me, kicks the door shut with a wet boot, then pulls his hood down and shakes the water from his hair.
I’m immediately drenched, and I hear him dripping all over my floor.
“Um.” I blink at his silhouette which is lit up by the faint candle light spilling into the foyer.
He clears his throat, then his shadow holds up his arm, which crinkles as it holds plastic bags. “Food.”
My eyes narrow. “Did Easton send you? Oh my god, did he tell you what I said?”
North passes a wet sleeve down his face, then sneezes three times in a row. “Sorry,” he sniffs.
As mortified as I am to see him again, I don’t want him to drop dead in my foyer.
I snag his sleeve and tug him hard into the living room so he can drip on the carpet instead.
The light’s bright enough there that I can see his horrible, beautiful face, and I’m annoyed he looks so good even when he also kind of looks like a drowned rat.
“Just…stand there,” I say, waving a hand at him. I snag one of the candles off the table and make my way into the bedroom, setting it on the dresser so I can dig around for some sweats.
He’s much bigger than me, but luckily for him, I like my comfy clothes very baggy.
“Your power’s out!” he calls from the other room.
No shit. I bite back the snarky retort. “Storm knocked it out about ten minutes ago!” I answer back.
He says nothing, so I grab a towel and find my way back to the living room without tripping over my feet and braining myself in the dark. North hasn’t moved other than to take off his hoodie, displaying his station T-shirt, which is now plastered to his obnoxiously cut abs.
I do my best not to stare at the shape of his muscles as I thrust the clothes and towel at him. “Here.”
“Laundry?”
“Clothes, North,” I say impatiently. “You’re going to catch a cold and die if you stay in wet jeans. And—oh god.” He starts to strip right there in front of the window. “I have a bathroom.”
“Yeah, but it’ll be too dark for me to change,” he says and keeps going.
In spite of the fact that he’s had a hand on my dick, I still turn my head away to give him privacy.
Unfortunately, I can also see a perfect reflection of him in the living room window from the candle flames, and I cannot stop watching as he peels away wet fabric to reveal miles of gorgeous, naked, glistening skin.
I swallow thickly.
“You know that you can’t catch a cold from getting wet, right? I didn’t graduate high school, and even I know that.”
I whip my head toward him just in time to see him tug the sweater over his stomach, and then he begins to towel off his hair. “You didn’t graduate?”
In the faint light, I can see his cheek darken. “Judgy much?”
“No, I—sorry.” I was being judgmental. “I thought you had to have a diploma and some college certifications for your job.”
“Unless you’re a volunteer or from the prison,” he says. “I got my GED and enrolled in the EMT program at the community college.”
“Oh. Why did you—” I stop when his face goes stormy, and I swallow back the rest of my words. “Sorry. Not my business. I’ll, uh…make some tea.”
Hurrying into the kitchen, I come to a halt when I realize I can’t make tea because everything’s electric except the stove, but the igniter is also electric, and I don’t trust myself to light a match near gas, so yeah.
I’m just going to stand here in the dark like a jackass.
“Leo,” comes a soft voice. I jolt, but only a little, as hands find my waist. I almost groan and lean into him, but instead, I make myself freeze. “You don’t need to make tea. Sorry I made it awkward in there. It’s not something I like to talk about.”
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
His hands tighten on me. I should tell him to let go, but god, I don’t want to. I want him to keep touching. To keep talking. To make me forget that I don’t like him and he doesn’t like me, and things in my life are so…empty.
“You’re allowed to ask,” he murmurs. He steps closer, and despite being soaked by the rain, he’s warm. I can feel heat coming off him in waves.
“No. You don’t have to tell me.”
He sighs, then after a short forever he says, “You’ve seen my scars, right?”
“Um…”
“I know you have.” He goes quiet another second.
“My mom married this real douche bag when I was younger. They weren’t great parents.
He was abusive, especially to me and my mom, though I took the brunt of it.
When I was seventeen, he went after our neighbor who threatened to call the cops on him, and beat the guy within an inch of his life.
I stepped in and he wailed on me with…” He stops for a second.
“North—”
“No. It’s fine.” He clears his throat. “He was tearing apart some electrical shit and had all this exposed wire. He slashed me open pretty good. It was the first time he went after me in public, and someone finally called the cops. They got there before I was hurt too badly. I got stitched up, but it left some pretty bad scars behind.”
I don’t know if I want to ask what this has to do with his GED, so I don’t. I simply wait.
After a long breath, he goes on. “He went to jail, my mom spiraled out, my sisters got sent to foster care, and I decided that dropping out was probably the only way I was going to survive. But I was working as a line cook which didn’t make dick for money, so I decided to get my GED and enroll in the EMT program.
I figured even if my mom wasn’t stable, maybe if I was, their case worker would let me bring them home. ”