Nicole Helm - Too Much to Handle Read online

  "Nope," she said cheerfully. "But I wanted to cook, and I hate cooking for one. Especially pasta."

  He stepped into his kitchen and frowned at the mess. "What the hell happened in here?"

  "I made it from scratch." She pushed past him, stirring something in one pot, then lifting the lid of another.

  It smelled amazing. His place never smelled amazing. The cat brushed his leg again and he grimaced. "Your cat is gross."

  "Aww, poor scabby cat. He just needs some love and medicine and he'll be an adorable little fluff ball again."

  Henry wasn't so sure.

  "Why don't you set the table? I brought over a bottle of wine. Pour that. We're almost ready."

  The smells, her, the cat. It all felt so domestic. Cozy. Things he'd always envied about the Simms house growing up. Sure, Dad had been a good father, done the best he could, but he wasn't a home-cooked-meal kind of man. There had been a lot of frozen food, bare walls and backslaps. Laughter and love, too, but it was different than the Simms household.

  Much different than the easy way Ellen infused everywhere she went with warmth. Which made it impossible to say no to her, to this. The comfort wrapped around him and turned all his self-preservation into acquiescence.

  So, he set the table and poured the wine, and gave in to the fact that Ellen and her cat were probably going to be fixtures of his life until Ellen got bored. Maybe that could be okay. Maybe it could even be nice.

  As long as he could remember to keep his hands to himself.

  *

  A curl of satisfaction wound around Ellen's heart as she looked at Henry's empty plate and empty wineglass. His relaxed, handsome face.

  She'd done that, and as tightly wound as Henry held himself sometimes, relaxing him was quite an accomplishment.

  What else can you relax out of him? Oh, she shouldn't think like that. Shouldn't want more from him. But spending all this time here reminded her of why she'd always had a crush on him.

  He was one of those people always trying to do the right thing, and he was always too hard on himself. So self-sufficient he didn't even realize he needed something or someone.

  Someone like her to relax him. To remind him to be happy. Would it really be so terrible if she pushed him a bit on the romantic side of things?

  She ignored the little voice in her head reminding her she hadn't told her parents about buying this place yet. Hadn't even told them she was home for good. Or home at all.

  Because that wouldn't be happy. Not even a little.

  Oh, isn't that nice, dear. Have you been to visit your brother? I lay flowers on his grave every day.

  "You okay?"

  She looked up to find Henry studying her. She forced a smile. "Yup. Just thinking about the unpleasant task of cleaning all this up."

  "I can handle it. It was the best dinner I've had in ages. I'll clean everything up."

  That was Henry, always cleaning up messes, even if they didn't belong to him. But she wasn't interested in that. She wanted to give him something. A little something, like he gave her.

  She gathered up her plates and took them to the sink where he was already starting to work. He took them from her, rinsing them in a quick, methodical manner before placing them into the dishwasher.

  His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and there was a streak of something white across his forearm, a scrape across his knuckles. She wanted to run her fingers over both. Then maybe kiss the scrape better.

  Then maybe kiss everything better.

  She should move. Maybe gather more of the dishes she'd left haphazardly about his counters. But she didn't. She stood next to him as he pretended she wasn't, while he carefully loaded the dishwasher as though his life depended on the proper organization.

  When he got halfway through, he sighed and finally looked at her. She flashed her brightest smile as if it was completely normal to lust after someone loading the dishwasher.

  She knew the exact moment when his gaze changed from frustrated to something else. The frustrated she could recognize. This other look was less familiar. Some kind of study, but it had more consideration in it than his frustration.

  So, she didn't say anything, didn't move, because consideration was something she wanted to encourage, and Henry was like a scared animal. One little flinch and he'd hide.

  "You have…something in your hair." He hesitantly reached out, as if touching her hair might burn him if he handled it the wrong way. Gingerly, he brought the strand of hair clumped together by pasta dough in front of her eyes.

  "Oh, that." She started to pick out the crusted dough while watching him carefully, watching for that consideration to grow. "I always get pasta dough in my hair."

  He was still staring intently at her hair, and her stomach did a little flip. This was not friendship staring. This was pervy hots staring. Mmm.

  "Why don't you pull it back, then?" he finally asked, scowling as he went back to attacking the dirty dishes.

  "My hair looks terrible up. Stupid big ears. Half of why I quit dance. Those awful buns," she joked.

  He looked at her like she was crazy. Yes, she knew that look well, too.

  "You always look beautiful," he said, as if it were some indisputable fact.

  "Beautiful?" Henry had called her beautiful. Even though she had been pretty sure he was attracted to her, those words, that compliment, so easily said, with his eyes on hers…

  Oh, she was sunk. She leaned forward, but he stepped back and cleared his throat.

  "I didn't mean… I just…"

  "I've never been called beautiful before. Gorgeous once. But the guy was trying to get in my pants. Is that what you're trying to do?" Please, please, please.

  "No!"

  "Hmm."

  "You should head home, Ellen. I'll handle the mess."

  "Nope. You clean, I clean, goose." She was sticking by his side until she could get a more satisfactory answer to the getting into pants question.

  Chapter Four

  Ellen was sitting next to him. He'd lost track of whatever was happening on some movie she'd found on TV that was apparently "so good."

  He couldn't concentrate beyond the fact her leg was pressed against his—no matter how many times he tried to inch it away. She just kept plastering to his side.

  Someone was dancing on screen and Ellen sighed. "Remember when you came to my dance recital at Moore?"

  "Yeah." He did. Vividly. Too vividly. She hadn't visited home much those two years away at her first college. But, when she'd asked him to come to a dance program her parents couldn't attend because it was the anniversary of Ken's death, he'd scrimped and saved to drive to Pennsylvania and see her.

  He felt he'd owed it to her, to Ken, to her parents. Then he'd gotten there and she'd been…beautiful. Grown up. It was the first time, really the first time he'd seen her as something other than Ken's little sister.

  And he'd hated himself for it. He still hated himself for it, for having an erection over the memory, over her pressed next to him. Everything about wanting her was wrong. She refused to see it, but he couldn't let himself be blinded by Ellen's exuberance for life.

  Ken had had the same kind of cheery goodwill. Everything was good. Everything worked out. Until your best friend didn't take your keys away and you drove yourself into a tree and died.

  Ellen needed to stay away from him, to preserve that happy goodness about her. Henry would never… He ended things like that.

  He scooted again, opened his mouth to tell her to go.

  But she smiled and spoke first. "I don't know if I told you at the time, how much that meant. Having someone there." Her hand rested on his thigh.

  This was an invitation, and his body wanted to accept, was so ready to accept.

  But he always led with his brain when it came to Ellen. He had to, because his body was a lying asshole.

  "You should go," he said abruptly, pushing himself off the couch.
/>   She cocked her head and studied him. Her gaze dropped to his crotch and her mouth curved.

  Oh, Christ.

  Then she unfolded herself from the couch and crossed to him. "I think, I really think I should stay." She reached up and brushed her fingers across his beard.

  He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her hand away from his face. It took way too much willpower to let go of her arm. He wanted to feel the pulse pumping through her. Feel her.

  But she didn't seem to understand the edge he was on, because she stepped into him, pressing against him. "You don't have to push me away, Henry. I don't want you to push me away."

  But he had to, so he did. Took her by the shoulders and moved her back and away from him. "I don't know what you're trying to accomplish. You want me to admit I'm attracted to you? Fine. I admit that. But that doesn't make you any less Ken's sister. Any less the daughter of people who hate me. Nothing like this can happen, Ellen. I don't understand why you're pushing it."

  "Because none of that matters."

  It was enough of a slap in the face for him to be able to move out of her reach. Shut it all down. "You're very, very wrong about that. What happened matters. It will always matter."

  "I know. It's the one thing that defines all our lives. This tragedy, and don't ever think I believe it wasn't a tragedy, but I am here, Henry. Me." She slapped her palm to her chest, eyes shiny and fierce. "I am living and have to keep living and so do you. Why should tragedy and pain be the only thing we let in?"

  She was standing too close. Everything was too close to the surface. He wanted to push her away, or hold her close, and because he was torn between the two, he just stood there.

  "Kiss me, Henry. Please…let yourself have something."

  "I most certainly shouldn't have you."

  "You should have what you want. We both should. And I want you."

  "I can't." And he couldn't. It would be…betrayal. And wrong, no matter how right it felt. "You should leave. I don't just mean my apartment. You shouldn't be living next to me. Move on to the next thing, Ellen. Find somewhere you belong. It isn't here."

  "You don't get to decide where I belong," she said, her voice low and dangerous. "I'm not moving. I'm not walking away. You know why? Because I'm alive and I have all the choices he doesn't. Stripping yourself of choices and friends and joy is a slap to Ken's face, not penance for your…mistake."

  That burned, a searing pain he'd felt so many times since Ken's death. Painful enough to snap at her, even if he was afraid she was right. "Pretending he doesn't exist so you can be happy isn't exactly honoring his memory, or dealing with it."

  "When you've dealt with it, talk to me. Until then? Bite me." Finally, finally, she turned around. She grabbed her coat off the back of the couch, scooped up her damn scabby cat.

  He wouldn't feel guilty. He wouldn't. Because what he'd said was true. She wanted to call it "finding happy" or whatever the hell bullshit, but all she was doing was pretending the bad had never happened, and he refused to dishonor Ken that way.

  She wrenched the door open, but before she stepped out, she turned, tears streaming down her face.

  Well, fuck.

  "I thought you were different than my parents, you know." She sniffled, wiping at her nose with her free hand. "But you're all the same. Was he really that much more important than me? So much better? He's dead and no one can even acknowledge I'm here? No one can care about me? It's all about him. Well, I, for one, hate him. I hate that he decided to drink and drive. And I hate that he was so damn important that no one can live their damn life years after he's gone."

  And then she was gone, slamming the door behind her.

  Chapter Five

  Ellen hated crying. She'd spent most of the first few months after Ken's death crying and it had become something of an obsession to make sure she never did anymore.

  But Henry's words made her cry, and him making her feel like her parents made her feel when she thought he understood…

  She sniffled into a patch of Scabby's fur that wasn't scabby. And then someone knocked on the door.

  The only person it could be was Henry, and she was torn about whether to answer or not. On the one hand she didn't want to be yelled at any more, but on the other hand maybe he was interested in what she'd been offering.

  That thought alone propelled her from bed and down the stairs. She opened the door and looked up at Henry standing there sadly in the dark, big puffy coat on. She gestured him inside.

  "I…I'm sorry for that. I am, but I can't… I could never feel right about getting involved with you."

  "Never?"

  He shook his head. "There are things you don't know. No matter how beautiful and amazing you are, you'll never not be Ken's sister."

  There it was again. Just like her parents. Defined by what had been lost. Something that had nothing to do with her. "I'm Ellen. Who I am is who I am. Regardless of who I'm related to, or how they died. And, Henry Peterson, who you are is who you are, and it is not defined by the one night you didn't take your irresponsible friend's keys away from him."

  "You know how you went to that dance camp the summer after Ken died?"

  "Yes, but what does that have to do—"

  "I paid for that."

  She tried to make sense out of him paying for her dance camp, but she failed. How could he have—

  "After Ken's funeral, when you were staying with your grandparents, I think, I went to your parents to apologize for my role. They said because of the costs of the funeral they couldn't afford to send you to that dance camp you wanted to go to. So…"

  "So what?"

  "I gave them the money I'd saved up for—"

  Her heart stopped or dropped or both. "Tell me they did not take money from an eighteen-year-old."

  "I offered."

  "That does not make it right. That doesn't make any of that right! You…you were going to go to Iowa State. You were going to… God, I'd forgotten all about that. You and Ken were going to be engineers."

  "Close enough."

  "Close enough. Close enough? What is wrong with you? That's… They never should have accepted that. That's awful—more awful than I've ever given them credit for."

  "They were grieving."

  "They will always be grieving. It does not give them the right to prey on a teenager."

  "It was hardly like that."

  "They should have said no."

  "Well, they didn't, and it's not the only thing I've given them money for when it comes to you. So, understand that this is far more complicated than you want it to be."

  It felt like a blow, like she'd been knocked flat. Her parents had taken money from Henry so she could follow all her different whims every time she'd run away trying to find happy.

  "Look, you may not agree with it, but I will always, always feel responsible for what happened to Ken. I knew he was too drunk to drive, but I was tired of being the responsible one. Some girl was going to let me go home with her, and I let that be more important than my best friend's safety. I can't let that go."

  "He did it! Why do we all have to blame you?" Ellen's throat was tight but she didn't want to cry anymore, so she let the anger overtake the sad. "It's his fault. His! Not yours. Not Mom and Dad's. Not mine. We should all hate him for it."

  "Ellen—"

  "How much?"

  "What?"

  "How much money do I owe you?" She had to make this right. She turned into her apartment to find her checkbook. Of course her account was on the zero side since she'd bought this damn townhouse. Taking money from Mom and Dad for this would be ludicrous. But she had to—

  "You owe me nothing. Not a cent."

  "No. I…it's not right. You changed your life all so I could go to some dumb dance camp? I'm not even a dancer! This is awful."

  "It's fine. I chose—"

  She whirled on him. "To be an idiot. A stupid, guilt-ridden, moro
nic… You were wrong. So damn wrong."

  "You don't get to tell me that. Sorry. I did everything I did because it was the right thing to do."

  He said it so resolutely, as if there were no other option. It was such utter crap.

  "Everything you did is because you enjoy being sad and miserable and in pain. That's why you do it, Henry. Just like Mom and Dad. You all love being fucking miserable, because if you'd ever try to be happy again something bad might happen. Well, it's a crappy way to live, and I won't go around pretending it's not." If she lived like they did, she'd never be able to get up in the morning. "I'd like you to leave."

  "I just had to explain to you that this isn't as simple as you think it is."

  "No. No, it's an excuse. Your life is excuses for hiding away from anything that could possibly go wrong or cause you pain." Her way might not have been much better, running away, living off of other people, but she was changing that. She was here to change that.

  "You would know. That's what you're doing. Chasing happy. How is that not avoiding anything that would cause you pain?"

  She paused because he was right. But that didn't make her wrong. "Good night, Henry." And she closed the door in his face.

  Chapter Six

  Henry stepped out of the dilapidated old building his boss, Jacob, was thinking about buying. Leah ahead of him.

  "Have to rewire everything, and I mean everything," Leah said to Jacob. "There's not crap for restoring, electrically speaking."

  "Plumbing, too. Have to redo everything. Shit hole." Which was a little harsh, but Henry was feeling harsh. And he was feeling like a jackass, so why not be one?

  "Pipe dream, Boss." Leah clapped Jacob on the shoulder.

  They kept on talking, pointlessly, in Henry's estimation. This whole thing had been pointless. As pointless as, say, pretending he wasn't all twisted up over how things had gone with Ellen a few nights ago.

  The irritating part was that he wasn't wrong. He would never feel right about getting involved with her. It was the stuff she said about her parents, about him being like them, and them all enjoying their misery.