But I don’t feel like .00001 of a percentage point. I’ve been broken, and although I’ve started to repair the cracks, they’ll never completely disappear.
Holden strokes my hair, smoothing my frayed nerves and untangling a little bit more truth as he does it. It’s been years since I’ve sought the solace of flesh. There was a brief period at the beginning of freshman year, no more than a week or two, when I foolishly thought that sex could chase my demons away. I haven’t let anyone get this close since.
Except for Luke. But then again, I ultimately found little comfort in his arms.
* * *
“S
tella.”
Holden’s voice is no louder than a whisper, but I rouse myself immediately. I can smell his fear. Whether he’s afraid of me or for me, I’m not quite sure. I glance up towards the front of the plane and see that almost all of the other passengers have disembarked.
“You were asleep.” He grabs my bag from under the seat and adds it to the one already in his hands. “I thought it was better to leave you that way.”
“Yeah.”
He offers me his hand. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Get out of here?
Oh sweet Jesus, we’re in San Francisco. No. I cannot do this. I raise my eyes, which must be filled with every ounce of the panic I feel, to his.
“We need to get off the plane,” he murmurs. “We can figure out what happens next after we do that.”
I let him lead me through the narrow aisle, and once we step off the tarmac, we’re transported into a different world. People hustle past us. Everyone has a purpose—each blur of fabric and flesh is returning to the people they love or running away from them. I want to wander aimlessly among them, to find a way back inside my own skin, but Holden’s voice, low and urgent, reminds me that I have other obligations. Grangers do their duty.
“Are your parents meeting you here?” he asks.
I shake my head. “They think I’m headed out tomorrow morning. I decided to take the flight tonight to give myself some breathing room in case I chickened out.”
I should have chickened out
. “Please. I can’t go home. I’ll just get back on a plane to Atlanta. I can’t do this.”
“I’m not putting you on a plane by yourself.”
“I’m not a child.”
His eyes don’t yield. Where’s my Holden, my laughing, teasing Holden, who never makes demands?
He sighs. “You can stay with me. For tonight. You should call your parents and let them know, though, just in case they were secretly keeping tabs on you. Caroline is probably panicked.”
Caroline? How does he know my mother’s name?
“How...”
His words come too fast, pouring out in a stream that belies his firm demeanor. “Your last name isn’t Walton. You’re Stella Granger. Your mother, Caroline, is a professor at Berkeley. The same professor that I’ve been moaning on about all semester.” He gives me a pointed look before his face slackens into an apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. She was a professor. Is. I don’t know if she’s still there.”
“How did you...” I start to ask a question, but it’s the wrong one. “When did you know that? When?”
“Just now. On the airplane.”
His revelation fills me with an overwhelming sense of relief. If he had known this entire time, all the days that we had worked together, side by side, without saying a word, then everything is a lie, and I just don’t think I can take that on top of everything else.
“But...”
He turns his head towards me. “Your mother was my advisor at Berkeley. Before Jack died.”
The sound of my brother’s name on his lips seizes all of my breath. It also reminds me that my parents are all alone, in that huge house, waiting for me to come home. I’m the only child left, and I’ve done nothing but hurt them over and over again. It’s time to grow up. I reach into my bag and pull out my phone. As soon as it turns on, I punch the keys.
“Stella! When...are...you...here...” My mother sounds absolutely terrified.
It’s my fault. I’ve done that to her.
“Hi, Mom,” I squeeze out. My throat constricts, but I swallow and force myself to regain control.
“Baby, are you okay?”
“I’m definitely fine, Mom. I’ll be home tomorrow.”
“Where are you, honey?”
I don’t answer the question, at least not directly. “I had some schoolwork to finish. Remember, I had that project I told you about? Plus, I needed to finish my Fulbright application.”
My mother’s sigh of relief causes the little knot of guilt in my belly to grow exponentially, but I ignore it. I can’t go home. Not quite yet.
“Did you change your flight? What time do you get in? Do you want us to meet you at the airport?”
“I’ll just take a cab. I might get delayed and I don’t want you to worry.”
I need to get off the phone before the tremor in her voice forces me to confess everything.
“I love you, baby. Travel safely, okay? Your father and I are waiting for you. I even made your favorite, jello salad.”
I hate jello salad. The bubbling sound of my own laughter catches me unaware. “Can’t wait, Mom.” A beat. “I love you.”
Click.
I glance at Holden, but his expression is indecipherable.
“Come on,” he says, hefting both of our bags over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
In a matter of minutes, we’re in a rental car, snaking our way through the hills of San Francisco. Holden turns the music on full blast and while I’m grateful that I don’t have to explain anything else, I’m also confused. He’s a shrink. He likes to pry. Why isn’t he asking eight million questions?
The answer comes swiftly—he doesn’t want me to fall apart on him again.
I open my mouth to apologize. But he hates apologies, so I close it again. I stare out the window as the city that used to be my home passes me by. Mark Twain once said that there are only three cities in America—San Francisco, New York, and New Orleans—and everything else is just Cleveland. He was right. I don’t know how I could have forgotten how beautiful it is.
When Holden pulls up to a tiny bungalow on the edge of a park, I wait for the panic to creep in. I don’t know what triggers the attacks. I just know that they happen. Being here, actually setting foot in the city and not in the airport, could bring one on. Thankfully, my breathing remains even.
I don’t protest when Holden hauls both of our bags up the stone steps. Ever the gentleman, he waits for me to get inside before locking the door behind us. I start to say that locks won’t keep the danger out, but it’s a foolish thought, so I smother it.
I take stock of my new surroundings. The house is beautifully decorated—no kitschy knick knacks, just the clean lines of modern furniture and splashes of brightly colored abstract art.
He sets the bags on the sofa. “It’s not exactly the Ritz, but it will do.”
“This is really nice. I appreciate...”
He brushes away my gratitude with his hand, and instead glances at the neatly arranged bottles of alcohol on the counter in the kitchen.
“I think I could use another drink,” he says, grabbing one of them.
I nod. I could certainly use a drink. Or twelve.
He doesn’t bother with glasses. Instead, he takes a swig from the bottle and passes it to me across the table. I follow suit, letting the warmth bathe my throat, and I say a silent thank you for moonshine. It washes at least some of my embarrassment away.
“Stella, I...”
“Holden, I...”
Our voices mingle at exactly the same time. He motions to me silently, indicating that I should go first.
I try desperately to make my voice as light as possible. “I never meant to burden you with any of that. The whole story just kind of came out. Airplane questions, I guess.”
“You never would have had to burden me, as you erroneously stated, if I had just put two and two together. All of the pieces were right there...”
The hard edge in his voice fades away as he glances up at me with a small smile.
“Your mother talked about you constantly. I worked with her for two years, but it only took me two days to recognize the beginning of a story about Stella’s latest exploits. She used to barge into the office in the morning, with this look on her face, and she would sit on the edge of my desk and say, ‘You’ll never guess, Holden, what she did this time.’ I could never get her to stop talking about you.” He looks at me ruefully. “I didn’t want her to. I loved those stories. You were real to me. Your family was real to me.”
I am horrified. I can only imagine the things she told him. Probably the one about...He brushes his hand against mine.
“Nothing too dreadful, I promise.” He puts his head in his hands and groans. “You even have the same disgruntled face.”
He’s being too hard on himself. Besides the blond hair and green eyes, I am nothing like the rest of my family. I’m nearly a full head shorter than my cousin Rachel, the former butt of all of the short jokes. I lack natural athleticism. I possess cruel sarcasm in place of innate warmth.
“I didn’t know my mother could ever be disgruntled,” I say finally, out of a lack of anything better to say.
He begins to pace back and forth across the kitchen, seemingly no longer aware of my presence. “So-called naïve psychology theories. That hair. The stupid insistence on not being in that classroom. All of the clues were there. If you hadn’t blindsided me, if I could string a half-coherent sentence together around you, if my brain would work, I would have been able to figure it out.”
I know that he’s talking to himself. His hand brushes against his hair, like it always does when he’s deep in thought and ignoring the rest of the world. But I did hear. And I don’t understand what he’s talking about.
“Blindsided?”
He throws back another quick swig of whiskey. “God help me,” he murmurs, slamming it back on the counter with an ungentlemanly grunt.
A sneaking remembrance creeps into my consciousness. He’s angry. For what?
I was a total bitch when we first met. I called him a douchebag. But it’s been months, and I’ve done everything I could to make up for it, including working my ass off on his stupid project that I don’t really think is stupid anymore. I told him a lot of dumb stories, but he seems to enjoy them. I guess he might just be too polite to tell me to stop.
He said I blindsided him. What they say about first impressions must be true. All it took was a little thing like a mental breakdown for him to remember what a brat I am.
“I’m so sorry, Holden. After everything you’ve done for me, I can’t even believe I said that you were a douchebag. To you. In front of you. You’re not a douchebag at all. You were kind of acting like one right when we first met, though, so I couldn’t really tell the difference between a lifelong douchebag and a temporary one. It wasn’t your fault that you had all of those students clamoring over you, and you lost your patience with me. I mean, it was your fault, but I was the one who was causing trouble, so...”
I could keep going, but he shoots me a look so incredulous that it stops me from digging a deeper hole.
“The fact that you called me a douchebag is not what I’m talking about here.”
I’m confused. “Oh.”
“The female mind baffles me.” He rolls his eyes, a gesture so uncharacteristic that I can do nothing but stare helplessly at him. “Come on, Stella. Try a little harder.”
“I’m sorry I lied to you?”
How the hell was I supposed to know that he knew my mother, knew my whole story already? Besides, I didn’t lie. I omitted.
“You didn’t lie. You omitted. I would have thought a shrink’s kid would know the difference. But that’s not it.”
He throws his hands up and utters a long string of curses that I’ve never heard put in the same sentence. If I didn’t know better, I would now be fairly certain that he had devoted most of his waking hours to learning how to use all of the most obscure expletives to dramatic effect.
His voice is a furious growl. “You have to know what you do to me, Stella. What you must do to any member of the male species with a pulse.”
The words don’t register. I don’t understand.
“I make them angry?”
He raises a sardonic eyebrow, and I stare back at him in shock. His next words come out in one long stream, like he’s been holding them in for too long and can’t bear to keep them bottled up.
“Obviously, the indirect approach isn’t getting through to you. I want you. I’ve wanted you since you marched into my office, all blustering anger and self-righteous indignation, begging me for a schedule change. You were so tough, so self-contained, and so...annoyingly beautiful, even with those ugly boots and ugly hair.”
“Um...”
Holden, who never loses his temper, who never gets upset, looks like he’s going to blow right through the roof. “You’re my student, for chrissakes. Your mother was my advisor. You’re obviously still dealing with a lot of bad life shit. This is fucked up on so many levels. I had no business bringing you here. I have no business telling you any of this. And yet, here we are, and I’m making a total ass of myself by telling you that you’re absurdly gorgeous, brilliant, and completely infuriating. And I want you. Shit.”
“Say it again.”
“What? You want to hear that I’m a cradle-robbing, grown-ass man who wants to take advantage of you? No, I don’t think so,” he mutters. “I won’t say that again.”
He runs his hands over his face before taking long strides through the kitchen, towards the living room.
He’s obviously intending to flee, but I am not going to let that happen.
I catch him just before he makes it to the door. I run my fingers over his golden strands of hair, brushing the back of my hand against his cheek and running my tongue over the contours of my lips.
“No, Stella,” he says, his voice cold and unwavering. He tilts his head before raising his eyes to the ceiling. “Hell no.”
There’s a fire alarm in my head, clanging so loudly that there’s only one reason I can ignore it—I need this.
Holden is perfect. He is the most beautiful person I’ve ever met, inside and out, and by some miracle, he thinks that he wants me.
I may be a world-class idiot, but I’m not foolish enough to ignore that. If there’s a chance that maybe some of his goodness, some of that sweetness, can chase my demons away, then I have to take it.