25. Now
NOW
“W ell, I’m off,” Donna says.
The reporter from The New York Times is back and has decided to expand the story.
In theory, it’s a good thing that she wants to meet with Donna.
She’s going to focus more on Danny’s House than she’d intended to, which is what we want.
Except I don’t trust her. It’s one of the reasons I negotiated with her in the first place, hoping a scoop about my background might be enough to shut her down.
And Donna’s never been media-trained. She has no idea how one offhand comment might unravel this whole pack of lies I’ve been telling for the past seven years.
“Be careful,” I warn. “She’ll act like she’s your best friend and you’ll find yourself wanting to tell her everything. Just imagine every word out of your mouth appearing in print.”
She studies me for a moment. “I’m not sure I have anything in my head that I’d mind seeing in print,” she says gently.
That’s probably true, but it doesn’t mean the way she might characterize my time in this house, and Luke’s, won’t cause problems. Laid out the wrong way, Danny’s death might seem like the natural conclusion of those events rather than an unhappy coincidence.
Laid out the wrong way, it might look like we wanted him gone.
“She’ll be fine, Juliet,” says Luke, slamming the refrigerator door shut.
You wouldn’t know a thing about that, Luke.
“What will the two of you do tonight?” Donna asks us, going through her purse.
Avoid each other. I’ve been steering clear of him for the past two days, ever since I saw Grady at the store.
Luke probably thinks I’m fickle, that I came to his room simply to get laid.
Let him think it. It’s better than the alternative—letting down my walls, allowing him to continue shaking the past loose until it can’t be put away.
I’m going to lock myself in my room the moment Donna leaves and I won’t emerge until tomorrow.
“We’re going to rent a movie,” he tells her. The look in his eyes is defiant. I nod, but there’s no fucking way I’m watching a movie with him, and as soon as she drives off, I grab my stuff to leave.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demands. “We’re watching a movie, remember?”
“You can watch it. I’m going to go read.”
His arms fold across his chest. “That lie doesn’t work with me, remember? Come on, Jules. Truce. I’ll even let you pick.”
Something softens inside me, though I don’t want it to. How can he be so fucking kind to me? I wish he’d stop.
He sees that I’m weakening, and smiles. “You can pick something without a single explosion if you really want to punish me. Some movie that uses a description like ‘rich tapestry’ so you know absolutely nothing’s going to fucking happen.”
I find myself smiling against my will and walking to the family room with feigned reluctance.
I choose a movie about World War II, assuming there will be no romance, but within minutes I see my error: the main character and his fiancée are pining for each other, and that’s nearly as bad as the sex scenes I’d hoped to avoid.
Because Luke and I…that’s what we did, wasn’t it? We pined for each other, for years. And I, at least, have continued to pine, all this time.
I sit rigid at one end of the couch while he sits at the other. I feel his gaze on me occasionally and ignore it. Just get through the fucking movie, Juliet. Get through the movie, go straight to bed, and spend this last, final week pretending being so near him isn’t tearing you apart.
And then the soldier gets leave and meets his fiancée in a hotel.
By the time he follows her into the shower, my skin is tight, overheated, too small for everything inside me.
I’m breathing fast, and I know Luke sees it.
I know he’s remembering what I’m remembering: the two of us in that shower, in broad daylight.
How one minute we were kissing, his hands sliding over my damp skin, and a moment later he was inside me.
I knew I was cheating and I just couldn’t stop it.
We were like a train without brakes. I had no words, no ability to control it, nor any desire to, and after all this time, nothing has changed.
How can it possibly not have changed, not have died, even now?
How can that still be all I want—him, naked and wet, pressed up against me, promising the world?
I jump to my feet, my heart hammering in my chest. “I don’t want to watch this.”
I just need to get away. I walk out the back door, into the yard, and within seconds he’s behind me, and his hands are on my arms.
He spins me toward him, his face not an inch from mine. “Are you ever going to stop feeling guilty about it?”
“No.” Tears slide down my cheeks. “Never. I’m never going to look at you without remembering what I did to him.”
A vein pulses in his temple as he steps closer. “Except you can’t look at me without wanting it again, either, can you?”
“Fuck you,” I say, shoving him.
He presses me to the garage wall behind us and pulls my mouth to his, his hand on my jaw.
His weight crushes me, his scruff abrades my skin, and I want more.
I grab the waistband of his shorts and push them down around his hips. He’s already hard, and he hisses when my hand wraps around him, too impatient for half measures.
He lifts me, pulling my legs around his waist before pushing my panties to the side and thrusting inside me.
My back arches and my head falls back toward the wall. He chases, seeking my mouth. I let my teeth sink into his lower lip, wishing I could consume him, eat him whole. I want to take in his smell, his taste, until they’re the only things I know and remember.
“Has it ever been like this with anyone else?” He buries himself inside me. The words are a low growl against my ear.
No, it’s never like this. Not even close. “Shut up,” I hiss.
His hands grip my thighs, lifting me higher, making him go deeper. I gasp as he hits the exact right spot.
“Answer.” He stops moving entirely, holding me pinned, still inside me. I’m so close. “Answer me or you won’t come.”
I wish I had more pride, but I’m too desperate for it now. “No,” I admit, flinching.
His hips snap backward and forward so hard that I hear the echo of it inside the garage. “ Oh .” My eyes fall closed. “ God .”
Cash thinks I’m hard to please. I’m not. It’s just that with him, I’m a husk. He has to work and work to find any part of me that still feels anything. Luke’s the only person who can access all of me. He barely has to try.
A car engine hums in the distance. I’m so close to coming it barely registers. It’s only when the wall behind me starts to vibrate—the garage door opening—that I realize what’s going on.
I gasp. “Shit. That’s Donna. You’ve got to stop.”
His eyes are nearly black in the dim light. “No.” He slams into me again and again. I know exactly how it will sound on the other side of that wall.
“She’s going to hear,” I plead. “You’ve got to stop.”
“Then you’d better hurry up and come,” he taunts, slamming into me again as her car pulls in.
His hand covers my mouth as I cry out. He thrusts once more and stills, biting my shoulder as his hips pump silently, squeezing me so tight I’ll be bruised in the morning. He breathes into my neck as we stand frozen, waiting for the sound of the side door to open and shut.
“ Fuck ,” he gasps when it finally does. He releases me, and my feet hit the ground at last.
“This was wrong,” I say, pushing my dress down. I walk off, and this time he doesn’t follow. But once again, there’s a part of me that wishes he had.