Slow Burn (30 page)

I begin to pull away from him, but his arms remain steadfast in their hold. “Uh-uh,” he murmurs against my shoulder, the heat of his breath hitting the fabric of my tank top and trapping it between his mouth and my skin. “Just give me a minute.”

And so we stand there as he processes what he’s heard, and I try to figure out where to go from here because damn it to hell, I’ve let him in. He’s using all he has to be the can opener to peel back everything I’ve sealed so tight, and that scares me to death.

“What did the biopsy show?” he finally says, and the question hangs in the air like an oppressive cloud.

I swallow the truth I know deep down and aim for cautious optimism in my answer. “I don’t know yet. Any day now.”

He makes an incoherent sound in response, his thumb beginning to rub up and down gently in reassurance. “I’m … I’m having a hard time processing this, Had—”

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t intend for anyone to know. I just …”

He releases me and stalks past me a few feet, his shoulders tense, and his emotion transparent in his posture. He starts to talk and stops himself, his hand gripping the back of his neck as he stares at the pond before turning back to look at me. “You didn’t intend for anyone to know?” His anger surprises me. Pity, I expected, disbelief too … not anger. “You think that little of me? You think I’ll take you in my bed but don’t care about you as a person? What the fuck, Had?”

He shakes his head, his eyes boring into mine. I see his hands clench and unclench, his chest rises and falls in anger as we stand in a silent standoff. “You don’t get it, do you?” The question hangs between us, and I’m not sure if I’m supposed
to answer it or not, and if I am, what the hell am I not getting? Which part of everything I’ve done to piss him off am I not understanding right now?

He clenches his jaw and looks up to the sky momentarily as if he’s asking for the universe to grant him some patience. When he looks back down, I see hurt in his eyes, and as much as I want to look away, I force myself to hold his gaze, tell myself that this look is nothing compared to what could be there if we held tight to whatever this is between us.

“I care about you, Haddie. I
more
than care about you.”

“That’s not possible,” I tell him, immediately pushing the thought away. Uh-uh. Not possible. Caring leads to devastation, and I can’t have that on my shoulders. “No strings, remember?” I spit the words off my tongue like they’re acid. Defense mechanism and all that. I see the impact of my statement flicker in his eyes and chastise myself.
Crap!
How can I feel it’s okay for me to feel like I’m falling for him, and yet I don’t want him to have any feelings for me? But isn’t a woman allowed to be a tad hypocritical when dealing with the bullshit I’ve had to deal with over the past year?

He walks toward me, his eyes narrowing and his mouth set in a firm line. “Fuck you and your
goddamn strings
. I may be too cynical to believe in love at first sight, Montgomery, but I believe in
the click
that happens between two people. And you can stand there all you want and lie through those sexy-as-hell lips of yours, tell me there’s nothing between us … but there was a click,” he shouts at me, jabbing his finger in his chest.
“And I believe in that click.”

His eyes glare, dare me to deny it, and I can’t bring myself to look away or to refute him. The honesty in his words and the tangibility of him before me readily admitting it are just too much.

He steps closer, a ball of anger, concern, and confusion on continuous rotation. “Why …,” he begins, and then stops, regrouping his train of thought. “Why didn’t you wake me
that night? Tell me? Pick up the phone when I called and explain what was going on so that I could have been there for you? I just don’t get it….”

“It’s not your problem.” It’s the easiest answer I have. I’ve told him more than I wanted to, more than I’d planned on, and yet I still feel lost in my decision. I’m not a half-ass kind of person, and yet that’s exactly what I’m being to Becks right now. And a pitifully pathetic one at that.

“There you go again, insulting me,” he says, cynicism dripping from each word. “It’s not my problem, huh? You leaving in the middle of the night, scared and alone? Yeah, you’re right….” He nods. “I wouldn’t care about that? About you? For fuck’s sake, Haddie, you’re not making any goddamn logical sense….” He blows out a loud breath of disbelief.

“Becks …” Any excuses I have die a strangled death on my tongue when hurt flashes once again in his eyes. “I didn’t mean it as an insult….”

He groans in frustrated exasperation. “Please tell me Ry thinks you’re being just as frustratingly stubborn about this as I do.”

I’m not sure how exactly I give myself away, but the brief hesitancy in my movement or the hitch in my breath tells him everything. His eyes widen and his nostrils flare. “What? Un-fucking-believable! You haven’t told her?” His voice rises as he walks away from me and kicks a small log on the ground so that it flies and hits against a tree, dust particles floating into the air.

I focus on those particles shining innocently against the sun’s backdrop. They look so free, so light, and I’d give anything to be one of those right now.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

The words flicker into my head—words as tried and true as time—but their significance right now is a bit much for me. I try to shake the images the thoughts evoke from my
head and only succeed in becoming more panicked, more desperate.

“There’s nothing to tell yet,” I shout at him, hoping that the escalation of my voice reinforces my statement.

“Yeah, there’s nothing to tell, and yet you haven’t told the person you’re closest to in the whole goddamn world about it. I’m sure you have some oceanfront property in Arizona you want to sell me since you seem to think I’m that fucking gullible.”

His words slap at me and, God, yes, I deserve them but the anger overrides the confusion and disheartened fear. “Fuck you.” My tone is low and even, a chill to it that he doesn’t deserve. How dare he judge me, mock me, come at me in regards to anything with Rylee?

My friend, my business. And then I groan inwardly because he’s right about it on every level, and all of a sudden it hits me that not telling her is still lying, regardless of whatever intention was behind it.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Montgomery?” he challenges as he steps closer, his anger vibrating off him and crashing into me. “You’d prefer to be fucked so mindless that you can’t remember what lies you’re keeping from whom and how many people care about you that you keep treating like crap and pushing away. What kind of game are you playing here? Let’s see how alone I can be? Let’s prove how stubborn I am?” He runs his hands through his hair, exasperated. “It’s like you’re trying to make me second-guess my feelings for you….” His words come out in a burst of heat but then trail off, and I can see the moment it all
clicks
for him. When the scattered jigsaw pieces of my sporadic and confusing actions suddenly fall into place.

Fuck me running.

Becks’s head angles to the side again, and his eyes narrow. I can see him trying to process what he’s just concluded. He takes another step closer into my personal space, and
even though I’m outdoors with nothing around me, my feet are glued to the ground, and I feel like my back is up against a goddamn wall.

“That’s it, isn’t it?”

I can’t speak, so I simply stare at him as my eyes burn with tears I don’t want to shed. I work a swallow down my throat, and I see his eyes track me, struggling to get the words past my lips. His expression softens immediately. Within a second, his arms—the ones I don’t want around me, and yet I want them so desperately at the same—are there, drawing me into him.

I tell myself to fight it, not to accept the comfort because I don’t deserve it, but my body’s innate reaction takes over. My hands grip in the shirt he slipped back on when he chased after me, and my face finds that spot just beneath his chin. His hand is on the back of my head holding me to him, our hearts thundering against each other’s.

The world spins beneath our feet, and nature hums around us, but I feel like time stands still, and I just hold tight to Becks and to that comforting thought.

“I don’t care how hard you push me, Montgomery. I’m not going anywhere,” he murmurs into the crown of my head, his hands pressing me farther into him. “You don’t have to do whatever this is alone.”

My emotions spiral into a continual free fall with his admission. I want to tell him that this isn’t anything—him, me, us, a bad diagnosis—but I’m so sick of pushing people out that for once all I want is to pull him in. My hands fist tighter into the fabric as I try to gain some kind of control of my inner turmoil, but it’s useless. We stand there for a moment, both breathing each other in and trying to understand the other’s reactions.

After a bit, when my fingers are relaxed on his shirt but his are still grasping me tight, I say in an even, unemotional voice that surprises even me, “Nothing has happened yet, Becks. Nothing.”

He sighs, and I can feel his jaw clench. “You’re scared so shitless you’re running…. That’s something.
That’s more than something
.”

I accept his words, know they are the truth, but I still need to warn him away. “I don’t know what it is yet, but I know that if it’s what I fear, asking anyone to stand beside me, suffer as I go through it, deal with the crap that comes with it … the side effects, the aftereffects, the scars inside and out … that’s something I can’t ask of anyone. Ever.”

His fingers dig into my shoulders as he pushes me back so that I’m forced to look into his eyes. They search mine for the remainder of the truths he knows are there but that I won’t voice: life, death, losing my breasts, losing my hair, scars, infertility. I try to guard those fears, not even wanting to go there yet, not wanting to admit those to him.

“And again, I call bullshit on that. You don’t get to choose the people that care about you. You don’t get to make choices for others, tell them how to feel or, better yet, block them out because of what you think they’ll go through.” Anger starts to weave through his voice, despite the soft brush of his thumb over my cheek, a gentle reassurance against the onslaught of chastising words I hear but struggle to accept. “It’s my choice, Ry’s choice how we choose to deal with it … not yours. I just …” His voice trails off as he shakes his head and leans forward so that his forehead rests against mine.

“Becks, I’m just trying to do what’s best for everyone.”

“What’s best?” He pulls back, irritation rising in him again. “God, you stubborn, fucking woman. Quit being a martyr. What’s best is you letting me make my own goddamn decisions and for you to stop lying to me so that I can.” He releases me and paces a few feet, energy so raw he needs to move. “What’s best is you pulling your head out of your ass long enough to realize I care about you, Ry cares about you—”

“I don’t want her to know.” My voice is implacable as I
think of the heartache Ry’s endured over the past few years and how I don’t want to add to it until there is a finite answer. I don’t want to add undue stress to her. “And I never lied to you….”

He bites his bottom lip and grimaces. “Fuck!” he growls out to the trees above him, and then rolls his shoulders to dissipate some of the stress I see settling there. “Semantics aren’t an excuse. An omission is the same as lying, Haddie, but you’re missing the point entirely. It’s not whether it was a lie or not. It’s so damn far from that. It’s you using the sex we’ve had to numb yourself when it should do the exact opposite. It should light your body on fire and burrow so deep under your skin that all you think about is the next time you can have me … because fuck if that’s not what you’ve done to me. So I call your bluff. I’ll keep calling it every fucking day until you admit you want me, that being with me does that to you too … but you won’t, will you?” I just remain still, face impassive, body raging with emotion beneath the surface. “You’d rather stand there and tell me you prefer the numb, the void, the nothing, than admit you need me.”

His eyes have their own language as we stare at each other, the power of his words bringing tears to my eyes and knocking the words from my lips. “I was just doing what I thought was best, protecting everyone from more hurt, more everything.”
And I hate the numb
, I scream silently.
I hate it so fucking much that every time we touch you make me feel so alive, I realize how dead I’ve felt inside over the past year
.

I don’t know why I don’t tell him the rest. Like if I do, then I’m just sealing my fate by Murphy’s fucking Law so I keep quiet.

“Really? That’s all you’ve got for me? Next time make sure your eyes and your lips match up, City, because you’re just adding insult to injury right now. Your refusal to answer is infuriating.
Need me, Haddie
. Use me as your goddamn emotional punching bag or your real one, for that matter,
but fucking need me. I’m not some schmuck who’s going to bolt at the first rough patch, and the fact that you still don’t see that is a crock.” He blows out a loud breath, jaw clenched, anger palpable. “I’m so fucking pissed, but I’m also so fucking mesmerized by you right now, and I don’t know what the hell to do or say. All I know is that protecting someone from the truth is just another way of shutting them out.”

My eyes snap to his, and I don’t know what to say to him. There are no words to take away the fact that I hurt him, but at the same time, his plea causes my chest to constrict so that I can’t help but feel the swelling of my heart. I try to justify, to apologize by explanation. “Maybe shutting someone out is my way of not forcing someone’s hand to react out of duty or stick it out when the shit starts rolling downhill. Pity by association is not needed, nor is it welcome.”

“By
association
?” He pulls back. “A formal way to phrase that, don’t you think, considering we were
associating
in the field over there?”

I try to bite back the smirk that starts to curl up the corners of my mouth at his comment. This conversation has been so damn serious that my nervous energy grabs onto his quip, and I fire one right back without thinking. “Associating? I thought we were
clicking
.”