by Vivian Lux
Goosebumps crawled across my rain-soaked skin. I was starting to feel genuinely freaked out. She lurched to the side again and this time I grabbed her and yanked her up, stumbling as I did so that we both fell against each other. Her eyes were wild now, looking everywhere but at me, and I could see her hands fluttering at her sides. Frustrated, I braced myself against my crutches and grabbed her face, turning her to me. “What happened?” I shouted, panicked now. “Are you okay?”
She couldn’t seem to get a full breath. Gasping, she struggled to form words as tears slipped from her eyes and mixed with the rain on her cheeks.
I knew this. I had seen it in rehab. A panic attack. She was working herself up into a panic attack. Her eyes darted over my face and without really thinking about it, I reached down and grabbed her hand, holding it tight in mine. I cupped her cheek with my other hand then brushed it back, smoothing the fuzz of hairs that had escaped her no-nonsense ponytail.
Her eyes snapped to mine. I nodded. “That’s it,” I said. “Breathe when I breathe, okay? Slow down, just slow down, watch my face, okay? In and out. Slower. In and out. Okay? Good. Again. In and out. You’re fine, Everly. You’re safe and I’m right here.”
“I can’t,” she moaned with each breath. “I can’t, I can’t…”
“You can. I’m here to help you, okay? I’m the nurse and you’re the patient and I’m going to take care of you. In and out. You’re doing so good.” I smoothed her hair again and again, feeling the way her overheated skin was already cooling. “Good girl. You are doing so good, okay? Keep doing that. In and out.”
Her bright blue eyes met mine and filled with tears. I smoothed her hair and smiled at her. “Hey there,” I said. “You’re back.”
She reddened and her breath caught again. “No,” I told her firmly. “Don’t. Keep your breath nice and even. Don’t try to talk yet.”
She shook her head, but pressed her lips together dutifully and took another deep breath. “That’s right.” She looked down. The rain was caught in her dark lashes and fuck, why did she look so fucking beautiful to me right now? “Everly, come in out of the rain, okay?”
“My car,” she started to say.
But I held up a hand. “My Dad’s a car guy. You already knew that. If I text him and let him know there’s a car stalled out in the middle of our road, he and his buddies will be out here and under the hood in no time flat. You don’t have to worry about that. Just come inside and out of the rain, okay?”
I could see panic working its way back up into her eyes. “Let me help you,” I urged.
“Why are you being so sweet to me?” she breathed, suspicion clouding her eyes.
“Because,” I said. “I know what it’s like.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Feeling like life is shitting on you for fun. Feeling like you can’t catch a fucking break even though you’re doing everything you’re supposed to.” And as I said it, I knew I was telling the truth. “We’re kindred spirits.”
She widened her eyes.
I laughed at her incredulous expression. “It’s true. I know it doesn’t seem like we have a thing in common, but we have everything important in common. Just look at me and tell me what happened. I can help you, Everly. Just tell me how to help you.”
The cords in her neck stood out in sudden anguish. She took a deep breath and let out a sob. “I missed my boards!”
“Oh,” I breathed. I felt like she’d punched me in the gut, so I couldn’t even imagine how she was feeling. “Oh Jesus Christ, baby, I am so fucking sorry.”
I didn’t know what to do. She looked so fucking sad, so devastated and alone that it was tearing me up inside.
I did the only thing that felt right.
I kissed her.
It was an accident, I will swear it to my dying day. And hell, if you pressed me, I might even blather some nonsense about it being a friendly kiss, something to buck up her spirits after such terrible news.
It might have been an accident when I started kissing her, but continuing to kiss her was completely on purpose. Because there was something there, something that stirred a memory. Distant and fuzzy, as if half-remembered in a dream. It made no sense that I should “remember” kissing Everly. But when I felt it, I kissed her harder, hoping to jog that memory loose from where it was stuck in the back of my brain and make sense of it. And fuck, kissing her was pretty nice, too. Her lips were warm and soft and she tasted sweeter than made sense.
At first she held her mouth tightly closed. As I brushed my hand up to the back of her neck, her body was stiff and unyielding. The rush of desire I’d felt started to ebb when I felt how she wasn’t into it, and the tendrils of memory started to slip through my fingers. I made to pull back and apologize, ready to let that memory slip past me as just some kind of weird deja vu.
Then she flung her arms around me and fuck, she kissed me back.
For all of her tightly held emotions, she kissed with a wild desperation. She was like a hungry animal the way she devoured my mouth and battled my tongue with hers. I was shocked, and then I was more turned on than I ever had been in my life to feel her coming alive under my hands.
She sought under my shirt, seeking warm skin. I tilted her head, devouring that soft, amazingly hot mouth as the memory came back with a vengeance, burning through all my synapses until I pulled back and stared at her, feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. “You,” I gasped, cupping her face in my hands and searching those blue eyes. “Oh my god, you’re her. It was you!”
Chapter Sixteen
Everly
Gabe tasted the same as he had that stolen night I’d been trying to forget since I started working for the Kings.
The jolt of surprise memory was enough to silence the stream of panic. His hands on my face were strong enough to hold me together long enough for me to catch my breath and gasp in surprise.
So much adrenaline pumped through my veins that I rose up on my toes and flung myself against his chest, desperate to hold on to something. I was ready to fall. I gasped again when he caught me.
He groaned in response to my gasp and suddenly his tongue was sliding against mine and goddamn, yes, I did remember this. The way he kissed. The way he didn’t hold back. Usually I was the one to hold back, but I had no strength left to keep up my defenses.
He was the one to draw back. Jerked back, more like. “Did I hurt you?” I wanted to ask, mindful of his injuries even with my clouded brain.
“Oh my god, you’re her,” he said.
I exhaled sharply. My heart stalled in my chest.
“It was you!” he exclaimed, gripping my shoulders and giving me a little shake.
I jerked. Stiffened in his arms and drew back, staring at his opened mouth. He looked at me like I was a stranger, and in that moment I understood that he didn’t know me, because I didn’t even know myself. I’d been convinced he didn’t remember. I’d been certain that that night was one both of us had let slip through our fingers.
His eyes widened. “It was you,” he repeated, his voice harsher now. An accusation. “You never…how?”
I swallowed and closed my eyes, partly to escape the way his soft hazel eyes had gone intense green with emotion. And partly to remember.
I still remembered every single detail of that night in December. And even though I was in Gabe’s arms, I was right back there on the barstool, sitting close to the door. Watching the party but not taking part in it.
I was humming.
It was a bad habit. Left over from when I was a bespectacled nobody at Crown Creek Primary and the laughter and chatter went on around me like I wasn’t there. I’d hum to be part of the noise. To be included.
That night I’d hummed into my rum and coke as I drank it way too quickly. The sugar made my lips sticky so I kept licking them as I glanced at the door again and again. The caffeine in the coke made my head buzz and my hands were starting to shake on their own.
I wasn’t supposed to be out.
I was scared about the unit test the next week, a unit test that ended up being cancelled because of a huge snow storm that hit the area, dumping thirty-three inches in thirty-six hours. That night I hadn’t known that. I only knew that being in the bar felt like a major transgression.
But when I’d seen the flyer on campus, my heart had stalled in my chest. I stared at it, even brushed my fingers over it to make sure it was real.
Jonah was playing. Right here in his hometown. I’d always been a fan, but I’d never been able to see him play, not solo, not even with his brothers. Now that he was this huge, massive star, the likelihood of me being able to see him, being able to afford the tickets to get close enough, was slim to none. Except he was back in town and playing a show at the Crown Tavern. The flyer said so.
I’d promised myself that I’d study early the next morning. Then I’d shown up super early and claimed a bar stool, determined not to miss the chance to have Jonah King finally notice me.
I was there so early that I noticed every single person who walked in after me. People I recognized from around town and people I didn’t, even though I knew I should.
I was there when the rest of the King Brothers showed up, three of the four of them. I ducked into my rum and coke and felt them file past rather than watch them waving to the crowd like the local heroes they were. Scowling Finn, solemn Beau…
And smiling Gabe.
I remembered the smile, and more than that, I remembered the smile making me angry. Back when the brothers played together, there was a rivalry that was implied if never actually spoken. If you were a Jonah fan, you did not trust Gabe, and the feeling was mutual. There were message board clashes and I’d heard of fights breaking out at shows. Of course I’d grown up enough to see that was silly, but some deeply ingrained part of me, the obsessive fan that would never fully die, still held on to that anger. His smiling face, his deep laugh, his easy way with the townspeople who asked for autographs—they weren’t plusses in my book. They were all reasons to sneer.
Even as I felt those feelings, I was horrified by them. That the fangirl hive-mind was still controlling me was shocking. I’d always considered myself a rational girl who had her feet firmly on the ground. I had no actual reason to hate Gabe King, but I also knew I wasn’t there to see him. I was there for his brother.
I looked at the door again.
No Jonah.
Where was he?
People filled in the spaces around me. After nearly two hours of solitude, my space was overflowing with elbows and “excuse mes.” I held my ground. I was a rock in the middle of a fast-flowing river, clutching my drink possessively. Whether it was my third or my fourth by then, I couldn’t recall. The rum hit my bloodstream hard. I leaned back on the barstool, needing something to prop myself up on. The woodgrain was cool under my fingers.
A gust of wind sent the front door slamming into the outside wall, and that was what started it all.
“Holy shit. It’s getting bad out there.” A voice at my side.
I’d turned, smiling, but the person was talking to someone over my head. There was a shout of laughter. Bodies jostled together. I felt warm and eager and happy and I wanted to be a part of it. I’d looked around, wanting to make eye contact with someone. I searched the room for someone to smile at and my eyes slid right onto Gabriel King’s face.
He was looking at me. Squinting, like he was trying to place me. I’d grown up next door to him, but this was the first time we were face to face in years. In the whole of the bar, he was the first person to look at me and notice I was there. The corner of his mouth turned up in a lazy half-smile.
The corner of my mouth tugged upward as he held my gaze. I wanted to believe it was the rum heating my cheeks like that. He was the wrong brother. That same indignant anger twisted in my belly, but it felt less like a reaction and more like a reflex because I liked smiling at him. And I liked the way he was looking at me, like I was something worth memorizing. I had dolled myself up for Jonah, but I wasn’t so un-girly not to hope that Gabe was noticing my seldom-worn makeup or the careful way I’d curled my hair. Or the way my new bra—not a sports bra, a real bra—made me look in my tank top. I’d barely recognized myself when I looked in the mirror before leaving, but it was worth it to see the other side of his mouth turn up. He’d lifted his chin then, a silent invitation.
But he was the wrong brother. I had to remember that.
With some difficulty I’d turned back to the door as a shout went up. It sounded like a fight was about to break out and I drunkenly mustered my training, wondering if I’d be called upon to nurse any head wounds tonight.
Gabe’s voice rose above the shouts. “Drinks are on me!” he’d called, and everyone started cheering.
Another rum and coke appeared and I was drunk enough to lunge at it and guzzle it down. It felt like I was moving even though I was sitting perfectly still. I hummed aloud, not worrying if anyone heard me. I smiled to myself and broke out laughing when someone next to me told a joke. My veins fizzed and my face hurt from smiling. Why didn’t I do this more often? Why wasn’t I a normal girl who went out and drank and laughed and had fun? Why couldn’t I be a person who did these things? Why couldn’t I have the guts to cut loose once in a while?
I wanted desperately to be the kind of girl that this night would come easily to. I’d come out to see Jonah and he still hadn’t shown up. I wanted to not read into that. I wanted to believe there was a simple explanation for why he was late to his one-night-only, special-for-the-town performance, and not that I had somehow fucked up.
And just like that, I flipped from pleasantly drunk to something much darker. Paranoia licked at the edges of my mind, insisting that this, all of this, this whole night was just an elaborate trick. That the same tormentors who had hounded me growing up had organized this to mock me. That everyone here was pretending, and they’d all start laughing.
I took a deep sip of my drink. No. That was insane. I wasn’t insane. I was a regular girl who sometimes got really nervous about silly things. Silly. It was all silly. There was a reason Jonah was over an hour late and it had nothing to do with me. He probably got in an accident and was lying in a ditch somewhere. The roads had gotten super bad since I’d come here hours ago.
But the idea of Jonah King in an accident was completely foreign to me. He was invincible. Untouchable. That couldn’t be it. No, there was some other reason. Was Gabe worried too? I turned and tried to find him in the ever-thickening crowd. I could see the sandy brown of his hair but I couldn’t see his face because he’d been swallowed up by the revelers. “Jesus, where is he?” came a loud, drunk voice.
“Probably fucking his girl,” I heard the bartender snarl.
I froze.
Jonah? Was he talking about Jonah?
More voices joined the conversation. I strained my ears to listen in. I even stopped humming.
“He’s dating that girl,” someone else explained. “What’s her name? The kindergarten teacher.”
“Ruby Riley?” came the reply. “Oh, I like her. She’s sweet.”
My stomach dropped to my toes.
Jonah was dating a local girl.
I knew he’d never end up with me. I’d always known I was too ordinary. Too literally the girl next door. But if he wasn’t going to be with me, I always hoped he’d be with some glamorous Hollywood Amazon. Some kind of otherworldly modelesque creature with high cheekbones and a smile that didn’t show so much gum. Not Ruby. I’d met Ruby. Though I doubted she’d remember me, I knew her.
She was one of the nice ones. A nice normal girl. Which was something I knew that I would never be.
I’d stood up with my heart pounding, intent on fleeing, but when I stood the sudden sway of the floor under my feet showed me how drunk I was. There was a burst of laughter when someone cut the sound on the sedate Christmas music that had been playing in the background and plugged in an old King Brothers song. I was suddenly enveloped in a sea of dancing bodies, my o
wn body swaying to its own internal rhythm as I looked around, wide-eyed as Jonah’s recorded voice came on through the loud speaker.
Gabe was watching me again.
The sound of the right brother’s voice crooning to me as the wrong brother looked me up and down was too much. Something inside of me squeezed tight and fell away. I started moving to him.
Him.
The wrong brother.
The crowd parted like the Red Sea and I walked right up to him. “Hey.” It was all my tongue could manage.
He grinned that grin that started at one side of his mouth and spread across his whole face. I’d seen that grin so many times since then, but that night was the first time he’d let me experience it. It was like getting hugged by a smile. That night, his hazel eyes looked the exact same shade as his brother’s. That’s why I could pretend he was Jonah.
I told myself that’s why I went to him, because I wanted to pretend he was his brother. I’d repeated that lie to myself many, many times after that night, but now I was finally realizing what I was pretty sure I’d known all along. It was a lie. I’d gone to Gabe believing that I wanted him to be like Jonah. But Jonah had never noticed me.
Gabe had.
He’d grinned when he looked down at me. Maybe he was amused by how I was swaying to the music, the rum making my limbs floppy and my movements fluid. At some point, he must have put his hand on my waist but when I finally noticed the warmth of his fingers, they’d felt like they’d been there forever. I leaned in to the pressure of it, liking the way he was holding me up.
We danced. Jonah’s voice filled my ears, but Gabe was filling every one of my other senses.
“I shouldn’t have come out tonight!” I’d said. I wanted to hate myself now that I knew that there was no chance of catching Jonah’s eye that night, but it was hard to hate anything when I was swaying in Gabe’s arms. I tried to imagine Jonah holding me like this, but that wasn’t real. This was.
“I have to study,” I finished lamely, dredging up another reason to hate myself when I was feeling so damn good.