Easy

he kissed me felt like a brand. Like he was tattooing himself under my skin.
    He knew all of my secrets, and I knew his.
    But that seeming reciprocity was a lie—because he hadn’t been the one to reveal his own. I’d excavated them, and worse, he was unaware of it.
    My guilt mushroomed between us, along with my longing for him to share that part of himself. To trust me with it. I was going home in three days. I couldn’t bring this up with miles and hours between us, or keep it to myself for weeks longer.
    When we slowed again, wrapped up in each other and allowing our libidos and heart rates time to decelerate, I saw an opening.
    “So you sort of live with the Hellers, and they’re family friends?”
    He watched me and nodded.
    “How did your parents meet them?”
    Turning onto his back, his teeth slid over the ring in his lip and he sucked it into his mouth. I recognized this as his stress-disclosing equivalent of Kennedy’s neck-rubbing.
    “They went to college together.”
    The earbuds had been dislodged sometime during the last half hour. He turned the iPod off and wound the wires around it tightly.
    “So you’ve known them all of your life.”
    He pushed the iPod into his front pocket. “Yeah.”
    Images of what I’d read, and what Dr. Heller had revealed, flashed in front of my eyes. Lucas needed comforting—I’d never known anyone who needed it more—but I couldn’t console him over something he hadn’t shared.
    “What was your mother like?”
    He stared up at the ceiling, and then closed his eyes, unmoving. “Jacqueline—”
    The scrape of a key in the door startled both of us. The room was unlit, except for a low-watt desk lamp. When the door opened, a block of light, filled with Erin’s silhouette, fell across the floor in the center of the room.
    “J, are you already asleep?” She whispered, her eyes still adjusting from the bright hallway, or she’d have seen that I wasn’t alone on the bed.
    “Um, no…”
    Lucas sat up and swung his feet to the floor, and I followed. Timing is everything , I thought.
    After tossing her purse on her bed and kicking off her shoes, Erin turned back toward us. “Oh! Hey… er. I think I might have some laundry I need to do…” She shrugged out of her coat and grabbed her nearly-empty laundry basket.
    “I was just leaving.” Lucas bent to pull on his black boots and lace them up.
    Mouthing, Oh my God I’m so sorry! over his head, Erin was the picture of contrition.
    I shrugged and mouthed back, It’s okay .
    Following Lucas into the hall, I gripped my opposite arms, cold after the warmth of lying next to him. “Tomorrow?”
    He zipped his leather jacket before turning to me, his lips set firm. His eyes slid from mine and I felt the wall between us then, too late. Our gazes connecting, he sighed. “It’s officially winter break. We should probably use it to take a break from each other as well.”
    I tried to form an intelligible protest, but wasn’t sure what to say. I’d just pushed him to this, after all. “Why?” The word rasped from me.
    “You’re leaving town. I will be, too, for at least a week. You need to pack up, and I’ll be helping Charles get final grades posted over the next day or so.” His justification was so logical; there was no concealed thread of emotion I could wrench free. “Let me know when you’re back in town.” He bent to kiss me, quickly. “Bye, Jacqueline.”

Chapter 25

    As I drove to Lucas’s apartment Sunday night, I reviewed the numerous reasons why popping up unannounced and uninvited was a bad idea: he might not be there, he might be busy, he thinks he scared me away, he thinks we said goodbye . On the other hand, I was only going to be in town until Tuesday morning, and I couldn’t let him dismiss me without a fight.
    After I knocked, I heard the bolt turn and then Lucas’s harsh voice through the door. “Who is it, Carlie? Don’t just open the door—”
    “It’s a girl.” The door swung open and a pretty, blonde, dark-eyed girl was framed in the doorway. She blinked at me, clearly waiting for an explanation of who I was and what I wanted. I couldn’t speak. I was sure my heart had lodged itself in my esophagus and stopped beating.
    Lucas came up next to her, scowling. When he saw me, his brows rose into the hair hanging over his forehead. “Jacqueline? What are you doing here?”
    My heart revved to life and I turned to tear down the stairs. Suddenly I was airborne, my bicep