Take Me On(72)

Her chest expands and she yawns. “Why didn’t you graduate?”

“Because I was stupid.” A nauseating pit forms in my gut. Stupid—it’s what Lila must assume about me. A moron who can’t put two words together to form a sentence, a moron who can’t add, a moron who didn’t graduate. But that’s not what happened. I didn’t graduate because I stopped caring.

Lila closes her eyes and lazily mumbles, “You’re not stupid. I’ve read all your letters—several times. You’re a good writer. And you got a twenty-nine on your ACT. That’s hardly stupid.” She pauses. “Not unless that was a lie, too.”

“It wasn’t,” I say. “I only lied about graduating.”

“What about getting in to the University of Florida?” she asks. “You told me you were accepted through early admission.”

“I was,” I answer. “But admittance was contingent on graduating.” I struggle to find the right words. How do I prove to her that I’m not lying? “I’ll send you my official ACT scores. I’ll send you my acceptance letter. Whatever you need in order to believe me.”

“I believe you.” She’s motionless long enough that I wonder if she’s drifted to sleep. Then she pats my knee and whispers, “Tell me what happened.”

Lila removes her hand, but my skin still burns from her touch. She believes me. Maybe, someday, she’ll trust me. I prop my elbow on the arm of the couch and lean my head against my fist. I should keep my other arm resting on the back of the couch. Instead, I cave to temptation and snake it around her body. She nuzzles closer to me in response. For a girl who is just my friend—just a pen pal—this feels incredibly right.

“Lincoln?” she urges.

“We should wait until morning,” I say.

“It is morning. And I’m impatient.”

I chuckle. She is. Lila informed me of her unhappiness anytime a letter from me ran a day later than she thought it should have. I take a deep breath and jump.

“I began skipping in the fall and then skipped more days than I should have. By the time I realized I hadn’t earned enough classroom hours to graduate, I was already screwed.”

Her eyes flicker open. “Did you skip because you missed Josh?”

Hearing his name on her lips causes my chest to jerk. The familiar, unwanted pain spreads from my heart to my brain. She’ll never know him. Never meet him. “Yeah, Josh. And everything else.”

I told her in several letters that I had skipped. That when I woke in the morning and felt the emptiness of Josh’s death, the burden of feeding a baby, the anger of listening to my parents argue, I’d feel like I’d explode if I didn’t break free. So I’d drive to the state park and climb until my fingers bled.

Her head rocks in my lap. “I should have seen it coming.”

“Seen what coming?”

“That when you can’t handle things, you run.” She wrote the same criticism in her letters to me when I told her I had skipped school.

“I don’t,” I say.

Her only response is the rush of air blowing out of her mouth.

“I don’t,” I repeat with the stubbornness of a dog gripping a chewed-up slipper in its jaws.

Lila fiddles with the frayed corner of the blanket. “Today was your graduation day and you drove here to see me.”

“So?”

She shrugs. “Only stating the evidence.”

“I came here for you.” The tension in my muscles begs me to shift, but if I do, I’ll give Lila an excuse to move. “You were upset with me.”

A nagging pang of guilt causes my spine to straighten. What I said, it’s not a lie. I came here for Lila. But then I remember my mom and dad fighting, the way Meg panicked when I asked her to hold the baby, and the nausea when I considered telling my parents about my failure.

Then my mind redirects to how summer school starts in forty-eight hours—on Monday. I drove here with the intention of telling Lila that I was going to fix everything, but all I really wanted was to mend things between us. I rub a hand over my head. Is Lila right? Am I running from the real issues in my life?

“I’m not running,” I say one more time. Even I notice the doubt in my voice.

“Whatever,” she mumbles, exhaustion weighing down her words. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because...” Because she’d be disappointed in me. Because I was disappointed in myself. Because her dreams became my dreams and I failed us both. Because I was chicken shit.

Two years ago, Lila began writing about the University of Florida. She talked about it enough that I checked out the school. Way before I fell for Lila, I fell for the dream of heading to another state for school. To possibly gain my degree in forest resource and conservation; to work around rock walls for a living.

How the hell could I lose sight of my future?

My right leg begins to tingle and all I can think about is getting up, walking around, heading back to the campsite, exploring the trails—even in the dark—and finding a rock wall. Then I glance down at the beauty cuddled close to me.

Her breathing becomes light and she flinches in her sleep. The baby does the same thing when he enters REM sleep. I tuck the blanket around her and permit myself to touch her hair one more time.

No, I’m not a runner. Not this time. She’ll have more hard questions, and I’m determined to answer them—standing right in front of her. It’s time I start facing the problems in my life instead of avoiding them. It’s time that I create a plan and follow it through. And hopefully, Lila will forgive me and be by my side as I go forward.

“I didn’t want you to hate me,” I whisper as I respond to her last question. “Because I’ve fallen in love with you.”





Chapter 8




Lila

I thought of you when I climbed today. You should try it sometime. I think you’d enjoy the rush.

~ Lincoln

My entire body seizes at the sound of pounding. I jump, my hands flail, and then I finally crash onto the hardwood floor, a disheveled mess. That crack had to be my tailbone. “Ow.”

I blink several times as I nurse my lower back. What am I doing in the living room?

“You okay?” The gravelly, sleep-deprived voice causes my heart to thump hard once. My eyes dart above me to the couch. Lincoln stretches his arms over his head. Absolutely amazing. He slept sitting up, holding me, the entire night.

“Morning,” he says. His gorgeous eyes fall on me, and my cheeks warm when the corners of his mouth lift. Echo would make fun of me for the silly smile forming on my face.

Feeling suddenly shy and self-conscious, I comb my hair with my hand. Oh, hell, tangles. Why, why, why do I always wake up resembling a troll? “Hi.”

The doorbell rings several times and the pounding resumes. Sunlight streams through the venetian blinds. The brightness definitely hints at more of a midday than a morning situation. “It’s probably Stephen,” I say.

Lincoln’s head jerks. “Your ex?”

I’ll admit it. I sort of like the alpha-male pissed-off stare he’s got going on. I scramble off the floor and for once heed my mother’s Post-it note advice by glancing through the peephole. Nope, not the ex. Which is good since Lincoln looks annoyed enough to chop the boy into deer steaks.

“Lila!” Grace yells. “Are you in there?”

“Yes!” I shout back to my former best friend. “Give me a sec, Grace.”

I turn to explain to Lincoln that it’s Grace and ram right into his chest. Both of his hands land on my shoulders to steady me. “I thought you two weren’t on speaking terms after what happened with Echo.”

“We aren’t. Which is why I need to answer. The world must have collapsed into a zombie apocalypse if she’s here.”

His grip on my shoulders changes into a massage that causes me to close my eyes. He could touch me like that for the rest of my life and I’d never move. “Then answer,” he says.

My stomach knots into a big ball of dread. Lincoln’s appearance screams that he just rolled out of bed and I’m in my pj’s and my parents are out of town and Grace is a huge gossip. “Crap!”

“I can hide,” he says as if reading my mind. His hands slide off my shoulders and I have to fight the urge to pout. “But you’d have to explain my car.”

I brighten for two point one seconds and then deflate. “I’m not that creative.”

“I’ll give you a few minutes alone with her. Maybe she won’t notice the car.” Lincoln starts down the hallway, then pauses to eye me in a way that suggests my clothes are riding up. “You look good right now. All rumpled and drowsy.”

The back of my neck explodes with heat, and I immediately focus on the muscles of his biceps. Lincoln flashes a flirtatious grin, grabs an extra pair of jeans from his backpack, which leans against the door to my room, and disappears into the bathroom. Good Lord, he’s hot.

Tangled thoughts of him and me muddle my groggy brain. He touches me and talks to me as if we’ve known each other forever. Is it possible he’s into me, too? As more than friends?

Grace resumes her banging. I bat at the hair sticking on top of my head and open the front door. “Hey.”