Sway (25 page)

“Okay. I’ll walk you out.” With a sigh, Caleb takes the album off the turntable and returns it to the sleeve, then pauses with it in his hand. “You’re sure about this?” He raises an eyebrow, giving me another chance to reconsider. About the album or about leaving, I can’t be certain. But it doesn’t matter, because both require the same answer.

“Completely sure.”

He opens a desk drawer and slides the album inside, then quietly follows me out of his office. We walk in an awkward, wordless silence toward the exit, neither of us sure about what to do, me feeling the sadness of yet another goodbye. But just as I reach for the front door handle, he suddenly stops me, pressing his hand firmly against the mahogany wood. His arm is planted against my shoulder, pinning me in place. I don’t have to see his face to know he’s battling with himself. I’m fighting the same thing.

“Stay,” he says in a low voice. I feel his breath on my neck, surprising me. Unable to stop myself, I turn and see that we’re close, too close, but everything about it feels right. I can’t force myself to move. My pulse throbs in my throat.

“Don’t leave. Stay here with me a little longer.” Caleb scans my face, my throat, my mouth. The look in his eyes is the same look he wore before he kissed me last week, full of conflict. Hesitant, but determined.

“Caleb, I—” It’s all I can manage, because right now all my reasons for leaving have left my mind, and before I can come up with one, he exhales and his lips are on mine. His fingers thread through my hair, trace my jawline, run down my back and meet in the middle, pressing me to him. Our first kiss was gentle and soft, our second was sweet. This one is laced with a definite hunger, and I return his kiss with the same feverish urge. I run my hands through his hair and settle my back against the door again, pushing away the screams inside my head that tell me to stop. He positions himself against me, and that’s all it takes for me to lose it completely.

But then his lips break away and he moves backward. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me, but we can’t do this—not here. It’s not—this isn’t—” He squeezes his eyes shut and looks at the ceiling, and maybe I shouldn’t, but I go to him again. I reach out with a shaking hand to touch his arm, and that’s all it takes before he’s against me again, backing me against the door, lined up with me from mouth to hip to knee to feet, kissing me with more intensity than before. My mind turns to liquid as his hands reach around me, his fingertips caressing the bare skin above the waistband of my jeans, behind my back, up my spine.

Just when I begin to contemplate how far to let this go, he’s gone.

He practically jolts away like he’s been electrocuted. He turns around, both hands behind his head as he faces the hallway. I can almost hear the internal chastising he’s giving himself, a warning to back off and get control. He’s breathing hard; his chest rises up and down.

“I’m sorry,” I say. My legs feel weak and I fumble behind me for the doorknob for support, trying to catch my breath but having a hard time. I’ve never been kissed like that, I’m unsure if I ever will be again, and I want it more than anything. But I can’t have it. “I won’t say anything to anyone, ever. No one will know that you kissed me, Caleb. I mean it.”

He spins to face me. “You think I’m worried about you talking? You think I’m ashamed of you?” He shakes his head, lines deepening in his forehead. “If I had it my way, the entire world would know that I’ve fallen for you, Kate. But I can’t tell them, because no one will take it well. It would be a media nightmare. You’d be raked over the coals, and we both know it.”

I can’t breathe at his words, my mind stuck on the first part. He’s fallen for me. Caleb has fallen for me. But he’s right; no one in my world—probably not his either—would understand. The pastor and the atheist—perfect fodder for late-night television. Yet a big part of my heart soars anyway, because I’ve fallen for him too. He’s perfect and gentle and tough and big-hearted and so good looking and everything I’ve ever wanted in a guy, and knowing it makes me fly a little more.

“This can’t happen again,” Caleb says. “I mean it, Kate. It isn’t good for either one of us. Most of all you.”

Part of me knows he’s trying to protect me, but with those words, I crash land back to earth, all at once angry and defensive and wounded. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.

“You’re right. It won’t happen again. I’ll make sure of it.” I feel my chin go up. Darn him and his stupid rules. His stupid morals. His stupid nativity scene that he won’t take down. His stupid convictions that don’t mean anything. If he would just throw them all away then we might have a chance. But he won’t, because he’s too stubborn. I turn toward the door again, and stop. Everything inside me folds in on itself, because I know.

It’s those convictions that make him so attractive to me.

Even his faith in God. Even though I don’t understand it.

Caleb is right. This can’t happen again.

“You don’t need to take me to see Ben tomorrow.” The pain of a thousand needles stabs me behind the eyes. Mondays with Caleb are the best part of my week. “I’ll find another way to write my paper, so please don’t worry about it.”

I hear him move behind me. I feel the soft flutter of my hair and know that his fingers are touching the ends of it, caressing it, before they drop away completely. He sighs, long and labored.

“I’ll be there. Same time as last week.”

“Caleb, don’t—”

“I’ll be there. Like I told you, I’ll be there every week until you’re finished. You’ve given everything to me, Princess. I’ll try hard to return the favor.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and try not to gasp from the heaviness crushing me, but I don’t cry. Sometimes it’s hard to remember not to. With a nod, I open the door. My shirt is twisted at the waist and my hair is mussed a bit from his hands, but I don’t stop to fix either as I walk down the stairs. The sound of Caleb’s keys jingle in the air as he locks the front door behind me.

“Kate, wait,” he calls after me. “At least let me walk you to your car.” I stop, but I don’t turn around. There isn’t anything left to say, and the longing is still there, stronger than ever. “Please don’t be angry,” he whispers when he catches up to me.

He’s right; I shouldn’t be. None of this is his fault; he didn’t ask for it any more than I did. So when he steps up beside me and wraps an arm loosely around my shoulder, I lean into him. He slows our steps and pulls me closer. Unable to take it, both of my arms work their way around his waist, and it takes us much longer than it should to walk across the sidewalk.

Under the cover of nightfall, it’s easy to relax, easy to forget about cameras and lawsuits and reporters and public perception, especially with Caleb’s arm around me. Especially with my arms around him. Especially when I feel so comforted and so secure and never want to leave and hate that I’m doing that very thing now.

But then I hear it. He hears it, too, and my arms fall and his arm drops and he spins around to search the night. There’s nothing but trees and blackness in front of us.

And a camera. Maybe two.

They click in our direction.

We can’t see them, but they see us.

And I have a feeling. A sick, sick feeling, that the time I’ve spent with Caleb, the private time that has felt at moments like heaven itself…

Has just gone straight to the tabloids.

Caleb

“Back To Me Without You”

—The Band Perry

J
udgment binds you up in chains, yet it’s handed out so freely.

By well-wishers lacing concern for a seven-year-old with threads of “this poor kid doesn’t stand a chance.” By Christians asking for prayer, then listing out the intimate details of another person’s life while convincing themselves it isn’t gossip. By the news media passing out condemnation without knowing all the details.

Judgment hurts. Until now, I’d forgotten how much.

She wasn’t at her apartment on Monday when I went to pick her up. She wasn’t there Tuesday when I stopped back by to check on her. Reporters were, however, and they saw me. Shoved microphones in my face while I struggled to get to my car. Later that night, I was the lead in the six o’clock news.
Jesus Dates the Devil
was the headline they chose to use. Clever. Cute. It hurt like a cigarette burn.

If I’m torn up this much, there’s no telling what’s going through Kate’s mind. In my world, it’s just me. In Kate’s, she’s bound to have an entire sea of people ticked off at her.

I’d hate to be in her situation, but I’d trade places with her if I could.

I haven’t seen Ben all week. I’ll have to make it up to him somehow.

Kate

“You Are Not Alone”

—Michael Jackson

I
’m scared and confused and lonely and worried. I’ve been accused of things and shouted at and threatened by many. I’ve alternated between the silent treatment and a dozen rounds of twenty questions from my disappointed parents. But it’s my own fault, and I’ll learn to live with the consequences, even if no one seems to care one way or another if I fall apart.

But what I can’t live with, what I can’t forget, is that I’ve felt this way before.

Once before. When I was little and afraid and lost inside a Target store, when a frightening man who didn’t look right picked me up and told me to be quiet and proceeded to carry me to his car even though I cried and asked him not to. But the difference is that day, even though someone strange was carrying me and I was screaming and no one was around to help me, I didn’t feel alone.

Because back then, I did the only thing a little girl knows how to do when she’s scared.

When she feels threatened. When all she wants is someone to rescue her. When she hasn’t yet lost her innocence. Or faith.

I prayed. And right then, I felt it. A Presence with me. And just as it came, another man was there. He walked towards us—the kindest face I’ve ever seen before or since.
Don’t be afraid
, he said before he told the stranger to put me down.

Just like that, the stranger did.

And right then, before I could say anything at all, my mother came outside. When I looked around to tell her about the nice man, he was gone.

I dreamed about the man last night, the only time I’ve revisited that day in my life.
Don’t be afraid,
he said in my dream. As soon as the words left his mouth, I woke up covered in a sticky sweat.

It’s becoming harder and harder to convince myself I don’t believe in God.

But I’m trying.

So many people are counting on me to try.

With blood rushing in my ears, I shift in place and step toward the stage. My father just spoke the usual line, my cue to step beside him, to the same little pink X that’s been taped there for years. It’s time for me to deliver another speech. Another town, another school, another government building, another church. I’ve never been nervous before, but now I might faint.

Good Without God.

The motto I’ve lived by my whole life.

In four short weeks, I’ve grown to hate it more than my own name.

“Come up here, Kathy…” My dad does a double take, one so subtle I’m the only one who sees it. His eyes rake my face and he frowns, and then recovers with a smile as he turns toward the audience. The sound of applause is deafening as I walk towards my father, and on my way up to the microphone a small part of me dies inside.

Caleb

“Angel at My Door”

—NeedtoBreathe

I
spend a lot of time thinking about my life, about how early circumstances led to my own personal downward spiral—like a venomous snake that writhed and hissed its way into the threshold of hell itself before slithering, scalded and feverish, back up again. About how it took hitting rock bottom and a stint in jail to know I was sick of the poison and needed a change, a way out of the darkness that had become my existence. Motherless. Fatherless. Abused. Unloved. Alone. All of it led to meeting Chris Jenkins. He led me to God. I lost friends in the process. I made new friends on the other side.

I’ve rediscovered my friends this week. The close ones have stuck with me, the not-so-close have accused me of abandoning my faith. The ones who know me have called me a brother, the ones who don’t have called for my resignation. I still have a job, but the future of it is shaky. Even with the promise of initial funding, nerves are rattled, and faith is thin. Even Scott’s.

I’ve always thought his faith was rock-solid. Impenetrable. Like that invisible fence I built around myself years ago. It’s strange how a fence that goes up because of a lawsuit comes right back down because of the same lawsuit, all in the course of one week. Then again, one week can change everything. God created the entire world in less time than that and still had a day to spare.

Kate was back onstage the other night, standing next to her father, calling for yet another church to close its doors. It surprised me, but then it didn’t. This is her life, the only thing she’s ever known. But this time she looked different, nothing like the girl I learned to care for. This Kate was scared. Unsure. Timid. Alone.

It didn’t hit me until later that night.

Kate was wearing black. Her dress. Her boots. Her coat. Even her eyes.

There wasn’t a trace of pink on her anywhere.

For all the commotion surrounding us, my office is unusually quiet today. I’ve managed to get a little work done in spite of the screaming silence—if you call pulling up YouTube clips of Kate’s latest speech and drawing penciled switchblades all over a scrap piece of paper in front of me work. There must be at least twenty, and I’ve wasted my whole morning. It’s Monday again, two days before Christmas, and I’m sick of being depressed. I’m thinking about cutting myself with one of these pictures just for fun, but of course the effort would only garner me a pointless paper cut that barely bleeds but hurts like a wasp sting to the eye. Paper cuts are the worst.