Chapter 40 Larissa
LARISSA
I woke up in the front seat of Chris’s car. His jacket was draped over me, and I was using one of his hoodies for a pillow. Woofarine was curled up in my lap.
It was dark outside. Heather was gone.
We never went to the hospital. Well, not inside. I didn’t want to go, couldn’t afford it. I fought Heather and Chris tooth and nail and finally they agreed that if I was still doing okay by the time we got there, I didn’t have to go in.
It had been six hours now since the kiss, and the swelling and hives were almost gone. I was groggy, sore, mentally and emotionally exhausted, and I had a bruise on my thigh from the EpiPen.
Chris asked me if I wanted to file a police report against Mike for assault. I didn’t. I just wanted to leave.
I slept most of the way back, dosed up on Benadryl. I woke up briefly when Chris pulled into a drive-through for food I was too out of it to eat, then again when Heather got dropped off. Now we were pulling up to Mike’s. The last stop.
Chris put the car in park, his headlights shining into the windows of the guesthouse with the stinking carpet.
I didn’t want to go in there. I honestly considered abandoning everything I owned in exchange for never stepping foot in that house again.
I couldn’t believe how much had changed in just a few days. My mom left the state. I was homeless. I broke up with my boyfriend.
I almost died.
I scoffed to myself.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing,” I mumbled. “Heather probably thinks we’re filming a reality show.”
He laughed a little but there was no mirth in it.
“She did triage the entire trip,” he said.
“Well, there’s something to be said about trauma bonding.”
A huff.
Chris stared out the windshield. He looked like a zombie. His knuckles were wrapped in gauze.
That whole chaotic fifteen minutes was still fresh at the front of my cloudy brain. The kiss. The realization I was going into anaphylaxis, the look on Chris’s face.
Mike.
It took almost everyone to yank Chris off him. He’d completely lost it.
And Mike just lay there. He didn’t even fight back. He just covered his face and let Chris pummel him until Jesse and Xavier pulled him off.
We sat in silence, and Chris peered out at the guesthouse. The clock on his dash screen read 11:16 p.m.
“I can’t believe it’s still Christmas,” I said tiredly. “It feels like the longest day in the history of days.”
“I want you to come stay with me,” he said.
I turned to him. “What?”
“I just need you to be where I can take care of you,” he said. “Please. I’m exhausted and slightly traumatized, and I just… I need you to be where I can see you and I know you’re okay.”
“How’s Mike going to feel about that?”
“I honestly don’t care.” He looked me in the eye. “I don’t care about anything anymore.”
I peered at him, at the haggard look on his face. He looked the way I felt. I didn’t know what my next step was going to be, and I was too tired to think about it.
“Okay.”
“I can take you to pick up your car tomorrow,” he said. “We can get your stuff then too.”
“What if he’s home tomorrow? I don’t want to see him—”
“The guys took his keys. They’ll let me know when he’s on his way back. We have time.”
I looked back at Mike’s.
“I need to go in there,” I said. “I want my jewelry box.”
I had no idea what Mike was going to do, mostly because now I realized I didn’t really know Mike.
For all I knew, he’d hold my things hostage or try to corner me when I came back for my stuff.
Maybe burn it on the lawn in a drunk rampage.
There wasn’t much I cared about inside that house.
I had my duffel for the cabin with a week’s worth of clothes and all my makeup, my best jacket and snow boots.
Mom took the photos with her to South Dakota, and I’d sold most of my furniture.
My jewelry box was the only thing I couldn’t live with losing—even if it was Mike who’d given it to me. I loved it too much.
“I can run in and get it,” he said.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I’m sure.”
“The carpet smells bad,” I warned.
“He said he ruined it?”
I coughed out a laugh and squeezed my eyes shut.
“What happened?” he asked.
I told him. Everything. When I was done, he somehow managed to look more worn out than he already was.
“You didn’t tell me…”
I gave him a look. “When was I supposed to tell you, Chris?”
He nodded slowly. It was a long moment of silence before he spoke again.
“I should never have brought her,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry for having a girlfriend?” I said.
“I’m sorry for a lot of things.”
Soft snowflakes were starting to come down. They landed gently on the windshield. “We should go,” I said. “I don’t want Janessa or Donna to see us out here.” I didn’t want to explain what was happening. Or worse, have them call Mike.
I picked up my purse from the floor to dig in it for the house keys. Then my hand grazed something familiar. I lifted it out and turned it over, studying it. My EpiPen.
It was unused.
“Didn’t you use my pen?” I asked, looking at him.
“No,” he said, rubbing his forehead.
“Well, whose was it?”
“It was mine.”
“You had an EpiPen? For what?”
He paused. “I just… had one.”
“You bought it?”
Nothing.
I pivoted in my seat to look at him full-on.
“We should go,” he said.
“Chris—”
“It’s not a big deal—”
“It IS. It’s a seven-hundred-dollar medication that you don’t have a prescription for.”
“Heather wrote me one. I don’t want to talk about this right now. We’re both tired. Let’s just get your—”
“No.” I shook my head. “You want me to come stay with you, you tell me the truth. I’m so sick of being lied to.”
“I don’t lie to you—”
“No, you just don’t tell me things.”
He pressed his lips into a line.
“Why is this a secret?” I asked. “Why are you sneaking around throwing away nuts and buying expensive emergency medication and cleaning snow off my car, because I know it was you.”
He didn’t answer. And I was done. Fuck everyone. Even him. I got unbuckled and started to get out.
“Larissa—”
“No!” I spun on him. “Tell me the truth!”
He studied me like he was weighing the pros and cons of calling my bluff.
“Yes,” he said finally. “I did those things.”
“What else.”
“I don’t know—”
“Yes, you do. What else?”
“Lots of things,” he said, throwing up his hands. “All the time. Since the beginning.”
I blinked at him.
“I made Mike pay to fix your car,” he said.
“I told him to get you the jewelry box—I bought your Christmas gift because he got you those fucking cookies that he almost killed you with. I carry an EpiPen because the worst possible thing that could ever happen to me is something bad happening to you. I have died every day for almost a year watching him mess up with you over and over again and all I can do are these stupid little things that make your life better or easier or safer… The EpiPen is nothing. The snow is nothing. It’s not even…
” He trailed off and wiped a hand down his mouth.
“I would do anything for you,” he whispered.
“If I had a nut allergy, I’d taste your food to make sure it’s safe and if it wasn’t and I died, I’d die happy because I died protecting you. Do you understand?”
I stared at him, my heart pounding against my rib cage. He looked at me with red, almost apologetic eyes, like he’d just given me bad news. And in a way he had.
All this time… It was him.
And the second he said it, I knew it was true. Like I’d always known but I’d been choosing to believe the lie.
All the things I loved about Mike, the considerate, selfless gestures that pushed me closer to him, endeared me to him, made me think he was a different person than he was. It was Chris. It was always Chris.
And now it never would be.
Do you understand?
I did. I knew exactly what those words meant. What he was telling me without telling me.
My heart cracked into a thousand pieces.
“You should have let me see him for who he was,” I whispered.
“I just wanted you to be happy,” he said, so quietly I could barely hear it.
I looked at him with wet eyes. We gazed at each other over the center console. So much said without saying anything at all.
“I would have been happier with you.”