Slow Burn (19 page)

Griffin followed her. “Is that true? Did you chase her off?”

“I didn’t mean for her to leave,” said Beth.

“I apologized to you,” I said, “because I thought Griffin had abandoned you and Dixie. I thought he had no right to be with me.”

“He did abandon us,” said Beth.

“I did not,” said Griffin.

“You did,” said Beth.

“You really feel like that?” He settled in a chair across from her.

She looked away.

He rubbed his head. “I don’t think that’s fair, doll.”

I gritted my teeth. I did
not
like him calling her that. I didn’t like it at all.

“You think you owe Frank so much,” said Beth. “But you don’t think you owe us anything.”

“I don’t do what I do for you out of obligation,” said Griffin, clearly offended.

“But you do for me?” I said. “Because I’m Frank’s daughter?”

He turned to me. “That’s not what I meant.”

“It kind of sounded like—”

“Hold it, doll.” He held up a hand in my face. “Just wait until I clear this up with her.”

My face twitched. “We can’t both be ‘doll.’”

“I call everyone doll,” said Griffin.

“No, you don’t,” said Beth. She was glaring at him.

He spread his hands. “I do.”

Beth drew in a noisy breath, avoiding his gaze.

I glowered at him.

He lay back in the chair, covering his face with his hands. “What the hell is going on?”

Neither Beth nor I responded.

Finally, he sat back up. “Okay. We’re going to sort this out.” He gestured to me. “Dol—Leigh.” He sighed. “Sit down.”

I perched on the opposite side of the couch from Beth.

“What did you say to her?” he asked Beth.

“I wasn’t trying to make her run away,” said Beth. She turned to me. “I wasn’t. I mean it.”

“Okay,” I said.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I wanted to know what was going on with you two,” she said. “I saw the way you looked at her, and...”

“And what?” he said. “What does it matter how I look at her? Why do you care?”

She laughed in disbelief. “You bastard.”

“Would both of you stop calling me names, please?” he said.

She shut her eyes. “Could you and I talk alone, Griff?”

That fucking nickname again. It made me seethe.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Not when you’ve somehow managed to make my girlfriend think I have something going with you. I’m not going to do that to her. You say whatever you need to in front of her.”

Did he just call me his girlfriend? My heart surged.

She took a deep breath. She picked up a pillow and began to squish it nervously. “All right. You remember last fall, that time in the car, when I kissed you?”

He nodded slowly. “But you were pregnant, and you were lonely, and that wasn’t about me, Beth. You know it wasn’t.”

“You can tell yourself that, if you want, I guess,” she said. “But I’d just been working up the courage. I thought maybe you might... you saved me, you know. I thought maybe it meant something.”

“I saved you because it was the right thing to do,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “And you told me that you didn’t kiss people anyway. You said you were asexual. That you were broken.”

Griffin looked at his feet. His Adam’s apple bobbed.

“So what’s different about her, huh?”

He rubbed the top of his head. “When I said that to you, I swear to God, I thought it was true.”

“And she changed your mind? Why? Because she doesn’t have a baby? Because her hair is long and straight, not wavy like mine? Because she’s Frank’s daughter?”

“I just never thought about you that way,” he said. “And I didn’t think you thought that way about me. Not really.”

“Well, I do,” she said. “I’m in love with you, Griffin. I always have been.”

He stood up. “What?” His voice was very soft.

“I’m not saying it again.”

He drew a hand over his face. “I need some air.” He turned and walked out of the apartment.

Beth put the pillow over her face. “Shit, shit, shit.”

I didn’t feel like I belonged here anymore. I got to my feet and went to the door as quietly as I could.

“Did he fuck you?” she said from behind me.

I froze and turned. “That’s not your business.”

She narrowed her eyes. “He didn’t, did he? Well, that’s something. Maybe he’s not a raging liar after all.”

“Listen, I’m sorry—”

“Save it,” she said. “Your father was just like the rest of them, you know that? He was as corrupt and as cowardly and as obsessed with money as everyone else there. He wasn’t any kind of hero, no matter what Griffin thinks.”

“I know that,” I said. “I think my dad wanted to change, though. But I think it was too late.”

“Maybe it’s always too late,” she said. “Or maybe people don’t actually change.”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Like Griffin,” she said. “He’s going to let you down. He lets you think he’s superman, that he can handle everything. But he’s not. He’s far from perfect. And he will abandon you, just like he abandoned me.”

I fled from the apartment.

There was an outdoor landing here. The night air skittered over the concrete stairs. It was cold.

“Oh no,” said Griffin. “I’m not ready for you to attack me too.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I said. I paused. “I’m sorry. I guess I jumped to conclusions.”

“Yeah, well, she didn’t make it easy for you,” he said. “I should have explained the situation better to you before we got here.”

“That would have been good,” I said.

We were quiet. I shuddered in the cold, my teeth knocking against each other.

Griffin pulled me against him. “You’re always cold,” he murmured.

I was grateful for his warmth. And for how solid he seemed. He could hold me up.

“You really think I would have done something like that?” he said. “Run off on my own kid?”

“I...”

“You don’t think very highly of me, do you?”

Guilt surged through me. “I didn’t want to think it. It didn’t seem right. But it seemed like it was true. It seemed like there was all this evidence.”

“I wouldn’t, you know,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever have children, but if I did, I would never leave them behind.”

Never have kids... “Griffin, did you tell her you were asexual?”

He sucked in a sharp breath.

I waited.

“Yeah.”

“A-are you?”

“Obviously not,” he said. He kissed my forehead. His voice was a low rumble. “You woke me up.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” His mouth found mine. “But you did.” His tongue teased its way against mine.

I sighed against him. His kisses were fluid and too, too sweet. But this was what he always did. He used them to distract me. I pulled away. “You can’t keep running from this.”

“Running from what?”

“From whatever you won’t tell me,” I said. “She asked if we were having sex.”

“That’s none of her business,” he said.

“You told her, didn’t you? You told her whatever it is. Whatever you won’t tell me.”

He let go of me in frustration. “No, doll, I didn’t. I don’t talk about it. I’ve
never
talked about it. And this is hardly the time.”

He was right. I was pestering him about why we weren’t having sex, and that wasn’t the most pressing problem we had. We were in much worse shape than that.

I sighed. “Well, we can’t stay here.”

“No,” he said. “I guess we can’t.”

“What are you doing, Griff?” said Beth.

Griffin was grabbing his pack, the one he always carried, and throwing it over his shoulder. I picked up my duffel bag too. “We’re leaving.”

“Leaving?” she said. She wedged herself in front of him. “Look, forget I said anything. You can’t stay on the run. You need to lie low for a while. They’re going to catch you.”

“What do you care?” said Griffin. “She’s just Frank’s daughter, right?”

“That’s not fair,” she said. She turned to me. “I want you both to stay. At least for the night. Where are you going to go right now?”

“I don’t know,” said Griffin. “We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about it.”

“Of course I’m worried about it.”

He pushed past her. “Well, don’t.”

She put a hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry. I never meant—”

“Drop it,” said Griffin. “You’ve said enough.”

Tears appeared in her eyes.

Despite myself, my heart went out to her. She wasn’t a bad person. She just had it bad for Griffin. If he’d never wanted me back, might I have become just like her?

He started toward the door.

“When will I see you again?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” said Griffin.

“Griffin, you promised you would keep Dixie and me safe.”

He stopped moving. “I picked up a phone yesterday. I don’t know how long I’ll have it, but I’ll give you my number. If you need me, you call.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He looked at her. “Don’t call unless there’s trouble, okay?”

“Griffin,” I said. He was being a little harsh with her.

“You freaked Leigh out,” he said. “I’m not cool with people who hurt her. You got that?”

“You really think we’ll be safe here?” I whispered. There was no reason to whisper, but the empty house seemed to demand it.

“It fits with hiding in plain sight, doesn’t it?” Griffin’s voice was soft as well.

This Nantucket house belonged to my father. I hadn’t been sure that it wouldn’t have been sold since his death, but it was still sitting empty, and the key was hiding in the place it always had been.

The spacious living room was furnished, but all the couches and chairs had been covered in white sheets. They squatted like oddly shaped ghosts against the wood floor.

I tried the light switch. The light came on. “The electricity’s still working,” I said in a regular voice. Somehow, the light meant that I didn’t have to whisper. “I wonder about the water.”

I scampered into the kitchen, also massive, and tried the faucet. Nothing happened. I wrinkled up my nose.

“We can probably turn it on,” said Griffin. “I’ll look outside.” He disappeared back out of the house.

The refrigerator was unplugged and sitting open. There was nothing inside it. I stuck my nose inside to smell. It didn’t smell bad. I plugged it in. It hummed to life immediately, a comforting, civilized sound.

I began opening the cupboards. There wasn’t much there, but I did find some cans. Crushed tomatoes, chicken noodle soup, corned beef hash. I set the corned beef hash on the counter and hunted down a can opener.

Griffin came back in. “Try the water now.”

The faucet sputtered and coughed at first. Then a stream of brownish water came through. Then the water ran clear.

I grinned. “Awesome.”

He picked up the can on the counter. “What’s this?”

“Breakfast,” I said. “It would be better if I had eggs to scramble, but this will have to do.”

“Sounds great,” he said. “I’m starving.”

There was a breakfast nook in the corner of the kitchen, just a small table with three wicker chairs. The dining room was bigger, but I’d never eaten in there, even though I used to come here every summer. Griffin settled down in one of the chairs. “So your dad owns this house?”

I got out a skillet and put it on the stove. Luckily the stove was still plugged in. There was an old can of Pam on top of the stove. I sprayed the skillet and set it on the burner. “Yeah. He never made it out here, though. Or at least, very rarely.”

“That’s too bad,” said Griffin. “It’s a nice house.”

“I came,” I said. “My nannies would bring me. And I got to come alone after I was eighteen. Not last year, obviously.”

“All alone in this big place?” he asked.

“Well, I used to bring people,” I said. “But it wasn’t that much fun. I always wanted to have an honest-to-God family vacation.”

He groaned. “Oh, you don’t know what you’re asking, doll.”

“You don’t like family vacations?”

“The worst,” he said. “My sister would get on my nerves on the drive down. My mom would scream constantly at the top of her lungs. All I would want to do is get away from them. They wouldn’t let me.”

“I guess that’s how my dad felt,” I said. “Only I couldn’t stop him from getting away from me.” I used the can opener to open the corned beef hash.

“I’m sure he wanted to be with you.”

“He said he did,” I said. “He said he couldn’t leave work, and he always apologized and bought me consolation gifts. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted him to show up.”

“You never had a family vacation here?”

I dumped the hash into the skillet and began to stir. “He came maybe twice. Every other year, he would promise to come but back out at the last minute. I’d be on the phone with him, begging him to come see me, and he’d always say, ‘Tomorrow for sure, Leigh.’ He’d say that every day until the last day, when I’d be coming home tomorrow, and there wasn’t any more time.”

“That sucks,” said Griffin.

“But he was awesome to you,” I said. “That’s why you’re so loyal to him. That’s why you protect me.”

“You know, I have a confession to make. And I hope you’re going to forgive me afterwards, because it makes me sound a little creepy.”

“Creepy?” I said.

“I saw you one day,” he said. “Back before I left Op Wraith.”

“Me? How?”

“You must have come to see your dad for some reason. It was his birthday, I think.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I was determined to have dinner with him. So I came to his office. And he was mad.”

“I wouldn’t have been there normally, but I was in a briefing with some of the big guys, and they wanted me to come to their offices instead of coming to me. I saw you arguing with the secretary on my way out. You were so adamant that you were taking your father out. I remember you standing there, your hands on your hips, yelling that he worked too hard, and he needed to take a break, and that it was his birthday for God’s sake.”

I remembered that. It had been a few weeks before my car accident with Eric. “I didn’t see you.”

“Well, I said it was kind of creepy. I hid and watched. I wouldn’t have had anything to say to you. You were so together and pretty.”