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This won’t last.
I just have to find a way to fight the insane urge to go back in there and pull her into my arms until it does.
Ruby
The radio plays softly in the background as my parents discuss the latest episode of Dancing with the Stars. They’re rooting for opposing couples, apparently, and for some reason, both of them think they can convince the other to cross over.
Cap’s focus has been largely on the road, his eyes serious, and he hasn’t said much. But my parents do have a way of dominating a conversation. So, while Mark and Connie are preoccupied, I try to get his attention.
I practically do a whole song and dance with no reaction, so I finally reach out and put a hand to his bare forearm. He pulls away like my touch burns.
“Sorry,” I apologize. Maybe I startled him?
He swallows thickly before rubbing at the skin I touched and pasting on a smile. “No, no. I was just kind of zoned out. Tired, you know?”
I nod, even though I don’t. I feel invigorated. Alive. Like I finally realized what this whole fucking time on earth is about.
“Long weekend,” I say, and he smiles again. It’s not a smile I recognize, though, and that’s saying something extreme when you consider the amount of time I’ve spent secretly studying every single one he’s got.
But not this one. This one seems…hollow. Sick, even.
“Are you okay?” I ask when the hold he has on it slips away completely. The corners of his mouth are actually turned down—something I don’t think I’ve ever seen.
“Yeah.” He nods, so hard it’s like he’s trying to convince more than just me. “Could you just grab me a mint?” he asks. “They’re in my bag on the floor in front of you.”
“Of course,” I say, forcing myself to take a deep breath. He’s obviously not feeling well, so I just need to back off with the overanalyzing. Just because we slept together last night doesn’t mean the world has to be ending.
I pull open the flap on the top of his messenger bag and undo the zipper, and then I lean over to get a look inside. I push a few things around in search of the mints, but when my hand closes around something that feels like a book, I can’t help but pull it up high enough to get a look.
Hanging on a Hero.
What the hell?
I dig around a little more until my hand closes around another book. When I turn it over, I gasp.
Can’t Handle This.
“Everything all right?” Cap asks, and I shove the books back into the bag in a panic, flip my hair out of my face, and smile. Mine is just as fake as his.
“Fine. Almost got the mint.”
“Great,” he replies, suspicion creeping into the edges of his voice.
I grab one from the bag quickly and unwrap it for him. I reach out to put it in his mouth, and he blocks me with a hand. “I got it. Thanks.”
I nod, but the truth is, I’m not even there anymore—riding in his fancy car with him and my parents. I’m in my head—trapped in a spiral of questions and a memory full of answers.
Like a laundry list of bullet-pointed moments, everything I’ve been through with Caplin Hawkins in the last couple months flits across my mind.
The women, the apology, the makeover, and the party. The weird, slightly cheesy, stilted talk of moonlight strolls and lovely twirls and promenades in his office. The weekend getaway in a cabin.
My heart damn near drops into my shoes when those real-life memories match up a little too closely to my literary memories.
All of it, nearly every damn thing, can be found in the pages of the books I’ve read—the books he currently has sitting inside his bag. And they span from the time I started working with him until last night, when I finally slept with him.
My stomach churns, and I reach down and grab one of his mints for myself. His queasiness has spread to me.
I sit back in my seat and angle my face out the window. My dad’s voice is louder now as he’s still trying to express to my mom that a football player like Glen Harwick, one of the best running backs to ever play for the New York Mavericks and the king of footwork, would never lose to some Teen Bop Kids reality star like Hugh Beckman on Dancing with the Stars.
Apparently, according to him, finesse on the football field has been studied scientifically and linked directly to rhythm and dance. I think he’s full of shit, but I’m too busy trying to figure out what the fuck is going on in my life to care.
But it is a Sunday afternoon, and I’ll have plenty of time to lay into Cap—and interrogate him about the books and the strange coincidences that have quite literally given me a painful, confusing case of déjà-fucking-vu—in the privacy of the office tomorrow.
