‘I’m not your father.’ The words roar out of me, repeating them important in some way.
She’s unflinching, that defiant angel all over again. ‘His demons were different to yours, but you’re dodging them in the same ways.’ And then she puts a hand on my cheek, the gentle touch completely unexpected in the midst of the words we’re throwing at each other. ‘Don’t you think I wanted to put my head in the sand, after the baby?’
I force myself to meet her eyes because she’s showing such courage and strength and it feels like the least I can do.
‘I would have done anything to help me forget.’ Her eyes close for a moment and her face carries the burden of remembering, torment in her features. ‘I felt my son move inside me, flipping and flopping, I nourished him and had him measured through my belly at each of my prenatal appointments. I readied a room for him, I chose his name, I imagined him into every picture of my future, and then he died and there was no time to prepare. I delivered my baby but never heard him cry.’
Jesus. Something big clogs my throat. Her words are like acid and electricity. Shocking and sharp, eroding everything inside me, making me feel like I don’t know a thing about pain.
‘I understand the desire to escape. I left home. I ran away in a sense because everything there reminded me of him, of what I’d lost, and I couldn’t face it. I haven’t stopped travelling for eight years. I barely stood still because, if I did, the memories were there, filling my dreams, making me catch my breath and remember all over again. Only now, eight years later, do I feel ready to pick up the threads of my life again, to start doing what I’ve always loved, to settle down and face the fact that those memories will always be a part of me, that what I went through isn’t going anywhere.’
She’s brave and maybe she’s right. But she’s also wrong. ‘It took you eight years,’ I say, when there’s so much more I want to add. ‘Don’t I get more time too?’
Her throat moves as she swallows. ‘The difference is, you’re destroying yourself in the process. The worst I did was fly away. You’re annihilating the relationships in your life, and you’re destroying yourself.’
‘Should relationships be so easy to annihilate?’
She drops her hand, frowning, a line between her brows. She’s quiet for a long time, and I find myself staring at her, wondering at the way we’re arguing, wondering how I can stop this, fix it—but fixing is way outside my realm of experience.
‘No.’ There’s been such a lengthy pause it takes me a second to recall what I asked.
‘But isn’t that your problem? You’re trying to push your brothers away and they refuse to budge. That’s why you’re so angry, right? You just want everyone to go away and leave you in peace? So you can drink yourself into a hole?’
I don’t say anything.
‘You want me to go away too, right? When you said this is just sex, your implication was that you could have sex with anyone you want, that I’m nothing special. That I don’t mean anything to you.’
The ground tilts under my feet because I feel the exact opposite of everything she’s said and that terrifies me and catches me completely off-guard. And I know I have to push through the haze of this anger to say the right thing: that this really matters.
‘Sex is sex.’ Great. That’s perfect, jackass. ‘We agreed to that.’
Her eyes are rebuking me, but she nods slowly. ‘We agreed to a week. I don’t know if we said it would just be sex.’
Did we? Didn’t we? I don’t know. I can’t remember any more. My own thoughts were loud enough that perhaps I only thought I spoke them. ‘It’s what I meant.’ The words come out gruff, defensive. ‘I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear, but sex is all I’ve ever been offering, Cora. One week, and this.’ I gesture to the bed.
She blanches visibly but a moment later regains her composure, turning to look at me with steel in her eyes. ‘I know what you were offering. I thought I was okay with that. To be honest, I had my own reasons for wanting to keep this simple. But it’s not and I don’t want it to be. You’re hurting and I want to help you.’ She moves closer and presses her hand to my heart, her palm flat on my chest. ‘I don’t want you to leave in four days. I don’t want you to leave at all.’
It’s my turn to blanch. The idea of what she’s offering hurts too much to contemplate. It’s a normality and reality that’s so completely removed from what I’m capable of. Doesn’t she see that?
‘You’re right.’ I force myself to speak with detached coolness. ‘I’ve become obsessed with you. When I’m with you everything feels better somehow. You make me forget, but that’s not about you. It has nothing to do with you. It’s how you make me feel, that’s all.’
‘And that’s nothing to do with me?’ she repeats with obvious disbelief.
My temper is growing. I try to control it. ‘What do you want me to say, Cora? Do you want me to say you made your way into my heart? I’m afraid to tell you I don’t think I have one.’
She flinches. ‘You’re wrong. No one without a heart would hurt this bad.’
Her words hurt because of the faith she’s showing in me, even now.
‘I have spent the last eight years completely on my own.’ Her voice is a whisper. ‘I’ve made friends, but I let no one get to know me beyond a surface level, no one I trusted. I know what casual feels like, and that’s not this. You and I mean something to each other, something different to normal. God, Holden, I don’t want to watch you destroy your life, but nor can I just walk away from you. I need you to listen to me. Stop fighting me and let me care about you, let me help you...’
But that’s the last thing I can do. I know what she went through with her father. Like she needs my basket case issues to deal with now. ‘No.’ The word is firm, unyielding. I take a breath, standing on the edge of a cliff with a fire raging at my back. There’
s no option but to jump.
‘The day I met you, I’d woken up beside some woman whose name I don’t even know. I guess I’d picked her up the night before. I honestly can’t remember. Maybe it was the day before that.’
I pause a moment, letting those words sink in. ‘I like sex. Sex makes me feel good, and yeah, it makes me forget. And sex with you is better than anything I’ve ever known, but it’s still just sex. Nothing more.’