He comes back a minute later with his acoustic guitar and closes the bedroom door. No one else is home. Jackie and her new boyfriend Tim are running errands before we meet them tonight for a birthday dinner. If Jackie knew what Chris and I are doing right now she’d kill both of us. Somehow, we’ve managed to keep our relationship a secret from her. This makes it seem as if Chris and I are doing something wrong, though we’re not.

The simple gesture of Chris closing the bedroom door makes me feel safe, like he knows exactly what I need. He always has.

I scoot back so he can sit on the edge of the bed next to me. He settles down with his guitar in his lap and strums a haphazard melody as he tunes the guitar by ear.

“I wrote this for you. It’s about the day we met. It’s called ‘Sleepyhead’.”

I smile as I remember how tired I was the day we met from not having slept the night before, but somehow he still convinced me to go downstairs and listen to him play.

His lips start toying with the ball piercing in his tongue, the way they always does when he’s working up the nerve to perform for me. He claims it’s unintentional, but it’s extremely hot. He starts plucking the strings and the melody that flows out is both haunting and sweet. I’m already on the verge of tears when he begins to sing.

“Feels so wrong to want this. You look so broken there. A flicker in the mist, as tired as the air.” He looks up at me and my breath hitches. He holds my gaze the entire time he’s singing, except when he closes his eyes as he belts out the chorus. “So frightened of the dark. You’re my sleepyhead. Hiding with the stars. Put your dreams to bed, my sleepyhead.”

A tear rolls down my cheek and falls on his guitar as I grab his face and kiss him.

I open my eyes and Adam’s face is blurry through the tears.

“Claire, why are you crying?” Adam asks as he takes the Red Vines from my hand and lays them on the coffee table.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, wiping my cheeks as the song continues to play in the background. I scoot over to the other end of the sofa and hug my knees tightly. “I’m a horrible, horrible person.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true.”

I can feel him staring at me, but I keep my gaze focused on the ropes of red licorice on the table. They remind me of blood vessels and I think of how my mother abused her veins. I think of how I nearly took a razor to my veins six months ago. I think of all the secrets pumping through my veins, poisoning me, ruining me.

“There are some things that, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself they’re for the best, always seem to cut a chunk out of your heart. And you know that no matter how many wonderful people and beautiful adventures you welcome into your life, you’ll never be whole again. You’ll never be you again.” My throat aches as I speak, but I keep going. “I don’t even know who I was before I dropped out. I feel like that person wasn’t me. Or maybe who I am now isn’t the real me. All I know is that I became the kind of person I always swore I would never be, and from here on out that will never change because no amount of apologizing can undo what I did.”

He scoots toward me and I ball myself up tighter. “Claire.” Just the way he says my name makes me bristle. I know he’s going to tell me something I don’t want to hear. I close my eyes as he says, “I know what it’s like to feel like the guilt will destroy you. Those plans you found the other day, the day we left to my uncle’s house, those plans are a manifestation of my guilt.”

I open my eyes and he’s staring at the drafting table in the corner of the room with a distant look in his eyes. He rises from the sofa and wanders toward the corner where he lifts a few sets of plans off the top of the stack and slides the house plans out from the bottom. He comes back to the sofa and lays the plans on the coffee table in front of us.

“Myles’ family never had a lot of money. His dad was always too busy getting on with his new family, he never really supported Myles or his mom and two sisters.” He flips the top sheet and a floor plan of the house is laid out before us. “I’ve been designing this house for the past three years with the idea that one day I’ll be able to build it for them. Maybe then I won’t feel like I took away the one shot they had at a decent future.” He lets out a low laugh as he shakes his head. “My dad found these plans and now he’s holding my trust fund until I turn thirty so I can’t build it. He thinks it would be like admitting my guilt. He doesn’t understand that that’s exactly what this house is. It’s an apology and an admission. I can’t live with this anymore.”

He finally turns to me and I can see the agony he’s carrying. I draw in a shaky breath as he looks me in the eye, his eyes searching for a sliver of understanding. I want to tell him everything. He’s shared so much of himself with me. He needs to know the kind of person I am. He deserves to know the kind of person he fell in love with.

But I can’t.

I cover my face with my hands; afraid he’ll see the razors of shame shredding my insides. These jagged lies I’ve told myself for the past year have rested comfortably beneath the delicate skin of truth. I can’t allow them to pierce through to the surface. I can’t allow myself to become a bloody mess again.

I need to meditate.

I stand quickly from the sofa and his eyes follow me as I walk quickly toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to go.”

He darts toward the front door and blocks it off as I reach for the doorknob. “You can’t keep pushing this down or it’s going to burn you from the inside out. Forget the fucking bet. I don’t care about that. Just please talk to me.”

I stare at the buttons on his shirt. I rarely see him wearing his work clothes in his apartment. He usually changes before I make it upstairs. He actually wrangled Linda into giving me today, tomorrow, and Saturday off for my birthday. I’ve never had three days off from the café. Adam can convince just about anyone to do just about anything, but he can’t convince himself that he’s not to blame for Myles’ death and he can’t convince me to spill my guts to him.

“Fucking shit, Claire!” he groans as I remain silent. “You’re self-medicating with that meditation shit. You might as well be shooting heroin in your veins. You’re numb and you can’t even see it.”

“I can’t believe you would even say that.”

“Yes, your mother died of a drug overdose and it’s tragic and I wish I could take your pain and make it my own, but I can’t. And you have to understand that your mother loved you. She wouldn’t have been so careful about keeping you safe if she didn’t love you. She made a mistake, but that’s because she was sick. You’re not sick, Claire. You’re just heartbroken.”

I reach for the door and he pushes my hand away. “Please get out of my way.”

My whole body is trembling with all the horrible things I want to shout at him, but I can’t let myself lose control. His face is twisted with pity, but he doesn’t move.

“I’m not moving until you talk to me.”

“I don’t want to talk. Please get out of my way.”

“No.”

I push him hard in the chest and he grabs my wrist. “Get out of my fucking way!” I try to wrench my arms free, but he pulls me against him so I can’t get any leverage. “Let go.”

“Is that what you want? You want me to let this go? You want me to watch you suffer like this? Because I can’t do it anymore.”

He lets go of my wrists and I’m stunned into silence. The one thing he wants is the one thing I can’t give.

“You think I can’t see it? You think I can’t see that I’m sinking like a stone and no one, not even you, can rescue me,” I whisper as I clutch my fists to my chest. “This was inevitable. You don’t want to know what I did. Trust me when I say that. If I tell you what I did you will never trust me again… and I don’t think I could handle that. So I guess it’s best if we just stop before we’re in too deep.”

“It’s too late for that,” he says, his voice sounding too thick. “I can’t believe you’re willing to throw this all away because you think I’m going to judge you or stop trusting you—especially after everything you’ve learned about me.” He reaches for my face and I swallow hard as I try to hold back my tears. “Look at this face.” He strokes my cheekbones with his thumbs and the first tear falls over the rim of my eyelid and races down my cheek. “How could I ever not trust this face? Or these eyes.” He kisses both my eyelids and my throat aches with all the words I wish I could say. “And these lips…. How could I ever curse a single word that comes out of these lips?”

He kisses me so tenderly I sob softly into his mouth. He pulls away and I know I probably look like a mess.

“I just need to be alone for a little while,” I say in a strangled whisper.

He nods and kisses my forehead. “I’ll come by later to check on you.”

I nod as I reach for the doorknob again and he places his hand over mine. “Maybe you’ll get some answers when we go to Raleigh tomorrow. Maybe your heart will be a little less broken once we leave there.”

I don’t have it in me to tell him that this trust account has nothing to do with my broken heart so I just nod. He kisses my temple once more before I leave. As I descend the steps to my apartment, only one thought occupies my troubled mind: It’s time to call Jackie Knight.

Chapter Sixteen

Relentless Signs

I WAKE UP TO TOTAL darkness with my leg curled around Adam’s leg and my cheek plastered to his stomach. This humidity is becoming too much. The impending tropical storm set to hit the Carolinas tonight is not helping any. I peel my face off his belly and he reaches down to take my face in his hands. He pulls my lips to his and sucks gently on my bottom lip.

“Mmm….” He moans as I lay on top of him. “Happy birthday, babydoll.”

He kisses me hard and I feel him growing beneath me. He flips me onto my back and I come down so hard on the mattress that the two twin beds we pushed together in my bedroom nearly split apart underneath me. We both laugh as we scoot over so we’re not on the crack. He leans in to kiss my neck and I skim my fingers down his washboard abs and grab his hard length.

He moves my hand away as he slithers down and takes my nipple into his mouth, teasing my nipple with his tongue and giving it a soft tug. He moves to my other breast and I grab a fistfuls of his hair to pull him up. I kiss him hungrily as I wrap my legs around his waist.

“It’s your birthday,” he says between kisses. “I’ll do whatever you want.” His tongue slides into my mouth and I suck on it for a bit before he pulls back. “Let me eat you up. You’ll be my slice of birthday cake.”

“We don’t have much time. We have to go to the bank. Let’s multitask and do it in the shower.”

He grins at me as he kisses the tip of my nose. “So efficient. But we have plenty of time. The sun hasn’t even come up yet.”

I turn toward the window then back to him. “Why are we up so early?”

“I wanted to wake you up in time for your favorite time of day.”

He slides down my body and lays a soft kiss between my legs before he rises from the bed. A shiver travels over my thighs and I press my legs together to stop myself from pulling him back on top of me this instant.

We go outside and sit on the bottom of the steps that lead to his apartment as we wait for that golden moment just before the sun comes up.

That’s when he turns to me and whispers in my ear, “I promise today will be the best birthday you’ve ever had.”

When the water in the shower begins to run cold, we drag ourselves out of the shower and take our time drying each other off.