Chapter 16 #2
It hasn't worked. What we did, our scent, is still in here. It hits me the second I'm through the door and my knees actually go a little soft, and the pull in my chest lets go like a fist opening. I make a sound I'm glad nobody's around to hear.
Cut grass. Cool clean air. Alpha. Him.
I should leave.
He obviously doesn’t want me in here. Not even a trace.
But that thought twists something in my stomach until tears sting my eyes and I can’t face that truth. At least not yet.
It’s easier to stay in here, as close as I can to him without actually having to face him, so that’s what I’ll do.
There's a chair by the window with a lamp next to it and a stack of paperbacks on the floor beside it. One of Calder’s work jackets is tossed over the back of the chair and I can’t help but lean into it, putting my cheek where I imagine his chest would be. His beating heart.
Just a minute.
I open the book and it’s a little easier to focus.
Finally, I can process what I’m reading and I escape into the pages. My mind is wrapped up in characters on a page instead of the reality of my life. They say the truth is stranger than fiction–I’m inclined to believe it.
I sink deeper into the chair, wrapping his jacket around my shoulders, and folding in on myself as I turn another page.
I’m chewing on my bottom lip when the door opens.
I jump up out of the chair so fast the book falls and hits the floor with a slap. My heart is pounding in my chest, and the light’s changed—gone orange and low, hours gone, and I don’t remember one second of them passing.
Calder's in the doorway.
He's got his keys in his hand and grease on his forearms and he's stopped dead about a foot inside his own room. His mouth slightly open, those full lips unmoving, and he doesn't say a word. His eyes look me up and down and then his hand tightens on the keys.
Neither of us says anything.
The pull in my chest, which had been quiet for the first time, wakes all the way up and hauls, and I feel my whole body lean about an inch toward him before I get hold of it. I see him see it happen.
That's what breaks the silence. That, and the fact that I'm standing in his room with his jacket over me.
"I—" My voice comes out cracked. "I got lost."
I inwardly cringe. That had to have been the dumbest thing I could have said.
"I mean… I didn't get lost. I know where I am." I fiddle with the sleeves of his jacket that overhand my hands. "I just—the front room's cold. And I was reading. And I don't know how long I've been up here, I only meant to be a—"
"Sonny."
"—minute, and I guess I lost track of time, I'm sorry, I'll go—"
"Sonny."
I stop. His eyes drop to my throat, to the mark, and stay there a beat too long before he drags them back up.
"You don't have to explain yourself to me," he says. "Not ever. Not about anything."
"Okay."
"You can be in here." His throat works. "You can be anywhere in this house you want to be. That's not—" He stops. Puts the keys in his pocket like he needs his hands empty. "You don't have to ask me for that."
I look down at my feet, feeling too awkward to move. “Calder.”
“Mm.”
“How long are you going to avoid me?"
He doesn't answer.
And something in my chest just folds up. Crushes like I’ve been punched.
Of course he doesn't answer. Why would he?
I'm not owed an answer—I'm not owed anything in this house. I'm a debt, a burden. An outsider. An outsider isn’t owed an answer and he certainly has no reason to continue being kind to me after everything that’s happened. After what my mom did to his family.
My throat gets tight and my cheeks flare hot and now I really can’t be in here.
I shrug out of his jacket. It takes longer than it should because of how it swallows me whole, and I fold it once and put it back over the chair the way I found it. Then I crouch down and pick the book up off the floor.
"Sorry," I say. "It's your room."
I get two steps toward the door.
"Shit—wait."
He's darted in front of me–standing between me and the doorway. He’s still not touching me, as if doing so might burn him. Instead, Calder is standing there with both hands half up like he's not sure what he's allowed to do with them.
"Don't go." His voice cracks straight down the middle of it. "Please."
I stand there with the paperback against my chest.
"I thought—" My voice wavers as emotion clogs my throat. "I thought… I just assumed you couldn't stand to look at me."
His head comes up fast.
"No." It's out of him instantly. "No, Sonny. God. No."
"Then what—"
"I can't stand to look at me." He says it hard, like it's been sitting in his throat for five days.
"Every time I think about being near you I know I’ll have to see what I did to you.
It's right there on your neck. And you—" He drags a hand down his face.
"You flinched, when I came in. Just now, and… I did that."
"I flinched because you scared me. I was reading and the door startled me.”
"That's not—"
"It is." My grip tightens on the book. "You came through a door and I wasn’t expecting it. That's all that was."
He doesn't say anything.
Neither do I. I stand there with the book against my chest and try to find the next sentence but nothing surfaces. There's too much between us right now–too much unsaid. Or undone.
I step around him and head for the door.
I get maybe a step and a half before his hand closes around my wrist.
It's not hard. It's not even really holding—it's the grip you'd use on something that might break—but the second his skin touches mine the thing in my chest lights up like a struck match and I make a noise.
Out loud. In front of him.
Calder lets go like I've burned him.
"Sorry." His hand snaps back. "God. Sorry, I shouldn't have—"
"It's fine."
"It isn't." He's staring at his own hand. Then he looks up at me, his eyes dipping down my entire body before arriving on the mark he left on my neck. "How are you… feeling?" he asks.
It's such a small, stupid, ordinary question that a laugh punches out of me but not a humorous one. "I don't know," I say.
"Are you eating?"
I nod. "Some."
"Is the heart thing worse?"
"No." I swallow. "The doctor changed the dose."
He nods slowly. "And the—" His eyes go to my throat and stop there, and his voice drops so low I nearly lose it. "Does it hurt?"
"Not the way you think."
Calder’s eyes lock with mine and I can see the concern, the tenderness. I can almost feel it.
"How, then?" He asks.
"There's a pull," I say, pointing back and forth between the two of us. As if the bond inside me heard me, the claws in my sternum tug forward.
Calder takes a step toward me. Just one. "Where?"
I touch my own sternum. "Here."
"All the time?"
"All the time." My voice has gone down to almost a whisper. The room around us is charged and my skin prickles with chills. "It got worse the closer I got to this room."
Another step. He's close enough now that I can smell him properly—cut grass, cool air, and underneath it something warmer that makes my stomach drop.
"And in here?" he asks.
"It stopped."
"Stopped?”
"Yeah, when I sat down." I can't look at him. I'm looking at the third button of his shirt but then all I can imagine is the strong chest underneath. The dusting of dark hair that felt so good between my fingers. "In your… in your chair. With your—" My face goes hot. "It just stopped."
He's quiet for a second. When he speaks again his voice has dropped into something low and careful. His tongue darts out to wet his lips and I track the movement.
"What does it do when I'm close?"
I could lie. I could tell him that it hurts or doesn’t feel good. That would make him give me more space. I could process everything that happened and maybe forgive him for biting me without asking. But… I can’t lie to him.
"It… gets worse," I whisper and then smile. "And better. Both."
"Both."
"I don't know how to say it." My stomach flutters as I look at him, but the feeling wars with being so out of control.
"Everything in me wants to move toward you and I don’t know how to feel about that.
I've had this on my neck for five days—" my hand goes up to it before I can stop it "—and I don't even know what it is. "
Calder is close enough now that when he breathes out, I feel it. "Then ask me," he says.
His eyes are nearly black, pupils blown wide.
I have to work up the courage to ask him.
"What did you do to me, Calder?”
He doesn't look away. I'll give him that much. He doesn't look away once.
His hand comes up instead—slow, so slow, giving me every chance in the world to step back—and his knuckles graze the edge of the healing marks. Barely. Hardly a touch at all.
My whole body sways toward him.
"That," he says. "That's what I did."
"Calder—"
"I bit you." Rough. Low. His thumb moves along the skin just outside the mark and doesn't cross into it. "Right here. Hard enough that it's going to scar."
I can't breathe properly.