Put Me Back Together (41 page)

I could say nothing in my own defense.

“It tore her apart to lie to you about it,” Lucas said, “you more than anyone else.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” Em said, holding up her hand as if to block him out entirely. “You’ve been in her life for, what? The past five seconds? I’ve been hers since birth!”

“But I saw it right away when she told me,” Lucas persisted. “You were the one—”

“You told
him
before
me
?” Em said, and this time I had to meet her eyes, to see the tears coursing down her cheeks. She was slipping out of my grasp. I couldn’t take the coward’s way out and shut my eyes as I lost my only sister. “I will never forgive you for this,” she said. Then she turned and ran into the house. We could all hear her crying loudly through the open door as she made her way up to her room.

“You know how she is,” my mother said as she wiped at her smeared mascara. “She’ll cry it out and then she’ll come around.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Dad said. “It’ll be fine.”

But I wasn’t so sure. Neither of them knew Em the way I did. I’d seen her hold a grudge for years over a suspected stolen hairbrush. It had seemed funny then; we’d laughed about it together, back when we were always on the same side.

My parents wanted me to stay the night in my old room. They offered to make up the guest room for Lucas. But I couldn’t stand the thought of spending the night listening to my sister bawling in the next room, or to be separated from Lucas by an entire hallway. When I told them Lucas would be getting a motel room and I’d be going with him, my father cleared his throat and wandered off into the dining room. Shockingly, it was my mother who seemed to understand that I needed Lucas that night. Maybe it was the way Dad had held her as she’d cried that made her see that sometimes closeness is something you need more than anything else.

“You go, darling,” she said, pressing a wad of bills into my hands. “Go with him, as long as you promise to come back.”

“I’ll always come back, Mom,” I said. “Thank you…for surprising me.”

“Thank you for giving me the chance,” she said.

We left them with promises to talk more, share more, tell more. I knew telling the story was just the beginning, that their anger toward me might still be waiting in the wings. The road to the truth would be a long one, but we were on it now. I’d put us on it.

As the cab pulled away from my parents’ house, I saw Emily peering out at me from her bedroom window. She didn’t wave.

I was right. Telling the truth was exactly like setting off a bomb. We’d all survived, all except Em, who would struggle through the night on life support as we all waited, as I waited, to see if she would come back to me.

24

We checked into the most expensive hotel I could think of. In her emotional state, I think my mother had pressed a few more bills than she intended into my hand, but I had no qualms about spending them.
I
was spent. I wanted to sleep the night in two-hundred-dollar sheets and order way overpriced room service and bathe in a tub so big I could swim in it. I wanted to indulge my every whim. So that’s what we did.

Lucas kept talking about the size of my parents’ house. I hadn’t really told him how wealthy they were, mainly due to my mother’s practice. He acted impressed, but I think he really just wanted to take my mind off of Emily.

“How many bathrooms are there, again?” he asked as we dug into our room service meal. He’d ordered a fancy burger and I’d ordered filet mignon, which came with a baked potato that was carved in the shape of a rose and carrot slivers woven into a basket.

“Four,” I replied, “one for each of us. And of course they each have their own attendant. Mine is named Pierre.”

Lucas swallowed and wiped his mouth. “Don’t ever tell your parents I share a bathroom with twenty other guys, okay?” he said.

“I was kidding about the attendants,” I said, though I was pretty sure he already knew it. “My parents aren’t snobs. Em and I used to say…”

I stared down at my food, my appetite disappearing. This has happened several times already. Just the thought of Emily brought the conversation to a screeching halt.

Lucas set the metal cover on top of my plate. “Let’s watch some TV,” he said gently, taking me by the hand and leading me over to the gigantic bed.

We snuggled up together, leaning back against the pillows and switched on the flat screen, which took up the better part of the wall. Lucas began swiftly clicking through the channels, but, naturally, every station was showing the same thing. Of course, I should have known. I was the one who’d been through all of this before. The country had been waiting six years for a new story about the Kindergarten Killer. My life would be the top story for months to come.

“I’ll turn it off,” Lucas said, but I stilled his hand.

“No, leave it,” I said. I’d been hiding from the news for so long, averting my eyes from the headlines, depriving myself of music to avoid hearing the top story update at the end of the hour on the radio. It was a stupid way to live, and I’d resolved to stop letting Brandon’s actions make me do stupid things. “It’s about me, isn’t it? We might as well hear what they’re saying.”

There she was, Leslie Wong, looking exactly the same as she had when I was thirteen, her shoulder-length hair perfectly coiffed, the teeth perfectly straight. To me, the sound of her voice was like nails being dragged down a chalkboard, but I tried to remind myself that it wasn’t Leslie’s fault that she’d joined the news team the year my life went to hell. As the camera zoomed out I realized Leslie was standing on University Avenue, the fluttering yellow police tape behind her cordoning off the pathway between Ontario and Grant Halls.

“Isn’t that your apartment building?” Lucas said. We both leaned toward the TV as Leslie’s voice-over played against footage of my building.

“This apartment complex is where victim Katie Archer had been living a quiet life at school until the Kindergarten Killer, now known as Brandon Tomko, came back into her life and tried to take it a second time. Though Katie and her family have been following their ‘no comment’ rule established six years ago, her friends were quick to comment about the character of the girl we all knew as ‘the babysitter.’”

The face of Pompous Guy from my art class filled the screen and I quickly reached forward and muted the TV before we could hear whatever nonsense he was telling the world about me. I’d never had a conversation with him in my life.

Lucas was still gaping at the television like he couldn’t believe his eyes. I remembered that feeling. As a seasoned victim of the media, I shot right into action. Grabbing my phone—which I now saw had thirty-seven recorded voicemails—I left a quick message on Mariella’s machine apologizing for disappearing without filling her in and telling her I was fine and not to talk to any reporters. I sent similar texts to Em’s friends, though I was pretty sure they’d all gone home by now. It was lucky the semester was over. The journalists would be hard-pressed to find someone to give them a sound bite about me, which explained how they’d landed on Pompous Guy.

“You should call any friends who you know are still on campus,” I said to Lucas as I scanned through my insanely long list of missed calls. Where exactly had the journalists gotten my number? “If they’re talking to random people from our class, they know we’re together. I hope you’re ready for the spotlight.”

“Don’t think that,” Lucas said, pulling the phone out of my hand and tossing it across the bed.

“Hey!” I cried. “What? Think what?”

He turned off the TV and then tugged me onto his lap. I hooked my legs around his waist and laid my head against his chest, marveling at how perfectly we fit together in this position. Though my head was full of racing thoughts, I wasn’t too preoccupied to notice that certain very sensitive parts of our bodies were touching, causing a little flame to ignite in my center, its heat rolling through my body.

“You’re thinking that I’m probably having second thoughts about you now that our relationship is going to be broadcast to the world,” he said into my ear. That was pretty much what I had been thinking, though now my thoughts had wandered to other things. “But don’t think that. I don’t care about any of it. I just want to be with you. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said weakly. He ran his hands up and down my back. He was trying to be comforting, I knew. I was sure he had no idea the reaction my body was having to his touch. It was as though a growling animal had been awakened inside of me, and she wanted to be fed.

“Why don’t I run you a bath,” Lucas said, delicately kissing my cheeks and pulling out of my arms.

I flung myself back on the bed as I heard him turn on the water in the bathroom. Maybe a bath would do me good, help me clear my head and focus on what was important instead of the sex-crazed thoughts that had invaded my mind as if from nowhere. Or maybe all that hot, sudsy water would only inflame my burgeoning libido. I groaned softly to myself as I pulled my hair up into a bun.

Get control of yourself, Archer
, I commanded.
You are not a sex monster
.

Except this was a whole new world and a whole new Katie Archer, wasn’t it? Who the hell knew what I was.

Lucas gave me another one of those frustratingly chaste kisses before leaving me alone in the bathroom to undress. I wanted to ask him to stay with me, to get into the bath with me, to do ungodly things to me with his insanely chiseled body, but instead I let him go. I had to get a grip on myself. Getting my freak on on the same day I broke my sister’s heart was way inappropriate. Besides, my body had just been through a terrible ordeal. I needed time to recover, no matter what my loins were telling me.

I took of my clothes and stood in front of the mirror as I peeled the bandages off of my face. Mom was right; they were starting to scab. I could probably leave the bandages off tomorrow.

As I gazed at my ravaged face, the blue-green bruises on my upper lip and chin, the dark red wounds in the center of either cheek, I realized that this face was mine alone now. I would never look exactly like my sister again. Brandon had taken my twin from me forever.

With this sobering thought circling my brain, I stepped into the bathtub and lowered myself into the steaming water. I was right—the tub was almost big enough to swim in. Closing my eyes, I let my thoughts run over everything that had happened yesterday and today, but it was as though I were watching a movie about someone else’s life. Maybe in time I’d fully understand what had happened to me and what was left of me now that it was done, but tonight it seemed easier to let my mind go blank. Everything I had to worry about could wait until tomorrow. Tonight I just had to let it all go.

Just around the time the water was beginning to cool, Lucas knocked on the door. “I was thinking of taking a shower,” he said.

There was a stand-up shower in the bathroom next to the tub. I noticed with appreciation that its walls were made entirely of glass. When the door to the bathroom didn’t open, I realized he was waiting for me to say something.

“Go ahead,” I answered casually, biting at my bottom lip.

Lucas came into the room in his boxers looking mildly bashful, which was amusing since he’d been sleeping next to me in just his boxers all week. But there was a difference between seeing Lucas in his boxers in a dim bedroom and seeing Lucas in his boxers in a bright bathroom, knowing he was about to take those boxers off. I tried not to drool at the thought.

He looked over at me and I didn’t miss the way his eyes lingered on the water in the place where my breasts were submerged. The bubbles were mostly gone now, but the tub was so deep that I was still completely covered. I noticed him shake his head abruptly, as though trying to banish something from his thoughts. Then he grabbed a towel from the back of the door.

“All right, no peeking, Hero,” he said as he placed his thumb on the elastic waistband of his boxers, giving me an admonishing look.

“As you wish,” I said. With a smirk, I closed my eyes. It was only fair, since he’d let me get undressed in private. But it was also pretty ridiculous, given that the shower stall was
transparent
.

When I heard the shower turn on and the door click closed, I figured it was safe to risk a peek and tentatively opened one eye. Then I snapped both eyes wide open and stared, my body flushing so completely and so quickly I was surprised the water in the tub didn’t start to boil.