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An hour later, Penny lay curled against Caleb on his sad, lumpy mattress in his sad, drab room in his sad, gross house. What kind of life is this? she wondered as she listened to his breathing slow and deepen. There was nothing joyful or beautiful in this place to brighten his life. He didn’t even seem to have friends to distract him. It was like he was living in exile in a self-imposed prison. Doing nothing but working and exercising and saving his money until he was sprung from his incarceration.
Now that she’d seen how dreary his life was, it was easy to understand why seeing her had been the brightest part of his days. It wasn’t that she was all that special, it was that everything else was so awful in comparison. He must be counting the days until he could leave this place and start his new life.
He let out a soft snore and she smiled, marveling that he managed to be sexy even while snoring and drooling a little out of one side of his mouth. Moving carefully, so as not to disturb him, she unwound herself from the heavy arm draped over her and slipped out of bed. She padded over to his closet and slid open the louvered door. Inside, all the shirts she’d gazed at lustfully over the months hung on cheap wire hangers. She ran her fingers over them until she found her favorite, the red plaid flannel he’d been wearing the day he dumped iced coffee all over Kenneth. She pulled it off the hanger and put it on. It fit her surprisingly well—one of the many benefits of sleeping with a man who lifted weights. Kenneth’s puny shirts hadn’t even fit her arms, much less her bust.
She wandered over to Caleb’s desk as she buttoned up the borrowed shirt. There was no chair, so she sat on the edge of the mattress as she peered at the stacks of books covering the surface of the desk. The nearest stack was all from the library—mostly science fiction with a couple of thrillers scattered in. There was a pile of imposing biology and anatomy textbooks at the back that had gathered a fine layer of dust. The rest of the books were more eclectic, their spines creased and the corners well-worn as if they’d been read over and over again. She studied them, hoping for some kind of window into Caleb’s soul. His tastes ran the gamut from Edgar Allen Poe and Fritz Leiber to Michael Chabon, Margaret Atwood, and John Le Carré. It was difficult to draw any conclusions other than he had good taste in literature.
A single framed picture perched at the back of the desk, partially hidden behind all the books. It was the only photo in the entire room. A group of smiling kids beamed out of the frame from the shore of a lake somewhere. She picked it up to study it more closely, searching the faces to see if one of them was Caleb. She found him standing off to one side. A teenager by the looks of it, but several years older than the other kids.
“Hey,” Caleb said behind her, his voice husky and sleep-roughened. “What are you doing?”
Penny turned toward him, clutching the photo against her chest. “Snooping,”
“Ah.” He propped himself up on one elbow. His hair was all lopsided and sticking up, and he looked just as sexy as when he’d been snoring. “Find anything interesting?”
“Not really. You’re so secretive, I was hoping for something juicier.”
He actually had the nerve to look affronted. “I’m not secretive.”
“Yes! You are! I barely know anything about you, you never talk about yourself—or anyone else for that matter—and wrangling an invitation to your house was like extracting a tooth from a grumpy bear.”
“I thought it was pretty obvious why I didn’t want to invite you over here.”
“Okay, fine. But the rest of it still stands.”
He stretched out his arm and ran his fingers along her thigh, dipping them under the hem of the shirt she’d borrowed from him. “What do you want to know?”
Refusing to be distracted by his wandering fingers, she held out the photo. “Tell me about this.”
He sat up with a sigh and took it from her, adjusting the pillow behind his back. “That’s Camp Northbrook. I was a counselor there for three summers in high school.”
“Why is it the only picture you have in your room?”
He shrugged and handed it back to her. “I don’t know. The others are all back at my parents’ place.”
“See, that’s what I mean,” Penny said. “You don’t want to talk about things.”
“I don’t know what you want to hear.”
“I just want to understand you.” She thrust the picture back at him. “This photo is the only one you didn’t leave behind. There must be something special about it.”
He stared at the photo with an inscrutable expression. “I guess it’s one of the last places I remember being really happy.”
She scooched closer and crossed her legs underneath her. “Why?”
“We moved a lot, so I never really made close friends at school or felt like I fit in. But at camp, everyone was just there for the summer, so everyone was new. It’s a camp for special needs kids, and most of them were really excited to be there. Seeing how much harder they worked to do things most of us take for granted really gives you a sense of perspective. I guess they showed me what kind of man I wanted to be—which was something my father never did.”
“That’s why you’re going to med school.” The realization raised a lump in the back of Penny’s throat. “It’s not because of your father, it’s because of them. Because you want to be able to help them.”
“I guess. I never thought of it like that, but maybe.” He shoved the photo back at her. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Yes.” She leaned over and kissed him softly on the lips. “That wasn’t too terrible, was it?”
His hand smoothed over her curls. She hadn’t straightened her hair in a week. “Not too terrible, no.”
“Wonder of wonders. Caleb Mayhew talked about himself and didn’t die. And now I feel like I finally know something real about you.” She set the photo back on the desk and selected a Neil Gaiman hardback from the top of a stack. “Tell me about this next.”
He regarded it dubiously. “You want a book report?”
