What You Leave Behind (8 page)

There is safety in numbers, or so she’s been told, and she feels that to be true with him. She walks home alone, knowing that’s how she needs to be, though the burn that lingers on her skin long after his touch is gone leaves her feeling safe, like he’s with her the whole way.

CHAPTER FIVE

A stiff wind gusts through the trees that blanket Liam in shade and knocks free a smattering of leaves, one of which cascades down and lands neatly in his upturned palm. He sits on a weathered bench—one that rattles beneath every motion, every shallow breath—in a public park, but he can’t remember which park, nor in which city or state it resides. He thinks from the mild weather that he’s probably in the South, somewhere like Louisiana or Texas, but it’s all been a blur of blacktop. All he knows is it’s not Lithia Park and he is without Harper, and it hurts just as badly as he feared it would and hoped it wouldn’t.

The freedom of the outdoors has become his constant. There’s something about open spaces and sunshine, the sound of birds chattering in the trees overhead, the gurgle of streams and the crash of ocean waves against the shoreline that hold his anxiety at bay. When he’s indoors, he feels like he’s hiding, cowardly, but when his feet are in the grass and the wind is upon his face, he feels like he’s gone somewhere with purpose, that he’s reveling in a sense of liberty. But no matter how many beaches he walks or trails he hikes, the cavernous space in his chest remains vacant. He can’t find what fills that hole in any of the wide open spaces he seeks it in, because what he longs for is nearly three thousand miles away. She’s where he left her. She’s where he lost her.

He leaves the park and takes to the road again, letting each mile take him somewhere new, somewhere away from her. Each mile looks the same, exit signs and dashed white lines, and he’s seen thousands of them over the ninety-three days he’s been gone. Thousands of miles and ninety-three days of mistakes. He drives four hundred or so more along back roads and interstates, destination and direction unknown, before day ninety-four is ushered in. His hands ache and his eyes are weary as he pulls off the highway and navigates through the night to the nearest place he can lay himself down to sleep.

“A room,” he mutters, his voice thick and his eyes empty, and tosses a wad of cash onto the counter before the front desk clerk. The faceless, nameless man hands him a set of keys, old brass ones, and points vaguely down the hall. Liam nods once and moves on, his feet shuffling as he goes. He fumbles the key into the door it’s marked to match, and heaves his deadened body onto the bed where he fists his too-long hair between his fingers and pulls until the pain in his heart is lesser than the pain in his head.

The clock on the bedside table reads one-fifty-five and it flickers slightly, the current to it not as strong as it once was. Liam thinks of his heart, how it’s not nearly as strong as it once was either, and stares at the phone next to the clock, thinks of calling her. He dials the number from memory, every digit but the last, before slamming the receiver down. He can’t call her, as her half of their whole is what he ran from. Even if he was wrong to do so, as the pain that courses through him constantly indicates, he still runs. Liam is lost, a floating soul who needs grounding, but he doesn’t know if it’s her ground that he needs. He’ll find new earth to walk across tomorrow and the next day and the one after that, to find out where he belongs—he runs to find himself, apart from her, to know if he can.

He wonders what freedom even means as he thinks of her and watches the clock flicker until he falls asleep.

CHAPTER SIX

“Meat and Eat. This is Harper. How may I help you?” Harper drones into the phone. It’s quitting time, and she has her purse in one hand and the receiver in the other, and her patience begins to wane as the caller on the other end of the line fails to answer her. She drops her purse unceremoniously atop Hilary’s desk as she huffs into the phone, unable to deal with idiocy at such an hour. All she wants is her sweatpants and salted caramel ice cream, a hot shower, and it shows within the grim expression on her face. She rolls her eyes, feeling the situation warrants such childish indignation, and huffs sarcastically, “Well, it’s been a
pleasure
serving you. Thanks for calling.”

As she drops the receiver to its base, she hears a sharp, “Wait,” and she fumbles it back into her grasp before the call disconnects.

From just one word, four small letters, she knows the voice on the line belongs to Austin.

She whispers his name and doesn’t know why it feels so good forming on her tongue, the lick of the syllables tasting sweet. She’s said it so many times over the last decade, but it’s never before been synonymous with the comfort she finds in it, in him now. Her skin ignites at the memory of the other night, of lost loneliness and found security. If she can’t feel the heat of his skin, she’ll bargain to hear the warmth of his voice. That will be enough.

“Harp—you still there? Hello?”

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he echoes back at her after a beat and Harper can hear him exhale, can perfectly envision the cloud of smoke that leaves his lips with the action. She sits back down at the desk, the time on the clock all but forgotten as she waits for more of his words. They come eventually, quiet under the grating sound of a buzz saw in the background, and she knows his hands are rougher than before, that his golden hair holds tiny splinters of blonde wood, and she wants to rake her hands through the tangled strands, run her palms over his skin and feel the calm that follows. She thinks of this when he nervously stammers, “Do you want to—um—I was calling because—what are you doing tonight?”

“I was actually just about to leave work,” she tells him, but she knows that she will gladly sit in the tiny, windowless office all evening if it means his voice will ricochet back to her from the other end of the line. Her fingers come up to her mouth to feel the smile that results from the timbre of his voice, the softness of his breath across the line, even over the aggravated electric hum that dares try to cover it. She can’t remember a time she ever listened to him so intently. That smile flows into her words and she all but beams as she jokes, “I have a pretty hot date later with a carton of ice cream and a pair of sweatpants.”

“Oh, okay,” Austin mumbles, none of the lightness of Harper’s tone mirrored in his own, and she frowns at how easily that deflates her. “What kind of ice cream?”

“Salted caramel.” Her smile resurfaces at the way he hums approval on the other end of the line. “Do you—maybe I could bring some by?”

“I’ll be off of work in an hour.” The words rush out of his mouth, eager. The saw in the distance sputters, then stops, and she can hear his breathing more clearly, but it’s dull under the sound of her pulse drumming in her ears. His breath and her pulse sound too quick to be normal, to not be fraught with some kind of longing. “Truck’s fixed. I can pick you up, if you want.”

“I’ll meet you. I have to pick up my date at Zoey’s, first,” Harper tells him, her voice low and conspiratorial, and her fingers curl around the strap of her purse as she readies herself to leave. A quick glance at the clock tells her that they’ll meet well after sundown and she warms at the thought of her hands in his hair in the dim light, once more. “Around six?”

“There’s a key under the mat, if you get there before I do.”

Harper fills much of the five o’clock hour wandering around the Ashland Food Co-Op’s produce section and buying a growler of amber ale from Standing Stone, before heading back to Meat and Eat to secretly wrap up thick cuts of steak after Hilary has gone home. She gathers all of the things that clichés tell her a man likes—meat, potatoes, beer—and she hopes that she can remember how to cook a steak without setting the whole kitchen ablaze. She used to cook for her mom and Liam regularly, but it’s been a while. Instead of worrying, she gives herself a backup plan of two turkey sandwiches, before walking down Main toward Zoey’s.

The windows are dark when Harper arrives at Austin’s and she doesn’t see his truck parked anywhere in the lot behind his line of row homes when she parks her own. Hoisting the packed grocery bags onto her hip, she slowly picks her way through the darkness to the front door and lets herself inside with a turn of the key she found tucked under the mat, as promised. She fumbles around for a moment, getting her bearings inside the even darker apartment and clawing the wall beside the door for a light switch, which she eventually finds after tripping over a boot and dropping her bundle of fingerling potatoes. They scatter across the front hallway, their varying colors like confetti across the tan tile, and at the sight, she breathes a sigh of relief that it isn’t a shattered growler or a busted carton of ice cream at her feet. Harper leaves them there to set the heavy bag down on the kitchen island and remove her coat and work shirt. She looks down at her mustard-colored tank top and wishes she had the forethought to wear something better that morning, or go home and change. But it’s just Austin and he’s seen her in much worse, she reminds herself as she turns back to the foyer. Still, when she sees him bent at the waist, scooping up the spuds and piling them into the cradle of his bent arm, she smoothes her shirt over her ribs and stands a little straighter.

“I don’t know much about cooking, but I think there’s an easier way to mash these than throwing ‘em at my floor,” he goads, his mouth curling into a wry smile as he straightens to his towering six-foot-two stature. “In fact, I think they even make a special instrument for that sort of thing. Pretty sure it’s called a potato masher or something like that. Think I might even have one.”

“Very funny,” Harper says dryly, but the tinkling laugh that follows as she crosses the ten feet from kitchen to foyer is the precise opposite. “Give ‘em here.”

She reaches for the pile of potatoes nestled against his body, making a point to brush her fingertips softly against his forearm as she does. They linger there for a moment, just millimeters from her assumed target, before her hand deliberately drags over the skin of his wrist—Austin’s voice echoing,
I always want you to touch me
, in her head. One of them exhales shakily as their eyes meet, but neither knows who, and the potatoes fall from his hold, striking the tile with a collective blunted thud. For a moment everything turns still and quiet, their eyes searching and breath held, but it doesn’t last long. She pulls him to her and Austin’s hands are quick to fit to Harper’s bare shoulders and press her against the wall. She gasps at the motion, at the strength of him, but doesn’t push him away. Instead, she flattens her hands on his chest and tilts her head upward, her chin rising like a dare. His hands are rough, as she knew they would be, but she isn’t surprised by the softness of his touch as it moves up from her shoulders, over the thin straps of her tank top, and across her neck, leaving a million sparks in his wake. She needs to know he feels it too, and as his thumb faintly moves across her lower lip and she watches him come undone, she finds her answer.

Harper can feel him leaning in, the space between them saturated with heat as the distance closes, and when he licks his lips, she can almost feel the swipe of his tongue against her own mouth.

“Austin—we shouldn’t,” she whispers as she breathes him in, wood and warmth. But then her eyes close and she leans in and her hands move to the back of his neck to pull him the rest of the way. Her mouth fits to his for the briefest of moments, a bottom lip pressing tentatively against a top, and she whimpers at the feel of it. The whimper deepens to a moan as Austin softly rakes her lower lip between his teeth, and the feeling shifts from wanting to being wanted. Something about the intensity of that feeling unsettles her to the point that she pushes Austin away. The heartbroken aren’t allowed to desire or be desired, she tells herself, and she knows she is still plenty broken. “I’m sorry, I—we shouldn’t.”

“No,
I’m
sorry. I—I shouldn’t have,” he tells her, his hands still caressing the smooth skin of her neck in obvious contradiction to his words. She lets his hands linger and roam, still selfishly wanting the comfort that accompanies them, and she closes her eyes and immerses herself in a wave of calm. “Too soon,” he whispers against her forehead, his lips cheating as they kiss the skin there with the words. “It’s too soon. I shouldn’t have.”

“No, I—I wanted you to,” she admits softly, her forehead falling forward and resting against his chest as his hands drop to her shoulders, back to the start. “I just don’t know how—I haven’t since—”

“It’s okay,” Austin says hastily, not wanting to hear another man’s name come from the lips he can still taste. “It’s okay.”

When Harper walks away, he lets her go, just as he’s done for years. As she acquaints herself with his small kitchen, Austin picks up the potatoes that have again scattered across his floor and drops them into a basket on the kitchen island, just to give his hands something to do. With her back to him, she shifts a bottle of vodka aside in the freezer to make room for the carton of ice cream, and he takes the opportunity to stare unabashedly, unseen. His gaze lingers on the smooth skin of her neck, the hair gathered loosely at the nape, and his fingers yearn to touch her again, to trail across her shoulders, down her back, and over her hips, but he pockets his hands instead. Harper idles at the freezer door, the icy air rushing against her skin and cooling the embers of his touch to ashes, but her cheeks flare red hot at the memory of his mouth on hers. When she turns to find him leaning back against the island, staring intently at her, the skin of her cheeks tints a deeper crimson as she flushes with heat again.

“Are you, uh—you’re okay with steak, right?” she asks as she navigates around him and his stare and grabs the paper-wrapped cuts of meat from where they sit on the island behind him, careful to avoid his skin along the way. “Liam wasn’t big on red meat, but I made it sometimes,” she says absently, her back to him again as she unwraps the beef and sets it in a pan on the stove. She grabs a pot and fills it with water, careful still not to touch Austin as he works the faucet, and sets it on the stove to boil. “You’re not him though, and I don’t know what you like,” she continues, tossing a pointed glance at him over her shoulder. He’s silent and still, and after a moment, she turns fully around, crosses her arms and leans back against the handle of the oven, and adds, “Or want.” The way her voice drops and her eyes flicker down to his mouth makes it quite clear she’s stopped talking solely about his food preferences, but whatever illicit meaning may have woven into the words drops off when she solemnly reveals, “I barely know you at all.”