Harder (Caroline & West #2)(17)

His mother, his grandmother, this whole family—they all asked him, again and again, to give his father one more chance. Maybe this time Wyatt would be different. Maybe this time life would be fair and kind, and happiness would be possible.

It never was, though. Not for West.

I don’t know how he can survive here.

I don’t know how he’s not crushed, because it crushes me just to watch him. This whole place—it’s beautiful, that winding road from the airport, the trees in the mountains, the buttes and the ocean. It’s not fair that it’s beautiful, because it’s so outrageously cruel to the man I love.

If West stays here, this place will kill him.

I step closer, skirt around the grave until I can feel the heat coming off his arm.

I touch him, my hand on the curve of his shoulder. “West.”

It’s not fair to ask him for anything right now, but I don’t want to take from him. I only want him to lean on me. I want to give him rest, oblivion, escape. Something.

I’ve been trying to give him space, trying not to dig up feelings he can’t handle when he’s already got so much to deal with, but I can’t take it anymore. I can’t believe that this is better—that somehow it’s better for West not to have whatever comfort I can give him, it’s better for me to be three feet away from him and telling myself I can’t get closer, not now, not tomorrow, maybe not ever.

How the f*ck is this better? For who? Not for me. Not for West.

Surely not for West.

I move around to his front and insinuate my hands into the space between his arms and his sides. I rest my cheek against his heaving chest.

“If you want me,” I say. “No strings. No anything—just, if you want to forget for an hour. Whatever you want.”

I tighten my arms around him. He’s so much harder than he used to be. All this armor between him and the world. I want him to know that I see it there. I know what it is, and if he wants to take it off with me, he can.

I love him.

I love him so f*cking much, and this is all I’ve got to offer that he can possibly take. So I squeeze him as tight as I can until he yields.

His weight bows into me. Not all, but a fraction of it. A crack in the blank concrete wall of his self-denial.

His hand comes to the back of my head, the nape of my neck, pressing my face into the ragged sound of his breathing.

“Caro,” he says into my hair.

It’s the first time he’s said my name like he used to. Like it’s precious.

Like I’m precious.

“I can come out to Bo’s,” I whisper. “Or we could find a motel. Whatever you need.”

When I lift my chin, his eyes are closed, so I kiss him.

I kiss his mouth. The margin of it. The swell of the bruise on his cheekbone.

His soft lips, his lowered eyelashes. This boy I love.

I kiss beneath his jaw, my tongue flicking out to taste his sweat, his skin, and then his hands are on me, lifting my chin, and he’s kissing me back.

It’s no tender reunion—it’s a swan dive right into the middle of where we used to be, a plunge into blind lust and tension and sex. His tongue, his frustration, his taste, his heat, his lips on mine, his hands guiding me, giving me all of that, all of it, and I get carried away.

Stoned on the taste of him, high on possibility, I tell him, “It’s going to be okay.” Not because I believe it, but because I want to. “We’ll get through this.”

And that’s all it takes for me to wreck it.

All it takes for him to take his hands off me and draw away.

When he opens his eyes, I can see my error written there. Because what sounds like hope to me isn’t hope to West. It’s just a reminder that he can’t have anything he wants.

“There’s no we.” He steps back. Brushes his hands over his thighs. “I don’t need anything from you.”

I know what he’s doing. Of course I do.

He does, too—he has to, because his words are so patently ridiculous. My chest is still heaving. My lips are wet and full. My whole body aches, and West is saying, “You should think about going home.”

It hurts.

God. It hurts so much.

But even as it hurts, I don’t believe him. I’ve had West inside my body. I’ve locked my gaze with his for that first deep thrust, and I know what he looks like when he wants me. I know how he kisses when he’s hurting, how he craves the oblivion our bodies can make together, the comfort afterward, the tired quiet space to talk in, to tell me what’s weighing him down.

I know better than anyone how to read the language of West denying himself what he wants.

So I let him walk down the hill alone. I watch his broad back get smaller, watch him pull off his suit jacket and ball it up and throw it in the Dumpster outside the funeral home. I watch him disappear around the corner of the building, and I count off the time in my head.

Ten minutes.

Then I’m going after him.


The funeral home is hushed. Quiet as a doctor’s office or a chapel, places people aren’t supposed to enjoy themselves.

Suspended places.

The door into the viewing room stands open, but there’s no one in there. No one in the hall, no one in the family lounge area.

I walk out into the parking lot. The sun has dropped beyond the horizon line, and although there’s still enough light to see, dusk is gathering.