Author: Cassia Leo

“Go ahead and walk away. You’re still mine, Claire, whether or not you admit it to yourself.”

I want to tell him to fuck off, but I can’t turn off the nagging voice inside my head telling me he’s right. Why else would that kiss have felt so good?

I leave his room, still attempting to make sense of this. I’m just feeling lonely. I miss Adam. Of course, I wanted to be kissed. And who better to do it than Chris? Someone who’s kissed me a million times. Someone who knows exactly what I want. But that’s all it was, just a kiss. We are not in love anymore. I love Adam.

Even if he did break his promise to never hurt me.

This is not exactly what I wanted to happen when I showed up here. I should never have worn this stupid shirt Senia bought me. I glance down at my chest at the gray T-shirt with a black silhouette of Chris playing the guitar and the letters CK behind the silhouette. I thought it would be kind of funny, but apparently I gave Chris the wrong idea. I should never have told him that Adam and I broke up.

I should have taken Linda Coldwater’s advice.

I think back to the conversation I had with my professor yesterday and I can’t believe I allowed myself to get so emotional in front of someone who holds such a large piece of my academic career in her hands. I’m a complete emotional wreck lately. Linda insisted that she didn’t quit her job as a caseworker because she didn’t enjoy it. She insisted that she loved the job, and the children she worked with, too much.

“It’s no secret that it’s a tough job. You can see that from watching any damn movie about orphans,” she said as she leaned back in her desk chair. “What you don’t see in movies and what most people who’ve worked in this job won’t tell you is that there is very little you can do for these children other than placing them in decent homes and performing thorough inspections. What happens the moment you leave a foster home or when they leave your office is not up to you.”

That’s about where I lost it. Then Linda handed me her business card with the name and number of a campus therapist scrawled on the back.

If I had had someone there to watch over me during the eight years I was shuffled through the system, I might have found a forever home sooner. I think back to all the homes I came through to get here, to Jackie and Chris.

When I was eight years old, I was placed with an artist, his wife, and their two young sons who were toddlers. They had a nice home in a quaint suburb where he painted mock-ups for large-scale murals. I was fascinated by these paintings, until he picked me up to set me on a stool, to watch him paint, and he accidentally touched my butt. I punched him and kicked down the stool and threw a hellish tantrum until they called my caseworker.

Eight years of these episodes. It’s no wonder my caseworkers hated me, and any wonder how Chris and Jackie got through to me.

Jackie sits at the table in the breakfast nook going over some paperwork, probably bills or something for the bakery. She looks up at me over her reading glasses and I feel like a child about to be chastised, full of shame and guilt over my indiscretions.

“Sit,” she says, pulling out the white wooden chair next to her.

I sit down and resist the urge to launch into a long apology. Jackie hates excuses and she doesn’t want to hear that.

“Jackie, I know you don’t hate me, but I can’t bear the idea of you being disappointed in me.”

She pulls her eyeglasses off and looks me in the eye. “I’m not disappointed in you. I’m hurt that you didn’t feel you could come to me.” Her eyes begin to water and my chest tightens. “Even if you and Chris aren’t together, you will always be like a daughter to me. You’re the little girl I always wanted but couldn’t have.” I make no effort to stop the tears once hers begin to fall. “After Chris was born, I had three miscarriages and it tore my marriage to his father apart. When Michael left, I gave up on finding unconditional love in a man, so I decided I would give unconditional love to those who needed it most.” She grabs my hand and my body shakes as I attempt to keep from sobbing. “I’m not angry with you. I love you, unconditionally.”

She stands from her chair and beckons me into her arms. I rise and we hug for a while as she strokes my hair and rubs my back.

“So are you ever going to bring this boyfriend of yours here to meet us?” she asks and I freeze.

“Boyfriend?”

She lets go of me and looks me in the eye. “You don’t have to pretend, honey. Rachel and Chris already told me you have a boyfriend. I want to meet him.”

Shit.

“I don’t have a boyfriend. Chris just assumed we were still together, but we’re not. He’s in Hawaii right now for business, anyway, so he wouldn’t have been able to come.”

“For business? How old is he?”

“Twenty-two.” It dawns on me that Adam’s birthday is coming in just a few days. October 10th. He’s going to be twenty-three.

She narrows her eyes at me. “So you don’t have a boyfriend?”

If I were being honest I would tell her that I don’t have a boyfriend, but that I desperately still want Adam to be my boyfriend. I miss everything about him. My heart and body ache for his voice, his jokes, his touch.

“He’s not my boyfriend anymore, but I miss him. His name is Adam.” I want to say that he brought me back to life, but I don’t want to drop too many bombshells on Jackie today. “I think you’d really like him.”

The look of sympathy in her eyes makes my heart squeeze in my chest. “Well, I hope for your sake that you two can work out your differences.”

I nod as Chris shuffles in on his crutches. I don’t tell her that Adam and I don’t have differences, we have distance—too much distance.

“I see tears have been shed. Does that mean I missed the good part?” Chris says as he passes me on his way to the fridge.

Jackie looks at me and I see a glimmer of something in her brown eyes. I think she’s silently asking me not to tell Chris that we were talking about Adam.

“I should get going,” I say and Chris immediately closes the refrigerator door.

“I’ll walk you out.”

“Walk?” Jackie says with a chuckle, and I can’t help but laugh.

“Real funny. Make fun of the cripple.”

He waits for me to give Jackie a hug and say goodbye before he follows me to the door. I grab my purse and keys from the table in the foyer and pretend not to notice how uncomfortable Chris looks when I open and close the front door for him.

I follow him out to where my car is parked next to the curb and he looks over my car. It needs to be washed, but I haven’t gotten my first full paycheck yet from my new job at the used textbook store.

We stand in silence for a moment while we both try to think of something to say. Finally, he looks me in the eye and I recognize that look. It’s the same look he gave me the day we broke up. The look that broke my heart and it has the same effect on me now.

“I’m sorry that I never called you after I left last year. I know I fucked everything up.”

“I think we both did a pretty good job of that.”

“No, this is my fault. If I had fought harder for us, we wouldn’t be in this situation with Abigail and everything would be different. We’d still be together. You know that, don’t you?”

I sigh then nod, because it’s true. It’s Saturday. If we hadn’t made all these stupid mistakes, we’d probably be lying in bed in my dorm or hanging out at Tristan’s house entertaining whatever girl he brought home that weekend. We’d be wrapped up in each other, two ribbons of the same color twisted and tied together, inextricable and indistinguishable.

He leans his crutches against the side of my car and holds out his hand. I stare at it for a moment, my heart pounding as I try not to think that this is one of those moments where everything changes—a turning point. I reach out and he takes my hand in his then pulls me toward him. I wrap my arms around his waist and bury my face in his shoulder.

“Can I call you tonight?” he asks in that soft, sexy voice he uses when he’s on stage.

I try not to laugh. “Yeah, I guess that’s okay. You still haven’t heard anything from Tasha?”

“Not yet,” he says as he pulls his head back to look at me. “But I swear I’m working on it. I’m not giving up.”

“I should go.”

He kisses my forehead and I sigh as his fingers trail down the side of my face and land on my neck. “Drive safely, babe.”

He grabs his crutches and steps back as he watches me get into the car. I turn the key in the ignition then jump when he knocks on my window. I roll it down and he smiles.

“Please wash your car.”

“Way to kill the moment, douche.”

“I put some money in your bank account yesterday, which you probably didn’t notice because judging by the negative balance you probably never check your account.”

I don’t know if I should punch him or kiss him or cry from embarrassment. “That’s not funny.”

“I know. That’s why I took care of it. Please don’t let it get to that point again.” He smacks the top of my car. “And wash this thing.” He leans his head through the window and kisses my cheek then whispers in my ear, “I’ll always take care of you.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Adam

AFTER THAT TEXT MESSAGE FROM Claire, I was about ready to completely give up on Claire, if it weren’t for the talk I had with Yuri last night. Sometimes I feel like Yuri’s the craziest person I know and other times I feel like he’s the only person I know who has any sense. His nuggets of wisdom come mostly from his upbringing. Both his parents were humanists and his mother was a surfer when she was younger.

“Dude, the quickest path to self-destruction is to push away the people you love,” he had said as he lay on the bed in the hotel room in Maui and I sat in the desk chair, both of us sipping beers and admiring the view out the hotel window.

“You sound like your mom.”

“Because my mom is the shit.”

I finish off my beer and pull another one out of the bucket of ice on the desk. “I think I fucked up majorly, but I don’t know how to fix it other than jumping on a plane and going back to her.”

“You can use my ticket and I’ll stay here and pretend to be you.”

“Do you think Lena would mind me pretending to be you when I get there?”

“She doesn’t like small dicks.”

“Then how the fuck are you two still together?”

“She doesn’t know about my inflatable implant.”

I can always count on Yuri to say what I need to hear, but now I’m faced with the biggest decision of my life. I can quit this project and go back to Claire. That means I’ll have to keep working for my dad and I’ll be tied to Wilmington and the secret that binds me to my father until I’m thirty. Or I can stick it out here for four more weeks and risk coming back to find that Claire can’t forgive me—or worse, that I’ve been replaced.

After driving Yuri to the airport at five a.m., I just want to get back to the hotel room and go to sleep before I make any important decisions. I have to take this rental car back tomorrow and catch a flight back to Kauai at eight p.m. But a text message from an unknown number changes everything.

Unknown: We decided not to catch the flight back because Lindsay was having some pain. We’re at Maui Memorial.

It’s Nathan. I don’t want to respond and I definitely don’t want to go. The odds of it being mine are so fucking slim, it’s not worth putting myself, or them, through it. I always used condoms with Lindsay. I did love her, but I’m not stupid. It’s not a trust issue. I just know I’m not ready to be a father.