Days Like This (20 page)

I COULDN’T SLEEP, again. I
couldn’t remember the last time I slept all night, but this time for a
different reason. How did I feel about Cass? What was Molly going to do? I had
to roam. I didn’t know where I was going to go just after dawn, but when I
opened my door, Cass was standing there. It was too early for this. Or late.
This day sucked.

“You leaving?”
she asked.

I shrugged.
“Nowhere important.”

“We need to
talk.”

The dreaded
words. Great.

I opened the
screen door for her and we went upstairs. I barely closed the living room door
when she turned to me. She looked a little angry, but I hadn’t done anything. I
hadn’t even spoken to her since the ice cream parlor.

“Your
girlfriend came to see me earlier,” she said. She picked up this little glass
ball thing from the table and put it back down. Molly went to see her? That
wasn’t good. I watched her walk around my apartment. “She told me that I needed
to let you go.”

“What?”

Cass flipped
around to me. Her blue eyes were bright and wild. “Is that what you want?”

“Since when did
what I want matter to you?” I asked. Cass never cared about what I had to say
or think. If she had then we wouldn’t be how we were right now.

“It’s always
mattered to me,” she said.

I laughed.
“It’s never mattered.”

Cass pushed me
and I stumbled. She had a fire burning in her eyes. One that I hadn’t seen since
she got back. “What the hell, Graham? I thought we were going to be friends.
You agreed to that. If you want me to let you go just say the word!”

I turned away
from her. “I can’t talk about this right now.”

“Don’t walk
away.”

“I’m not the
one who walks away! That’s you, Cass!” I yelled. I didn’t like yelling, but she
was so infuriating. She looked at me as if I’d slapped her. “Oh, sorry. I don’t
mean walk—I mean run away in the middle of the fucking night.”

“You don’t
know what that was like for me,” she said. Her voice was soft, and if I wasn’t
so pissed and tired, I would’ve cared.

She was right:
I didn’t know. That was because of her. “You’re right—because you disappeared
and wouldn’t tell me a damn thing. God, you’re so selfish.”

“I’m selfish?”
she squealed.

“Yes! You only
think about yourself. About what you want and to hell with the rest of us.”

Cass crossed
her arms. “What about you? You made decisions and never even stopped to think
about what I wanted!”

“I never had
to think. You never had a problem telling me what you wanted before. You never
had a problem pretending you wanted the same thing!” I had to get control. I’d
never told Cass how I felt about all this, but it was sort of nice not holding
the shit back anymore. I didn’t care if I hurt her feelings. Not when she’d
burned all mine without an apology or an explanation.

Cass took a
step closer to me. “That’s why you proposed to me when you knew I was trying to
figure out the future.”

“Our future.
Ours.
I thought it was ours.
I stayed here for you. I did everything for you,
so excuse me if I thought proposing to the woman I loved was the best solution
for
our
future. You’re the one who said yes—no one held a gun to your
head!”

“You’re just
as selfish as me, Graham!”

I shook my head.
“You’re right. Silly me. I must not know what selfish means, because I thought
it was you who left, not me. You who moved across the country and abandoned her
mother. That’s selfish, Cassie. And that was you, not me.”

“Don’t,” she
said. “That’s not fair.”

“Fair? You
know what’s not fair? I drove all the way to fucking Indiana to get you back.
To ask you why you left, and you gave me back that ring without a second
thought. You told me nothing.
That’s
selfish.”

Cass shook her
head; her eyes watered and she took a step back. “Stop it.”

I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t once I’d started. Not after a year of not saying anything to her
about it. “I’ve done everything for you. I’m selfish? Fine, I’m selfish because
I waited for you—”

“I never asked
you to—”

“—And I
proposed to the girl I loved because nothing made me as happy as when she
smiled or when she said my name. Because there was no one who would ever
compare to her in my head and she had this sad amazing little life, but she
never let it stop her. She kept dreaming and that inspired me. And a woman like
that? Yes, I had to spend my life with her.”

She didn’t say
anything, but I had her attention. Good. I stepped closer to her. So close I
could hear her breathing. I could feel it, and see her chest rise and fall. I
could see the green in her eyes, and the way they looked glassy.

“If that makes
me selfish, then yes, Cass. Yes, I’m as selfish as they come. I won’t apologize
for that.”

GRAHAM TUCKER STOOD in front
of me and gave this speech and somewhere in the middle, I knew he still felt
that way. I did, too.

“If that makes
me selfish, then yes, Cass. Yes, I’m as selfish as they come. I won’t apologize
for that.”

I hurled
myself into his arms, filling the inch that separated us, and pressed my lips
against his. Graham seemed surprised at first, frozen, and it took him a moment
to respond. Like his body was remembering me, but mine had never forgotten. I’d
never let it. I’d never wanted to.

I pressed against
him, feeling reckless and out of control. Then, he was ready. I felt the shift
as his fingers dug into my hips and he pressed himself against me, his erection
hard. Heat flowed between us, and his lips were hungry. He pushed me backward
against the wall until there was no space between us and deepened the kiss. My
hand trailed under the waist of his jeans. He moaned into my mouth, and his
slightly calloused hands were all over my body. Rough when they trailed across
my stomach as he kissed my neck, and my whole body exploded.

In this moment,
there was no past or future. No trespasses, no arguments, and nothing to
forgive. There was me and him and this. This was what I’d been missing. Graham
and I had this electricity, this instant heat. He felt it, too. Whatever else
we felt or knew, there was nothing like this. He brought me in closer to him.
My hand tugged at the waist of jeans, because I wanted him, and he wanted me,
and we’d waited long enough.

I WAS KISSING Cassie and it
was everything I remembered it being. More, even. It was like no way we’d
kissed before, and no way we’d kiss again. I wanted her. I focused on that part
of myself, the part that wanted this more than air. That wanted her skin on
mine, and her breath in my ear.

We stumbled
backward toward the bed, never parting even to breathe. I pinned her against
the wall, and her fingers trailed up my shirt. Each touch was an electric
shock. I was with Cass. This was what I wanted, really wanted, but something lingered
at the back of my mind. I tried to shut it out. I tried to keep kissing her and
focus on her hands and her body…I couldn’t ignore the call in my head that this
was wrong. I could let it happen, but it shouldn’t be this way. We had all
these unspoken feelings and secrets between us. All this uncertainty. I had a
girlfriend.

Cass pulled at
my pants, and my body responded under her touch. I groaned at the pressure, but
then I jumped away from Cass because she was fire and wind and lightning. She
looked at me, face red and confused. We were both panting. I was confused, too.
I’d been nothing but confused since I called her after that fire. She was here,
disheveled and beautiful and I—
God,
what a mess
—I was the
dumbest man alive for what I was about to say.

“We can’t,” I
said. Even saying it hurt, because lies always hurt the most. We could’ve, but
we shouldn’t.

“Graham.”

I had to look
away. I couldn’t say this and see her. Not when she was looking like that and
we were about to have sex and everything inside me still wanted her. “I have a
girlfriend, Cassie. I can’t do this.”

We didn’t say
anything for a long time. I tried to focus on a normal thought. All of my
thoughts were Cassie. Her hands, her lips, her voice, her hips, the soft skin
on her upper thigh, her—

“I didn’t come
over here to—”

“I know,” I
said. “This was a lapse, a wrong one.”

She looked
away from me. “I should go.”

“Probably best
for now,” I said. I had to get her out of this room before my mind lost this
battle to my body.

She slid on
her shoes—I hadn’t even realized she’d taken them off—and walked back toward
the door. When she was almost there, she returned to me and stood right under
me until I was forced to meet her gaze. Man, I loved those eyes.

“This wasn’t
wrong, Graham.”

“I have to
figure it out,” I said. That part wasn’t a lie. I didn’t know what was right
here, what was worth it.

“I know. I get
it. But whatever you think about, this wasn’t wrong. This was us, and we are
never wrong.”

I didn’t
respond, and Cass left me standing in the living room. I had to talk to Molly.
I had a girlfriend, but I knew without a doubt that she wasn’t the one I
wanted. I’ve never felt that way for Molly, even if I tried. And I had tried.

I loved Cassie
Harlen. I had never really stopped.

IT TOOK ME the rest of the
morning to fall asleep, because all I could think about was Graham’s lips on
mine, his fingers sliding across my skin, the feel of him pressed against me.
It was better than I remembered; I hadn’t wanted it to end. I didn’t go over
there to kiss him. I made a mess of this. He called us wrong. He must hate me.

“Harlen?” June
called, knocking on the door. I groaned in response. “At least you’re alive.
I’m coming in.”

Her eyebrows
furrowed when she saw me. “What happened?”

I looked her
over. June had on her shoes, a jean jacket, and a purse. “You’re leaving
today!”

“Today’s the
day. Taxi should be here any minute.”

“I can take
you,” I said, throwing off the covers. I was so busy moping that I almost
missed her leaving.

“Nah, don’t
worry. The bus doesn’t wait for goodbyes.” She smiled, but I could see that she
didn’t want to leave either.

She sat next
to me. I really didn’t want her to leave. She was starting to make all the
other shit make sense. Neither of us said anything at first.

“You’re taking
a bus all the way to California?” I asked.

June replied
quickly, the words out in a rush. “Nah, back to school so I can grab things.
Then, I’ll fly to my sister.”

I wanted her
to stay. No getting clingy. When did she become so important to me?

“Why haven’t
you told me about your sister?” I said.

June smiled
back at me. “I didn’t know your mom was bipolar. Or that you had a fiancé.”
Whatever it was, she wasn’t talking, but she’d talk when she was ready.

“Touché,” I
said. She was trying to be funny, but I could tell she was as hurt that I
hadn’t thought she was important enough to know the truth. Hopefully she knew
it wasn’t her, that it was me. Because I didn’t want to face it.

“Now you know
about her. There are just some things in my past that are complicated.”

“I get it,” I
said.

She put her
hand on my mine. “What happened last night?”

Everything
happened. “I called Rohan, that was good. Molly came over.”

“Uh-oh.”

That didn’t
even begin to explain it.

What did I do
now?

June stared at
me, obviously wanting details. Maybe talking about it would be good. Would help
it make sense. “She told me to let him go. How does she have the right to say
that to me? So, I went over to Graham’s and told him what happened. We fought,
and then somehow, we kissed.”

“You kissed?”

I shifted on
the bed, and felt my body warm at the memory. “Made out.”

Her eyes were
wide, and she smiled a little. “Made out?”

Tears burned
behind my eyes. Mostly because I was embarrassed, but even more because he did
the right thing. I shouldn’t have gone over there. I shouldn’t have kissed him.
What did I expect to happen?

“He stopped
it,” I said. That was the worst part. That he said it was wrong. We were never
wrong, no matter what the circumstances. We were “Cass and Graham,” and it was
as natural as breathing.

“He did?”

I threw a
pillow at her. “Stop repeating everything I’m saying! It’s annoying.”

June threw the
pillow back at me. “So, you guys made out, and now what?”

That was the million-dollar
question. I didn’t know the answer. I didn’t know if I wanted the answer. There
were only two ways for this to end, and neither of them were good because in my
head, they both ended in us not being together. “Now, he still has a
girlfriend.”

June gave me a
thumbs-down. “How did you end things?”

“He said it
was a mistake. I said it wasn’t. I’m here. Now I don’t know. I wait?”

“Yes, wait.”

I started
pacing. What was I waiting for? “I hate waiting.”

“You know what
you can do while you wait?”

I raised my
eyebrows.

“Research.”

“For what?” I
asked, confused. How to ruin a life? How to heal a broken heart? How to not
kiss your ex-fiancé even though you want to? Too late on all those.

June shook her
head in a “poor Cassie” sort of way. “You still need to pick a major, or a
path, or whatever the shrink suggested.”

I deflated.
“Right.” That wasn’t the answer I wanted either. Fill the questions in with
more questions.

A horn honked
from outside, and suddenly I didn’t want to say goodbye. I pulled her into a
hug. “You’ll call when you get there?”

“Of course.
You’ll call when you and Graham figure it out? I’ll want all the details.”

“If there are
details.”

“There will
be.” She winked. I wished I shared her certainty.

I walked her
down the stairs and Mom hugged her, too. “You can come here anytime, June.”

“Thanks, Mrs.
Harlen. See ya,” she said over her shoulder.

Mom and I watched
from the doorway as June got into her cab, and then, when it drove off, it was the
silence and us. This one was more normal than before. Not filled with tension
or unsaid words.

“You hungry?”
Mom asked.

She wrapped
her arm around my shoulder; I thought that maybe this would be okay, and
somehow, all this could end in a good way. “Very,” I said.