Count On Me(58)

I feel the heat rise in my cheeks and I try to bury my face in his chest. Not letting me hide from him, he leans down and uses his hand to bring my face up until I’m looking only look at him.

“Tell me.”

Holding up my hand, I lift three fingers, bringing the other two down and smile again. Taking his hand and pressing it to mine he pulls the fourth finger up and meets my smile with one of his own.

“I’m just gonna pull the last finger up too, okay? Because you’re totally gonna do it again.”

He brings my pinky finger up until our hands are completely open and pressed together. Blushing and lowering my head, it slips past my lips and I’m not sure which one of us is more shocked by it.

It was one thing when I smiled at him, my first real smile for someone other than my family, but this is something else entirely. Laughing is something I really don’t remember doing at all and here I am doing it and all it took was him.

“Holy shit! You just laughed.”

The minute I smile again, he grins at me and nods toward our hands.

“I told you.”

With everything that’s happened I haven’t paid much attention to how close we really are to each other. When he lifted my chin so that he could see me, it put our faces in perfect proportion to each other. Noticing it now reminded me of the time in the park when we had been this close and exactly what happened because of it.

The way his eyes are looking down at me, tender, just like my mom told me earlier, I know what’s about to happen next. I’m just not sure I’m ready for it.

“Belle, I am so…”

He stops himself and his eyes go wide, like he can’t believe what he was about to say and it annoys me because I really want him to finish his thought. Pulling my hand away from his, I start typing. At the exact moment I hit send, he slides the phone out of my hand and lays it down on the other side of him. It’s only when he does the same with his phone that I start to worry what he’s about to do next.

He knows that’s the only way we can communicate, at least it is until I can talk to my doctor, so taking it away is only going to make things uncomfortable and right now that’s the last thing I want.

“No more phones, Belle. I don’t want to talk anymore.”



Kayden



Sitting here with her like this, I’m starting to remember things that for whatever reason I pushed out of my mind. Well, I know why I pushed it all down, because it came from my mom before she split, but why I’m thinking about it now really doesn’t make any sense.

I wasn’t always a total ass. I used to be a pretty good kid or at least that’s how I remember it anyway. I made friends easily with everyone in the neighborhood, helped people when I saw they needed it and generally had a pretty good time. It’s only when she bailed that everything seemed to change and I became the person that’s sitting with Isabelle now.

Well, maybe not the person sitting with her because I’m not sure what version of me is sitting here right now. I like to think it’s a middle ground between the good kid I used to be and the monster I became when she split. I’m not stupid enough to think I’ve been cured of the asshole gene, but I know I’m not as big a one as I was before.

It’s the way Isabelle smiled at me and when she laughed that’s bringing all of these old memories back to the surface. For whatever reason, she’s here and she’s giving me this chance to be someone that’s worthy of her. I never want to lose that or let her down. I’m afraid though. With everything she’s bringing to the surface inside of me that letting her down is exactly what I’m going to do.

Deep down, I’m exactly like my brother and my father before him. It’s my own mother’s words that slam it home to me and it makes me want to bail, even though doing that would break everything I worked so hard to build with the beautiful girl in my arms right now.

“I had one wish before you were born and it was that you wouldn’t turn out like me and your daddy. I wanted you to be better than that, better than us.”

I don’t really remember much about my dad. I know he was a pretty mean drunk and more than once beat on my mom and maybe even Dean. The thing is, her wish never came true because neither one of us turned out any better than them. Maybe that’s part of the reason she took off. She didn’t want to see me and Dean turn into what we are now.

We really are our father’s sons. We’re both filled with a rage that even beating on each other never seems to cure. We’re angry and lonely at the same time. We’re lost and every single day it feels like we’re drowning with no way to be saved.