Put Me Back Together(84)

As those words sunk in, Lucas placed a hand under my chin, gently urging me to raise it instead of hanging my head in shame as I had been. “All the more reason to call in the tip,” Lucas insisted. “He’s already breaking two of the rules of his parole. They’ll have to take him back into custody.”

“Not before the press gets wind of it,” I said. “If they start digging even a little… It always amazed me that nobody ever saw the two of us together at the park. Six years is a long time for a witness to sit around wondering if they really saw what they did, to stew in their guilt. The right question from a journalist and the case could blow wide open again.”

“You don’t even know if this witness exists,” Lucas said patiently.

“I lied on the stand, Lucas,” I replied. “I lied with the whole country watching. We can’t take any chances right now.”

“You mean like the chances you’re taking with your life?” Lucas said, and I pulled out of his arms in frustration. I was beginning to realize that telling the truth came with some unforeseen consequences. Like Lucas’s opinions about everything.

Facing the mirror above the nightstand, I eyed my frizzy hair and tried to remember the last time I’d washed it. I couldn’t. Instead of having pointless discussions about turning Brandon in, what I really needed to do was get home and take a shower. “Do you have a comb?” I said, not even bothering to cover up the hostility in my voice. If Lucas wanted to be with me, he was going to get all of me.

Unzipping a canvas bag sitting on the floor, Lucas took out a plastic comb. “You know I’m right,” he said as he handed it to me.

I let out a groan of frustration, both at Lucas’s persistence and because my hair was so knotted I could barely move the comb an inch. As I glared down at the nightstand, I noticed it was oddly bare, as were the shelves of Lucas’s wardrobe. I knew he didn’t have to clear out of the Res for another few days—he still had two exams this week—and Lucas might have been many things, but he didn’t strike me as the pack-five-days-ahead type.

“What’s with the suitcase?” I asked, pointing at it with the comb.

“Well, I figured since I have to be out of here soon anyway,” Lucas explained, “and since we’ve already established you have that awesome double bed, I thought I’d just…move in.”

“To my apartment?” I squeaked, taking in the larger suitcase by the door. In addition to showering and picking up breakfast while I’d been snoozing this morning, he’d apparently also been packing.

I tried not to hyperventilate at the thought of Lucas living full-time in my apartment, with my hair clogging the drain and my dirty underwear and my enormous jar of Nutella.

“Did you really think I was going to let you out of my sight?” Lucas said into my ear. “I need to be there every second so we can continue this argument ad nauseum.”

“Can’t wait,” I said, giving him a spiteful look as he began to strip the sheets off his bed. But as he finished his packing, I thought about how nice it would be to have him there, to lean on, to snuggle up with, and to do other things with in my double bed.

I turned my head so he wouldn’t see my smile. After all, I was still mad at him.

Can’t wait, I thought.



Lucas and I spent the next few of days getting to know each other all over again. I’d been so hesitant to tell him anything about my past that he realized he knew almost nothing about my life back in Vancouver. His curiosity piqued, he started quizzing me about my history, asking some silly questions, like what board games I’d hated as a kid and what kind of apples I’d liked packed in my lunch, and other less silly questions, like what it felt like when they put me on anti-depressants.

It was hard for me to answer without being evasive. My years of avoiding ever talking about my past had me tensing my shoulders and bracing for the worst, my lips clamping shut, my eyes searching for the exit. One day, when we were both supposed to be studying but instead he was asking about my mother’s reaction during the trial, I felt tears running down my cheeks before I even realized I’d started to cry. Lucas caught each tear with his fingertips and wiped my face dry, but the next day he was back at it. I never asked him to stop. He said he wanted to know everything about me, that he couldn’t help it, and truthfully that was what I wanted, too. I wanted Lucas to know me through and through. The questions felt like a different kind of exam, a test of my courage. Once every detail of me was laid out for Lucas to see, as nobody else ever had, I knew I would feel better than if I’d aced a test. It was like a cleanse.

His love was washing me clean.

There were other lessons, too. I learned that Lucas was a lot neater than me, folding his clothes at the end of the day instead of leaving them in a pile on the floor for him to trip over like me. I learned that Turner far preferred Lucas to me. Turner’s little ears perked up every time he heard Lucas’s voice and he spent all his time tangling himself around Lucas’s legs, purring like a lawn mower, which didn’t make me jealous in the least. I also learned that Lucas did not know how to cook—he managed to botch boiling pasta—and since neither could I, we ordered in a lot. Because leaving the house was definitely not on the menu. My flight back to Vancouver was booked for Saturday morning, and until then Lucas had appointed himself my personal bodyguard. With Brandon still on the loose, he ruled that we should stay inside at all times except for exams. Granted, when he said this his hand was on my ass, and when I agreed I was slipping my tongue into his mouth, but the seriousness of the situation wasn’t lost on us.