“Come up here,” she tells him. Her fingers pulling at his strands in gentle instruction as she scoots over on the cushions to make room for his long limbs, but Austin can’t move. The feel of her tugging against his scalp is too much and somehow, not enough, and through heavily hooded eyes, he stares in awe at the woman doing this to him. He watches as she readjusts herself on the sofa, and shapes the blanket he pulled across her lap into a makeshift pillow. He closes his eyes and presses out a jagged breath at the thought of laying his head in her lap. “Come on,” she coaxes, her voice a throaty whisper, “someone’s got to fix you, too.”
Slowly, Austin rises and folds himself onto the couch, the warmth of her drawing him near. He settles his cheek against the blanket and shifts slightly to stare up at her. Tumbling waves of copper hair hover above him, masking wide brown eyes and full lips, porcelain skin, and he wants to brush it aside, as she does to his, and fit his hands to the back of her neck, pull her down to meet him. Instead, he curls into himself and closes his eyes as her fingers trail through his hair, letting the feeling welcome him gently into a slumber he doesn’t intend to fall into.
Harper watches as he drifts, the twitch of his thick lashes against his cheeks, and waits for his breathing to even out. As it does, she untangles her hand from his hair and swipes the backs of her fingers down his stubble-covered cheek, following the line of his jaw. The skin there is different than Liam’s, a shade or two darker with a scar or two and thicker hair, and the scratch of it against her hand feels foreign, but familiar. The want she feels to touch him has mounted within her since she awoke, the memory of his arms braced strongly around her in the alleyway, but she can’t place if it’s a want for his skin or just skin in general—a need to be needed, to touch and be touched. Some small part of her wonders if she’s lonely somewhere buried beneath the rubble Liam has made of her, or if she wants to spite Liam, get back at him in some way. She wonders if Austin is doing the same, consciously or not, and if she’s an awful person for thinking so. But something shifts alive in her chest when she touches him, her phantom heart contracting tightly as her fingers skim the surface of his neck and across the bare sliver of his exposed collarbone, and for now, she can’t find it in her to care what the reasons may be. She just wants the tingle his skin leaves on the tips of her fingers, and while he is there, asleep in her lap, and her hands are on him, she has it. Slowly, she strokes down his cheek again, pausing slightly when she nears his mouth, before trailing back up again. With every brush of her fingertips, tiny pinpricks of sparks fire beneath her skin, and while he sleeps, she stocks up on the feeling, brushing her hands across his forearms, his hands, his face and neck.
“Austin,” Harper whispers hours later, after her legs have gone numb and the room has grown cold from the night leaching warmth through the open door. Her hands are dormant now, resting on the thigh Austin isn’t fully draped across, and he feels the absence of them as he awakens and brushes his own hands across her lower leg. Harper cannot help herself—she smoothes a hand down his cheek once more as his eyes open to meet hers. “Hi,” she says softly.
“Hi,” Austin returns, his voice winding gruffly around the small word. Getting his bearings, he cannot find the motivation to move from her lap, from the comfort of her touch, and he reaches up to place one of her hands back in his hair. She smiles kindly as their hands tangle in it together and he smiles languidly in response as he says, “I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but I guess we’re even now. Thank you.”
“It was my pleasure,” Harper counters, honest to a fault. She scratches her fingers through the honeyed strands as he stretches his legs at the other end of the sofa, and feels a pitting in her stomach as she notices the darkness that has overtaken Austin’s backyard through the open patio door. A rush of wind sneaks in through the gap and they both shiver and draw nearer to each other as it hits them. “It’s getting late.”
“Want to go?” Austin asks, trying to mask the want to ask her to stay. She nods above him after a bare moment of hesitation. “I can drive you. Just let me wake up a bit more first.”
Austin moves off of her and gets to his feet, instantly feeling empty at the lack of her touch. He grabs another cigarette from the floor and lights it, stretching his limbs again as it dangles from between his lips and the smoke curls into his eyes. Harper watches him, the ripple of muscle in his back beneath his shirt, the tiny line of skin exposed where the hem hitches at his waist, and wants the feel of it under the pads of her fingers once more, but fights it, knowing it’s wrong to use someone in such a way, that the comfort isn’t worth the consequence.
“Your truck’s broken,” she tells him. “And I kind of want to walk it, anyway.” Alone on the darkened streets of Ashland, his skin will not be there for her to fist between her fingers, to lie to her with its call of want. “It’s not that far.”
“It’s far enough. And it’s freezing out there,” Austin replies, tossing the butt of his cigarette into a planter on the patio and pulling the door shut. “Let me take you. It’s the least I can do.”
“You’ve done much more than the least, already,” Harper sighs, standing and moving near to him. She reaches across the space between them and lays her hand against his arm, her fingers pressing into his skin just a bit. It’s meant to be a sincere gesture, but the selfishness of it isn’t lost on Harper. She touches him to soothe herself as much as, if not more so than, she does to comfort and reassure him. “When I’m with you, I don’t—I don’t think about—I feel better when I’m with you.”
“I’m sorry if I overstepped or anything by bringing you here, if any of this made you uncomfortable or—”
“Austin, don’t. I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to do.” Her grip tightens just slightly, as if to accentuate her point. “And I know this outsider routine has been an ongoing thing for you and I get it, I do, but you’re not always unwanted, Aus. I’m thankful you’re here and to be here with you—that we have each other right now.”
Austin hangs his head, and stares at the place where their skin meets. “He’s such a fool,” he says sadly, his eyes trained on the faint pressure of her fingertips. She brushes her thumb along his forearm, moving it back and forth through wispy blonde hair, and he uses his opposite hand to cover hers. There is a jolt and they both feel it, but pretend they don’t. “Text me when you get home, okay?”
“I will,” she assures him, her hand slipping from underneath his. She gathers her things and he walks her to the door, his hand itching to place itself on the small of her back to guide her out. She turns before she exits and stares up at him, at the somber half-smile there, and shakes her head. “You don’t have to worry about me, you know.”
“It’s a little too late for that,” he laughs. He reaches around her to open the door, relishes the tiny brush of his arm against hers. It’s something that’s happened thousands of times over the years, but it is the first time he sees her openly recognize the touch. She stares at the bare skin of her arm where it still tingles from the contact, until he bends at the waist to press his lips so softly against the apple of her cheek. Harper blushes beneath the feel of it, a kindling fire, and all of her attention lingers on that spot as he whispers, “Get home safe,” against her skin.
There is safety in numbers, or so she’s been told, and she feels that to be true with him. She walks home alone, knowing that’s how she needs to be, though the burn that lingers on her skin long after his touch is gone leaves her feeling safe, like he’s with her the whole way.
CHAPTER FIVE
A stiff wind gusts through the trees that blanket Liam in shade and knocks free a smattering of leaves, one of which cascades down and lands neatly in his upturned palm. He sits on a weathered bench—one that rattles beneath every motion, every shallow breath—in a public park, but he can’t remember which park, nor in which city or state it resides. He thinks from the mild weather that he’s probably in the South, somewhere like Louisiana or Texas, but it’s all been a
blur of blacktop. All he knows is it’s not Lithia Park and he is without Harper, and it hurts just as badly as he feared it would and hoped it wouldn’t.
The freedom of the outdoors has become his constant. There’s something about open spaces and sunshine, the sound of birds chattering in the trees overhead, the gurgle of streams and the crash of ocean waves against the shoreline that hold his anxiety at bay. When he’s indoors, he feels like he’s hiding, cowardly, but when his feet are in the grass and the wind is upon his face, he feels like he’s gone somewhere with purpose, that he’s reveling in a sense of liberty. But no matter how many beaches he walks or trails he hikes, the cavernous space in his chest remains vacant. He can’t find what fills that hole in any of the wide open spaces he seeks it in, because what he longs for is nearly three thousand miles away. She’s where he left her. She’s where he lost her.
He leaves the park and takes to the road again, letting each mile take him somewhere new, somewhere away from her. Each mile looks the same, exit signs and dashed white lines, and he’s seen thousands of them over the ninety-three days he’s been gone. Thousands of miles and ninety-three days of mistakes. He drives four hundred or so more along back roads and interstates, destination and direction unknown, before day ninety-four is ushered in. His hands ache and his eyes are weary as he pulls off the highway and navigates through the night to the nearest place he can lay himself down to sleep.
“A room,” he mutters, his voice thick and his eyes empty, and tosses a wad of cash onto the counter before the front desk clerk. The faceless, nameless man hands him a set of keys, old brass ones, and points vaguely down the hall. Liam nods once and moves on, his feet shuffling as he goes. He fumbles the key into the door it’s marked to match, and heaves his deadened body onto the bed where he fists his too-long hair between his fingers and pulls until the pain in his heart is lesser than the pain in his head.
The clock on the bedside table reads one-fifty-five and it flickers slightly, the current to it not as strong as it once was. Liam thinks of his heart, how it’s not nearly as strong as it once was either, and stares at the phone next to the clock, thinks of calling her. He dials the number from memory, every digit but the last, before slamming the receiver down. He can’t call her, as her half of their whole is what he ran from. Even if he was wrong to do so, as the pain that courses through him constantly indicates, he still runs. Liam is lost, a floating soul who needs grounding, but he doesn’t know if it’s her ground that he needs. He’ll find new earth to walk across tomorrow and the next day and the one after that, to find out where he belongs—he runs to find himself, apart from her, to know if he can.
He wonders what freedom even means as he thinks of her and watches the clock flicker until he falls asleep.
CHAPTER SIX
“Meat and Eat. This is Harper. How may I help you?” Harper drones into the phone. It’s quitting time, and she has her purse in one hand and the receiver in the other, and her patience begins to wane as the caller on the other end of the line fails to answer her. She drops her purse unceremoniously atop Hilary’s desk as she huffs into the phone, unable to deal with idiocy at such an hour. All she wants is her sweatpants and salted caramel ice cream, a hot shower, and it shows within the grim expression on her face. She rolls her eyes, feeling the situation warrants such childish indignation, and huffs sarcastically, “Well, it’s been a pleasure serving you. Thanks for calling.”
As she drops the receiver to its base, she hears a sharp, “Wait,” and she fumbles it back into her grasp before the call disconnects.
From just one word, four small letters, she knows the voice on the line belongs to Austin.
She whispers his name and doesn’t know why it feels so good forming on her tongue, the lick of the syllables tasting sweet. She’s said it so many times over the last decade, but it’s never before been synonymous with the comfort she finds in it, in him now. Her skin ignites at the memory of the other night, of lost loneliness and found security. If she can’t feel the heat of his skin, she’ll bargain to hear the warmth of his voice. That will be enough.
“Harp—you still there? Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Hi,” he echoes back at her after a beat and Harper can hear him exhale, can perfectly envision the cloud of smoke that leaves his lips with the action. She sits back down at the desk, the time on the clock all but forgotten as she waits for more of his words. They come eventually, quiet under the grating sound of a buzz saw in the background, and she knows his hands are rougher than before, that his golden hair holds tiny splinters of blonde wood, and she wants to rake her hands through the tangled strands, run her palms over his skin and feel the calm that follows. She thinks of this when he nervously stammers, “Do you want to—um—I was calling because—what are you doing tonight?”
“I was actually just about to leave work,” she tells him, but she knows that she will gladly sit in the tiny, windowless office all evening if it means his voice will ricochet back to her from the other end of the line. Her fingers come up to her mouth to feel the smile that results from the timbre of his voice, the softness of his breath across the line, even over the aggravated electric hum that dares try to cover it. She can’t remember a time she ever listened to him so intently. That smile flows into her words and she all but beams as she jokes, “I have a pretty hot date later with a carton of ice cream and a pair of sweatpants.”
“Oh, okay,” Austin mumbles, none of the lightness of Harper’s tone mirrored in his own, and she frowns at how easily that deflates her. “What kind of ice cream?”
“I’ll be off of work in an hour.” The words rush out of his mouth, eager. The saw in the distance sputters, then stops, and she can hear his breathing more clearly, but it’s dull under the sound of her pulse drumming in her ears. His breath and her pulse sound too quick to be normal, to not be fraught with some kind of longing. “Truck’s fixed. I can pick you up, if you want.”
“I’ll meet you. I have to pick up my date at Zoey’s, first,” Harper tells him, her voice low and conspiratorial, and her fingers curl around the strap of her purse as she readies herself to leave. A quick glance at the clock tells her that they’ll meet well after sundown and she warms at the thought of her hands in his hair in the dim light, once more. “Around six?”
“There’s a key under the mat, if you get there before I do.”
Harper fills much of the five o’clock hour wandering around the Ashland Food Co-Op’s produce section and buying a growler of amber ale from Standing Stone, before heading back to Meat and Eat to secretly wrap up thick cuts of steak after Hilary has gone home. She gathers all of the things that clichés tell her a man likes—meat, potatoes, beer—and she hopes that she can remember how to cook a steak without setting the whole kitchen ablaze. She used to cook for her mom and Liam regularly, but it’s been a while. Instead of worrying, she gives herself a backup plan of two turkey sandwiches, before walking down Main toward Zoey’s.
The windows are dark when Harper arrives at Austin’s and she doesn’t see his truck parked anywhere in the lot behind his line of row homes when she parks her own. Hoisting the packed grocery bags onto her hip, she slowly picks her way through the darkness to the front door and lets herself inside with a turn of the key she found tucked under the mat, as promised. She fumbles around for a moment, getting her bearings inside the even darker apartment and clawing the wall beside the door for a light switch, which she eventually finds after tripping over a boot and dropping her bundle of fingerling potatoes. They scatter across the front hallway, their varying colors like confetti across the tan tile, and at the sight, she breathes a sigh of relief that it isn’t a shattered growler or a busted carton of ice cream at her feet. Harper leaves them there to set the heavy bag down on the kitchen island and remove her coat and work shirt. She looks down at her m
ustard-colored tank top and wishes she had the forethought to wear something better that morning, or go home and change. But it’s just Austin and he’s seen her in much worse, she reminds herself as she turns back to the foyer. Still, when she sees him bent at the waist, scooping up the spuds and piling them into the cradle of his bent arm, she smoothes her shirt over her ribs and stands a little straighter.
“I don’t know much about cooking, but I think there’s an easier way to mash these than throwing ‘em at my floor,” he goads, his mouth curling into a wry smile as he straightens to his towering six-foot-two stature. “In fact, I think they even make a special instrument for that sort of thing. Pretty sure it’s called a potato masher or something like that. Think I might even have one.”
“Very funny,” Harper says dryly, but the tinkling laugh that follows as she crosses the ten feet from kitchen to foyer is the precise opposite. “Give ‘em here.”
She reaches for the pile of potatoes nestled against his body, making a point to brush her fingertips softly against his forearm as she does. They linger there for a moment, just millimeters from her assumed target, before her hand deliberately drags over the skin of his wrist—Austin’s voice echoing, I always want you to touch me, in her head. One of them exhales shakily as their eyes meet, but neither knows who, and the potatoes fall from his hold, striking the tile with a collective blunted thud. For a moment everything turns still and quiet, their eyes searching and breath held, but it doesn’t last long. She pulls him to her and Austin’s hands are quick to fit to Harper’s bare shoulders and press her against the wall. She gasps at the motion, at the strength of him, but doesn’t push him away. Instead, she flattens her hands on his chest and tilts her head upward, her chin rising like a dare. His hands are rough, as she knew they would be, but she isn’t surprised by the softness of his touch as it moves up from her shoulders, over the thin straps of her tank top, and across her neck, leaving a million sparks in his wake. She needs to know he feels it too, and as his thumb faintly moves across her lower lip and she watches him come undone, she finds her answer.