Wait (Bleeding Stars #4)

by A. L. Jackson

She was just reading me.

  Getting to know me again after the years that had passed between us.

  The girl wondering if I’d changed. If I’d healed or was still lost to the grief that would haunt all my days.

  I hugged my knees a little tighter. “Crazy…because it doesn’t matter what ocean I land up against. He’s always there. I felt just as tied to him on the Atlantic when I was staying back in Savannah where Sebastian met his wife. Second I get landlocked? Feel like I’m gonna crawl out of my skin if I don’t get back to the sea.”

  Low laughter rocked from me. Completely lacking humor or amusement. “Then I just fucking freeze at the edge of it. Never able to touch because I can’t ever really touch what’s always going to be missing.”

  Right then, I wanted to confess everything. Lay it all out. Let her hold my secret the way she’d allowed me to hold hers.

  I knew Edie wouldn’t waste it.

  Wouldn’t toss it aside like it meant nothing the way I had.

  Instead, I shook my head in disgust. “I’m not sure I’m any different than the kid from that room back in L.A.”

  I repeated her affirmation.

  A warning.

  A plea.

  My eyes traced the long stretch of her legs. Cut and toned. Her shoulders firm.

  Her exterior had grown so strong. Kinda like me. Youth scraped away by the years.

  Yet I knew the inside still harbored all those broken pieces.

  My mirror.

  Edie began to edge back out of the water.

  She watched me carefully as she slowly moved up the beach in my direction.

  Hair a halo of ripping flames.

  Like a white witch who’d cast her spell.

  Mesmerizing.

  Entrancing.

  I gulped around the heaviness. Around the hold she had over me. My heart went wild with the need to bury myself in all the comfort she gave.

  She stopped two feet away.

  Looking down like she could see straight inside of me, the way I swore I could see inside of her.

  And I was again regressing back to that helpless kid.

  Wishing for my damned hoodie so I could rock in the shadows.

  I knew she knew it.

  Knew she felt it.

  Edie didn’t even know all the details and she was still the only one who really got it.

  She dropped to her knees in front of me. That sweet, pouty mouth twisted in stark compassion, in her own vivid confusion. “How do you both break my heart and heal it at the same time?”

  I reached up and cupped her cheek.

  “I don’t want to break you.”

  She blinked at me through misty, aqua eyes, the words thick with emotion. “You broke me a long time ago.”

  “I’m so fucking sorry, Edie. I know I wrecked it. That I wrecked us. For the last four years, I’ve woken up every single day regretting it. I went to sleep wishing I could take it back. But right here…with me…this is where you’re supposed to be. Where you’ve always belonged.”

  Fate.

  I felt us spinning around it like it was the sun and we were in orbit.

  Sadness climbed into her expression. “I used to think that…from the first night you crawled into my bed, I believed wherever you were, that was where I was supposed to be. Something about it just felt…right. You made me feel like no one else in the world could understand me the way you did. Like you saw me.”

  Wetness gathered in her eyes. A glimmer of diamond in the night. Priceless and precious. Her voice dipped in sorrow. “I believed it right up until the night you threw me to the wolves.”

  And those wolves had jumped right in with the intent to destroy.

  Regret shimmered in my consciousness. Suffocating. Doing its all to squeeze out the glimmers of hope.

  “And now?” I asked, because I was a masochist like that.

  I watched the trembling roll of her throat as she swallowed. “And now…I feel more confused…more conflicted…than I’ve ever felt in all my life.”

  She averted her gaze, before she turned her admission back on me. “When I first saw you on that stage? I knew I had to run. To get as far away from you as possible.”

  Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and a harsh gust of wind barreled down upon us.

  Whipping.

  Stirring.

  Inciting.

  “And here I just turned around and ran right back to you.”

  Her words struck me like an arrow to the chest. One of those lovesick kinds. The kind where my pulse pounded through my body like the vibration of a drum and I had zero thoughts except to make her mine.

  It was unavoidable.

  Inevitable.

  Because Edie and me? We were always gonna be.

  I weaved my fingers through the length of her hair.

  So damned soft.

  I tugged her closer.

  Her mouth parted on a sigh.

  I inhaled it.

  The subtle hint of orange.

  Sunshine and innocence and something so deliciously sweet.

  Light. Light. Light.

  Intoxicating.

  She blinked as if she were trying to make sense of it all. “How is it possible you have this hold over me?” she murmured quietly.

  “We never even…” She trailed off, leaving the idea of it hanging in the air like a tease.

  But Edie had it all wrong.

  It was her who had me enchanted.

  Bewitched by the best kind of spell.

  I dipped my mouth close to her ear. “Just because we’ve never actually had sex doesn’t mean we weren’t lovers.”

  She gasped and pulled back a fraction, her gaze heated and hot.

  God. I couldn’t take it a second longer, and I leaned in closer.

  Closer.

  Edie did the same.

  My heart damned near beat out of my chest.

  At the last second, fear took her over and her eyes grew wide. She tipped down her chin while still falling forward.

  My lips landed on her forehead.

  I lingered there.

  Breathing in the girl.

  The sweet and the pure.

  Refusing to count it a disappointment.

  She collapsed against me and let me wrap her in my arms.

  We stayed that way for what could have been minutes or hours.

  Finally, I whispered into her hair, “Do you feel that, Edie Evans?”

  “What?” she mumbled, her face tucked against my chest, like she was speaking directly to my heart.

  “Me.”

  Age Seventeen

  We wrestled around. The girl bit back her laughter, giggles a slight tinkle in the easy air.

  Tickling at my ear.

  I pinned her down, her wrists above her head, sweet, sweet smile so free. “Let me go,” she demanded quietly.

  Playfully.

  My heart thrashed and the room spun.

  Light touched me everywhere.

  Warming all those cold, dead places.

  Life.

  It was there.

  For the first time since I was eight.

  I felt alive.

  Like I could finally take a full breath.

  “Never.”

  Dropping her at home just damned near killed me. But she’d told me she needed some space. Time to think. We’d said little the rest of the way home. Neither of us seemed exactly sure of where we stood.

  It felt like we were rushing, all the while knowing we’d taken a thousand steps back. No doubt, we’d be in an entirely different place right now if it wasn’t for one fucked-up night.

  It was the night that had sent me spiraling, right back down that slippery slope.

  The night that’d stolen her from her family. From her brother. From her home.

  Now she was returning to that makeshift comfort. Finding it in people she’d found along the way.

  I didn’t blame her or them.

  All the blame fell on me.
<
br />   Of course, that didn’t come close to meaning it didn’t twist through me like the dull edge of a blunt knife when she unlocked the front door to the house she now called home.

  Pausing, she allowed herself a single second to glance back at me from the stoop, her body all a perfect shadow in the night, before she pushed it the rest of the way open and disappeared inside.

  On a sigh, I forced myself to put the car I’d borrowed from Deak into drive and do exactly that.

  Drive away.

  Home.

  Straight to the confines of my own makeshift comfort where I still remained utterly alone.

  But tonight?

  Tonight I felt compelled.

  The remnants of the sea still calling for me.

  Lost and found.

  I was quick to run to my room and dig through the nightstand drawer, slowed when I edged out the back and down the worn path. At its edge, I kicked off my shoes and let my feet sink into the soft, cool, wet sand.

  In the distance, the storm gathered. Encroaching. A bustle of clouds flickered with flashes of light.

  Wind gusted.

  Low and deep.

  A howl.

  I pushed toward the ocean then sank down onto the sand six feet away.

  Just like I’d told Edie.

  Not close enough to touch.

  Never so far that I’d ever get away.

  Lights burned from the house behind me on the hill, darkness swallowing me whole, the foamy white caps of the waves rolling onto the beach barely visible.

  I gripped the tattered, worn green monkey to my chest. Pressed the dingy stuffed animal to my nose.

  I brushed a hand through the longer pieces of my hair that thrashed around my head, just as hard as my heart thrashed in my chest.

  Only the sound of the sea and the damned monkey was there to keep me company, every part of me completely and utterly alone.

  All except for him.

  “Did you know she’d come back to me?” I whispered into the driving wind.

  Grief gripped me by the throat. “Is it wrong, man, to love someone when you won’t ever get the chance? When I was the one who stole that chance from you?”

  The sea thundered back. A mournful cry, and my spirit throbbed and ached and spun.

  Reaching out for him.

  “Can’t mess this up again, Julian. I can’t. Wouldn’t make it if I ruined it all again. Tell me it’s gonna be okay.”

  I closed my eyes. Behind my lids, I saw him running along the edge of the sea like a tightrope. Sunlight streaking down, striking against the white of his hair we’d had when we were kids, forever marked as an eight-year-old boy who’d never had the opportunity for time to age him. To deepen and darken and scar.

  I bore all the scars myself.

  I could almost see him turn and smile my way.

  So free.

  Pain gripped and pulled and somehow comforted.

  Like a lifeline to the afterlife.

  That…that was where I was bound.

  Maybe it made me a little sick.

  Twisted in the head.

  Maybe that’s why I’d fed everything and anything into my veins to cover it.

  My phone buzzed. I flicked into the message.

  Sebastian.

  Come home, man. This is where you belong.

  My breaths became choppy as I read my older brother’s words.

  I looked to the endless sky.

  Fuck. Wasn’t sure I belonged anywhere. If I’d ever be worthy enough to return and become a part of their lives without making it worse.

  Did I have something more to offer than my constant bullshit that only served to bring them down?

  Baz had always worried I’d finally go tumbling over the edge. Harm myself in some way because I was missing this piece of myself.

  A piece I wasn’t ever going to get back.

  An unknown feeling gripped me. As light as it was heavy.

  Maybe I’d always known there was a reason. A reason I was here.

  Tied and bound in an entirely different way.

  And I knew…I knew.

  The reason was her.

  Walking away was always the hardest.

  I paused at the door to our townhouse and peered back at the boy who sat in the car, his big body a mere outline in the dark. But I knew it. The way his hands were fisted on the steering wheel as he stared back at me across the space.

  Restraint.

  I could feel it like a force as he sat and watched.

  Containing himself to keep from tearing out of his car and coming after me.

  A thrill I couldn’t stop slithered slow beneath the surface of my skin, my breaths short and ragged.

  I’d asked him not to follow.

  I needed time.

  Space.

  Clarity.

  My insides felt like a jumbled mess, my emotions an avalanche of disorder.

  So I asked him to stop.

  To wait.

  To give me a moment for my head to catch up with the direction my wayward heart was stampeding.

  I just needed to make sure that rebellious organ knew what it was getting itself into.

  That it was strong enough to brave the storm that was Austin Stone.

  That my cracked, brittle shell was sturdy enough to take on water and not sink.

  Because when it came to him, my decisions were always skewed.

  A shiver slipped free when those potent eyes gleamed in a spray of passing headlights.

  Trained on me like I was the target.

  The goal.

  Maybe even the purpose.

  An overheated current ran between us. A short circuit one degree away from combusting.

  He was anchored to me so deeply I could feel him pulling at me from every angle.

  We were magnets in opposition.

  Trembling lures.

  A fierce tug of war raged around us, unseen but profound. As if the tether that bound us was being stretched too thin. Tugging and tugging and tugging. It was only a matter of time before it snapped and we collided. So tangled we couldn’t tell where one’s spirit ended and the other’s began.

  That was a hazardous place to be.

  Your next breath sustained by another.

  Your next heartbeat reliant upon the one who held it in their hands.

  So difficult to mend yet so easily crushed.

  I forced myself to break the connection and stole into the quiet of the darkened house, the hour late as I padded down the hall and into my room that was softly illuminated by the attached bathroom light.

  A smile played across my face and a new sense of joy teased at the fringes of my consciousness.

  I set my phone and my small bag on my nightstand, slipped off my sweater so I was just wearing a tank, crawled onto my bed.

  I was too amped up to sleep. Too torn to make any decisions.

  So instead I stared out my window at the emerging storm.

  Beckoning it.

  Welcoming it.

  The chaos and mayhem and disorder.

  A flash of lightning lit up the sky. Energy prickled across my skin like a clash of fear and desire.

  God, I knew I was so dangerously close to falling over the edge. My body angled so I could peer down into the unknown depths.

  Worst part was knowing the darkness below would welcome me. Embrace me in its arms.

  I stayed that way for the longest time before my phone chimed.

  The befuddled smile I’d worn grew.

  Austin.

  Excited, I scrambled to grab it from the nightstand.

  Pushing to my feet, I ran my thumb across the screen.

  Sender unknown.

  Not Austin.

  A nudge of unease prodded me, but I shoved it down and clicked into the message.

  My eyes flicked across the words.

  Processing what I read.

  Confusion.

  Dread.

  Horror.

  It took me al
l of a second for those stages to process.

  Then a wave of nausea hit me so hard I dropped to my knees on the floor.

  Tears blurred my eyes as I read the message again and again.

  Head shaking.

  No.

  How did he find me?

  No.

  Finally figured it out. You did this. Did you really think you’d get away with it? That I’d never find out? That I wouldn’t find you?

  I clutched my phone to my chest, as if it might keep my heart from breaking free of its confines and bleeding out on the floor. Fear mixed with a hatred so intense it boiled inside. Bubbling up and spilling over. Saturating every cell.

  No.

  How did he find me?

  It seemed crazy that question seemed more important than the other that swirled around me.

  What was he talking about?

  I did this?

  What did he find out?

  Oh God.

  What did he want? Hadn’t he done enough?

  I tried to stop them. But I couldn’t. The memories were so vivid as they impaled my mind, another stake to my spirit.

  Excruciating.

  I squeezed my eyes closed. Trying to block them out. They only played out in a greater intensity.

  Heavy metal blasted on the other side of the door, voices shouting and laughter carrying through the thin walls of the house she’d never been to before.

  She’d begged her oldest brother Ash to bring her with him. Gave him her most pleading smile as she’d told him how much she was going to miss him when she and the rest of their family moved to Ohio the next month. She’d told him she didn’t get to see him nearly enough as it was. Eight years and two brothers separated them, and Ash had long since left home while she was just set to begin high school that year. Now almost clear across the country since their father had accepted a job in Cleveland.

  When Ash had first refused, she’d begged, insisting she hardly knew him anymore.

  It was the truth.

  But now she wondered if she even knew herself.

  Fear clouded at the corners of her eyes, and she pressed closer against the wall, wishing she could somehow disappear as she curled into the tightest ball.

  Naked.

  Hair tangled and matted, thick pieces stuck to her snot- and tear-stained face.

  A dull, throbbing pain ached between her thighs and bile burned in her throat, climbing up and stinging her tongue.