The Best I Could (25 page)

I knew she would, not because I had that much
confidence in myself but because I had that much confidence in her
curiosity.

“I’m not going into your place,” she
protested, pausing on the cottage porch.

I pulled open the door. “Afraid I’ll ask you
into the bedroom?”

“No,” she admitted. “I’m afraid you
won’t.”

My gaze flew to hers, holding it. I had to
remember it wasn’t sex Tansy feared. She made a tempting
seductress. It was something deeper.

“Maybe I’ll surprise you.” My voice dropped,
my brows rising.

Releasing a shuddering exhale, she threw a
glance over her shoulder, cursed, and then swept past me into the
cottage.

Her gaze slid over the interior, noting the
carelessly tossed clothes, unwashed coffee mugs, and the lingering
smell of cigarette smoke.

She sniffed. “Pops lets you smoke in
here?”

“No.”

She glanced at me, amused. “But you do it
anyway.”

“Not really, but that shit sticks with you.
On your clothes. In your hair. I don’t really notice it
anymore.”

Passing her, I nodded at the hallway beyond
the living room.

The cottage was small but comfortable. Two
bedrooms branched off a living room full of overstuffed chairs and
a tiny, modern kitchen.

Pictures flanked the hallway. Most of them
school photos Grams had framed and hung. Heather, her
full-figured body enfolded in a navy blue dress, her cheeks
dimpled. Jonathan, lanky and freckled, his smiling eyes on
something off camera, Lincoln looking as taciturn then as he did
now, and me in varying stages of awkwardness.

“The hall of shame,” Tansy said, grinning. “I
think everyone has one. I swear my mother hung up every terrible
school picture we had until she passed.”

“It’s an unwritten rule that school pictures
have to be terrible,” I agreed.

She laughed. “The ones of your sister are
good though.”

“She’s the photogenic one.”

Heather took after her dad’s side of the
family. Most of the women on that side were curvy, full-figured,
and confident. Any issues my sister had were because of our mother
and her father. Not her self-esteem.

“Here,” I told Tansy, pulling open the guest
room door.

She paused, glanced inside, and then looked
at me.

“Go in,” I prompted.

When she entered, her eyes landed on the
punching bag, curious and intrigued. Not many people saw this bag,
but when they did, they usually looked at it the way she did
now.

“This is yours?” she asked.

“No, it belongs to the guy who looks like me
and sleeps in my bed.”

Ignoring my sarcasm, she approached it, her
gaze scanning the black and red scribbles.

One word caught her eye, and she stiffened.
“What is this?”

Glancing at the
scrawled
Tansy
on
the bag, I said, “This is my bag of demons. The red words anyway.
The others are ...”

“Words that mean something to you?” Tansy
finished in a whisper, her gaze frozen on her name.

“Some of them,” I replied. “Others are things
I think could mean something to me.”

“Could?” she repeated. She looked at me. “Why
are you showing me this?”

Edging past her, I grabbed the red permanent
marker off of the dresser and offered it to her. “Write something
on the bag. Something you want to get rid of. A demon.”

She laughed, the sound high and tense.
“You’re kidding me right now.”

“Take it.”

“I'm not writing anything. That’s your stuff
on there. That has nothing to do with me.”

“Just one word,” I told her.

“No.”

I shook my hand at me. “Just take the fucking
marker, Tansy. Trust me, okay?”

Her gaze dropped to my hand. “Why?”

“Because I want to see what you write. Just
one word. Don’t think about it. Don’t give it any thought. Just
write.”

When she finally accepted the marker, her
hand shook. “Just write, huh?”

“Anything.”

Twisting off the lid, she stepped in front of
the bag, permanent marker fumes overwhelming the space.

“Don’t give it any thought,” I reminded
her.

“Shit,” she mumbled, leaning in to scrawl on
the bag.

In red, she wrote,
Death
. Then next to it,
she wrote,
Love
.

Two words she wanted to get rid of. Her
demons. They weren’t what I expected, but I was beginning to
discover things with Tansy never were.

“Happy?” she asked, returning the marker,
hand still shaking.

Taking it, I caught her hand before she could
pull away, capturing it in mine.

“Let me go,” she whispered.

I pulled her toward me instead. “Tell me who
you are, roof girl. Tell me something about the girl inside your
head.”

“You don’t want to know her,” Tansy
argued.

“Let me be the judge of that.”

Everything Deena had said about Tansy today,
every hurtful thing she had flung out about her sister, only
intrigued me more. What had changed her so much? It would be
different if Tansy was like my mother, or even Mandy, but despite
the pain in her, she tried hard to put her family first and that
made her different. Most of the women in my life put themselves
first … in often unhealthy ways.

“Talk to me,” I urged.

She peered up into my face, her dark eyeliner
smeared onto her cheeks. “I don’t want to be in my head right now.
Don’t you get that? I want to be out of it. I want to see, feel,
and do things that have nothing to do with my head.”

My gaze studied hers, the fierce passion
behind her words captivating me. “Is that why you started
cutting?”

She tried pulling away, but I wouldn’t let
her.

“I’m not a cutter,” she protested.

“Yeah, you are. It doesn’t matter if you did
it once or more than once, if you cut to feel better, you’re a
cutter.”

There was no judgment in my voice. None. I
didn’t know what made her do it. I wasn’t there inside her head,
and I couldn’t judge what I didn’t know.

She jerked against my hold. Again, I held on.
She wasn’t struggling because I was hurting her, she was struggling
because I was trying to get to know her.

We played a silent game of tug of war before
she finally hissed, “Twice. I’ve done it twice. Break the skin, I
mean.”

The confession slammed into me, urging me to
find out where the second place she’d cut was, but I fought the
temptation to look.

“Tell me something about you,” I repeated.
“Not the cutting. You.”

She went rigid in my hold. “God, you don’t
give up, do you?”

“I’m a boxer, roof girl. We give up, we go
down.”

She smiled at that, fleetingly. “I have
dreams sometimes about blood.” She looked away from me. “My brain
feels like a television. Memories and things that flash in and
out, filled with static. The channel keeps changing until I’m
confused about it all, about how I got here and who I am. Before my
mom passed, I thought I had it all figured out. I’m not sure when
that just went away.”

Releasing her suddenly, I touched her face,
the marker falling to the floor between us. Shame and disgust
filled her eyes.

“You think I won’t like the girl you are
now?” I asked.

“You don’t like messes,” she reminded me. “Or
women.”

I threw my eyes up. “God, I need to learn to
shut the fuck up. Misconception is a bitch. I don’t have a problem
with messes. Hell, I’ve been one. And women ... I don’t know. I’m
not looking for commitment with one. I’m not sure that’s a thing
with women.”

“The same could be said about men,” she
pointed out.

“Men like sex, roof girl. It’s true. Some men
just see women that way. I do. A lot. But ... Oh, fuck it. Women
like sex, too. That’s not the problem.” My gaze fell to the floor,
to the red marker. “Here,” leaning over, I picked it up, “let’s
talk about my problem.”

Walking to the punching bag,
I wrote
romance
in
red.

She laughed, shocked. “You have a problem
with romance?”

“It’s an ideal no man can
attain. Look at my mother. Married four times. Been in more
relationships than I can count. She falls for men, spends some time
in their lives, and then moves on.” I shrugged. “Then there’s women
like Mandy. She had someone who gave a damn about her, but then she
left because what he could give her wasn’t enough. But mostly it’s
the women like Mom who give me a problem with romance. How do you
make something work with someone who is in love with
falling
in love and not
the man himself?”

Tansy studied me, her gaze flicking to the
word I’d just written. “You know, as much as I hate to agree with
you, all women are in love with falling in love. That twinge in the
gut, the sweaty palms, the rapidly beating heart, and this
incessant need just to hear his voice feels good.”

My gaze traveled down her frame, down the
black tank top hugging her torso to the waist of her shorts, to the
button that kept them closed.

“Are we describing you right now?” I asked,
stalking her. “Because love isn’t the only thing that causes the
heart to race and the palms to sweat.”

She backed away, the guest room wall stopping
her escape, heat flaring in her eyes.

“I’m just saying that it feels good to fall
in love. It’s heady,” she breathed, her voice low. “Entire
industries are built on the feeling, on making women feel that over
and over again. Movies ... books.”

Meeting her at the wall, I trapped her, my
hands caging her in. “Built on love or attraction? Because lust
feels awful damn good, too.”

Dropping one of my hands, I played with the
bottom of her tank top, running my fingers just under the hem to
press against her stomach.

She inhaled sharply. “What kind of point are
you trying to make?”

Pulling her hands above her head, I pushed
her against the wall, my lips melding with hers. Long, slow, and
deep.

She kissed me back, moaning, the sound going
straight to my groin. Sweeping my tongue into her mouth, I tangled
it with hers.

Her body moved against mine, a desperate
dance my hardening dick responded to.

Keeping her wrists trapped with one of my
hands, I dropped the other, running it down the side of her face,
her neck, her breast, and her stomach before I pushed it under her
shirt.

She shivered.

“Tell me,” I whispered, my lips falling to
her neck, “is your heart racing now?”

I kissed her pulse, felt it thudding, and
grinned. “That’s lust, roof girl.”

Lifting my head, I broke the contact, my
chest heaving. My hand remained under her shirt, splayed against
her back.

Tansy stared up at me, her eyes dark and
excited. “The only point you made is that you can turn me on. I’m
betting you can do that to a lot of women. The falling in love
feeling is different. Women are in love with the idea of it, that
melting feeling of knowing there’s just one person out there. For
her. Not all women need to feel that over and over again. If they
do, they read a book or watch a movie, and then go find the person
they love, hug him, and if he’s lucky, screw his brains out. They
don’t go searching for love with someone new like your mom
does.”

I was having a hard time getting past the
fact she was turned on. “Are you looking for love?”

“No,” she whispered, “because I’m afraid of
what that will mean for me one day. But lust ...” The words trailed
off, her eyes searching mine.

My hand slid to her stomach, working its way
slowly up to her chest, to the bra I shoved aside before cupping
her breast. Her hot skin filled my palm. Taking her nipple between
my fingers, I pinched it lightly.

Breath hissed out of her. “It’s not fair, you
know? You touching me without letting me touch you.”

“If you touch me, roof girl, I won’t be able
to stop.”

“Then don’t.”

We were frozen, my hand on her breast, my
dick so hard the only thing I wanted was release.

“Tell me something about you,” I persisted,
kneading her gently.

Gasping, she pressed herself against my palm.
“Do you do this to women often? Use the promise of sex to get
information?”

I chuckled because Tansy’s blunt way of
avoiding my question not only amused me, it added to my
arousal.

“You’d be my first,” I replied. “I don’t
usually try and get into the heads of the women I sleep with.”

“Then why me? Now?”

I stared at her. “Fuck if I know.”

The sound of the cottage door opening had me
dropping my hands, releasing her, but I didn’t step away.

“Tansy in there with you?” my brother called,
coming down the hall. “Pops saw the van, and we didn’t see her
outside.”

Tansy smirked, heat still filling her eyes.
“He’s compromising me in here!”

“Bitch,” I hissed, grinning.

“Oh, well, that’s all good then,” Jonathan
said from outside the bedroom door. “It’s probably better if Tansy
comes out and joins us for dinner.”

She glanced at the door. “I’m leaving,” she
announced. “There will be something at home.”

“Suit yourself,” Jonathan replied. “Tonight,
it’s Mexican.” Thudding footsteps sounded down the hall, stopping
at the door. “I’ll wait on the porch.”

The cottage door closed.

Tansy looked at me, her eyes wide. “I’ve
always liked gardening, but knitting came after my mother died.
Something to pass the time when there was nothing else to do, and I
realized, after figuring out how to do it, that I really enjoyed
it.”

Her gaze fell to the punching bag, to the
words written there. “I used to be into other things. Cheerleading
and science.” She chuckled. “A cheerleading science geek. I used to
compete at these science fairs. My projects were mostly
environmental. I won my first science fair in fourth grade. A
project I did on acid rain.”