The engine was running and from the muted volume of the radio, I heard Breaking Benjamin’s “Ashes of Eden” pulsing from his speakers. A few taps on his window and Ransom pulled his head up in a jerk, fists still tight on the steering wheel.
“What are you doing?”
Ransom’s long blink was slow, like he was coming out of a stupor, and he stared at me for a few seconds as I tilted my head, waiting for an answer. “You’re late,” I finally said when he rolled the window down.
“I’m sorry. I just…”
I reached for the door handle, and he suddenly jerked up straight, seeming to fumble for the latch. “No don’t…” he managed to get out, but it was too late to stop.
I opened the door and dozens, hundreds of rose petals fell out of the car and fluttered onto the ground.
“What’s all this?”
He was on autopilot, I was sure of it, letting me pull him from the car, standing blankly as I brushed back the petals that covered his floor and seats. There were sharp, broken stems with sharp thorns around the car’s console and on the dash.
Ransom’s fingers had been pricked and were bleeding, with small cuts crisscrossed around his knuckles. I didn’t think, just grabbed his big hands to examine the marks more closely, not concerned that this was the first time I’d touched him without the pretense of a lesson since I’d danced for him at Summerland’s.
“It’s her birthday.”
My gaze sliced up and I tightened my grip on his hands so that it was no longer tender. He looked completely lost, worse than I’d ever seen him before, and any irritation about a missed lesson completely evaporated, replaced by something fierce, some consuming desire to take care of him, to make that washed out, pale flush on his face disappear.
What could I say? The roses, that defeated, weary expression could not be eased by something as simple as “I’m sorry” or “Do you want to talk about it?” Of course he didn’t. He never did, and though we were friends, or so I thought, it was clear that Ransom didn’t share his secrets with anyone.
Behind us, the back entrance swung open and Leann’s voice echoed across the parking lot as she yammered to someone on her phone. She couldn’t see us, not with the dumpster blocking Ransom’s car, but her appearance seemed to waken Ransom from his trance and he pulled his had from mine.
“I shouldn’t have come here. Leann sees the damn roses and she’ll bother my folks. Mom’s already worn out…”
His face was now a mass of worry, and his voice had taken on a slightly panicked tone. It was heartbreaking. “Come on,” I told him, pulling him away from his car by the hand.
Ransom didn’t ask where I was taking him. He followed me like a child, like he was so lost that he had no idea where to turn.
A brief dash up the stairs and Ransom was in my apartment, slipping his hands in his pockets as he looked around my place. No one but Leann and some of my friends from the studio had ever been in my tiny apartment. Ransom filled up the space so completely, I had to step back and let him pace around, his movements a little slow and listless, before he finally crashed onto my sofa.
My place was nice, small but comfortable, though it wasn’t really more than a couple of converted storage rooms. I had a small kitchenette with a mini fridge and stovetop and there was a tiny bathroom at the back.
My style was a little eccentric—vintage because I could only afford thrift store and garage sale finds, and hand-me-downs from Leann that I knew she’d bought for me and lied about using.
The sofa was really only a loveseat, and was plush but threadbare, covered in an olive cable knit throw Leann had given me for Christmas the year before. It matched the sporadic pops of green and turquoise around the living room and on my neatly made bed at the back of the loft. Ransom took up most of the seating area on the sofa and held his head in his hands as he looked down at the whitewashed hardwood floors.
“Who did this?” I asked him, coming closer to the sofa with my knee leaning against the plank wood coffee table.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Those large hands trembling, the defeated, exhausted tone of his voice, were almost too hard to bear. I’d never seen him like this up close—broken, wounded in a way that I worried couldn’t be healed.
When I came to my knees in front of him, Ransom didn’t move. “Hey,” I said, pulling his face up to look at me. “Talk to me. How can I help?”
“You can’t,” he said, as a bitter laugh left his throat. “You can’t help the hopeless.”
“No one is hopeless.”
He stared at me a long time and when I tried to touch his hand, he sat back, fingers running through his hair.
Everyone tiptoed around Ransom when it came to bringing up the past. He was such a large, imposing figure that only Keira and Kona really got to push his buttons. They knew how to handle him, everyone else took their lead. And as much as I respected them, loved them even, I thought they did more harm than good letting Ransom wallow in his grief, not making him confront the stuff that seemed to weigh him down. Now he had brought the past to my front door. Or backdoor, however you look at it. He hadn’t come here for a damn dance lesson. I thought maybe it was being here, at the studio, getting lost in the music and movements that eased him. Maybe, just maybe, he’d come here because he needed a friend who wouldn’t try to tell him things would be fine. More likely, he’d been lost but that innate desire to please, to keep to his responsibilities had somehow pushed through the sick birthday reminder and led him here.
Ransom needed a friend, I knew that, but he also needed to talk through the ghosts that were hurting him. It was a risk to mention, but one I’d take just to get him past this. “Is this…the roses, it has to do with…with Emily?”
His fingers came down, slapped onto his leg at my question and I recognized that swift flare of anger, insult in his eyes. But Ransom was able to retain his temper holding back from it as he looked away from me. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Leann’s still downstairs. She will be for a while.” Again I tried touching him and he grunted, leaving the sofa to avoid my reach. “I thought we were friends,” I said, trying to calm him without cutting him any slack. He had his back to me as he paced, hands loose on his hips. “This is what friends do, Ransom.”
“What?” he said, moving his head to the left to glare at me over his shoulder before he turned around. He moved his hands from his hips to ball into fists at his side. “Get in your business? If that’s the case then I don’t want any friends.” It was a shock, that harsh tone, one he hadn’t used since that first confrontation after I lied to him. Instinctually, I flinched when he yelled, stepping back, then feeling stupid for pulling away.
I’d only meant to help, to get that sad frown off his face and deep down inside Ransom must have known that because his immediately softened. “Aly…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” He laced his fingers in his hair again, staring up at my low ceiling. “Shit, I suck at this.”
Someone had to reach him, knock down the walls Emily had erected the day of the accident. “You don’t talk about her?”
That anger flashed again and Ransom stood straight, curling his fingers into a fist. I felt the tension from him, it shook his arms and lowered his deep voice. “No.”
“It might help.”
He shook his head.
“Ransom…”
“No!” This time when he shouted I wasn’t surprised and found myself annoyed that he was trying to use his size, his imposing voice to make me back off. It wouldn’t work on me. My father had done that for years and once I realized that it was my reaction, the way I’d huddle away from him for fear of that voice alone, I’d stopped doing it. It gave him too much power over me and no one did that to me anymore. Not even Ransom.
He moved his chin up, but kept his face hard, a frown that shook his top lip, reminding me of a tiger, pent up and pacing behind a glass wall at the zoo. “No one gets that from me. It’s none of your damn business.”