“I thought you said she was leaving today.”
I nodded. “She was. But her ex-boyfriend is charting a relentless campaign to get her back, and he wanted to see her tonight.”
His hand wandered under my shirt, exploring. “So what happened with them? Why did they break up?”
My lips parted when his hand cupped one breast, molding it to his palm as though it was meant to fit there.
“Over me.”
His eyes widened slightly and I smiled.
“No—not like that. Chaz was… Buck’s best friend.” I hated how my body clenched when I thought of Buck, how my teeth clenched when I said his name. Without even being present, he triggered responses I couldn’t quell, and that infuriated me.
“He’s gone now, right?” he asked. “He’s left campus?” Transferring his arm to my back, Lucas pressed me closer, his hand at the back of my neck.
Closing my eyes, I burrowed my head beneath his chin, nodding.
“I doubt he’ll be allowed to come back next semester, even before the trial,” he said.
I breathed him in, closing my mouth tight and inhaling the scent of him through my nose. I felt sheltered by him. Safe. “I’m always looking over my shoulder. He’s like one of those jack-in-the-box clowns… I never told you about the stairwell, did I?”
I wasn’t the only one incapable of suppressing physical reactions. His body stiffened, and his grip on me was suddenly less gentle, more charged. “No.”
Mumbling the story into his chest, trying to stick to facts and nothing else so I could temper my own response, I ended with, “He made it look like we’d done it in the stairwell. And from the looks on everyone’s faces in the hall… from the stories that circulated after… they believed him.” I forced the tears back. I didn’t want to cry over Buck anymore. “But at least he didn’t get into my room.”
Quiet for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to comment, he finally pushed me onto my back, wedging one knee between mine and kissing me roughly. His hair tickled the side of my face, and I wrenched my hands—trapped between us—free, plunging them into his hair as though I could pull him closer.
The way he kissed me felt like a brand. Like he was tattooing himself under my skin.
He knew all of my secrets, and I knew his.
But that seeming reciprocity was a lie—because he hadn’t been the one to reveal his own. I’d excavated them, and worse, he was unaware of it.
My guilt mushroomed between us, along with my longing for him to share that part of himself. To trust me with it. I was going home in three days. I couldn’t bring this up with miles and hours between us, or keep it to myself for weeks longer.
When we slowed again, wrapped up in each other and allowing our libidos and heart rates time to decelerate, I saw an opening.
“So you sort of live with the Hellers, and they’re family friends?”
He watched me and nodded.
“How did your parents meet them?”
Turning onto his back, his teeth slid over the ring in his lip and he sucked it into his mouth. I recognized this as his stress-disclosing equivalent of Kennedy’s neck-rubbing.
“They went to college together.”
The earbuds had been dislodged sometime during the last half hour. He turned the iPod off and wound the wires around it tightly.
“So you’ve known them all of your life.”
He pushed the iPod into his front pocket. “Yeah.”
Images of what I’d read, and what Dr. Heller had revealed, flashed in front of my eyes. Lucas needed comforting—I’d never known anyone who needed it more—but I couldn’t console him over something he hadn’t shared.
“What was your mother like?”
He stared up at the ceiling, and then closed his eyes, unmoving. “Jacqueline—”
The scrape of a key in the door startled both of us. The room was unlit, except for a low-watt desk lamp. When the door opened, a block of light, filled with Erin’s silhouette, fell across the floor in the center of the room.
“J, are you already asleep?” She whispered, her eyes still adjusting from the bright hallway, or she’d have seen that I wasn’t alone on the bed.
“Um, no…”
Lucas sat up and swung his feet to the floor, and I followed. Timing is everything, I thought.
After tossing her purse on her bed and kicking off her shoes, Erin turned back toward us. “Oh! Hey… er. I think I might have some laundry I need to do…” She shrugged out of her coat and grabbed her nearly-empty laundry basket.
“I was just leaving.” Lucas bent to pull on his black boots and lace them up.
Mouthing, Oh my God I’m so sorry! over his head, Erin was the picture of contrition.
I shrugged and mouthed back, It’s okay.
Following Lucas into the hall, I gripped my opposite arms, cold after the warmth of lying next to him. “Tomorrow?”
He zipped his leather jacket before turning to me, his lips set firm. His eyes slid from mine and I felt the wall between us then, too late. Our gazes connecting, he sighed. “It’s officially winter break. We should probably use it to take a break from each other as well.”
I tried to form an intelligible protest, but wasn’t sure what to say. I’d just pushed him to this, after all. “Why?” The word rasped from me.
“You’re leaving town. I will be, too, for at least a week. You need to pack up, and I’ll be helping Charles get final grades posted over the next day or so.” His justification was so logical; there was no concealed thread of emotion I could wrench free. “Let me know when you’re back in town.” He bent to kiss me, quickly. “Bye, Jacqueline.”