Before You Break: Between Breaths

by Christina Lee

  “So how was last night with Quinn?” Avery asked.

  “Dreamy,” I said. “Damn, he’s so hot.”

  “Have you guys gotten freaky deaky yet?” She tucked a smirk in the side of her cheek.

  “I want to. Bad,” I said. “I’ve been trying to just go with it, like you said. But he’s holding back and I’m not sure why.”

  “You do realize that I understand that kind of logic completely,” she said.

  I nodded and let her continue. “He has to feel comfortable enough—ready enough—to share stuff with you, whatever it is,” she said, lacing her arm through mine.

  “I know,” I said, frustration seeping into my words. “It’s just annoying because it feels like it’s the one thing holding us back.”

  “I can tell that boy is hot for you,” Avery said, leading us across the street as the light changed to red. “So it’s only a matter of time.”

  Rachel stood outside of a new shop called Threads. We gave brief one-armed hugs and then turned toward the shop’s window display. It contained gigantic paper mums in pastel colors that were only eclipsed by the colorful vintage-inspired clothing on display.

  “I’ve been dying to shop here since this place opened,” Rachel said before we stepped inside.

  After the owner greeted us, we perused the racks along the wall and agreed that the prices were reasonable. I was probably the most girly of my two friends. I rarely saw them in skirts or dresses. Rachel found a rack of vintage T-shirts and piled a few on her arm before heading for the dressing room. Avery grabbed two pairs of skinny jeans that she could squeeze her tiny butt into, and I followed behind with a couple of sparkly tops.

  “So, have you gotten that boy in your bed yet, bitch?” Rachel said over the dressing-room door.

  I pulled a black top with sequins over my head. “Not yet, but I’m working on it.”

  “He’s in my marketing class on Tuesdays,” she said, both of us stepping out to check ourselves in the large three-way mirror. “Pretty much keeps to himself. A couple of the girls in the class are hot for him, but he doesn’t give them the time of day.”

  I understood that logic now. He didn’t talk to anybody because he somehow felt unworthy.

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, tugging the thin material over her belt loops, “I’ve never seen him with anybody.”

  “Oh, he’s so into Ella,” Avery called from over her stall. “You should see the way he looks at her.”

  “Good to know,” I say in the most laid-back voice I could muster, despite a thrill racing through me. He didn’t seem to notice any other girls beside me. But that still didn’t mean we’d end up being together, not if he wouldn’t allow himself.

  And what he’d said last night about not having sex unless I belonged to him. Holy hot damn! That had turned me into a complete mushy mess. No guy had ever uttered those words to me before. It only made me want him more. If that was possible.

  “Not sure what that pretty boy’s deal is, but he does seem to be into you,” Rachel said. “So I need to hear the dirt when you finally let him in your pants.”

  Little did she realize that it was the other way around.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Quinn

  Sometimes when I walked into my childhood home, it was like stepping back in time. Pamphlets and fliers strewn across the kitchen counter. Mom and Dad prepping for their next event or fund-raiser. Advisors plotting strategies on the campaign trail. Various personalities gathered around the kitchen table, welcomed into our home like close friends.

  How was it possible to be surrounded by so many people but still feel completely alone?

  It hadn’t always been that hectic or eventful. It was quieter in my younger years. Gentler moments could be plucked from my memory, when my parents were becoming savvier—the idea of politics was just taking hold. When it had all been grassroots and our involvement in the community didn’t feel like a game.

  When the campaign trail became our way of life, everything began to blur. We were always on the road, in planes, visiting city after city, the skylines smudging in the background. I’d latch on to other politicians’ kids because they seemed to get it. Get me.

  That was the exact reason Sebastian and I got along so well. At least in the beginning. He would have made a great politician. All charm and skill and bullshit. He knew how to build you up, and with the simple flick of an eyebrow, tear you back down. He could command a room just by stepping into it—and everyone gravitated to him like he was the fucking sun or something. Including me.

  I’d lost my virginity to a senator’s daughter in the backseat of her daddy’s Range Rover. There was nothing romantic about it. We were both lonely and horny and fulfilling a need. By that time, Sebastian had taken the virtue of more than a few willing girls.

  When I stepped inside the quiet of my parents’ home this morning, I realized we were completely alone, just the three of us. And now I’d welcome some sort of distraction. Because my parents had become strangers to me.

  My mother was already dressed in her white pearls and crisp cardigan. It was a rarity to see her in anything other than a skirt. She was always on—as if a fucking camera were following her around, documenting her political life or something.

  Was it any wonder how paranoid I’d become about revealing too much of myself to outsiders?

  “Hi, honey,” she drawled, setting a steaming cup in front of my father, who was standing at the kitchen counter in his shirt and tie. “I laid out your best suit for the event.”

  “Yep,” I mumbled and nudged past her to get to my room. But my father’s large hand latched on to my shoulder.

  When I looked at him, I saw irritation hidden beneath his eyes. The same impatience I’d seen countless times when I didn’t do what was expected of me. “I hope you’ll have an attitude adjustment by the time we get to the dedication.”

  “Yeah, sure, whatever,” I said, stepping out of his grasp.

  “Don’t you think of anyone but yourself?” he growled. My shoulder slumped against the wall, my back to him. “He was your best friend. These people lost their child that night.”

  My fingers balled into tight fists and I considered using them on him.

  “Are you fucking kidding me—you think I don’t know that?” I turned to glare at him. “You think I don’t live with that every single day?”

  “Don’t you raise your voice to me, young man,” my father said, his top lip quivering.

  “Or what, Dad? What will you do to me?” I challenged him. “Take away my college funding?”

  “Don’t get smart with me.” His voice had lowered, his anger taken down a notch. I had thrown him off by confronting him. He was unsure where this was headed. Good.

  “You can’t punish me anymore than I’ve already punished myself,” I said, my rage deflating, sliding out of me into a puddle on the floor. To be quickly replaced by self-loathing. “I mean, shit, Dad. Almost every night, I consider driving myself off a bridge.”

  My mother gasped, her hand crashing down on her mouth. And I’d admit, I liked hearing that sound. Of her being shocked. Maybe it meant she still cared.

  If not, then maybe I’d done my job of ruining her perfect façade.

  “Why would you say such a thing?” my mother said in a low and horrified voice. “What would be so bad that you’d want to tarnish our name?”

  I snorted. It always came back to that: soiling our family’s Goddamn reputation.

  “I took someone’s life that night, don’t you get it?” I threw the words in her face and it felt so damn good. So fucking perfect. “How do you think people see me? As a pathetic kid or a murderer?”

  “Don’t you dare say that, Daniel Joseph.” She only used my middle name when she was serious. When something was important. “He did it—Jacob Matthews—that man who drove the truck. He admitted it and we took care of it.”

  I hunched forward like I’d been punched in the gut. The air had trouble maki
ng its way down my lungs. I braced the wall and sucked it air.

  “T . . . Tell me what happened that night,” I panted out. “The night all the adults met with Sebastian’s parents. What was said?”

  “We won’t talk about that night,” my dad said, as if he was having trouble swallowing. “What’s done is done.”

  “So it’s okay if your son—your only child—walks around with all of this guilt. Wants to kill himself for it. That’s fucked up, Dad.”

  “Watch your mouth,” he muttered, more out of habit than anything else.

  A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “Right, because not using profanity is so much more important than the truth.”

  Mom and Dad shared a look. The same look I’d seen countless times when they were deciding whether I was mature enough, worthy enough, to be privy to their useless information. Then Mom gave Dad a slight nod, like they were letting me in. Letting their pathetic child inside their fucked-up lives with their fucked-up logic.

  God, how the hell had I been able to stomach this for so long?

  “Daniel,” my mom said. “Jacob Matthews admitted that he fell asleep at the wheel.”

  My body became numb and my vision blurred, like I was in some fucked up Twilight Zone episode. That was the first I’d heard that version of the story. What the hell? I had the sensation of falling, falling, falling, down the side of a giant mountain.

  “He was scared,” mom said. “He apologized to Sebastian’s parents, signed the plea agreement along with other legal documents, and we moved forward from there.”

  I moved my lips in a fuzzy haze. “What you mean is . . . you paid people off so that the public didn’t hear about it again.”

  “We did what we needed to do to protect our families,” she whispered. I saw how her hands shook as she gripped the counter. “We didn’t need that kind of publicity.”

  My father took a step toward me and for the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel the need to cower. I felt dead, numb—weightless, even. Like I’d just been gutted and my remains lay in a heap on the floor and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. “You have nothing to feel guilty about, son.”

  My gaze leveled on him. I could tell how uncomfortable I’d made him, glaring at him like that, but he didn’t look away.

  “Don’t you get it?” my voice was soft, defeated even. “This entire time I thought you paid him off because it was my fault. You didn’t think I deserved to have that information?”

  My hands tore through my hair as the resentment surged to a crescendo again. “You’re my parents, for God’s sake.”

  A choking, garbled sound burst from my mother’s lips. “I . . . I wish I’d known you’d been suffering like this.” When I looked up at her, tears were spilling over her cheeks in waves.

  But I couldn’t handle it. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  It was too late.

  I stormed down the hall to my room and slammed the door.

  I lay in my bed and stared up at the ceiling, my body convulsing in shock waves. I’d spent so many years trapped in a prison of my own making.

  My thoughts naturally wandered to Jacob Matthews. Did this arrangement keep him awake at night as well? Would I have taken what’d been offered to me? Maybe Matthews knew as well as I did that you could never run far enough away from your own damn self.

  There was also a small a part of me that wondered if Matthews’s hands had been tied—that he’d felt forced to confess. That maybe somebody had dug up dirt on him—I’d seen it too many times to count on the campaign trail.

  It was that kind of uncertainty that Gabby said I’d face for the rest of my life. And there was nothing I could do about it, except try to move on. Try to make something meaningful out of my life.

  I pulled myself out of bed, changed into my suit, and soon enough there was a knock on my door.

  “It’s time to head to the dedication, Daniel.” My mother’s voice sounded small and quiet. Filled with regret. And uncertainty.

  And I could only hope that she got it. Really got it now. Got me now.

  Understood that she’d once held me in her arms, whispered soothing words into my tiny ears, and shaped me into believing all things were possible. And then gradually, over time, the rug had been pulled out from under me. It had all been hollow. Useless. Disingenuous.

  And then the night of the accident—it was all taken away. Just gone.

  My hopes. My desires. My dreams.

  And she—they—did nothing to make me feel otherwise. Only considered themselves. Their reputation. Their political standing.

  And it was wrong. So Goddamn wrong.

  And in that moment, I’d decided never to allow anyone I cared about feel that small. That worthless. That insignificant.

  When we pulled into the crowded parking lot, my stomach had tightened into a fist. I realized how many of the people from high school that I had severed ties with would be here. Including Amber.

  And in that moment, I wished that Ella had been at my side.

  I saw her shock of red hair from the backseat of my parents’ car, and I knew I needed to say something to Amber before I chickened out. “I’ll meet you inside.”

  I walked faster to catch up with her. “Amber, wait up.”

  She turned, her eyebrows meeting in the center of her forehead.

  “Hi, Quinn.” She motioned to her parents to keep going. “What’s up?”

  She was gorgeous, with a flowing head of curly hair and pouty red lips. And I realized that the two of us had been high school students with almost-innocent crushes. I wasn’t the first and I wouldn’t be the last. And someday she would find a guy who’d feel for her what I already felt for somebody else.

  I’d made mistakes. We all had. And it was time to remedy them. Right here and now.

  “Listen, I’m sorry,” I said and her lips parted in surprise. “That I keep pushing you away. I’ve been broken up about this for years. Living with my own guilt and I’m ready to be done with it. Move on from it.”

  “I’m glad,” she said, a small smile lifting her cheeks. “I’ve had my share of guilt, too. For liking you. Being attracted to you. When I was with someone else.”

  “This whole time, I figured you were using me to get to Sebastian,” I said. “I mean, he was the king, the boss, had girls lined up around the corner.”

  “And he knew it, too.” We both laughed about our lost friend and it felt good. Too bad he wasn’t here with us, so we could rag on him. But maybe he was somewhere, listening. Ready to pound his fist into my arm or wrestle me into a headlock like he’d done countless times on his front lawn.

  I couldn’t blame him for having all of that charisma, unless he was abusing it—like I’d been fearful would happen if he kept traveling down the same path. I’d always hoped that reality would slam into him one day. But not in the way it had. And not at my own hands.

  In retrospect, I was jealous of Sebastian. I’d wished whatever it was that he possessed would rub off on me. That I could be as luminescent as he’d been. As beautiful and magnetic.

  But maybe it only mattered if one person felt that way about you. That you were the moon, the stars, and maybe even the whole damn universe.

  “Anyway, Quinn,” Amber said, bringing me out of my thoughts. “I liked you for you. Sure, Sebastian was a superstar—gorgeous and charming and good at everything he touched. But so were you—in your own quiet way. And there was something so attractive about that.”

  I closed my eyes at the sound of her words. Because Gabby had been right. There was a glow inside of me, too. Incandescent. This entire time. I just hadn’t recognized it.

  “Thank you for that.” I grabbed Amber’s hand and squeezed. “I hope we can start over and be friends.”

  “Just friends?” Her eyebrow quirked up.

  I nodded and dipped my head, hoping I wasn’t hurting her again.

  “I could do that,” she said, and then smiled. It was a genuine smile that helped unraveled that bal
l of worry in my gut. “Let’s go.”

  She threaded her arm through mine and we walked up the stairs to the building. This time, I held my head high and saw things a bit differently from the way I had a couple years ago. People greeted me and slapped me on the back. I didn’t see pity or disgust in their faces. I realized now that what I had seen back then was my own emotions reflected back at me.

  We slid into the front row of seats near our parents, but not before walking past Bastian’s family first. This time I looked his parents in the eye. Really looked at them. And I saw their sorrow, their grief, their forgiveness shining back at me.

  And I showed them the depths of my emotions, as well. Because that was the singular place we were joined. Connected. In our heartache over losing someone that we’d loved.

  I found the empty seat next to my mother, faced the front of the stage, and straightened my tie, ready to take on the day. That’s when I felt a pair of small hands grip my shoulders.

  I turned to look into the eyes of my Aunt Gabby. Uncle Nick stood beside her and he reached for her hand, his gaze never leaving mine.

  “We came to support you. We figured you’d need it,” Aunt Gabby whispered in my ear. “Please stop shutting us out. We want you in our lives, Daniel.”

  I nodded and allowed her to encircle me in a hug, while Uncle Nick clapped me on the shoulder. I felt something warm and wet slip down my neck onto my hand, so I looked up at her.

  And that’s when I realized that the tears that had fallen were all my own making.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ella

  I’d been lying on the couch trying to get my thoughts in order about Quinn when my phone buzzed with a text. I hadn’t been able to sleep very well the night before, like there had been a dark shadow looming over me. Over my heart.

  Quinn: Heading home from my parents’ house. Can I stop by?

  My pulse thrummed in my veins. I was desperate to see him, if only to hold him again. I loved the weight and feel of his arms around me. And I was scared of the possibility that that would be all I’d ever get from him. That he’d only be able to show me how he felt through his touch, and with his body—and never with his words or his emotions. That I’d have to make the difficult decision to walk away. Before I fell even deeper.