My Stepbrother Is My Secret Master novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Daylight

I took the stairs two at a time.

My dad was in the big guest closet, stuffing flannel shirts into the duffel he'd had since before I was born.

"Dad. Stop."

"I'm going home for a while, Laurie."

"This is your home."

"This is a museum with a lake in it." He zipped the bag halfway and stopped. "I need to think somewhere I understand."

"Is this about me?"

He looked at me then, really looked.

"It's about a woman telling me which one of you she'd keep," he said. "I don't stay where my kid's on a list."

Dorinda stood in the doorway behind me, white to the lips.

"Gary. Please."

He kissed her cheek on his way past.

That was the worst part. He was still gentle with her.

His truck went down the gravel drive at nine, and its taillights turned south toward Ohio.

Beckett left the same night with one bag and a box of brushes.

He'd been renting a studio loft in the West Loop since August, the place he'd been the night of the storm.

I stayed on Daisy's couch for eight days.

I went to class. I drew. I didn't answer the eight o'clock texts.

He sent one every night anyway.

I'm here. You don't have to answer.

On the ninth day, I sat on Daisy's kitchen counter with my sketchbook and a pencil.

"What are you writing?" she said, eating cereal out of the box.

"Rules."

"For what?"

"For him."

She came over and read over my shoulder.

"Number one. No masks. Number two. No secrets, including the kind where you just don't say anything." She nodded. "Good. Strong. Number three. I can see you whenever I want."

"Is that weird?"

"Babe, that's the least weird thing on this page." She tapped the paper. "Add one. He has to be funny at least once a day."

"He is funny."

"Then it's an easy rule."

I wrote it down.

At two o'clock on a Saturday, I knocked on a steel door on the fourth floor of an old factory.

Beckett opened it in a paint-stiff T-shirt with a brush between his teeth.

He took the brush out.

He didn't say anything.

He just looked at me.

Behind him, the loft was all brick and windows, full of hard white daylight.

There was a mattress on a low frame in the corner, unmade, and canvases everywhere.

Half of them were faces I couldn't make out yet.

"Can I come in?"

He stepped back.

I walked into the middle of the room and turned around in the light.

There was nowhere to hide in it. That was why I'd come at two in the afternoon.

I tore the page out of my sketchbook and held it out.

He read it standing up.

Then he read it again.

"'Four. You don't go easy on me because you feel guilty,'" he read. "'Five. You never decide what I can handle.'"

"Do you agree?"

"'Six. Funny at least once a day.'" He looked up. "Is that Daisy's?"

"She was very firm."

"I'll do my best. Brutal standard."

That was one.

I didn't smile. It was close.

"I'm not here because I forgive you," I said. "I don't. Not yet. I'm here because I want you, and I'm tired of being scared of wanting things."

His hand tightened on the paper.

"Then what do you want, Laurel?"

My name, in that voice, in daylight.

It went straight through me.

"I want you to look at me," I said. "And I want to look at you. The whole time."

I unbuttoned my coat and let it drop.

Under it I had on a white T-shirt and jeans and nothing fancy at all.

From the pocket of my jeans I took the black leather collar, the one with the little silver ring.

I held it out to him on my palm.

He didn't take it.

"Say it," he said, low. "Out loud. In this light."

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