Page 51 of Tied

Shaking my head, I go to the small kitchenette and put some water in a teapot to boil. About a week ago, she told me her stray cat obligation theory, and how she’s worried I’m only hanging out with her because I feel sorry for her because no one else wants to. In true me fashion, I shot back that maybe she’s only hanging out with me because I saved her life, and now she has white-knight syndrome.

Insecurity eats at both of us.

“Don’t fish,” I say.

“Fish?” Her nose crinkles with confusion, something she does that pisses me off with its cuteness. There are so many little things about her that just get to me lately. Things that make me smile when I don’t want to, that make me fight to focus on what she’s talking about rather than getting lost in the shape of herlips. Even the way she talks nonstop sometimes, like a song in my head that, even though I’ve heard it a hundred times, still puts me in a good mood.

“Fishing for validation.” I pull two mugs from the cabinet and put tea bags in them. “Do you like milk and sugar in your tea?” I turn to face her, and she’s staring at me like she has no idea who I am.

“Holly?” I hope she’s not going to have a meltdown and pass out in the middle of my tiny living room. There’s really no way she can fall without banging her head on something on the way down.

“You’re making tea?” Her voice is laced with surprise.

“Is that okay?” Maybe tea is a trigger, something she was poisoned with in the past. One night, during our texts, she told me all about how that asshole would put something in her water to make her fall asleep. It put me in such a rage I couldn’t sleep for two days. My inner demons were begging to get high or drunk—anything to numb the feelings battling inside me.

Instead, I drove to the city, to a dirty warehouse I’ve spent a lot of my time in since my second accident. Underground street fighting, my favorite stress and violence outlet. My brothers used to fight, too, to make extra money to help support Mom and the bike shop after Pop died. They quit fighting a few years back, but I’ve secretly kept going about once a month. I don’t do it for the money, though. I do it mostly for the self-punishment. I let my opponent beat the fuck out of me until the very end, and then I take him down. Ninety percent of the time, I win. Every opponent becomes the face of karma to me first, giving me what I deserve for destroying my family, and then my opponent morphs into the asshole who kidnapped and hurt Holly, and I get to beat the hell out of him all over again. This last time I didn’t have toworry about explaining cuts and bruises all over my face when I saw Holly the next day because I chose to not even let the guy get a punch in. I just pummeled him right from the start and walked out with two grand in dirty cash that reeked of weed.

I guess the thing about Holly that makes me the craziest is how being around her is like being on an emotional train, and every stop brings something new and unexpected. Happiness, fear, anger, care, desire. Unfortunately, the train doesn’t let me get off. I’ve got a one-way ticket to places I never wanted to visit again.

Or even thought Icouldvisit.

“Tea is good. I like milk, sugar, and honey. You should have honey, too,” she adds. “I just didn’t know you made tea. It’s so… nice.” She says it with a hint of disbelief. “And validation of what?”

I’ve been so lost in my thoughts I have to back the conversation up in my mind to remember what we were talking about.

“Validation that I like being with you.”

“I wasn’t fishing,” she protests, pouting a little.

She was definitely fishing, but I don’t mind giving her reassurance when she needs it. Grinning, I hand her a mug and sit on the couch across the tiny room. Boomer is asleep in his favorite spot, crammed under the small stairway that leads to the loft, which is good because when he’s awake, he likes to tear around the house and knock things over. He also likes to pull socks and shoes off people and run and hide with them.

Holly gazes around the inside of my house with genuine interest, studying the nature photographs on my walls—which I took myself. She takes in the miniature inset lights, the incense holders on the mantel, the bookshelf filled with my collection of books by Stephen King, Madeleine L’Engle, Anne Rice, and Marquis de Sade, and the statues of foxes, wolves, angels, and grim reapers that Tor’s friend-turned-girlfriend leaves for me by the dog-feedingstations that they set up in the woods when we think there’s a lost dog in this area. I check the stations at night and early morning, and I’m hoping maybe someday Holly will go with me like Kenzi does with Tor.

Holly’s eyes rove over the full-size fireplace, which is the focal point of the house, with its gray stone chimney reaching all the way up to the second-floor loft and its thick stone mantel.

“You built all this?” she asks.

“Me and my brother Tanner. There was a house here before, but we knocked it down. The garage was here, so I just fixed that up.”

“It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Thanks. Tiny houses are kind of a fad, but that’s not why I live in one. I only wanted what I needed.” I take a sip of my tea. She’s the only woman who’s ever been in here, other than my mother and my sister, and that was a long time ago, before I told them I never wanted them to come back. I couldn’t stand seeing the sadness in their eyes or the way my mother constantly touched her wedding band, rubbing her finger over the white gold like it was a genie’s lamp, missing my father with every breath she took. I couldn’t take seeing the damage I’d caused the people I loved.

Holly’s sweet voice floats across the room, sucking me back from the edge. “It’s so cozy and warm. I thought I would be scared or feel cramped, but I’m not and I don’t. I feel like I’d never want to leave.”

Then don’t.

“Isn’t that what a home should be? A place you’d never want to leave?”

“I hope so,” she agrees. “I don’t feel like that at my apartment, though. Or at my parents’.”

“Because home is more than a bunch of walls and floors.”

With a faraway look, she nods and wraps her hands around her mug. I wonder if anyone ever hugs her, or if she has to constantly comfort herself. I want to pull her into my arms, show her what it’s like to let someone else make her feel better and not hurt her. “That’s true, Tyler,” she says softly.

“Someday, you’ll have your home. A real home that you’ll never want to leave.”

She smiles weakly. “I’m hoping when I move to New York I’ll feel that way with Zac and Anna.”

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