Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-One
The first thing she did when she got home was do her best to take care of herself a little better. She took off her makeup instead of falling asleep with it on. Made herself something to drink without caffeine so she wouldn’t be up all night. Then she decided she was going to have a good long bath.
She went into her bedroom to strip down, feeling not better, exactly.
But maybe not as bad about everything. Maybe I could accept Beck’s help or reach out to Caleb or something, just something, she thought as she went to lift her jumper over her head.
She was about a third of the way through when she heard the throat clear.
From the direction of the window. That was five fucking stories up.
Honestly she almost threw a chair, blindly, in the direction of the vampire that simply had to have flown up her apartment building. It was actually in her hands, when she realized. There was nothing toothy waiting to tear open her neck out there.
It was Caleb Miller.
Caleb fucking Miller, just straddling her windowsill somehow. One booted foot trying not to dirty the bedsheets just below it, the other still probably hovering over a fifty-foot drop. Or maybe not fifty feet, exactly. Maybe forty. Maybe a hundred. She had no real idea when it came to measurements.
All she knew was that it was a lot.
Too much. An incredibly scary amount.
But even more scary than this was the fact that he had done it.
A man so responsible that he paid other people’s tips, and checked the tires on other people’s cars, and could name all the road safety signs in countries he never even wanted to go to.
A man who took a tent on a road trip, just in case something happened.
Even though nothing ever happened with him.
Yeah, but it did, though, didn’t it, her brain muttered.
And then of course she was thinking of why he had panicked like that.
He only does completely wild things when he’s emotionally compromised somehow, she realized.
Then suddenly her heart was beating hard in an entirely different way.
And it got worse when she started going over everything he must have done to even get to London. It had only been a few days, after all.
He had to have flown. He had to have flown, and then done this.
Maybe this part at least is because of Beck, she thought.
But he wouldn’t even give her that much.
“So before you ask,” he said. “This was supposed to just be a reconnaissance mission to check you actually lived here. Because I forgot to bring your address with me, or even clothes or toothpaste or my travel insurance, and also I think maybe I’ve left my front door open because I don’t have my keys, but anyway, long story short, I had to recall it from the memory of contact details in a notebook I left behind.
And it didn’t seem right, because it’s not even near a bookstore or a movie theater.
Nearest one of either of them is about seventeen blocks away, Daisy, what the fuck. ”
At which point she sort of thought she might pass out standing up.
All she could think was: He left his fucking front door open.
And as soon as she did, it felt like she could hear romantic music in her head. Something big and operatic. Something that filled her up, from her socked feet to the roots of her hair. She had to swallow the immediate I love you that swelled with it, just to get out something sensible.
“Just get in here,” she said.
But god, he was relentless.
“I can’t. I’m wedged. I’ve been wedged for the last thirty minutes. I think I might have to live here now,” he said, and just as she was about to laugh, he added: “Not so bad, really, at least I might get to see you every day.”
And then after he had, her face did the thing.
The crumpling thing.
“Oh Christ, I thought that would go down well. See, I’m so bad at this.”
“You’re not bad at this—it did go down well. These are happy tears.”
“They look completely indistinguishable from the ones you were crying on that stage,” he said, probably just to explain himself. Though of course it didn’t hit like that for her. She didn’t take it practically.
She took it by clutching at herself.
“So you saw it, then.”
“I saw it.”
“I didn’t intend it as any kind of pointed message to you.”
“No, I know. Hey, hey, hey, I know. There were just things in it … there were things you said that … well, they made me think—they made me feel some kind of way. About how things are for you inside. How lonely you—” he started, obviously intending to finish on seem or are.
Only he couldn’t. His voice cracked before he got there.
He had to stop and compose himself, and then start again, like a man fumbling in deadly darkness to save something that would kill him.
He knew it would, but he carried on anyway.
“How lonely you sounded. How sad you sounded about the way the world is. The way people are, you know.”
Then on the end he met her eyes.
And they were so full of worry for her she could hardly get out the words she wanted. The ones she needed to, so he wouldn’t keep doing this to himself. Forcing himself to say things that were hurting him. “It’s all right. I’m okay.”
“But you’re not, Daisy.”
“Even if I wasn’t, you don’t have to do anything.”
“I do, though. I need to tell you that—that I don’t want things to be that way for you.
I want you to have the other world, the one where things work out, and it turns out you aren’t too much, and you’re loved, very loved, and you know.
Even though I’m not the one good enough for you to love me back.
I want to try and—” he said, and this time the crack down the middle of his sentence was bad.
Oh, it was really bad. He couldn’t compose himself this time.
Instead, he made a sound of pain. He had to press his lips together, and it was obvious why.
She could see the tears standing out in his eyes.
It was too much. It was too much. She took a step forward.
But he stopped her with one wavering, held-up hand.
“No,” he said. “Let me feel it. I want to feel it. I want to know myself, I want to know you. And honestly, just be there for you. If you reach out for a lifeline, I don’t want you to come up empty.
If you’re not waving but drowning, I want to see it from the shore.
I want my hand to be ready for you to grab.
You were too far out, all your life—enough. Enough.”
And all she could think once he had finished was poetry.
The same poem, in fact, that he’d refused to read out in class.
Did you read it in secret and keep it close to your heart, she thought.
Did you think of me when you read it, she thought, and knew she was just silently shedding tears now.
They were streaming down her face. They had wet her collar.
Though part of her understood it wasn’t because he had thought of her.
It was because he had most likely thought of himself. You were too far out all your life, she thought, then swiped her face with the back of her hand. Steeled herself.
“All right,” she said. “But you, too.”
“What do you mean, me too?”
“You have to accept the lifeline I throw out. You have to accept that you’re not waving, but drowning. You have to come with me, okay? I can’t just leave you, I can’t, no matter how much you think everybody should.”
“Daisy, you have to understand that I’m right to think—”
She shook her head.
Drew a line through the air with a hand.
“I don’t understand anything of the kind. You’re being ridiculous.”
“I tell you that I beat a man half to death out of some kind of deranged sense of ownership over a woman who doesn’t even like me, and all you’ve got to say is that I’m being ridiculous? Think we’re gonna need a recount on that one. The numbers are off. Check the tapes,” he said.
He didn’t sell it, though.
Not like the poem. Not like any of this.
“I’ll check your tapes, you massive prawn.”
“That doesn’t refute anything I said. It’s just silliness.”
“Because silly is exactly what you are. Jesus Christ, Caleb. Did you really come all this way to give me everything in the world, while still thinking you deserve nothing? Still thinking that I would believe that? And based on something so flimsy, my god. You know how good I am at this and you honestly think I don’t know how heavily you’ve edited events in favor of whatever this is? ”
“I didn’t edit a goddamn thing.”
“Oh, I think you’ll find you very fucking did. Acting like it was an accident.”
That got him. He jerked back so hard his shoulder cracked the drawn-up window above him. She almost screamed and jumped onto the bed to grab him before she remembered he was wedged.
And that she had just thrown him.
For a second he looked so busted she thought she had won.
Then he got it back together. “Even if it wasn’t, it doesn’t matter.”
“Are you shitting me right now? Of course it does. You saw someone hit a woman from across a bar, on purpose. While being the kind of person who doesn’t even like a man interrupting one.
” She shook her head, marveling. “Pretending I should be horrified that you punched him. I wouldn’t have been horrified if you’d produced a sniper rifle out of your ass and taken the top of his head off. ”
“I would never keep a sniper rifle in my ass. It’s damp in there.”
“Oh my god, that’s not the point. None of this is the point.”
“Then what is? What is?”
“That you did something so good and you think it’s rotten.
Possessive, even, when it’s the opposite.
You don’t even expect gratitude for all the things you do and want to do for me.
You knew I had no idea why you did half the things on that trip, and you did them anyway.
Just for the joy of doing them,” she said, yet somehow even that didn’t sway him. He just blew out a frustrated breath.