Steady as the Snow Falls (17 page)

“What are you afraid of?” he asked after a moment.

Beth pressed her lips together. So many things, too many things. She glanced at Harrison, her footsteps halting when she saw the intensity with which he watched her. “I’m afraid I’m not good enough,” she confessed.

His head tilted. “At what?”

She shrugged, feeling nervous under the directness of his questions. “At writing, more than anything.” Beth inhaled slowly, sick with the admission. “What are you afraid of?”

“Everything,” he replied in a whisper. “But especially you.”

Harrison picked up his pace, leaving her behind. Her? Harrison was afraid of her? Her heartbeat sputtered and Beth’s surroundings darkened and lightened. It almost made her smile to think of him possibly being afraid of her, but the hint of a smile quickly fell from her face. Maybe he was right to be afraid. She wanted to tell him to not be, but maybe she was the foolish one out of them, daring to take chances he wasn’t, to think of possibilities better left unformed. To have hope. To dream. Selfishly deigning to forget everything but the man beside her.

“Do you play any instruments?” she questioned to change the subject.

A fallen tree branch cracked under his boots. “No. I thought about taking piano lessons when I was younger, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to commit to them like I’d need to. Sports were my life growing up, and I didn’t have much time for anything else.”

“Did you want sports to be your life?”

His jaw flexed. “They were, and it was that simple.”

“Do you sing?”

He shot her a look. “Not well.”

“What about dancing?”

Harrison set his hands on his hips and gave her his full attention. “Where are you going with this?”

“When you were in the music room last week,” she explained. “It was obvious that you care a great deal for music. I wondered if that extended to anything else. I’m only asking for research purposes.” Foremost, Beth was asking because she wanted to know, but it was something that should be in the book. He hadn’t answered her about dancing. Which, in her mind, meant he liked to dance. She could work with that.

“Music heals what nothing else can,” he allowed, turning his back to her and climbing over a pile of tree limbs.

“What does it heal?” Beth navigated through the brittle foliage, catching her jacket on a sharp piece of wood. She tugged at it until the earth released it, plowing forward and stopping abruptly in order to keep from running into Harrison.

“The soul.”

Music heals the soul.
His words echoed through her mind. Beautiful. They were words she would not forget.

Harrison turned and placed a finger to his lips, setting a hand on her shoulder and firmly pushing. She opened her mouth to ask what he was doing, and he shook his head. Crouched beside her, he pointed to a small body of churning water. Beth went still, listening to the soothing sound of water as it flowed over rocks. On the other side of it was a doe and its fawn. As Beth stared at the animals drinking from the stream, she understood how special the moment was.

It was a realm of cold and white, but she focused on the scene before her, and the sound of Harrison breathing next to her. In. And out. In. And out. It was hypnotic—staring at the deer, listening to Harrison. Harrison’s father shared something similar with him, and he was sharing it with her. The fawn was gangly, its reddish-brown coat spotted with white. It backtracked and skipped around the doe, close to being trampled a few times. Beth smiled at its gaiety and innocence. It didn’t understand that there was danger everywhere. It only knew that it was alive, and it rejoiced in that.

Her eyes slid to Harrison’s and found his on her. A ring of olive green circled his irises, made his dark brown eyes that much more captivating. Beth’s heartbeat formed its own cadence, and it played for Harrison. Strong and sturdy. She wanted to kiss him, and feel his breath on her lips, taste the bitterness of his disease and turn it into something sweet. Obliterate his loneliness. The need grew in her stomach, pooled there like warm, thick molasses.

She let a slow smile overtake her mouth, careful to keep her thoughts and desires hidden. Harrison studied her face, his eyes like a caress. His gaze was remembering her, inch by inch. In the sharp bones and design of his features, Beth saw severity relaxed with an unnamed emotion. She liked it, whatever it was.  

“Thank you for showing me this,” Beth whispered.

Light flickered in his eyes, and he lowered his gaze to the ground.

Beth turned her eyes back to the wildlife. The deer and its fawn galloped farther into the forest, and the surreal moment was broken. She straightened, feeling the loss of it like a blanket ripped from a cold body.

“Tell me what you were like in school.” She glanced at him, smiling at the question she was about to ask. “Was it like the movie ‘Varsity Blues’? Drinking and partying and girls in whipped topping and nothing else?”

Harrison snorted. “Not quite.”

“What were things like then?”

He turned his eyes to the forest. “I got good grades, didn’t drink or party all that much. I had a goal of playing football in college, and I didn’t want to screw it up. Worked part-time in the kitchen of a local restaurant. Had a steady girlfriend from freshman to junior year.” She felt the shrug in his words. “I was pretty boring.”

“I doubt that.”

Harrison looked at her, interest lightening his eyes. “What about you? What were you like?”

“I was pretty boring too. I never once got in trouble for anything. I wrote poetry and short stories for fun. Dated Ozzy. Babysat for extra money. I took dance classes until I was sixteen. After that, I don’t know, I lost interest.” Ozzy told her they were silly, and like the insecure person she was, she believed him.

That isn’t you anymore.

His eyes darkened at the mention of Ozzy, but he didn’t say anything. Beth’s inhalation was shaky, knowing that just because someone didn’t say something, didn’t mean they weren’t thinking things. What did the mention of her ex-boyfriend mean to Harrison? Something? Nothing? Everything?

She stood along with Harrison, her knees stiff from being motionless for so long. “Will you dance with me?”

Harrison’s head jerked up, the frown on his face a definitive no.

“Will you let me dance for you?” Beth tried.

“That is an odd request.”

“It isn’t. You’ll see.” Beth turned and tramped through the snow, a spring to her step. It made her think of the fawn and she laughed. A new life, a new day, a new start. She hadn’t wanted to dance in so long, and now her body ached to do so.

“What does dancing have to do with the book?” he asked her back.

Grinning, she picked up her pace, swinging her arms. “I can write it into the story. ‘Harrison wouldn’t dance, but that didn’t mean the music didn’t move him. The lyrics swept through his eyes, and his rigid mouth softened with the song. His very existence hummed with the melody. It made him dance, though he claimed he wasn’t a dancer. That was because Harrison didn’t realize he could dance without moving a single part of his body.’ What do you think?”

When he didn’t respond, Beth looked over her shoulder. “Harrison?”

Harrison faced her, pale and unmoving.

She took a step toward him. “Are you okay?” A trail of blood appeared on his face, trickling down from his nose like a solitary, deadly announcement of his mortality. She gasped, stunned and horrified. “Harrison, you’re bleeding.”

His eyes didn’t leave hers as a hand carefully went to his face, leaving a smear of red above his mouth. The blood dripped to the snow, red on white. It made the snow appear to be bleeding, uneven stains of it spreading and fading to pink, sinking into the soil. It was beautiful in a way, a splash of color on a pallid canvas. She watched it fall as she sprinted for him, her stomach rebelling at the wrongness of it. It didn’t seem like a lot of blood, but its iron smell hit her hard.

Beth halted her footsteps and reached for his hand without thought.

“Don’t touch me,” he shouted, swinging away from her.

“You’re bleeding. Let me help.”

With his face turned away, he ground out, “If you get my blood on you and you have a cut on your skin, you could contract the disease. Stay back.”

Beth inhaled icy air, feeling helpless and irrelevant. She was warm and she was frozen, flashes of horror controlling her body temperature. The facts of HIV couldn’t be glossed over when she was witnessing the consequences of them in motion. This was minor compared to what she could be seeing. That didn’t make her feel better. What would happen to Harrison as the disease progressed? Who would help him get through this until there was nothing left to get through? Her chest squeezed, harder and harder, and it hurt. It hurt so much.

She saw his future, and it was painted in streaks of black until that was all there was. And she hated it. Beth despised the disease taking over his body. How did one destroy the destroyer? She sniffed and fought the tears that wanted to come. To anyone else, it was a nosebleed. To Harrison, it was an enemy. To Beth, it was a threat.

“Is there someone I should call?” Her voice wavered.

Beth kept her hands stiff at her sides, and it felt like a betrayal. Her lack of movement was a lie. It wasn’t her; it wasn’t in her heart to stand by and do nothing. Her heart wanted to cocoon him, to hold him and lie about how everything would be okay. Lies weren’t always bad. Sometimes they were all that could get a person through a day, a moment, a reality.

“Do you need to be seen by a doctor?” Beth briefly touched his shoulder when he continued to remain silent. “Tell me how to help you, Harrison.”

Harrison pulled a glove from his jacket and pressed it to his face. His eyes slammed into hers, stealing the air from her lungs. “There’s nothing to do for it.”

He started toward the house. “If you really want to help me, you’ll go.”

Harrison refused to look at or speak to her once they were back to the house, locking himself in the bathroom before she could even try to talk to him. Beth didn’t want to leave him, but she wouldn’t stay where she wasn’t wanted. Feeling helpless, she chewed on a fingernail as she came to the decision that she had no choice but to go. She decided to make her departure a positive experience and take the time to write more on his book.

It was madness, but part of Beth thought, if she just kept writing his story, then Harrison’s life wouldn’t be able to ever end. His story was left unfinished, and what kind of person would step out of their own tale before it was time?

Beth left as he instructed, but not before she retrieved the ten pages of the manuscript from the Blazer and set the beginning of his novel on Harrison’s bed. She lingered in the room, feeling him like a mark upon her skin, smelling him in the air. Masculine, clean, sensual in his plainness. Her footsteps were heavy, lingering. Beth let the tips of her fingers slide across his dark bedspread before leaving the pristine, sparsely furnished room of a single dresser, one bed, and a solitary desk.

THE FOLLOWING DAY, fear spiked her pulse as she entered the house. No text came telling her to stay away, but even if it had, Beth would have ignored it. Harrison could only avoid her if she allowed it. It wasn’t about her writing his story anymore, although that was an important part of their association. It was about them—the thread that stitched her life to his.

Beth didn’t announce her presence. She took off her jacket, hat, and boots, and marched to the laundry room. Opening the linen closet, she found cleaning supplies and a wood polishing agent. Logic wasn’t necessarily a factor in what she had planned, but it didn’t matter. Even as she understood why it was the way it was, the trophy room was no longer going to live in disharmony.

She knew that making a shrine out of his past wasn’t the way to go. The awards he’d earned weren’t him. They were a reminder of what he’d once been, who he’d been. Harrison wasn’t that person anymore, and that person had never really been Harrison. He was more, deeper. He was all the stars, and all the galaxies, and everything beyond; held in the hand of all the worlds. Secret rooms, unknown floors, whispered passages. Beth wanted to discover them all.

Following that train of thought, he was more than the person he was being. He said he wasn’t hiding, but he was. Harrison was hiding from himself. He gave the disease power over him, just as she gave Ozzy power over her. It wasn’t the same, she knew, but power was power. And no one and nothing should have it over another.

As she entered the room, dust swirled around her like tiny dancers, and she blinked against it. Juggling in her arms the bottles of disinfectant and whatever else she’d grabbed, she moved to the center of the room and dropped everything on the floor. Beth closed the door and then moved to the window, unlocking it and pushing it open. Cool, new air wafted in, and she closed her eyes as she popped her head outside and inhaled deeply.

Beth tightened the ponytail on the top of her head as she turned from the window, tugged her pink tee shirt back into place, and eyed the daunting task before her. The room appeared unending, filled as it was, but in reality, it wasn’t all that big. The task was not unmanageable.

“Don’t think about it,” she told herself. “Just do it.”