Chapter 17 Lara
Lara
“Are you ever still?” Calder asked, turning from his seated position on the blanket in the Sanctuary.
“Not if I can help it.” I took one more, defiant trek across the clearing where I’d been pacing, restless for Dr. Julia to arrive. Or because not even thirty minutes ago, I was dry-humping my sister’s ex-boyfriend in the middle of a wellness retreat and it hadn’t fazed me.
When I’d been on his lap, his hands on my skin, his hardness right where I needed him . . . I’d forgotten everything. Where we were. Who we were with. Who we were there for. It had all incinerated under the heat of our attraction.
“I wonder what Dr. Julia said to Sarah. Maybe we should’ve snuck back out and tried to listen,” I blurted out, needing more space to breathe.
Calder’s frown made his opinion about that idea clear. “Do you remember the hummingbird that got trapped in your garage?”
I blinked, the long-ago memory coming back suddenly. “Yeah.”
It was spring semester, and one of my housemates had left the garage door open. The hummingbird had flown inside, and I couldn’t get it to fly out. Just as I was trying to swat it out with a broom, Calder had pulled up with Rachel in the passenger seat; she’d wanted to borrow a skirt of mine.
While he’d jerry-rigged my roommate’s tennis racket onto the end of a broom, Calder explained that hummingbirds are attracted to the color red and get drawn in by the red release handle on the garage-door motor.
Then, with an abundance of patience, he coaxed the bird onto the racket frame, and after about fifteen minutes of trying, he carried it to freedom.
“Do you know what would’ve happened if I hadn’t gotten it out?”
I had the sense that this was a trick question, but I answered anyway. “It would’ve become our garage pet.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “It would’ve died.”
“What?” I jolted. “I’m sure it would’ve flown out eventually.”
I knew I was wrong by the slow, nearly immovable shake of his head.
“When hummingbirds sense danger, their instinct is to fly up, not out. It would’ve continued to fly up into that corner of the garage to try and escape, land on the tracks of the garage door when it got tired, and then fly for the corner again until it exhausted itself to death.”
“That’s . . . horrible.”
The tragedy of that scenario struck me first. For the small bird to die of exhaustion when a wide-open door was only a few feet away seemed . . . unbelievable.
“Always doing something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing.”
My shoulders tensed, ready to reject his insinuation. “Doing something is better than doing nothing.”
“Is it? For whom?” Before I could reply, he added, “Is flying endlessly upward better than stopping to take stock of the situation? Is the hummingbird only worth something because it kept putting in the effort until the effort killed it?”
Suddenly, the open sanctuary felt suffocating. Stuffy with things I didn’t want to think about, let alone think he could see in me: a hummingbird that never stopped trying—that never stopped flying. Until it almost killed me.
A wash of guilt stained my mind as I wondered, for the umpteenth time, whether I’d caused this. Had Rachel ended up here because I’d made her feel like she wasn’t doing enough?
“I think we need to put some distance between us,” Calder said. “In front of Maxwell.”
Of course. It made total sense, and I should 100 percent, completely agree, especially after what had just happened at the group session.
My body was still thrumming from the heat of him—the hardness.
I should welcome any reason for distance.
So why did it feel like he’d just ripped the rug right out from underneath me?
The ball in my throat inflated. “What do you mean?”
“She mentioned targeting Sarah and Trent because they’d argued during their first session. If we can provoke the same reaction, we might find out what the Garden and EC is sooner.”
“Yeah. That could work.”
A sound drew Calder’s attention, and I quickly joined him on the blanket as Dr. Julia’s footsteps sounded along the path for a few seconds before she entered the clearing.
“Lara, Calder. Thank you for joining me.” She came and sat in front of us, and I noticed a distinct dilation in her pupils. I wondered how many of those smoothie shots she’d had that morning, or if she’d made herself something stronger.
“I want to say, I was very impressed with your intimate work this morning. That is the kind of connection I like to see—to feel—in those sessions.” Her gaze wove between Calder and me. “Tell me, Calder, did you feel the electric tether of your wild core to Lara’s?”
Felt it or faked it? Because as much as I’d thought he’d felt it, he’d certainly become all business right after.
“Yes,” he answered after a beat, and I searched for the lie seamed into his voice but came up empty.
It was still a lie, though. It had to be.
“Good.” Dr. Julia beamed and looked to me, and I braced myself to answer the same question. “And you, Lara—I know you felt it, too,” she continued, surprising me with the assumption. “You felt it, and you tried to resist it. Why?”
My skin prickled. Had she figured out we were faking this?
And then I felt Calder’s strong fingers lacing mine into his hold. Without a word, he comforted me. Steadied me.
Be still, Lara. Stop flying up.
“I’m not sure,” I murmured, and Dr. Julia took my hesitation as nervousness.
“Do you think it has something to do with your sister?”
My jaw went slack. I should be glad—glad the accusation hadn’t hit closer to home. Do you think it’s because you aren’t really together? Because you’re faking this relationship to invade my retreat?
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to answer her.
“Calder, what do you think?” She drew him in. “Is your ex-girlfriend, Lara’s sister, a barrier in your relationship?”
“Yes.”
I couldn’t help but flinch.
“This is a safe place, Lara. A sanctuary for your wildness. You can let it be free here.”
I released my breath, the air forced out by the battering of my pulse, and leaned—hard—into what I could think if Calder were really mine.
“I hesitate because he never looked twice at me back when he dated my sister,” I started slow, my feigned answer fueled by coals of dark, messy truths like a locomotive gaining speed. “I hesitate because I wonder if he thinks of her when he’s with me. If he wishes he were with her instead.”
It couldn’t be the truth—in fact, it was probably the furthest thing from it: Calder had ended things with Rachel, not the other way around. But somewhere in the fiction, my deep-seated anger toward him for hurting her began to sprout.
“But mostly, I hesitate because I worry he’ll treat me like he did her.
That he’ll realize I want too much or something too serious, and he’ll leave me without caring what happens.
” The words tumbled out, unstoppable. Like trying to unfire a gun, I couldn’t reel back the bullet through the air or press it back into the chamber, any more than I could stop my words from piercing skin and bones and soul.
“I hesitate because I’ve seen how carelessly he can break a heart, and I don’t want him to break mine. ”
When I’d finished, the air around us prickled with a static energy, unmoving but threatening to spark all the same.
“Good,” Dr. Julia finally cooed. “Bravo, Lara. Bravo.” In my periphery, she turned to Calder, but his stare didn’t break from mine, shimmering and molten. “Calder, Lara’s wild core has shared this vulnerability with you. Reached for you. How does what she said make you feel?”
Her question drifted into long seconds of silence.
“I’m sorry, but I haven’t thought about your sister in any meaningful way in the last dozen years. And before that . . .” His jaw fired up. “I never looked twice at you back then because all it took was once.”
My heart tripped and fell flat on its face, its rhythm returning only to the cadence of those words: All it took was once.
Five words and I forgot this was fake. How could I not when he stared at me like he wanted to rip my prior thoughts to shreds?
“Your sister and I dated for nine months, but it could’ve been nine years and I still never would’ve felt for her what I felt for you after only one look.”
A small whimper escaped my chest, and as soon as I heard the sound, I stiffened. His words were affecting me too much—he was affecting me too much.
“Don’t tell me it’s okay to kiss you. Not if you don’t want me to do it again.”
“What is it, Calder? What are you holding back?”
Calder grimaced, a wild, tortured expression consuming his face.
He was holding back, or trying to. His jaw anchored shut and his mouth pulled into a tight line, but even that wasn’t enough to stop the honesty that came next.
“As for how things ended,” he rasped, “sometimes letting someone believe a lie is the only compassion you can offer.”
My heart tumbled like a glass from a table, shattering in my chest and sending shards of heartbeats like shrapnel through my veins.
There was no responding to him before he rose abruptly and strode from the Sanctuary without another word. Like he was angry. Like we were not real.
“We need to put some distance between us in front of Maxwell.”
The raging heat under my skin turned to ash.
Of course. This was fake. Calder would never display emotion like that.
This was all part of his plan—our plan. To make Dr. Julia think we had major problems, too.
This was nothing more than a show, and like a fool, I’d been swept away in the performance—in the sweet promise. “All it took was once.”
“Let him go,” Dr. Julia said as she stood and placed a hand on my shoulder. “This is what happens in the Sanctuary. An unearthing of things we’d rather not think or talk about, but it’s the only way to go deeper.”
For the sake of the ruse, I swallowed, tasting nothing but bitterness in my mouth. “And if we’re not meant to go deeper? What happens then?”