I was in this incredible fog of roaming hands and insatiable lips.
“Ava,” he said, pausing to kiss me before continuing. “Where’s my shirt?”
I shook my head. “Who cares.” I drug my hands down his strong, hard back.
He shuddered, moving to bury his face into my neck. The break from his lips forced some of the fog aside and some clarity in its place. We were so close, I couldn’t tell where I ended, and he started. His shirt was in fact gone and my sweater was inched up, revealing my stomach. His grip was on my side, and his thumb stroked my hip bone, skimming the waistband on my sweats. I could feel his excitement. I locked my legs around his waist when he tried to rise, mewling in protest.
He rose enough to meet my eyes. His were molten. “We have to stop.”
I kissed the tip of his nose, his cheek, and then his lips, shutting him up. He moaned against my lips and gave me what I wanted. Him. My fingers came around and settled on his chest. I drug them lower, over the ridges in his six pack. The moment my fingers teased the band on his shorts, he disengaged from me and bolted to his feet, pacing and cursing under his breath as he tried to gain some control.
I watched him, putting my hands behind my head.
“You don’t have to look so pleased with yourself,” he said, shooting me a heated glare. “Where’s my shirt?”
It was a crime when he put it back on. He reached down and pulled my sweater back in place. “Get up, please. And stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what, Bishop?”
“Like you didn’t want me to stop.” He held his hand up. “We still need to talk.”
I let him pull me to my feet. The fog he brought over me wasn’t entirely gone yet and I knew he knew it. He kept his distance from me. I wondered what my eyes looked like. If they were as molten as his. We ended back in the kitchen and he immediately made himself busy.
“Did you eat breakfast?” he asked, looking in the fridge.
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“Are you hungry now?”
“Mhm.” I bit my lip.
“Ava,” he snapped, making me giggle. “Seriously, stop. I’m trying to be a good guy. It wouldn’t hurt you to help me.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. You are a good guy. And,” I added, anticipating his next reaction, “a really, really good kisser.”
He braced himself against the counter. And then his eyes shot to mine. “I didn’t want to stop. You felt so good, Ava, I couldn’t help myself. That can’t happen again. I promised your mother and now I’m promising you.”
I put my chin in my hand, unsure how I was supposed to act now that I knew what it felt like to have his body on top of mine. It was like being on a diet and then having chocolate cake put in front of you. I had two forks in each hand and the cake was trying to be a gentleman. “Fine, let’s talk.”
He sighed in relief. “Thank you.”
“Yeah,” I muttered dryly. “You’re super welcome.”
He chuckled, taking out eggs. “Your mom told me what’s been going on.” His smile dropped and the seriousness of the past few days snuffed out any and all heat. It was still winter. “But I’d rather hear your side.”
“There’s not much to tell. My brain’s broken.”
“No, it isn’t. The words depression and anxiety have this heavy stigma placed on them, but everyone feels that way sometime during their life. It doesn’t have to define you, Avie. So, you’re sad some days. Some days you’re anxious and scared. Some days you’ll be happy and some day’s you’ll want to tell me about your day and other’s you won’t. You don’t have to let this derail who you are. It’s like having allergies, you know? I don’t say, Hi, my name is Bishop and I sneeze my ass off in the spring time. I just exist. We don’t have to explain ourselves to anyone.”
“It scares you, doesn’t it?” He had his answer ready, almost like he’d thought about it all night.
“No. It doesn’t scare me. It worries me, of course it does, but only because I know there are going to be times when you’re suffering and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
I wasn’t scared about those two words. I was sad. Sad I couldn’t feel like everyone else, but at least I could feel. Maybe I was always meant to feel stronger. “I don’t think so. I think there will be times when I’m sad and no one but you can do something about it.”
He stared into my eyes for a long time. “Ava.” He took a deep breath. “I love you.” When I didn’t say anything, he cringed. “Was it too soon to say that? It was. Did I mess that up?”
All of my uncertainty, doubt, and fears evaporated. “You love me, Bishop?”
He set everything down and came to me. “I love you, Ava, more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything or ever will. I’ve been a part of a team since I started playing hockey, but yours is the only team I need to be a part of.”
I flung myself at him. He hit the counter and chuckled, steadying us as I tried to climb him. He helped me, bringing my legs around his waist. I wrapped my arms around his neck and sobbed the strangest tears. They weren’t sad tears or scared tears, but happy, hopeful love tears. So, my brain didn’t think like everyone else’s. My heart still did, and it loved enough to make up for it.
I pressed my lips to his ear. “I love you, Bishop Manfield.”
The arms he had wrapped around me tightened. “No one’s ever said that to me before.”
“Get used to it. I’m going to say it a million times a day, until you’re so used to it, when I skip a day, you’ll miss it.”
He pressed a kiss to my neck. “Try it.”
“I love you.”
“Mmm,” he hummed, kissing behind my ear. “Again.”
“I love you, Bishop.”
“I think you’re right.” He pulled back to meet my eyes. His were glowing. Icy, dark blue and mine. “I missed you so much these past few days, I’m not going that long without you again.”
I didn’t mention the abyss I’d fallen into. A part of me thought he already knew. The other part of me knew next time, he’d pull me to safety.
“You promise?” I whispered.
“I promise,” he whispered back. “Your turn.”
I smiled, feeling our promises grow inside my chest and covering the hole that had been there since last summer. “I promise.”
Everyone kept saying that I wasn’t supposed to need Bishop. I was supposed to need myself.
But that was crap.
We all needed someone.
We needed our moms, or we’d never be born. We needed them to feed us and love us and raise us. We needed our dads to toughen us up and break us so we could figure out how to put ourselves back together again. We needed our children to learn what unconditional love and sacrifice was. We needed siblings to fight with and learn what loyalty was. We needed friends to smile and break rules with. We needed love to mold our hearts, to prepare it for all the joys and abyss’s that have passed and come.
And we needed boys like Bishop Manfield to show that it wasn’t a mistake trusting someone. To show that your heart still worked and that it still beat, and that it would be just fine.
Most of all, we needed ourselves to need anyone else. We needed to love our minds, scars, and pasts. So that we could love everyone else.
It was human nature to need.
And it was second nature to love.
EPILOGUE
Bishop
My palms were sweating.
Ava bounced in excitement beside me. “Come on, open it.”
Her mother rocked Ava’s four-week-old brother, Cooper, in her arms, her face contorted into an array of nervousness and happiness. “How long are you going to keep us waiting?”
“Yeah, open it,” Zara chimed in.
“Hurry up!” Henny screeched, holding Laurie’s hand. Ava’s best friends had become my friends, too. Not that it was my idea. They just sort of stuck around, like a scar.
A really nice scar, but still…
We were all crammed in the kitchen at home. Home. I’d never had one until Ava and her mother let me in, and now Zara had a place to hang out that was safe, and I had a place to do the same. With the people I loved and the people who loved me.
“Bishop!” Coach snapped. “Stop torturing us.”
I took a deep breath, reading the sender’s address one more time before I tore into the envelope. It was from the University of Minnesota. Ava had already opened hers and had been accepted to start her career as a social worker. Her college fund would pay for her first year, and we’d figure out the rest. She wanted to help boys like me and girls like Zara.
I loved her so much for that.
The blood rushed to my head and I felt like I would pass out. It all came down to that moment. The practices, the games, the dedication and sacrifices. I pulled the stack of papers from the envelope and read the cover letter out loud. The top was decorated with the Minnesota hockey logo, and before I could even read it, Coach was already celebrating.
“Dear Bishop Manfield, after careful consideration, it is with extreme pleasure that I inform you of your acceptance into Minnesota University and the collegiate men’s ice hockey team…”
It was strange, but time slowed down. Everyone in the room was cheering and crying. Coach was about to shake Ava’s mom and Cooper apart with his excitement. Zara was bouncing on her feet, her eyes huge and bright and proud. I could see it all in slow motion. But I felt my joy the way I did most things these days. With too much intensity and want.
I wanted this.
I wanted this so badly.
And I got it.
I turned to Ava, my mouth hanging open. Tears danced in her beautiful honey eyes.
“You did it, Bishop. You did it!” She kissed me, grabbing my face and looking at me like I was the most amazing human being she’d ever met in her entire life. “I am so freaking proud of you.”
“I did it?”
“You did it.”
Coach grappled me to the ground, screaming in my ear. “Do you know what this means? Do you know what this means! You’re going to crush college and then you’re going to play in the NHL for the Minnesota Wild and become a household name and marry your cute as pie girlfriend and make baby hockey players and I’ll coach them, and we’ll revamp the game of hockey as we know it!”
Maybe Coach looked into a glass ball; maybe everything he said that night happened.
And I owed it all to the cute, bubbly blonde I was assigned with in home ec senior year. I thought I had her all figured out. But I was wrong.
So wonderfully, perfectly wrong.
I guessed that’s what love was. Getting it wrong so you could finally get it right.
We were never supposed to be friends.
Let alone fall.
Thank you so unbelievably much for reading The Rarity of Falling.
If you enjoyed reading, please consider leaving a review.
Leeann M. Shane escapes through reading and creates escape routes for others. She writes edgy, beautiful, and moving young-adult titles.
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://leeannmshane.weebly.com
Also by Leeann M. Shane:
The Tomboy & the Rebel
For seventeen-year-old Melanie Barton,
high school is a war zone.
She prefers baggy jeans, cool hoodies,
and comfort over beauty.
She’s in a constant fight against the popular kids,
her emotions, and society.
It’s exhausting, and it doesn’t help that
things at home are getting harder
to deal with ever since her parent’s divorce.
Her one safe place is photography class.
She can see the world through a lens,
and there’s no chance at war in her safe place… right?
Wrong.
The war she fights gets ten times
harder when the biggest assignment
in photography class forces her into
close contact with Darren “Dare” Morre,
Phoenix High’s very own bad boy.
Dare is bad news in every way.
He manages to push every single button Melanie has.
They’ll never get along enough to finish this project,
let alone ever become friends. She’s doomed.
Just being around him makes his ex-girlfriend,
Maisy, queen bee at Phoenix High,
paint a target on her back.
The war she’s been fighting becomes all-out anarchy.
But something strange happens
the more time Dare and Melanie spend together.
Maybe the bad boy isn’t all that bad.
Maybe he’s just misunderstood. And maybe this
tomboy could use a little understanding…
Purchase on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078N68C15
The Rarity of Falling Page 25
