15
Wendy
Wendy was the sort of person who always intended to keep a tidy bedroom, but somehow never managed, efforts sidetracked by artistic impulses. She owned the world's actual worst mattress, carefully disguised beneath a plush pillow-top mattress pad and layers of colorful, cozy quilts. Above it, a corkboard mounted to the wall, studded with art show flyers and programs, her syllabus – laminated for posterity's sake – and a hundred little doodles, on notecards, Post-Its, and stray Starbucks napkins. Her dressing table, the one she'd had since childhood, was draped with old towels and currently housed her paints, brushes, and various half-full cups of cloudy, paint-swirled water. Her latest WIP rested at a careful angle against the wall, the Brooklyn Bridge in half-sketch, half-dark muddy oils. A jacket sleeve was caught in the closet door.
Chase had always hated her room. She thought he must have wanted her to live in some sort of sex palace or something. He got up in the middle of the night once, fumbling toward the door for the bathroom, and knocked one of her water cups over. It ruined the rug – her rug – and somehow he'd been the one angry about it.
But she didn't need to think about Chase now. She didn't want him intruding on any more moments with Ollie.
Ollie who, behind her, said, "Looks just like it always used to," with an obvious smile in his voice.
She turned around to see the smile, the wistful, sweet curve of it as his eyes tracked across her walls, the artwork pinned up, the inspiration photos and magazine tear-outs, the clutter, all of it. "Like what?"
His eyes came to her, smile tugging a little harder at the corners. "Like your head's full of color. It always was."
Well. If that wasn't enough to make a girl's stomach flutter. That was the thing about Ollie: he didn't give her the sorts of compliments boys gave girls. He gave her the words she needed exactly. Tailor-made compliments, stitched from their shared experiences, his knowledge of her.
Self-conscious again, she gestured to the small room around them, its four-paned window, fogged with radiator steam. "This is it."
"I like it."
"It's tiny. And there's paint everywhere."
"So?" He shrugged and sat down on the side of her bed, completely at ease. At home. More relaxed than she'd ever seen him since their reunion. "Don't mean it's not nice."
She felt herself grinning, and sat down beside him, close enough for comfort, far enough for a semblance of propriety. He'd been so skittish, she wanted to let him make the first move. If he wanted to. Unless he wanted her to –
"Tell me about Chase," he said, tone so light that it took her a beat to acknowledge the actual words.
Then she sucked in a shallow breath. "Yeah. Um. I don't really want to."
"Right. So tell me anyway."
She glanced over at him, the calm persistence shining in his eyes. She wanted to be angry that he was pressuring her like this, but more than that she was proud of his steadiness. "I don't actually have to tell you, you know."
His gaze softened. "I know."
"It's not going to make you feel any better, knowing all the details."
His throat moved as he swallowed. "I know. But I think I have to hear it."
She sighed and scooted back across the bed until her shoulders were against the wall.
Ollie scooted back to join her, their shoulders overlapping.
"Last chance to just make out instead," she offered, trying to smile, and he smiled back, softly, but made no move to kiss her. "Okay. So. Chase."
There were selfish reasons for wanting to keep the past buried. If she talked about what happened with Chase, then she had to go back there in her mind, and relive it all again. And if she relived it, she remembered how stupid and weak she'd been. And then Ollie would know...and there was a chance he'd hate her just a little. He'd been scarred by flying shrapnel in a war zone, burned and traumatized. He'd been so brave. And she couldn't even break up with a bad boyfriend in a timely fashion.
His hand landed on her thigh, and squeezed gently.
Wendy took a deep breath. "I was in this coffee shop in Savannah, and I was trying to email you..."
~*~
The problem with Chase was that he was nice at first. If he'd walked into the coffee shop that night with a blazing neon "I'm a Dick Head" sign hovering over him, she never would have accepted the latte he handed her. Would never have become Facebook friends via their phones right there under the honeyed track lighting. She certainly wouldn't have accepted his offer, a few days later, of a cover band concert and a dinner of food truck tacos. Wouldn't have shared a seafood dinner with him a few days after that, candles flickering in hurricane lamps on the tables, smell of brine in her nose, distant sound of tug horns coming in off the water. They'd walked along the pier that night, and when he'd reached for her hand, she'd let him take it.
It had come on unexpectedly. Chase was personable, funny, bold in a way that sparked startled laughter in her lungs: the way he'd describe their surroundings in sarcastic detail. One dinner had turned into another, and another, and suddenly they were dating. Or not so suddenly, really. It was a slow slide into a relationship.
If she was honest with herself – which she tried not to be in those days – she felt like she was betraying Ollie. Which was stupid, because she and Ollie had never been together in that way. Their handholding had never been a promise of things to come, only a deep grounding, something gravitational and strong that was friendship, and not romance. But when she laughed along with Chase's jokes, felt his fingertips skim up her arm, and thought about what Chase wanted from her, she wished it was Ollie here now, touching her, wanting those things from her.
But Ollie wouldn't even return a letter. So...
The first sign of trouble came two months in.
"Hey, beautiful, how are you today?" Chase said to a woman who was definitely not Wendy.
Wendy froze in her tracks, halfway between the front door of the pub where Chase worked and the bar he was tending; where he was leaning onto the old polished wood and shooting a killer grin to a curvy brunette with a v-neck top and dark lipstick.
It was early evening, and the bar was starting its slow fill of regulars and tourists, the door opening at predictable intervals, flashing orange evening light across the dim interior of the old Irish pub. So Chase didn't think that it might be her, didn't think to look toward her. And he smiled at the brunette in the same way that he smiled at Wendy, that sly, toothy grin that promised all sorts of interesting secrets. A grin that wasn't meant for selling beers; a grin for dark, close nights; for his girlfriend. Not for a customer.
As she watched, Chase leaned even closer to the brunette, said something Wendy couldn't make out, and the woman threw her head back, laughing, showing off her throat and cleavage. Chase's grin widened, and he touched her hand. A fleeting skip of fingertips across her knuckles and fingers. But a touch nonetheless.
Wendy couldn't call the sentiment building within her jealousy. She didn't know what to call it. She felt hollow, and desperate, and completely foolish.
Forcing her legs to work, she started forward and took a stool at the bar, three over from the brunette.
Chase turned to her – and that was when she knew he'd had impure intentions with his customer – and lurched a little when he recognized her. The smile made a quick appearance, though. "Hey, babe. You get off work?"
"Uh-huh," she said, woodenly.
The customer gave her a derisive look from three stools over.
The thought that kept looping through Wendy's brain, damaging and painful, was: Ollie would never do that to me. Which wasn't fair to Ollie, herself, or Chase.
She didn't stay through his shift, like she sometimes did, but went home, to her tiny studio apartment, choked down a frozen dinner that tasted like lead and burned her tongue. She was expecting her buzzer to sound, but she wasn't ready for it.
When Chase got to her front door, he said, "Hey," and dropped a kiss on her mouth like nothing was wrong.
She should have kept quiet.
She should have ended it there.
But, wooden-faced, she said, "You were flirting with that woman tonight."
"Who?" He moved into her apartment like he owned the place, went to the fridge and cracked it open. "Hey, you have any of those stuffed mushrooms left over? With the breadcrumbs? Those were awesome." He twisted to shoot her a smile over his shoulder.
She realized then what she should have known from the start, and what she should have reacted to far earlier: there was something plastic and sideways about his smile. Something about the handsome curve of it, the spark in his eyes that wasn't exactly emotion. A certain flatness that had nothing to do with physics, and everything to do with an uncertain tug at the back of her psyche.
"Your customer," she pressed, folding her arms. The door was still open and she wasn't ready to shut it yet. "That brunette with the boobs. You were all over her. And she was all over you."
He sighed and rolled his eyes. "Shit, seriously? Don't tell me you're one of those."
"One of what?"
"Jealous bit...chicks who don't have any self-esteem and take it out on their boyfriends. Seriously? I didn't think that was you."
Pain trickled between her ribs, tickled at her common sense. An insult was an insult, no matter who delivered it. She wasn't immune. And Chase was her boyfriend. He cared about her.
He did.
Didn't he?
"I'm not being unreasonable," she insisted, proud of the way her voice was calm. "When you see your boyfriend flirting with someone else, it rattles you."
"Flirting?" The fridge closed with an angry slap. "Shit. Look, babe, I have to do that for work. It's part of the job. Make the sad lonely girls feel better about themselves, and they buy more drinks. I make better tips, and I can take you out more. I'm doing this for you, Wendy. Jesus. Don't make it out like I'm some kinda bad guy."
He came toward her then, and she didn't resist when he put his hands on her waist, voice gentling. "You just gotta calm down, okay? I'm with you. For real. That other shit is just pretend, for work."
When she told Tate about the incident the next day, he said, "Dump him," without hesitation. "Guy's an asshat."
But Chase had been so sweet, trying to make it up to her, trying to reassure her.
And idiot that she was, she gave him that second chance.
~*~
"It was just so many little things at first," Wendy confessed, twisting her hands together in her lap, unable to look at Ollie. "He was...unkind. Wanting me to work out. Being impatient when I was running late. He criticized my art–"
Ollie's hand tightened on her thigh, and she liked the pressure. "Fucking asshole," he said in a choked voice. "Did he...?"
She knew what he wanted to know. And she hated to tell him. But this was Ollie, and they'd never been less than honest with each other.
At least, she'd thought that once upon a time. But they'd both loved, both wanted, both pined...and denied themselves. Its own kind of dishonesty.
So in the interest of total disclosure, she said, "He only hit me once. But that was it. I ended it."
Through his teeth, Ollie said, "I'll fucking kill him." Without hesitation.
So Wendy didn't tell him the whole story. About the shouting. About the way he'd slapped her four, five times in that one instant. About the bruises. About the way she'd felt trapped, and afraid, and the way he'd left her forty-seven voicemails when she left town, all her belongings packed in the Road Runner, fleeing for her life.
"Don't try to sugar coat it," Ollie said in a low, rough voice, hand spasming on her thigh. "He hurt you bad." Not a question.
The marks had healed. Her mind, her nerves, her trust...not so much.
"Why?" Ollie sounded devastated. "Why did you stay with him? Why..." His throat clicked as he swallowed.
Wendy finally risked a glance, and her heart squeezed. Ollie sat with his shoulders slumped, holding onto her like a lifeline, other hand curled into a fist in his lap. Eyes shut tight, dark lashes wet against his cheeks.
"The same old stupid excuses," she said. "I kept thinking it was just me, that he must be a nice, normal guy, and I was just..."
His eyes flipped open, came to her face, red-rimmed and raw, and full of a kind of violence that didn't frighten her, not the way Chase's had. "Just what?"
"Just wasn't giving him a fair chance," she whispered. "Because I was in love with someone else."
He let go of her and curled forward, bracing his elbows on his thighs, his face in his hands. Breathing in ragged, heartbroken stutters.
~*~
Ollie
It was his fault. Everything that asshole had done to Wendy – that was on him, for withdrawing, for wallowing in his own misery, for not communicating...and for driving her straight to someone else. Someone who didn't think she hung the moon. Who'd hurt her.
"Hey. Ol, hey, no, it's okay." She leaned against his side, draped her arm across his shoulders, pulling him into her chest. He didn't deserve that comfort. "I didn't mean it like that, not the way you're thinking. I knew better, that I shouldn't have been with him, and I–"
He sat up, startling her. He couldn't breathe. His guilt was a physical thing, a thick smoke, filling up the small room, choking him. "I gotta go."
"Ollie," she said, voice pained. "I'm sorry."
"No. I'm sorry." He captured her face in both hands, kissed her soundly, and said, "Thanks for dinner. It was great. But I..." He was already pulling away, getting to his feet, wheezing a little as he fought his own panicking lungs.
"Just stay," she pleaded.
But he couldn't. "I'm sorry." He forced himself to move before the attack got out of control, striding out of her room and across the living room, ignoring Simone's surprised glance. He snatched his jacket and helmet and lit out of the apartment as fast as he could, almost jogging.
It was his fault.
His fault, his fault, his fault, a silent mantra that matched the pounding of his boots on the stairs.
He drew in a painful breath when he hit the sidewalk out front, sucking down the smells of exhaust, frost, and Indian food from farther down the block. Shit. Shit, shit, oh fuck. It was all his fault.
He wanted to hit something.
Wanted to shoot something.
Wanted to go back upstairs to Wendy and beg forgiveness, bundle her up in his arms and promise her that nothing like that would ever happen again.
Instead, he crammed his helmet down on his head and got on his bike.
The sharp slap of cold air against his face on the road home did nothing to ease his stress. If anything, it sharpened it, gave it focused edges.
He heard the echo of his heavy breathing as he stalked through the cold, empty garage on the way back to his apartment. Felt his pulse thundering in his eyelids, the shells of his ears, his fingertips.
It took about thirty minutes of fooling around with Facebook before he found the right Chase Lawrence: the one from Savannah, Georgia...who'd posted a selfie earlier today at the Brooklyn Bridge.
NY vacay!!! the caption read.
He was here.
Ollie was going to find him.