Chapter 29

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

LAKE

79 bobas left until we both die … (the same day)

I kick Tam’s ass at Just Dance. He claims that it’s because his remote is broken or because of where he’s standing. Bullshit. The game involves watching a character onscreen dance, and then using your remote to imitate their movements. I’m so good at it that I get nearly perfect scores—to Tam’s own music. The game has like six of his songs on it.

“You’re trying to actually dance, Tam. That’s not what the game is about.” I move behind him, and I grab right onto his hips. He’s moving them around too much, and he’s not paying any attention to the game remote.

He goes so stiff in my grip that I release him like his skin is on fire, stumbling back and falling onto the couch. He turns over his shoulder to look at me, and his expression is as weird as it was this morning. In the bedroom. On the treadmill.

“It’s nice that you can gyrate your hips like that, but the game only cares what you do with this.” I shake the remote at him, but he just swallows, and I find that I can appreciate the shape of his neck. His Adam’s apple is particularly nice. Not sure I’ve ever noticed a guy’s Adam’s apple before.

There’s sexual tension between me and Tam Eyre.

We have sexual tension.

I know he can feel it. I can see it. He smells like he wants me. I don’t know how I know that. I just do. I fold my hands in my lap and purse my lips as he takes a few steps back and falls onto the couch. Doesn’t turn around. Just falls onto it.

I wait for him to put a pillow over his lap, and he does.

“Gyrating my hips is the only reason I sell out concert stadiums,” he says absently, letting his head fall back on the couch so that he can stare up at the rafters in the ceiling.

I scoff, and he turns his head to look at me.

“Don’t say things like that.” I swallow and then clear my throat, forcing myself to keep my gaze on his. “I’m sorry that I said those rude things about your music. I was wrong. I’ve read the lyrics to “I Want to See You (Dad)” about a hundred times.” I feel my throat go dry, so I stand up and head into the kitchen to grab a water.

Tam follows me.

“Were you thinking about Joe when you read them?” he asks gently, and I turn to see that he is right fucking there again. It’s not accidental, him getting that close to me. I just … I don’t know if everybody feels this exact same way with Tam. He winks and wets his lips, bats his lashes, molds his body into aesthetically pleasing shapes. It’s all part of the deal, and I see girls fanning themselves around him all the time.

So … if I’m in need of a fan myself right now, what does that mean? Do we actually have sexual tension or is it manufactured?

But no. No. He stares at my mouth a lot. He meets my eyes. He moves close to me even when he thinks I won’t notice him doing it. Especially if he thinks I won’t notice. Like last night when he came into the kitchen to grab the cheese block, and he brushed his arm purposely against mine.

I scratch the curse mark on my wrist; it’s burning again.

“Yeah, I was thinking about Joe.” I take another drink of my water to chase the pain down. “I’m always thinking about Joe.”

“Well, it hasn’t been very long. You’re fine. Even if it had been a long time, you’d still be fine. You can think of someone who’s dead as much as you want because that’s the only time you get to spend with them. The past.” Tam wets his lips and then I turn, and he looks down. He takes a step closer.

I want to tell him everything about Joe, how Joules and I grew up alongside our cousin like he was our sibling, too. How he made every day exciting, how he could turn the mundane into the extraordinary, how he could stop a fight between me and Joules with a single word.

Then I want to kiss Tam Eyre. I want him to kiss me. I want to know what it’d feel like if he put his arms around me, if he hugged me.

I think he might do it for a second there. But then there are footsteps from the other side of the house and his manager, Jacob, appears with an iPad in hand.

“You have a fan call tonight,” Jacob says without preamble, and my skin goes cold. I grab Tam by the shoulders, and he turns a startled look in my direction. But then his hands flex, and I think he sort of wishes that he could grab me right back.

“Stand up for yourself tonight. These fan calls are insane. Nobody has a right to treat you that way. Being famous is not an excuse.” I give his arms a little pat and then release him. He stares down at a spot on his bicep and then looks back to me.

“I’m not allowed to get angry,” he whispers, and his words sound like a cry for help.

I don’t argue anymore, but … I have ideas.

“Please don’t interfere with the fan call,” Jacob says, his words directed at me, and Tam gives him a nasty look which I sort of appreciate.

“Jake, don’t tell her what to do. She isn’t your client, okay?”

“No, but she’s here with you which makes her my problem.” Jacob turns and flees the room, and Tam moves like he might go after him. I put my hand on his arm which stops him again, but then I remember that he blocked me. I can’t get over it. I think about the way he pushed my hand off his leg at dinner. I think about when he pushed me away from him at the Japanese gardens.

I also think about him lying on the bed with me this morning.

“Want to take a walk?” I ask, and he exhales, like he was hoping I wouldn’t get angry. Jacob is technically right about me. I am here to mess things up. And I probably will mess things up for Tam. But I’m also not going to let us both die because my presence might cause a blip in Tam’s career.

“That sounds nice. Meet me back here in ten? I want to change.”

I nod, and he heads upstairs.

I don’t need to change, so I just wait. Takes him a good thirty minutes to come back, but when he does, he’s … he looks like an ad for the West Coast. His burgundy North Face jacket, Fj?llr?ven pants, brown hiking boots that’ve clearly never been used. He has a white beanie on his head, and he walks right over to me and yanks a sea green one down over mine.

“Wear a hat, at least.” Tam moves around me and opens the patio door, holding his hand out to indicate that I should go first. As I pass by, he gives me his jacket from yesterday, the one he cut wood in. It’s oversized and warm, and it smells like him in a way that goes beyond shampoo or cologne.

There are no words for this smell. It’s just, when I breathe it in, the smell makes me think of him. I know this is his jacket. I know that he was wearing this recently.

“What does a person even do out in the middle of the woods like this?” he asks, and I start to realize that he’s been teasing me all along. Oh my God. I glance his way, and he’s got this adorable smirk on his face that turns him into something edgy and fae-like.

I’d forgotten about my own initial observation: Tam is not stupid, but devious. He is not na?ve, but clever.

I said this fucker is going to cause me trouble.

I scent it on the air, on a day when things feel easy and perfect.

This is not going to last.

“What happened with Kaycee?” I ask as we walk, stuffing my hands into my pockets. No phone this time. I almost smile at the memory, but I’m too nervous to hear Tam’s response to my question. I figured it’d be easier if I just got the hard stuff out of the way.

“Nothing other than what I’ve told you,” Tam says, but his eyes are glazed again in thought. He blinks through it like he’s wading through fog, and then he stops. Turns. He leans in and stares at a mushroom growing from the trunk of a tree. His eyes shift to the side, to a dewy web with an orb weaver in it. Tam looks fascinated, like he’s never been outside in his entire life.

“I thought you grew up in Washington?” I ask, and then a branch falls from above us and obliterates the spider’s web. Tam curses and steps back, but I also see him swipe his finger out. He collects a bit of the spider’s web—with the spider on it—and then moves it to another tree.

This is like the firewood cutting all over again.

“I don’t get outside much,” he says with a tired-sounding sigh. Hands tucked into pockets. Slick, boyish grin over his shoulder at me. I can’t believe he’s about to turn twenty-seven. Nobody would ever believe that. “But I love being outside.”

“Do you like to roll around in dirt?” I tease, thinking of my cousins and my brother. We all got drunk together, right before Joe died. Even Marla was there. We were all way past sobriety, and it started raining all of a sudden, doused our bonfire. We had a mud fight. In our twenties. I’ve never loved my family more.

“I would if I could,” Tam replies mildly, and then I turn and push him so that he veers off the path and into a puddle, splattering mud everywhere. All over his new pants. His new jacket. His pristine shoes. His mouth parts in surprise in that way I like, and then he turns to give me a look. “I see how it is. The next time I see a spider, I’m putting it in your hair.”

“If you do that, I will stab you. Even Daniel won’t be able to stop me.” I waltz past him, but he’s laughing too hard to follow.

“I knew you weren’t as cool as you pretended to be,” he says from behind me, and then he goes running uphill like it’s nothing, pausing to turn around and wait for me. The pink in his cheeks from the cold, the tiny mud splatters on his chin, the full shape of his lower lip and that dramatic cupid’s bow on the upper.

I meet Tam’s eyes.

“I wear lingerie under my hot dog costume. Of course I’m cool, Tam.”

I walk past him humming, and he spins around to join me, and then we just walk.

We don’t talk for the rest of the two-hour hike.