Gaining Ground

by Nikki Bolvair

  “Yeah,” I said, agreeing with her.

  When closing time came, I glanced out the store window to see Kayden’s truck waiting in the parking lot. And I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

  “That’s Kayden McGuire’s truck,” Talia stated, staring in the same direction as me. “Total hottie, but you wouldn’t know him. He and Lincoln, the younger brother, go to my school. But the older one, Tyler? He and Tucker have been on the outs with each other ever since their last year of high school.” So she didn’t know about them and me.

  Talia leaned on the broom, gazing outside, and I wondered if I should say anything.

  “Hmm, wonder what he’s doing here now,” she mused. “Know what? I would’ve been in the same year as Lincoln, but that hunk of a male is too smart for his own good. He worked hard and is going to be graduating with his brother this year.”

  She turned to me with an excited grin. “Let's hurry and close up and see what he’s doing here.”

  “Umm, Talia?”

  “You know that whole fighting thing,” she continued, walking toward the back room, “doesn't actually extended toward the two younger brothers.”

  I followed, not sure what I was supposed to do. She was yapping away, and I didn't want to hear any more about the McGuire brothers. I knew them. I didn’t need her gossip version. I was kind of jealous that she thought she knew more than me about my guys, which was crazy, because obviously that wasn't the case.

  We had already closed out the register for the evening and things around the store did look better than when I came in. More straightened and polished.

  I followed Talia’s lead, I grabbed my stuff from the lockers in the back room and then pulled out my cell phone to quickly send a text to Kayden. I asked him to meet me at the Greyhound bus depot. He immediately texted back.

  Kayden: Why??

  Daniels: Please! I’ll tell you when I see you. #Hacked

  Kayden: I’m already here though.

  Daniels: I know. That’s part of the problem. #Hacked

  Kayden: This better be good. See you at the Greyhound, Sweetcheeks.

  I sighed, then pocketed my phone and hurried after Talia. She stopped short and frowned, looking out the store window again.

  “Huh. He’s gone.” She shrugged as I let out a relieved breath, careful not to let her hear. For some reason, I didn’t want her to know of my connection with the McGuire brothers.

  “Must have been waiting for food from the diner, most likely. Well,” she said, turning to me, “it has been a pleasure, and you’ll be with Nancy tomorrow.”

  She set the alarm before we went out, and then we both waved goodbye. I had only gotten a few strides in when I heard her.

  “Daniels, wait up!”

  I twisted, glancing toward her as she paused, halfway out of her car. It was almost dark, but the parking lot lamps made up for what little light was available. “Are you going to the bus stop? Because I could give you a ride, if you need one.”

  “Thanks, Talia,” I answered back. “But I think I’m good for tonight.”

  “Suit yourself,” she mumbled, and I grinned. She was trying. She was attempting to be nice to the girl who socked her brother in the nose. Nice to know her family was so close.

  I walked slowly, until I saw Talia drive away, then I picked up my pace. When I reached Kayden a few moments later, I noticed he was leaning against his parked truck, watching for me.

  When he saw me, he jogged my way and I slowed, wondering what in the world he was doing. I squealed when I found myself over his shoulder. He turned and trotted back to his truck, his arms across the back of my thighs.

  “What— Kayden!” I laughed as I bounced on his shoulder.

  He spanked my butt, “Quiet, woman,” he teased. He opened the door to his truck and placed me in the passenger seat while I laughed. He pressed his lips to mine, cutting off my laugh. He pulled back and smirked before closing the door. I smiled. Kayden was fun.

  “Now, want to tell me what's going on?” Kayden asked as he got in and started the truck up. “I couldn’t help but feel like a dirty little secret with your text.”

  I chuckled. “As if.” Then I thought about my reaction. “Well, maybe.”

  He gave me a weird look, and then with a grin, backed up the truck. “Spill it, Sweetcheeks.”

  “Well... Talia and I were working—”

  “Who’s Talia?” he asked, pulling out of the parking lot and onto the street.

  “The girl I worked with today,” I explained, noticing he was taking a different way home.

  “Got that. Continue,” he said as we drove.

  “I guess Talia knows you from school, and when she saw your truck she started to tell me everything about you guys, and it was a little weird ya know?”

  “Talia...hmm. What's her last name?”

  Uh-oh. “Um... I’m not sure.” I wasn’t lying. I didn’t actually know hers, or Tucker’s, last name. “But anyways, when she saw you in your truck she wanted to hurry and close up so she could talk to you and introduce me. I think she has a crush on you guys, and her knowing that I was dating all of you might not get me into her good graces.” We made a left at the light, and Kayden responded.

  “Gotcha. Just awkward and weird,” he replied, getting it.

  As we drove, Kayden reached for my hand kissing the back of it before placing it on his thigh. I smiled at him then turn and looked out the window.

  “Other than that was it a good day for you?”

  “Yeah. It was okay,” I responded, taking in the area we were in. After a moment, I noticed where we were and kept a lookout for Raina’s haunted house. I was surprised he had taken a different route home and when I saw it, I couldn’t help but gasp. The haunted house Raina wanted so badly wasn’t for sale any longer.

  “STOP!” I shouted and held onto my seatbelt with my right hand as Kayden slammed on his brakes. As we stopped, his hand that was holding mine let go to grab the steering wheel.

  ‘What- What!” he asked, looking everywhere for the potential danger.

  “The haunted house.” I cringed with how dramatic I had been, but still pointed to the house almost desperately and exclaimed, “It’s not for sale anymore!”

  “Oh, Jeez!” Kayden groaned, putting a hand to his chest in relief. “I thought I was going to hit someone! Damn, you took years off of my life with that!”

  “Sorry, Kayden.” And I was sorry. Raina was just talking about the house the other day and it had a sign up then. “But the house...” I tried to explain.

  “No yelling like that,” Kayden demanded, parking the car in front of the small house in question then turning to me.

  “But...”

  He frowned and gave me a pointed look.

  “I...” Sigh. “Ok. No yelling like that... but do you—”

  “Sweetcheeks.”

  I pursed my lips and huffed. “Sorry,” I replied sulkily as I looked away from him and toward the house that Raina had wanted so badly, but now couldn’t have.

  He blew out a deep sigh then surprised me by getting out of the truck. He made his way around to the passenger side and opened my door.

  “What are we doing?”

  I asked as he took my hand and helped me out. He shrugged, “You seemed upset about the house, so we’re going to see if anyone’s living in it yet.”

  “What? No,” I said, tugging my hand away as I looked at the house. “We can’t do that.”

  “Sure we can.” He grinned, taking my hand once again and pulling me to the house.

  He looked inside the uncovered windows and determined that it was still vacant. “The back door is always unlocked. It’s a small town. No one will care. Let’s take a look.”

  Kayden was up to something.

  “The new owners won’t like it,” I tried, but it didn’t matter as he dragged me along until we reached the back gate. “Brady’s gonna kill me.”

  He snorted as he opened the latch at the top of the gate.
He guided me from the front yard into the back, passing the safe zone. Kayden had now made me an unwilling trespasser. “If we get caught—”

  “Then I’ll confess that it was all my idea, and that I “made you do it,” he said, making quotations marks with both his free hand and the one holding mine. I bumped into his shoulder in jest. “Just so you know that won’t work on Brady.”

  “Trust me. We’re okay.”

  I huffed, but blindly followed. Now that we were already breaking the law, I wanted to go inside just as much as he did. Might as well, since we were already in the risk zone. I just hoped we didn’t get caught.

  When we reached the back and climbed the steps to the door, Kayden tried the doorknob. It twisted open just like he said it would. He turned to me, grinning like a fool, and swept it open.

  “Are you sure it’s not haunted?” I asked as we went inside.

  “Pretty sure,” he said, closing the door behind us. “But not a hundred percent.”

  I could hear the grin in his voice as he said that. I softly hit his shoulder.

  “Are you sure? I mean, I know the sign said it isn’t, but then why put it on there unless someone said it might be?”

  We had walked through the door and into the small kitchen. I clung to Kayden and told myself I wasn’t scared in the least. It was the only way to keep him safe. Yeah. That sounded good to me.

  “Well, some people say it’s not, but others disagree. The family who first built the house would disagree with the claim that it wasn’t haunted. In fact, according to historical records, the family insisted that the ghosts from their former home in Maine followed them here, and stayed.”

  I shook my head, not believing him for a moment. “Where do you come up with this stuff?”

  “Hey, it isn't me. It’s town history.”

  “Is that why Raina’s so in love with this house? Because of the weird story behind it?”

  “Naw, she just likes it for the simplicity of it. It's an excellent starter home.”

  We walked through the whole house as Kayden told me about it. When we entered the second bedroom, I decided to ask him about what Lincoln and I had talked about a few weeks ago.

  “Question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  I walked into the center of the bedroom, noticing how quaint it was, before turning to face Kayden, who was leaning against the doorjamb with his arms folded, waiting for me to talk.

  “I talked with Lincoln about... college.”

  Kayden moved into the room and slid down the wall that faced the outside front window until he was sitting. He patted the space beside him, and I did the same. He once again took my hand and interlocked our fingers together, until our palms had not an inch of space between them.

  “Linc told you about Arizona, huh?” His voice sounded rough, like whatever he was going to say was hard for him.

  “Yeah. Why did you change your mind? Lincoln still plans on going.”

  “Did he ask you to go along?”

  “Yes,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. “I’m willing, but only if we’re all together. We’re a team. A family. I couldn’t go and leave one of you behind, but I couldn’t stay and let one of you go either. We’ll have to find a solution or have a plan before we get to that point.”

  Kayden grunted.

  “So what I want to know is... If Tyler goes, will you?”

  As he turned to me, his hand tightened on mine. His other hand reached up to hold my cheek. “I’d follow you anywhere.”

  I paused, taking in what he just said. As I waited for him to say more, my heart began to race and my hands started to sweat.

  “If you’d go... I’d go,” Kayden continued. “I was going to anyway, before I changed my mind. Before you.”

  “Lincoln wants to go,” I whispered, “and I’ll go.” But even to my ears, it sounded lame and unconvincing. “I’m still worried about leaving though.”

  “We’ll all get together and talk. How much time do we have anyway? Like, a few months until we graduate? We have time, Sweetcheeks. Nothing’s going to happen until then, okay?”

  I nodded, moving my head out of his hold to wipe my runny nose. “Yeah, I got it.”

  We both got up, and Kayden wrapped an arm around my shoulders. We found ourselves back in the front room.

  “So do you like it?” he asked. It was an attempt to change the topic and bring us back to our strangely normal discussion over why we had come to a dark, off the market, haunted house in the first place.

  I chuckled, letting the shift in the conversation settle my nerves. “From what you said, and what I could see in the dark, sure, it’s a nice house.”

  A breeze whispered across my cheek, and I shivered. There wasn’t a draft before. Could it have been a ghost passing by? I shivered. “Did you—” I started to ask, but car lights glowed in the front room window as a vehicle pulled up into the driveway.

  My heart raced when I realized the owners had just pulled up. We were going to get caught, and I was going to make a run for it.

  “Kayden, in case you live, I want chocolates at my funeral instead of flowers,” I whispered desperately, but he was chuckling, not panicking as I was. I didn’t wait for him to get any crazier. “Let's go!”

  I let go of him and raced out of the back door, intending to hop into his truck and act like I hadn’t even been in the house in the first place. Kayden had an excuse. He worked with his mom selling houses all the time. He could weasel his way out of it. I, on the other hand, could not. Kayden was going crazy; he was calling after me. Didn’t he know that if we didn’t want to get caught that we should not alert the people we were running from?

  “Daniels!” I heard him shout out after me as I reached the back steps. I listened to the front door of the house open and lights flickered on behind me. I sensed Kayden behind me before he caught me around my waist. I never even made it out the back door.

  “Faith! We’re okay. We’re good. It’s just Kane and Tyler.”

  I stopped struggling when I heard that, and peered behind me into Kayden’s blue eyes.

  “Tyler?” I questioned, confused, until Kayden turned me around and I saw the two of them.

  Tyler was setting a box on the counter while Kane held another one. I straightened, prying Kayden’s hands away from my waist. “What’s going on?” I asked, gesturing to the boxes they had brought in. “Why are you guys in here? Wait!” I turned to Tyler, who was grinning broadly. “Did you buy this place?”

  They all laughed, but Tyler shook his head. He approached me while Kayden stayed right behind me holding my hips, effectively blocking my retreat. Tyler’s hand came up, and he swept his fingers through my hair, holding me in place as his head dipped down to give me a steamy kiss. One of Kayden’s hands circled around and under my shirt until it rested on my bare stomach. I moaned, threading my arms around Tyler's neck and Kayden moved in closer behind me so that I was squeezed in between them.

  “Come on, guys,” Kane huffed. “Not in my new house.”

  I pulled away from the two of them, looking over toward Kane. “Your house? Your house. You bought Raina’s dream house.” I smiled, noticing how uncomfortable he looked. Like I had caught him doing something sweet when he wanted to be the badass type. “Does she know yet?”

  Kane glanced at Tyler and then back to me. “She knows it’s been sold, but not that I’m the one who bought it.”

  Uh-oh.

  “And why?” I asked, stepping out of the guys’ embrace and folding my arms, trying to figure things out.

  “I have a plan. You know that,” Kane said proudly. “It’s kind of like the whole 'it’s your birthday but I forgot it because we’re throwing you a secret surprise party' thing."

  I stared at him and then I shook my head. “That makes no sense.”

  “He’s going to surprise her with the house at—” Kayden tried to explain, but then Tyler elbowed him. He grunted, but went on, “—at a surprise party next week, and
ask her to move in with him.”

  I put up my hand. “Hold the phone. Surprise party? Move in? What? I’m lost.”

  Kane gave me a confusing glance. “We talked about this when you came to my house, Daniels. You knew, didn’t you?”

  I blushed as it dawned on me that I hadn’t really known what he’d been talking to me about before at his house. He had asked me to keep something a secret that he thought I already knew. I had assumed he was proposing, but obviously that wasn’t the case.

  “So you bought her a house,” I surmised trying to deflected, then I turned to Kayden, glaring at him. “We were coming this way tonight anyways, weren’t we?” I accused him.

  Kayden had enough guilt that his cheeks reddened. “Maybe?” He put a hand up when I was going to interrupt, “But I didn’t realize that Raina had already shown you her baby.”

  I snorted.

  “What? I didn’t expect you to yell and freak me out. Payback’s a—” Tyler pushed him hard enough that he stumbled. Kayden laughed, holding up his hands in surrender.

  “Idiot,” Tyler mumbled as Kane said something similar. They made their way back out of the house grabbing more stuff from the Jeep.

  “Come on...” Kayden said. “It wasn’t that bad.”

  He looked toward me, still half grinning as he walked my way, “Sweetcheeks, Honey, My Queen.”

  “Nu-uh,” I told him backing away. “You-you played me!” I pointed at him, not really mad. But he deserved something for what he had done. I backed away as he continued his approach. “Kayden...” I warned, opening my hand up in the universal sign for stop. “Stop. Don’t come... Kayden!” I squealed as he lunged at me. Jumping to action, I ran out of his reach, heading for the front door. I didn’t know what he was up to, but I wasn’t so sure I wanted to find out. I laughed as he chased me. Tyler and Kane came in with more boxes as he tackled me in the living room.

  As I lay panting beneath Kayden, I knew I had lost; he knew too. I wasn’t upset. In fact, I was the happiest I had been in a long time. I needed this. I needed them.