by Lena Maye
“Vacations. Will you buy that answer?”
“No.”
He snorts something that might be an annoyed laugh. “Me neither.”
“Then what’s the real answer?”
“Why don’t we converse about you?” he spits back, that tick in his jaw turning into a symphony of muscle movement. The distance between us grows with every syllable, like those dangerous centimeters are on rewind. “How did you fare on that linguistics paper?”
“B minus. Not good, but enough to keep my average. Although we’re talking about you right now.” Another question. I need another question. “So what’s this mysterious secret you wanted to share with me?”
He shifts towards me. I guess all it takes is something he wants to talk about.
“My secret is I’ve never been in a fight before.”
A laugh bubbles out before I can stop it. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”
He presses a palm to his chest, a playful gesture like my words wounded him. “And here I was hoping you saw me as somewhat manly.”
“You fight in a different way.”
His hands clamp down at his sides against the rock. “It shouldn’t have been my first fight.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“There are other guys I should have punched.”
I blink at him. He’s talking about them. The trail of ex-boyfriends in my wake. I shake my head. “No, Kepler. They don’t deserve to be punched.”
“That first one did.”
I shift, and the rock is rough and jagged under my ass. And suddenly very, very uncomfortable.
“You never told me who he was,” Kepler continues. “That time you….”
The time I fucking cried. My head keeps shaking as if that will close the subject. “What are you talking about?”
“Him. Tall, lanky, dickhead. Surely you remember?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The lie comes easily.
“The hell you don’t, Lo. That day—the day I first saw you. You were backed up against the house and—”
“We don’t need to talk about it.”
“—and his hands were on your hips and—”
“Stop talking about it.”
“—who was that?”
“He was my mom’s boyfriend. Now shut the fuck up.” My voice echoes against the trees.
Kepler flinches away. There’s a long silence where some crickets chirp and the world shifts and I try to control my breathing.
“Had it happened before?” His voice is softer, like he’s scared of what I will say.
“We don’t need to talk about this, Kepler.” A bubble rises up in my chest. Something so heavy that it’s hard to breathe around.
“Yes, we do.” There’s so much emotion behind the words—more than he’s ever let cut through the smoke and mirrors. It’s like I’m seeing the inside of the magic trick. I roll my shoulder to push away the rhythm of his fingers on my back.
That focused gaze is stuck on me. “I need to tell you I should have done something else. I should have helped you. You needed help, and…” His words come out in a cluster, lying over each other and dragging me back to that day pressed up against the side of my mom’s house.
No. I won’t go back.
I stand. The pine needles cut into the bottom of my feet on my warpath to that stupid car. My breath comes in spasms, my chest pitches in like I’m trapped in a metal box that keeps tightening and tightening. And the thick bubble is getting larger and larger. I crawl into the car and drop my head on the steering wheel. What the fuck is happening?
“Kep…” I can’t get the word out. I fight for it, but it’s like the night just keeps getting darker.
“It’s okay.” His voice is in my ear, close and warm.
I shake my head. I don’t believe him. Something is wrong.
I reach for the keys. But Kepler’s hand covers mine, and I’m too lost to fight him on it.
My chest ratchets. My arms and face are wet. I don’t know where the pressure is coming from. Everywhere. Nowhere. Kepler talks. Words that don’t make sense. Fingers latch the steering wheel. I grip harder. Keep myself upright.
“K—” I reach for him. My fingers find empty space.
He left me. Something’s wrong and he left me.
Cold air blasts my face. It dries tracks of water on my cheeks. I lean towards it and press my forehead to the vent. The cold slides down my throat, filling my chest cavity like water expanding into ice. Breath by breath until my lungs finally reinflate. My head throbs and my throat feels like I ate a pound of bark, but I’m breathing.
And not fucking crying.
Kepler sits in the passenger seat. My hand rests in his.
He was here the whole time?
I lean back, reorienting myself with the leather seats and the gearshift and Kepler’s silent, steady gaze.
“So, that was weird,” I choke out to break the silence. “And embarrassing.”
“Not embarrassing,” he says. “I’m sorry if I pushed you to talk about it.”
“It.” I mimic the way he said the word, like spitting out a thumb tack. Whatever he thinks he saw all those years ago, he read the situation wrong.
“He wasn’t trying to hurt me.” My words are rough, like I’ve just woken up.
“We don’t have to talk about it.” Uncomfortably soft and kind words.
“You were overly keen on talking about it a few minutes ago.” I take a cautious breath and push it out quickly. I don’t want to draw attention to my little freak-out.
“I’m sorry,” Kepler says.
I shake my head, not sure what to do with those words, so I skip over them and say “Jeffrey Nickelson” as if his name is an explanation. “It isn’t what you thought.”
“He was your mom’s boyfriend. He was kissing a thirteen-year-old girl—”
“I asked him to kiss me.”
Kepler keeps shaking his head. He turns off the a/c and fiddles with nothing. “The guy’s a dick.”
“We hated Jeffrey,” I say, remembering his thick black boots set by the front door and the way his gaze traced over the edges of my clothing. “Sloane and I thought if our mom saw him kissing one of us that she would leave him. She’d start up with our father again.” Stupid little girls playing at something they thought was a game.
“If we chased him away—if we chased all the Jeffreys away, then my parents would magically get together. But he still left. So I guess it didn’t work. We failed.” I stare at the dropping branches of the pine trees. My chest still burns, each breath has a little rasp. “I failed.”
“Your dad didn’t leave because—”
“What would you know about why my father left?” But Kepler was always there in the background. The fence fixing. The competitions with Sloane. “Do you know something about why my father left?”
Kepler folds into his seat. “Nothing.” The answer is a snap. An un-Kepler-like single word sentence.
“Do you know something?”
He shakes his head. “I know he didn’t leave because of you.”
I wrap my hands around the steering wheel and twist them. The leather pulls and pinches against my palms.
“She saw.” I sputter out the words, not sure I want to say them. The thing that haunts me isn’t Jeffrey and his slimy kiss. It’s what happened after.
Kepler runs his palms down his jeans. “Your mom? I saw her come out. Then she and the dickhead went inside the house. You sat with me. And you cried. And then you went after them. Even though I told you to stay.”
He says it all so matter-of-factly. Which makes it easier, I guess. Facts—like it happened to someone else. Some other stupid girl who just wanted to keep her father from leaving.
“What happened?” he asks quietly.
I grumble and twist the steering wheel. Can’t he just figure it out so I don’t need to say these stupid words? But not even Kepler can read me that well.
“
Lo?” he says cautiously.
“Jeffrey was in her bedroom by the time I walked in the house.” I try to take a breath, but everything’s too close. “My mom was sitting on the couch. Just sitting there. Staring at the wall.”
Kepler’s jaw tightens. “She didn’t say anything to you?”
“I—” I shake my head. “I asked why she picked him over me. Because that’s what she did. She saw us kissing and didn’t care. The whole game was that she would care. That she’d ditch him and stay with us.”
“Lo—”
“Shut up.” It’s taking all of my effort to get this out. I don’t need him interrupting me.
Kepler’s mouth snaps shut. A miracle.
“She called me names. Whore and slut and stuff. She told me to stay out of her life. That I needed to leave. Not him. Me. She went into the bedroom with Jeffrey, and she didn’t come out until the next morning. My father slept on the couch.”
I hate the guys, but they were nothing more than ghosts passing through our walls. It was the way my mom would turn from us. The way she picked them over us again and again. It makes every part of me collapse.
I turn on Kepler. “And if you ever make me talk about this again, I’ll duct-tape your mouth shut.”
He shakes his head. “I won’t pretend we didn’t have this conversation. You need to talk about it.”
“No. I’ve dealt with it—I’m done.”
“You aren’t done—”
“I’m fucking done.”
Kepler pushes back against the seat. I wait for him to say something, but for once, he doesn’t. His silence toys with me.
I go to start the car, but the keys aren’t in the ignition. I hold out my hand.
“I’ll drive.” He doesn’t look at me.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“It’s been hours,” Kepler says. “I’m fine.”
I pull out my phone. Two in the morning. Where did the time go?
He opens his door and walks around the car. I slide over the stick shift and into the passenger seat. My forehead conks against the cold window. He reaches past me and takes my seat belt, clicking it around me before he starts the car.
More fucking help.
We wind into Rock Falls. I squint at the passing trees—blackened flagpoles from last year’s fire that have splintered and fallen, leaving razored stumps.
The car purrs around mountain curves. My lungs ache. My brain is coated in velvet. I’m a shadow of myself. Like I could slip into the darkness between the dead trees, and no one would see me anymore.
I’m just so damn tired. The jittery nights, the miles on my running shoes, the thoughts that keep spiraling through my head. I haven’t really slept in weeks. Haven’t eaten anything besides soup. I close my eyes and feel the shift of the car, and how Kepler’s presence settles me. I shouldn’t be here with him. I’m a bomb ticking down. One that’s going to hurt him.
One that already has. One that’s going to keep on doing it because that’s how fucking selfish I am.
The next thing I know, Kepler is lifting me again. The Cassie-smell of flowers and nail polish tells me I’m home. He deposits me on familiar sheets.
“I’m not sure,” Kepler is saying to Cassie. Somehow in my fog, I’m surprised when Kepler admits a lack of knowledge.
I reach out, and a hand latches around mine. It’s not Cassie’s. And when I whisper “stay,” it’s not her who kisses my forehead and tucks around me.
Twelve
I wake to warmth. Much more warmth than a crappy comforter in a drafty duplex usually provides. And the weight of the bed is shifted. Even before I open my eyes all the way, I know he’s behind me. His hand rests on my hip, the soft rhythm of his breath filling the room.
I turn my head to look at him, still lost in my groggy morning state—expecting to find those gray eyes prying into me—but they’re closed. He sleeps on his side, his t-shirt trapped tight to his chest and stomach. His jeans twisted and askew. A two-inch swatch of skin showing on his hip—a light curve that slides down into a flat plane just below his stomach.
Just above his…
Yeah.
I’m fully awake now. Still wearing my shorts and shirt.
“Kepler,” I whisper.
Why am I whispering? I should shout his name. Tell him to wake the fuck up and go home.
But it feels… safe having him here. Quiet and secure. Like I don’t have to push myself out of bed and tie on my running shoes. Like I could stay here for… well, a bit longer.
How crazy is that? I don’t think I’ve slept this well since Sloane used to tell me stories to get me to sleep.
I slowly roll over, careful to keep the bed steady. His chest hitches and then regains its even rhythm. His lower lip is slightly swollen. A dark mark under one eye. I hold a hand to his lips, and his breath tickles my fingers with heat.
I smile at this rare silence—the stillness of him—and my fingers drop, pressing against the taut skin of his bottom lip. I freeze. What if he wakes up to find me touching him? I mean, it’s just his lip. I could be touching…
My eyes flick down to that stretch of skin above the waistband of his jeans. Then lower to the rough fabric pulled tight. Then lower still. And, oh god. Thick and most definitely eye-catching.
For fuck’s sake. What is wrong with me? I’m groping a sleeping guy.
Okay, groping might be a slight exaggeration. Is there such thing as eye-groping?
I snap my eyes shut. I can’t keep taking what I want whenever I want it.
Wet warmth envelops my fingers followed by the light graze of teeth from the top joints of my fingers up to the tips. I open my eyes and find him looking at me—and my fingertips nestled between his lips. He bites on the tip of my middle finger, harder this time.
And every cell in my body jumps to attention.
But so does my damn brain. I slide my fingers out from between his lips and press them to my chest, crossing my arms so they are between us.
“Last night…” His voice is gruff and low and so fucking soft. “Are you okay?”
I clutch my arms tighter. “Yeah. It was… nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing.” He smooths my hair back, his fingers resting for a moment in the hollow under my jaw before they smooth down to the sharp bones of my shoulder. “My friend pushed his brother onto you.”
I shrug. “Yeah, I guess.”
His fingers pause. “That’s your response? Aren’t you angry?”
“At Mackie,” I say. “I’ll probably yell at him later, but I’m not much for grudges.”
His eyes dart around my face. “I don’t understand you, Lo. Why aren’t you ready to go scream curses at that fucker who kissed you? He kissed you without your permission. Without you wanting him to.”
“But that’s how it always feels,” I admit. “I never really want them to kiss me. It wasn’t that different from kissing Ty or any of the others.” I shrug, like all of that was easy to admit.
“Fuck, Lo.” He lets out a long breath. “That’s how you always feel? I can’t…” He rolls halfway over, his gaze finding the ceiling. “I don’t want it to be like that for you.”
I bite my lip. “I don’t want it to be like that for me either.”
He nods, reaching for me again. His hand warms my shoulder. He patterns light circles before he slides down my arm—over my bicep and to my crooked-up elbow. “Is that the way you felt kissing me?”
I shake my head, and my hair catches against the pillow. But the words don’t come to my lips.
Is that the way I felt kissing him? No. Not at all.
His hand smooths down to my waist, and he pulls me across the three inches of wrinkled fabric separating us, but I keep my arms locked across my chest.
“Lo?”
I let out a long breath. Fuck, I hate this. Sloane’s advice winds back to me. If you have a thing with guys, then you need to put yourself on pause.
I swallow hard. “My solutio
n to guy problems can’t be another guy.”
Another guy. But he’s not just another guy.
“And I don’t know what you want from me,” I continue. “What your goal is.”
“Equilibrium.” His hand leaves my hip, and he pushes up to his elbow.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t have a goal.”
“Bullshit, Kepler.” I roll away from him. “You’ve always got some sort of plan. Like why you kept showing up at my house growing up. Why you're here now. Why you keep thinking you can help me. What the hell do you want?”
“I thought that was obvious, Lo.”
“Nothing about you is obvious.” I scrunch the sheet into my fist. “Do you have some responsible-for-all-of-womankind complex where you didn’t help the little damsel when she was kissed by the big, bad wolf and now you need to make up for it?” I yank up on the sheet. “Or is it because you need to forgive yourself for Jeffrey? Do you feel some crazy responsibility for what happened that day?”
He watches as I curl and uncurl my fingers in the sheets. A few minutes ago, the silence was peace. Now it's full of stupid unspoken things that weigh so much the bed might collapse.
“You should ask yourself why you’re so intent on helping me,” I continue. “Maybe it has less to do with me and more to do with you.”
“It has to do with both of us,” Kepler says suddenly. “And you know why I’m here, Lo. You’ve always known it.”
I drop the sheet. The bed is suddenly way too small for both of us. I sit and swing my feet down to the carpet. Pain shoots from my toes up to my knees as my soles hit the floor. I’m throwing those damn shoes in the trash. Along with everything else from last night.
The bed shifts, and Kepler’s weight leaves. A soft swish and a click. I glance back to see him retrieve a joint off my bedside table.
I push up and step into the hallway, closing the door behind me. Cassie’s voice winds through the apartment. Low and sputtering. I walk down the hallway, trying to decipher her string of words, but they are so choked I can’t decode them. But something is most definitely wrong.
I find her in the kitchen, a tangle of red hair and red eyes. She’s on the phone.