All Falls Down (21 page)

I didn't really think she would anyway.

"Why are you so quiet tonight, beautiful girl?" Jared asks later that evening as we sit side by side on the porch swing, trying to give the girls privacy to say goodbye before Kit moves back to her dorm.

"I'm just thinking." I close my eyes and inhale.

Everything smells of spring, and I love the scent – freshly mown grass, warm dirt, and flowers. It reminds me of the Gardens, and the carefree days of youth. The ones right after mom and I moved here, when she wasn't tired of me and the only disparity I noticed between me and the girls was physical.

I was a knobby-kneed, mousy kid. They were beautiful. Even Madeline, who was just a toddler, was beautiful with her blonde ringlets and porcelain skin. I wasn't a charity case then. I was just a twelve-year-old kid with three lazy summer months stretching out before me.

"Thinking about what?" Jared asks, his arm thrown over the back of the swing. He tugs lightly at a strand of my hair, playing with it. It's the most physical contact we've had outside the confines of the guesthouse since that day at the Gardens.

During the days, we're just friends. We put on our act and give no one a reason to suspect there's anything more going on between us. But each night, when the guesthouse door closes behind him, we shed the masks we put on for everyone else and become us again. The
us
that touches and loves and desires. The
us
that's new and good and is better than anything else I've ever experienced. The
us
that I spend the hours of my days wanting to lose myself in.

He stays until I fall asleep each night, and returns to wake me with soft kisses and sweet words as the sun climbs over the horizon before he heads off to deal with T.I. It's not a perfect arrangement, but from the time the girls go to sleep until the time they wake up, he's mine. At midnight each night, my fairytale begins.

It's more than I've ever had.

"Savannah?" he asks, shifting toward me. "What's wrong?"

Concern swims in his gaze.

"Nothing's wrong," I say, though I'm not sure exactly how true that is. There's nothing any more wrong than usual. It's just that my mind bounces again and again to my conversation with Kit this afternoon, and I hate where it leads me.

"I quit school for Toby," I blurt out.

Jared knows this already, but I need to hear it out loud. I need to say it out loud again, I think.

Storm clouds roll through his eyes. His fingers slip through my hair, but he doesn't say anything.

"I'm not even sure why," I continue. "I worked so hard to get my scholarship, and then I just let him tell me that I had to give it up. You'd think I'd know why, but I realized today that I don't." Like so much else in my life, there is no definitive reason I can point to. There is no specific memory I can pull up and say, "This right here is where I became that girl. The one who gives up her dreams because some guy tells her that she has to."

It happened gradually. He didn't want me wearing certain things, so I didn't. He didn't want me talking to certain people, so I didn't. He wanted me to go to Italy with him instead of to England, so I did. He told me I had to quit school or find somewhere else to live, so I quit. His constant berating wore me down until I lost myself little by little, piece by piece, more willing to give up my dreams than to deal with him screaming names at me and throwing things.

No matter how hard I think about it, I can't figure out where it started, or why.

Even now, after thinking all day, I still don't know.

All I know is that I let him turn me into that cowardly girl.

I want to be someone else, someone who doesn't let fear stand in her way.

"I want to go back to school," I announce quietly.

Part of me expects Jared to tell me no, not because he's anything like Toby, but because Toby is the only standard of measure I have. Instinctively, I know Jared is as different from him as the sun is from the moon, but part of me still expects him to say no anyway.

He smiles at me instead, pride in his eyes. "I'll take you to register next week."

No argument. No fuss. Just instant acceptance of what I want.

"Where do you want to go?" he asks.

"I'm not sure." I haven't really thought it through that far. "Probably City College. They have literature classes."

"They do."

"I just want to take a class or two, get back into the swing of things."

"I'm not going to try to change your mind, Savannah," he says, watching me intently again. "I'll support you whether you want to take one class or five. Whatever you want, beautiful girl."

"I know," I whisper, feeling guilty part of me ever expected him to say no. "I'm just trying to work it out for myself."

"You're scared."

"Is it weird that I think I may have forgotten how to be a student? What if I suck at it?"

"I highly doubt you'll suck at it." He smiles that crooked smile again, the one that makes my stomach flip. "I've seen the books you read."

"It's the writing part I might suck at."

"You won't."

"I might."

"I want to kiss you right now," he says, his voice husky.

I think he's just trying to divert my attention.

It works. I lick my lips, my eyes moving to his mouth. I want to kiss him too.

"We can't," I whisper, regret heavy in my voice.

"I know, but that doesn't mean I don't want to." He shoots me a wicked grin.

I jump when his hand suddenly slips from playing with my hair to beneath the collar of my shirt. His fingers are electric heat on my bare shoulder. He squeezes.

"You won't suck at being a student. You'll wow your professors, and I'll get to tell you that I'm the luckiest bastard on the planet to have such a smart girlfriend."

"You aren't a bastard," I mutter, my heart racing over the fact that he called me his girlfriend. It's such a little thing, but it means something to me. It means everything to me.

"Maybe not," he concedes, "but I am lucky." His hand glides across my collarbone and down until his fingertips brush across my nipple. His eyes never leave mine, the jade color bright in the fading light. "You're incredible, beautiful girl, and when this is over, anyone with sense will envy me because I have you."

"You do have me," I say. He has no idea how completely he has me or how much I'm looking forward to his pretense with Lexi ending. I want to belong to him in the light of day just like I do when the clock strikes midnight. I can't wait for the day I get to kiss him on the porch swing, or make love to him in the backyard while the stars twinkle overhead and the world envies me this beautiful, breathtaking man. Every little part of me wants it.

"You have me too, you know." His fingers circle my nipple before he squeezes my breast once and slips his hand from my shirt. He rises to his feet before lifting me to mine. "You have me for as long as you want me."

I place my hand in his, the word
forever
whispering in my mind. I don't say it though. It's more than I'm ready for right now, bigger than I think I can handle.

Instead I say, "Kit knows something's going on."

"Hmm?" He lets go of my hand and opens the door, allowing me to enter first. The second the door closes behind him, he has his arms wrapped around my waist, pulling me back against him. His lips brush across my cheek.

The tension in my body unravels when his chest presses against my back. I melt into him, closing my eyes to savor the way he wraps himself around me, cradling me in his strong arms.

"She suspects you and Lexi aren't really together and that something else is going on," I finally say, reveling in this moment when my fairytale begins all over again. It's not midnight yet, but it doesn't matter. This is still the
us
that I crave. The
us
that makes the days tolerable and makes me forget that I was ever the pathetic, frightened girl Toby turned me into. When Jared touches me, I don't feel pathetic. I feel strong. Powerful.

Who wouldn't want to get lost in that for a little while?

"I know," he murmurs after a minute, his chin atop my shoulder. His breath washes across the side of my face, sweet and minty.

"You know?" I frown.

"I know," he repeats and then he sighs and releases me, allowing me to turn to him. "She heard Lexi talking about Matthew."

I hate the way he grimaces when he says Matthew's name, and the way guilt washes through his expression.

Will he ever realize that it wasn't his fault?

"She has a right to know the whole truth. Not knowing is a bigger danger for her."

He rests his forehead against mine. "I know," he says quietly. "But Lexi thinks Katrina's safer not knowing, and I promised to keep quiet. I can't break that promise now." He looks so tired suddenly, as if he's carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders again.

"How do you do it?" I whisper to him. "How do you hold it all up?" The question sounds awed, but I
am
in awe of him. He's only twenty-nine, but he has it all together and is so
good
at it. Even though everything is so much harder than he expected, he deals with the situation the best way he knows how.

It's baffling to me that someone like him – someone so driven and in control – could want someone like me. I'm a mess. I'm weak. I'm selfish. Parts of me are broken beyond repair. And he's none of those things. He doesn't have to pretend to be stronger or braver or someone better than he is. He's
already
all of those things.

"You have no idea how much this helps." He reaches out blindly and grasps my hand. "How much you help."

His eyes pop open.

The way he focuses on me so completely takes my breath away. He's not feeding me a line or saying what he thinks I want to hear. He's telling me the truth as he sees it. Me, the girl who pretends and avoids and is a million different messed up things, makes it better for him.

I have no idea how to tell him everything I want to say in this moment. How to tell him that I'm falling in love with him, that I already want forever with him, that I admire him more than I can say. I don't try.

Instead, I give him the kiss he wanted outside.

Chapter Thirteen: Carry On

Kit leaves the following morning, barely speaking to me. I ache to tell her the truth, but when Jared catches my gaze across the driveway, he shakes his head slightly.

I hug her hard and tell her that I'm sorry instead.

She doesn't really respond, and I don't blame her.

Maddi breaks down sobbing when Kit drives away. Lexi has tears in her eyes.

Kit's dorm on campus suddenly seems so much farther than a simple twenty minute drive away. I send up another silent prayer for her safety. I'm pretty sure I've used up my lifetime allotment of prayers, but I keep sending them up anyway. Whoever or whatever is in charge up there has to answer sometime, right?

When Lexi takes a still crying Madeline inside, Jared steps up behind me. He's not too close, but his shadow falls over me as if offering a bit of shade in the middle of the desert. It engulfs me entirely, but I don't feel small. It's strange. I've felt nothing but small and overwhelmed by looming shadows for a long time, but with him there's none of that. All I feel is safe and warm when he's near me.

"You okay?" he asks me.

I nod.

I'm exhausted, but he has enough on his plate already. I don't have the heart to add to that with my own issues. And at the end of the day, the things that keep me awake at night
are
my issues. I just need to catch my breath for a minute, I think. And then maybe I can figure out how to start dealing with those issues.

"Lex and I have to go out tonight," Jared murmurs.

I turn slowly in his direction. He stands a few feet behind me, his arms crossed over his chest. The sun is a giant ball of vivid orange behind him. Chris lingers halfway down the drive, unobtrusively waiting.