Cassidy

 

It takes me about two hours, but I’m not about to stop until I have an even dozen. And then, just for the hell of it, I catch one more. Maybe to show off a little.

I took an hour-long walk in the dark last night, just to cool down after kissing her foot like that. I don’t know why I did it. I guess because I felt this desperate, insane urge to prove to her that her presence was an honor, not a burden.

But the feelings it conjured up? The way my blood started rushing so hot and fast, my heart pumping it like crazy? The way my pecker stiffened almost painfully? I’ve never felt these feelings before, but I recognize them instinctively. I’m wildly attracted to her. If we were animals, I’d want to mate with her. Because we’re humans, I want to make love to her.

Love.

A word that keeps entering my mind lately.

And I know it’s not possible, because of promises I intend to keep, but I can’t help the way I feel.

With my thirteen fish swimming around in the bucket, I reel in my line and remove my favorite lure, tucking it back into a safe place in the tackle box. I close and latch the top, then lean the rod against a tree trunk.

Moving as quietly as possible, I step through the high grass to the rock where Brynn is sleeping.

Since I’ve known her, I’ve probably seen Brynn asleep more than awake. I’ve had a lot of opportunities to watch her sleep. But not like this. Not with her face turned up to the sunshine, her freckles on full display, her lips slightly parted and tilted upward just a touch. Like she’s happy. Like maybe being here with me makes her happy.

This is an image that will torture me when she’s gone, but I can’t force myself to look away because, in my whole life, I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as this woman. If I didn’t know better, and if it was allowed, I might even think that I love her.

And there’s that word again, I think. I trace the lines of Brynn’s face, finally resting on her mouth. I wonder what it would be like to kiss her, to press my lips to hers. They’d be warm from the sun, and soft. What would she taste like? How would her body feel in my arms if I clasped her to me as our lips touched? Would I be able to stop after a single kiss? Or would I need more?

A terrible thought occurs to me, and I wonder if my father ever looked at my mother like this. In fact, Mama could have been wearing that very T-shirt and jean shorts, and my father could have looked at her with desire, with want. I don’t know if he loved my mother or not. When I think back, it feels like he did. It feels like they loved each other, as unbelievable as that sounds. Because how could he feel one way for my mother and still do what he did to other women? How could he feel love for her but a few days later, go kill someone else? It scares me. God, it scares me so bad that I lean away from Brynn, searching my mind for indications that my appetites run similar to his. I search and search, but I can’t find anything but protectiveness and tenderness for the small, sleeping woman in front of me.

“I’d never hurt you,” I murmur, the words so soft, I can barely hear them. I’d never hurt anyone. But there is that tiny part of me that isn’t convinced, that reminds me of who I am. I don’t know what genes lurk inside me, biding their time to make themselves known.

Sighing with the bleak unfairness of it all, I reach for her shoulder and shake it gently.

“Hey, angel,” I whisper. “Time to wake up.”

***

For two days we eat all manner of brook trout, cooked up in so many mouthwatering and creative ways, I swear I never knew how delicious fresh fish could be.

Brynn wasn’t kidding when she said she wasn’t a bad cook.

We’ve had fillets with a maple syrup reduction, the whole fish dredged in eggs and flour and fried with fresh herbs, and tonight she made some sort of spicy tomato sauce that caught my mouth on fire, but tasted so danged good on the flaky white meat, I couldn’t stop eating.

She’s taken over my greenhouse, babying the tomatoes and trussing up overgrown herbs. It’s come alive under her care and makes me smile every time I step inside.

Speaking of smiles, I live for hers. As if on cue, she looks up at me and grins.

“You okay? I might have gone overboard with the horseradish.”

“Is that what’s burnin’ my mouth?” I ask, reaching for my glass of water.

“. . . he asks after three helpings,” she says, winking at me.

“It was good,” I say, leaning back and patting my stomach. “You’re going to make me fat.”

“Impossible. You work too hard to get fat.”

“How do you stay so little if you eat like this at home?” I ask, replacing my glass.

“I don’t eat like this at home,” she says. “Eating like this is only fun if you’re sharing it with someone.”

I nod, realizing that she learned to cook like this for Jem, probably, then stopped when she lost him. That she would share her skills with me sends a shock of something wonderful through my body.

“Thank you,” I say, leaning forward to take her empty plate.

She cooks and I clean up. It’s become our tacit agreement since she took over cooking, the day before yesterday.

“Are you still taking out my stitches tonight?” she asks.

I stand up and walk the dishes to the sink, where I add them to the bucket of water that holds the soaking pans and bowls Brynn used for cooking.

“Yeah,” I say, turning to look at her over my shoulder. “Everything looked good this morning. I think it’s time.”

“Will it hurt? I’ve never had stitches. In or out. And thank God I don’t remember most of what happened when they went in.”

“Nah. You won’t even feel them come out. Shouldn’t, anyway.”

“And then I’m finishing Owen Meany.” She sighs. “Are you starting a new book tonight?”

Those D batteries have been burning a hole in my bureau drawer because I’ve been wanting to suggest a movie night for a few days now. The idea of sitting next to her, close to her, on the couch while we watch the small TV has my stomach in good knots. I’ve read books where a guy and a girl go out on a date to the movies and always wondered what it was like. It’s not like I have a right to put my arm around her or anything—I know we wouldn’t actually be on a date, just watching a movie. It still gets me a little excited. And I can’t decide if that’s okay or not. Is it okay to want to sit next to a pretty girl in the dark and watch a movie? I guess it is. As long as it doesn’t go anywhere.

“How about a movie?” I ask, staring down at the dishes in the sink, which I wash with a sponge, then rinse in the clean-water bucket.

She laughs, and I love the sound of Brynn’s laughter, but I’m not sure if she’s laughing at me or not this time, so I keep my back to her, concealing my flushed cheeks.

“Wait. Really? Can we?” she asks, and my shoulders, which are rigid, relax because I can hear the excitement in her voice.

“Sure. I have a portable VHS player. A little TV to hook it up to. Batteries.”

“I saw your collection of movies, but I assumed you kept them out of nostalgia.”

I shake my head and glance around at her. “Nope. We can watch one . . . if you want.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I’d love it. A little technology fix!”

I rinse another plate and add it to the drying rack. She’s told me a lot about the internet since she’s been here, and though it’s hard for me to completely get my head around it, I love the notion of information at my fingertips. Someday I’d like to give it a try, all this technology she talks about.

“Do you have one in mind?” I ask. “A movie?”

“You’re killin’ me, Smalls!” she says, giggling softly behind me.

I feel a smile split my face and whip my head around to look at her. “The Sandlot! You know it?”
“Cass, we’re only three years apart. Of course I know it. Every kid in our generation knows it.” She blinks at me. “Even you!”

“I played baseball when I was little.”

“Oh, yeah?”

I nod, remembering the day I hit a home run for my Little League team. It was the summer before my father was arrested, before my whole world changed. And it was—before the day I met Brynn Cadogan—the best day of my life.

“Yeah. Little League.”

“Before you moved here.”

The pan she used to make the tomato sauce needs a little more elbow grease, and I lay into it with a Brillo Pad, remembering Mama’s face as I rounded the bases. My father was out on the road, as usual, but she sat in the bleachers watching. She was so proud of me—her “winning little man.” And then the whole team hoisted me on their shoulders, and we got our picture taken for the North Country Register. We didn’t end up winning any more games, but for that day, we were champions.

“Yeah,” I say, realizing that she’s waiting for an answer. “When we lived in town.”

“When your dad was still alive?”

I clench my teeth and swallow hard, transferring the pan into the rinse water. I hate the way she calls him my dad, so casually. He was never, ever my dad. He was, unfortunately, my biological father.

“Um, yeah.”

“You are not a man of many words, Cassidy Porter,” she says, her voice exasperated. “Don’t you have any good stories to tell me?”

Good stories?

No. Not many, sweet Brynn.

Finished with the dishes, I pour the soapy water down the drain and put the bucket on the floor. I’ll take it outside and dump it later. Then I slide the rinse-water bucket over to where the soap bucket was. I add a little soap to it so it’s ready for tomorrow’s dirty dishes, then I turn to Brynn.

“Some stories have really bad endings.”

She stares at me from where she’s still sitting at the square, four-person table. “Do you have a bad story inside of you?”

She has no idea how close her words come to the truth. I flinch.

“Oh. But, Cassidy, we all have bad stories inside of us,” she says, her voice gentle as she stands up and takes a step toward me.

Not like mine. Not as bad as mine.

She searches my eyes and takes another step toward me, reading my gaze astutely. “Yes, we do. Jem was murdered. That night the cops came to my door? To tell me? One of the worst nights of my life. A horror story if there ever was one.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to say that the night the cops came to my door was the worst night of my life too. But I’d be opening a can of worms that I don’t ever want to open with my Brynn.

My hands are on my hips, but she reaches out for one of them, curling her small fingers around mine and pulling my hand into hers. As always, her touch sends longing galloping through my body like a herd of wild horses, making my heart thunder, making every nerve ending in my body clamor for more.

“I know something bad must have happened,” she says quietly, her green eyes boring into mine. “A mother doesn’t just uproot her son from a small town and move out to the middle of nowhere if everything’s happy. But whatever it was . . .” She pauses, her fingers clasping mine. “. . . it wasn’t your fault. You were just a little boy. Whatever happened with your father or your mother, whatever they did, or whatever happened to them, you were just a child. It wasn’t your fault. You know that, right?”

In a roundabout way, I do know that.

It’s not my fault that my father killed those girls, but the fact remains that they’re dead.

It’s not my fault that the townsfolk of Millinocket were frightened of my mother and me, but we couldn’t live there anymore.

It’s not my fault that my blood, my genes, are half Porter, but it doesn’t change the fact that my grandfather worried for the monster inside me.

“Whatever it is . . . tell me you know it’s not your fault,” she says, her sweet voice pleading.

Not my fault?

It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t change anything.

I am who I am.

Brynn’s eyes narrow as they focus on mine. Her voice is soft when she asks, “What happened to you, Cassidy?”

Would it be a relief to tell her?

My father was a sociopath who killed a dozen women or more. I found out on my eighth birthday. He was tried and convicted and killed in prison ten months later by a group of angry inmates. It became unbearable for my mother and me to live in town, so we moved here.

That’s what happened to me.

I look into her beautiful bright eyes that stare up at me with hope and compassion, and my heart swells with yearning to unload my tangled past. But I’m distracted by another emotion shining in her eyes—something deeper and utterly impossible. Impossible, even though I’m looking at it, even though I’m seeing it stare back at me:

Love.

The deep and impossible emotion brightening Brynn’s eyes is love.

A jolt of realization makes my breath catch and my head swim. I jerk my hand away and take a step back from her, dropping her eyes and staring desperately down at my toes.

We cannot love each other.

It is not allowed.

“I can’t . . .”

“You can’t what?” she murmurs, still standing close to me.

So close.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t do this.

I can’t love you.

I can’t let you love me.

“It’s okay,” she says, talking fast, an out-of-control quality entering into her rising tone. “We’re adults. We’re free. You’re here . . . and me. Alone. And . . . we’re . . . um, we’ve been spending a lot of time together. And, um, you know that people who meet during traumatic experiences bond faster? So it makes sense that our feelings would grow into—”

“Stop!” I bark.

The room goes still and somehow spins at the same time. My heart is pounding so loudly in my ears, I bet I’m wincing.

“Cass,” she gasps.

“No,” I bite out. “Just . . . stop. Please.”

“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” she says, and it’s like someone reaches into my chest and fists my heart. A single, bereft sound that makes me want to die because it is full of so much sadness, so much longing. “I thought . . .”

Her voice drifts off.

I clear my throat, then take a deep breath and hold it.

Do something. Say something.

“Let’s get those stitches out,” I mutter, finally looking up at her.

Her eyes are glistening because she’s about to cry, which makes me feel like a demon. She tugs her top lip between her teeth, gnawing on it for a second before turning her back to me and taking a seat at the table.

“Okay,” she says, averting her eyes, her voice defeated.

I reach over the fridge for the first aid box and place it on the table. Without looking at her, I open it and take out a small scissors that I sterilized after using them last time, and a pair of tweezers.

“Should I take off my shirt?”

Yes.

No.

Definitely no.

“No,” I say, pulling out the bottle of alcohol and a clean gauze pad. “Just lift it a little.”

Her fingers drop to the hem, and she pulls up the shirt, still looking away from me. When I glance at her face, she’s blinking rapidly, her jaw clenched tightly like she’s desperately trying not to cry.

“Brynn,” I say, pulling out the chair beside her and sitting down. “I’m sorry for yelling.”

I don’t look at her face. I focus on the first of the six incisions, swabbing it with alcohol first, then leaning forward to carefully cut through the middle of each stitch with the small scissors.

“I feel like . . . an idiot,” she says, sniffling softly.

Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip.

“Don’t,” I say, resting the scissors on the gauze pad.

“I . . . I thought we were . . .”

I tug the stitches from each side with the tweezers, placing each half on the table. The small pile grows as I tug on the tenth knot, relieved when it slides easily from the tiny needle hole. I reach for the Steri-Strip and rip off three small pieces, which I place over the healing incision.

“What?” I ask, moving to the next incision and swabbing it clean before cutting.

“I thought you liked me.”

I gulp, taking a deep breath as I pick up the scissors again. “I do.”

“But not . . . like that,” she says.

I’m not totally sure what she means, but I assume she’s talking about attraction, and she has no idea how very wrong she is.

Snip. Snip. Snip.

“It’s not a matter of liking you. It would be impossible not to like you,” I say honestly, finding it far easier to talk about this when I’m concentrating on something other than her eyes. I reach for the tweezers. “But we’re very different.”

“How?”

“Well, for one thing, my life is here. Yours is in California.”

“Lives can change,” she says.

“Not that much. My life works. I’m not looking to change it.”

The second half of the third stitch doesn’t want to come out, and when I force it, she bleeds a little. I take a clean gauze pad and press it to a bright red blood droplet. “Hold this.”

She is holding up her shirt with one hand and can’t see what I’m doing, so I reach for her fingers and guide them to the gauze, pressing them gently. My fingers linger over hers for a moment before I pull away.

I can take care of one more incision from this angle and get to work. It’s the one that became infected last week, but now it looks good. It’s healing well.

Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip.

“So you do like me,” she says, her voice less upset than it was before.

“Of course,” I answer softly.

“And we’re trapped here together for two more weeks.”

“Mm-hm,” I murmur, tugging on another stitch, grateful when it slides out without bleeding. I release the tweezers and add the tiny knot to the pile.

“What if . . .?”

“That’s three,” I say, interrupting her. “Can you turn a little on the seat? Put your back to me?”

She follows my instructions, giving me her back, which I believe emboldens her to state, “Fourteen days.”

“What?”

“We have fourteen days together.”

My heart thunders, and I focus on keeping my hands from shaking.

“Today is July 6,” she says, her voice soft and nervous. “I’ll leave on July 20, no matter what. I won’t ask anything of you, Cass. I won’t try to change your life. I won’t try to stay. I won’t ask you to go. I’ll never come back, if that’s what you want. I promise. I just . . .”

Snip. Snip. Snip.

I swallow, not daring to say a word, desperately wanting to hear the rest of what she has to say, but fearing that it will be too wonderful to refuse, even though I should.

“And, um, if feelings bother you, we can take them out of the equation. No, um, no feelings. No declarations. We like each other. That’s enough for me,” she says softly, her voice a little brave and a little sad as she finishes.

I pick up the tweezers, and she takes my silence as permission to continue.

“But for the next two weeks, we could, um, enjoy each other. All of each other.”

Snip. Snip. Snip . . . Snip.

I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until I exhale. My hot breath streaks across her exposed skin. The tiny blond hairs on her hip stand up, and I stare at them for a moment, blinking with growing realization.

Although I’ve never been with a woman, my mind skates easily back to those old, beat-up magazines lying under my mattress. I may not know much, but I know what she’s suggesting: she’s temporarily offering me her body in exchange for mine. I don’t know exactly to what extent, but I’m fairly certain she’s offering me sex.

I know that it might be the only chance I ever get to experience what she’s suggesting, and my blood surges, my body hardening everywhere at the idea.

She’s come dangerously close to offering me something I might actually be able to accept—no-strings-attached physical intimacy with an expiration date.

No commitment.

No marriage or children or forever.

No chance of infecting the world with my father’s genes.

Without realizing it, she’s giving me the opportunity to love her without breaking my promises.

Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip.

I cut through the last of her stitches, then place the scissors on the table.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” she asks, her back to me, her voice breathless and low. “Do you understand what I want . . . what I’m suggesting?”

“Mm-hm,” I hum, surprised I’m able to make any sound at all.

“Is that something you want too?”

I pull out the last of the stitches, then place the tweezers beside the scissors on the table, grazing her bare hip with my wrist as I withdraw it. I stare at her ponytail, at the back of her neck, my eyes sliding down her bunched shirt and resting on her skin. It’s white and soft over the waistband of her shorts, and I know if I say yes, I will have the right to touch it, to learn the contours of her body, to love her. Maybe enough to last me a lifetime.

She exhales, saying my name as her breath passes through her lips. “Cass? Please answer.”

My heart pounds.

I suck in a breath and hold it for what feels like eternity.

“Yes,” I hear myself answer, letting my forehead drop to the back of her neck in surrender. “I want it too.”