Here Without You (Between the Lines #4)

After grabbing a snack from the kitchen, I screw around on the internet, effectively wasting at least forty-five minutes, and then try her again. Voicemail number two – click. I answer an email from George and check out my fan page, where John appears to be correct about the amount of girls who’d chop off a limb to go out with me even once. But none of them know me. I’m just a pretty face, a hot body, a fantasy stand-in, and though I appreciate their support, such as it is, I couldn’t care less about the shallow praise.

Listening to Dori’s cheerful, musical voice telling me to leave a message for the third time, I hang my head and wait for the beep, one hand gripping the phone and the other gripping the back of my neck as if I could shake some sense into myself.

‘Dori, I’m sorry. I told you we’d go at your pace, and I broke that promise. Just … I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone. Maybe that’s not saying much – or enough – but I do.’

My jaw clenches. What I mean by trust and what she means by it are two different things. We’re quite a pair, trying to find the middle ground between our temperaments, our beliefs, our lives. While she tries to repair her broken faith in everything, I’m stumbling over learning to trust at all.

‘Don’t give up on me.’ I press end and lie back in the middle of my bed, wishing I could just learn to shut the fuck up when I’m that pissed off.

Barely resisting the urge to pitch the phone across the room, I focus and count silently. My therapist (another novelty) is adamant about using the focus-and-count thing to uncoil my temper instead of acting on impulse. He insists it’s a habit that requires persistence. It works sporadically, at best – especially when I forget to use it. Like when Dori was lying next to me minutes ago. Dammit.

When the phone rings, relief floods through me. ‘Hey.’

‘I have some news. Are you alone?’

It takes me a second to catch up. Familiar voice, not Dori. ‘Brooke?’

She sighs heavily. ‘Don’t you ever look to see who’s calling before answering? Are you alone or not?’

I close my eyes and restart the mute therapeutic counting. So not working.

‘I’m alone.’ Teeth clamped, I wait for her to say whatever she’s going to say. I’m not in the mood for Brooke Cameron. A reserve of composure is essential to my ability to tolerate her, and at the moment I’m all tapped out.

‘My PI found him.’

Him?

Oh, shit. The kid.

‘That was fast.’

‘Yeah. We need to talk. Can you come over?’

Brooke has always put the high in high maintenance. I swallow a retort – my theory on the real reason phones were invented – namely, the avoidance of in-person meetings with people we don’t want to see. Ten to one Alexander Graham Bell had a problematic ex or an overbearing mother-in-law.

‘When?’

‘Now?’

I glance at my watch. ‘Brooke, I’m tired.’ More importantly, I’m hoping Dori will call me back any minute. ‘Can’t you just tell me whatever it is over the phone?’ I’m not used to us speaking amicably – or as amicably as Brooke and I are capable of. That’s bizarre in itself.

‘Well, shit, Reid. Never mind, then.’ I hear the drawl creeping into her words and know that despite efforts to avoid setting her off, I have anyway.

‘Don’t be that way.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’ She huffs out a breath. ‘This is important and you’re blowing me off. I should have expected as much. Are you really alone or just saying you are?’

I shove a hand through my hair and close my eyes. There’s not enough focus-and-count in the world to deal with Brooke Cameron. ‘Why would I lie about that?’

‘Why won’t you answer the question?’

‘Because I already did answer it, goddammit.’

When she doesn’t snap back right away, I get my first clue that something has her pretty freaked out.

‘Fine. Here it is.’ Her voice sounds off – now that she’s speaking more quietly, and I realize she’s been crying. What the hell? Is there something in the air today? ‘He’s in foster care.’

‘What?’ I sit up, the gears in my brain catching and stalling.

‘Apparently, the people I chose to give him to transformed into shit-for-brains tweaker meth-addict losers and CPS removed him.’

‘What?’

‘Quit saying that! Don’t you have anything else to say?’

‘Well no, actually. Give me a minute, Jesus, I mean – CPS? As in child whatever – the people who take kids away from parents when they’re being abused?’

I imagine the exaggerated eye-roll I thankfully can’t see.

‘Yes, Reid. That’s what I mean.’

My life flashes before my eyes – what’s left of it. Because it hits me right then that I’ve not told Dori about this yet. Not any of it. There hasn’t been an appropriate time in the past week to bring up the fact that Brooke and I had a son four and a half years ago. A son I’d denied was mine to Brooke’s face and in my own head until a few weeks ago. A son she gave up for adoption right after she had him.

With what happened to Dori in high school, this wasn’t a piece of my past I could disclose offhandedly, and I’ve never been the king of insightful situation management. Not to mention the fact that I’ve never told a living soul about this. Not John, not my parents, no one.

‘God-fucking-dammit.’

‘Yeah,’ Brooke says. She has no idea.

Into the silence of our mutual shock, my phone beeps, and this time, I check the display. Dori is calling me back. ‘Look, I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘Fine.’ Brooke hangs up, and I flash over, shelving our conversation for later.

‘Dori, I’m sorry –’

‘I’m telling them tomorrow, first thing. Please try to understand – this is difficult for them, especially after Deb’s accident. It’s not about you, really. They don’t know you. They’re only afraid I’ll be hurt, and that’s all this response is based on.’ She blurts her words like a practised speech, defensive and placating. ‘They may … want to talk to you.’

Parents who want to talk to me. Huh. And I’m not only considering it, I’m determined to do it. This is the stuff of alternate universes.

‘I’m not going to hurt you, Dori,’ I say, meaning it. ‘And I shouldn’t have pushed you to tell them,’ I add, half-meaning it.

‘Yes, you should have. I haven’t kept my promise to you, either. I told you I would never be ashamed of you – and I’m not, Reid – but this must have seemed that way to you. I’m sorry.’

I hadn’t realized until the moment she verbalizes it that this was exactly how it felt to me. She can hurt me in places I didn’t know I was vulnerable, soothe aches I didn’t know existed. How does she manage this sort of empathy?

‘I wish you were here right now,’ I say, unable to concentrate on anything but the need to pull her under me and shut the entire world out.

‘I was just there, you know,’ she retorts.

Smartass. God, I want her.

‘Yeah, I know. Jesus, I’m a fu– uh, idiot.’

Her hoarse little laugh at my interrupted curse yanks at my heart.

‘What if I sneak over to your house and climb into your bedroom window?’

Laughing again, she says, ‘You can’t sneak anywhere in that car – certainly not in my neighbourhood. And there’s no tree or trellis for you to climb to my second-storey window …’

I chuckle softly. ‘But you’re thinking about it, aren’t you?’

Her exhalation sounds like a smile. ‘Yeah.’

‘Want me to tell you what I’d do, if your dad had been more obliging and installed a trellis or planted a tree just under your window?’

‘Maybe,’ she says softly, and I imagine her sucking that fat lower lip into her mouth.

‘Maybe?’

‘Okay. Yes. Tell me.’

This is the thing about her – this, right here. She doesn’t play coy. That’s why the thought of her pushing me away is unacceptable. It wouldn’t be a play for attention like it always was with Brooke. Goodbye is goodbye to Dori, and I won’t let that happen.

‘Close your eyes and imagine those perfectly situated branches, right outside your window.’

‘Um, okay.’

I lie back, relaxing, breathing in the subtle trace of her still on my pillows. ‘You’ll leave your window open – the one the fish are swimming towards. It’ll be late, and try as you might, you can’t stay awake waiting for me. I’ll slip quietly across the room in the dark, following bars of moonlight to your bed.’ I entertain the thought of her, curled up under the covers, and my fingers twist a knot into the unmade bedding beneath me. ‘What do you wear to sleep?’

‘Just a T-shirt,’ she whispers.

Air hisses through my teeth and I take a slow breath while my body riots. For the first time in my life, I’m hoping the new will wear off soon – just a bit, at least – because whenever I think of touching her and how she responds when I do, I can’t think of anything else.

‘I’ll pull my shirt off before peeling back your covers. Run my fingertips over you, carefully. Wake you so, so, slowly.’ Every nerve in my body is wide awake. ‘What will you do then?’

Her voice is so quiet that I strain to hear her. ‘Reach for you. Take your hand and pull you into my bed.’

The hot-factor of this conversation just vaulted up several notches. ‘Ah, I like the sound of that … but I’m still wearing my jeans, and you’re wearing that shirt …’ I wonder if she’s brave enough yet to continue this sort of game, though six months ago I would have had to be high to think she’d ever do this. Or that I’d end up wanting a committed relationship with her.

After last weekend, all bets are off on what either of us is capable of.

‘Are you – are you wearing the ones with the button-fly?’ Breathy and soft, her words are like a caress.

‘If that’s what you want, then yes.’

‘Then … um … I’ll unbutton your jeans …’ Her voice husky and sweet, she hesitates, and I picture the blush spreading across her face.

‘You’ll shove them down with your foot, grazing my leg as you go …’ I say, helping her out ‘… while my hands are sliding under that T-shirt.’

‘Oh?’ She sounds almost breathless, and I’m completely turned on.

‘Your MADD T-shirt,’ I qualify, pausing when she laughs. ‘It’s a little threadbare, you know. I’ll stroke your breasts with my fingertips … and then lean down and taste you right through that thin red knit.’

‘Ah …’ she breathes.

‘One hand will drift down, over your ribcage, across your hip, nothing between us … what then?’