Falling to Pieces (14 page)

“Don’t you dare say the word fine to me one more time. You’re
not
fine. You’re hiding again.” Without waiting for me to finish what I was doing—which was absolutely nothing—Kiernan slammed my locker shut and dragged me off to a deserted alcove near the cafeteria.

It seemed I wasn’t the only one who knew the best places to disappear at school. But why would Kiernan Parks ever need to hide? I swallowed hard against the lump forming in my throat. If he exerted even two ounces of effort, he could rule the place.

“Is this about what
Caulder said?”

“No.”

“Then it’s your mother. What did she do to you last night?”

“Nothing.” I gave up the
futile attempt at escape I’d been trying to make. The look on his face said he wasn’t letting me go until he got some answers. “She’s never laid a hand on me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Kiernan’s shoulders slouched, bringing him closer to my eye level. "There are different kinds of wounds people can inflict on us, Jade. Just because yours aren't physical doesn't mean they aren't there. Just because they aren't visible doesn't mean I can't see them."

He always had a way of making my heart melt in the absolute worst way. He reached right inside that locked box like he was the key and smashed it all to pieces. But that box was my safe place, my protection. I needed it.

“Kiernan . . . I can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what?”

“This.” My hand waved between the two of us. “Whatever it is we’re doing, I can’t. I’m sorry. I really am.”

I expected confusion, maybe even anger. I was sure Kiernan Parks wasn’t used to being dumped. Especially by the likes of me. But I didn’t get either. I didn’t get anything. He just stood there, watching me until he simply said, “No.”

“No?”

“No, Jade. I’m not letting you do this. I’m not going to let you push me away. You’re scared. I get that. Believe me. I’m scared, too. But I can’t let you do this. I can’t stand here and watch you crawl back inside that shell of yours. I won’t give up on you, Jade. Not ever.”

The feel of his fingers lightly tracing my jaw, the warmth in his touch, the understanding burning in his eyes, all of it made me almost forget where we were. When he leaned into me, my heart rate sped up.
We were at school, in a hallway, someone could walk by at any second. Students, teachers. This was definitely against the rules. We were probably going to get in trouble. But Kiernan didn’t seem to care any more than I did.

His lips barely brushed mine at first, asking permission. He had it. He absolutely had it.
Screw white flags and boxes. Doing this with him may have been scary and hard, but doing it without him was impossible. Pushing up onto my toes, I pressed my lips to his. My hands balled the front of his shirt and I held on for dear life as his arms came around me. I’d never kissed a boy in public before—not even Doug—but I’d never felt safer in my entire life than right then and there.

Fourteen

Come outside.

I stared at my phone, blinking away sleep, convinced I must be dreaming. The clock on my nightstand read 11:15. And Kiernan was texting me? To ‘come outside’?

Why?

I waited anxiously for his reply, already rooting through my dresser for a pair of pants to pull on. If he was here at this hour, something must be wrong.

Bring a coat. There’s something I want
to show you.

Show me? I rubbed my eyes and tied on my sneakers. It had better be a winning lottery ticket.

The wind nipped at my cheeks and fingers as I pulled the main door shut. Kiernan was standing on the sidewalk in front of his car, waiting for me.

“What’s going on?”

“Sorry.” He grimaced, reaching for my hand as I drew near. “Did I wake you?”

You look like you just rolled out of bed.

“It is kind of late,” I pointed out needlessly, running my fingers through my tangled hair.

“Yeah, I guess it is.
I’m sorry. I don’t always sleep great.” He opened the passenger side door and lowered me in before rounding the hood and slipping in beside me. “I thought I’d go do something I love to do, and I wanted to bring you with me. But if you’re tired, I can—”

“No. I want to come.” He’d piqued my interest.
More than anything, I wanted to know what it was Kiernan Parks ‘loved to do’ in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep.

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.” I was
absolutely
sure . . . until he pulled into the turn-off where he’d taken me hiking. Then I was beginning to have second thoughts about this particular adventure. “What are we doing here?”

“We’re going back to our spot.”

Okay, hiking Mount Everest, in the dark of night, during a blizzard would have been worth hearing him call it ‘our spot’. Climbing out of the car, I pulled my jacket more tightly around my shoulders and rubbed my hands together.

“Here.” Kiernan popped the trunk and pulled out a thick woolen, overcoat. “Use this.”

He dropped it over my shoulders and I gratefully threaded my arms through the heavy sleeves as he pulled a few more items from the trunk and tucked them in his backpack.

“Is this a tutoring session?”

Kiernan looped his arm through mine and graced me with one of his stunning smiles. And those dimples. “Not exactly.”

The light of the moon was bright enough that our progress wasn’t entirely treacherous. Even when we turned off the main path and picked our way through the thicker undergrowth, we made decent time. Kiernan never let go of my arm, guiding me over and around obstacles in my path.

The clouds had made for a nice view the last time we were there, but they had absolutely nothing on the starts shining above us that night. Twinkling on a backdrop of endless blackness, they winked, and blinked, and shone with incredible light.

I’d never been stargazing before.
Halfmoon wasn’t exactly the kind of place you wanted to be wandering around alone at night. It was magnificent

“You like it?” Kiernan tugged a blanket from his bag and spread it over the tall grass.

“It’s beautiful.”

“That’s not even the best part.”

I settled in beside Kiernan on the ground and sighed when I felt his arm come around my shoulders.

“What’s the best part?”
I asked, though I was pretty sure I already knew.

“You’ll have to wait and see.” Reaching in his bag of goodies again, he came out with a thermos
. I wasn’t a fan when he had to remove his arm to pour, but the rich chocolaty scent soon changed my mind. “This should keep us warm.”

Good glory almighty, it was like a triple fudge brownie had melted on my tongue. It was heaven, and nirvana, and perfection in a cup. “That’s delicious.”

“Old family recipe with a secret ingredient.”

“Really?” I took another sip, holding the steaming liquid on my tongue for as long as I could
stand to. I wanted to permanently imprint that taste on my taste buds for all of eternity.

“Nah. It’s just cinnamon, but it’s good, right?”

“Understatement of the century.”

Kiernan chuckled as I regretfully passed the mug off to him to share the deliciousness. “Still not the best part.”

Somehow I didn’t think that could possibly be true. “So what’s this ‘best part’ you keep talking about?”

“It’s not time yet. Patience
, grasshopper.”

“Did you just call me a bug?”
I was pretty sure he had, but all was forgiven the instant he passed that cup back.

“I told you to have patience. Come here.” Kiernan
lay back on the blanket and tugged me down beside him.

Careful not to spill my drink—
because that would have been a crime against humanity—I snuggled up beside him and let his body heat do for my outsides what the hot chocolate was doing for my insides. Huddled together, we stared up at the stars in the sky and waited. For what, I had no idea. And didn’t care one bit.

“Let’s play a game
,” Kiernan offered.

“What kind of game?”

“A get to know you better game.”

That sounded . . . ominous. “How do you play?”

“We take turns asking each other questions.”

I shifted to look over at Kiernan. As much as I wanted to know everything there was to know about that boy, I was convinced the more he knew about me the sooner he’d be gone. “Do we have to answer?”

His eyes sought out mine thought the darkness and held. “Not if you don’t want to. I’ll go first.” He broke eye contact, rolling his head to look once again at the sky, and I prepared for the worst. “What’s your favorite animal?”

My relief escaped me in the form of a laugh. “My favorite animal? Dogs, I guess. What about you?”

“Hippos.” He said it so matter-of-factly, I almost laughed again.

“Your favorite animal is a hippopotamus?”

“Yeah. Everyone thinks they’re the rhino’s poor cousin or whatever, but I don’t think people give hippos enough credit. You know they can swallow a person in one bite?”

“And that makes you
like
them?” His reasoning skills were a little lost on me.

“I think they deserve more respect, that’s all. And they’re pretty freaking cool to look at. Your turn.”

“Ummm . . .” I wracked my brain for anything to say. Something I actually had a non-embarrassing answer to. “What’s your favorite . . . subject?”

“Do you really need to ask?” No, I did not. He tutored me in it
, for crying out loud. “What’s yours?”

“Well, not chemistry, obviously.”

“Ouch.” Kiernan threw a dramatic hand over his heart.

“I like the tutoring sessions just fine, but the class is kind of a nightmare.”

“So what class do you like?”

“English.”

Kiernan ‘hmmed’ like that meant something to him and scrunched up his brow in concentration. "What's your favorite color?"

“Brown. Yours?”

“Brown? Really? Isn’t that kind of ugly? Don’t girls usually like pink, or purple, or some weirdly
named combination of the two?”

“Maybe, but I like brown. Your turn.”

“What if I said fuchsia?”

“I’d probably laugh at you.”

The moonlight made his smile glow. “Then
green.”

“So predictable.”

“Hey, I’m
a traditionalist. What can I say? It’s a classic for a reason.”

“Okay . . .” It was my turn and, as much as it scared me, I was determined to dig deeper than benign nonsense. I wanted to know something
real. Something substantial. “What’s your passion?”

“My passion?”

“Yeah, what are you passionate about?”

Kiernan thought about it for a long time before answering. “Life.”

I considered calling it a bullshit answer—like wishing for more wishes—but he said it with such reverence that I believed it was true.

“You?”

That one was easy. “Writing.”

“You write?”
Kiernan’s head snapped toward me and I felt my cheeks heat.

“
Mm-hmm.” I’d never told anyone about my writing before, but I wanted Kiernan to be the first.

“What do you write?”

“Stories.”

“Alright, smart ass. What kind of stories?”

“All different kinds. Sometimes I write a few at once. Whatever I feel like. It’s sort of . . . an escape. From reality.”

I could see in his eyes that Kiernan understood why I might need that. “What do you do with the stories you write?”

I shrugged. I’d never really considered
doing
anything with them. “I save them. I have notebooks full of—”

“You
hand
write them?”

“No
, computer.” The shrugging was back, this time mainly out of disgrace.

“Oh, right.” He laid
there on his back staring up at the stars twinkling above us as I studied his profile. “Hmm . . . that was a good question. The next one I had lined up about your favorite food just seems lame now.”

I laughed, grateful tha
t he’d lightened things up. As much as I wanted to know him on a deeper level, intimacy sort of scared the ever-loving crap out of me. “Shrimp.”

“
Mmm. Good choice. But I think I like a classic burger better.”

“Traditionalist?” I teased and Kiernan rolled
over, propping himself up on an elbow to grin at me.

“What can I say?” He paused, his eyes roaming over my face. I couldn’t see them well in the dark, but I could feel them on my skin. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”

I considered lying, or maybe saying nothing at all, but in the end I went with the truth. Kiernan wouldn’t have accepted anything less. “I don’t.”

A frown marred his perfect face. “I know.”

“But you almost make me believe it.” I smiled up at him.

He
smiled back, tucking stray hairs behind my ear as his face moved closer. “I will. I will make you believe it.” His nose skimmed along the side of mine setting off little fireworks in its wake. “Because it’s the truth. And you deserve to know.”

I
kept my mouth shut, allowing him to have his moment. To make his declaration and believe it, even knowing it would never come true. I just couldn’t see what he saw in me because it simply didn’t exist. But then his lips were on mine and the truth, reality, imagination, and wishful thinking all ceased to matter. All that mattered was us. Him and me, and this moment we’d somehow found ourselves in.

A gasp escaped my lips when he suddenly pulled back and cocked his head to the side,
reminding me strangely of a puppy. ”Listen. It’s coming!”

“What’s coming?”

“Just listen.”

Closing my eyes, I focused on hearing whatever it was he was hearing. A low rumble was
carrying from somewhere downhill. My ears perked up and I listened harder trying to figure out what it was. When a low, mournful horn blasted through the silent night, I had my answer.

“Is that a train?”

“The midnight train. One rolls through every night. Listening to it is one of my favorite things in the world. If we’re lucky, it’ll be a long one.”

Lying there beside him, I already felt like the luckiest person alive. I scooted closer and his arm slipped beneath me, holding me to his side. The train did sound eerily beautiful, but it was nothing compared to the sound of his heart beating slow and steady beneath my cheek.

“You know what?” Kiernan’s whisper tickled my eyelashes.

“What?”

“I think my favorite thing in the world just got a million times better.”

“I love you.” The words came without a single thought because they’d bypassed my brain entirely, traveling directly from heart to mouth. And for once, I wasn’t embarrassed. Because they were true.

The hurt in Kiernan’s eyes was not the reaction I was hoping for. “You shouldn’t say that.”

“Why not?
I mean it.”

A cloud slid over the moon, hiding his face from me, but I could feel his breath accelerate against my skin. “Dammit, Jade, I love you, too.
I’ve tried to fight it, I really have, but you make it damn near impossible.”

“I don’t understand. Why fight it?”

“Because I don’t want to hurt you.”

“How could loving me possibly hurt?”

The clouds swept on by, allowing me a glimpse of whatever it was flashing in Kiernan’s eyes. “Trust me, love can be the most painful thing there is.”

As usual when talking to Kiernan, I was left in a verbal cloud of confusion, but
I didn’t care. He loved me. Kiernan Parks loved
me
. And I loved him. He had this way of reaching inside me and touching my soul. I wanted to do that to him. Lifting my chin high enough to reach his lips, I kissed him with everything I had in me. His hands snaked up my back to tangle in my hair, and for a long time we were lost in each other as the longest train in the history of the world chugged by.