Sheltered (16 page)

And then it was done. It was done. He sagged against her, warm and almost too heavy. His face pressed to the side of hers for a brief moment, so sweet and calming after something so intense.

Before realization seemed to hit him.

He was weighing her down. Swamping her with himself. And though she didn’t mind in the slightest—in truth, she appreciated the reassurance of his big body—he shifted to one side on the bed. Sprawled out right next to her, one hand still on her back, like a reminder
. We’ve just explored each other, touched each other, you can still taste me in your mouth, can’t you, Evie?

She could. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to taste or feel anything else again, after something like that. The heat of him, the pleasure, the feel of his kisses…how was she supposed to give that up now? How was she supposed to spend a day without any of it, let alone a
week
?

Looking back on it, she could hardly believe how they’d spent their time over these last couple of months. A few hours together, and nothing for days and days. It seemed impossible to her, right at that moment—like a nightmare she’d had about leading the wrong life.

This, now…
this
was how her life should be. This was the right one. Not that other thing, so cold and lifeless and dull.

“Hey, hey,” he started, and she knew how he was going to finish it before he actually did. He never shocked her, with something brutal and awful. He always gave her the best, the sweetest, the thing she wanted most of all.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s okay, come here. Come here to me.”

And she went, without a word. She tucked herself into the little nook he made for her, just below his shoulder. Listened to him saying other things, about how lovely he found her, like this. How good she’d made him feel.

After words like those it barely seemed like a hardship, to tell him something she’d never said out loud, to anyone.

“You make me happy, Van,” she said, then sleepier, softer. “You make me so happy.”

“Evie.”

She knew something wasn’t right almost immediately. He just didn’t sound like his normal self, and the other versions of him she knew—the ones that turned dirty during sex or shut off the second she tried to push him too far—weren’t in that one word either.

He hissed the damn thing. He shook her as he said it—even though he’d seemed to love her drifting off against him. She’d woken at some stupid time to fall asleep at, like 9:30, and found him just staring right down at her. Gaze soft, near smiling, suddenly embarrassed, once he realized he was caught.

But this wasn’t that. She could feel the tension in his body before she’d even come all the way around, though that wasn’t surprising. She suspected anyone could feel what another person was going through, when said person had decided to take all of their clothes off in the middle of the night.

She couldn’t even respond to his hissed use of her name. She had to go with this thing instead.

“Oh my word, you’re naked. Why didn’t you tell me you were taking your clothes off? I could have had a lo—”

“Evie, your parents are home.”

Every part of her immediately went still. Like a reflex, she thought. Like a rabbit freezing in the headlights, though in this case the rabbit had more than an oncoming Ford Coupe to deal with.

She couldn’t even speak for a second. Questions wanted to come up, but none of them actually made it. What did he mean, her parents were home? They’d said 2:30 Sunday, not 11:55 Friday. It wasn’t even the middle of the night, like she’d thought—it was 11:55 on the day they’d left, and that
simply was not fair on any level whatsoever
.

“No,” she said, but even as she did so she could hear them, shouting at each other about some probable nonsense.
You’re a drunk.
You’re a bully.
The usual sorts of stuff. Vacation cut short, Evie’s about to be murdered—or worse.

What if discovering her with a man in her bed meant he’d decide on murdering her mother instead? He’d never laid the rules down, after all. He’d not written her a guidebook—
I’ll Only Kill Her if You Run Away
.

Anything could happen, for behavior like this.

“How long do they usually fight for?” he whispered, but she couldn’t think. She couldn’t think of anything but the trail of evidence they’d left—the plates, the Chinese food, the smell of Van just about everywhere.

The smell of
sex
, for God’s sake. It was all over her room and her sheets, and any second they were going to come up the stairs. Any second now.

“We left everything—”

“Evie, Evie. Stay calm, okay? I cleared everything away. Everything’s spotless. Stay calm and just tell me—have I got enough time to get my clothes on?”

“It won’t matter if you have your clothes on, are you crazy? It wouldn’t matter if you turned yourself into a Sunday school teacher, Van—”

“Honey, I’m not suggesting I stand here and shake your father’s hand, okay? I want to spit on the guy. I’m just asking—how long’s this going on for?”

Panic had hold of her now. She couldn’t stop it. It made her do crazy things, like forget to breathe, and clasp and unclasp her hands.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. God, please don’t spit on him—he’ll kill you. You don’t get it, it’s worse than I’ve said, it’s so much worse.”

She hated herself for saying it, but it was true. If her father caught him in here, if Van did something crazy like that…he’d drown them both in the pool. He’d smash something over Van’s head, the way he’d done on New Year’s Eve. He’d drag them by their hair and promise to do unspeakable things to her mother and oh, she didn’t know what was worse.

That he might do those things, or that Van might actually see them.

Though the latter seemed at least a million times more bearable, when he quite suddenly put his hands on her face. Kissed her in a dozen weird places, like her temples and her forehead and right into her hair.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

Just like that. Her heart soared, then sank as she heard footsteps on the stairs.

“Van—”

“Stay there. Just stay there, baby, and pretend to be asleep.”

He kissed her again, but this time he did it on the lips. Soft and reassuring—God, everything about him so reassuring, even if she had absolutely no idea what he was going to do.

He was going to have to be fast about it, whatever he decided on. The heavy thud-thud of her father’s footsteps—like something out of a goddamn ghost story—were already at the top of the stairs, and Van had barely begun to snatch up his clothes. By the time that terrible sound reached her door, he was as conspicuous as he’d ever been—so
naked
still, in the middle of her neat little room.

And it seemed worse, too, that he had all his things in his arms. He looked like a thief who’d come in to somehow steal things that didn’t actually belong to her. He looked big and bristly and like the Gollum she’d first thought of, only in reverse.

She didn’t want to hide from him now. She wanted
him
to do the hiding—so much so that her heart nearly stopped when he melted his way back into the closet behind him, just as the door to her bedroom swung open.

It looked like a magic trick, she thought. Like he’d faded to black without even really trying, though somehow it still didn’t seem like enough. Her father knew when she breathed wrong. He’d guess this no problem at all, and then what?

She lay as still as she could on the bed, eyes so closed they almost trembled with the effort, and prayed there would be no
and then what
.

“Eve?”

She came close to shuddering at the sound of his voice. Kept it in by the skin of her teeth, kept her eyes tightly closed and her breathing so steady and regular. She’d done it before, after all. She’d pretended to be asleep for all sorts of reasons, though she had to admit—none of them had felt quite as life and death as this.

Usually it was about a book she’d been sneakily reading, or maybe just plain old unwillingness to talk with the man who’d slapped her an hour before. But here, now, everything about him suddenly seemed life-threatening.

The smell of his cologne creeping through her body. The sound of his breathing, like some slumberous, too-heavy animal. And then finally his voice again, piercing through the darkness.

“Eve?” he said, but he wasn’t really asking. He knew, he knew. He’d guessed immediately, and now came the part she hated the most.

The pretending game, wherein he acted as if he didn’t know what she’d done wrong, but secretly did. And then he simply waited like the real Gollum haunting her, for her to slip up.

It didn’t surprise her when something cool and wet slid sideways over her face. The tension was just too much, and it got steadily worse the longer he remained at the end of her bed, saying her name over and over again.

She thought of Van adding the
i
and the
e
to the end of
Eve
, and that helped. But it wouldn’t be of any use to her at all, if her father actually
killed
Van. He could do it, she knew. Van was big, but her father was bigger, and though Van
looked
fierce, he wasn’t at all.

His face never got so red with anger she thought he might burst. He never screamed or yanked on her, or tried to suffocate her with a dishcloth, because she’d forgotten to wring it out again.

But she knew that in this world, those sorts of people—the ones who did terrible things like that, without even thinking about it—always won. They did, they did, and for a moment the unfairness of this idea struck her so hard she couldn’t breathe. Another tear slipped out—one her father would undoubtedly notice—while every fiber of her being willed him to just
go
.

Though it came as a thunderous shock when he actually did. On the third non-response to her name he simply turned and walked out of her room, then shut the door behind himself, as calmly as you please.

Leaving her in some sort of strange tension vacuum.

She couldn’t breathe out for the longest time. Every muscle remained on edge, just waiting for the surprise finish—though none came. He hadn’t guessed. He didn’t know. It was okay for her to start shaking with relief now, despite the very real problem that still presented itself.

Namely—how the
fuck
was she supposed to get Van out of here? What was she even meant to say, to something like this?
Oh hey, sorry my life’s so fucked up you have to hide in a closet, as though I’m twelve years old. Do you think you could possibly jump out of my bedroom window now
?

Her heart carried on thumping wildly when she finally crossed the carpet to the closet, though she suspected it wasn’t fear anymore. It was embarrassment, just horrible, soul-crushing embarrassment. They’d done all of those things and fallen asleep together like normal people, and now he’d had to hide in a closet, naked.

Though of course he wasn’t naked when she finally opened the door. And even better, he didn’t look as though he found this situation the least bit humiliating. He looked
pissed
with many capital Ps, and like maybe he wanted to go downstairs and do what he’d said he wanted to.

I want to spit on the guy
, he’d said, without even using something like
your father
or
Mr. Bennett
. Just
the guy
, as though the man did not deserve a title.

The thought made her heart pound harder. It made her feel sharp and sick, all at the same time, and then he just put a hand around the back of her neck and drew her close. Held her tight, for nowhere near long enough.

Kissed her, kissed her.

“I have to go now,” he said, with those good gentle hands still on her face and his mouth so near to hers. It sounded like something she almost wanted to hear, when he did it like that.

“How?” she asked, but most of her suspected the answer. He actually and really was going to go out the goddamn window, and oh she didn’t like that idea at all. Two stories up and nothing but the concrete surrounding the pool below. “You’ll break your neck if you—”

“I’m six foot five, Evie. I can practically touch your window from the ground—I’ll be fine.” He hesitated then. Closed his eyes briefly, as though building up to something. “But I want you to know something first, before I do this fucked-up thing.” Another pause, this time longer. More painful. “I think this is crazy.”

There it was, in plain English. He thought this was too much, too weird, and now he wanted nothing more than to cut her off. End it right here, in her suddenly too-dark bedroom.

She’d never be able to remember his face, if her last glimpse of it was in shadows. She couldn’t even remember it now, as her brain fumbled toward some words she could say, some note of protest she could give.
Eve could not attend normal life this evening because her father is an asshole. Please excuse her, and be assured she’ll return to it the second she gets the chance.

Only as it turned out, she didn’t need a note at all. A second before he left by way of the window, he said it to her straight.