Put Me Back Together (22 page)

Please don’t do this to me.

“Save my life?” she said with a grateful smile as Ethan stepped forward and took my hand. He stuck his tongue through the hole a missing tooth had left in his smile and wiggled it at me as his mother put a bag of toys down at my feet.

His hand felt like a grenade in mine. My palm was so sweaty against his that I was sure his fingers would slip right out of my grip and we’d both be blown to bits.

“I’ll be back at nine thirty, ten o’clock at the latest,” Mariella said, slapping a Post-It on Ethan’s forehead that had her work number on it. “He’ll eat anything you put in front of him and his bedtime’s at eight. Just leave him on your couch or whatever. I can just come and grab him when I get home.”

Before I had fully processed what was happening, she was already going down the stairs, waving goodbye.

“Wait, Mariella,” I cried. “I don’t know if I can—”

I heard the door in the lobby closing behind her with a click and just like that Ethan and I were standing in the hallway, alone. Nine thirty…that was
four and a half hours
from now.

I swallowed hard and stared at my front door, because it was better than staring at Ethan. Just looking at him made me feel as though I might pass out.

“Did you forget your keys?” Ethan asked, pulling his hand from my grip and reaching for the zipper of my purse. “My mom always finds hers hiding right at the bottom in the same old place, but she swears a lot before she remembers to look there.”

“Right, keys,” I whispered, shakily pawing through my purse until I found them.

I swung the door open and Ethan ran inside with his bag of toys, bouncing onto the couch and turning on the TV. “Do you have Treehouse? Do you have Nickelodeon?” he asked, already clicking the remote, though the screen remained blank.

He gave me a horrified look.
No TV?

I grabbed a DVD off my bookcase, thanking Jesus that I had a childish taste in movies, and threw it into his hands. “Here, watch this,” I said as I practically jogged down the hall away from him. “I just have to make a phone call, okay?”

“Okay,” Ethan called back. I heard the opening music to
Toy Story
drifting down the hallway to my room just before I shoved the door shut.

Throwing my purse onto the bed—where it promptly exploded because I hadn’t zipped it shut—I started pacing with my hands over my face. From his perch on my desk chair, Turner’s eyes followed me around the room. The tips of my fingers were tingling and my stomach was churning, a sure sign I was about to have a panic attack. Though I desperately wanted to keep moving, I shooed the cat off my chair and sat down, putting my head between my knees.

Think
, I urged myself,
think. Who can I call?

I didn’t even consider the alternative. I couldn’t be here alone with Ethan. That was out of the question. I hadn’t babysat a child, not in six years. And there was a very, very good reason for that. I clutched my thighs, squeezing them so hard I left bruises. This was not happening, not again. I couldn’t let it happen. I needed somebody to come and take care of this kid
right now
, but who?

Emily.

Burrowing through the pile of purse crap on my bed, I finally located my phone and dialed Em’s number, trying to think of where she might be at that moment. What day was it? Wednesday? Didn’t she have yoga at dinnertime on Wednesdays? But sometimes she skipped. A lot of the time, actually. She and Anita sometimes went out for burgers instead. But apparently not today. I left several incredibly frantic and probably alarming messages on both of their phones and then started pacing the room again, tapping my cell against my stomach. As I passed the door I pressed my ear up against it, but I could only hear the movie playing from the other room. Good, good. He was fine. Unless he’d already choked to death.

Who else could I call?

I didn’t have Melissa’s number. Sally would probably set the place on fire herself. My parents were too far away. I shook my fist in the air, cursing myself for insisting on running four thousand kilometers from my past. Wouldn’t thirty have been enough? Then they could have been here in half an hour. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d wanted my mommy this much. I thumbed through the measly list of contacts on my phone. There was only one name left.

I stared down at his number then pressed my forehead into the windowpane, gazing out at the dark street below. He was my only option. I could either call him or spend the evening with Ethan by myself. Just the thought of it made my breath hitch in my throat and I had to spend five minutes with my head between my legs again.

I didn’t consider what he would think when he saw my number on his phone. I didn’t think about how pathetic it was that I was calling him now, or how pathetic he would think I was, or how pathetic I thought I was. I didn’t think about anything at all. I just closed my eyes, pressed my thumb down on his number, and listened to it ring.

“Hello?” Lucas said, speaking loudly due to the background noise. Just the sound of his voice made tears spring to my eyes.

“Lucas?” I squeaked, holding the phone with both hands. “Lucas, I’m sorry to be calling. I—”

“Katie?” he said, and the noise around him receded. I wondered if he’d stepped into a closet or something.

Silence spread between us as I tried to think of the right words to say that would make him come. How could I explain this? I’d sound like a lunatic. He had no reason to care about my problems now, after I’d left him standing on the street alone in a storm and then ignored him for two weeks straight. What could I possibly say to fix all of that and express my desperation at the same time? There weren’t words enough in the English language.

“Lucas,” I repeated, my voice breaking, “I need you. Please come.”

There was a pause. I held my breath, waiting for his reply.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said, and then hung up.

They were the longest ten minutes of my entire life. I spent them pacing around the kitchen eating marshmallows and peeking over the back of the couch at Ethan playing with his dinosaurs on the coffee table. Every time the toy dinosaur came on the screen, he cheered and held up his Tyrannosaurus rex and I ate another marshmallow. The only time we interacted was when he asked me if he could have some marshmallows, too, and I gave him ten. His eyes lit up like it was his birthday, and he’d been quietly stuffing his face ever since.

Finally the front door buzzer went off and I rushed over to press the button. Standing in the living room, I noticed all my dark paintings hanging on the wall in an alarming cluster and quickly pulled them off the wall, leaving them in a pile by the couch. That done, I swung open the door and stood with one foot in the hall and one in my apartment. I didn’t really start breathing freely until I saw him hurrying down the hall toward me. I’d never seen him hurry anywhere before. At the sight of him, my chest started heaving as though I was the one who’d just run up the stairs.

He stopped in front of me, his eyes full of questions, and before I realized what I’d done, I was pressing my cheek into his chest and breathing in his Lucas smell.

Oh my God, I was throwing myself at him, just like I’d said I wouldn’t do. And now he was going to push me away.

But, surprisingly, he didn’t. His strong arms came around me, the fingers of his right hand running down my back, his chin resting on the top of my head. I noticed he wasn’t wearing a jacket, and it was barely five degrees outside. His arms were cool, but they heated up quickly as I stood inside them. I heard him make a
hmm
noise, kind of like a sigh, and it had an amazing calming effect on me. Barely a minute had passed, but a minute in Lucas’s arms was like a lifetime in anyone else’s. They were magic healing arms.

“What’s wrong, Katie?” Lucas said into my hair, and I shook myself back into the present moment, remembering there was a five year old in the room with us.

Pulling out of Lucas’s arms, I pointed at Ethan, who, thank God, didn’t seem to have been paying us any attention.

“Th-this this is Ethan,” I stuttered, and Lucas glanced at the kid, who waved a dinosaur, then back at me. “He belongs to Mariella.” Had I ever mentioned Mariella to Lucas? “She’s my neighbour and she had to work and I’m watching him until nine thirty or maybe ten and these are his dinosaurs,” I finished in a rush.

Lucas looked back and forth between me and Ethan a few more times, then his eyes settled on my face and I stared at him, shaking my head because I knew none of this made any sense to him. Wordlessly I begged him just to put up with my craziness one last time and he’d never have to do it again. He gazed at me a few minutes more, blinking thoughtfully, then nodded once and turned and closed the door.

“Can I be the stegosaurus?” he asked Ethan as he sat down beside him on the rug.

The little boy nodded and handed over the toy, then started to telling him the names of all the characters in the movie, pointing at the screen.

I closed my eyes and let out a long sigh of relief.

Somehow we made it through the night. Like a real trooper, Lucas sat with Ethan and played dinosaurs and built a fort and harassed Turner while I made us a dinner of chocolate chip cookies—I had the dough, after all—French toast, and apple slices, using up all the fresh ingredients I had in my fridge. We watched the rest of
Toy Story
and made it halfway through
A Bug’s Life
without Ethan bursting into tears, which he finally did only because I reminded him that it was already ten minutes past his bedtime. Though the sight of those tears nearly sent me over the edge again, Lucas dealt with them like a pro. He got the kid to stop crying and brush his teeth and put on his pajamas, all for the promise of being able to go to sleep inside the fort.

When it came time to go to sleep, Lucas lay down on the floor next to Ethan’s cushion fort and they whispered secrets into each other’s ears while I watched from my perch on a kitchen stool. I hadn’t really known if my rescuer would be good with kids when I’d called him in a panic, but he really was. It was really precious to watch, and kind of a turn on in a weird way, although I tried to ignore that. He would make a great dad one day.

We retreated to my pillowless bedroom once Ethan was asleep so as to not wake him up. I collapsed facedown onto the mattress, nearly delirious with happiness that the nightmare was finally over. Then I felt the mattress sag next to me as Lucas sat down on my bed and I scrambled into a sitting position, all of a sudden very aware that there was a guy in my room. I’d never had a guy in my room before, or on my bed, or leaning back on my headboard watching me with his legs splayed. Or grinning at me because I’d been staring at him, speechless, for five minutes.

“Thanks for coming,” I said. “I guess I just got a little…” Upset? Overwhelmed? Maniacally hysterical? There didn’t seem to be any adequate word to finish the sentence.

“Are you going to thank me from over there,” Lucas said, gesturing at my perch on the corner of the bed, “or over here?” He patted the bedspread beside him.

Uh-oh.

“Uhhh…” I stalled, glancing around the room for something to distract him, but there was nothing but art supplies and books. Why the hell was my room so boring? Then I felt two hands grab me by the waist and suddenly I was sprawling, my butt on one side of his legs and my feet on the other, not quite sitting in his lap, but pretty close.

“Over here—that’s what you said, right?” Lucas said, pulling at my hip so my side was pressed up against his chest. “That’s what I thought.” He rested his arm around my shoulder, coaxing my head onto his chest. I resisted at first, but it was the scent of him and the all-encompassing warmth of his arms—they were intoxicating. I let my head fall against him, just for a minute, I promised myself.

“Are you going to tell me what tonight was all about?” he asked.

A band of anxiety wrapped itself around my chest, but I forced it loose. “Maybe another time,” I said, hoping that would be enough.

“Mmmhmm,” Lucas said. He was rubbing his hand up and down my arm in a way that was incredibly distracting. Then his other hand, which I’d lost track of, brushed against my cheek and I felt the beating of my heart begin to speed up.

His fingers reached farther, grazing against the skin of my neck and easing into my hair. I let my eyes fall closed at the tantalizing feeling.

“I missed you,” I murmured into his shirt, and suddenly I felt the beating of Lucas’s heart pick up, as well, the pounding precisely even with my own.

He removed his arm from my shoulders and I felt him guiding me backwards until I was lying flat on the bed and there he was next to me, propped up on his side. Our bodies weren’t exactly touching. His hand was braced against the mattress beside my hip, his chin in the palm of his other hand as he gazed down at me.

I swallowed and tried to catch my breath as my heart went completely crazy, beating a mile a minute.
Whoa
, I said in my head, and a second later I realized I’d also said it out loud.

“Katie Archer,” Lucas said, and I couldn’t believe how much I loved hearing him say my name, “you are driving me crazy.”

I wanted to protest, but then his lips were on my neck and all possibility of thought was lost. From somewhere in the back of my brain where I was still aware of what was going on, I heard myself breathing hard as I let my head fall back, baring more of my neck to his insistent lips. Then I twisted to face him, feeling the tight curve of his waist through his shirt as my hands pressed against his body. When he found the sweet spot where my neck met my shoulder, I felt something blossom to life inside me and pressed my hips against his. He reacted by making a sound like a growl deep in his throat.