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I shoot a text back to Ryne, thanking him for the birthday message, and at the last second before I hit send, I add a red heart emoji. I try not to overthink and obsess about that emoji on my way to first period, but my mind has, well, a mind of its own, called anxiety. It makes me worry about the dumbest stuff. I guarantee if things ultimately end up going to shit between Ryne and me, a year from now I’ll still be thinking about that text and wondering if that stupid heart emoji was our downfall. My brain’s weird.
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I shake my head. “This is all completely new to me. It’s pretty out here.” I gesture toward the lake behind us and Ryne smiles. I could get lost in his smiles. The real ones. Like the one he’s giving me now.
I could stand here and stare and listen for hours. The sound of the rushing water is the best kind of white noise, very soothing and relaxing, but it also fills me with a renewed energy. I wish I could bottle it up and keep it with me forever.
Number one: this is the best birthday present I’ve ever gotten, ever. Hands down. Number two: another piece of my heart just worked its way out of my chest and plopped into Ryne’s hands, without my permission.
“What made you decide to bring me here? To do something for my birthday?” It’s at least a full thirty seconds of silence before he responds in a low voice. “I don’t really know how to answer that question.” And that’s okay, I appreciate his honesty. If anything, it makes me hopeful he’s coming around to the idea of some sort of us.
“My official grade. How’d I do?” I want to tease him, make him think he earned a low grade, but one look at his face and all thoughts of that vanish. He tries so hard to keep that gruff, unaffected shield up all the time, but it slips now and then, and before he turns away, I catch the vulnerable softness in his expression. I’ve only got one answer to his question: the truth. “Definitely an A+.” He looks at me again and grins. It’s cocky, smug, and maybe even a little bit arrogant, but there’s also a shine in his eyes that betrays his relief at my answer. It lights him up inside, and that
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“No,” I whisper into his neck, then sit up. “No, you don’t scare me, Ryne. Mr. Grumpy Ass, Mr. Tough Guy, Mr.— ” “Dacen?” I peer down at him and he bites his lip. “Yeah?” “Shut up and kiss me.” Well, okay. So, I do.
The happy, genuine smile lights him up from the inside out, and as unlikely as I am to ever say anything like this out loud, I can safely admit within the confines of my mind that he is breathtaking.
Being here with Dacen, doing this together, feels different than anything I’ve experienced before with anyone else and leaves me feeling untethered. I ignore the voice weaving through my muddled brain that whispers the truth to me, the reason this feels different. I just… I can’t. I shove the voice aside and focus on what’s right in front of me. Here goes nothing. I’m jumping into a rowboat headed upstream in choppy, uncharted waters, without a paddle or a life vest or even a fucking bucket to bail out if needed.
“You look so Southern right now, Ryne. I can’t even stand it.” I shut my locker door carefully and then slowly make a half-circle around him, checking out each angle. Ryne’s glare, which would make most people at least take a step back if not wither away, tracks me over his shoulder. “Jeans and boots. Plaid shirt with a white tee underneath, tight but not too tight. And a hat.” He’d slipped a hat on just now. “Check, check, check, check.” Ryne slams his locker closed and turns to face me with his arms crossed over his chest. It makes his biceps look massive, like he could bench-press five of
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So, glares? Scowls? Yeah, those types of expressions are what I’m comfortable with. They’re safe and easy and keep annoying people and their stupid sympathetic stares away. You glare and frown at someone long enough and they eventually give up and leave you alone.
“Okay, okay. Tacos first, then orgasms.” Dacen leans in and smiles against my lips. “That’s basically my perfect day.”
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One look at your eyes tells me so.” “My eyes,” I deadpan. He nods and turns over on his side, facing me. “You’re full of shit, Dacen. They’re just boring blue irises with a black hole in the center, all surrounded by white. How does that tell you anything?” “First of all, they’re not boring and they’re not just blue. Staring into your eyes is like taking a walk down a pebble beach early on a foggy morning. Blue and grey stones surround you. They’re soft and smooth but can also be painful if you step wrong.” Dacen’s voice trails off and his eyes bore into me with an intensity that’s almost
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I stare at him, unblinking, while he mutters something under his breath about Southern boys, and I hear a Lord have mercy as well.
I suck in a breath. Swallowing hard, I look back up at the sky in silence, searching for answers to questions I haven’t voiced out loud, let alone allowed to become more than a faint whisper in my head. The bright sky and fluffy white clouds don’t hold the answers I seek, but I do know one thing, well, two things. I turn my head toward him again. “I asked Lily to make tacos for lunch specifically because you were coming over. And yes, you made me laugh earlier with the whole alphabetizing thing.”
How desperate does it make me if I sleep in his shirt? I decide since nobody can see me it makes me not desperate—kinda like the whole ‘if a tree falls in a forest and nobody’s around to hear it does it really make a sound’ thing—and
The constant back and forth, the combination of his sharp, curt actions followed by soft words, the almost vulnerable expressions that slip out, it’s all bewildering. Trying to understand Ryne is like trying to navigate a complex labyrinth while blindfolded. Sometimes you’re lucky and manage to fumble your way around the correct corner. Only unbeknownst to you, a cunning warlock has surreptitiously shifted the walls, and once again you’re headed in the wrong direction. It’s not even a ‘one step forward, two steps back' kind of thing with him. It’s more like a ‘one step forward, two leaps into
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I hear the teasing underneath his words, but jealousy still swirls through me. Not because it’s Trisley, even I can appreciate that she’s beautiful. It’s more so because of the annoying voice of insecurity that likes to pop up in the back of my mind and wreak havoc with comments like, What’s he see in me? I’m not special, not any more than any other person at school. What’s to say his eyes won’t drift to something brighter and better and move on? I know they’re ridiculous thoughts. But then again, are they? After all, he only seems to want the physical stuff and he can get that from almost
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I rub one hand over my eyes and drag it down my face. I sound like a clingy brat even to my own ears. In my defense, Ryne has his own bouts of jealousy from time to time. He doesn’t act like a petulant child about it though. He gets all alpha-asshole.
The way his eyes light up with his barely contained laughter should be illegal. They’re like two supernovas coming at me through the phone.
My heart is still pounding. I’m not sure if he intentionally made a play on words, but regardless, I need all his words right now. They calm me and ground me in a way nobody and nothing else has before, even when they’re dirty.
My shoulders rise and fall with a heavy sigh, and her eyes soften a degree or two when I raise mine to meet hers. “I’m not trying to hurt him, Evie.” “I believe you, but the choices you make affect more than just yourself.” “I am very much aware of that.” My jaw tightens. “Okay. So you’re a smart guy. Make better choices. At least when it comes to Dacen.” She hops down and starts to walk away but turns back around. “And Ryne?” I raise an eyebrow and wait for her to speak. “You’re a good person, too. You deserve to be happy. You both do.”
Much as I might wish it, I’m not a robot and some emotion slipped through the cracks and snuck its way inside me. And it sucks. Emotions suck. They truly, truly suck. They’re all kinds of tricky. They do what they want, when they want, and don’t listen to reason. When you stop and think about it, we’re basically all being controlled by a bunch of toddlers. Who needs that? And when they’re conspiring with the heart? It becomes a cluster of misunderstandings and unmet expectations.
It’s been awkward during class and at our lockers, but the attraction and pull between us is as strong as ever, relentless even with the tension. Maybe even more so because of it. There’s this constant force vibrating between us. It’s kind of like when you try to push the same side of two magnets together, and they push and push to get away from each other, but then in the commotion, one of them somehow flips around and they violently collide.
He somehow stole a piece of my heart with that first scowl. And he’s stolen the rest of it in bits since then. The problem though when someone steals your heart is when they inevitably get buyer’s remorse—or would it be thief’s remorse?—and try to return it, it doesn’t fit back into place the same way. It’s different. When your heart gets stolen right from under your nose, it permanently changes. It shifts and transforms. It’s not in the same condition anymore when it gets shoved back at you.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing of all is that beneath his exterior, buried under the indifference and all the snark, Ryne has one of the purest hearts I’ve ever met in my entire eighteen years of life. I’ve seen how he cares for his sister and how he always backs his friends, I’ve felt it myself over and over again. He’s a good guy in asshole clothing.
He doesn’t want me, not fully, not really. And that really freaking sucks because my heart unfortunately already belongs to him. He owns it, whether he wants it or not, and if he completely walks away, I’m basically screwed. He can lob my heart back over to me as he runs but it’ll be all misshapen and sad. I’m not sure there’s any coming back from that kind of damage, not easily anyway.
Dacen scoffs. “Then you need glasses. I have been nothing but honest with you from the beginning. I’ve been myself this entire time, including all the weird shit that comes along with being me, and…” He pauses like he can’t find the words. “I just…” He throws his arms up. “I don’t know what else I can do, what else I can say. All I know how to do is be me. And if that’s not enough for you—” He chokes up and blinks rapidly. “Then that’s a you-problem, Ryne. Not a me-problem. If you can’t or don’t trust me, that’s on you.
The problem with words is once you speak them, you can’t un-speak them. You can’t click Ctrl+Z and undo them. The damage is done.
I clamp my jaw together and grit my teeth. My heart and brain war with each other, and I need the words that want to escape, the truth that I’m not good enough for him, I’m not worth it and he’s so much better off without me, I need those words to stay the fuck put.
“I think you’re just scared, Ryne,” Dacen whispers, rubbing his thumb along my jaw. “Putting your,” he swallows hard. “Putting your heart in someone else’s hands is a scary thing. They can choose to hold it close and cherish it, or rip it apart and walk away, leaving you with a shredded mess and no hope of piecing it back together unchanged. Scary shit,” he laughs shakily. “And confusing. It’s a lot to deal with,
He drew me in with his sexy face and wicked smirks. And he warned me, way back on that picnic table, he told me what would happen; he’d eat me alive. And that’s ultimately exactly what happened. There’s something in him that burns wicked-hot—and not in the ‘he’s hot as hell’ way. And you can’t reach into the fire and expect to not get at least a little bit scorched. I reached into the flames. I got burned. If only I could forget the taste of him, forget the feel of his skin against mine. If only I could forget how he’d twisted and turned and wound his way through my brain, my body, and my
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I love Ryne. And that figures. Of course I fall in love with one of the most emotionally closed guys I’ve ever met.
Noah chuckles. “I think this is one of those moments where we’re supposed to say things like ‘it takes time, you have to give yourself time to heal' or whatever other bullshit sentiments apply.” “Noah!” Evie chastises him, but I actually laugh. He smirks and continues. “That crap never helps anything. And honestly? Shocking as it is because he’s Mr. Aloof, the two of you make sense. Nobody who’s seen you within five hundred feet of each other would disagree. You’re drawn to each other.” He holds his hands shoulder-width apart and brings them together quickly, smacking them together when they
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A splintered, useless heart, that’s what I’ve got to show for all this. Every time Dacen’s near, those splinters dig further in. These cuts, they run deep. Emotions suck. Really and truly suck. I don’t want them or need them, and yet I find myself welcoming the pain. Things with Dacen had been great while it lasted, not perfect but so good. Then reality inevitably came crashing down and the pain is a reminder that my fucked-up self is too fucked up for anything truly good.
The writing’s been on the wall ever since, hell, ever since camp. We were doomed from the start, and it’s my fucking fault.” Evan speaks up. “Then erase it.” “What?” “Don’t give us that ‘writing on the wall’ bullshit, Ryne. Change it. Rewrite it. Own your shit, man. Ya done fucked up but if you care about him—and you do—then fight for him, instead of standing here stewing like a miserable bastard.”
I give him a sad smile. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect him. That’s just the way it is. Too bad I couldn’t figure out a way to protect him from me.
I wish I could rewind time, all the way back to the first day of soccer camp, and rewrite history.
My eyes drink him up like I’ve been walking through the desert for two weeks and he’s the last glass of water on the planet.
“Do you think maybe we can, I don’t know, hang out sometime or something?” Dacen’s smirk drops off and he kind of sags back against the Jeep beside me. “I can’t, Ryne. I can’t just be your friend. I can’t sit there while you’re all ‘hey, dude, bruh, how’s it hanging?’ and watch you eventually date someone else. Oh, my bad, not date. Just ‘mess around with.’” He uses air quotes around the last sentence. He’s still hurt, and clearly still pissed. But damn it, he’s so gorgeous when he’s being a sarcastic sassy ass and I miss him so much. I bite back a smile; it would so not help my case right
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His eyebrows pinch together, and he glares at me stonily. “Don’t stand there and try to smooth things over with your cute face, Ryne. Rare and hot as your smiles are, they aren’t the antidote to this shit fest.”
“But that’s the thing, Ryne. I don’t think you’ve worked out all your head-shit yet.” He makes a circular motion in front of my face. It pisses me off a little because who really ever has all their head-shit figured out? Show me that person and I’ll show you a liar.
“You okay, bud?” I throw down everything in my hands and rest my elbows on the wooden tool bench, then rub the heels of my palms over my eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Fuck—shit, sorry. Ugh, damn it, my bad. I don’t know anymore.”
With a deep breath in and a forceful exhale, I feel like I’ve drawn in a fresh start and finally let go of the past. I give myself permission to be who I want to be and do what I want to do.
You’re quick to assume the worst in certain types of situations. But to be overly frank, not everyone you let yourself care about is going to die or leave. Sometimes you have to give people the benefit of the doubt and take a chance. Now you have to ask yourself, what do you really want?” “Dacen.” The answer is fast off my lips as soon as he finishes the question. Nathan pats me on the shoulder. “Then you need to apologize from your heart, tell him how you feel. You have to be vulnerable, Ryne. The hard part is he might not forgive you, but if you don’t put yourself out there why should he?”
Evan stands, picks up his bag, and turns to me again. “I’m not saying he’s not a difficult asshole, Dacen, but he’s different since, well, since you. He smiles more, real smiles. He’s one of my best friends, and though I’ll probably never admit this out loud again in my life because he’d kick my ass, it’s been hard watching him over the years. There’s always, I don’t know, a heavy weight dragging him down. He’s been through some rough shit. But since you showed up here?” He shrugs. “It’s like he can breathe again or something.
He’s a glass teetering on the edge, about to fall and shatter. I’ll always be there to pick up his pieces from now on, but if there’s something I can do to lessen the impact of the fall or prevent the crash in the first place, I’ll make damn sure I do it.
“Yeah, it’s pretty intense. Anxiety’s a bitch. I need to figure out a way to tell it to fuck off I guess.”
“I love you, Dacen,” I whisper to his sleeping body and kiss the top of his head. The last thought I have before I’m totally out is that I am absolutely where I’m meant to be, with the person I’m meant to be with. And that thought doesn’t scare me at all.
