I had no idea what Jacqueline liked or didn’t.
‘I’ve never had a guy cook for me before,’ she said, leaning her elbows on the opposite side of the counter, watching me chop veggies and drizzle basil vinaigrette over them. Her inexperience with college-guy cooking boded well for the snapper and baked potatoes. Once everything was in the oven, I set the timer and led her to the sofa.
I wanted to know what conclusions she and her ex had reached, but I wouldn’t ask. She was here, and I couldn’t think about her going back to him.
Taking her magical hand in mine, I examined every millimetre of it. I traced the lines in her palm, the sensitive valleys between fingers and the arching whorls on the pads of each one. She kept her nails short so she could play her bass, pressing and plucking strings, without impediment.
Landon knows that. Lucas doesn’t.
I had to tell her. I had to tell her, soon.
Pulling her on to my lap, I leaned her into the corner cushions to tip her head back and kiss her neck, buzzing with need when she swallowed, tracing the path of those tiny quivering muscles with my tongue as her pulse and breathing sped. I unbuttoned her white blouse – one button, then two, following the path of each inch of newly gained territory with my lips, halting at the top of her bra. If I unfastened her any further, our dinner would be burned to soot.
One of her hands was trapped between us, splayed against my chest. Her free hand gripped my bicep, the thick knit bunched beneath her palm. When my tongue began to stroke the just-visible curves between her breasts, she kneaded my arm like a kitten and purred like one, too. The weight of her was just right, her rounded hip pressing into the saddle of my lap. I fought to slam the door on my rampaging contemplations – like how her soft, naked body would feel in my hands. I wanted to turn her round, feel the heat of her pressed against me –
The timer began to beep, and Francis added his eager meow to the alarm.
I’d never been so turned on and willingly ready to starve in my life.
‘Time to eat.’ Those words discharged another surge of reckless, uninhibited thoughts concerning Jacqueline’s lovely body.
Her disorientated, frustrated groan was a mind-blowing sort of music to my ears – a refrain that told me, clearly, she wanted me. What she knows of you, my brain clarified. Even possessed with lust, I couldn’t break away from my conscience.
Over dinner, I mentioned that I’d cooked for Dad and myself before leaving for college.
‘You cooked? Not your mom or dad?’ Her gaze was steady below faintly creased brows.
‘My mom died when I was thirteen.’ I tried to make light of the fact that I did the cooking after that – like I was just making sure Dad and I ate something besides toast and fish.
‘I’m sorry.’ Her genuine sympathy surfaced in the quiet concern of her voice, and I felt pulled apart by contradictory desires – follow my characteristic restraint where the subject of my mother was concerned, or tell her everything. As usual, the words roadblocked in my throat. I nodded and said nothing.
While we ate, Francis consumed his body weight in snapper and yowled to be let out after. Bolting the door behind him, I imagined he’d need a jog around the neighbourhood rather than a hunting expedition tonight.
I walked back to the table and took Jacqueline’s hand. She rose and followed me to my bed, where we lay, eyes locked, like it was old habit to do so. I reached to touch her, to confirm that she was real and not a cruel fabrication of my heart. Her skin was so soft, and her face became more beautiful every time I saw her. She scared the hell out of me, but I couldn’t stay away from her.
I unbuttoned her blouse the rest of the way, slowly, eyes on hers, ready to stop the moment she signalled me to do so, regardless of what we’d done before. She swallowed thickly, nervously, as I bared the curve of her shoulder and leaned to touch my lips to it. Her warm breath in my ear, she shoved her cool hands under my shirt, palms sliding across my abdomen and wandering higher. I couldn’t tear my shirt off fast enough.
Sliding one leg between hers, I pressed my thigh against her firmly and drove my tongue into her sweet mouth when she gasped, my need for her overriding my need for oxygen. She rewarded me with a subtle moan and arched against me, her hands sliding over my skin, stroking over the poem inscribed on my side that I finally understood fully. My brain was a riot of want and fear. I’d never been so terrified of my own desires, because they went well beyond her body. I shook to my core, my soul curving round her protectively as my mind strove to determine the logical calculation that could make her mine. I wanted to be hers as much – more – than I wanted to possess her, when I knew damned well that neither was possible.
She moved above me, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, the silky tips brushing my chin, her blouse and bra sliding away with strokes of my appreciative fingers. I shoved my reservations to the side for these surrendered, short-lived moments, worshipping her with murmured supplications and whisper-soft caresses. I felt certain my skin’s nerve endings had multiplied in the prior week, because every place she touched me with her mouth or fingertips, I burned.
Since I had no plan to push past Jacqueline’s former point of resistance, the hours we spent in my bed were hotter than I’d ever imagined making out could be, and kissing her was a luxurious, sensory indulgence all its own. As my body accepted this, I lingered over every stroke of my tongue, coaxing her along with my mouth alone and pinning her hands flat to the mattress so she couldn’t touch me. She arched and twisted beneath me, winding her legs round mine, telling me with every whimper and hum that her body was the instrument I knew how to play, and play well.
When I finally released her hands, she shoved her fingers into my hair as I kissed down her chest and across her belly, swirling my tongue into her navel while gripping her tightly between her waist and hips, as if debating whether to remove her jeans. She scraped her nails across my shoulders, and I knew if I touched the button just below my chin, she would tell me yes. Every provocative touch of her fingertips, her lips, her tongue, and every sound she made built both my craving and my contentment – which made no logical sense, but I didn’t care.
I slipped back to her lips, slowly, pressing my weight into her, attending to every part of her body that demanded my notice on the way up. She trembled and held on to me when I pulled us to our sides. ‘I should get you back.’
Tucked to my chest, her fingers were entwined with mine, and though she nodded, she tightened her grip on my hand and didn’t move an inch from her position in my arms for several minutes. I felt a compelling desire to preserve the moment, as if final grains of sand were streaming through the neck of an hourglass, and all I wanted to do was tip it on to its side for a few more precious seconds.
We dressed without speaking, and I buttoned up her blouse, lingering deliberately over each button, and then leaned to kiss her one last time.
I was about to bring the Harley to life when Charles emerged from the back of the house with a kitchen trash bag. I couldn’t move, my eyes tracing his steps from the door to the bin, and back to the door. I willed him to go inside without turning round, but I knew he wouldn’t. His hand on the doorknob, he turned and looked straight at me. Straight at Jacqueline.
‘Landon? Jacqueline?’ he asked, as if he couldn’t believe his own eyes. Or just wished to God he was wrong. He sighed and told me to meet him in the kitchen when I returned. I nodded once, and he went inside.
Jacqueline said nothing at all. I didn’t know if she’d been shocked into silence or if she’d sensed this impending finale, as I had. The ten-minute journey to her dorm seemed like ten seconds, but it was long enough for me to realize one clarifying truth about my dual persona and Jacqueline: she already knew.
19
Landon
After spring break, my truancy scaled new levels of don’t-give-a-fuck. Mr Quinn was disappointed in me – he’d told me so every time he handed back a failing or near-failing test or sent me to detention for
skipping. But there were some days I just wasn’t going to sit across a table from Melody Dover.
Ditching class eventually results in in-school suspension, because in public school, a body present and accounted for means money from the state. Exiled to a secluded room, you’re given a shit ton of work that no one can make you do. A front-office secretary babysits you. You’re allowed to sleep all day, though they occasionally jostle your shoulder and tell you not to sleep. All of this, of course, is for your own good.
The last time she sentenced me to ISS, Ingram informed me that one more unexcused absence would result in my expulsion, and even an excused absence would result in my being held back a year instead of being promoted to the next grade. No fucking way I wanted to be stuck there for an extra year. In the last month of school, I had to attend every class, which blew. I passed by the skin of my teeth, Grandpa would have said.
I worked for my dad on the boat, but he handed me cash that didn’t amount to minimum wage, so I supplemented with a second job. Rick Thompson had become one of the most sought-after guys in town. His popularity was due to two things: drugs, and girls he called party favours – who brought in business and were paid in drugs. Thanks to frat guys, teen guys looking for something non-family to do on their family vacations, and grown men who were stupid enough to be lured by high-school girls, Thompson made serious bank.
He began allowing for lines of credit from locals. Now and then, somebody either got in too deep or resold in his territory without giving him a cut.
That’s where Boyce and I came in.
Boyce had mostly quit picking on girls and smaller kids, though that had little to do with becoming more perceptive. The first got him laid more often – obvious incentive, and the second was due solely to the fact that I didn’t like it. His prior bully reputation preceded him, though, and after my Hulk-out during the fight with Richards, the added benefit of mental instability made me almost as menacing as my best friend. Luckily, Thompson didn’t have many problems, so most of the time, we were just there to make sure people did what he wanted them to do – pay him.
In return, he paid us. Sometimes in drugs, sometimes in money. All we had to do to be on his payroll was be intimidating and beat the shit out of the occasional dumbass. Boyce, bigger than me, typically handled the first. I handled the second – and I enjoyed it.
‘You don’t have to be in here,’ I said. ‘We don’t need you fucking fainting or some shit.’
Boyce threw his hands in the air, as if he hadn’t made gagging sounds while Arianna lined up the huge curved needle. ‘If you don’t want me to stay, I won’t stay,’ he said.
I stared at his paler-than-usual face with a straight-up blank expression.
He rolled his eyes and went back out front.
Five minutes later, I had a ring through my lip.
‘Sexy ma-aaan,’ Boyce sang while I paid. He was fine once the needles were put away.
‘Want one, Wynn? I’m paying.’
‘Fu-uuuck no-oooo,’ he sang, adding a hip-swivelling dance move. ‘My sexiness is a Wynn-win without pokin’ holes in my ski-iin.’
Arianna shook her head and handed me my change.
‘Oh, God. Stop,’ I said.
‘See what I did there?’ he asked, unrepentant.
LUCAS
‘You already knew, didn’t you?’ I couldn’t look at her.
‘Yes.’
I wanted to know how long she’d known and how she found out, but neither of those things were important. I made myself face her anger. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘Why didn’t you?’
I couldn’t blame her. I couldn’t answer her.
She wanted to know how it was that I went by two names.
‘Landon is my first name, Lucas the middle. I go by Lucas … now. But Charles – Dr Heller – has known me a long time. He still calls me Landon.’ My throat narrowed when I searched for the words to explain why I’d made that change, so I said nothing. The fact remained that I could have told her and hadn’t.
‘You lied to me.’ Her eyes snapped blue fire.
I stepped off the bike and took hold of her shoulders, desperate to make her see that I’d never meant to hurt her. I insisted I’d never called myself Landon – that was her assumption, but Jesus Christ if that wasn’t the most spineless excuse I’d ever voiced. I had known all along what she believed to be true, and I hadn’t corrected her perceptions.
She shrugged out of my grasp and I looked into her eyes. The betrayal there sliced me open. I had to let her go.
‘You’re right, this was my fault. And I’m sorry.’ My hands shook and I knotted them at my sides. I steeled myself and took a breath. ‘I wanted you, and this couldn’t happen as Landon. Anything between us is against the rules, and I broke them.’
I had to make this right with Charles – first and foremost, for the inviolability of her grade. She’d done the work, and I couldn’t let her be punished for my deception. My desire to restore the trust of the man who’d been my saviour in my darkest hours was secondary. I couldn’t consider, now, what I would do if I’d lost that trust entirely.
‘So it’s just over,’ she said, and I came back to myself.
‘Yes,’ I answered, bleeding out at her feet. My ears were ringing. I knew I’d spoken the word, but I couldn’t hear it.
She did.
She turned and went inside, and when she’d disappeared, I went home to face the consequences of what I’d done.
I wanted you … I wanted you … I wanted you. I heard the refrain of my words all the way, like a vinyl track with a scratch, repeating. And then hers: It’s just over … over … over.
It was nearly one a.m. when I slipped through the back door. Heller sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, his gradebook and Jacqueline’s paper. The only light came from the stovetop and the small lamp over the table. The rest of the house was silent.
I took a seat across from him and waited. In all the times I’d cooled my heels across a desk from a frustrated teacher or my small-minded principal, I’d never felt this bone-deep remorse, or this exhaustive disappointment with myself.
As soon as I was seated, he asked, ‘Did you assist her in producing this paper?’
I shook my head. ‘I offered her research sources, and I checked her conclusions and citations. But she wrote the paper.’
‘Same as you would have done for anyone I’d assigned this project to.’
I sighed. ‘Yes, but –’
‘Son, let me help you unhook yourself where I can.’ He grimaced, our eyes connecting. ‘If I’d assigned this paper to another student in the class, would you have given that student the same help?’
I nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Did she ask you for additional advantage or any kind of grade revision because you two were … involved?’ His eyes didn’t leave mine.
I licked my lip, and sucked the ring into my mouth. ‘She … didn’t know I was the class tutor.’
His frown intensified and he squinted, confused.
‘I met Jacqueline outside of class, before you assigned her the make-up work and gave her my email address. She knew me as Lucas, but you called me Landon. I never met her in person as her tutor – we conducted all of that through email, because our schedules didn’t work for meeting up.’
He quirked a brow and my face heated.
‘Um, during regular, daytime hours.’
‘So you didn’t know, until I asked you to assist her with catching up, that she was in the class –’
‘I knew.’
He sighed. ‘She thought you were in the class – but didn’t know you were the tutor.’
I nodded.
He pulled off his glasses and closed his eyes, heaving a sigh. ‘So you conducted this entire dual – relationship – lying to her about who you were. And she didn’t know until tonight.’
‘Right.’ I swallowed, but the guilt didn’t go down easily. I hadn’t intended to lie additionall
y tonight, but this lie protected Jacqueline. I didn’t know why she hadn’t confronted me once she knew or suspected. I didn’t even know how long she’d known. But it wouldn’t look good that she’d known and continued the relationship.
I had no choice but to protect her – doing so had become a necessity, like breathing.
‘Landon –’ he waved a hand and corrected himself – ‘Lucas – why?’
How many times had I asked myself this question? ‘At first, it was because she was afraid of me – as Lucas. But not as Landon. Through email, she took me as you’d presented me – a knowledgeable upperclassman who would help her catch up in class. She was funny, and smart, and as Landon, I didn’t …’ I frowned at my hands. ‘I didn’t scare her.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Not to disaffirm your feelings … but she didn’t look all that frightened of you a few minutes ago.’
My lips pinned into a flat line.
‘Is there anything else you’d like to confess, before I decide what to do about this?’
Shit, I thought, as one more indiscretion popped into my head. ‘The quiz – I didn’t tell her about it, per se … but I may have hinted that you were giving one.’
He covered his eyes with his hand and sighed. ‘All right. I’ll speak with her Monday –’
‘Charles.’ I leaned into the table, clasping my hands in front of me like a supplicant. ‘This is my fault. All of it. She did nothing out of line – she’s worked hard to catch up. She wrote that paper unaided, as you wanted. If she’d have had a problem doing it, I might have been tempted to cross a line to help her. But that wasn’t the case. Please don’t penalize her for my bad judgement.’
He angled his head, gaze softening. ‘You admire this girl quite a bit, don’t you?’
I gave one quick nod.
‘You put her in a bad spot here, son. If I hadn’t known you all your life … I could be making a disciplinary decision for each of you based on how the situation looks. Appearances often carry more weight than the truth – but I think you know that.’ He sighed again, laying a palm over my tightly gripped hands. ‘Well. Can I trust you to limit yourselves to appropriate tutoring interactions for the last couple weeks of the semester? I need your word.’