Page 16 of Intersect
“What are you doing?” I ask a littlebreathlessly.
He backs out of the pantry. “I thought we had more staples but—” His eyes sweep over me from head to foot. “Holyshit.”
I grin. “It’s not like you haven’t seen it before. Sortof.”
He coughs. “Let’s just say the experience of the red bikini is a little different in person.” He walks over to me but hesitates. I’m the one who bridges the distance, going on my toes to press my lips to his, waiting to feel his self-restraint lessen just a touch. When his hands grip my hips, pulling me tighter against him, the need for him sharpens—a pulse in my belly that is half pleasure and half pain. He breaks the kiss suddenly, breathing fast as he pushes a hand through his hair. “If you are going to make noises like that we will not get out of thishouse.”
I’m dazed and desperate to continue. “I didn’t make a noise,” I argueweakly.
“Believe me. You made a noise.” He blows out a breath. “Let me feed you before I take this in a very differentdirection.”
I’m tempted to object, but lunch was hours ago and it’s not going to hold us forever. I need to let him move at his own pace anyway. “So there’s nofood?”
“Yeah,” he says. “My parents’ housekeeper must have tossed the food I bought last weekend. I need to run over to the Captain’sMarket.”
“I’ll go with you,” I tell him. “I have to call Jeff really quick but then—” His face falls and I put up a hand before he has time to object. “I have to. His mother texted twice today, begging me speak to him. He drove home yesterday, and it sounds like things are goingpoorly.”
Nick’s jaw hardens. “You don’t owe themanything.”
I wish I agreed with him. It would be such a relief just to wash my hands of the whole thing. Nick and I were meant to be. I just wish it hadn’t left so many people damaged in its wake. “That’s not true,” I say softly. “Abby was there for me after my dad died. And Jeff was too. I…I do feel like I owe themthis.”
He sits on the counter, staring at the floor, his teeth grinding. “I can’t tell you what to do,” he says, a hard edge to his voice that wasn’t there before. “But all these calls and these visits of his—he’s not looking for you toexplain. He’s trying to bully you into coming back, and he’ll use guilt and fear and anything else at his disposal to do it. He’s gotten his way for a long time, just by playing on the fact that you were too nice to drawblood.”
I think of the house in Manassas. The way Jeff returned to the topic again and again, trying to persuade me. Is this any different? “Maybe,” I reply. “But I do still need tocall.”
“If he gives you shit,” Nick warns. “Draw blood. Because if you don’t, Iwill.”
* * *
I walkto the grassy hill leading down to the dock, taking a single deep breath before I hit Jeff’s name on speeddial.
He answers immediately, and my stomach sinks a little. I guess I was hoping he might not answer at all. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks, in lieu of greeting. His words are overloud, slightly slurred as if he’s been drinking. “Six years together, our wedding invitations already out, and all I get is a two-second conversation in your lobby? That’s all Ideserve?”
No matter how much I wish it wouldn’t, guilt is mounting inside me, a small shrill alarm in my blood that is only going to get louder. “I’m sorry,” I begin. “I—”
“No,” he cuts in. “It’s not your turn to talk, it’s mine. And this is some crazy fucking bullshit. You’re going to tell me to my face you don’t love me. Do you? Do you love me or was it all a fuckinglie?”
I’ve never thought of Jeff as a bully before, not until Nick said it, but as Jeff unloads on me it’s striking a chord. “I don’t love you in the right way,” I reply, each word meted out carefully. “I care about you, but this isn’t what Iwant.”
“What, precisely, don’t you want? Name one goddamn way in which I’m not what youwant.”
A voice inside me whispersbully, bully, bully. And it’s not Nick’s voice, oddly enough, but my own…a voice I didn’t know existed until this moment. “I—”
“Because everything I am I did for you. I moved to D.C. for you. I took this job for you. I gave up everything for you and you don’t even appreciateit.”
“I never asked you to do those things,” I tell him. I didn’t want him to do those things. I remember the sick resignation I felt when he showed up on my doorstep, telling me he’d gotten a job inD.C.
“You sure didn’t complain about it, though, did you? You were more than happy to let me give up football and move from one shit job to the next, all so you could stay in D.C. So I want you to tell me what’s so wrong with our life. What is suddenly, out of nowhere, so terrible you just can’t stand to be with meanymore?”
I never asked you to give up football. If you hadn’t moved to D.C., I’d have gone back to school. I wouldn’t have gotten talked into a mortgage I wound up paying on my own most of the time, a mortgage that took school off the table entirely.All the things I thought during our worst moments but kept to myself…those words are bubbling in my throat, demanding to be released. But I’ve done him enough harm without that, so I force them back down. “Nothing is terrible,” I tell him. “It’s just not what Iwant.”
“Then whatdoyou want? Because I think you don’t have a fucking clue. That brain tumor is making you crazy and you’re the only one who doesn’t seeit.”
I pushed everything down for so long, and when I finally act on my own behalf he tries to convince me I’m not sane? For some reasonthisis the last straw. “What I don’t want,” I hiss, “is someone who insists on moving to Manassas or back home when he knows I’ve got no desire to do either one, and who discourages me from following my dreams. I don’t want to be with someone who talks over me in the hospital and tries to start a fight with my doctor. I don’t want someone who suggests I’m insane the second I speak up for myself. And you know what, Jeff?No onewould want that. So instead of blaming the brain tumor, take a look in the mirror.” The words tear out of me, with a thousand more behind them that I manage to keep to myself, and I don’t feel scared, the way I thought I might. I feelstrong.
“Do you hear yourself?” he demands. “Tell me you hear yourself, because this is not you, and if it’s not the tumor I don’t know what itis.”
I laugh. It’s his default, I realize. Blaming me, blaming my tumor, is way easier for him than accepting a shred of responsibility. “I can assure you it’s me. You just might not recognize it because I haven’tbeenme in a long time with you, if I everwas.”