Page 134 of Between the Lines

Just like the way that your selfishness all those years ago cost you the rest of your days.

My subconscious nags at me, and I hate it. I beat it on the head with a hammer and focus on the extra time I’ve gotten with Claire. When she leaves, I see the text she mentioned earlier, the one from my driveway. She knows me too well already—well enough to let me know where she’s going to be, without even understanding the why.

Maybe thewhydoesn’t matter to her. She does what I ask simply because I’ve asked it of her. I can barely swallow around the weight of that truth.

fifty-three

claire

Penelope is awayfor the weekend. I didn’t bother to find out why before heading straight to Nathan’s, where I fed him dinner and then and he proceeded to show me exactly what he’d originally had planned when he bought me the toy we played with over the phone.

I don’t even know how I’m functioning enough to speak full sentences, let alone tell Nathan my idea after he exhausted me in his bed. We’re cuddling on the study couch. I’m wearing his T-shirt, snuggling his bare chest. It’s so vulnerable, but if I’m going to have my heart on display, it will be for him and for him alone. I want this. I wanthim. More than just in stolen moments. But if this is all we can afford for the time being…

“I have a proposition for you,” I say, shifting off his lap so I can see him while we talk. He nods for me to continue. “So, since I needed to make some extra cash in order to get myself through these extra classes and my internship, Lucy and Aaron suggested working some of the athletics up at the high school. Those games pay better, and no one up there likes to help out anyway, so there’s a bunch of games open for the rest of the season.”

“I think it’s a great idea. I’m just concerned that our already shortamount of time together is going to be cut even more if you’re working games late at night.”

Sweet, sensitive man.

I cup his cheek.

“It won’t be like this forever. I’ll be done at River Valley soon enough, and then, we won’t have anything to worry about.”

“Except for sharing our private affairs with your friends.”

“They’re your friends, too.”

He tilts his head in question. Boy, do I know the feeling.

“I like spending time with them. But I also enjoy my time spent just with you. I’ve never had something that I’ve coveted this fondly before. I don’t know what to do with my feelings about you sometimes.”

All of my nerves are on fire.

It’s like this man’s flame is a twin to mine. I’ve never gotten to hold onto something either. All of my teasing slips away, and my thumb strokes back and forth over his five-o’clock shadow.

“Jealous, Mr. Harding?”

A growl catches in his throat. He snags my wrist, turns my palm over, and kisses the center of it.

“When it comes to you? Always.” When he sees the fire kindling in my eyes, he says, “Anyway… This proposition?”

I perk up again. “Yes. Since the away games are so far, I was thinking, what if you came with? No one would think twice about you being there. We could go out after and be far enough from home that we could maybe make it like, I don’t know, a real date?”

Goosebumps tickle up my arm. It shouldn’t be too much—to request a real date with the guy I’m seeing. But in the face of asking him to share his feelings, I’m slapped with the irony that I’m continuing to keep all of my own bottled in.

I want to ask him what this is. What we are. Where this is going. Grand gestures can only hold me over for so long. My parents never let me want for anything so long as I was acting as their live-in nanny,when all I really wanted was affection, attention, and appreciation. Going away with Nathan over spring break is still months away. How long can we hold off until then, subsisting on stolen moments in secret corners? How long can we last before the words we’ve locked away shrivel into unsalvageable dust?

fifty-four

nathan

“I really could have driven myself,”Claire insists from my front passenger seat. I can tell that she’s fighting annoyance. I wonder when the last time was that shewasn’tin the driver’s seat.

“I know. I wanted to do this. And besides, it makes more sense if we take one vehicle for after the game.”

The high school’s basketball game is an hour away, and I cannot even begin to fathom Claire driving herself home after. I would surely have a panic attack the entire drive home. Luckily, the January roads aren’t snowy or icy right now; if that were the case, I’d have refused to let her go at all.

You can’t do that, Nathan. She hasn’t had freedom her entire life. She doesn’t need one more person telling her what she can and can’t do.

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