Relentless(41)

His hand slides farther up and I flinch when his fingers hit the wire of my bra. “I love you,” he whispers, and somehow this has the opposite effect.

I push him off and he sighs as he lies back. “I’m sorry,” I mutter. “I’m just scared that it’s going to hurt and then I’ll feel different about you. I don’t want to feel like you’ve hurt me.”

He turns onto his side and kisses my cheek. He slips his hand under my T-shirt and traces circles around my bellybutton as he says, “I could never hurt you. You’re my Claire-bear. But I can’t fucking lie. I want to be inside you so bad…. I want to make you feel as good as you make me feel.” He plants a soft kiss on my belly and I shiver. “But I’ll wait as long as it takes.”

I stroke his hair out of his face and whisper, “I love you.”

He kisses my temple before he springs up off the bed, leaving me feeling a little used up. “I’ll be right back, babe.”

He comes back a minute later with his acoustic guitar and closes the bedroom door. No one else is home. Jackie and her new boyfriend Tim are running errands before we meet them tonight for a birthday dinner. If Jackie knew what Chris and I are doing right now she’d kill both of us. Somehow, we’ve managed to keep our relationship a secret from her. This makes it seem as if Chris and I are doing something wrong, though we’re not.

The simple gesture of Chris closing the bedroom door makes me feel safe, like he knows exactly what I need. He always has.

I scoot back so he can sit on the edge of the bed next to me. He settles down with his guitar in his lap and strums a haphazard melody as he tunes the guitar by ear.

“I wrote this for you. It’s about the day we met. It’s called ‘Sleepyhead’.”

I smile as I remember how tired I was the day we met from not having slept the night before, but somehow he still convinced me to go downstairs and listen to him play.

His lips start toying with the ball piercing in his tongue, the way they always does when he’s working up the nerve to perform for me. He claims it’s unintentional, but it’s extremely hot. He starts plucking the strings and the melody that flows out is both haunting and sweet. I’m already on the verge of tears when he begins to sing.

“Feels so wrong to want this. You look so broken there. A flicker in the mist, as tired as the air.” He looks up at me and my breath hitches. He holds my gaze the entire time he’s singing, except when he closes his eyes as he belts out the chorus. “So frightened of the dark. You’re my sleepyhead. Hiding with the stars. Put your dreams to bed, my sleepyhead.”

A tear rolls down my cheek and falls on his guitar as I grab his face and kiss him.

I open my eyes and Adam’s face is blurry through the tears.

“Claire, why are you crying?” Adam asks as he takes the Red Vines from my hand and lays them on the coffee table.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, wiping my cheeks as the song continues to play in the background. I scoot over to the other end of the sofa and hug my knees tightly. “I’m a horrible, horrible person.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true.”

I can feel him staring at me, but I keep my gaze focused on the ropes of red licorice on the table. They remind me of blood vessels and I think of how my mother abused her veins. I think of how I nearly took a razor to my veins six months ago. I think of all the secrets pumping through my veins, poisoning me, ruining me.

“There are some things that, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself they’re for the best, always seem to cut a chunk out of your heart. And you know that no matter how many wonderful people and beautiful adventures you welcome into your life, you’ll never be whole again. You’ll never be you again.” My throat aches as I speak, but I keep going. “I don’t even know who I was before I dropped out. I feel like that person wasn’t me. Or maybe who I am now isn’t the real me. All I know is that I became the kind of person I always swore I would never be, and from here on out that will never change because no amount of apologizing can undo what I did.”

He scoots toward me and I ball myself up tighter. “Claire.” Just the way he says my name makes me bristle. I know he’s going to tell me something I don’t want to hear. I close my eyes as he says, “I know what it’s like to feel like the guilt will destroy you. Those plans you found the other day, the day we left to my uncle’s house, those plans are a manifestation of my guilt.”

I open my eyes and he’s staring at the drafting table in the corner of the room with a distant look in his eyes. He rises from the sofa and wanders toward the corner where he lifts a few sets of plans off the top of the stack and slides the house plans out from the bottom. He comes back to the sofa and lays the plans on the coffee table in front of us.