Between the Girls (The Basin Lake Series Book 3)

by Stephanie Vercier

  “I could stay one more night and just leave really early for California,” Tyler tells me over breakfast at the small diner around the corner from my house.

  He’s already spent two nights with me, and I’d continued to skirt around his questions about where our relationship actually stood.

  “Won’t you get in trouble if you’re late getting back?” I take a sip of coffee, not really wanting him to go, but knowing that he can’t stay here any longer.

  He shrugs. “My boss would overlook it, but if I get fired, then I get fired. Maybe that would be a sign.”

  “I think you need to see it through,” I tell him. “I don’t want to be the reason you don’t fulfill your responsibilities. Imagine what your dad would have to say about that.”

  The breath he lets out sounds let down, impatient and annoyed.

  “You’re never going to forgive me, are you?” he says like there’s been an anger building inside of him and is just now about to overflow.

  I hadn’t wanted to have this discussion, especially not in a crowded diner, but I feel like I don’t have any choice. It was going to happen one way or another.

  “It’s hard to trust you,” I begin, having had one-sided arguments in my head countless times where I’d tried to anticipate Tyler’s answers to my accusations and only now truly verbalizing them. “How can I really ever know that you didn’t want to be with Laney, that I was just your backup in case things didn’t work out with her?”

  “You really think that? Have I done such a bad job of letting you know how much I care about you?” There’s that anger, but it feels like he’s directing it at himself more than me.

  “I know you care about me. That’s not at question. What I can’t know is whether or how much you care about Laney too.”

  “I do… I did… I loved her and then cared about her as a friend. And maybe I was confused about what that meant, but I never for a second loved you less. Not for a second would I have chosen her over you if it had even come close to that.”

  “But you’d gotten into CU,” I remind him. “You were keeping things from me.”

  He sighs, puts his hands to the sides of his head, elbows on the table, and looks down. “I fucked up in even talking to her,” he says, slowly lifting his eyes back to mine. “I fucked up, but I didn’t do anything with her. And I applied to CU before I even knew you, Claire. But getting in wasn’t what I really wanted—all I wanted was to get closer to you.”

  “I want to believe that.”

  He takes my hand. “I get it. I have to. If I was in your shoes, I’d feel the same way.”

  “You just about bit my head off thinking I’d been sleeping with Will.”

  “Yeah, I know. And I probably would have gone ape shit crazy if I’d seen texts between you and another guy, Austin or whoever. I’d have been all kinds of pissed, but I would have had to give you another chance because I love you. I would have had to put my heart on the line for that.”

  “And you’re saying I should do the same? Just put my heart out there and risk having it broken again?”

  “I never wanted to break it in the first place!”

  “Is everything okay?” The man at the next table is asking, the woman he’s with looking at Tyler like he’d just punched me.

  “It’s fine,” I snap, then more coolly say, “Really, it’s okay.”

  “I need to get out of here,” Tyler says. “Will you come with me? To talk somewhere else?”

  Part of me is desperate to do just that, to talk this out until I’m satisfied that Laney will remain a distant part of Tyler’s past. But the other part of me thinks about a huge test coming up tomorrow and how I should study. That part of me knows that I need more time to let him back into my life, regardless of us sleeping together, not just once, but three times since he’d come to see me.

  “We can’t just force it all to be okay,” I say, standing up when he does and starting to dig money out of my purse when he beats me to it, pulling a twenty out of his wallet and leaving it on the table.

  “I’m not asking us to.”

  We walk out together, but somehow I know he won’t be coming back to the house with me.

  “I need more time,” I finally tell him as we stand out in the chill of early autumn together. “I do love you. I really, really do, but I’m just not ready to start building right where we’d left off when Laney showed up.”

  He winces at the mention of Laney again and then looks pretty much crushed. I hate seeing him like this, and I want him to agree with me, to tell me he understands and that he sees that something this important can’t just be decided in a few days.

  “So, I go back to California then,” he says in a low tone. “My contract is up in January. You could let me know where we stand by December, and if you want, I’ll come back, if you’re ready.”

  I touch his arm again, wishing it didn’t have to be this way but knowing it does. “Thank you for understanding. Maybe we can write letters to each other or something… you know, go all retro? We can go slow.”

  When he smiles at me, it’s forced. I don’t think he believes that I really do want to work on us, and I’m not sure I’d be able to convince him any more than he’d be able to convince me right now that his feelings for Laney while he and I were together had been nonexistent.

  “I’m going to go then,” he says, dragging a hand behind his head, looking up the street and then back at me, his eyes suddenly red.

  “I’ll see you again,” I tell him, hugging him, not wanting him to leave thinking I don’t care. “I love you… I do.”

  “I love you too, Claire. I love you… I love you… I love you.” He kisses my forehead and then pulls away from me. “Can I walk you home?”

  I shake my head. “I’m okay. I need to head to the library to study anyway.”

  He offers a half-hearted smile. “Then I’ll see you, and I’ll write to you.”

  “I’ll count on it,” I say.

  As he walks away, across the street and to his Jeep, I hope he knows that I am counting on it. I’m not giving up on us, but I’m just not ready to risk my dreams either.

  “So, how was the concert?” Will asks.

  I ran into him just outside the library, and I hadn’t anticipated saying more than hello to him until he asked if I’d like some help studying. My mind was probably still so focused on Tyler, my heart half sunk from having to say goodbye to him, that I was caught off guard and said yes.

  “It was good. Bastille is amazing live.”

  “Wish I could have been there with you.”

  Oh, dear.

  “Well, yeah… anyway, back to the books. Um, so what is one of the best ways to determine if someone is in a psychogenic coma?” I ask, hoping that studying will keep my mind focused and sane. “Is it A, an EEG, B, a CT scan, or—”

  “Are you back with that guy?”

  “What?”

  “Are you back with that guy, Tyler, or whatever his name was?”

  “He went back to California today.” Like it’s any of Will’s business now.

  “So, that’s it then? He’s gone for good?”

  “Not really, no. Listen, Will, can we just study?”

  “Can we just study? Are you seriously asking me that?”

  I’m taken aback. “Is this like jealousy or something? Because if it is, then—”

  He laughs. “I’m not jealous—I just want to know where I stand.”

  “I told you I didn’t want a relationship,” I say in a calm, quiet voice, not especially wanting to get kicked out of the library. “Was I not clear?”

  “You obviously want one with that guy. It’s just me you don’t want one with. Is that it?”

  I’m this close to rolling my eyes on him, but I refrain, instead telling him gently that, “I’m actually still in love with that guy, and I’ve been honest with you Will. I can’t do more than friendship.”

  He’s clearly pissed off at me, his eyes dark, his face reddening.
“Your age should have been a red flag, but I thought you’d be more mature than this.”

  “Me?” My mouth is wide open, finding it hard to believe a guy in his mid twenties is calling me immature while he’s the one throwing a fit because I don’t want a relationship with him.

  “Whatever,” he says, gathering his things up again like he did just the other day. “I wish you well, but I don’t have time to quiz you if I’m not getting anything out of it.”

  For the second time, Will is storming out of the library. And for the second time, I don’t really give a shit.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CLAIRE

  It’s easy to take things for granted, but I didn’t consider myself one of those people who did. I’d lost my father before I really ever had a chance to know him, and I’d lost my friend, Margaret, when I’d somehow imagined she’d keep fighting off death forever. My relationship with my sister, Kate, was on shaky ground, and I couldn’t help but to worry about her and what her future would bring.

  Knowing these things, knowing how quickly things can be changed and taken away, I shouldn’t have let go of Tyler so easily. In my head, I’d considered I was doing the adult thing, the thing where you give yourself time to heal and to rebuild something important, to rebuild trust. It’s like building a skyscraper that you don’t want sitting on a shaky foundation when it could just fall into a heap of twisted metal and concrete after so much time had been taken to build it. It had all seemed right to me when Tyler drove off in his Jeep, back to California, back to fighting wildfires, back to danger.

  But now?

  He had followed through on writing a letter to me, one in which he described where he was and that the fire season wasn’t letting up. He told me he loved me, said he thought about me the entire drive back and that he’d wait “for as long as it takes” until I could fully trust him again. His letter also contained something I wasn’t expecting, an explanation of how his relationship with Laney had ended in Denver. Making it clear he didn’t want to keep anything from me, he admitted to “beating the shit” out of Heath Larson, the guy who Laney cheated on Tyler with. He leaves nothing out, explaining the details and the consequences of his actions and how he still has things to work on. And while I raise my brows more than once, the raw honesty that comes through allows a deepening of the closeness I feel to him. I am unafraid.

  I’d been writing back to him a little each day, wanting to take my time in conveying my feelings, while also studying for a massive organic chemistry test that I needed to do well on. I say a lot of things in my letter, including an understanding about what happened in Denver and a hope we’ll talk about it in person someday, but the most important thing I say is that I miss him, deeply, and that I can’t wait to see him again.

  When I walk to the mailbox and slip the letter in, the day being cold and sunny with the leaves falling rapidly off the trees, I have the strangest feeling, a tight cinching in my gut and what feels like a sudden emptiness in my chest.

  “Tyler,” I say out loud, and my intuition tells me something is wrong.

  Some people will say you should always listen to your inner voice, but I don’t want to, not today.

  “He’s fine,” I assure myself. “He’s absolutely fine.”

  A little over two hours later, I’ve taken my organic chemistry test. That brings some relief because it was a monster of a test, and I’d been planning to treat myself with a giant cupcake full of sweet, delicious calories at a dessert shop near campus. But as I start walking toward the shop, I’m really not relieved at all. I’m still worried about Tyler.

  I call and leave him a message, but he doesn’t call me back, and I tell myself that’s okay because I don’t imagine he’d be taking phone calls while he’s cleaning up after a fire or thinning brush or one of the many other tasks that would require his full attention. But it’s not okay enough for me to still enjoy that cupcake, so I head in early to work instead, thinking I might be able to pick up the last part of someone else’s shift.

  The persistent nag I’m feeling about Tyler hasn’t left me by the time I’ve made it there, and I’m considering trying to get a hold of Sam or his mother to allay my fears. I pull out my phone just inside the coffee shop and start toward the counter, then pretty much freeze when I overhear a girl waiting in line nonchalantly mention that a bunch of “hot firefighters” just died in California.

  No.

  No… no… no… no… no.

  With shaking hands and a heart that threatens to beat right out of my chest, I scroll through my phone to news sites that are all reporting the same thing, that a crew of thirty-two firefighters had died doing everything right except for being able to anticipate winds switching course dramatically and whipping up a firestorm. There are surely dozens of active fire crews in California at the moment, but the vast wilderness fire the news is reporting on is the same one Tyler mentioned in his letter to me.

  It’s him.

  “No,” I say out loud and nearly fall to the ground when my muscles all seem to turn to jelly, one of my coworkers catching me and taking a call from my phone. It’s Court who’d been calling me, and within ten minutes, she’s picking me up and driving me to the apartment she and Denny share.

  “He’ll be okay,” Court assures me while I refresh the news on my phone every few seconds, praying for an update that will offer some concrete evidence or tales of survival.

  “There’s a list!” I say, noting it’s a list of the dead, and for a brief second I’m excited because I can’t imagine Tyler’s name could actually be on it. He’s too young and there is so much I have to tell him, so much time we still need to spend together.

  With her arm around me, she holds the phone, and we check the list together. It contains the names of thirty-one men and one woman, all dead:

  Jonathan Alvarez, 32

  Nathan Barker, 26

  Shane Billings, 27

  Tyler Duncan, 19

  …

  I can’t quite fathom that the howling, tortured screams I hear are coming from me. How could I be capable of such noises? They are raw and inhuman and full of pain.

  “He won’t want them to see… if he wasn’t burned… I’m not sure he’d want them to see his scars,” I cry, thinking of Tyler lying in some morgue, cold and dead and deeply pained at the idea that some person who doesn’t know him, who sees him as just another dead body, would judge him or take scientific interest in his scarring, something that Tyler had worked so hard to come to grips with.

  “They won’t judge him,” Court assures me, but she doesn’t know about the scars. She’s just trying to comfort me with her hand around my back, saying, “He’ll get the honor he deserves. He was a wonderful young man.”

  Was.

  I want so desperately to say he is.

  I want to wake up from this thing that has to be a nightmare.

  I want to talk to Tyler one last time.

  I want him to hold me close to him.

  I want to kiss him… oh, how I need to kiss him.

  The calls come to my phone in rapid succession. Court takes them all before passing them along. My mother, Paige, McKenzie and Emma. They’ve all heard the news and seen Tyler’s name. My mother says she’ll be on the first flight she can get here.

  It’s all so unreal. I want it to be unreal.

  At some point, Court offers me a blanket, and I somehow sleep. I dream of Tyler. I look right into his eyes and tell him I love him, and he wraps his arms around me and says, “I know, silly.”

  “I thought you died in a fire.” I tell him in my dream. “That’s what’s silly.”

  “What is death, really?” dream Tyler says. “I’m okay. My friends are okay, too. It just sucks about the people we had to leave behind.”

  “Don’t leave me behind,” I say, reaching out to him, reaching and reaching and just grabbing hold of his hand.

  I wake up and open my eyes.

  “I can’t even imagine what she’s feeling,”
Emma says. She’s standing and talking to Court, her belly so big that I think she might have her baby today, in this very room.

  “No… me either. Could you imagine losing John, or me losing Denny? I can’t even go there in my head.”

  I sit up, slowly, still picturing myself reaching for Tyler and touching his hand that felt so warm and real. I should feel the weight of the truth on me, the truth that he’s dead, but I instead feel lightness, a peaceful sensation, one that builds until it’s stronger than the more painful one I’d had at the mailbox.

  I brush the hair away from my face, and I want to say something out loud, something that I’m feeling deep inside of me but that I’m afraid to vocalize.

  Emma notices that I’ve woken up. “Claire, honey. Are you… are you okay?”

  I realize that I might be hyperventilating, wanting so desperately to speak.

  “Claire, you’re—”

  “I think he might not be dead,” I say, and then I break into tears.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  TYLER

  “Don’t you give me that! I’ve just had to talk my poor sister down from thinking her nephew is dead!”

  I wake up to my mother’s back to me, her screaming into her phone, which is weird since my mother isn’t one to scream. I’m in a hospital, that much I know from looking around at the white walls, the big window and a host of beeping machines and IVs.

  “Is everything all right in here?” A woman who I suppose is a nurse asks my mother after rushing into my room.

  Mom turns to her and holds her hand over her phone. “This so-called news agency got a list of all the injured and somehow plopped them right along with the dead!” Mom is shaking her head wildly back and forth and goes right back to yelling at whomever is on the other line.

  The nurse turns away, then stops and looks at me. “You’re awake,” she says quietly, coming over to my bedside. “Are you feeling all right?”

  I nod, not really able to talk because my throat burns like hell.

  “She’s right,” the woman says, tilting her head to my mother who is still wrapped up in the phone call. “Nobody is supposed to share the names in a tragedy like this, not until all of the family is notified, especially when they lump in the injured and say that every single one of you died. What a mess.”