Harder (Caroline & West #2)(38)

“I can’t lock the door behind me.”

That gets me another smile, slower and wider, though he still won’t look my way. “Now you’re gonna tell me you need a key.”

“I don’t mind hanging around until you get back.”

“Some nights I’m on till two.”

“I know. Frankie said.”

Now he looks me over, head to toe. “You sleeping bad again?”

“Sometimes.” Most of the time. I stay up late, sleep a few hours, wake up and work, take a nap late in the day if I don’t have meetings.

My vampire schedule. It was one thing West and I used to have in common.

Still do, I guess.

“I’ll get you a key,” he says. “You can leave when you want.”

“Thanks.”

I brush past him, hyper-aware of his body and the narrowness of the staircase. Conscious that he could reach out, put his hands on me, touch me anywhere, and I’d let him.

Does he feel that, too? He must. It’s right here between us, that knowledge, that love song our bodies never stopped singing.

Even mad at him, I’d kill to be able to go with him to his room, help him get his boots off. I’d die to be able to crawl into the crook of his arm so he could sleep and I could keep him safe.

Keep vigil over him.

“Goodnight, West.”

“ ’Night, Caro.”

I hold that image of us in my head when I get into the car and start driving through the tunnel of my headlights down the deserted country road. Me and West in his bed together.

Me and West, wandering through a wilderness of stars with our hands clasped.

Me leading him out.





West


The morning after Caroline told me she was back in my life whether I liked it or not, I quit smoking.

She was just going to keep hounding me if I didn’t.

I missed the hit I got from those cigarettes, though, and the way the smoke went all the way down to the bottom of my lungs and made it possible for me to breathe when it felt like I couldn’t get a full breath in Putnam any other way.

After she left that night, I stared after her taillights until they winked around the corner and disappeared. I locked up the apartment and ate leftovers from the dinner I’d made my sister.

I thought about Caroline spending afternoons and evenings with Frankie.

Thought about her in my place, in my kitchen, in my life.

I pulled the rest of my cigarettes out of the freezer, opened every pack, broke them apart, and threw them away.

Then I leaned a hip against the counter and sparked my lighter in the dark.

Spark. Spark. Flame.

The whole time, I was trying to convince myself that the flame didn’t look like hope, didn’t feel like it, but I’ve never been any good at that kind of self-deception.

That spark in the dark, that wavering flicker—Caroline. Hope.

For me, they were always the same thing.

Impossible girl. That’s what I thought when I first met her. She was exactly what I wanted, everything I wanted, and she was impossible.

What made her impossible was only my fear.

Last time I came to Putnam, I fell in love with her. I claimed a life for myself, then lost it. I didn’t want to take that kind of risk again—not with my sister, and not with my own heart.

But Caroline lost her future once. She lost everything she believed about herself when her ex put her pictures online. Then she fought to reclaim it. She bit and clawed and scrabbled and took it back. It was the most beautiful thing I ever witnessed.

So how stupid was I to think after what I did to her, she would just let me go? Caroline doesn’t let things go. I was the last person on earth she should have wanted anything to do with, but try telling that woman what she’s supposed to want.

Just try it. I’ll be over here laughing.

She wanted me, so there she was on my porch. There she was with my sister.

There she was destroying my cigarettes and pissing me off, telling me I was going to give myself cancer like I didn’t f*cking know it already. Like I was supposed to care.

She was trying to make me care, and I resisted for no reason.

Except that’s not true.

I resisted because I was afraid.

What if I couldn’t fix what I’d done to her?

What if I fixed it and lost her anyway, and I found I couldn’t come back from losing her a second time?

What if I claimed Caroline and discovered all over again that hope is a luxury I don’t get to claim?

I was afraid.

But it didn’t matter.

Me and Caroline—it was going to happen anyway. I was going to let it. That last week of September, that first week of October, I tried to keep my distance, stalling, when all the while I was trying to remember how I’d ever done it in the first place.

How I’d given myself permission to take what I wanted.

It sounds easy—telling yourself you deserve good things. Letting yourself want them. Letting yourself claim them.

It sounds easy, but it’s not. For a guy like me, it’s right next door to impossible.

I was stuck in Silt. Not just the Silt on the map, but the Silt in my head. The Silt that made me, trained me to survive, and taught me my life was worth precisely nothing.

The path that led out of Silt was the one that took me back to Caroline. Once I found it, it was easy.