What You Leave Behind by Katoff Jessica

Author:Katoff, Jessica [Katoff, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jessica Katoff
Published: 2013-12-22T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

It’s a special kind of loneliness to know you’re not the only one physically occupying a space, but to feel like you are. Harper struggles against that feeling, sensing Austin’s aura still within the walls of his home, but the space beside her in his bed remains vacant and cold. She pulls his sheets—the ones that smell like cigarette smoke and fresh wood and him—tightly around her body, trying to call forth some semblance of him, but there’s no conjuring him. She doesn’t cry for Liam or even for herself. She cries for Austin. She cries for how much she feels for him and how it may not be enough, and how she’s breaking his heart and how she can’t seem to stop. When it’s over, when her tears dry and hours have passed, she knots the thin sheets around her body and stands, collects herself, and goes in search of him.

The night is heavy, breaking from midnight blue to pure black, and the hour is late, but Harper knows he’s awake—she can hear the sad, simple strum of his guitar. Still, she tiptoes down the staircase and around the bend into the living room. His back is to her, eyes cast toward the patio window as his hand falls lazily over the steel strings. She distantly observes his reflection, the shadow play of the muscles that traverse his shoulders as his hands move along the frets, the strings, and the dip of his head as he eyes his finger work. Her hands ache to fit to his shoulders and pull him back against her as she sits behind him on the sofa. Instead, she chews her lower lip, leans against the wall, and listens to his breathy, aching croon—the only good the cigarettes ever did him. The words don’t tie together and there are moments of complete silence, but she knows from the crying of his guitar that it’s the same song he played months prior on the pub jukebox. He is so lonesome, so very lonesome.

“I can hear you breathing,” Austin notes in a whisper at the tail-end of the song. His hands still roam slowly over the guitar, eyes trained on the window. “Can’t sleep?”

“I can’t.” Harper doubts she’s welcome, but she moves to him then and fits herself behind him on the sofa. Hesitantly, she draws her head down and leans it softly against his bare back. When he doesn’t stop her, she breathes a sigh of relief that makes the soft hairs that dot his skin stand on end. Her mouth opens and closes a few times, the edge her lips gliding against his spine with the motion, and when the words don’t come, she presses them to his back, right over his longest scar, and lets them linger against his hot skin. His hands still at the feel of it, and she quietly tells him, “But, I want to.”

“You’re not talking about sleeping.”

“I’m sorry, Austin,” she murmurs against his spine. “I’m truly so sorry.

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