Underneath It All (The Walsh Series #1) (31 page)

I’d been kidding myself these past months, thinking I could walk the line between dedicating myself to opening my school and seeing Matthew. I didn’t belong to the coupled world, not now, and a new plan wasn’t changing that.

He fell asleep quickly, but I lay there for hours, vibrating with that suffocating panic, replaying this conversation and every minute of our time together.

I knew the score, and I knew the stakes.

Leave nothing on the road.

MATTHEW

O
ne of these
days, I was going to figure out Lauren, but I could bet my ass it wasn’t going to be today. She stewed in her stress, tucking it aside and plastering fake smiles on to keep everyone away, but she let it linger and fester. I saw past the smiles and the bullshit, but I couldn’t see the source of that stress.

It went downhill last week, that I knew. It was risky asking her to move in, but we couldn’t keep wandering between her place and mine. I was nearly thirty-one, and living out of a backpack for days on end was altogether too undergrad-esque for my tastes. But instead of agreeing to make our arrangement slightly more permanent, Lauren started plotting her escape.

I always figured she had a tidy plan for selecting the right guy and engaging in a fair amount of relationship due diligence. It wasn’t surprising to hear she wanted to wait, either. Part of her loved military precision, and her desire for thorough rigidity made sense when I thought about it long enough.

But what confounded me was that she
wasn’t
waiting and she
wasn’t
following the tidy plan, and it was only problematic when I suggested officially moving in together. Why didn’t she see that we were following her plan, but in a slightly modified order?

Or was I not husband material?

She responded to some texts but ignored most others, and for the first time in months, we were sleeping apart. She blamed her period, but that never barred me from her bed before. I would have gone to her, banging on her door with panties in hand—and maybe her favorite cupcakes, too—but the atmosphere shifted when I told her I loved her and asked her to live with me. She was disappearing, and I was watching it happen.

And now, parked outside Shannon’s apartment building, I felt her drifting out of my reach.

“We don’t have to go in,” I said. Lauren glanced at me with a raised eyebrow and I continued. “That Thai place on Cambridge Street is open today. The one you like. They have good sake.”

She shifted to face me, her eyes narrowed. “This seems really important to Shannon, and it’s one of your only family traditions. Why would you skip out on that?”

How was it possible? After all this time, how could she not see how much I adored her?

Drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, I forced myself to count to ten in my head to reign in my percolating frustration. “For you. I’d skip it for you. I see them,” I gestured toward the building, “every day.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” she muttered, turning her attention out the window.

“No, Lauren, you’re being ridiculous. I want you, whatever it takes, but I need you to stop pushing me away.”

“You say that, Matthew, but you don’t think about anything. You just say the first thing that comes into your head because it feels good in the moment.”

I ran my hands through my hair, fisting the strands and hating that she interpreted my love as an offhand remark. “I don’t obsess about what I think I’m supposed to do, or when I’m supposed to do it, or what anyone will think of my choices, and I don’t make myself miserable about any of it.”

And now I was treating
her
admissions like offhand remarks.

“I’m sorry, I have to overthink things. I have too much going on right now to do whatever I want.”

“Does this usually work for you, Lauren? Pushing people away and hiding behind the whole workaholic thing because it’s easier than figuring out what you really want?”

“How can you say that? How can you even say that to me?”

I shifted to face Lauren, my expression grim and chilled. “Let me repeat myself: you’d rather close yourself off to everyone than figure out what you want.” I sat back in my seat and bit my tongue before I let this spiral any further out of control.

“I’m not interested in arguing with you right now.”

“Fine,” I murmured. “Let’s go.”

I led the way into Shannon’s building and wasn’t surprised when Lauren positioned herself on the opposite side of the elevator, staring at the fire escape map. She waited for me to exit the elevator despite me gesturing for her to go first, and stayed several paces behind me in the hall.

Riley opened the door, a bottle of Heineken between his fingers and an amused smirk on his face as he eyed us. “Look at these happy people,” he murmured. “Is it erectile dysfunction? That’s common in old men like you. I’d never let you down, Miss Honey, literally.”

“Shut up, Riley,” I hissed.

“Hey!” Shannon called from the kitchen. Lauren edged past us and marched toward her.

“What the fuck did you do?” Riley asked.

I shook my head as my sister and Lauren embraced like long-lost twins. “Why do you assume I did something?”

Riley smacked my back and laughed. “Lesson number one: even when it’s her fault, it’s your fault.”

I grunted in response and headed for the refrigerator in search of a beer. Lauren and Shannon were bent over a colander filled with grape tomatoes, baby carrots, and snap peas, and they murmured in collaboration as they arranged them on a tray. I glanced at the stockings peeking out between the tops of Lauren’s boots and the hem of her skirt. They screamed naughty schoolteacher, and if I hadn’t just yelled at her about being an emotionally unavailable workaholic while avoiding the one question I really wanted to ask, I would have whispered something in her ear about getting her out of those stockings when we arrived home.

“Matt, Nick is supposed to be stopping by later today,” Shannon said.

“What?” I mumbled, my eyes focused on Lauren’s legs.

“Nick? Your brother from another mother? I invited him,” she said, taking care to enunciate each word.

“Why?” Lauren’s lips pursed when I slanted a look at her, and I wondered whether some angry sex would help. It might not solve anything, but we’d be in far better moods. And maybe I could spank some honest answers out of her.

“Plenty of reasons, but primarily because he’s really hot.”

Lauren chuckled. It seemed like a normal Lauren laugh, a normal Lauren smile, and I couldn’t tell whether she was still angry with me. I wasn’t even sure I knew what she was pissed about in the first place.

Was it the moving in together? The confessions of love and general hysteria for her? Or something else entirely?

“Your sister would like to bite his ass.”

“I would,” Shannon sighed, her voice husky as she gazed at the tomatoes.

“I’d be good without that information,” I murmured, backing out of the kitchen.

Parking myself beside Patrick and Sam on the leather sectional in Shannon’s den, I stared at the football game without seeing.

My initial clue should have been waking up alone after that first night together. She made her intentions pretty clear by walking out on me then. There were plenty of other clues along the way—her uncommunicativeness while traveling, all her pushing and my pulling. The signs were there. I should have known this wasn’t shaking out the way I wanted.

“Get you another?” Sam asked. I nodded and handed him the empty bottle, ignoring the curious glances around me.

Sam handed fresh beers to my brothers. “Who’s planning tomorrow’s pub crawl?”

We didn’t have many traditions, but the ones we did have—Thanksgiving at Shannon’s, drinking ourselves sick on the anniversary of Mom’s death, and pub crawls on Black Friday and the day before Christmas Eve—were special.

They were also heavily reliant on alcohol, but we’d address that some other day.

Patrick scowled at Sam. “They’re forecasting a blizzard.”

“Let’s do it anyway,” Riley said to Sam. “We’ll get snowshoes.”

“Would you shut up and watch the goddamn game?” I snapped.

I nursed my second and third and fourth beers, my thoughts deep in Lauren while my brothers swapped tales of bachelorhood. All I wanted was to find my way back to her but there was something about the rapid shift—the walls that went up, the defenses she deployed. Those gestures were bright, flashing signs that I was trespassing in forbidden territory.

“Food’s hot,” Shannon called, and my brothers scrambled into the dining room. I continued staring at the game until Riley flopped down beside me with an overflowing plate.

“Go talk to your girl,” he said under his breath.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.

“Trust me. She’s about forty seconds away from deciding to pack her knives and go.”

I groaned and got up from my slouch. A heated conversation between Shannon and Patrick filled the dining room, and he gestured for me to join.

“You’re free to talk to Erin all you want,” Shannon hissed. “I will not be making any calls today, tomorrow, or any other day.”

Patrick dropped a hand to my shoulder and squeezed, a clear indication I was expected to wade into the debate. “She’s your sister, Shan, and you need to drop your stupid fucking bullshit and call her. It’s Thanksgiving.”

I held up my hands in surrender when they turned eager gazes on me. I didn’t have any strength or patience for the Shannon-Erin Smackdown today, and I wasn’t sure she was even on the grid. Last I heard, Erin was holed up in some remote location in the Canary Islands listening for volcano gurgles. Or something equally unusual.

“She can call
me
if she wants to talk,” Shannon snapped.

“It has been years, Shan,” Patrick said. “When are you going to grow the fuck up?”

I twisted out of his hold while their argument continued. I spotted Lauren in the kitchen, her back to me as she mixed vodka into a tumbler of ice and cranberry juice. I watched her stare out the window, sipping her drink for several minutes, and her rigid body language communicated everything I needed to know.

“Hey.”

Startled, she spun around to face me. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Can we talk?”

She raised her eyebrows but reserved comment, instead draining her glass and setting it in the sink.

“Please. I think we need to.”

She lifted her shoulder with a questioning gaze. “I think you said everything already.”

I wanted to kick my own ass for going off on her in the car. I exhaled and fisted my hands inside my pockets, twisting the necklace I carried with me every day. I held the cool rose quartz pendant between my fingers, and flashes of that first night passed behind my eyes.

“I can assure you that I have not said anything I need to say…not even close. Let’s get out of here. The Thai place?”

“No, Matthew, no,” she sighed. She shook her head, the motion slow and resigned.

“What’s happening right now?”

I watched her approach, though I wasn’t sure if she was inching toward me or time was grinding to a halt. She pressed her palm to my chest, frowning, and met my eyes. “No. You said what you needed to say. We can’t force it anymore. I have my priorities, and I can’t let you be one of them.”

She retreated, her hand falling away, and I felt rooted in place in Shannon’s dark kitchen. The pressure in my chest doubled, and I gasped at the pain of her rejection. Not husband material, not hook-up material.

Not even for now, not even for fun.

She never wanted me the way I wanted her.

*

Sprawled on the
cold floor, I pillowed my head on my arm and hugged Lauren’s scarf to my chest, breathing in the remains of her delicate scent while I watched snow accumulating on my terrace.

My legs and lungs ached from an eighteen-mile run—suicide sprint, if I was being honest with myself—in white-out, blizzard conditions around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir and back. I couldn’t remember ever seeing Beacon Street as desolate, the deserted city mirroring the hollow feeling in my gut. My only companions were snowplows and salt trucks, and even they surrendered to the storm around midnight. I jogged a circuit through the slippery streets of the North End until two in the morning, my body consumed with a sick mix of dread and anger and hurt, and I needed to get it out before I could go home. I needed to collapse into a dreamless sleep that would rewind time or wipe the memory of Lauren entirely.

Coughing, I yanked my phone from its protective shield on my bicep, snickering at the messages from my siblings and Nick, all inquiring about my whereabouts and mental status, and nothing from the only person I wanted.

I shouldn’t have expected to hear from her, but that didn’t change the fact I
wanted
it. She wasn’t the door slamming, all caps text message type. She shrank, folding in on herself, and shrouding her emotions in hard, defensive layers.

She liked to think her shoes and her panties were armor, but she had no idea how many layers she really wore, how much space she put between herself and the world.