Tomorrow's Lies (Promises #1) (12 page)

As Flynn shifts from one foot to the other, I shade my eyes and peer up at him. The sun, behind where he’s standing, bathes him in a golden glow, making him look like an angel. Damn, I must be overheating.

Back to fanning myself, I say, “I think I need to put on some shorts.”

“Me, too,” Flynn replies.

I nod to his denim-covered legs. “Yeah, why are you wearing jeans?”

“Same reason as you. I never dreamed we’d be outside all day.” He points down to the house. “Let’s go change.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I say, standing.

“Cool.”

Gesturing to Mandy and the twins, who are still running around having fun, I say, “Should we tell them we’re going down to the house?”

“No.” Flynn shakes his head. “We’ll only be gone a few minutes. They won’t miss us.”

Flynn breaks into a light jog, until I protest. “Hey, no more running, okay? Not till I lose these leggings.”

Flynn slows to a walk, and from there we stroll leisurely. Still, by the time we reach the front porch it’s like the temperature has shot up another ten degrees.

“Blech, it must be closing in on ninety,” I gripe as I lean next to the front door and mop my brow.

“I think it is ninety,” Flynn agrees, tugging on the handle of the screen door.

When the light screen swings back, I use my hip to keep it propped open so Flynn can open the front door without this one falling back on him.

“I think I’ll wash up a bit while we’re in there,” I muse to myself as I make the door bounce with my hip.

Flynn pauses, chuckles at my amusement. “No problem. I’ll wait for you.”

Pushing back a clump of moistened hair from my forehead, I make a face and add, “I feel so totally gross right now.”

Flynn gives me the ’ole once-over, and I cringe at how I must look to him.

To my surprise—and let’s face it, absolute delight—he says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You look really pretty, Jaynie, as always.”

He turns back to the door.

Wow, wow, wow
. I almost faint on the spot. “Thank you,” I whisper.

I feel like we may have just had a little moment, but that warm and fuzzy feeling dissipates rapidly when a breeze blows and I detect what feels suspiciously like the little legs of a bug on my cheek.

“Oh, God, what’s on me, Flynn?” I smack at my face. Lightly, since I sure as hell don’t want to get stung.

“Is it a bee?” I freeze and ask.

Flynn looks at me and starts to laugh. “It’s not a bee,” he assures me.

I go back to swishing my hands around my face, while the screen door smacks against my butt. “What is it, then?” I ask. “Something is definitely still there.”

“Hold on a minute.” Flynn’s still smiling, shaking his head. “Would you stop waving your hands around everywhere?”

“Okay, sure.” I lower my arms and stand completely still.

“It’s not a bee or a bug,” he reiterates, nodding reassuringly. “It’s just a long strand of your hair that’s stuck on your cheek. It’s kind of poking you, uh, right about…
here
.”

He starts to reach out—I’m sure to push away the wayward, feels-like-a-bug strand—but then he remembers my issues.

“Anyway…” He drops his hand to his side, sighing. “The hair’s stuck to your cheek. The breeze was making it move. That’s why it felt like a bug.”

Reaching up to my face, I ask. “Where is it, exactly? I can’t feel anything now.” I touch different places on my face and ask, “Here? Here?”

Flynn tries to point to the spot. “A little lower and to the right,” he says.

“Um…”

“Ah, fuck it.”

He reaches out, and I drop my hands to my sides.
I can do this, I can do this
.

Then again, maybe I can’t.

Just as Flynn’s hand is about to make contact with my cheek, I involuntarily flinch.

He freezes, hand suspended in the air. “Jaynie…?”

It’s a question. Should he stop, or do I want him to keep going?

Our eyes meet, and all the things Flynn doesn’t outright state are in those depths of gray. He wants to try again. He’s just waiting for permission.

Taking a deep breath, I give it to him. “Go ahead, Flynn. Touch me. I’ll be okay.”

I don’t know if what I’m so bravely stating will bear out to be true, but I sure as heck plan to try. I refuse to allow the monster who made me this way to win.

Quietly, he asks, “Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes.”

And that’s all he needs to hear. Flynn brushes over with my cheek with his finger, lightly, just to see how I handle it.

Not great, as it turns out.

I gasp, and he jerks away.

I don’t feel the usual panic, though. This feels different. Flynn’s warm skin pressed to my own, even if only for a brief second, felt electric. Maybe it did for him, too. He appears a little flustered, which is not like Flynn.

“Try it again,” I whisper.

He raises a brow. “Yeah?”

I nod. “Uh-huh.”

His fingers brush across my cheek once more, this time more slowly. I close my eyes, acclimating myself to his touch.
I am okay.
I feel his fingertips, warm and appealingly rough, as he lifts the elusive strand of hair from my damp skin. So carefully, so gently. Wow, this is what it feels like to be cared for. I need this. Oh, how I need this.

Without opening my eyes, I lean into Flynn’s lingering touch. He tucks more wayward hair behind my ear, pieces that weren’t even stuck to my cheek. He just wants to touch me. “Is this all right?” he whispers.

“Yes.”

I open my eyes, and he smiles at me. I smile back at him. He’s as excited by this development as I am. And, damn, it feels
good
. A million unsaid things are expressed as we gaze into each other’s eyes. Maybe not a million, but many, and all of them point to two things—I like Flynn, and he likes me. We are more than friends, more than pretend siblings.

Time freezes, and I revel in the magic of the moment. But alas, when he moves his fingers away from my face, the moment is lost.

“We should go in,” Flynn says, clearing his throat.

“Yeah, we should.”

In the house, neither of us mentions a word about what happened out on the porch. There’s no need for discussion; we both know this is huge. Flynn—a guy—touched me, and I didn’t have a meltdown.

Maybe there
is
hope for me, after all. Like real hope that I can have a normal relationship. I feel more like myself now than I have in a long time. So maybe this is the family I needed all along to help me reach this point.

And then there are my feelings for Flynn. Maybe Flynn is more than just the here and now. Maybe he’s my future.

Flynn

J
aynie and I change into shorts, but before we head back out, I check to see if the lock on the door to the kitchen is unlatched. Sometimes Mrs. Lowry forgets to lock it when she goes out for a full day. There’s never much food to raid, but the nutrition bars are always there.

Today, unfortunately for us, the kitchen is locked. “That fucking bitch,” I mumble.

Jaynie flicks the padlock. “Looks like Crafty Lo remembered this time.”

I shake my head. “Nah, this is Allison’s doing.”

Jaynie bites her lip and eyes me curiously. “Why do you think it was her?”

I am not about to fill her in on how many of Allison’s advances I’ve dodged this past month, nor how jealous Allison has become of Jaynie. She wants me more than ever these days. It’s her underhanded way to stick it to the pretty, new waif-like girl. It’s fairly obvious to everyone in this house that Jaynie likes me. And that’s cool. I kind of like her, too.

Okay, I have to be honest—I really like Jaynie. And if I ever needed confirmation, I got that out there on the porch. Something happened out there, a breakthrough for Jaynie. And something more, something between us. Shit, I am in so deep with her now.

Like I wasn’t before? Yeah, right. Quit lying to yourself, Flynn.

My feelings for the new girl stopped me from getting a blow job the other day, and that’s saying a lot. Allison, bypassing her usual innuendo, flat-out offered. And hell, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I seriously considered it. See, Allison has these big, pillowy lips, and a part of me would have liked nothing more than to have that mean whore down on her knees, sucking me off.

I couldn’t do it, though. If I had it would have felt like a betrayal to Jaynie. See, in deep. Eh, who cares? Jaynie is amazing, and beautiful, and witty, and her soul is more than good.

Speaking of which, as the object of my affection waits for an answer to her question, I stand at the padlocked door, grinning like a fool. She must think I’m crazy.

Shrugging, I play it off. “Never mind, it’s not important. Let’s go back outside.”

She lets it drop with an, “Okay, Flynn.”

The girl is easy-going like that. For all her issues, she’s far from high-maintenance.

Back in the fields we catch up to Mandy and the twins. As soon as Cody sees me, he runs over and hops up in my arms.

“Whoa, little man. You’re getting too big to jump up on me like that.”

I’m totally teasing. Truth is Cody is below normal height and weight for a boy his age, side effects of a lack of proper nutrition.

Placing his thumb in his mouth—and reminding me far too much of Galen—he puts his head on my shoulder. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

I pat him on the back. “Aww, you’re good, buddy. I was just joking.”

He leans back, his big eyes meeting mine. “Where you go, Flynnie?” he asks.

“Jaynie and I went inside to change into shorts. What are you guys doing out here? You come up with any new games?”

Excited, he replies, “Yeah, we did. We play Hide and Go Seek now. Wanna play?”

“Sure.”

Cody peers over my shoulder to where Jaynie is standing. “Jaynie play, too?” he asks quietly.

Spinning around with Cody in my arms, I face Jaynie. “I don’t know, bud. Let’s ask her.”

Turns out, Jaynie is up for playing Hide and Go Seek. For the next half an hour the five of us have a blast. We hide behind hay bales and crawl under bushes. The old barn up in the fields makes a great hideout, too. As time wears on, the game moves beyond the old barn and up into the dense forest.

When it’s Jaynie’s turn to try and find us she covers her eyes and counts to sixty. Four of us run amok, each trying to claim the best hiding place. Cody chooses a massive boulder, not far from the thick-trunked tree I’ve chosen to utilize as cover. Out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of Mandy ducking into a thicket of green. And then I spy Callie crouching down by an old wood pile. She wraps her oversized pink tee over her pale, skinny legs, like that’s going to help hide her.

My laughing at Callie gives me away, and Jaynie finds me first.

“Really, Flynn, hiding behind a tree is the best you can do?” She tsks. “I expected more from you.”

“Oh, I’ll give you more,” I playfully retort. “You just say the word.”

At first, I worry I’ve gone too far, especially when Jaynie dips her chin and stares at the ground. But then she whispers, “Oh, stop,” with no conviction at all.

Damn. The girl is flirting right back at me. Talk about progress.

Encouraged, I keep this playfulness going. “Yeah, okay, whatever you say.” I lean back and stretch, knowing my tee will lift and expose my abs.

When I catch Jaynie sneaking a peek, I can’t help but smile. My ploy worked.

I don’t want to push too far, though, so I lose the grin and say, “Do you want some hints on where the others are hidden?”

“Flynn!” She feigns indignation. “That’s cheating.”

“Okay, I won’t say a word.” I make a show of pretending to zip my lips.

Jaynie glances around. There are no signs of anyone. “I guess one little hint wouldn’t hurt,” she says softly.

“I knew you’d cave,” I say.

She huffs. “Just shut up and tell me.”

Chuckling, I nod to the thicket where I know Mandy is hiding. “Try over there,” I whisper.

Jaynie thanks me for the tip, then creeps off. But before she can reach Mandy, Cody gives himself away when he springs up from behind the boulder he’s hidden behind and yells, “Hey guys, help, help! I see snake, I see snake.”

All of us converge on Cody—to hell with the game—to make sure he’s okay. “Which way did it go, little man?” I ask as I crouch down to his height. “You didn’t get bit, did you?”

“No, I okay.” Pointing to the boulder, he says, “Snake slithered under
there
.”

I suspect what Cody saw was a garter snake, based on the tiny space beneath the boulder where it supposedly slithered in to.

“Hmm,” I begin. “If the snake is under that rock, Cody, I think he’s probably staying there for a while. Believe it or not, we’re scarier to him than he is to us.”

Cody looks wary. “No. Snaked scared of me? He was big, Flynnie, real big.”

Fighting back a smile, I ask in a somber tone, “How big, bud?”

Cody holds his arms
way
apart. “This big!”

I give him a look like
for real?
And he quickly narrows the space between his hands to about six inches.

“That’s more like it,” I say. “So, think about how much bigger you are than that little guy.”