Who Caught Whom

For a moment, Owen said nothing.

Then he took a breath that sounded painful.

“Okay.”

I frowned.

“That’s all?”

“It’s okay, Julian.”

“No, it isn’t. You look as though I’ve kicked you.”

He tried to smile.

It was dreadful.

“You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to.”

“I do want to.”

He glanced toward the door.

“You said you were hungry earlier. I can still get dinner.”

He moved past me.

I caught his wrist.

“Owen.”

He stopped at once.

Of course he did.

He looked at my hand around his wrist as though it was something he might be allowed to keep if he behaved carefully enough.

My throat tightened.

“Do you think I have nothing better to do?” I asked.

His brow creased.

“What?”

“Do you think I’d spend weeks trying to get your attention just to irritate a man I barely speak to?”

“You said—”

“I said it was part of it. I didn’t say it was all of it.”

He looked at me then.

I stepped closer.

“When we moved in, you carried my bags without acting as though I’d asked for a kidney. You fixed the stupid ladder. You listened when I complained.”

His mouth moved, but I held up a hand.

“Then you smiled at me while you were putting my suitcase away, and I thought you were beautiful. That happened before I wondered what my father would think.”

Owen stared.

“Yes, I enjoyed the idea of him being furious. I still do. But he wasn’t in the room when I asked you to stay in my bed.”

My fingers tightened on his wrist.

“He wasn’t at the court when I wanted you to look at me. He wasn’t there when I got jealous over a takeout container.”

A small change crossed Owen’s face.

“You were jealous?”

“Don’t look so pleased. I was having a terrible time.”

He made a sound that was almost a laugh.

I let go of his wrist and took his hand instead.

“I wanted you before you kissed me. I wanted you when I kissed you outside the restaurant. And today, when my father raised his hand, you were the person I wanted to leave with.”

His fingers closed around mine.

I could breathe again.

“Does that make sense?” I asked.

“Yes.” His voice was rough. “I think so.”

“You think so?”

“It does.”

“Good.”

I put my free hand against his chest.

His heart was beating hard.

“I wasn’t pretending all of it, Owen.”

He looked down at me.

“I know.”

I lifted an eyebrow.

“I know now,” he corrected.

I leaned into him.

His arms came around me so quickly that I laughed against his shirt.

“Careful.”

He loosened them immediately.

“Not that careful.”

He held me again.

We stood like that until my knees stopped feeling strange.

Then he sat on his bed and pulled me down beside him.

“What else?” he asked softly.

I turned toward him.

“Your father,” he said. “There’s something else.”

I could have put him off.

I had spent years doing that with everybody.

Instead, I looked at our hands.

“Victor,” I said. “His driver.”

Owen went still.

“When my father stopped coming home, Victor was there a lot. He drove me places. Picked things up. He had keys.”

I paused.

Owen waited.

“I was sixteen. He cornered me one evening. I got away before he could do what he wanted, but I had to fight him.”

The words sounded smaller than the memory.

Owen’s thumb stopped moving over my knuckles.

“Did your father know?”

“I told him.”

“What did he do?”

“He said I’d misunderstood.”

For a second, the room seemed to lose all its ordinary sounds.

Then Owen exhaled through his nose.

I looked up.

His face was very calm.

Too calm.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You didn’t do it.”

“I know.”

I leaned against his shoulder.

“Victor behaved more carefully after that. Then I got older. My mother’s money became available to me, and I left for university as soon as I could.”

“Has he come near you here?”

“He tried calling. I blocked him.”

Owen nodded.

His arm remained steady around me.

“That’s why I don’t like people waking me up sometimes,” I said. “I’m sorry about your face.”

“You don’t have to apologize for that again.”

I rubbed my thumb over the mark on his cheek anyway.

He caught my hand and kissed it.

“You’re not alone with it anymore,” he said.

There was nothing clever about the sentence.

No grand promise. No speech about saving me.

I believed him more because of that.

I put my face against his neck and stayed there until I could speak without sounding different.

“Get dinner,” I said. “Then come back.”

“I will.”

“And stop deciding you’ll accept anything just to keep me.”

He looked at me.

“I want you,” I said. “You’re allowed to act like it.”

His hand lifted to my cheek.

“I do want you.”

“I’ve noticed.”

This time, when he kissed me, there was no apology afterward.

The next morning, I woke in his bed because neither of us had wanted to negotiate the ladder.

Owen was at his desk, answering messages.

When I stirred, he set his phone down.

“Breakfast?”

I held out my hand.

He came over first.

That became our routine. Not the messages, which I forgot about almost immediately. The coming over first.

A week later, Marcus arrived with news that Victor Shaw had been arrested during a police operation at a motel outside town.

I stared at him.

“How do you know?”

“My cousin works there. Apparently he tried to get out through a window and fell. Broke his leg.”

Ben winced.

I did not.

Later, I learned my father had fired Victor after the arrest. His wife had left. After drinking too much, he had driven into a parked car and added another charge to an already unpleasant month.

For once, I found the news deeply restorative.

Then my father’s other family stopped being a private matter.

Photographs appeared online. Dates followed. People began asking how his public speeches about loyalty fitted together with the timeline of his marriage.

Some of the first posts came from an account associated with a business rival. I assumed that explained it.

My father’s company spent several weeks answering questions it could not charm away. A planned partnership stalled. His name disappeared from a charity event he had expected to chair.

He called from unfamiliar numbers.

I did not answer.

On a bright Saturday morning, I sat cross-legged on Owen’s bed while he washed a few things in the bathroom sink. The laundry machines downstairs had broken again.

My socks were draped over his forearm.

I watched him come back into the room and hang them neatly on the drying rack.

Victor. My father. The timing.

It had all happened after the afternoon outside the athletic center.

I looked at Owen’s broad back.

He was carefully reshaping the heel of one of my socks so it wouldn’t dry crooked.

Surely not.

Then again, I had also thought he would never find the courage to kiss me first.

He turned and caught me watching.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He came over, bent down, and kissed me.

There was a quiet confidence to the movement now. He no longer waited for me to arrange every inch between us.

“My academic award and the extra housing grant came through,” he said. “And I’ve been saving from work.”

I tilted my head.

“What are you planning?”

“There’s a little apartment near the east gate. I checked the listing. Two rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom with an actual tub.”

“A tub?”

“You complain about the showers.”

“I complain about many things.”

“I keep track.”

I looked at him for a moment.

He looked back, perfectly serious.

“I could cover my half,” he added. “If you wanted to look at it with me.”

“You’ve already looked.”

“Only at the listing.”

“And checked the tub.”

“The pictures were clear.”

I laughed.

He sat beside me and caught my hand.

“Do you want to?”

I thought about his note beside my breakfast. The arm around me in a bed too small for either of us to sleep comfortably. His hand stopping my father’s.

I thought about how peaceful I had felt waking beside him that morning.

“Yes,” I said. “I want to.”

His smile came slowly.

The sunlight caught one side of his face. The other remained in shadow.

I reached up and tugged his ear.

“You know, I thought I was very clever.”

“You are.”

“I thought I had you exactly where I wanted you.”

He turned his head and kissed my palm.

“Do you?” he asked.

I looked at our joined hands.

Then at the socks hanging neatly behind him.

For one brief, unreasonable moment, I wondered which of us had really been caught.

Owen smiled again.

I decided I could live with the uncertainty.

The End