Here Without You

He glances towards Reid. ‘Are you sure –’

‘Yes. I’ll be fine.’

Reid’s eyes flick to him as he passes. Nick is taller than average, but shorter and leaner than Reid, whose in-production body looks big and defined in comparison. Nick keeps a wide berth and avoids eye contact as he walks to the sedan he borrowed from his mom for the night. Reid’s spotless Ferrari is parked right behind it.

I start down the steps. ‘Reid. What are you …’ I swallow the uncomfortable lump in my throat and start over. ‘What are you doing here?’

He watches me approach, but makes no move towards me.

‘You stopped talking to me, Dori. I came to find out why.’ He glances over his shoulder at Nick, who waits by the driver’s side door, resting his arms on the roof of the car and watching us. ‘Or should I take this as an answer?’ When he looks back at me, the pain is evident in his eyes.

I shake my head, coming to stand in front of him. ‘No. Nick has nothing to do with … us.’

‘Is there an us, Dori?’ I flinch at the raw torment in his voice, and his hand moves as if to touch me, but he drops it back to his side. ‘I made promises to you, and I intended to keep them. I know I was wrong to hide River from you, and I’m willing to do whatever I need to do to make up for that. But you have to talk to me. If you’re going to end it, you have to tell me why. You can’t just disappear like you did before.’

Mom told me he’d called, though her memory was suspiciously vague as to the content of their conversation. From his perspective, my withdrawal is exactly like last time. But last fall was about submitting to pressure from my parents. This time is all me and my personal demons.

‘This isn’t like last time.’

‘Isn’t it?’ he says softly.

My heart clenches rhythmically instead of beating. ‘We can’t talk about this now –’

‘Because going out with some other guy is more important to you?’

I wince at the indignation in his voice, and the way he pivots from hurt to anger.

‘Nick is leaving town tomorrow. We made plans …’

He stares at me, hard, silent.

Laying my hand on his forearm, I note the immediate tautness of the muscle under my fingers. Like he can steel himself against my touch. Like he wants to.

‘Can we talk tomorrow, Reid? Please?’

The tension melts from his shoulders with a sigh. Carefully – as if he’s afraid to startle me, he lifts his hand to curl one finger under my chin and gazes down into my eyes. ‘Will you talk to me, Dori?’

His thumb grazes over the indentation in my chin as though it’s meant to rest there before it slides up to outline my lower lip. When he leans to kiss me, my body responds without regard to how this connection tears at my heart. My mouth opens to him, yielding against all the rapidly disregarded rationales for why I can’t surrender to what he thinks he wants right now. My hand slides up his arm and under the sleeve of his T-shirt, tightening on his bicep as he slips that arm around my waist and pulls me closer, urgently.

I want this. I need this. And when he kisses me, he knows it.

Stroking my tongue with his, he’s both fiercely possessive and gentle, and I want nothing more than to wrap myself around him and be carried away to a place where I don’t have to think. A place where there’s no guilt or fear, no right or wrong, no divine punishments or senseless accidents or indeterminate states.

When he draws back, his chest rises and falls with mine. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon,’ he says, turning to go without looking back, pulling his keys from his pocket. He ignores Nick completely as he gets into his car and drives away.

I walk unsteadily to Nick’s car, belatedly aware that at least three neighbours came outside in the last few minutes to sweep clean sidewalks or check empty mailboxes and watch Reid Alexander kiss me.

REID

As soon as Immaculada leaves the kitchen, Mom walks in with her coffee cup and heads for the impressive-looking coffee maker, which supposedly makes all sorts of coffee drinks. If it’s in operation, though, there’s a good chance it’s just making coffee.

‘Reid?’ She pulls out the adjacent seat and glances back at the digital clock over the stove. ‘Goodness, you’re up early,’ she observes, sitting next to me.

I shrug. ‘I’m still on production schedule, I guess. Just as well – we start up at Universal on Monday.’

‘So soon?’

I arch a brow at her. ‘Time is money, Lucy.’

She laughs at my overdone impersonation of my father … and every producer in Hollywood.

Truth: I couldn’t sleep most of the night, thinking about how Dori responded to that kiss. She wants me still. I don’t care what she says – or refuses to say, since she hasn’t been speaking to me. Come to think of it, her avoidance feels even more suspect, because I’ve seen Dori angry, and nothing about her reactions yesterday denoted anger, even in the face of my obvious jealousy towards her friend.

Dr Shaw will be happy to know I didn’t lay a verbal insult (or a fist) on Nick – the guy I mistook for her boyfriend last summer at Habitat, because he clearly wanted to be her boyfriend. Considering the fact that for about two minutes yesterday afternoon I thought that guy was the reason she wasn’t calling me back – I think I showed extraordinary restraint.

‘River’s room is completely ready,’ Mom says, breaking into my mental recap.

‘Mom, are you sure you’re good with River living here? I know you and Dad thought you were almost rid of me. And it’s not like I can’t afford my own place.’