In My Dreams I Hold a Knife(42)

“I wanted to talk to you.” The wine, dark as blood, snaked out of the bottle and down the side of the glass. “About something important.”

My heartbeat picked up. This couldn’t be good.

“Here,” he said, handing me the glass. “Cheers.”

I clinked and downed half the wine, feeling it coat my lips. “So. Something important.”

Coop took a step closer. It took everything in me to keep my shoulders straight, not lean into him, bury my face in his chest. He smelled like things that came from the earth—wood and citrus and grass.

Panic gripped me, sudden and fierce. I didn’t want this to be over.

“Come on,” he said gruffly, picking me up again.

“Hey!” My feet kicked uselessly. “You’re so manhandley tonight.”

“Grab the bottle.”

I rolled my eyes but snagged the wine.

“And—set—it—down—right—there,” Coop took a few exaggerated steps to his bed and lowered me over his bedside table. The instant I placed the bottle down, he tossed me.

“Jesus, Coop!” I bounced high on his bed, but he reached for me, pulling me over so I lay against his chest, our legs tangled.

He rested his head on his hand. “Come home with me for Thanksgiving. Meet my mom.”

I drew back. “What?”

“Hear me out.” He raised a finger. “One. My mom really wants to meet you. Two. You could see my teenage bedroom, including all my emo band posters from high school. The blackmail material writes itself. Three. We’d get a whole week together without anyone else. Just you and me in the exotic town of Greenville, South Carolina. And four—I know you don’t want to go home.”

I didn’t. My dad’s latest stint in recovery had ended in flames when he got high and drove his car straight through the parking lot and into his office lobby. That made three unsuccessful admissions to rehab in three years. Three pointless family days, sitting in a little circle, waiting for my dad to do something—anything—different. Maybe look my mom full in the face without cutting his eyes away; maybe say something to me that wasn’t about school; maybe talk about those times when I was young and he reshaped me with his cruelty. Maybe he could admit to being sad, or lonely, or depressed. Or even mildly disappointed.

Yeah, yeah, we asked for so much.

The first stint in rehab, my mom and I had expected the impossible—waited for him to say something that let us know he recognized the pain underneath the fog of the pills. But he didn’t, of course, and after that we’d stopped expecting it.

And now this. He was finally unemployed, and spiraling. No one knew what to do next.

“What about Mint?” I asked, pushing thoughts of home aside. “He’s going to think it’s weird if I go home with you.”

“I was thinking,” Coop said slowly, studying my face. “What if you ended things?”

My mouth opened, but no sound came out.

“We could tell him together. I mean, I’ll do it if you want. We could come clean, and then after a little while…we could be together. For real. In public.”

My brain was having trouble processing. Coop, scorner of all things traditional, earnest, wanted to be my boyfriend?

“You want to date?” I asked dubiously.

He took my face in his hands and looked me in the eyes. How terrifying, to be truly looked at.

“Coop—” I started, wanting him to turn that gaze away, unsure where this was going. There was a charge building in the air, a feeling: Today, something starts that will never end.

“Jessica Marie Miller. You have to know by now I love you.”

I made a sound of surprise.

He smiled. “I feel like I’ve worn it on my sleeve since the day I met you.”

“The fortune,” I said, three years too late.

“Of course. The first week of class, you and I left East House at the same time. You didn’t notice me, but I watched you the entire time we were walking. You were so beautiful. But the thing that really fascinated me was that I could read everything you were thinking.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was so easy to tell what you were feeling. It was right there on your face for everyone to see. Longing when you passed other students, happiness when you saw Blackwell Tower, worry when you got close to Perkins Hall, where your class was. I remember thinking how innocent that was, or brave, how much I wanted to know you.”

Coop leaned down and kissed my nose. “Now I can never tell what you’re thinking.”

“I—”

“I wanted to ask you out, freshman year,” he said in a rush. “You taped the fortune on your door, and I thought there was hope. But then Bid Day, when I walked into my room and you and Mint were on the bed… Mint was my roommate. And you obviously liked him. So I told myself to forget you. But I never could.”

“You could have,” I said quietly. “You could’ve been with anyone. They all wonder why you don’t date.”

He shook his head. “Tell them I’ve been out of my mind for you since we were eighteen. There’s no one else for me. I thought I could handle being with you in secret, because at least I’d get part of you. I told you when we started that I wanted more—”