“Maybe. I’m going to stop by my grandma’s shop and see if she wants any help over the break, but I’ll text you later.”
“Okay, but if you wait too long, I’ll text Matt.”
I grinned. “You’re probably going to text him anyway. Let me know if you decide to schedule a booty call so I don’t show up and interrupt.”
“I will. Go see your grandma, hooker.” She shoved past me.
“Slut,” I called after her.
“Hag,” she tossed over her shoulder.
“Bitch.”
“Love you.”
“You too. Tell Matt I said hi.”
She laughed and I walked out to my car.
It was just Didi at the shop when I got downtown. Winter business was a little slower without all the tourists, but she insisted it was still going well enough that she could afford to give me a few hours every day over the break. I wasn’t even worried about the money. It just gave me something to do that would keep me out of the house and away from Mom all day. Didi sent me to the sandwich shop to get us lunch and we ate behind the counter while I caught her up on school life, at least the parts that didn’t include me kissing boys in English class. I left that out when I told her our presentation went well.
She knew the basics of my break-up with Jeremy and enough of the drama surrounding it, that she smoothly transitioned into asking about Kellen, even without me mentioning the kiss.
“Any new boyfriends, like that partner of yours?”
“No, we’re still just friends. Same as the last time you asked about him,” I smiled good-naturedly even though I didn’t really want to talk about Kellen with my grandma.
“Are you ever going to bring him around the shop, so I can at least meet him? Just friends or not.”
“I don’t know if we’ll be spending that much time together now that we’re finished with the project.” I tried not to let her hear how much that actually bothered me, but Didi was sharp.
“Uh oh, do you have feelings for this boy?”
“He’s not the kind of boy girls should have feelings for, Didi.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“But it’s the only answer I’ve got.” Admitting I had feelings for Kellen would only be asking for more heartache, just like Cam said, even though I was pretty sure I did. Big, annoying feelings.
By the time I left Didi’s, Cam had already texted me to tell me she’d made plans with Matt for the night, but that her parents would be gone for a few days, so our girls’ night could happen tomorrow. I didn’t mind, and was actually glad she had Matt to distract her from grilling me more about Kellen, especially when my head was still spinning. It was driving me nuts that I didn’t know what the kiss meant and I was too chicken just to text or call him. Sometimes I wished I could be as bold as Cam. This wouldn’t happen to her. She wouldn’t let herself get all twisted up over a boy. She’d confront him and she’d find a way to get what she wanted.
The thought of confronting Kellen and telling him to his face that I was pretty sure the feeling in my stomach that made me want to throw up meant I really liked him, as in really, really liked him, and risking him telling me the kiss was some sort of mistake, or that he only wanted to sleep with me, was mortifying. So I didn’t text him. Or call him.
Instead I drove home and found his car in my drive and him sitting in the driver’s seat. At least until I pulled in. Then he climbed out.
I parked and shut off my car without pulling into the garage, and hesitated a moment before I got out.
“Hey.” I slung my backpack and purse over my shoulder and stood there awkwardly.
“Hey.” I couldn’t read his face and it made me more nervous.
“How long have you been sitting out here?”
“Not too long.”
I nodded, not sure of what to say.
I was going to ask him if he wanted to come in, but we both started to speak at the same time.
“Do you–”
“About the–”
I shifted and he scraped a hand over his head, exhaling deeply.
“Go ahead,” I told him.
“About the kiss earlier …”
“Yeah?” Here it was. He was going to say it was a mistake, and even though that was probably true, something pinched tight inside my chest and I felt my face grow hot.
“Are you mad at me?” Not quite what I’d expected him to say, but still my throat felt dry so I just shook my head.
“No?” He took another step toward me and I repeated the motion with my head, my eyes lifting to stay on his as he got closer. “What if I did it again? Would you get mad then?”
Another side to side shake.
His hand lifted and caught my chin. He rubbed his thumb over my jaw. “I really want to kiss you again.”
I swallowed and found my words this time. “I want you to kiss me again.”
He began tipping my chin up as he lowered his mouth.
“But only if you’re still going to want to kiss me in a week.”
He froze, his lips so close to mine that I could feel his warm breath fluttering over them. His eyes held my nervous gaze. “You think I’m not going to want to kiss you in a week?”
“The time frame is irrelevant, I just meant I don’t want you to kiss me if this is only a temporary thing for you,” I whispered.
“I know what you meant and why you would think that, so now let me reassure you.”
His mouth lowered those final two inches and I sucked in an anticipatory breath. It was a light, tentative touch at first, just a soft press before he pulled back, eyes searching mine, which I knew were lit with this overwhelming need for him to do it again. His hand curled around to the back of my neck and my eyes fell shut when I felt the press of his lips again, just as gentle and slow, but more sure. My heart slammed against my chest and my stomach took a roller coaster plunge. My hands somehow found his waist and rested there while I went up on my toes, straining for more than the sweet, chaste kiss he was laying on my mouth. I parted my lips and darted my tongue out, running it along the seam of his lips until he opened to me.
The hand that wasn’t curled in my hair grabbed onto my hip and pulled me against him. I dug my fingers into the material of his shirt as he chased my tongue back, sweeping his inside my mouth. I pressed in harder; he squeezed me tighter and deepened the kiss. Somehow we moved the couple feet until my back was pressed against the door of my car and I could feel every hard ridge of his lean body caging me in, and still I wanted to feel more.
His tongue stroked mine and retreated, luring mine to taste and explore him. I traced the tip of my tongue along the roof of his mouth, and then stroked his, spurring him on. His fingers dug into my hip, massaging the deep tissue and his other hand yanked softly on my hair, arching my neck. He had me eagerly at his mercy, so pliant beneath his skilled mouth. He tugged my bottom lip between his teeth, the gentle bite drew a breathy gasp from me before he released it and I felt his grin against my lips. He held me there, in his arms, his lips just barely covering mine, but not moving. We shared heavy breaths as our chests rose and fell together. My eyes fluttered open and were captured by swirls of blue flecked with grey and heated with desire. Then, ever so slowly, he drew himself back and eased his grip.
I relaxed against the car, still caught in his intense gaze. The hand that had been tangled in my hair slid to my face and tenderly brushed back the stray locks. I uncurled my fingers from his shirt and dropped them at my side. His thighs still brushed mine and our chests almost touched with every breath we drew in.
“Even now, after having just tasted your sweetness, it’s all I can do not to take your lips again. I’ve been thinking about kissing you for months, and now that I have, I guarantee you I’m not going to want to stop in a week, or a month, or ever it feels like right now.”
“I know the feeling,” I murmured breathlessly, earning a chuckle.
His hand still cupped my face and he swept his thumb acr
oss my cheek. “Just so I know I’m making my intentions clear and you won’t have to wonder later; when I say I want to kiss you again, when I say I’m still going to want to kiss you next week and the week after that, I mean that I want to be able to kiss you whenever I want, and take your hand in mine.” He did right then, his eyes dropping for a second to where he wove our fingers together, before lifting to mine again. “I want to be able to hold you in my arms when you make me watch One Tree Hill and Harry Potter and your girly ass TV. I want to be able to hold you in my arms whenever, for no reason at all except that I want to. I want to make you smile every day like you are right now.”
I could feel the cheesy grin that was stretching my lips as he went on.
“I want to make you laugh, and I never want to make you cry and I want to do all that because you’re mine. I’ve never had that, one person I wanted to spend every day with, but that’s what you do to me. You make me want crazy shit and it’s actually scary as hell, because I’m wanting these things for the first time. Not just for you to be mine, but I want to be yours and I’ve never been anything but someone’s dirty little secret. I don’t know what I’ll do if you tell me you don’t want anyone to know what we’re doing. I don’t want to hide this.” His hand fell away from my face and his fingers tugged free of mine. His feet shuffled, kicking anxiously at the gravel.
I never thought I’d see the day that Kellen Nash was afraid of anything, but he was standing right in front of me, ducking his eyes, afraid that I was going to reject him. It was my turn to reassure him. I lifted my trembling hand to the side of his face, bringing his gaze back to mine.
“This thing that’s happening is between you and me. No one else gets a say, and what they think doesn’t matter.” I watched a shutter come down over his face. He thought I was going to tell him I wanted to keep it a secret. “But I still want them to know that you’re mine, and I am very much yours.”
I was pretty sure the smile that lit his face was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, but over the break I would think that a lot about the things Kellen gave me. Like his rich laugh when I did or said something he thought was funny. His eyes when they looked down at me as his body lay over mine on the couch after a particularly intense make-out session. His voice when he sang along to the radio in his car wherever we went. His deeper, rougher voice when he would whisper sexy, soft things in my ear. The more time we spent together, and we spent just about every moment that we weren’t working together, the more convinced I became that the most beautiful thing about Kellen was the thing he kept most hidden, but was slowly revealing to me, and that was his heart.
It was big. And full. And kind and generous and protective and gentle and sweet and funny and a little bit damaged, but so … damn … beautiful.
And he was giving it to me.
I just wondered if he realized I’d already given him mine.
I started the night I thought Jeremy broke it. Really he’d only freed it up, because my heart had never, in almost two years, belonged to him the way it belonged to Kellen more and more every single day.
Twenty-Six
Shae
May 8
Present …
The rumble of the motorcycle grew farther away until it was swallowed up by the night. The front door clicked shut behind me and I tipped my head back against it, fighting the rising tears. My heart rebelled against its cage, beating wild and erratically as my chest constricted.
So many lies. So many secrets. So many chances we both could have told the truth and it would have spared so much pain.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
My eyes, which I’d squeezed shut against the onslaught of emotions, popped open and Liz was standing there. I shook my head.
“But that was Kellen, and you two talked?”
“Yeah. It was him. I thought you were asleep.” I pushed off the door.
“I heard him knock and you slip out of your room. I had to force myself not to follow you and press my ear to the door.”
“Sorry if we kept you up.” I made to slip past her back to my room, but she wasn’t having it.
“Don’t give me that sorry crap. You know damn well I want to know what happened. Did you tell him?”
“No, I couldn’t. He lied, Liz. He lied. For nothing. It was all nothing and it ruined everything.” My voice broke on the last word and I felt myself crumbling with it.
“What was nothing, babe? I’m not following. What did he lie about?”
I lowered myself into one of the chairs at the small round dining table and dropped my head in my hands. Liz pulled out the chair next to me. “Come on, Shae, talk to me.”
I dragged my fingers back through my hair and lifted my head. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel, but I’m so angry at him, Liz. I finally accepted things, God, I think I was even ready to forgive him or maybe I already had, and then he had to go and tear that night and everything wide open.”
“Just start at the beginning, Shae, and talk to me. What did he tell you?”
I repeated everything he’d said before I told him to leave.
“I’m so sorry,” was all Liz could get out when I was done, and neither one of us knew what to say after that. Kellen hadn’t fully understood why his confession hurt so much, why I could barely look at him afterward, but Liz got it. She knew why my anger was boiling back up to the surface. She knew what his lie had cost me, what it had cost us both.
I don’t know how long it was after Liz and I finally went to bed that I fell asleep, but I tossed and turned for a long time, unable to stop torturing myself with the what ifs and whys and the senselessness of it all. Because he was a damn coward.
Twenty-Seven
Shae
January 3
Senior year …
Are you ready for tomorrow?
I read and re-read the text message probably ten times without typing out a response. It was just a question, a simple one that shouldn’t have caused me so much anxiety, but it did. We’d had two whole, uninterrupted weeks together. It hadn’t been perfect. Christmas had seen us through a rocky patch right out of the gate.
After spending nearly every day leading up to it together, I hadn’t understood why he was so against us sharing Christmas. When I pushed for us to make plans to see each other at some point during the day, he’d shut me out. It meant we both went Christmas Eve and Christmas day without hearing from each other. Eight days in and I’d been ready to face that we were already over, and I didn’t even know why. All I knew was that it felt just as terrible as when I’d found Jeremy with Daisy. Eight days and I was grieving Kellen like I had almost two years with Jeremy.
Mom’s Christmas tradition since Dad had died was leaving me with Didi and Papa while she checked herself into a spa retreat for three days. As I’d gotten older, she stopped dropping me at their house and just started leaving me a note and a check, but on Christmas Eve Didi would still pick me up. We’d get big trays of cinnamon rolls ready to bake the next morning before we stayed up late watching Christmas movies, drinking hot cocoa with peppermint and marshmallows, something we’d always done. When Papa was alive, he’d join us, but never made it through the first movie. He’d be snoring in his chair halfway through Miracle on 34th Street. It might have been the peppermint in his cocoa that came from a bottle of schnapps instead of the syrup Didi put in ours. We’d had three years without him now, and our tradition hadn’t changed, even though that first year without him was somber.
This year I was as quiet and withdrawn as I’d been the first time we sat down with our cocoa and I looked over and saw Papa’s chair empty. Didi noticed and pried subtly, but let it go when I gave up nothing. I tried to be more cheerful the next morning when we got up early to bake the trays full of cinnamon rolls and then deliver them to all the neighbors. At each house there was a tray of cookies, or a tin of popcorn, or a handmade blanket or scarf waiting when we arrived with the cinnamon rolls.
>
Seeing all the familiar faces I’d been visiting with Didi since I was a little girl, lifted my spirits some, and I tried not to put a damper on the rest of the day when Didi and I returned home to exchange our gifts while we enjoyed the hot, gooey cinnamon rolls we’d left warming for the two of us.
It was when I hugged her goodbye and drove back home later Christmas night, and walked into a quiet, empty house that the loneliness got to me and I wished I could call Kellen to come over. I didn’t even know how he spent the holiday because he wouldn’t talk about it any of the times I’d brought it up.
It was the next morning when I woke up to find him at my front door, ridden with guilt and remorse, that I found out he’d spent the past two days feeling as awful as I had. I let him in and we shared one of the leftover cinnamon rolls Didi sent home with me and he explained why he’d gotten so touchy. He was still embarrassed with the way he lived. He didn’t want me spending Christmas at his place, because he was ashamed, but he had his own Christmas traditions with Trinity that they’d started together because their parents hadn’t ever given them any. He was also feeling bad that that he couldn’t get me anything. With flushed cheeks, and downcast eyes, he explained that what money he made working at Derek’s dad’s restaurant was what had to keep their power on and food in the cupboards and the little extra he’d had, he used to get something for Trin.
I’d never cared much about the money and life I was born into, but I guess it’s easy not to care about money when you’ve never had to struggle for it. That didn’t mean I wasn’t grateful or aware of how fortunate I was. I liked having nice things, but after years of my mother just buying me off with things, they’d come to mean very little. Making Kellen see that wasn’t easy. It was obvious there was this big gap between us and I didn’t know how to close it. My money bothered him, even more than I realized at the time, even though I tried to make him see that this big house, full of expensive stuff, was still empty.
He detected right away that I was feeling resentful toward my mom, and after we’d polished off the giant cinnamon roll, we went upstairs and laid on my bed. He dragged all that bitterness and anger and hurt out of me. There were tears that he dried, and when he didn’t have the words that would make me feel better, he just held me. When I admitted out loud that I’d trade everything we had, because maybe if the house wasn’t so big and we didn’t have so much money she wouldn’t be able to get away from me, and she’d have to face me and our problems, he just commented dryly that even poor parents could find a way to leave their kids.
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