What You Leave Behind (9 page)

“That’s not true,” Austin counters. “You’ve known me forever, Harp. You know plenty about me.”

“I know facts.” Harper moves to stand in front of the sink, directly beside Austin, and begins to painstakingly scrub the potatoes with her bare hands until he grabs a brush from the drawer beside him and hands it to her. She thanks him with a nod and then gets back to work, thankful for something to concentrate on other than the way his stare cuts through her. When she’s nearly done, Harper returns to the subject at hand, and begins to recite the things she knows to be true about Austin Killian Hayward. “You were born in Bisbee, Arizona on the sixth of July, but we’ve always celebrated on the fourth because the bigger the party, the better. You met Liam on your first day of school here, punched him within twenty minutes because he stole your crayons, and you two were best friends by lunchtime because he had Oreos. You’ve been arrested twice, but have never been charged—once, when you turned eighteen and again last year, because of the mysterious fire at your dad’s place in Wingspread Park.” She piles the potatoes in her arms and sets them carefully into the roiling water as she continues, “Your favorite movie is
Platoon
, but you’ll watch anything with a war plotline or the undead. You’re allergic to shellfish, but you usually take a cocktail of Benadryl and prednisone and eat it anyway—a trick you learned from Dan, I’m sure. You smoke Marlboro Lights, mix beer and liquor like a champ, and you won’t touch wine unless someone pays you—and it had better be more than five bucks. You haven’t had a girlfriend other than Gemma Thorne and that only lasted a few months during freshman year, a month after graduation, and a week last spring, but you’ve always seemed to get around just fine.” She looks over at him and it’s his turn to look away, not wanting to talk about how well he has—or, in actuality, hasn’t—gotten around or with whom. She nods to herself and turns to the stove, and begins to coat the steaks in seasoning, thankful that her hands have something to do, because she thinks if they didn’t, they would be on him by now, trying to learn all the secrets of his skin. “I know the surface things, as much as the rest of this town.”

A silence overtakes the room, the light rustle of boiling water and uneven breaths the only sounds as Austin crosses the two feet of space between sink and stove in one measured step. Harper bites her lip when she senses him behind her, and when his hands come down to rest on either side of the stove, she leans back against him without hesitation.

“Austin,” she murmurs his name as he shifts closer, his belt buckle nestling into her lower back. “Those aren’t the things I mean.”

“What do you mean?” he asks, the words whispered against the gentle curve between her neck and shoulder. “What things?”

“I don’t know you like I know—knew him.” Her teeth worry at her bottom lip for a moment as she thinks of how she wants to word things. “I mean, I was never even in your house until yesterday. We’ve been friends all these years, but it’s like we’re strangers.”

“What else do you want to know?”

“I didn’t know I wanted to know. But it isn’t—they aren’t things I can just ask you,” she sighs and turns to face him. With his hands on either side of her, he has her penned in, and she’s just as close to his mouth as she was in the foyer. Her gaze flickers from his eyes to his lips and back again as she says, “If I could have asked you, I would have by now.”

“You can ask me now,” he whispers, leaning in, his bottom lip deftly sweeping across hers as he turns his head.

“Austin—”

“Ask me,” he says, his lips grazing her cheek as his head dips lower and his mouth hovers near her neck.

She presses herself into him, arching up just enough to let his lips press against her skin. She feels bold and daring and his lips are so soft.

“Harper,” he says breathlessly. “Ask me.”

“Do you—” Harper’s voice quivers from his mouth on her neck and her head spins, filled with a dizzying lust. She slides a hand into his hair to still him long enough to get out the words she needs. “Austin—Austin, do you want me?”

A groan breaks free from Austin’s throat as his teeth scrape along her neck, and Harper’s hand fists reflexively in his hair, pulls him closer. He litters slow kisses along the low-slung neckline of her tank top, beneath the strap as it slides off her shoulder indulgently, each one eliciting a whimper from Harper that spurs on the next move of his lips. When he reaches the hollow beneath her ear, he whispers, “Always.”

The pot on the stove boils over and flecks of scalding water throw themselves toward Harper and Austin, singeing whatever bare skin is available and tearing them apart in the process. Austin is at the ready and quickly grabs at the pot with one bare hand and shoves it roughly to the side, onto an unlit burner. He makes a hissing sound when the pain of the burn forming on his palm makes itself known and Harper is quick to hand him the nearly empty bottle of vodka she found earlier, makes him wrap a fist around the frozen glass.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” he grimaces as he flexes his burned hand around the bottle and uncaps it with the other, winces around a long swallow of the contents. “Russia’s favorite painkiller.”

“Something like that,” Harper laughs uneasily. She lowers the light on the burner before sliding the pot back over, places the steaks back in the pan, and then goes to wash her hands. Austin has since folded himself onto one of the two stools on the opposite side of the island and as Harper lathers up her hands at the sink, she looks across to him and asks, “Do you have a first aid kit or anything?”

“Do I seem like a first aid kit kind of guy to you?” In response, melodramatic disapproval crosses Harper’s features—her eyes narrow seriously, mouth twisted to one side. “Exactly,” Austin laughs, setting the bottle on the counter. He holds up his injured hand, the palm of it facing her, and prods at the small red welt there with the fingers of his good hand. His face remains impassive, proving his point to Harper. “See? I’m fine. It’s definitely not first aid kit worthy. I mean, these hands have definitely seen worse.”

As Harper turns back to the stove, a rush of heat spreads over her skin as she tries not to think about what else his hands have seen, the way they skimmed over her shoulders and caressed her neck, and how badly she wants to show them more.

The only light that touches the back patio is whatever escapes through the sliding glass door, which isn’t much, but as Harper’s eyes adjust, it’s enough to see how the shadows play across Austin’s angles and curves. He sits with his back to the window, the bulk of light falling across Harper instead. His hair draws long shadows down his face, and the lean of his shoulders leave his torso masked in black. When he turns to face her full-on, which he does often as he talks, the shadows disappear, save for a quarter of his neck that remains engulfed in darkness. She waits for those moments, tries not to stare, but as they near the end of the growler, the vodka long gone, she finds it difficult not to seek out the cluster of beauty marks at the base of his throat each time the light kisses his skin.

“Hey,” he says, and her stare snaps up from where it lingers on his collarbone to meet the estimated position of his half-shadowed eyes. “You okay?”

“Fine, yeah—I’m fine. Just tired. And tipsy. And
really
full.”

“Well, that was one killer dinner, little lady.” Austin exaggeratedly pats his stomach and lets out a low whistle, at which Harper laughs. “Where’d you learn to cook like that? And, more importantly, how in the hell did you manage to hide this from me for ten years?”

“From my mama,” she tells him as she snickers into her beer stein, “and with optical illusions.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” The conversation drops off and leaves only the sounds of night and their hazy clouds of exhaled winter air to dance around them. Then it’s a strike of a match and puffs of smoke, the drag of a heavy glass mug along an even heavier glass tabletop. Somewhere in the distance, an owl’s soft hooting reaches them and ricochets against the high wooden fence around the yard. After Austin smokes his cigarette to its filter and the owl quiets, Harper asks, “Why do you always call me that?”

“What?”

“’Little lady’.”

“I didn’t realize—” Austin clears his throat uncomfortably and sinks back into his chair, into the shadows. “It’s the only good thing I really remember about my parents. He called her that—Jimmy did.” He clears his throat again, reaching for his beer this time. “I’m sorry,” he says around a swallow. “You don’t want to hear about this.”

“I don’t mind.” Harper reaches through the dark and clasps Austin’s hand in hers. “Really.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk about it,” he says with a sardonic laugh wrapping up the words.

“Okay.” The conversation lulls, but Austin’s hand remains in Harper’s, her thumb rubbing to and fro across the backs of his fingers. “You’re not him, you know.” Austin’s hand tenses beneath hers for the barest of moments as she says this, and he isn’t sure if she means Liam or Jimmy. He knows he isn’t like either of them though, and that thought paired with Harper deliberately lacing her fingers between his own comforts him. His hand relaxes against hers, and squeezes in thanks when she tells him, “You’re a good man.”

“It’s getting late,” Austin muses solemnly.

“I mean it, Austin.”

“I know.”

After one final beer and a round of light,
tell me about your day
conversation, Austin walks Harper to the door, helping her into her coat along the way. As he trails behind her, his hand longs to fit to the small of her back. He doesn’t know if it’s the beer, the vodka, the late hour, or the sway of her hips, but he lets himself do it, and when she doesn’t pull away, he draws her to him. She welcomes the fold of his arms around her, his face tucked into her hair.

“Thank you. For dinner, for what you said, for being here.”

“Thank you,” she counters, her lips close to his neck. Emboldened by the same mysterious force as Austin, Harper presses her mouth to the spot where the constellation of beauty marks rests. He takes in a ragged breath of peach shampoo as she whispers, “And I’m sorry.”

“For that? Don’t be sorry for that,” Austin laughs against her hair. “Ever.”

“I’m sorry that I—I couldn’t. I wanted to. I still want to.”

But she also wants to be sure, to know it’s not just impulse drawing her to him.

“There’s no rush,” he tells her and somehow, he means it. After ten years of longing for her, Austin still wants to take his time, do things right. Because there’s so much wrong about how they’ve come together—if that’s even what’s happening—and he knows they’re standing on faulty ground. Tenderly, he tucks her hair behind her ear and presses his lips to her neck, where he whispers a husky, “And I’ll still want you tomorrow.” Blindly, Austin reaches behind Harper and unlocks his front door, his mouth still on her neck. “Go get some sleep,” he urges, releasing her with one final press of his lips. He watches as she reluctantly crosses the threshold, looking over her shoulder at him as she rounds the corner and disappears into the night. He waits outside as she drives off, and after her taillights are swallowed by midnight, he closes his eyes and whispers, “Sweet dreams,” as he tastes the salty reminder of her skin on his lips.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The embankment alongside Interstate 5 at the ENTERING PHOENIX road sign is steep enough that when Harper sits on the frozen ground, she’s able to overlook both sides of the highway, but only when the headlights of passing vehicles knife through the darkness. A semi-truck comes through first, heading north and illuminating the spot of gravel where she stumbled and tore her dress that September night. Moments later a minivan limps along, going significantly under the speed limit, and she gets a lingering view of the place she stood when she last saw Liam, before she crossed the median and walked away, left him there to leave her. As another eighteen wheeler rumbles south down the roadway, giving her a third glimpse, she waits for herself to feel something, anything at the sight of it. She waits for heartache or solace, understanding or regret—anything. She waits and waits, gives herself six more passes of headlights, six more glances. She doesn’t know what she expected to find on the roadside—the pieces of her heart she left behind or clarity, perhaps—but as she walks the mile or so back to where she’s left her Ford just off exit 24, all Harper feels is a nagging emptiness and the wind beating at her back.

It’s nearly three in the morning by the time she pops open the door of her truck, but she doesn’t at all hesitate to call Austin, dialing his number with her cold, trembling hands as she climbs into the cab and starts the engine. He answers just as the heater kicks on high and she finds it fitting.

“Is everything okay?” is what Austin says in place of a greeting.

“Hey,” is what Harper considers an answer as she swings her truck down the entrance ramp onto I-5 south. “What are you doing?”

“Pacing my foyer, keys in hand, waiting for you to tell me you’re okay,” he laughs out, but there’s nervous tension carved into his normally level voice, letting her know he’s not kidding. “So, could you please tell me, so I can go back to eating the ice cream you left here?”

“I’m sorry. Yes. I’m fine,” she laughs as her headlights kiss the sign that tells her she’s three miles from Talent, seven from Ashland, and exactly at the place she feared would, but doesn’t drag her back into sorrow. Already, she feels less hollow than before, and with each bit of road that falls behind her as she heads toward him, she feels more and more whole. “Can I come back over?”

“I’ll save you some. I promise.”

“I don’t want the ice cream,” Harper says, and she’s met with silence as Austin processes her words and tries to avoid jumping to conclusions while he susses out the right response. She drives a whole mile before she wonders if he’s still there and asks, “Austin?”

“Yeah—come.”

The key to Austin’s front door is still in the back pocket of Harper’s jeans, where she tucked it earlier in the day, absentminded in the darkness and overwhelmed with mishaps. She turns it over and over in her cold hands as she walks from the lot behind his row of homes and goes to stand on the concrete slab that mimics a porch. She hesitates just slightly, wondering if he would mind if she slipped it into the lock and let herself in, but she rings the doorbell instead. Austin’s quick to pull open the door and when he does, she extends her palm, the brass key centered in it glinting in the porch light.