chapter 6
CHRIS
Her fingers grip my neck, and she clings to me. No words seem right enough to actually put voice to, so I lift her into my arms and hope that it’s enough.
I try to breathe in and out slowly, but she must feel the quickening of my chest. Then again, maybe not. She’s oblivious to the man who emerges from his room, the way that his eyes widen with a flicker of recognition as he looks at me. I reach into her bag, praying that she still keeps the key in its own compartment, a habit that was particularly useful when we had banged mindlessly into a hundred different hotel room doors years ago.
I find it. In one smooth motion, I lift her limp body and carry her into the room, just as the nameless man starts to open his mouth. The door closes behind us, and I wrap her into me, allowing myself to breathe in her honey and mint and sunshine. I try to keep myself from wanting more, from doing more.
She was running from something; that was made clear enough by the presence of the black bag slung over her shoulder. Whether she was running from me or from New York, I’m still not sure. I hadn’t surprised her when I had showed up at her door earlier, but this time, she had been shocked by my presence, and subsequently she was unable to cover the pain in her face.
I couldn’t help myself from trying to provide some kind of comfort, regardless of the consequences. I had needed to touch her, and brushing her hair away had been the least intimate gesture I could find. It was the wrong choice. That one touch was laced with our history together, and she and I both knew it.
Backed up against the wall, literally and metaphorically, she fell into my arms. I don’t know how or why that happened, and I really don’t know if I’ll ever be able to let her go again.
I shift her slightly so that I can touch her hair and as I do, I feel her muscles tense against me. She pulls herself away, and even the partial separation hurts.
Stop it, Jensen. Stop.
Her expression is inscrutable, but I’m so dizzy from the blue of her eyes that I don’t even care to find out what secrets she’s hiding. Then, she closes her eyes once more and moves closer, touching my hair with deft fingers. Other girls, women, have done that over the years, and it’s always made me cringe. That gesture has always belonged to her.
I lean back and lose myself in the feel of her skin.
I don’t know what she wants or needs. I don’t know what it’s going to cost me.
And I really don’t give a shit.
I force my hands to lie at my sides as she gently touches my face. Leaning into me, she draws my lips dangerously close to hers.
“I want…” She stops mid-sentence before pleading with me, in a whisper, “I want to be the old Hallie. Just for a little while. Do you think you help me with that, Chris? Or is it too much to ask?”
I want to scream at her, “Of course it’s too much to ask.” But I don’t. Of course, I want nothing more than for it to be possible to be the old Hallie and the old Chris, to move backwards in time. I’ve thought about it often enough. But we both know it’s not possible, and I open my mouth to tell her that and she hears my words before any sound escapes my lips.
She’s withdrawing back into herself, and I touch her check gently. As she gives me a wistful smile, I realize that she’s not asking for time travel. She needs to get outside of her own skin. I know that feeling well enough, although I tried to conquer my own demons with alcohol and not with flesh. I don’t tell her the lesson I learned—turning away from yourself won’t work, not in the long term, but it sure feels good in the moment.
She slides herself closer to me. I want to crush my body and soul into hers, but I manage to hesitate for long enough to give her another moment to think about it.
She must know me well enough to see the answer, because she touches her lips to mine gently.
F*ck it.
I crush her mouth under mine, putting five years of loss and anguish into kissing her slightly parted lips. I slide the tip of my tongue into her mouth and she kisses me back, softly at first and then with real hunger, devouring me until I feel like I’m going to fall apart right there and then.
She arches her back and curves her body into mine and I meet her there, letting my fingers graze the outline of her face. It’s an old rhythm, a familiar one, but the fragility of her slim body feels alien to my touch. She moans slightly and runs her fingertips across my palm, and I shudder at even that slight contact. I revel in the sweetness of her smell as she lets her fingers entwine with my hair, curling it under her fingers until I moan and manage to push back from her slightly.
Everything that I’ve ever wanted is right in front of me. And it feels all wrong. I start to open my mouth to tell her that I can’t have her like this, that this is only going to hurt her and me, that I can’t bear to be the cause of any more pain in her life, but she silences me with the brush of her fingers across my lips.
Her eyes hold a thousand memories, so many that I need to look away.
“I need this. I need you. Please. Just take it away. Take it all away.” She pauses and her lips twist into a sad smile. “Christopher.”
That’s it. Reason and caution and pain be damned, I lift her in one smooth motion and clasp her close to my body. She’s impossibly light, and her long, strong legs wrap around my waist with a certainty that takes me by surprise. We stand, locked together, kissing and touching and letting the months and years between us disappear.
When she yanks at my clothes, she tears the bottom of my shirt and looks up at me guiltily. I rip it all the way off, putting my finger over her lips and smiling gently. The irrepressible need to be joined, to be inside her skin, takes over. She lifts her shirt over her head and unclasps her bra and before I even have the chance to drink her in, she pushes her warm body next to mine. Her skin has retained something of its lushness, despite the fact that she’s far too thin, and as our limbs tangle together, none of that matters.
I had forgotten what it meant to be with someone, body and soul and spirit. Lust is different from love. However I managed to convince myself that they were one and the same, I’ll never know. I won’t make that mistake again. Not after this.
Her skin turns fiery under my mouth, and unable to wait any longer, I grab her and push her beneath me. I can’t give myself time to decide that this is an extremely bad idea.
Her mouth is working overtime, devouring my skin with kisses, but she’s not looking at me. I need to see her face. I need to feel her eyes looking into mine. I drag my mouth to hers again and brush against her soft lips, gripping her shoulders.
“Look at me, Hallie.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
With that, I slide into her. As I do, I take her chin in my hand and force her to see me staring down at her. Her eyes are endless, down and down and down. There’s shock there and thick desire, and a wisdom that belies her childlike wonder and tousled hair. I haven’t seen her, not like this, in six years. She’s a thousand times more beautiful than she was at eighteen. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I’m shaking and I try to cover that small display of weakness, but she sees it anyway. She’s always seen everything.
I’m trying to keep myself from making any sound, but it’s impossible, because I had forgotten what it was like between us. I don’t even know if it was ever like this. The years have made me hungry for her in a way that I never knew existed. I’m desperately trying to keep myself in check, but she’s moving her hips against mine in a pulsing rhythm, begging me to move faster.
Her hair, still tied neatly in a knot on the back of her head, taunts me. I run my fingers through the masses of brown and red and gold waves, and it tumbles down around her face, making smooth waves onto the pillow beneath her. She reaches her hand up to brush it away, but I clasp it and hold it down.
“It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”
She tosses her head and smiles, once, a real, genuine smile that holds a hidden sea of emotion.
I love her. I will always love her. The knowledge of it, and her warm body in my arms, makes me feel alive and heartbreakingly human.
I move again, within in, and she lets out a little moan, and I can feel her body tensing beneath mine as the first waves of the orgasm begin to hit her. My body is on fire, and I can’t resist it for much longer. When her fingers dance across my face as she begins to contort herself, I feel myself slipping under, losing myself to this particular kind of madness. I’m so far gone and outside of myself that I barely realize it when we burst into flames.
* * *
Long minutes later, I’m still drifting in and out of consciousness. I’ve been trying to keep myself from leaving the glow of our love-making, to keep the feel of her in my arms so that it remains tangible, unlike the half-remembered dreams I usually wake up from. I reach for her to reassure myself that she’s not merely an apparition, but I find nothing but a warm spot on top of the bed.
For a moment, I think she’s already gone, but when I glance up, I find her huddled over the table, scribbling away furiously.
“Hallie.”
She looks back at me, but she doesn’t quite meet my eyes. Bad sign. F*ck. I want to cross the room and pull her into me, but her arms are crossed firmly against her chest and her eyes are solid steel. It’s clear that she’s built a protective barrier around herself, one that I can’t penetrate.
I attempt to wipe my face of any trace of emotion, but apparently, I’ve been making my living in the wrong business, because it’s not working.
“Chris.”
“I…”
“Please don’t say anything.”
Unfortunately, I’ve seen that particular brand of tension in her body and that exact look on her face before. I know what they mean. And I know that there’s nothing I can say that will make her stay.
She lets the paper drop to the table in a flutter and gives me a sad smile.
“Thanks for not rejecting my advances, Chris. I appreciate it.”
She might as well be talking about the book deal.
“Anytime.” It’s barely audible.
Her eyes soften slightly, and her hand flutters upward as if she’s going to reach out and touch me. At the last second, she recoils and pushes her hand away, like it moved on its own. “Chris, I…”
“I know, Hals.”
I silence the voice in my head that’s telling me to drag her back into bed.
I thought I would be able to give her this thing, this moment of being able to forget about everything else. I thought I would be able to leave this room with some kind of closure, knowing that I couldn’t bring myself to harm her again.
But I want more than that. I want her. I want to make her feel whole again, because it’s obvious that even though she’s badly broken, she’s not beyond repair. And, because we’re all selfish creatures, to one degree or another, I need her to make me feel whole again, too.
“You don’t have to leave, Hals.” I keep saying her name, as if to prove to myself that she is actually still here. I know she’ll refuse, but I still need to say it.
“I was leaving anyway. I need to go, or otherwise, Sam will wonder if I decided to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge or something. I mean, I know we’re not in Brooklyn, but Sam always manages to come up with some crazy story. You know how he worries…”
She stops abruptly and takes another step backwards. She certainly didn’t mean to let that piece of information slip out. I tuck Sam’s name away in the back of my head. I can’t stop her from leaving, and I won’t. I need to tread carefully, to figure out how and why and if it’s even possible to make her fall in love with me again.
“Chris, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t share the fact that we knew each other, way back when. The press hasn’t managed to make the connection between you and me, even though there are some pictures of us still out there, and I’d really like to keep it that way, especially with the movie coming out and the fact that I have to do all of the interviews, and it would probably be better for me if no one ever found out that I was linked to you. I mean, not that we were ever really linked together, since Marcus insisted that we shouldn’t be or anything, but now it would just be such a disaster…”
She moves to cover her mouth with her hand, and the gesture is accompanied by a frustrated shake of her head.
At the tumble of words, at the tiny echo of the old Hallie, I grin.
I can’t tell if she’s going to throw something at me or break down into tears. To my surprise, she smiles.
“Verbal diarrhea. You can take the girl out of the Midwest, but you can’t take the Midwest out of the girl. We all talk too much. New Yorkers have nothing on us.” She even tries a little Brooklyn accent, and I almost laugh before I realize where we are. What we did. What we are, or aren’t.
“That’s a lame joke, Hals.”
“Yeah, it is.” She shrugs her shoulders and throws on a jacket and a scarf.
She takes one last look at me before she opens the door to leave.
“Stay as long as you want,” she adds, brushing her hand across the air in the room. “I have the room through tomorrow. If we happen to run into each other at any of the preproduction meetings or on set, I promise, I’ll try to keep my hands to myself.”
If we run into each other? Nice try, Hals. Make that when.
“I make no promises about such things.”
I try to pass it off as a joke, a visible display of my carefully cultivated public persona, but I’m deadly serious and we both know it. She doesn’t even address my words when she speaks again.
“Thank you, Chris.”
It’s more of a goodbye than a thank you, but it’s accompanied with a soft, genuine smile.
“You’re welcome.”
And with that, she’s out the door and out of my life.
I give myself five minutes of breathing in and out and remembering the feel of her on me. I languish in the memory, letting it roll over me. It’s an old trick I learned from Hallie. She used to call them photographic moments. We had a lot of them, once.
If I have anything to say about it, we’ll have a lot of them again.