Only Between Us (21 page)

“Long enough to be really worried about you,” he says. There’s a smear of white paint on his jaw. I glance at his fingers and see faint streaks there, too. “I’m going to pack up soon.”

“Okay,” I whisper.

Caleb grimaces. “Is this because of me? Because of the things you heard about me? Or what I told you last night?”

“What? Oh … no, Caleb.”

He sighs. “I was hoping not, since you were willing to be here with me tonight, but I had to ask.”

I swallow, trying to pull myself together. My fingers loosen a little over my brush. “How’s Catherine?”

“She’s staying in the hospital until Saturday, but then I’ll take her home.” The corner of his mouth quirks up. “I actually think this might have been a step in the right direction, as odd as it sounds. She let me apologize to her for the fight we had—and she even apologized for hitting me.”

I look back at my canvas and shudder. “That’s good,” I try to say.

“Romy?”

“Yes?” I whisper.

“I want to put my arms around you.”

My gaze lingers on the beetle, losing itself bit by bit. I want to be contained. I want him to hold me together. I need it as much as I need to breathe. “That would be nice.” And as he scoots up to me and does exactly that, it’s more than nice. He winds around me and pulls me between his bent legs, surrounding me. He tugs the brush out of my cramped fingers and sets it on the palette. Together we stare at my painting.

“It looks painful,” Caleb says quietly, resting his chin on my shoulder.

“I think it was dead.”

“It doesn’t look dead.”

“Alex called me today.”

He stops breathing. “What?”

“He got my number,” I choke out. “He-he said we needed to talk.”

“Do you
want
to talk to him?”

I shake my head, and his arms tighten around my body, drawing me against him, my shoulder blades against his chest. “You’re scared,” he says.

I pull my knees up, making myself as small as possible. “Terrified,” I admit.

But honestly? Right now, in this little studio, in Caleb’s arms, his hair tickling my cheek and his hands over mine … I feel safer than I have all day.

Chapter Twenty: Caleb

I hold Romy tight as anger burns through me. I wouldn’t know this Alex guy if I met him face to face, but I hate him. The girl in my arms is
shaking
. After the way Phil played with my mind all those years, after what he did to Katie, that kind of intimidation makes me crazy. But my priority needs to be Romy, not thoughts of slamming my fist through this Alex guy’s face. So I try to do what she did for me last night. My body is a cage around her, not holding her in, but blocking everything else out. It feels amazing, satisfying, like maybe I really can offer her something good. Gradually, her muscles relax, and her breathing grows steady and slow. My ass starts to hurt and my legs cramp a little after so much time sitting on the hard tile floor, but I ignore it as long as I can.

“I need to clean up the brushes and get ready to close up,” I finally say.

She goes still, but I feel the tension gathering again. “Okay,” she says in a choked voice. “I’ll go home.”

She starts to get up, but I don’t let her go. “I’d feel better if you let me make sure you get home all right.” Which means I’ll know exactly where she lives, and she might not want me to. I remember how Dr. Greer and Jude looked at me. Like they don’t trust me. My heart beats faster as I wait for her response.

Her head tilts up, and her somber green eyes meet mine. “Are you really willing to do that?”

You have no idea how important you’ve become to me.
“Absolutely.” And then I kiss her temple before I realize what I’m doing.

By some miracle, she closes her eyes and relaxes, like my touch was what she needed. So I do it again, and then I grab our brushes and clean them. Romy wipes her fingers with a turpentine-soaked rag and washes her hands in the utility sink, and I do the same. I turn out the lights and walk her to her car. Her eyes dart up and down the street. I can tell she really thinks this guy is going to come after her, and it winds me tight. What if she’s right?

“Does he know where you live?” I ask, now scanning the street myself, though I have no idea who I’m looking for.

She shakes her head. “I’ve moved since last year. But he found my phone number, so I don’t know if he could find my address, too.”

“Did he threaten you?”

She bites her lip. “N-no. He said he wanted to talk. He said he still had feelings for me.”

I step closer to her, because she sounds right on the edge of panic. “Let’s get you home.”

I put her toolbox in her trunk and then follow her in my truck as she drives to her apartment complex. I find a space in the lot and meet her as she gets out of her car. Once again, she’s looking around the parking lot like he might be here. “What kind of car does he drive?”

“A red Acura TL.”

And that instantly tells me something about him. Good with words, drives an expensive car. One of those assholes who thinks the world owes him something. Obviously, he thinks Romy owes him something, too. My fists clench as I search the parking lot.

“He’s probably not here,” she says quietly. Like she’s embarrassed, making a big deal about nothing.

I look down at her, dying to take her in my arms again. “I could walk you to your door if you want.” But since she might not want me to know her apartment number …

“I’d like that.”

I walk beside her as she crosses the lot and enters the building. She lives on the third floor, which is good because the asshole can’t climb in through her window. She’s safe here. He doesn’t have a key. She opens her door and I catch a glimpse of her space, a nice, soft-looking couch, a flatscreen TV, a sleek, polished wood table with matching chairs. Something tells me Romy’s parents have plenty of money. I sigh inwardly. One more thing that tells me she’s probably out of my league.

She turns to me. “Thank you.” She touches the tab of my zipper, like she did a few weeks ago, and my arms rise from my sides, because it feels right. She walks into me and I hug her tightly.

“You can call me if you feel scared or if you think he’s around,” I tell her, leaning my cheek against her silky hair. “You know I don’t live far.”

“You have other things to worry about,” she mumbles against my shoulder. “Catherine and—”

“Romy, are you my friend?”

She looks up, searching my face. “I … guess so.”

I stroke her cheek. I understand her hesitation. We’ve been as close as two people can be, but so much has happened and we haven’t had time to sort it out. Despite all that, what I want goes far beyond friendship—but I don’t know how to get there. I’ve never done it before. So I’ll start here. “I worry about my friends, and I like to know they’re okay. Give me your phone and I’ll put my number in.”

She does, a tiny smile pulling at her lips. “I’m glad you’re my friend,” she says.

I try to enter my number, but it takes me three tries because I keep getting distracted by her face. My body stirs. I remember looking up at her, naked and perfect—

I kiss her forehead and hand her the phone, then quickly pull away, wishing I had better control over myself. “I’ll see you whenever, then.” I walk away as fast as I can without actually running.

I make it back to my apartment and go straight to my room. She’s there. Right there on my wall. “This is going to be hard,” I tell the 2-D Romy. “You don’t know what you do to me.”

My phone rings, and my eyes go wide. The 3-D Romy is calling me. “Romy?” My gaze flicks to her green eyes, staring back at me from my sketch. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I wanted to thank you. For everything.”

“You’re welcome. But I didn’t do much. I mean—”
Not like what you did for me last night.

“Sometimes we don’t know what we do for other people. Sometimes we never get to know,” she says.

“Is that good or bad?”

“I guess it depends.”

“You saved me last night,” I blurt. There’s no other way to describe it.

She’s quiet for a moment. “All I did was listen.”

“You know it’s more than that. There’s no ‘all I did,’” I say, settling in on my bed and staring at the ceiling.

“There’s no ‘I didn’t do much,’ either,” she jokes, doing a silly imitation of my voice.

I smile. “Tell me why that is. Why does it help so much, just to have someone listen to you? I mean, you’re the therapist.”

“I’m not
your
therapist. If I were, we couldn’t be friends.”

“No?”

“No. That’s how it works. If I were your therapist, I would be there for you, and that would be my purpose. You wouldn’t have to worry about whether I was okay, because you’d only be talking to me to do something for yourself. But—”

“I’m there for you, too. And I like it that way.”

Another few seconds of silence. “Yeah,” she finally says. “I think I like it that way, too.”

This crazy-fierce feeling of triumph rushes through me. It’s easier to talk to her like this, when she’s not right in front of me, making my heart race. “So. Listening.”

“Listening,” she says quietly. “I think it helps to have another person sit next to you and say ‘yeah. That happened.’ It keeps you from feeling crazy.”

God, that’s exactly what it is. That’s what she did for me last night. After so many years of climbing the walls of my own skull, of having my own mom tell me I was lying, of having my own sister scream that I was making things up, Romy simply said, “It happened.” And that made all the difference.

“Amazing,” I whisper, then clear my throat. “I never knew it was that simple.”

She chuckles. “I don’t think it is. If it was, we’d all be totally sane, right?”

My heart clutches a little as I think of Katie, who at this very moment is in the hospital. “Yeah,” I say, airy and hoarse. “I wish it was that easy.”

“I know, Caleb,” she says, and the tenderness in those words is devastating. It lays waste to my walls, all my defenses. “I know. I wish it was, too. But she has you, and not everyone is so lucky.”

 “Do you think—”
Do you think she’ll ever be okay?
I suck in a breath. Romy’s going to think I’m such a fucking mess. And she’d be totally right. “Never mind. So. Have you seen Daniel’s most recent painting? He’s got a new obsession.”

There’s a huff of breath into the phone, and I brace myself. “Tell me about it,” she says. “I haven’t seen much of Daniel’s work.”

Holy shit. She’s totally letting me get away with changing the subject.

“Marbles,” I tell her. “He’s collecting marbles and painting them in all sorts of styles. He came up to me earlier today and was like ‘I found a Christensen Nine Bloodie on eBay!’ And he’s waving around this swirly marble like it’s the most magnificent thing that’s ever existed.”

“Marbles? Huh. I guess his style is a lot different from yours.”

I smile as I think of him. “Actually, he switches styles a lot. Most painters I know kind of settle in on one thing for a while, but Daniel’s always trying something new.” And he’s surprisingly good at everything he tries. I’ve always been kind of jealous of him for that. “I think he likes to surprise people. Throw them off balance.” I chuckle as a memory comes to me. “When we were in high school, we were supposed to do a watercolor project, and everyone else was painting the lake or flowers or a rainy cityscape. But Daniel did a re-imagining of the shower scene from
Psycho
that had the teacher calling the guidance counselor on him. It was a joke, but the counselor was convinced Daniel was a future serial killer.”

Romy giggles. “He seems pretty live-and-let-live, actually.”

“He’s better than that,” I say. “But he doesn’t want anyone to know, so don’t tell.”

“His secret’s safe with me.”

And it goes like that. For the rest of the night. We talk about art and music and the fact that we both like fried food more than is good for us. We talk about books, and when I quote from one of my favorites—this line from a Terry Pratchett novel that goes “It is at this point that normal language gives up, and goes and has a drink”—Romy crows, “
The Color of Magic
! I love that one!” By the time it occurs to us to hang up, it’s four in the morning, and we’re both starting to drift.

“Romy?”

“Caleb?”

“I think I need to get some sleep.”
But I wish I could stay on the phone with you forever.

“Me, too. I have to be at my internship by nine.”

“Oh no! I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I loved every minute of this.”

It steals my breath, how she says stuff like that, just puts it out there. “Me, too. Maybe we could talk again sometime.”

“Maybe. You have my number.”

“So I do.”

“So call me.” She whispers
goodnight
into the phone, and then she’s gone.

I sink into sleep with her voice in my ear, continuing the conversation in my dreams.

I step back from my painting and pull my earbuds from my ears, plunging myself back into reality and feeling the image in front of me release its grip. My lips lift into a smile, like my body knows what’s going on before my brain does.

This is right, and it’s beautiful, and I know exactly what I’m going to do with it. It’s amazing how a few weeks can change everything.

The flyer sits on my supply table. I saw Romy taping them up, saw her talking to Daniel, Markus, Daisy, and a few others about making donations to the charity auction in a week. She hasn’t mentioned it to me, probably because of the way I reacted when she first told me about it. But this, right in front of me, is because of her. I’m going to donate it.

There’s an intake of breath behind me, and I turn to see Sasha standing outside my stall. “Wow, Caleb,” she says quietly, looking at the canvas.

I grin. “I think I’m finally happy with it.”

She smiles, too, but she hasn’t taken her eyes off the painting. “Yeah. Is this for a gallery show?”

I shake my head, then realize she won’t see that, because she’s still got her eyes on my work. “No, it’s for the charity auction thing? I’m donating it.”