The Duality Principle (10 page)

Connor froze and reached frantically for their shirts. He picked them up and raised his arms to the tree’s branches, his bulky frame and muscled arms hiding her from view. He kept watch over his shoulder, waiting for the family to pass.

Gabriella grinned, dizzy with the satisfaction of finally seeing how far he was willing to go. It was a given that they weren’t going to be alone out here, but she didn’t want to stop. There were other spots along the mountain where they could hide, places where they could be alone and forget the roles they’d been forced to play. She wanted to let him finish looking for that butterfly, to find the hottest places inside her and not stop until they were both shaking.

The children disappeared with their parents down the path. Connor turned back to face her, his head lowered and eyes closed in obvious relief.

“Connor,” she began, searching for the right way to tell him what she was feeling.

You’re so much more than I’d hoped.

You’re everything I’ve been waiting for.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

Gabriella shook her head, but with his eyes still closed, Connor didn’t see it. He must have thought that she was humiliated, not thrilled that he nearly just made one of her longest running fantasies a reality.

“No, Connor, it’s—”

“I know. I was out of line. We went too far. It was completely inappropriate.”

Gabriella paused, the crushing weight of disappointment coming down like a chokehold, the things she was about to say caught in her throat. Connor opened his eyes and handed her back her shirt.

“It was wrong,” he added, nodding at words that didn’t even sound like his, face stern and unreadable.

It was wrong.

The words fed into all her past rejections, Gabriella’s self-doubt clamping down her jaw and stinging her eyes with tears. She wanted to scream, to tell him that he
was the one who was wrong. That out of line and inappropriate were exactly what she’d been starving for. But she couldn’t bear to tell him that and see the same look of disgust and shock in his eyes that she’d seen too many times before. So she let her rational side take the driver’s seat, mirrored Connor’s nod and forced out a cool, calm reply.

“It’s all right.”

Without meeting his eyes, she carefully rebuttoned her shorts and put her shirt back on.

Connor kicked at the ground. “Do you want to keep going?”

She nodded again, although she wasn’t sure if he was asking about the hike or the crumbling beginnings of their would-be love affair. Both of them were ruined now, anyway.

They wordlessly trekked up to the mountain’s peak and sat for a few minutes on the flat expanse of rock. As they looked out over the horizon, Connor kept a healthy distance between them, not even coming close enough to let their fingertips touch. All at once, he appeared no different from every other man she’d been with: closed off, hesitant and restrained. It made her feel sick to her stomach. They picked their way back down the mountain without speaking, and by the time they returned to her car, she couldn’t wait to get home.

They remained silent for the drive back to Portland. Outside, the sky was getting cloudy, overcast and gray. They were passed by a group of motorbikes on the highway, flying by her in the left lane. In a moment of desperation, she sought out her masked rider, but every one of them was dressed in bright blues and red racing stripes. There were no traces of his slick, dark leather or his shiny black bike anywhere.

Gabriella pulled robotically onto her driveway. The quiet in the car was stifling.

“So I’ll call you later?” Connor asked, tentative even in the way he angled his body toward her in the passenger seat. “There’s a bonfire down at the beach tonight.”

“Sure,” she lied. “Sounds great.”

She flipped through the excuses that came to her mind.

I just don’t feel the same way.

I have to focus on my studies.

But it hurt to think of saying things like that to him.

He walked her to her front door, and she ducked away from the kiss he tried to place on her cheek. She had to turn away from the hurt she saw in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered as she went inside.

It was the same thing she would have said too.

Chapter Ten

Connor walked until the late afternoon hours fell into dusk. The brilliantly sunny day had faded into a chilly summer rain, the kind that didn’t so much come down from the clouds but seemed to saturate the air in every direction. It was fitting—the gloom was the ideal accompaniment to his epic state of fuckup.

Today had been amazing. Being with Gabby and so far away from Portland and his past, he felt more free than he could ever remember being. He’d never really thought about it before, but he’d always been fascinated by nature, the way leaves and flowers kept coming back no matter how badly winter beat the crap out of them, year after year. Nature was a survivor, just like him. Surrounded by those trees and the way Gabby looked at him, he got lost in it. Got lost in her.

How could he not have? She seemed to see through him, to not even notice the shell of his former life he thought followed him everywhere like a ghost. She’d said there was more to him than his closest friends realized, even after only knowing him a few days. Somehow, she saw
him
. He had to show her what that meant to him, and how incredible he thought she was too. The idea of losing that moment, of letting her walk out of the forest without telling her exactly how amazing she was, was something he couldn’t let happen.

But apparently, that was yet another phenomenal joke.

He’d wanted it to be special, and all he ended up doing was maul her against a tree. He couldn’t stop himself. All it took was the feel of the bare skin of her belly and the damp, soft cotton of her panties, and he lost control. She’d made him want to be different, but in the end, he couldn’t. He’d tried to replace himself with a better version, with his opposite, and it didn’t change a goddamn thing. He’d never be able to fix things with her. Not after today.

Connor felt that same tension from his childhood balling up in his stomach again—the feeling like he had to fight the whole goddamn world just to get a scrap of happiness.

He kept walking until he hit the strip of beach by the cove, his hands firmly entrenched in his pockets. His shirt was wet, his hair was sticking to his forehead, and his socks were soaked through, but he didn’t care. He just stood there and looked out at the murky horizon, almost unable to make out where the line of the ocean met the dreary clouds. The weather hadn’t stopped a bunch of kids from setting up camp at the water’s edge, though. Connor watched as they hovered around a spot in the sand and then suddenly jumped back, running with their heads turned to look over their shoulders as the firework they’d just lit exploded into the air. As it fizzled to the ground, one of the kids punched a fist above his head in glee. They all ran back to where they’d started, skidding to their knees in the wet sand to light another. They were too busy and the ocean was too loud for them to hear the sound of tires rolling over the pavement, but Connor knew what was behind him before he even turned around.

The Cumberland County patrol car crept up the concrete, silent and predatory. The cop inside it wasn’t looking at him, but Connor froze even though he hadn’t done a damn thing. His throat clamped shut, his reaction Pavlovian—a response ingrained in him after years of encountering men in uniform bearing unfriendly faces. He could see each one of them in that set of headlights, in the engine that idled in the rain, the wipers that slowly canvassed the windshield: the cops who had carted him back home after his first break-in, his second and his third. The investigator who looked at their ratty apartment with blatant scorn when Patricia reported Travis missing. The cruiser he’d sat handcuffed in when he’d stolen his grandfather’s car. Sheriff Roger and his sneer from the other side of the bars as Connor sat in a cell.

That was who Connor really was. He could hide from his past for a time, pretend he’d left it all behind him, but it was still there. It didn’t matter how far he’d taken things with Gabby today. Eventually, the truth about the past would have come out, and he would have lost her anyway.

Another firework screamed into the air by the shore, and the cop bolted out of the car. Connor turned on his heel, knowing his shot to get the hell outta Dodge when he saw it. He kept his eyes on the ground and the wet gravel that spat up under his feet, his shoulders bunched up by his ears as he found his way home.

“We were waiting for you.”

Connor looked up. His grandmother was sitting on the porch swing. She had a pile of knitting on her lap.

Dinner. Of course. Crap.

“Sorry, I lost track of time.” He reached for the door. “I’ll get started on the dishes—”

She held up a hand to stop him. “I’ve already got your grandfather on that. Go change out of those wet clothes and come back here.”

She was using that tone again, the one he didn’t dare defy. With a sigh, Connor went into his room and twisted off his drenched clothing. He hadn’t realized how soaked he was until he was finally in warm, dry clothes again.

The rain had finally let up when he returned to the porch, the sky clearing just in time to showcase the purple glow of the sunset. His grandmother nodded to the spot next to her on the swing. Connor sank down onto it.

“I know that look,” she said.

“What look?”

“The one you’ve got on your face right now. It’s the look of a man who’s regretting something.”

He winced. “Grandma, I—”

“I don’t need the details, and I’m sure you don’t want to tell me them, either. So sum it up. Ten words or less.”

Connor closed his eyes. Opened them again. Bent his head back and stared at the part of the roof that hung over the porch. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his grandmother calmly resume her knitting. Her movements seemed to say,
any time, now
.

“I tried to be someone else,” he finally said. “But I couldn’t.”

She dropped her knitting to her lap. “Why would you ever try to do that?”

“I couldn’t let Gabby know the person I used to be.”

“Who were you, then?”

He swallowed. “Someone I thought she deserved.”

She sighed, a heavy sound of someone who’d been a parent once already and was too old to have to do it all over again. Guilt ate at Connor like a festering wound but then she said, “You know, just because your parents made the choices they did, it doesn’t mean you aren’t worthy of love.”

Her words cut right through him, a gut punch that left him short of breath. It took a minute before he could reply.

“I wanted her to think I was, but I couldn’t take the risk. I had to be someone different.”

“You’re acting like there are only two options. That Connor or this one. Black or white. One or zero.”

His brow shot up at her mention of binary language. She didn’t flinch.

“That’s right, I actually know a thing or two about technology.” She smiled and picked up her knitting again. His eyes followed the movement of the needles, loop by loop. “No one is all one thing, honey, and I’m betting your Gabriella isn’t either.”

Something about the idea of her being
his Gabriella
made Connor’s chest go tight with wanting.

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he said.

“You’re never doing the right thing if you’re not being yourself. But you’ve always been like that, ever since you showed up at our door. It’s like that quote you have tacked to your desk at work. ‘Make an island of yourself, make yourself your refuge.’ You’ve tried to be an island, not needing anyone, but that doesn’t work for very long. Eventually, we need someone to see us for who we are.”

His gut twisted again, this time not with the waves of anger or resentment he’d come to know so well. He didn’t recognize the feeling at first, but he thought it was something that resembled hope.

An engine rattled down the road. Connor looked up to see Dean pulling up in front of his house, a pile of driftwood in the back of the truck. The bonfire. He’d forgotten all about it. He’d agreed to go when he thought Gabby might go with him. Maybe there was a chance she still would, and he could come clean, and they could start over again.

He turned back to his grandmother. “Do you need me to—”

“Go.”

He kissed her cheek and leapt down the steps, palming his phone as he walked to the curb. He got into the passenger seat and dialed Gabby’s number.

“Where’s your girl?” Dean asked.

She didn’t pick up. The call went to voicemail. “Just drive.”

He still hadn’t reached her an hour later, when they’d built up the driftwood into a plume of orange that crackled against the night sky. He must have tried her number every fifteen minutes, but she wasn’t answering.

Connor shoved his phone into his pocket, walked over to the abandoned lifeguard stand pushed up tight against the dunes and looked around. The scene in front of him was one he’d been a part of too many times before. In the parking lot, a strange mix of country and hip hop blasted from competing cars’ speakers. A keg sat at the back of someone’s SUV. Dean had disappeared shortly after they’d gotten there, and was most likely wrapped up in a beach towel with God knows who.

Connor wanted Gabby like that, here with him. He wanted her giggling as he tugged her away from the crowd, wanted to press her down in the night-cooled sand. To see if all of her skin glowed the way her face did, shining in the moonlight that bounced off the waves. To get her so hot that she lost all sense of modesty or control, get her even more frantic and desperate than she seemed to be every time they were together.

He thought about her then, how she’d been more than willing to push things a step further. The way she’d unbuttoned his jeans on the dock, and her hitched breath as she found the stiff shape of him inside. How she’d pleaded for more in the tent at the park. The hike, and how she’d taken his hand and pushed it into her shorts.

Could Gabby be different from the girl he’d imagined?

He was sure it had all been him, so absolutely certain that she’d want someone different from who he was, but she’d been just as eager as him whenever they were alone. The things he’d said about his behavior being out of line and inappropriate were what he thought Gabby would want to hear, but the truth was she’d told him she wanted to be bad. That good was overrated. That she didn’t want him to behave. And she seemed to have no problem getting down and dirty in public. As a matter of fact, not only did she like it, she begged him for it, even when only shadows and some poorly constructed fabric hid them from the eyes of everyone around.

Connor wanted to make her beg. To coerce her into telling him about her dirtiest fantasies then act them all out. He wanted to let loose with her, to show her the side of him he’d kept on lockdown.

Maybe he didn’t have to try so hard to be someone else for her. Maybe he could actually be himself.

He called her again, but no dice.

Tomorrow. He would go to her house tomorrow. Then he’d let himself be the version of Connor he really was and tell her everything.