by Haley Jenner
FOR KEEPS. FOR ALWAYS.
HALEY JENNER
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 by Haley Jenner
All rights reserved.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Design: Haley Jenner
Cover Image: Shutterstock
Editing: Ellie McLove @ My Brother’s Editor
Editing: Jenny Sims @ Editing4Indies
Proofreading: Michelle Clay @ Book Nerd Services
This book is intended for those 18 years and older. It contains content of an adult nature.
Dedication
To the stories that kept us company throughout the mayhem of 2020. The fictional worlds that offered us all a sliver of escape in a time of uncertainty. And to every one of the authors that gifted us that refuge.
Contents
Introduction
1. HENLEY
2. BROOKS
3. HENLEY
4. BROOKS
5. HENLEY
6. BROOKS
7. HENLEY
8. BROOKS
9. HENLEY
10. BROOKS
11. HENLEY
12. BROOKS
13. HENLEY
14. BROOKS
15. HENLEY
16. BROOKS
17. HENLEY
18. BROOKS
19. HENLEY
20. BROOKS
21. HENLEY
22. HENLEY
23. BROOKS
24. HENLEY
25. BROOKS
26. HENLEY
27. BROOKS
28. HENLEY
29. BROOKS
30. HENLEY
31. BROOKS
32. HENLEY
33. HENLEY
34. BROOKS
Epilogue
Brooks and Henley’s Playlist
About the Author
Also by HALEY JENNER
Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.
~ Erol Ozan
HENLEY
AGE 15
Lips pinched together, I concentrate on the heavy thrum of my heart.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Thick enough I can feel it hit my chest bone, loud enough to drown out the sounds echoing from upstairs.
The walls shake with their disdain. Their screaming and their anger now etched into the very foundations of our home. A place that should be built on love, crafted with unrivaled hate.
My body shakes, preparing itself to crumble away. To break apart into the million and one pieces my mother and father are determined to pull me in.
I will my body to do it. I beg it to disappear into nothing. Forever free from this world of scorn I’m forced to survive within.
It’s been this way forever. I don’t know how they ever tolerated one another long enough to conceive. Children are meant to be created through love, yet Derrick and Jacinta Wright bore me in hate.
I feel it every day.
My heart doesn’t beat with love and affection. It stutters through longing and despair.
I’m caught between the desire to know what real love feels like and the overwhelming need to encase my heart in an impenetrable box. Numbness seems far more preferable to heartache, which, from my lack of experience and internet searches on the topic, seems to be the sole ending to every love story; be it great or pitiful. I’ve never known love in any form. It’s as foreign to me as the world I’m so eager to lose myself in. Love as an emotion is as fictional to me as the stories I’ve read about it in. People die. People leave. And the ones who loved them are left crying over the remnants of a heart shattered beyond repair. In the end, maybe being devoid of love is the greatest gift a person can be given.
My parents fight over who loves me more and who knows what's best for me. I’m a commodity. A slice of property they each want to claim ownership over. There is no love or affection in their desire for my loyalty.
My mother’s voice rises, forming a screech that forces my hands over my ears. I’m shaking, my whole body quaking with tremors I can’t settle.
I just wish they’d stop.
No. Not that.
I wish they’d separate.
Divorce is commonplace. But that’s a reality neither one is ready to give in to. That would mean they’d have to admit defeat.
Their screams grow louder, the fire in their argument hitting new lows. Unable to take any more, I jack my window upward, grateful they allowed me to claim the only first-floor bedroom in the house.
Feet dropping to the soft grass, I run. I welcome the wind as it whips through my long hair and crisscrosses it over my face like a mask. The wind whooshes through my ears the faster I run, drowning out everything but its song.
I run until my lungs hurt.
I run until my chest heaves.
I run until my legs feel like jelly and my feet feel like stone. Until my lungs struggle to take in air, and I can no longer hear even the faintest echoes of my parents' voices as they shout over one another to be heard.
Only then do I stop to breathe.
I move past the playground, past the other children playing and laughing while their parents watch on with tenderness and devotion.
No one pays me any mind as my legs carry me past them in haste.
Disappearing from sight, I move toward my personal refuge. A place beyond the trees where parents who spend more time watching their kids than arguing about them don’t allow them to breach.
A place of stillness. A quiet not often gifted to me, found here, in my own personal sanctuary.
Twigs crack under my bare feet as I make my way through the trees. It used to hurt when the crack of a broken stick pierced my skin. Now it just feels like home. Like freedom.
The light from the sun dims into a damp darkness the closer I get to the water. I can hear it from here, flowing calmly, welcoming me.
I found this place six months ago on an afternoon not unlike today. My parents were fighting, arguing over what to buy me for my birthday, about what would impress me more. If only they knew the one thing I wanted in this world was peace, was freedom from them, together.
My fingers brush against the rough bark of the trees as I zig-zag between them, my skin catching on their coarse surface. I breathe in the fresh air; the scent of the dirt and last night's raindrops my favorite perfume. I let my heart beat in rhythm to the birds' song and the river's melody.
Breaking through the trees, I smile for the first time since I was here yesterday. Eyes closed, I tip my head back, inhaling the thick, earthy scent of my secret spot.
Arms stretched out wide, I greet the coolness of the breeze. I let it rush across my skin in an embrace.
Welcome home.
The sharp sound of a throat clearing pulls me from my quiet, startling me enough to make me turn in search of the sound.
He watches me with a tilted head of interest. Curiosity shines from his light-colored eyes. Hair covered by a backward cap, he forces a dark eyebrow to lift slowly.
A glitch in my perfect picture. An error, not able to be erased.
“You’re on my rock,” I announce rudely, staring at the boy—who doesn’t look much older than me—perched upon the wide rock on the bank of the river.
My rock.
The one place I come to sit and breathe at.
Th
e boy stands, dusting the back of his jeans as he searches around the large rock, bending his ridiculous height to sweep his eyes over it thoroughly.
“What are you doing?”
Pausing, he stands at full height, well above the normal range of a teenage boy. “Looking for your name.”
I feel my eyebrows pinch together.
“You said it was your rock,” he explains as he steps closer, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his pants. “I was just looking for proof of property.”
I let my frown grow.
“Of course, I don’t own the rock,” I bite out, crossing my arms over my chest defensively. “But this is my place. I’ve been coming here for months, and I’ve never seen you here before.”
He nods, not quite looking at me. “I just moved here. Today actually. I was out exploring and found this place.”
He looks pleased to be here. Content to be surrounded by everything and nothing all at once.
“Aren’t you too young to be exploring the woods by yourself?”
“Aren’t you?” he retorts, meeting my eyes.
“I’m fifteen.”
“Me too,” he announces triumphantly, a smirk tipping at the corner of his thick lips.
I blink.
He doesn’t.
“Well…” I clear my throat. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but we can’t both have the same spot, and I was here first. Finders keepers, and all that.”
He tips his head side to side. “Technically, I was here first.”
“Today,” I snap, stepping forward without agenda. “Today, you were here first.”
“Way I see it”—he sighs, unfazed by my panic—“it’s all that really matters. The moment.”
“Just find a new spot,” I argue, my head tipped back to look at his face, the plea in my voice embarrassing.
He smiles at me. “Nah.” He moves closer again until we’re toe to toe. His eyes track over my face in a curiosity he can’t contain. “I think I like this one.”
I stand still, his elbow brushing my upper arm as he walks past me.
“Name’s Brooks.” He stops, not turning around. “Might beat you here tomorrow, friend.”
I huff, moving toward my rock without watching him leave.
“Name’s Brooks,” I mimic after I’m confident he’s gone. “Who even introduces themselves like that?” I ask the river.
I sit for a moment, disquiet settling around me. He’s disturbed my space. He’s made it feel less like mine and more of anyone else’s.
Standing, I search around, kicking away twigs and leaves with my toe. Picking up a gray stone, I rub the pad of my thumb across it, testing its sharpness. Satisfied it’s jagged enough to do what I need it to, I lean over the large stone Brooks had attempted to steal.
My hand aches with the pressure I use to engrave my words.
Smiling at my handiwork, I turn, skipping the stone along the river and watching it bounce three times before sinking.
Order restored, I sit upon my throne, arms wrapped around my knees. The damp moss of the stone tickles the pad of my feet, and I wiggle my toes in welcome, working my hardest to ignore the niggling sensation that Brooks has completely thrown my order into disarray.
BROOKS
Age 15
Property of Henley Wright.
I stare at her scrawl etched into the stone as a smile pulls across my lips. It’s deep, I’ll give her that. She put some serious elbow grease into making it visible—for my benefit of course. No one else has dared to step foot into her spot, or so she says.
What a pompous brat.
She’s like an old lady trapped in the body of a fifteen-year-old girl. The permanent scowl on her face, the know-it-all way she spoke.
She was strange.
Clothes that screamed money, but barefoot in the forest?
A pretty face but the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen.
Confident but an obvious loner.
I shrug, my eyes dragging along the ground in search of a stone big enough to outdo her scrawl.
Beneath her chicken scratch, I rush the sharp stone back and forth, carving an ampersand before printing my own name into the property deed of the stupid rock.
It’s lame. I’m lame. But I just moved here, and I’d welcome any distraction to my life right now. Messing with a loudmouth snob works right into that need.
Lying on the rock, I stare up at the canopy of trees.
Lake Geneva.
I sigh in acceptance.
If I’d kicked up a big enough stink, they wouldn’t have moved me here. They would’ve uprooted Gran and moved her to Colorado. That would’ve made me a special brand of asshat, though. Forcing my dying grandmother to displace her life completely and move a thousand miles away to be taken care of. Away from everything she knows and loves.
“You clearly can’t read.”
I open an eye and find Henley Wright standing over me, hands on her tiny hips, scowling down at me with a ferocity that seems out of place on her meager frame.
I roll away from her briefly so she can see the rock in full.
“I can read fine, Henley. Nice to meet you, by the way.”
Reading my addition to the stone, she growls, adding a little foot stomp in and breaking a bunch of twigs through her tantrum.
“What is wrong with you?” she groans.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” I answer calmly. “I was enjoying some peace and quiet and reflecting on the recent upheaval in my life when you disrupted me.”
She blinks in an almost apology.
“I didn’t mean to ruin your serenity.”
I pull my lips together to hide my smirk.
Serenity.
Who talks like that?
“You’re more than welcome to sit with me. We can think privately in silence together.”
She turns her head out toward the river.
Her hair is tied in a messy knot tied atop of her head today. It makes her freckles stand out more, the dusting of the dark spots starting at her nose and working their way outward over her cheeks. Her dark hair is a direct contrast to the creamy tone of her skin. She’s fair but not pale.
She’s pretty. To look at anyway. Her personality, from what I’ve seen of it, could use a facelift.
“That would be weird.” She finally speaks absent-mindedly, eyes still set on the flow of the water. “Imagine if I’m thinking about something exceptionally private . . . I’d be worried you might be trying to read my mind, which would make me uncomfortable and therefore ruin my private reflection time.”
I stare at her like she’s an alien. Truth be told, she might very well be. “Uhhh . . .”
My stutter pulls her attention from the river, and she glances at me in confusion. “What?”
“You think way too hard about things.”
She seems shocked by my statement. The lids of her eyes drop down, and her eyebrows pinch together. “What other way is there to think?”
I sit, shifting to make room for her. Maybe I'm being presumptuous, but if she was going to leave, she would have already. It’s not hard to tell that she wants to stay. It’s obvious in the way her eyes flick back and forth to the rock in longing.
“I don’t know, maybe just go with the flow,” I say.
“I do,” she declares confidently. “I just think about where the flow is taking me.”
She finally gives in, sitting down while making certain she keeps her distance.
“Do you have something against shoes?”
She glances at her own feet, clumps of dirt scattered across them. I have no doubt her soles would be black, sullied from her trek through the dirt. Her attention moves from her feet to my muddy Chucks. “What’s the point of being out in nature if you can’t feel it between your toes?”
I remain silent.
“It’d be like being given flowers but refusing to smell them or having your favorite song on the radio while you’re wearing earplugs.”
“Then why
not just be naked and feel it all against your skin?”
She turns her head, looking at me with a curious smile. “Being naked is illegal, but being barefoot isn’t.”
I shrug. “Fair enough.”
I make no attempt to speak as she goes back to gazing at the trees.
“Where did you move from?”
“Colorado.”
I watch as she runs one of her toes across the slimy patch of moss on the edge of the rock. “Why?”
“My gran is sick.”
Her foot pauses as she turns her head back to look at me. She blinks once in sympathy before turning away again. “I’m sorry.”
“She’s not dead yet.”
I ignore the bite of desperation in my tone as I say the words, my need for it to be true for as long as possible.
“Brooks, what?”
“You ask an awful lot of questions for someone who was looking for quiet.”
She ignores the comment, and we sit in comfortable silence for a good few minutes before I find my voice again.
“Riley. Brooks Riley.”
“Moira Riley is my neighbor?” She phrases it like a question, an invitation for me to confirm she’s a relation.
“That’s my gran, which means you and I are also neighbors. Seems we share a property line and a secret spot.”
She ignores my jab. “I didn’t know she was sick.”
“Cancer,” I say before I can stop myself.