“You mean it? It’s not weird? I’m not weird?”
I kissed her cheek. “Not weird, and I did tell you I wanted to help you with all things crazy, right?”
She nodded. A piece of lush red hair fell across her face meeting her flushed cheek like a caress.
“Good.” I kissed her cheek again. Mainly because I could. “I say we can get most of this done before Thanksgiving.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.” I helped her stand. “You know… minus the whole falling in love part.”
Kiersten laughed. Damn, I loved that sound. “Right, well, I figured go big or go home.”
“My kinda girl.” With a wink, I put the paper back on her desk. “Now put on a shirt so guys don’t lust after you. We, my dear, are going for a run.”
Chapter Sixteen
At least running next to him meant I wasn’t running from him, that was progress… right?
Kiersten
When Wes said we should go running, I mistakenly thought he meant jog. You know, as in go kinda slow, not like a bat out of hell.
The guy wasn’t even talking.
But he was sweating.
So I guess it was a good trade off, especially considering he’d opted to run without a shirt. I, however, had to look much less than sexy as I gasped for breath next to him.
“We’re crossing something off your list right now, you know,” he said in a perfectly normal voice.
My side sliced with pain as I wheezed out, “Oh yeah, what?”
“You want off your anti-depressants.”
“So you’re…” I coughed. “Trying…” Holy crap I was going to pass out. “…to kill me?”
“Negative.” He chuckled. Seriously. How. Was. He. Breathing? “Studies show that hard exercise, the kind that evokes physical pain, actually releases happy chemicals in your brain which heal emotional as well as physical pain. Kind of like a drug. Running is the quickest and most efficient way to get those happy chemicals in your body. You start running, and I guarantee that you’ll feel better, possibly good enough to go off your drugs.” He stopped running. Thank God.
I bent over and held up my hand. “I need a minute.”
He patted my sweaty back and chuckled. “The thing is, Kiersten, drugs aren’t bad. They’re there to help you.”
“They give me nightmares.”
“So sleep with me.”
“They make me feel weak.” I exhaled another breath.
“Only because you’re looking at it the wrong way.”
I waited for his usual wisdom. Seriously, was the guy a shrink in another life?
“Just because you need help to cope doesn’t make you any less strong. The truly weak people in this life are the ones who can’t admit they need help. They’re the ones who can’t admit that they can no longer go at it alone. Those are the people who are weak. By asking for help, by taking help, you’ve just admitted your weakness and in that, you find your strength. The weak of the world are those who think they’ve got it all figured out and flaunt it to others.”
I paused a minute and then looked up. He was grinning from ear to ear.
“When did you get so smart?”
Wes shrugged as a bead of sweat ran down his jaw. “Lots of therapy. Believe me. You can’t go to therapy your whole life and not walk away with at least a little good advice.”
I snorted. “Clearly I need to switch therapists.”
“Great, because I take appointments, and dates are my currency, so pay up.”
“Friends don’t date.”
He squinted against the sun and laughed. “Sure they do.”
I bit down on my lip and told my heart to stop doing cartwheels across my chest. “That wasn’t on my list.”
“The date is.”
“Is it?” I smiled. I couldn’t help it. He was a freaking expert at peeling back all of my carefully erected walls.
“This weekend. Friday. You and me. Date.”
I looked away, trying to at least make it appear like I wasn’t ready to jump all over him and scream yes in his face. Of course, the guy had girls throwing themselves at him. Just walking with Wes got me weird stares and gaping looks from the entire female population.
“Okay,” I said in a small voice. “But only as friends.” I held out my hand to shake his.
He nodded and took my small hand captive in his. “At least you shake my hand now. A few days ago I was convinced I’d have to show you how like John Smith did to Pocahontas.”
“Funny.”
“Aren’t I?” He chuckled and pulled my hand so that we were almost chest to chest.
“I’m sweaty.”
“Yup.”
“And I — I smell.” Wow, way to scare him off.
Wes leaned in and sniffed the side of my head.
“Are you sniffing my skin?”
He shrugged. “You said you smelled. Just trying to prove you wrong.”
“So I don’t smell?”
“No…” He still hadn’t moved his face. My breath quickened when I felt his intake of breath across my neck. “You smell, but it’s a sweaty smell. I happen to like sweat.”
“Charmer.” My voice sounded airy and foreign.
And then a wet tongue touched just below my ear as his lips grazed the side of my face. “Absolutely.”
Before I could slap him or push him away or roll my eyes, a ringing sounded. He stepped back and pulled out a sleek new iPhone. “What?”
I waited awkwardly while the smile fell from his face.
“No, its fine. Not a problem. Yeah, I’ll… I’ll be there.” He put the phone back in his pocket and zipped it up, then like a switch he was happy again.
“You okay?” I crossed my arms.
“Fine, why?” He started walking back up the path toward the school.
“Phone call, sad face. You know, tension in your voice. That sort of thing.”
“Oh. That.” Wes didn’t meet my gaze as we made our way through the last part of the trail and back onto school property. “No big deal, just drama with my dad, you know how parents can be. Sometimes they just annoy the hell out of you because they can.”
I froze.
“Kiersten?” Wes touched my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
I opened my mouth but all that came out was a gasp, and then I started running all over again.
Because the last time I’d talked to both my parents we’d gotten into a fight, an epic fight, about me wanting to go to my first party as a sophomore in high school.
“Kiersten!” Wes called after me, but I kept running focusing on the slap of my shoes against the cement. Left, right, left, right. I needed to get away.
I ran all the way up the huge concrete stairway that led to the dorms until finally I collapsed onto the ground scraping my knee in the process.
“Crap!” Blood trickled down my leg and pooled in my shoe. Tears burned at the back of my throat as I tried to keep myself from hyperventilating.
“Kiersten!” Wes was immediately by my side, must have paced along behind me. He ripped part of my shirt and blotted the scrape alternating between blowing on it and trying to stop the bleeding. “What the hell was that? You scared the shit out of me. In fact, you’re still scaring the shit out of me. What’s wrong?”
I tried to jerk free from his grip, but he was too dang strong. I refused to meet his gaze.
“Talk to me.” Wes’s voice was gentle and coaxing. “I know it was something I said.”
I nodded.
“About parents?”
I nodded again.
“What happened?”
“They’re dead.”
Chapter Seventeen
And the Mr. Insensitive award goes to… Weston Michels. I. Am. An. Ass.
Weston
What was I supposed to say to that? What could I say?
“It was an accident. You can rarely prepare for death,
you know?” She shook her head.
Sadly, she wasn’t right in that regard. You could prepare and I knew from firsthand experience that it didn’t make it any easier, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. It wasn’t the time.
“You were close to your parents?”
“As close as you can be in high school.”
“What happened?”
I assumed it was a car crash or something sudden that took them.
“They drowned.”
“What?” I sat down next to her on the concrete. “How?”
“Cave diving.” She sighed. “They were risk takers, unlike me. I was afraid of my own shadow until last year.”
I chuckled and wrapped my arm around her.
“They were in Florida for another one of their diving trips. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I do know they were careful. I never thought about the risks because they were always so safe.” Her voice got really quiet. “I got in a huge fight with both of them over the phone. I wanted to go to a party and they said no. I told them I hated them and didn’t want to ever see them again.”
Shit.
“They died three hours later. Their bodies were recovered miles inside the cave they were exploring. The safety ropes were tattered as if they’d been ripped in half. The police thought that maybe the surf came in sooner than my parents expected, causing the rope to rub against the sharp rocks.”
Kiersten wiped at a few stray tears. “I can’t imagine. It kills me to know that their last moments were spent lost in a dark watery hole. It’s not as if you can go to the surface. It just seems so miserable, and I was powerless to do anything to stop them.”
Risking getting myself slapped or worse, I licked my lips and said, “Kiersten, I think you’re looking at it the wrong way.” I could feel her muscles tense beneath my touch. It was as if I’d just told her I was going to hunt her and I wanted her to run, every single part of her body pulled away, getting ready to bolt.
“Hear me out,” I whispered. “They loved cave diving, right?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was small and weak but at least she was still sitting by me, not slapping or running.
“And they knew the risks involved in it?”
“Of course!”
“Close your eyes.”
“What? No.” She tried to pull away from me, but I held her firm.
“Kiersten, just close your eyes.”
She shivered and huffed, then closed her eyes.
“Listen to my voice,” I whispered against her ear. “Imagine the story differently. Your parents get off the phone with you, both irritated but not really upset. I mean, you were, what? Fifteen? All fifteen-year-old girls go through those stages.”
“How would you know?”
“I’m a fifteen-year-old girl trapped inside this body.” I chuckled against her ear. “And I know because I used to mentor at the youth center. Believe me, fifteen-year-old girls are terrifying.”
Her shoulders relaxed.
“So they get off the phone with you, shake their heads, have a good sigh, and hold hands as they walk across the beach. They put on their gear, check and double check their air and the ropes and then go into the cave. Something happens. maybe it was just the perfect storm of the elements. The cave was so beautiful that they went farther and farther in, not realizing they didn’t have enough air to get back. Or maybe they didn’t realize the ropes were no longer attached to the way out.”
Her breathing was erratic as I continued my story and rubbed her back. “Maybe they looked at their air, knew they didn’t know which way to go so just went one direction. Maybe, they grabbed hands and swam into the darkness knowing full well that in a few minutes they’d probably fall asleep. But at least they’d fall asleep holding hands. At least, the last thought in their heads would be of you, of their family, and at least they were with each other. I guess I don’t look at their death the same way you do. You think of their death as torture. And I think of it as peace. Maybe that makes me crazy, but I can’t imagine your parents, seasoned divers that they were, panicking and suffering.” I shrugged. “I see them holding hands into the darkness, and I see them smiling.”
Kiersten was silent for a while.
I pulled back to look into her eyes, but she was covering her face with her hands, and when she pulled back her fingers, they were wet with tears.
I didn’t have time to prepare myself for her hug. She knocked me onto the concrete so fast all I could do was open my arms to her and hang on tight.
It was the first real hug I’d received since my brother had died. I didn’t tell her that, but in that moment, hugging her, comforting her… Death didn’t look as bad anymore. The future didn’t look as bleak. Because when she pulled back… when her eyes met mine, I saw hope.
Chapter Eighteen
So I hug complete strangers and cry in their arms? Tell me something I don’t know!
Kiersten
He probably thought I was insane, but I couldn’t pull back. Logically, my brain told me it was insane to feel so close to a guy I’d barely met. But emotionally? He’d picked up every little piece of emotional baggage I’d brought with me to college, unzipped it, and cleaned house.
Part of me was furious. But the other part of me? The one still holding onto Wes like he was my lifeline — just felt free. He did, in five minutes, what two years of therapy and endless amounts of antidepressants had failed to do. He’d helped me forgive. I knew it wasn’t that easy, it couldn’t be. Was it really just about thinking about the story differently? The odd thing was, everything he said about my parents was spot on. It was true. He made me believe the story because I knew for a fact that was how they were.
“Kiersten?” Wes murmured against my wet cheek. His breath created a cooling sensation, causing me to shiver from my head to my toes, “You okay?”
I let out a heavy sigh. “Do you think I’m crazy?”
Wes laughed. “We’re all a bit crazy, it’s what makes us human.”
I pushed against his chest.
“Wes?” a male voice said from behind me. I turned to see the guy that had been in the cafeteria that one day.
“David.” Wes stood and helped me to my feet. “Everything alright?”
“Course.” David cleared his throat and then dialed someone on his phone. “He’s fine, sir. Yes, he was just out… running with a girl.” David’s smile fell. “Of course, sure I’ll remind him, yes. Thank you, sir… Sorry sir.”
Wes released my hand and crossed his arms. “So, the general’s orders?”
David shoved his phone in his pocket. “He just said to keep your priorities straight. Your health, football, school. And then friends.”
Ouch! That made me last.
“Right.” Wes nodded. “Thanks David. I’ll text you if I need you.”
David stood his ground.
Something close to a low growl emerged from Wes’s throat. “What? You’re going to follow me now?”
“Orders.” David sighed and shrugged. “I’m sorry, Wes. My job’s at stake. You know how it is.”
“I do.” Wes muttered a vulgar curse under his breath and turned to me. “I’m sorry, Kiersten. I need to go. My father, it seems, is concerned about my priorities.” His smile was tense. “Can I see you tonight? Seems like we have some things we still gotta take care of.”
“I don’t know.” I looked at David’s disapproving glare and back at the ground. “I, uh, I think I’m busy.”
Wes frowned in frustration.
“Come on, Wes.” David reached for his arm.
“No.” Wes didn’t move. “Not until she says yes.”
“Wes, just stop. Parents are important. If your father wants—”
“What he wants is two healthy sons,” Wes said in an icy voice. “What he has is me. He’ll take what he can get. I’ll be at your dorm tonight at seven.”
“Not tonight,” I said. “But tomorrow’s F
riday. Date night, okay?”
“Okay.” He swallowed, the color returning to his cheeks as his jaw seemed to relax. Why did he suddenly look so weak? “I’ll see you then.”
I watched Wes walk away, and I grew more curious by the second. Why did the quarterback of the football team look so pale all the time? And why, when he stepped into the shadows of the trees, did he lean on that David guy as if he was going to pass out? And if he was feeling sick, why the heck did he want to go running?
Thoughts plagued my mind as I made my way all the way back to the dorms. The last thing I wanted was to get close to a guy that made me feel as good as Wes did, only to have him ripped from my life because I wasn’t high on his daddy’s priority list.
Ugh.
I unlocked the door to our dorm and waltzed in.
“‘Sup.” Gabe waved and flipped through a few TV channels. “You can thank me later, you know.”
“Thank you?”
“For the protein shake and banana waiting for consumption on the counter. I may have been bird watching and seen you walking down the path to the dorms.”
“Bird watching?” I rolled my eyes. “And what birds were you watching, nature man?”
“The gray ones,” Gabe answered, straight faced.
“Pigeons?”
“Pigeons aren’t gray.”
“Are you colorblind?” I laughed and shook my head. “Okay, fine. So you were watching pigeons because why?”
Gabe threw the remote against the cushions on the couch and stood, raising his arms high above his head revealing more tattoos on his hips trailing up his stomach. “I was worried.”
“About the bird population?”
“You.” Gabe growled. “I know you like him, I just…” He bit down on his lower lip. “Something about him worries me, and you are only a freshman.”
“Thanks for the warning. Next time a girl jumps into your bed, I’ll be sure to give her a heads up. You know, as a thank you for all your protectiveness.”