Page 33 of Between the Lines
“I think it’s probably out of juice by now. Here. I’ll toss it.”
He hands me the ice pack, and I’m stunned at the disappointment I feel when our skin doesn’t touch. After I toss it, and see that he still hasn’t gotten up from the chair, I take a seat in the student desk nearest him.
“So.”
He’s staring at his clasped hands, threading them in and out slowly. He tilts his head toward me, and it’s like I can see the thoughts swimming in the forest of his eyes. They’re buried deep down into the jungle, but they’re there somewhere.
“Why do you have an ice pack in your purse?”
I chuckle, my whole upper body jolting as I smile.
“Because Ryan can’t make it twenty-four hours without procuring some kind of injury. I’ve just learned to be prepared. I have a whole box in my car.”
He smiles, but it immediately collapses into intrigue.
“Who is Ryan?”
“Oh! Sorry. Ryan is my little brother.”
Something about the way his body relaxes, the tension slipping off of his shoulders as they fall, makes me wonder who he thought I was talking about. Makes me wonder why he cares. Makes me wonder whyIcare if he does.
No wife. No girlfriend either.
“How many siblings do you have?”
He interrupts that particular train of thought, and I swallow the tension that knotted in my throat.
“Five. I’m the oldest. And I was pretty perfect for the first eight years, but then the ‘rents decided to try to duplicate me five different times, and well…”
I shrug, eyes widening as if to say all that I typically keep in. The ones I spilled to him at the bar last week without even thinking twice.
Nathan’s brows bunch together, a divot forming above thebridge of his glasses, and something in me wants to press forward and smooth it out with my thumb.
“So you’re here late because…”
The cut-and-dry man returns. Straight to the point. I swallow, choosing my words carefully enough that I don’t have to give it all away.
“Home is loud,” I shrug. There is a sadness in my voice that I don’t expect. My gaze falls to my lap, where I smooth over my fresh nail polish. “Sometimes it gets too loud to think, so I figured, if I washereinstead ofthere, at least I’d get to pick the music.”
I slip my thumb over my phone screen and Taylor Swift blares for a second before I pause it again.
“You do a lot of the heavy lifting at home, don’t you?”
The tone of his voice, the soft silk, wraps me in empathy. A weight on my shoulders slips. Falls. Tumbles right into Nathan’s awaiting palms, like it has simply been waiting all this time for him to catch it.
“Yeah.”
Oh, God, why are there tears in my eyes?
I shake my head, laughing nervously, shucking them away with the backs of my hands as I stand.
“Oh myGod, I amsosorry, I?—”
“Shh. Stop.”
He takes my hand, gripping it between both of his, and I look down to where he still sits. Bump on his forehead. Hazel eyes swimming behind his glasses. Lips pursed tightly, like he’s trying to hold in all of the things he wants to say.
“I know how it feels, Claire. Sometimes, things were so hard, I just wanted to run away from it all. But that would mean abandoning my brother, and I couldn’t do that either.”