Put Me Back Together (29 page)

“He died just after New Year’s,” Lucas said, his voice cracking on those last words. Beneath my hand, his lungs stuttered as they expanded and collapsed. He was trying to hold in his tears.

Getting onto my knees, I took his face in my hands as he’d done mine this morning, and though there were no tears to wipe away, there were cheeks to kiss, and eyelids and lips. I covered his face with kisses as he held my arms tight. “I’m so sorry, Lucas,” I whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Me, too,” he said, then pulled me right into his lap and wrapped both his arms around me, placing his chin on my shoulder so his cheek was right next to mine. “You’re the only one I’ve told.”

“You didn’t tell your friends, your roommates, Oleg, Tim?” I asked.

He shook his head. “At first I didn’t want them to know. I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone. And then…I knew what they wanted of me. They want me to be the same old Lucas, always ready to party, easygoing and fun. The basketball star. The stud. They wouldn’t have understood.”

“You never gave them the chance,” I said, trying my best to be delicate. “They might have surprised you. I bet they would have wanted to be there for you.”

I frowned, realizing how hypocritical it was of me to preach openness when I’d been lying about my pain to the people closest to me for much longer than a couple of months. Try six years.

“I’m not so sure,” Lucas replied, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “But that’s why I was so glad when I met you.”

“What do you mean?” I said as I interwove my fingers with his.

“You didn’t know me before,” he answered. “You don’t expect anything of me. I can be quiet with you, or even sad, and you don’t question it. You don’t need me to be the old Lucas. When I’m with you it’s like I can breathe again.”

I pulled my hands away from his. “So that’s why you like me? Because I didn’t know you before this?” I said, his words stirring up something I didn’t like in my stomach. “Then I could be anyone, any girl you happened to stumble upon. It’s not really me that you want.”

I shifted in his lap, trying to dislodge his arms, but he wouldn’t let me go. “You’re not just any girl,” Lucas said steadily, his lips warm against my ear. “You’re the girl who didn’t even know what sport I used to play, who never noticed me in class, who doesn’t care about the next big party. You’re the girl who almost got into a fight with three guys twice her size to save a cat, who punched Buck Mullard in the face, who got me through a panic attack and then handed me, a jock, a sketchbook and expected me to draw. You’re the girl who would never even think of chasing me, who doesn’t care what I look like.” I wasn’t so sure about that one. “You’re the girl who told me she just wanted to be friends. Do you know the last time a girl said something like that to me?”

“A while?” I said timidly.

He squeezed me tight. “Try
never
,” he said. “And as much as I loved it, I don’t want to be your friend, Hero. I want to be with you. Only you. The girl wearing glasses and sweatpants with wild hair flying everywhere and a cat inside her jacket. The girl I can’t stop myself from wanting to kiss and hold in my arms and do everything else with. The girl who makes me feel like I might get through this if she’s there next to me. That’s the girl I want.”

Suddenly I was the one whose chest was heaving with unshed tears, whose heart felt like it might burst. I only had to turn my head slightly to find his lips waiting for me, those sweet, soft lips and that moan-inducing tongue. Before long we were lying back on the cement and neither of us felt much like crying anymore. Breaking our kiss before things got too out of hand—we were in the middle of a
playground
, after all—I lay my head on his shoulder and we both looked up at the cloudy sky.

“So I’m the only one who knows?” I said.

“Well, family, too,” Lucas said. “And there’s Jenny. She came to the funeral with her family. They’ve lived next door since I was six.”

“I’m glad you have her,” I said, and it was the honest truth. “It must be comforting to have somebody from home so close by.”

“She’d actually pretty pissed at me most of the time,” Lucas admitted. “I haven’t come back here to see Mom since the semester began. It’s just…too painful. But Jenny comes every few weeks and she checks in on my mom. She thinks I’m neglecting her. She keeps telling me how much she needs me now, how she’s all alone. She yells at me a lot.”

The scene on the bench suddenly made a lot more sense and I wanted to kick myself for reading it so incorrectly. I’d thought they were having a lovers’ quarrel and really she’d been scolding him for not visiting his grieving mother.

“You’ll go see her when you’re ready,” I said.

“I will,” he said. “Soon. Just not today. Maybe I’ll call her tonight instead. I could tell her about you.”

“Telling your mother about me?” I said teasingly, pinching his stomach. “That sounds pretty serious.”

“Well, that’s how serious I am about you,” Lucas said, and there was no teasing in his voice at all. It made my heart ache. My heart was really getting a workout today.

Lucas rolled onto his side and I adjusted my head so his arm cushioned it and we were lying face to face.

“That’s why it’s so hard for me to see what I did last night and not want to jump into action. I care so much about you, Katie. If someone’s trying to hurt you—”

“Nobody’s trying to hurt me,” I said quickly, the lie turning sour on my lips as I said it. He’d been so incredibly honest with me, so vulnerable. This was the moment when I had to decide if I was going to be just as honest back.

“But you know who broke into your apartment. That’s why you didn’t want to call the cops,” Lucas said. His eyes were fastened on my face. I could tell he’d been holding in these questions all morning, though he’d been dying to ask them. I wished he would look away, just for a moment, so I could think straight, compose my thoughts.

Compose my thoughts
, I wondered,
or compose my lies
?

“I-I think it’s…an old boyfriend,” I forced out.

“Does he go to Queen's?” Lucas asked.

“No…” I said. “I’m not even sure if he’s the one who broke in. It might have been one of his friends. He’s been…contacting me lately. Texting me. He might be sort of…stalking me.”

All at once Lucas sat up, pulling me up with him. His eyes were wide and serious, his expression tense. He pulled out his cell.

“I’m calling the cops,” he said.

“No, don’t,” I said, covering the screen with my hand before he could dial. “It’s not as bad as you think!”

“Katie, you’re telling me an old boyfriend is stalking you, that he broke into your apartment, and you expect me just to do nothing? I’m not going to let this guy hurt you!”

“But I’m not hurt,” I protested. “He hasn’t done anything to me except rip up a couple of my paintings. Please, if you call the cops it’ll do more damage to me than to him.” If the police got involved the whole story would come out, I knew it. And then everyone would know I was a liar, Lucas included. I pictured myself being led away in handcuffs. I pictured the look on my mother’s face, on Emily’s face.

All of a sudden I couldn’t catch my breath. I pressed my palm to my chest as I struggled to get in some air. Lucas’s face was narrowing to a pinpoint.

“Okay, we won’t call the cops,” Lucas said, dropping his phone in his lap as he put an arm around my shoulders. “Just breathe, Katie. It’s okay. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” I pressed my cheek into Lucas’s chest as my heartbeat slowed and air came rushing into my lungs.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled into his shirt. “It’s just that everything that’s happened between Brandon and me…the story is long and complicated. I just—”

“You don’t have to tell me everything,” Lucas said, smoothing a hand over my hair. “Just promise me if you’re ever in trouble you’ll come to me. If you see him anywhere, if you hear from him, if you just think you see him, or if you feel scared, I’m the guy you call, got it?”

“Yeah,” I said weakly, trying to imagine what that would be like. If I really did as Lucas asked, I’d probably be on the phone with him twenty-four seven.

We stayed a little while longer, snuggled in each other’s arms, watching the clouds rushing by as the wind picked up. Then Lucas helped me up off the ground and we started walking back to his car. It had only been about an hour, but I felt like days had passed since our drive into Christie. This morning was a distant memory. My mind was full of everything I knew now, and everything he didn’t know, my brain working so hard to keep it all straight I was starting to get a headache.

“So his name’s Brandon?” Lucas said as he unlocked the passenger’s side door for me.

I nodded.

“Will it freak you out if I say I wish I could find Brandon and pummel him in the face?” Lucas said. “I won’t, I promise. But I really, really want to.”

I smiled weakly as we got into the car, but the truth was his words did freak me out. Now that Lucas was involved in my life, I worried that he’d also get involved in my past. I didn’t want to pull him into that mess. I didn’t want him to defend me. I didn’t want to make those same old mistakes again.

Lucas had said he wanted to be with me, only me. I tried to cheer myself up with this thought as he drove us back to Kingston, but the lies I’d told him kept popping up in my mind, dampening my mood. Well, I hadn’t lied exactly. Every word I’d said to him was true. I just hadn’t told him the whole story.

That’s right, Katie
, said the familiar voice inside my head.
That’s how you lie without lying. That’s how you make sure he never, ever knows the real you
.
Because when he does, he won’t want you anymore, you can count on that.

“What does he think you lied to him about?” Lucas asked as we approached campus. “I saw what he wrote on your wall.”

Keep lying, girl
, the voice said.

“Just something that happened a long time ago,” I said.

Once upon a time I’d thought of the truth was my enemy. I’d lied without question, without even thinking about it, the lies ready and waiting on my tongue, prepared ahead of time for easy use. Now, as I butchered the truth to suit my purposes, I found that lies, even lies of omission, were starting to take their toll.

I’d didn’t want to lie to Lucas ever again.

I just wasn’t sure I was ready to face the truth.

17

“So are you guys doing it or what?” Mariella said.

“Shut up!” I hissed at her, raising a spatula threateningly and shooting a glance down the hall at the closed bathroom door. I could hear the shower running, so I was pretty sure Lucas hadn’t heard her. “We just fell asleep on the couch watching movies, that’s all.”

“Seems like you’ve been watching a lot of
movies
lately,” Mariella said, her implication plain. She snatched a piece of bacon out of the pan as I moved them onto a plate.

“We’ve just been hanging out,” I said, “and making out.” I gave my friend a sly grin and she bumped her hip with mine, smiling broadly.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” she said. “I told you he’d come around.”

Lucas had actually been coming around a lot lately. Since the day we’d gone out to Christie we’d spent at least part of every day together. The thing he’d said about my calling him whenever I felt like I was in danger seemed pretty amusing now, since he was almost always with me.

As the school year wound to a close we’d gone to our separate classes each day and then almost always met up for lunch before art class. Now that exams were on, we often studied together at my place or at the library or worked on our final portfolios in the studio. I’d even hung out at The Limo with him during his shift, sitting behind the bar on a little stool, listening with delight as Brit imitated the irritating customers and watching the overdressed girls drool over Lucas—which might have bothered me if he hadn’t made a point of kissing me dramatically whenever he got tired of them. That didn’t bother me one bit. We’d definitely been doing a lot of kissing and touching—maybe it was more like groping—but we hadn’t advanced any further than that. I wasn’t really sure why, because I certainly wasn’t the one hitting the brakes. I kept wanting to ask him why he was hesitating, but at the same time I didn’t want to spoil a good thing. Just making out with Lucas was still plenty exciting.