Ozzy gripped his shaggy hair and flexed his fingers. "I don't know-I've just, I've felt insane the last few months. You're gone. You're really gone, and I don't know how to deal with that. I don't know what's wrong with me," he mumbled, turning to the side and staring into the night. His arms fell to his sides.
"Harrison Caldwell."
That name passing his lips made her stomach fall, all the way to the ground. It pooled there, disbelief and dismay churnings its contents. Her fingers curled, wanting to scratch the name from his throat, his thoughts. One of her numb fingers scraped against the sharp edge of the key and pain pulsed there. It reminded her that she could feel even when she'd rather not.
"What?" She didn't understand how she was able to produce the word, or even the air that entered and left her lungs.
Ozzy turned to her, his eyes two golden ponds. They weaved and waved, a storm brewing from within. It would be destructive, and deadly, once it hit. "Harrison Caldwell. That's whose house you've been going to."
"How do you-why?" Beth wouldn't confirm his words, and denying them would do exactly that. She swallowed, felt her throat contract. Not saying anything was best. She turned her shocked eyes to the horizon, unconsciously looking in the direction of Harrison's house. Beth wanted to go there, and never come back to this town, this existence.
"That's who you've been seeing, that's the person who hired you. Are you even really working for him, or was that a lie too?"
Beth shifted her gaze to his, and stared.
"Beth."
She pressed her lips together, refusing to warrant his words with an answer. Beth owed him nothing. Placing a hand to the icy glass of the window, she steadied herself and put the key in the lock. "I'm going home. Don't try to stop me."
"Do you have any idea who he is, what he has?"
Her back stiffened, anger heating the cold from her body. Stealing the tremble from her voice. Disintegrating the trepidation from her eyes. Beth looked over her shoulder, met firestorm eyes with blue titanium ones, as indestructible as her faith in Harrison. She turned back to the Blazer. "I know everything."
"And you still chose him over me." His tone was derisive, disbelieving.
"I would choose him every time, over you and anyone else."
"He came to see me."
She froze with her back to him. Even the ice-covered landscape wasn't as motionless as her.
"Yeah. About a week ago. Showed up at my place in the middle of the night. He told me to stay away from you, said that if he ever heard I touched you again it would be the last time I touched anything."
Ozzy made a sound of incredulity. "At first, I couldn't believe who was talking to me, then what it meant sunk in. Harrison Caldwell wouldn't have warned me away from you unless he was involved with you in some way. After that, it all clicked into place."
A piece of snow skidded past her feet, and she knew Ozzy had kicked it. "So there you have it. I know your secret. It's sick, Beth. You're sick."
Her eyes glazed over with tears of fury. It wasn't sick. People would think that. They would criticize, and be disgusted. Because they didn't understand. And they couldn't. That was fine. That was life. But it wasn't her problem that others could discredit something they didn't comprehend.
"You say I've changed," he said from behind, his fading footsteps signaling his retreat. "Look at you. You've changed more."
"I have," she agreed, opening the car door. "And I like the changes."
She climbed in and slammed the door. Beth hit the locks, waiting until Ozzy left in his truck. She set her forehead on the cool steering wheel and tried to breathe. Beth had recently realized that she could miss something, but not want it back. She had been too busy looking behind her when she should have been looking ahead. That was the only way she'd allow herself to look from now on. Straight ahead. Like Harrison. With Harrison.
Harrison.
Chills swept over her body, up and down and crisscrossing over her. He'd confronted Ozzy. He'd stood up for her. He'd let his identity be known to someone, for her. Her hands shook with emotion for what he'd sacrificed. Harrison with his own nemesis living, growing, and inflicting havoc in his veins, fighting her battles. Overcome, she sat quietly in the cold as she breathed to steady her pulse before she attempted to go home.
Believing she was worth more than what Ozzy wanted to give her was the hardest thing she ever did.
Falling in love with Harrison was the easiest.
CONVULSIONS TOOK OVER her frame when she set eyes on Harrison the next day. He was the dark sun, fiery and consuming, and he lit her up. Burned her. She had to force her feet to stop, or Beth feared she never would. She'd walked right up to him, right into his arms, and she'd stay there, live there, breathe there. Beth would never go, not even when he told her to. Not even when he couldn't tell her to.
"How was your last day at The Lucky Coin? Did everything go okay?"
Beth inhaled.
Beth exhaled.
His copper eyebrows lowered over black, black eyes. He stood in the entryway, like he had been waiting for her. Like he was anxious to see her. Like he got up every morning hoping he would see her, that that was enough of a reason to meet another day, the same as it was for her. "What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?"
She curled the fingers of her free hand and shook her head, the erratic beat of her heart saying all the words she wouldn't.
"Beth. Tell me what's wrong."
Beth wanted to tell him so many things, but all she said was, "Thank you." Her voice was quiet and unsteady, and her fingers tightened around the handle of the laptop case.
"For?" He inclined his fire-kissed head of hair.
"You talked to Ozzy. Thank you. You didn't have to do that, but you did."
He gave a brief nod, looking away from her. "I did have to."
Her lips tugged down.
Harrison lifted his gaze to hers, the space from him to her disintegrated by the flames in his expression. So pale, so much strength overtaken by fragility. Harrison's body was imposingly tall, stiff with soreness. She knew he hurt, in his bones, in his muscles, in his soul. Her arms ached to hold him, to erase the pain, to take it away.
"I did have to, because if I learned that he touched you again, I would have hurt him." His hands opened and closed, opened and closed. "I wanted to hurt him. Every time I think of him hurting you, I want to hurt him a million times worse."
Beth set down the laptop case and moved for him, stopping only when the time it took to take a breath was all that was between them. Harrison's lips were carved from rock, his jaw from the same. But his eyes were alive, and they felt. Sometimes sadness, sometimes grief and hopelessness, and other times, like now, they were ignited with emotion.
Swallowing around the beat of her heart, and the strumming of her pulse, and her tightly wound body that wanted to know the feel of his, Beth lifted her hand. Harrison turned her into music. And she wanted to dance within the song of his life. Feel him, kiss him, love him, burn with him, live in him. Be with him.
"Stop," he rasped when her fingers were an instant from touching the hard plane of his cheekbone. He closed his eyes, the emotion draining from them into his skin, straining his features. Harrison opened his eyes and showed her nothing. "This-this has to stop. Whatever this is, it can't end well. I need you to go, and not come back. This was a bad idea, and I'm ending it."
Beth's heart sputtered, faltered, thought about stopping altogether. She shook her head, denying his words, denying his right to tell her such a thing. "It's too late for that."
The skin around his eyes tightened. "This is an illusion, Beth."
"Why do you keep pushing me away?"
"I'm trying to protect you."
"Don't."
A muscle bunched in his jaw. "You don't know what you're saying."
"I do. I want you to stop. I know what can and can't be done. I know the risks. I know what it involves. Stop trying to protect me and just … just let us be." Beth touched the shell of his ear and he flinched, careful not to move. "I care for you. Don't make me feel bad about it, and you don't feel bad about it either."
"And in the end, should it come to that?" Harrison's voice sounded like broken glass, cutting her skin with his words. "When you have to watch my body and mind fail? When the disease grows, and I finally lose. When I'm covered in sores and my body is emaciated, and every breath hurts. When you can count the bones in my body through my skin. Do you think I want you to see that?"
Her eyes filled with tears. She didn't want to think about how the disease could ravage his mind and body before it was done with him. But she had. Over and over Beth forced herself to imagine all the possible scenarios. And none of it was enough to keep her away, or change her mind. Whatever decisions were made, whatever happened, Beth would know exactly what she was doing, as she was doing it.