I watched more rom-coms, though I wasn’t watching them as much as I was staring blankly at the TV in the lounge while I tried to figure out how to fix things with Danny. I hadn’t meant to intrude and had just tried to help, but maybe I did overstep. No, there was no maybe about it. He was obviously feeling vulnerable after telling me his story and I’d told him he needed a shrink when his reaction had definitely been within the bounds of normal. Clearly I was the one who needed a shrink. I realized in the end I was going to have to beg his forgiveness, and the best way I could figure to do that was to hang out at the gym and just wait for him.
I guess I could have hung out outside the dean’s cottage, or even could have knocked on her door, which was probably the best and most direct course of action. But to be honest, I was scared. Not that he’d hurt me, but that I’d messed up really badly. He was probably going to yell at me.
I told myself not to be a chicken, and myself did agree to go find him tomorrow, but the gym seemed like the most neutral ground. Plus, after that meal and all the junk I’d been eating, the gym wasn’t a bad idea.
By ten-thirty I was bored of watching movies by myself and remembered Rob’s e-mail with the new website matrix, so I figured it was as good a time as any to go get started on that. I shoved my feet into my slippers and shuffled down the hall to my room. Being that I was pretty much the only one in the building, I’d propped my dorm room door open, so when I stepped inside to see someone sitting on my desk chair, I couldn’t help the shriek that came out of my mouth.
I did manage to cut it short when I realized who it was, but my heart still thumped hard, like it was trying to get out and smack the intruder. “Danny!” I said, pressing my palm to my chest. “What are you doing here?”
He shrugged. “Apologizing?”
“By giving me a heart attack?”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He stood up and stepped toward me until he was close. Really close. “I was a jerk earlier and wanted to say I was sorry for what I said.”
I shook my head. “I wanted to apologize to you. I shouldn’t have pushed like that. You...you told me a really hard thing and I don’t know why I said...”
“It’s okay. I don’t know why I said what I did, either.”
I laughed humorlessly. “About my issues? Uh, because it’s true?”
“Even if it is, it wasn’t right to lash out like that. I...” he looked over my shoulder, but wasn’t focused on anything. “I just feel like I keep messing things up with you.”
That made me really laugh. “You think you’ve messed things up with me? Have you forgotten I called the cops on you?”
He shrugged like it was no big deal. “You were right to assume I’m a criminal.”
This again. I put my hand flat on his chest, over his heart. “Danny. You are not a criminal.”
“Yes, I am.”
I pushed him, forcing him to step backwards until his legs were against my mattress. “Sit down,” I commanded, a little surprised when he dropped down onto the bed. I lowered myself beside him, careful to keep some distance between us. “Tell me everything. Not the part you told me last night, but the prison part. If you’re going to keep telling me you’re a criminal, I want to know what I’m dealing with.”
He looked at me like I was nuts. I might have been, but I wanted it all out there. “Go on,” I said.
His eyes were defiant. “And if I say no?”
I shrugged. “You came up here to apologize, so obviously you either have a conscience, care what I think of you, or both. I assume that means you want to be friends. I’d like to be your friend, too, but not with all these secrets. So spill or leave now and don’t come back.” My eyes were just as defiant. We stared at each other for a good long time, but I knew I would win this one, if only because so much was at stake and I was not going to back down.
He looked away first, but I wasn’t ready to do my victory dance just yet.
It took a long time, but he finally spoke. “After the cops came, I got locked up. I confessed, obviously, to what I remembered, but it was pretty hazy and I was still pretty messed up on top of the craziness of what had happened. They threw me into prison until the trial.”
“How old were you?” I asked.
“Seventeen.”
“Juvie?”
He shook his head. “Not pending a murder trial.”
I tried not to let my feelings show. It was so sad that a young, sensitive kid who’d had to watch his mother die and kill his own father in self-defense was thrown into an adult prison, but I kept my face as blank as I could, knowing he’d hate seeing the sympathy and would probably stop talking. I had to just take his story as facts, like I was writing a report for school.
“Couldn’t they figure out it was self-defense?”
“Not right away because of all the drugs and me being the only witness. And like I said, I was a bit fuzzy on the details. The confession was right after it happened and I was still messed up, which made it more complicated. My lawyers wanted it thrown out. In the end, I got acquitted, but not before I spent six hundred and forty-seven days in prison.”
I looked up at his face. Like it had a mind of its own, my hand reached up to the teardrop tattoo. He flinched when I touched it lightly with my finger, as though I’d burned him. “You got this there?” He nodded. His face relaxed a little as I stroked down his cheek with my palm. “I read that it can mean different things.”
“It has a double meaning,” he said, softly, looking down so I couldn’t see his eyes, just the long lashes against his cheeks. “That I killed someone and that I lost a family member. Mostly I got it because I killed him. I can’t ever forget that I took a life.”
“I don’t think you would have forgotten without the tattoo,” I said gently, still stroking his warm and slightly stubbled cheek, feeling it as he clenched his jaw under my hand.
“No. But I want to see it every day when I look in the mirror.”
“Why?”
“So I never forget.”
“Never forget? Or never forgive yourself?”
His head snapped up and he looked into my eyes, his like angry glaciers piercing in into me. “How could I ever forgive myself? I killed my father. My father.”
Consciously keeping my eyes calm and on his, I moved my hand slowly down to his neck, feeling the pulse quicken there. “He would have killed you.”
“So?”
Like that didn’t matter.
“It sounds like he had a death wish that night. There’s a good chance if you hadn’t defended yourself, he would have ended up killing you and himself.” He looked at me strangely then and I wondered if he hadn’t considered an alternative way of how the night might have gone down. “You had no choice, Danny. You walked into a bad, no, impossible situation. It’s amazing anyone got out alive. You didn’t create it, you tried to diffuse it, but in the end, the best you could do was survive it.” I kept my hand on his neck, stroking over his Adam’s apple with my thumb. He swallowed hard.
“And you know what?” I said when he didn’t speak. “I think you’re just about the bravest guy I’ve ever met.”
His eyes widened a bit at that. I nodded. “I’m serious. To come out the other side of that and not be a total basket case? You’re a hero in my books.”
He gave me an awkward smirk that didn’t reach his eyes. “You have pretty low standards for what you consider a hero.”
My gaze never wavered when I said, “No. I don’t.”
His smile dissolved.
“I mean it, Danny. You’re not a criminal. The law doesn’t think so and neither do I or anyone else around that knows you. Only you believe it, but only because you make a point of convincing yourself of it every day. You’re punishing yourself for something you had no control over. But you have control now. You have the ability to forgive yourself and move on with your life. From this point forward, I think you should take it.”
A single tear shimmered on the lower lashes of his right eye before it fell, rolling down his cheek. I wiped it away with my thumb.
“I’m so messed up,” he whispered.
“Join the club. I’m like the most privileged girl in the world and I have separation anxiety. Dogs get that and tear up couches.”
“Remind me to never leave you alone in my living room,” he said. “I like my couch.”
I smiled at that. “Yeah, just a pair of basket cases. We’ll make quite the couple.”
He cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“You need me to spell it out for you?” I said, pretending to be coy, but really my insides were vibrating with nerves.
His eyebrow quirked. “Apparently, yes.”
Feeling suddenly shy, I dropped my eyes down to his arms, mostly bare since he was wearing a t-shirt. It was the first time I’d gotten a good look at his tattoos. “Tell me about these,” I said, tracing a finger down his forearms.
“First, I think you need to finish what you were going to say,” he said.
I shook my head and looked up into his eyes again. “No. I need to know what these mean to you first. What’s important to you?”
He looked down to where my fingers were on his left forearm. This was the biggest of his tattoos (that I could see) wrapping around his entire forearm, a mosaic of blues and greens. “That one, the mermaid, that’s for my mother. She collected mermaids. They were everywhere in our house.” I could hear the smile in his voice as he remembered his mother. “Everywhere she went, she’d bring home a mermaid souvenir. Dad would, too, if he went on a business trip.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
“Telecommunication sales rep. She was a nurse. Before...” he trailed off and swallowed before returning to the tattoos. “This one,” he pointed at his right forearm to the design I didn’t recognize. “This is the logo for the Buffalo Sabres, Dad’s favorite hockey team.”
“Your favorite, too?”
He shook his head and grinned. “No, I’ve always hated them. The Rangers are my team. We used to argue about it all the time.” But I could tell from his face that the arguments were good-natured ones. And what a testament to his father that he had his team logo tattooed on himself.
“Where’s the one for your sister?” I asked, because if he’d honored his parents with ink, surely he had one for his sister.
He pulled his right sleeve up over his shoulder, revealing a cartoon-like picture of a redheaded girl with pigtails that stuck straight out of her head on either side. I glanced up at him. “Pippi Longstocking?”
He smiled, looking down at his arm. “She had the most brilliant red hair, which is why my parents called her Rowan; it means little red one. I used to read her Pippi Longstocking books all the time and she said that’s who she wanted to be when she grew up. She loved those stories.”
“She loved her big brother.”
He glanced up at me and nodded. “I loved her, too.”
“Of course you did. Any other tattoos?”
He nodded. I lifted my brows. “Well?”
“One more.”
I waited.
He stood up and started undoing his jeans. Oh God. “Never mind,” I said, my face suddenly flooded with what surely had to be most of the blood in my body.
He didn’t stop, but pulled down the side of his jeans (and what looked like black boxer shorts because how could I not look?) to reveal a red heart on his hip.
I looked up at him, questioning.
“That’s where they took the bone marrow from for Rowan’s transplant. She made me get it because she wanted me to always remember how much she appreciated me trying to save her.”
You’re killing me, I didn’t say.
He looked away and did up his pants. “It didn’t work, obviously.”
“It still counts,” I croaked, my throat suddenly really dry. To give us both a moment, I went to the little fridge and took out two bottles of water, handing him one.
He took a swig and said, “Now. About that other thing.”
I drank half of the bottle and wiped my mouth on my shoulder. “What thing was that?” I said, back to coy.
He cocked an eyebrow and smirked, so sexy, it felt like my bones were melting. “About us being a couple.” But then, as I looked at him, his smile dissolved and his face transformed into something else: conflicted.
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
He leaned his elbows on his knees, picking at the label on the water bottle, shaking his head. “I’m nowhere near good enough for you.”
“What?”
He looked at me. “Look at you. You’re good and beautiful and caring and if you’re here, you’re probably from a good family and really wealthy. I’m a cri....someone who’s been to prison, works manual labor and has no one.” His eyes dropped back down to the water bottle.
“Uh, let’s get something straight,” I said in my best, Emmie doesn’t take any crap voice. “YOU are good and beautiful and caring. I’m guessing since you were acquitted, you don’t volunteer at the blood donor clinic because it’s court-ordered community service.”
“No,” he said with a small shake of his head. “I started there after Rowan had her first transfusion.”
“Right. So you care about people. You help at the youth center to give back, not because you have to.”
“Marjorie was like a second mother to me after I got out of prison. I lived at my uncle’s place, but she was the one who helped me get myself on my feet. She helped me get the job at A1.”
“And there’s that. Your ‘manual labor,’” I said, giving him a set of air quotes. “Do you enjoy it?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I like working with my hands and the guys there are good to work with.”
“Okay, so,” I held up my hand to tick off my fingers. “You’re a good, charitable person who gives back. You are gainfully employed, enjoy your job and have what I understand is a very nice couch.” He grinned, but I continued. “You smell great, are smoking hot and have tattoos.”
“Smoking hot?” he said, a little blush creeping up his cheeks.
I snorted, like he didn’t know. “What are your feelings on Pride and Prejudice?”
He frowned, which I guess made sense, since the question sort of came out of nowhere. “The book?”
“The miniseries.”
“Do I get to watch it with you?”
“You must watch it with me.”
He shrugged. “Then I’m fine with it.”
“It’s over six hours.”
He put his hands on my face, like he couldn’t wait one second longer to touch me. “Emmeline, I would watch paint dry for six hours if I got to be with you.”
“You’d do that for me?”
He touched my forehead with his, his blue eyes suddenly all I could see. “I’m cat-sitting to be on campus with you. I did a second workout, shredding every muscle in my body to hang out with you. I think I can sit through a six hour movie to be with you.”
There was nothing else I could do then but kiss him.