Two
Two
I have no idea how much time has passed when I feel my shoulder being shaken gently.
The rain has stopped, leaving the unmistakable smell of petrichor in the air.
The breeze has turned into a rather biting wind, but the sky is still dark.
Slowly, I open my eyes, which are still burning, and a blurry image materializes in front of me.
I frown, and in the nighttime darkness, illuminated only by the streetlamp, there are two soulful eyes staring worriedly back at me.
A tattooed hand rests on my hip, which has been covered with a heavy black leather jacket.
“Thomas?” I murmur confusedly, sitting up. “W-what are you doing here?”
“You’re shivering,” he notes with a frown. He kneels down and rubs his hands over my arms to warm me up. “What are you doing out here?”
“I fell asleep,” I say, still a little out of it. I look at him, trying to decipher his mental state. He doesn’t seem angry anymore, just tired and worried.
“Out here?” he answers in dismay as he tucks his jacket around my shoulders. Now that he’s so close to me, the scent of beer and smoke fills my nostrils. Did he go out drinking? That’s a bad sign.
“I needed some air,” I lie. I don’t want to tell him about what happened.
I just want to know where he was and what he did.
I am about to ask him when I notice the way his forehead creases as he rests his gaze on my right cheek.
He clenches his jaw and runs a knuckle over my cheekbone; I feel a twinge of pain.
It’s not hard to conclude that I must have a mark there from the slap I took.
So I guess too much time couldn’t have passed since the argument with my mother.
I check the time on my phone next to me and see that it is well after three.
“Who did this?” he asks severely.
“My mother.” He raises his eyebrows in surprise, but before he can ask me anything else, I go on the offensive. “Where have you been? I called you over and over, and you never answered…” I say, unable to hide the fear in my voice.
He bows his head, running a thumb over his left eyebrow before lifting his face again. “I had business to take care of.”
I swallow hard and nestle deeper into his jacket to protect myself from the piercing cold. “What business?”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
My heart pounds so loudly in my chest that I can feel it vibrating in my throat as a feeling of dread spreads throughout my body.
He did it. He was with another girl. I’m sure of it.
I can tell from the way he won’t look at me, from his tense face, and from that mortified expression he wears, like someone who has made a huge mistake but doesn’t know how to come clean.
“But I do want to know. After what happened with Travis, nothing scares me anymore,” I say brusquely, taking his jacket off.
“What?” he asks, perplexed.
“Come on, Thomas, just say it.”
“Say what?”
“Look, you left here furious, I didn’t hear from you all night, and now you come back with your clothes smelling like alcohol, refusing to tell me what you did…
And that’s fine. I mean, you don’t owe me anything.
No justification or explanations, because we aren’t actually together, but I’ve been through this before.
I know how these things go and if you”—I feel my stomach clenching like a vise—“if you’ve gone back to her, I would like to know. ”
Silence permeates the space around us for several seconds, during which Thomas continues to look confused. Then he squeezes his eyes shut. “Hold on a minute. What do you think happened?”
I look down and don’t answer him. I can’t say it.
Then he lifts my chin gently, forcing me to look him in the eye. “Did you think I was with someone else?”
“Was I right?”
“Christ, no!”
“So…you weren’t at Finn’s party?”
He shakes his head.
“And you weren’t with anyone else?” I whisper. It seems to me that he hesitates for a brief moment—during which I feel short of breath—but then he denies it again. I look into his eyes, scrutinizing them intensely, but all I see there is the truth.
“I thought I was being clear when I said I wouldn’t do that.”
“You say a lot of things, Thomas.”
“I would never do anything like that to you.”
“Then why didn’t you answer your phone? Why won’t you tell me where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing all this time?”
“Because there’s things you should stay out of, for your own good.”
By now, I should be used to him constantly pushing me away and shutting me out.
Yet every time he does it, my heart crumbles into thousands of pieces.
As if he can read my mind, Thomas takes my face in his hands, rubbing my cheeks with his thumbs and burying his other fingers in my hair before pulling me closer to him.
I close my eyes as I feel tears beginning to prickle behind my eyelids. Like I haven’t cried enough yet today.
“I was out of my mind when I left, that’s true.
But I want you to get one thing straight in your head: No matter how pissed off I am, no matter how much you piss me off…
you are always my first priority.” He stares intensely at me, resting his forehead against mine while I struggle mightily to contain my emotions.
Our mouths brush against one another, and our heartbeats quicken faster and faster until Thomas presses his lips to mine, a kiss of mingled sweetness and determination.
And if, in the past, I struggled to understand and accept his insistence on keeping me out of certain situations, I am now starting to understand his motivations a little more clearly.
He wants to protect me. I take his hands in mine, intertwining our fingers, and pull them from my face to rest on my thighs.
He watches me with his head tilted to one side, trying to work out my intentions.
“I can wait…”
“‘Wait’?” he repeats slowly.
“For you to let me in here,” I say, placing a hand on his chest, right over his heart.
“Ness…”
“No.” I silence him with an index finger against his lips because I don’t want to hear what he has to say.
Right now, he’s going to be the one listening.
“I can wait, Thomas. Whether it takes a day or a lifetime, I will wait. And when you’re ready, when you finally let me in, I promise that I will be so quiet, so delicate with you.
I will look and not touch, and learn to accept all the things that I can’t understand.
” I lower my head for a moment before lifting it again, noting the bewildered expression on his face.
“I don’t expect you to do it now. I just want you to know that, when you’re ready, I’ll be ready with you.
I want you to know that you don’t have to afraid to bring me into your world, because you won’t ruin me.
You can’t. You fix me, over and over again. ”
He doesn’t say anything. He just stares at me with those magnetic eyes, which always intimidate me, and I get the feeling that he wants to tell me something, but he’s holding himself back.
Then, in one sudden motion, he pulls me to him and holds me tight.
I rest my head against his chest, right there where the heartbeats echo against his ribs with shocking strength.
I press myself closer to him and let myself be enveloped by his warmth, because God only knows how much I need it right now.
“I’m sorry about today,” I tell him softly.
“Don’t worry about it.”
But it’s impossible not to; the way Logan talked about Thomas still haunts me, lingering confusedly inside my head:
“Sketchy…”
“Out of his mind…”
“A disgusting coward…”
“You are just one more poor victim who has fallen into his trap…”
I break away from our embrace. “No, I was wrong. I shouldn’t have gone to his room, and I shouldn’t have stayed until I lost track of time.
I was being reckless. But I swear to you that nothing happened between Logan and me; please believe me.
I should have listened to you, but instead I just made you worried and angry—”
“Enough, Ness. Forget it. The important thing is that you are okay.” He tucks my hair behind my ear with a slow movement while his eyes scrutinize me apprehensively. “Tell me why you’re out here.”
I tense up and feel my stomach drop. I can’t tell him that my mother kicked me out over him. He would blame himself and wind up pushing me away. “Talk to me. What’s going on?” he continues abruptly.
I straighten my spine and heave a deep sigh.
“I got into a fight with my mother about her new boyfriend, Victor, who is coming to live with us. I don’t agree with her decision, but she doesn’t care.
I said some ugly stuff—really ugly—and she…
she made it clear that I’m no longer welcome in her house.
” It’s not the whole truth, but it is a truth.
Thomas turns his face away slightly. “Are you kidding me?”
I shake my head. “No, but it doesn’t matter anymore.”
He presses his lips into a hard line. “How can it not?”
I shrug, not sure what to say. Of course it matters, but what’s done is done, and talking about it now won’t change things.
Because I don’t intend to give up on Thomas any more than my mother intends to rethink her beliefs about him.
So I pull my knees up to my chest, rest my chin on them, and shutter myself inside a painful silence.
Realizing that he’s not going to get any more of an explanation on this matter, Thomas runs a frustrated hand through his hair, stands up, and grabs a pack of Marlboros out of his jeans pocket.
He sticks a cigarette in his mouth and lights it, inhaling deeply before sitting back down next to me, legs slightly spread.
All of this he does without taking his eyes off of me. “What are you gonna do now?”
I shrug. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”