Beg for It(67)

“And now I could support you,” he put in.

She shook her head again, trying to take this all in. “Why didn’t you tell me, Reese? Why lie? Did you think I would try to take it from you, or what?”

“I didn’t tell you, because I knew it would change everything,” he said angrily. “And I never liked being dependent on you, you know that, but once I found out about the money, all I could think was that if you knew I didn’t need you that way, that it was going to change how you felt about me.”

“I don’t think it would’ve changed my feelings for you then,” she said after a moment or so, “but I think knowing it is definitely changing my feelings for you now.”

“Shit. No, Corinne. No, okay? Look, it doesn’t have to change anything—” He tried to take her by the shoulders again, but she shrugged out of his grasp.

“You need to call the car. I want to get home.”

Silently, Reese nodded and left the room. Corinne spent the next few minutes gathering her things, packing up her bag. She hesitated before taking the items she’d just bought on South Street, then left them behind. She found him in the living room, still wearing only the jeans. No shirt, no shoes.

“Are you coming with me?” she asked.

“No. I have things to do here too. Where I live,” he told her coldly.

She did not want things to end this way. Not after such a great weekend. Learning he’d lied to her about something so big, though…it wasn’t sitting well with her. Not at all.

“The car’s downstairs,” Reese said. “You should go.”

So, she went.





Chapter Thirty-Seven


Before


It’s cold outside and not much warmer in the house. She can see her breath, and while she’d tugged off her mittens upon entering the kitchen, she hasn’t taken off her coat. Reese wasn’t in the apartment when she got home. His note said he was here.

“Reese?”

Corinne hears a muffled noise from upstairs, and she follows it up the narrow staircase and down a hall to a small room with slanting eaves and a dormer. Reese’s old bedroom, she can see that at once by the posters on the walls. The single twin bed is made up with what looks like a homemade quilt and several pillows. Trophies line the dresser.

“I didn’t know you played baseball.” She runs a finger along the golden figurines, then turns to face him.

“In high school. Yeah. I wasn’t very good. I just didn’t quit.”

Things have been strained between them since the fight about dinner two nights ago. She’s tried to make it up to him, but the problem with being with someone who likes it when she’s stern is that in the fragile aftermath of an argument, it feels like any kind of discipline, even teasing, relates right back to the fight.

Anyway, they’ve been tiptoeing around each other since that night, and when she got back to the apartment tonight to find him missing, she’d been sure the note was going to say he’d left her. That he’d only gone “home” to the old farmhouse should’ve been more a relief—but it wasn’t. Not quite. This relationship has been souring for months, and Corinne isn’t sure how to fix it. At this point, she’s no longer sure if she wants to.

“Are you hungry? I brought takeout from the China King. It’s downstairs. Your favorite, beef with broccoli.” She smiles, trying to tempt him into smiling back.

He doesn’t. “Thanks. I’m in the middle of something. I’ll get some later.”

“Anything I can help with?” She sits next to him on the hard wooden floor and reaches for the file box he’s been sifting through, but when Reese pulls it away, subtly but definitely moving it out of her reach, Corinne lets her hand fall onto her lap. “What are you doing, exactly?”

“Cleaning out some stuff.”

She looks around the room and tucks her knees up, linking her fingers to hold them close to her chest. “Looks like this whole house is going to need a good cleaning out. That’s a big job, puppy, are you sure you don’t want—”

“I’m fine. I can handle it.”

“Okay.” She sits in silence for a few minutes, watching him. Waiting.

She can’t imagine what it has been like for him, to lose both his parents so close together, and so unexpectedly. Her own parents are sometimes annoying, as all parents can be, but she sees them as often as she can. Since they moved to Delaware, it’s not as often as she, or they, would like. To have both of them be simply…gone…Corinne can’t begin to think of how terrible and sad it must feel.

She’s tried talking to him about it, but Reese has said very little, other than to occasionally tell her there are problems with the estate. Lawyers to pay. Mortgages to settle. Back taxes to take care of. She hasn’t pressed him about any of it, though she does wonder if surely, somehow, some way, there is a way they could move into this house and stop paying rent. It might ease some of the financial burden that has started to cause such a strain in their relationship over the past few months. It might help lead them toward some kind of future.

Maybe, she thinks, watching him sort through piles of papers without looking her, maybe the trouble that seems to have crept between them has nothing to do with money.

Maybe Reese just doesn’t want to be with her, anymore.