Harder (Caroline & West #2)(41)

“Nothing happened.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t give a shit if you believe me.”

“Franks, look, whatever’s going on, changing your wardrobe is probably not going to fix it. Think about it. You’re too smart for this.”

“Yeah, well maybe I don’t want to be smart.”

Hearing her say she doesn’t want to be smart—it lights a fuse.

I want to shake her, tell her smart’s all we’ve got. Smart is what’s going to save her ass from Silt, keep her from turning into Mom, keep her from turning into me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

She huffs an exhale. “God. Never mind.”

I grip her arm. “Don’t take that tone with me. I should be writing a paper right now, but I’m here with you, and I think you owe me—”

“I don’t owe you anything!” She pulls away and shoves me hard enough to rock me back on my heels. “Buy them or don’t. I’ll be in the truck.”

I stand between the racks of clothes in the aisle of the Salvation Army with no idea what I’m supposed to do next.

Wishing I could ask Caroline.


Monday morning, I stop at the student cafe in the Forum for some coffee and see Caroline alone at a table with a book in front of her and a doughnut on a napkin, untouched.

Chocolate cake doughnut, glazed. Her favorite.

I sit down across from her, pick it up, take a big bite.

“Dick,” she says.

Without looking up, she kicks me in the shin.

Sitting there, I eat the whole doughnut. The sun’s shining in the windows across the front of the Forum, bathing her in light. She reads with her mouth slightly open, pushing her tongue into the gap between her teeth. She’s switching from her book to a stack of note cards covered in highlighter, and I recognize the format. She’s got a Latin quiz.

“Want me to help with your verbs?”

“No. Quit distracting me. I only have ten minutes.”

I walk up to the counter and buy her a replacement doughnut.

She doesn’t say another word to me, and it’s still the best fifteen minutes of my day.


When I come home at two a.m. after my shift that night, I find her pecking away at her laptop in my kitchen.

“You know the library’s open, right?” I ask.

“Mmm-hmm.”

I open a bag of corn chips. Put some in a bowl so she can share if she wants.

She plucks out a chip. “What’s your job like?”

“Boring.”

“What do you do?”

“Whatever they tell me.”

“What’d you do tonight?”

“Measured stuff. They won’t let me cut yet.”

“Is cutting more fun?”

“It would be different. I’ve never used a miter saw, but you can do tricky cuts, like when you’ve got to cut 30 degrees on the X axis and 45 on the Y—I want to see how that works. Or I’d like to drive the forklift.”

“When do you get to do that stuff?”

“Not for f*cking ages. What are you writing about?”

“Victorian periodicals.”

“Fascinating.”

“No, it’s good. We had to pick a topic that there were lots of articles about and read a bunch of different journals. I picked the Irish problem.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Basically, they wanted independence.”

“Such a f*cking hassle, those Irish.”

She smiles.

“You want a beer?”

I ask without thinking about it. I don’t want to think tonight. I’m sick of it—sick of everything being difficult all the time. I want to do something easy. Beer, couch, Caroline.

“At two in the morning?”

“I’m all jacked up. Probably won’t sleep for a while.”

“Why are you jacked up if work was so boring?”

“Those Monsters you bought me.”

It’s only partly true. I’m jacked up on her being here, and I’m jacked up because Frankie still won’t talk to me.

I stayed up all last night writing the last of my final projects to clear my incompletes. I’m so far behind on sleep, I don’t feel like I need it at all.

“You want a beer or not?” I ask.

“Sure. I’m about out of brilliant thoughts for the night anyway.” She rolls her shoulders.

I snag two beers from the fridge and find a napkin to spit the gum I’ve been chewing into so I can eat. She’s raising an eyebrow at me when I turn around. “What’s with the gum?”

“Helps with not smoking,” I admit.

“You really quit?”

“Trying.” I open the beers and hand her one. “I need to sit.” I grab the chips and head for the couch, where I turn the TV on to an infomercial for some kind of food chopper. She follows me in and takes a seat on the other end.

We watch this skinny, hyped-up sales guy try to convince us we’ll f*cking die if we don’t have his chopper.

I can smell her, her hair and her skin, her detergent, the deodorant she wears that’s oranges and spices.

“Do you think I’m f*cking up?” I ask.