Breakable (23 page)

My convictions vaporized and I volunteered to accompany Carlie on an exploratory drive around town. Her father happily surrendered the keys to his SUV. We rolled down the windows and I submitted to a pop station in exchange for stopping at the Bait & Tackle & Coffee & Wi-Fi.

‘
That’s
a mouthful,’ Carlie said, one brow angling with the sort of superiority only a sixteen-year-old girl can deliver. Once inside, she observed, ‘This place is like a stage set. Are they for real with these flowery chairs?’ Her opinion of the coffee: ‘
Blech
. It tastes like
fish
.’

She checked out the souvenir shelves while I signed on and encountered a dozen useless emails, but nothing from Jacqueline. Landon had no plausible excuse to write to her. There was no worksheet to send. No upcoming quiz. So I described the new-and-improved Bait & Tackle, and above my usual signature,
LM
, I added a casual:
You’re locking and alarming your house every night, right? I don’t mean to be insulting, but you said you were going to be home alone.

I stalled for fifteen minutes, but she didn’t answer.

Carlie, all out of pithy observations on the décor, purchased
a bright pink T-shirt with
bait
written across the chest – which her mother would probably confiscate immediately – and a snow globe containing sand-coloured ‘snow’ and a tiny replica of the original Bait & Tackle, sans coffee and Wi-Fi.

‘C’mon, Lucas, let’s go sit on the beach,’ she said. ‘If there are cute boys my age in this town, they are definitely
not in here
.’ I decided not to inform her that cute boys her age would be unlikely to come anywhere near her if I was there.

Six hours later, my phone’s screen cast a greenish light in my pantry cocoon. My willpower was depleted.

Me:
When will you be back on campus?

Jacqueline answered seconds later:
Probably Sunday. You?
I took a breath, relieved. She was okay. I told her I’d be back Saturday, and out of nowhere I added:
I need to sketch you again,
and told her to text me when she got back.

Friday, Dad and I took Charles and Caleb out on the boat while Carlie and Cindy sat on their rental’s porch, drinking virgin daiquiris and reading. After we got back, I borrowed Dad’s truck and headed to the Bait & Tackle. Jacqueline had replied to Landon’s email minutes after we’d texted. My smile over the fact that she was engaging the security system every night didn’t last long.

I spent the day at my ex’s,
she wrote. He wanted to see her Saturday to
talk
. I could guess what kind of
talking
he wanted to do. I shut the laptop without replying.

When Caleb announced that he had a science-fair project outline due Monday – and he hadn’t chosen a subject yet, the Hellers decided to head back Saturday morning. Dad had booked an all-day fishing tour anyway, so we said our goodbyes before dawn, and I was back home by noon.

I pulled up Jacqueline’s email again, imagining that she might spend the evening – if not the night – with Kennedy Moore. He’d treated her like she was expendable, replaceable, when she was so far from either. She was stronger than she knew, but her relationship with him had made her weaker. She’d accepted his view of her. She’d followed his dreams, and not her own. She’d let him change her name, and who knew what else about her.

I hit
reply
, and told her it sounded like he wanted her back. Then I asked:
what do
you
want?
I wondered if anyone ever asked her that.

The Hellers went out to dinner and a movie, followed by a holiday-lights procession through gated neighbourhoods in the hills on the south end of town that were filled with grandiose mansions decorated by professionals. Bowing out to do laundry, I told myself I wanted to be alone. I made a cilantro lime marinade for the red snapper I’d caught yesterday, stuck it in the fridge and went for a run. Jacqueline Wallace was on a perpetual loop in my mind. The thought of her with Moore woke a violent part of me I thought buried and gone. It made sense to fight to protect her, but I couldn’t kick someone’s ass because she chose him over me. Fuck if I didn’t
want to
.

Joseph:
Survive T-day? How bout them Cowboys!?

I’m not allowed to say that again to Elliott, upon penalty of something called kinky boots – not my kind of kinky btw – on replay all the way home from Cleveland.

It’s a long damn drive.

Me:
Survived. Home. Go Cowboys. Your bf is controlling, dude.

Joseph:
Tell me about it. I’m fucking whipped. :P

When my phone buzzed again, I assumed it was more from Joseph, but no. It was Jacqueline, saying:
I’m back.
So of course, I invited her over for dinner.

Preparing my own food was something I’d done for so long that it didn’t seem odd. As a child I’d played culinary assistant to my mother, to whom cooking was another art form. Once Grandpa died, I cooked for Dad and myself out of necessity. It was that or a steady diet of toast, fish and eggs. We’d have both contracted scurvy before I got out of high school.

Cooking a full meal for anyone but myself had become rare. I lived alone, and Carlie had been right a few months ago – I generally didn’t have anyone over. I didn’t have time for a circle of friends, and I didn’t do dates. I barely did hookups.

Inviting someone for a home-cooked meal boasts
culinary confidence and encourages a level of expectation, but I was no chef. I bypassed gourmet recipes and anything with complex steps. I prepared simple meals in unassuming ways.

I had no idea what Jacqueline liked or didn’t.

‘I’ve never had a guy cook for me before,’ she said, leaning her elbows on the opposite side of the counter, watching me chop veggies and drizzle basil vinaigrette over them. Her inexperience with college-guy cooking boded well for the snapper and baked potatoes. Once everything was in the oven, I set the timer and led her to the sofa.

I wanted to know what conclusions she and her ex had reached, but I wouldn’t ask. She was here, and I couldn’t think about her going back to him.

Taking her magical hand in mine, I examined every millimetre of it. I traced the lines in her palm, the sensitive valleys between fingers and the arching whorls on the pads of each one. She kept her nails short so she could play her bass, pressing and plucking strings, without impediment.

Landon knows that
.
Lucas doesn’t
.

I had to tell her. I had to tell her, soon.

Pulling her on to my lap, I leaned her into the corner cushions to tip her head back and kiss her neck, buzzing with need when she swallowed, tracing the path of those tiny quivering muscles with my tongue as her pulse and breathing sped. I unbuttoned her white blouse – one button, then two, following the path of each inch of newly gained territory with my lips, halting at the top of her bra. If I
unfastened her any further, our dinner would be burned to soot.

One of her hands was trapped between us, splayed against my chest. Her free hand gripped my bicep, the thick knit bunched beneath her palm. When my tongue began to stroke the just-visible curves between her breasts, she kneaded my arm like a kitten and purred like one, too. The weight of her was just right, her rounded hip pressing into the saddle of my lap. I fought to slam the door on my rampaging contemplations – like how her soft, naked body would feel in my hands. I wanted to turn her round, feel the heat of her pressed against me –

The timer began to beep, and Francis added his eager meow to the alarm.

I’d never been so turned on and willingly ready to starve in my life.

‘Time to eat.’ Those words discharged another surge of reckless, uninhibited thoughts concerning Jacqueline’s lovely body.

Her disorientated, frustrated groan was a mind-blowing sort of music to my ears – a refrain that told me, clearly, she wanted me.
What she knows of you
, my brain clarified. Even possessed with lust, I couldn’t break away from my conscience.

Over dinner, I mentioned that I’d cooked for Dad and myself before leaving for college.

‘You cooked? Not your mom or dad?’ Her gaze was steady below faintly creased brows.

‘My mom died when I was thirteen.’ I tried to make light
of the fact that I did the cooking after that – like I was just making sure Dad and I ate something besides toast and fish.

‘I’m sorry.’ Her genuine sympathy surfaced in the quiet concern of her voice, and I felt pulled apart by contradictory desires – follow my characteristic restraint where the subject of my mother was concerned, or tell her everything. As usual, the words roadblocked in my throat. I nodded and said nothing.

While we ate, Francis consumed his body weight in snapper and yowled to be let out after. Bolting the door behind him, I imagined he’d need a jog around the neighbourhood rather than a hunting expedition tonight.

I walked back to the table and took Jacqueline’s hand. She rose and followed me to my bed, where we lay, eyes locked, like it was old habit to do so. I reached to touch her, to confirm that she was real and not a cruel fabrication of my heart. Her skin was so soft, and her face became more beautiful every time I saw her. She scared the hell out of me, but I couldn’t stay away from her.

I unbuttoned her blouse the rest of the way, slowly, eyes on hers, ready to stop the moment she signalled me to do so, regardless of what we’d done before. She swallowed thickly, nervously, as I bared the curve of her shoulder and leaned to touch my lips to it. Her warm breath in my ear, she shoved her cool hands under my shirt, palms sliding across my abdomen and wandering higher. I couldn’t tear my shirt off fast enough.

Sliding one leg between hers, I pressed my thigh against
her firmly and drove my tongue into her sweet mouth when she gasped, my need for her overriding my need for oxygen. She rewarded me with a subtle moan and arched against me, her hands sliding over my skin, stroking over the poem inscribed on my side that I finally understood fully. My brain was a riot of want and fear. I’d never been so terrified of my own desires, because they went well beyond her body. I shook to my core, my soul curving round her protectively as my mind strove to determine the logical calculation that could make her mine. I wanted to be hers as much –
more
– than I wanted to possess her, when I knew damned well that neither was possible.

She moved above me, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, the silky tips brushing my chin, her blouse and bra sliding away with strokes of my appreciative fingers. I shoved my reservations to the side for these surrendered, short-lived moments, worshipping her with murmured supplications and whisper-soft caresses. I felt certain my skin’s nerve endings had multiplied in the prior week, because every place she touched me with her mouth or fingertips, I burned.

Since I had no plan to push past Jacqueline’s former point of resistance, the hours we spent in my bed were hotter than I’d ever imagined making out could be, and kissing her was a luxurious, sensory indulgence all its own. As my body accepted this, I lingered over every stroke of my tongue, coaxing her along with my mouth alone and pinning her hands flat to the mattress so she couldn’t touch me. She arched and twisted beneath me, winding her legs
round mine, telling me with every whimper and hum that her body was the instrument I knew how to play, and play well.

When I finally released her hands, she shoved her fingers into my hair as I kissed down her chest and across her belly, swirling my tongue into her navel while gripping her tightly between her waist and hips, as if debating whether to remove her jeans. She scraped her nails across my shoulders, and I knew if I touched the button just below my chin, she would tell me yes. Every provocative touch of her fingertips, her lips, her tongue, and every sound she made built both my craving and my contentment – which made no logical sense, but I didn’t care.

I slipped back to her lips, slowly, pressing my weight into her, attending to every part of her body that demanded my notice on the way up. She trembled and held on to me when I pulled us to our sides. ‘I should get you back.’

Tucked to my chest, her fingers were entwined with mine, and though she nodded, she tightened her grip on my hand and didn’t move an inch from her position in my arms for several minutes. I felt a compelling desire to preserve the moment, as if final grains of sand were streaming through the neck of an hourglass, and all I wanted to do was tip it on to its side for a few more precious seconds.

We dressed without speaking, and I buttoned up her blouse, lingering deliberately over each button, and then leaned to kiss her one last time.

I was about to bring the Harley to life when Charles emerged from the back of the house with a kitchen trash
bag. I couldn’t move, my eyes tracing his steps from the door to the bin, and back to the door. I willed him to go inside without turning round, but I knew he wouldn’t. His hand on the doorknob, he turned and looked straight at me. Straight at Jacqueline.

‘Landon? Jacqueline?’ he asked, as if he couldn’t believe his own eyes. Or just wished to God he was wrong. He sighed and told me to meet him in the kitchen when I returned. I nodded once, and he went inside.

Jacqueline said nothing at all. I didn’t know if she’d been shocked into silence or if she’d sensed this impending finale, as I had. The ten-minute journey to her dorm seemed like ten seconds, but it was long enough for me to realize one clarifying truth about my dual persona and Jacqueline: she already knew.