“It’s Victor,” he said, his eyes darkening behind his glasses. He touched the bridge with a fingertip. “I need to go.”
I prickled. “What happened to Victor? What’s wrong? Can I go?”
Kota shot a helpless glance at Nathan.
Nathan’s face turned serious, a mask of granite. “I’ll stay with her,” he told him. “We’ll wait for the game to end and we’ll go with North and Silas.”
“But wait,” I said, dropping a hand on Kota’s chest to stop him before he could pull away. “What happened? Is he hurt? Should we all go?”
Kota’s mouth tightened. He took up my hand and squeezed it. “He’s fine,” he said, the calm and power in his voice thundering through me. “He’s not hurt. He just needs me right now. Stay with Nathan. Listen to what he says.” He picked up my hand, brought it to his mouth. His lips brushed against a couple of my fingers and he pulled away. He marched down the steps of the stands, weaving among other students and parents. Within moments, he was gone.
My heart sunk seeing him leave. Despite his promise that Victor was fine, I couldn’t imagine Kota needing to get to him so quickly. If Victor was fine, he wouldn’t have called for help.
“Peanut,” Nathan said. He sat back down on the bench. His blue eyes gazed up at me and he found my hand again, tugging it. “Come here.”
His tugging drew me in until he pulled me onto his lap. His legs were warm against my butt, that had started to feel numb on the cold seat.
“Is Victor going to be okay?” I asked, unable to help feeling worried.
Nathan stuffed his arms around me, his cheek pressed to mine. “He’s fine. If he was hurt or needed us, Kota would have made us all go. Since he didn’t, it must not be too bad. He just needed to go see him.”
“But why? What could be wrong?”
Nathan sighed loud in my ear. “Victor stresses at his concerts. There’s a lot of pressure on him to be perfect.” He repositioned himself until he was sitting with his legs parted on the bench. He positioned me between his legs so his thighs partially wrapped around mine, with my back pressed into his chest and he could look out over my head at the game. “Don’t worry. Kota will go out there and he’ll be fine.”
I sighed, but swallowed back my desire to prod him with more questions. It felt wrong to not do anything, even at the risk of their reprimands and disapproval. I wanted to help and didn’t know how. It also felt wrong to continue to enjoy the game when Victor wasn’t happy.
Nathan wrapped his arms around my shoulders, drawing me in tight like a backward hug. His embrace stopped my trembling from the cool air. It was extremely cozy. “If I was really honest, Peanut, I’m kind of glad he had to go.”
My mouth popped open in surprise. How could he say that? “What do you mean?”
He turned his face, until his nose touched my ear and I felt his breath on my neck. “Because now I can pretend we’re on a real date.”
♥♥♥
We were still sitting together, with me partially in Nathan’s lap, when the clock on the scoreboard finally counted down to zero. The only thing keeping me from not shivering from the crisp air was Nathan’s warm arms around me and Kota’s hoodie. My legs were tingling. I’d have to remember to wear pants at the next football game.
Ashley Waters managed a one point victory, the final touchdown scored by Jay after Rocky threw the ball at him, with Silas and North assisting. The crowd was in an uproar. Everyone stood, cheering the team on.
It was with some small reluctance that I stood up as well. I wanted to show support but I didn’t want to draw away from Nathan.
Nathan seemed to read my mind. When I stood, he did, too. He stayed right behind me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders again, his chin hovering over the top of my head as he stood behind me. I witnessed other couples around us doing the same thing. It warmed me beyond anything I’d ever felt before. Despite being so nervous earlier with both of them, having just Nathan alleviated the burden of worrying about making Kota jealous. And since they’d done so much and neither of them seemed to pressure the other to back off, it was still confusing but I didn’t feel quite as guilty for having Nathan’s arms around me. Perhaps North was right after all. Maybe I did need to relax and let them take over some things, like worrying about touching and dates.
I sought out Silas and North, but the team had grouped up together on the field, cheering and patting each other on their backs. People started leaving the stands around us, trying to get ahead of the crowd getting out of the parking lot.
Watching people leaving and losing sight of Silas and North woke me up from my snuggle state with Nathan. I pulled away to look back at him. “Silas and North don’t know we’re here by ourselves. How are we going to catch them in this crowd?”
Nathan sighed, rolling his eyes and grinning. “Sang, oh my god, stop worrying so much.”
“But what if they leave without us? They think we’re with Kota.”
He smirked, shaking his head and grabbed my hand. “Come on, Peanut.”
He tugged me along to mix in with the crowd headed out. There was some relief that we were moving in the right direction. I hoped we made it before Silas and North did.
Nathan pulled me in close, with his arm wrapped around my shoulders. I wanted to do something with my arms, like wrap one around his waist or something similar like I was seeing other girls do, only I was too nervous and wondered if I should. I let it go so long until it felt too awkward to start since I hadn’t done it.
“Did you have fun, Peanut?” Nathan asked me as the crowd started to break up around us beyond the gate.
“Yes,” I said. I wasn’t sure I liked football or sitting on cold stands but spending time with the guys outside of school and not worrying about my parents had been fun.
“Good,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if you were for a while there.”
“What do you mean?”
“You looked scared again.”
I smirked. He said that about everything. “There were a lot of people,” I said.
He stopped walking, pulling back to look down at me. “Was that all that made you nervous? The crowd?”
I blushed, a finger fluttered toward my lower lip.
“Stop that,” he said, snatching my hand before it could reach my mouth. He trapped my fingers and ducked them into his mouth. “Why were you nervous?” he asked, his serious blue eyes focusing on me, although he seemed less intense with my fingers dangling in his mouth.
I twisted my lips as I spoke. “I’ve never been on a date ... thing before.”
The side of his mouth twisted up, he nipped at my finger. “That it?”
“And the whole Victor possibly being in trouble thing.”
“Anything else?”
I bit my lower lip. “Well, I mean ... I thought ...” Only this time I couldn’t formulate the words. What did he expect me to say? I couldn’t deny it any more. They were doing things to me that made my heart flip around, things couples did together, not just friends. It was more than I was expecting. He was chewing my fingers! Kota nuzzled my nose. If he’d gotten any closer, he could have kissed me. I’d almost wanted him to. I wanted Nathan to, even now. It was messed up and not normal. Mr. McCoy had said it with that sneer. Two dates.
“Tell me,” he said. He sucked at my fingers, drawing out his saliva to hold my hand in his. His blue eyes fixed on my face. “What’s wrong?”
I glanced at the gravel of the parking lot at our feet. “I thought for a little while you and Kota might be mad at each other.”
Nathan raised an eyebrow. “Mad? About what?”
My face radiated and my fingers started to shake. “Because you were both holding my hands. Then he tried to bite my finger and you told him not to ... And then he ...”
“Oh,” Nathan said. “You thought he’d be jealous? Or that I was?”
I nodded, unable to look at him.
He sighed. He tugged me around the shoulders. “Come on, Sang. Let’s
get to the car and I’ll tell you a story.”
My heart fluttered in my chest and I wanted to ask him questions but I couldn’t think of any to ask. Why would he want to tell me a story now? How was that going to help?
We found Silas’s blue sedan in the lot. Nathan fished out his keys and he selected one, putting it to the lock. I’d nearly forgotten they all had copies of each other’s car keys.
He opened the front passenger side for me. I sunk into the car seat, glad for the break from the chill wind. Nathan closed the door for me. He ran around the front of the car and got into the driver’s side. The overhead light shut off above us and we were cast into the dark, with the occasional head light shining in on us as cars continued to stream out of the lot.
I kicked my sandals off out of habit, drawing my knees to my chest. I slipped my hands into the pockets of Kota’s hoodie, smelling his spice scent still in the fabric.
Nathan twisted in the seat, looking at me and putting his hand on the shoulder of the car seat behind me. His lips parted like he wanted to say something but he paused, his eyes fixing on my face. “I’m not really sure if I’m supposed to tell you this,” he said quietly.
I leaned against the center console in Silas’s car. “Why not?”
“It’s partially Academy stuff.”
I frowned. I didn’t want him to get into trouble. “Mr. Blackbourne told me this week I probably won’t get into the Academy.”
Nathan’s face fell as if in shock. “He what? Why did he say that? Did he say never?”
The way he responded stunned me. It was almost exactly how Victor had reacted, as if he almost expected me to join but like he, too, was waiting for confirmation on something. “He said there was a slim chance.”
“Oh,” Nathan’s face softened, looking relieved. He pushed his palm against his forehead. “I was about to have a heart attack.”
“Why?” I asked.
His eyebrows shot up and he slowly turned back to me. “That’s another long story. And I don’t know the answer to that anyway. Let me tell you the other one.”
I pursed my lips, gazing into his face, afraid to say anything to interrupt him.
“I’ve known Kota since forever. We’ve always lived across the street from each other. His mom and mine used to be friends. We’ve shared everything, like toys, and since we were about the same size, we even shared clothes. We used to fight, too. We fought like brothers over the better toys and who got to sleep where when the other had to sleep over. Actually, that was probably me. My mom was gone overnight a lot so I had to sleep at Kota’s house on that cot thing he rolls out from under his bed. What we shared most was the fact that our dads were never home. When they were, we didn’t like them.”
My eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
Nathan’s eyes turned dark. “They were mean, Sang. Kota and I gave each other bruises, but our dads gave us more.”
I clutched at Kota’s hoodie around my body, stunned by this information. “Kota never mentioned his ... you never ...”
“We don’t really talk about it now,” Nathan said. “We really never told anyone back then either, not even Victor or Luke or Gabriel when we met them in school.”
“They’re not around now. Your dads, I mean.”
He shook his head. “No. Well, my dad shows up every once in a while.”
“Where’s Kota’s? What happened to him?”
Nathan frowned. “He should probably tell you that story. But his dad’s not here anymore. That’s the important part.” He waved his hand in the air. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, Kota and I have been through a lot. All of us have, but I guess between us, it feels different. When the Academy took us in, we had no idea that the times we fought over little things, like toys and clothes and other stuff, that was us mimicking our dads. It was working through the Academy that we managed to get beyond a lot of it, including dealing with jealousy.”
“You were jealous of him?”
He smirked a little. “Are you kidding? Kota’s the smart one. All he had to do was glance at a textbook and he knew it all. He also acted smarter than me a lot. He used to tell me to do stuff. Not like he does now where he’s nice about it. I mean he used to just rattle off stuff and he’d say it like I was stupid that I couldn’t read his mind and do what he wanted without him telling me to do so. Then there’s Erica. His mom was around more than mine. When my mother left me and my dad ...”
A heavy breath escaped my lips. I hadn’t thought about Nathan’s mom because he never said anything about it. In the back of my mind, I thought perhaps she died or something. “She’s still alive? Where is ...”
Nathan sighed, closing his eyes and shook his head. “She’s gone, Sang. She’s not coming back. I used to tell myself all the time she would one day but that’s a lie. She left.” He opened his eyes again, gazing at my face. “But I was jealous that his mother stayed and mine didn’t. It wasn’t his fault but for a while I was blaming myself. I thought if I’d been more like smart-and-perfect Kota, that she might have stayed.”
I chewed my lower lip, holding on to the questions tripping behind my lips. I couldn’t dare to ask.
“When Mr. Blackbourne brought us into the Academy, they forced us to share everything. Not just stuff, but everything we were feeling about each other and held back. I told Kota I was jealous about his mother.”
I clutched the console between us, leaning against it, eyes glued to his face. “What happened?”
The hint of a smile touched the corner of his mouth. “You know what he said? He told me his mother had a habit of comparing me to him. Erica would tell him, ‘You should be nicer to your sister. Nathan’s sweet to her. You should do what he does.’ Or, she’d say, ‘Nathan’s such a gentleman. You should learn from him.’ Kota had been jealous, too, because he thought his own mother liked me better than him.”
“Did it make you feel better? Knowing he’d been jealous, too?”
“No,” he said. “It made it worse.”
“How?”
He sighed, sitting back and glancing out the front window. “We were still angry. We’d said what we needed to say. Yes, it was good to get it out, but we were still angry about everything. But the Academy had an answer for that, too. When we were twelve, we had to go to this boot camp. It was there they showed us how certain things didn’t matter. Money, for example. The Academy had no room for people who desired money above anything else. Money doesn’t really mean anything to us anymore. Like Victor’s got that fancy car and I don’t have one. What he owns or possesses doesn’t bother me, because it’s not what I need. And it wouldn’t matter now anyway because if I really wanted to borrow it, all I had to do was ask.”
“Victor’s nice,” I said. “He’d let you borrow anything.”
“Yeah, but it’s more than that. It’s ...” He twisted his lips. He shifted, fishing out his keys and held the loop in front of my face. “This,” he said. “Here it is. Everything we own, we’ve got the key and we have access to it. We have full permission to use anything we need. What’s yours is mine. We do it with everything. Like how Gabriel took you shopping and Victor paid. Yes, they do it because they’re nice. They wouldn’t have let us into the Academy otherwise. But now it’s more like we share everything.” He sighed. “Well, shit. Now it sounds like you're a set of keys we're sharing. I don’t know how to explain it any better. Maybe Kota should be telling you this.”
I shook my head. “I understand,” I said, and fully believed I did. “But what I meant before ... about you and him ... with me ...”
His lips twisted into a smile. “Look, I won’t lie. I like having you to myself. He and I have had crushes and girlfriends and stuff, but I’ve never met a girl he’s dated and he’s never met mine. We kept it separate. Girls never really stick around with us. Academy life and personal life was separated for a long time, and it still is. Academy stuff is secret. So when we disappeared for days on end without explanation, they never really under
stood. Only now it’s like ... you’re so close. You know a lot more than other people. And you’re with us.”
“I’m not sure I know what that means.”
“I don’t know if I know, either,” he said. He leaned over the console, putting a hand behind my neck and massaging. “Listen to me though, this whole family thing, what we have, it’s a slow process. Answers don’t happen in a single day. The Academy taught us that. Families take time to build together and trust, and we’ve had a head start with each other.”
“I just don’t want to see you guys mad at each other,” I said. If he was going to be honest, I felt I should as well.
“I can’t tell you how everyone else feels,” Nathan said, his fingers massaging in small circles along my neck. “But it doesn’t make me mad to see Kota and you together. It’s like when Erica cares about me but also cares about Kota. You can’t really think about how she loves her son more. Or like how siblings want to know who mom loves the best. Feelings don’t always have to work like that. You don’t always have to pick a favorite and sometimes it’s better if you don’t. I wouldn’t pick North over the others in anything we were doing together because I don’t have to. We’re all in together. Now you are, too.”
“Without being in the Academy?”
He half smiled. “You can be with us and not in the Academy. It’s where you are now. Will you please trust us, though? If something bugs me, I’ll tell you. Like I told Kota to not bite your fingers.” He let go of my neck, picking up my hand and letting it hover over his lips. “This,” he said. “It’s okay to claim little things. We share everything, but we can ask the others to back off of little things if it isn’t a big deal.”
“Not a big deal?” I asked. It felt like a big deal. It was like claiming a piece of me.
He beamed at me, pulling my fingers from his mouth and pressing my hand to his chest. “I don’t mean it like that. I meant things that aren’t really life or death. Don’t be such a girl.”
I groaned, rolling my eyes. “I am a girl.”
“I know, but you’re not like other girls.”