“You don’t understand what you’re saying,” she said as I turned to leave, and I looked back at her.
“No, I do. If I’m capable, I will save you every time, Indy. Believe that, if nothing else. I don’t need or expect anything in return. I’m doing this because it’s what you deserve and what I want to do for you.”
“I want you! You consume me in a way I’ve never experienced even though up until ten minutes ago it didn’t make sense! I want the feeling you give me to never end, but there’s no way—”
I dropped to my knees in front of her and cupped her cheeks in my hands and brought my mouth down onto hers. “Don’t finish that,” I growled against her lips before kissing her again.
Her mouth moved easily against mine, and when I traced my tongue against her lips, they parted on a soft inhale, allowing me access to tease her tongue with my own.
“I need to be able to touch you,” she pled before deepening the kiss, and I released her cheeks to begin quickly, and awkwardly, pulling down the blankets I’d wrapped around her.
Once her arms were free, I laid her back on the pillows and hovered over her body for a few seconds before relaxing on top of her. An annoyed groan sounded in the back of her throat when she tried to move her legs, but the six blankets wrapped—and now tangled—around her lower body prevented the movement.
Moving back enough so I could look down into her eyes, I shook my head and whispered, “Nothing is ever guaranteed, but you can’t write us off before you even give me a chance to prove that I can be good for you.”
That pained look was back in her eyes. “I have a feeling that you would be. I’ve had that feeling. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll be good for you.”
I brushed my lips against hers, everything in my body yelling to taste her again. “Let me be the judge of that.”
Fresh tears welled up in her eyes, and my body tightened as I prepared to make my case again. Instead of the resistance I was coming to expect, she choked out, “My brother died. Two years ago last Saturday. But it was Thanksgiving, so it’s also kind of tomorrow.”
“Indy,” I crooned, my hands going to cup her cheeks again.
“He was my twin, and I loved him”—she cut off on a sob—“so much. We were nothing alike, but still inseparable until college. He was my best friend, and we loved to drive my mom crazy . . . probably just because she gave us such horrible names.”
I smiled and brushed at a tear. “I love the name Indy.”
Her watery gaze drifted over to me. “My brother’s name was Ian. Indy and Ian . . . Indy-Ian. All our friends just called us Indian instead of trying to say our separate names.” She laughed softly and shook her head. “He got a scholarship to play football in Texas. It was the first time we’d ever been away from each other, but I didn’t get accepted there, and there was no way he wasn’t going. It was like a dream for him. He’d always been so focused in school and football . . . my parents had always been proud of him.”
Her eyes got a faraway look as heavy tears slipped down her cheeks.
“Our freshman year Ian said he couldn’t come home for Thanksgiving, and our parents never really liked me, so I decided to stay here with Dean.” She must have seen my skeptical expression, because she added, “Ian always had to tell my parents to back off because they were never happy with me or anything I did. My grades were never as good as his. My boyfriends never measured up to Ian’s perfect girlfriends. My dad always said I dressed like a whore, but he congratulated Ian when he lost his virginity. It was always difficult with them. They practically paid me to move away from them.”
“Are you serious?”
She choked out a depressed-sounding laugh, and even in the dark I could see her eyebrows rise in confirmation. “So apparently Ian just told my parents he couldn’t come home because he wanted to come hang out with me here so we could have time without our parents fighting over how I wasn’t making them proud the way Ian was. He called me the night before Thanksgiving to tell me he was boarding a plane with a friend who lived in the area, and would be catching a ride, and not to tell Mom and Dad. There was some crazy snowstorm, and he got stuck in Chicago.”
The tears came harder, and for long minutes Indy didn’t continue the story. After taking a few large breaths in and out, she looked up at me and gave me a depressed smile.
“I was woken up the next morning by a phone call around six. I was alone in my dorm room, my roommate had left for the break, and I remember it smelled like her perfume. I don’t know why I remember that. It’s just something that has always stood out, because I hated that fucking perfume, and it’s all I could smell as I listened to my mom sobbing on the other end of the line. Ian and his friend had decided to try to drive since there were no flights, and it was only about four hours. We’re from Chicago, so Ian called his friends all night until one of them agreed to come get them at the airport and drive them. They didn’t make it forty-five minutes before they, and another car, hit a huge patch of black ice and spun out of control. They both went off the road and into a ditch. The driver was paralyzed from the waist down, Ian’s friend broke his collarbone, and Ian’s side of the car was pinned underneath the other car. They said he lived for about ten minutes after the crash. They didn’t say the exact words, but it wasn’t hard to figure out how much he’d been suffering for those ten minutes. And he’d been coming to see me.”
“But, Indy . . . that doesn’t make it your fault.”
“I know that,” she cried. “But I’m not sure my parents do.”
“You don’t—”
“My dad said, ‘It should have been you’ when I was finally able to make it home.”
I flinched back. “What the fuck?” I breathed. “Indy, I—I don’t. God, I’m so sorry about Ian. But your parents, they’re wrong.”
She nodded absentmindedly, her jaw shaking as she did. “Through everything, all I could think about was that Ian suffered. That he was in pain for those ten minutes, and I wasn’t there for him when he’d been there for me my whole life. I—I just lost myself after that. I clung to my relationship with Dean because my parents hated me even more, but nothing took the pain away. Over and over I relived that phone call, the smell of that horrible perfume, and the fact that he suffered—and I started cutting.”
My chest felt hollow and my stomach dropped. “Indy, no. . . .”
“Somehow it made sense to me. Like if I felt pain for him, I was taking away what he had gone through. I never did it to kill myself. It was always on my legs, and I knew where not to cut, but I couldn’t stop. It became addictive. Every time I thought about him, I’d have to do it. Dean tried to get me to stop, and I tried—God, I tried so fucking hard, but I felt like I’d failed Ian,” she cried. “I know none of this makes sense, but at the time it did. My parents never even found out—I was able to stop before sophomore year ended—but when I had to go home over summer . . . it was horrible. It was like even though they didn’t know, they knew that I was refusing to cope, and they just got tired of having to deal with their disappointment. I found my bags on the driveway when I came home from the gym one morning, the locks to the house changed. So I came back to school early and found Dean and Vanessa having sex.” She took a deep breath and I could tell she was trying to steady herself.
“I hadn’t been there for Ian, I was never a good enough daughter for my parents, so much so that I can’t go home anymore, and I found out my boyfriend—the only person who knew what was happening and was trying to help me through it—had wanted to dump me and hadn’t done it yet because he was just afraid to upset me.” I started to say something, but she cut me off. “That is why I’m trying to tell you it can’t work. That is why I’m telling you you’ll leave. Everyone does. And you think you want to save me, but it’s not your job to save me, Kier. I need to save myself, and I’m trying. The drinking—it’s bad, I know. But it’s done. It has to be, just like I stopped cutting for Ian. I can’t keep drinking to forget a guy who never cared about me. But while I’m trying to save me, you shouldn’t have to get caught up in the mess that is my life. Do you understand now?” she asked, her voice breaking on the last word.