by S. R. Grey
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
Jaynie 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.”
&
nbsp; 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.”
Cody is far from reassured. He wants to go back. “I like playing close to house better,” he tells me.
I tousle his hair. “No problem, kiddo.”
With the decision made to abandon our game in the woods, Mandy gestures for Cody and Callie to follow her back to the trail that leads down to the open fields. Just as I’m about to fall in line behind them I feel a tug at the back of my T-shirt.
When I turn around, Jaynie takes a step back. “What’s up?” I ask.
Hesitantly, she says, “Would it be all right if you and I stayed in the woods a while longer? It’s just so pretty up here. And…” She glances around at all the flora around us, everything thick and green. “I really like this place.”
I raise a brow. “Even with snakes lurking all about?”
“Pfft…” She waves her hand dismissively. “Snakes are the least of my worries, Flynn.”
Her eyes—green as the foliage around us, but troubled—tell me Jaynie has had to worry about far worse things than little snakes.
“No problem,” I tell her. “We can stay. Just wait here a sec.”
I run ahead to catch up with the others. Once I have Mandy’s attention I tell her Jaynie and I are going to stay in the woods a while longer.
Mandy narrows her eyes and gives me an I know what you’re up to look. She’s protective of Jaynie, but she needn’t worry. I am, too.
“It’s nothing like that,” I assure her, rolling my eyes.
“Not yet,” she says in a sing-song-y voice. “But I can see it coming.”
I push her shoulder. “God, get out of here. Now, I’m not sure if you’ll kick my ass if something happens…or if something doesn’t.”
“I like to keep you on your toes, Flynn,” she says as she starts to jog away to catch up with the twins, who’ve run way ahead on the trail.
“Having you around is as bad as having a real sister,” I call out.
Yelling over her shoulder, Mandy gets in the last word. “I have every intention of remaining like a real sister, Flynn. For as long as I’m here. And I guarantee you’re going to miss all this sisterly concern when I’m gone.”
Shit, that part is probably true. Mandy leaving is definitely going to suck. Apart from missing her friendship, it will be up to me and Jaynie to take care of the kids. That won’t be easy since the twins rely so much on Mandy.
When I return to Jaynie, she watches me curiously as I rake my hand through my hair.
“What’s bothering you, Flynn?” she asks.
We begin to walk, and I think about how I usually deflect questions of that nature. Today, though, I feel like I could use someone to talk to.
“I was just thinking how hard it’s going to be when Mandy leaves.”
“Yeah, it’ll suck. The twins are going to be a mess.”
“That’s an understatement,” I scoff.
Jaynie stops. She reaches out to touch my arm, but then it’s like she realizes what she’s doing.
“Oh.” Her arm drops back to her side. “Anyway, we’ll still be here for the twins.”
“Yeah, we will.”
We start walking again, heading deeper into the woods. The trail narrows for a while and we have no choice but to walk single file. When it widens, we walk side-by-side.
“Hey, Flynn,” Jaynie says with a sigh. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What is Mandy’s story? How’d she end up in the system?”
I motion to a huge old oak. “Here, let’s sit for a minute.”
We use the thick roots protruding from the ground as seats, and after we’re settled, I say, “Mandy never had a real home, like ever.”
Jaynie looks over at me, brow furrowing. “What do you mean?”
“She’s been in the system since birth.”
“Oh, Flynn.” Jaynie appears absolutely stricken. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah, but it is what it is. Mandy’s mother was a foster kid who got pregnant at fifteen. She was in a group home at the time.”
“Mandy was born in a group home?”
I nod. “She was. And she was taken away immediately because her mom had psych problems.”
“Wow. Where’d they place Mandy?”
“She was sent to live with a family who wanted to foster an infant.”
Jaynie picks up a stick and starts tracing the grooves in the tree roots. I can tell the story unsettles her. Hell, what foster story is soothing?
“Did those people adopt Mandy?” Jaynie asks.
“They were in the process, supposedly. But, uh, something bad happened.”
Jaynie stops tracing and looks over at me. “What happened?”
I blow out a breath. “They were killed in a boating accident, and Mandy was thrown back in the system.”
“Damn, Flynn. That’s…I don’t know. Just…talk about bad luck.”
“I know, Jaynie, I know.”
Things are turning too dour. I want this day of freedom to stay positive, since we have so few.
“Hey,” I say, tone upbeat. “Enough of all this sad talk, okay?”
Jaynie tosses her tracing stick off to the side and stands up. “Sounds good to me. Let’s keep walking.”
“Yeah.” I jump up and point to where the trail continues. “You up for seeing a place up here that’s really cool? It’s actually my favorite spot to go when shit down at the house gets to be too much.”
Nodding enthusiastically, Jaynie says, “I’d love to see it, Flynn.”
We wind our way through the forest, diverging away from the trail. Jaynie doesn’t know it yet, but we are close to the edge of the mountaintop, the only part of the property that’s not fenced off.
Finally, we arrive at the spot that’s my sanctuary—a thick copse of pines growing in a perfect circle. The trees soar high into the air, seemingly to the heavens. Their long limbs provide a heavy canopy of green that stretches all the way to the edge of the cliff. The cliff itself juts out over a swiftly flowing river.
“I can’t wait to share this with you,” I say to Jaynie, wishing I could take her hand. I nod to a break in the pines that lead into the circle, but Jaynie walks instead over to the edge of the cliff.
“Mind I see the view from the edge, first?” she looks back and asks.
I shrug. “Sure.” She seems pretty focused, so whatever.
At the cliff’s edge Jaynie is peering across the forested valley. She then looks down to the water, flowing hundreds of feet below. “Where does the river go, Flynn?” she wants to know.
I walk over so I can stand beside her. “Downstream,” I say. “There’s a little town named Lawrence not far from here. After that, I’m sure the water keeps going. I guess this river eventually dumps out into an even bigger river.”
“Oh.”
Jaynie sounds distant and lost in thought, so it’s with care I inquire, “What are you thinking about?”
Jaynie turns to me, eyes sparkling and bright. She looks
so alive and happy right now, and I almost tell her how I think her eye color is a perfect match to the boughs of the pines above us. I ultimately decide to save that observation for another day.
“I was thinking that I wish I were a bird,” she replies, at last.
Her answer catches me off-guard. “Why in the hell would you want to be a bird?”
She faces the water again and throws her head back. Spreading her arms, like wings, she says, “Because then I could fly away.”
I step closer to her, until her hand is near my face. I expect her to curl her fingers away. But she doesn’t. She leans toward me, allowing her fingertips to brush over my cheek. “Flynn,” she sighs.
We stay like that for a while, her barely touching me, but touching me nonetheless. I want to hold this moment for as long as we can, so I don’t move an inch. My heart sure races, though.
Quietly, just loud enough to be heard over the rushing rapids, I say, “If someday you fly away, Jaynie-bird, can I go with you?”
She opens her eyes and peers over at me. When she lowers her arms, I can’t help but sigh at the loss of feeling her touch.
With her attention returning to the water, she asks, “Would you go with me? Like, for real? If we could leave this place, Flynn, would you go?”
Answering that question is easy. “Yes.”
Jaynie
“We could really go,” Flynn tells me. “If things ever get to be…you know, too much.”
“What?” I gesture to the river, so far below us. “You really think we could jump into the water from up here?”
He sounds like Mandy. What do they know that I don’t? It’s not that horrible here…yet.
“Yeah,” he says, dead serious. “You can swim, can’t you?”
“Well, yeah.” I peer down at the dark rapids, trying to calculate the distance and just how dangerous a jump like that would be. And, crap…
“Wouldn’t the fall kill us?”
Flynn chuckles. “No, we’d be fine. The water is deep in this part of the river, and there are no rocks down there to hit your head on. The fast-moving current keeps debris from settling.”
“So, how would it work?”
“Simple. We’d jump, land in the water, float to the surface within a few seconds, and then let the current do its work to help us swim away.”
