Breathe Into Me (19 page)

I smiled up at him but still felt like a compete spaz. I couldn’t believe I had just orgasmed like that in front of him. Kane cleared his throat and kind of shifted from foot to foot.

“As much as I would love to stay and spend some more time with you, I think I’m going to have to call it a night a little early and, uh, take care of something.” He glanced down.

I followed where his eyes had gone and my hand flew to my mouth when I noticed the huge bulge in his pants. It was obviously pushing against his jeans and probably had to be quite painful. Poor guy. I was even worse than I thought.

“Um, maybe I could help you out with that?” I questioned, but my voice was noticeably shaky.

He shook his head. “No it’s all right. Nothing I haven’t dealt with before, but I will say this, it was the best way it has ever been brought on.” He gave me a sly smile. “I’ll text you later, okay?”

I nodded. Honestly I was a little relieved that he hadn’t taken me up on my offer because I would have had no clue what to even do with it had he said yes.

Kane gave me a quick kiss goodbye and headed out the door. After he was gone I noticed the still-untouched food lying on my bed. If I hadn’t been starving, I would have probably felt bad about devouring half of it within five minutes after he’d left with the problem he did. But it smelled so good and like I said, I was starving, so I ate my fill and put the rest in our mini fridge with a note for Jessi, letting her know there was more left over if she wanted it. Then I climbed into my bed and read some more while I waited for Kane’s text letting me know he had made it home safely
.

Over the next few days, Kane and I had fallen into a pretty steady routine. We spent as much time as we could together when he wasn’t working. We made out … a lot, but there were no mishaps like before—not that the urge didn’t hit to jump him when we kissed, I was just becoming more in control of myself around him.

The day of the cookout, I stressed all day over what to wear. I mean I was meeting his grandparents after all, and they were important to him so I wanted them to really like me. This would be the first time I had ever met the family of a guy I was interested in, so I was freaking out a little bit. Usually people had high school to get used to that awkward first time meeting the family thing, but since my high school years were mostly spent hiding out, I never had the chance. Now here I was eighteen years old and scared to death to meet someone’s grandma.

“Kelsey, would you just pick something already? Landon will be here in a minute,” Jessi huffed from where she sat perched on her bed.

“I need to find the perfect thing to wear, Jess. I have to make a good impression on them. Kane really looks up to his grandparents, and if they don’t like me, well maybe it would be a deal breaker for him,” I said as I tossed yet another shirt over my shoulder where it landed in the pile with the others that I had already deemed not worthy.

I guess Jessi had finally had enough of my mini melt down because she hopped off her bed, made her way to me, gripped my shoulder and gave me one firm shake.

“Snap out of it! They will
love
you! Everyone loves you. You need to give yourself more credit sometimes.”

I sighed and looked down at my feet. “I just feel like I need to build myself up so high, Jess, that way when the darkest side of me becomes known, maybe it won’t matter so much to people because I will have already established myself with them and they will be able to absorb that awful side and not hold it against me.”

Jessi firmly grasped my chin and made me look into her pale blue eyes. “No, you listen to me Kelsey Makinzee Rien
.
”
Oh no, she pulled the full name card. I was in trouble now.

“What happened six years ago was. Not. Your. Fault! The person whose fault it is, is rotting in a jail cell somewhere—probably getting raped daily by his celly.” I raised my eyebrow at her and she shrugged. “We can hope right? After what that person—I will not call him a man, and I will not call him your dad … he lost that right—but after what
he
did to your mom, and after what you had to grow up witnessing every day, he deserves all the hell that he can go through on this earth before he rots for the rest of eternity in a different kind of hell.” She loosened her grip on my chin and took my hands in her tiny hands.

“I hate that you do this to yourself, Kelsey. You are the only person who can’t see how special you are. Lord knows you have had it rough, and I can’t imagine what it is like for you. But as your best friend, it hurts me to see you tear yourself down the way you do. You of all people deserve happiness now. So, please, I’m begging you. Let it in. Let Kane in. Let
me
in.”

I grabbed my best friend in a tight hug. I felt the warmth of a tear slowing slipping down my cheeks. I knew what Jessi was talking about, but it was easier said than done. She didn’t know how my mother looked at me for help and I just stood there and watched all the life drain from her. It was something I didn’t think I would ever forgive myself for.
He
may have been rotting in a prison somewhere, but it didn’t help with the fact that some small part of me believed that maybe I should probably be sharing the cell right beside him.

“I’m sorry, Jessi. I know how difficult it is to have me as a friend. You have no idea how much your friendship means to me. I will try to work on it, okay? You deserve that much from me.”

Jessi shook her head, her wild red curls flying everywhere. “No, Kelsey, I don’t want you to do this for
me,
I want you to do this for
you.
I will be here for you no matter what. You will never get rid of me but you need to forgive yourself. Your mom wouldn’t want you to go through life hating yourself for something you had no control over. You were stuck in a horrible situation and there was nothing you could have done.”

I don’t care how many times the world would tell me that, I couldn’t make myself believe it. I had taken the cowardly way out and I would have to carry that with me for the rest of my life, but I would do as I promised Jessi. I would work on
me
.

“Shit. Now I’m going to have to redo your make up on top of finding you something to wear,” Jessi said as she ran her thumbs under my eyes to try to clear my cheeks of the little black streaks that I know had to be running down due to my crying.

“I’m sorry to have brought that up like that on a day that I know you are already stressing over. Not a good move on my part,” Jessi sighed.

“No Jessi, it’s okay. I need you to give me a kick in the ass every now and then to make me remember I do have to go on living. That no matter how much it hurts, I am still here and I have people who gathered around me and loved me when they didn’t have to and I need to be thankful for that.”

Which was true. With all my shame and guilt over my mom, I rarely took the time to be thankful for Jessi and her family extending their home and their love to me when they didn’t have to. They could have let me go off into the system, but they took me in and cared for me as if I was one of their own and the way I repaid them was to mope and feel sorry for myself for the six years I had lived with them. I ached every day for my mom, but I needed to find that happy medium of being thankful for what I still had and learning to live with what I had done. I wanted to be happy again, I really did. I just hadn’t figured out how to be that way yet.

After many different wardrobe changes, Jessi helped me decide on a nice summer dress and a light sweater. Her reasoning for the choice being, “His grandparents are old, old people grew up in a time where girls wore a lot of dresses.” Though her reasoning may have been a little crazy, I went with it and then let her reapply my makeup. She was just finishing up when there was a knock at the door.

“That’s probably Landon. I’ll get it,” Jessi said as she hopped over the pile of clothes that still lay in the middle of the floor. I was going to have to clean up this mess when I got back. As I made my way to the door to leave, Jessi, stepped back in the room closing the door behind her. In her arms was a large arrangement of flowers.

“Was that Landon? Are those from him?” I questioned.

She shook her head. “No there was no one at the door. Just these sitting on the floor. I looked down the halls but didn’t see anyone. The card has your name on it. Maybe they are from Kane?”

She handed me the flowers and I plucked the card from the plastic stem. The top of the card did read my name but the message was very vague. There was no name stating who they were from, only a message saying, “Be seeing you.”

“Be seeing you?” Jessi read aloud over my shoulder. “Who do you think they are from?”

The handwriting on the card was obviously female, so I assumed the lady at the flower shop had filled it out, but I honestly had no clue who they were from. It wasn’t as if I knew a bunch of people but I couldn’t understand if they were from someone I knew, why they wouldn’t sign their name.

“I don’t know. Maybe it was meant for a different Kelsey in the dorms or something and they got the rooms mixed up,” I said as I placed the flowers on my desk. I hated the thought that someone might have spent their money, and that the other Kelsey would never know she had these beautiful flowers.

“Or maybe you have a secret admirer,” Jessi teased as she poked me in my ribs, and I rolled my eyes at her.

“What?! You’re hot, girl. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the guys on campus want them a little piece, but they have enough sense in their heads to not approach you because Kane would more than likely flip his shit.”

“Flip his shit, Jessi, really? For starters I have had no guys approach me the entire time we have been here other than Kane … and well Nate. So I highly doubt anything you just said.” She was crazy. It wasn’t as though I had guys lined up at my door, I never had.

“Oh believe me, honey, they are
all
looking, but the thing you don’t realize is that Kane is like a shadow. He doesn’t know it, but I watch him around you sometimes. He is always so focused on you and you just have no clue about anything. You don’t know that when he catches people checking you out that he gives them this look that can be sometimes downright scary, but hot all at the same time. Well hot for me, scary for the poor fool whose eyes linger just a bit too long on you.”

Did that really happen? Did Kane really scare off anyone that looked my way? While that would be a little annoying, it also made me a little giddy. It was kind of a turn-on to have him claiming me as his in a ‘don’t touch AND don’t look’ kind of way, and I was smiling at the thought. There was another quick knock at the door and Jessi and I looked at each other.

“Oh no. You get it this time. If there are more gifts out there for you I might just get a little depressed.”

I laughed at her and went to the door. This time on the other side stood Landon. I pushed the door open wider so she could see who was out there. “See, this time it is for you.”

She walked right into his arms and gave him a quick kiss. “This time huh? What am I missing here?” Landon asked as he wrapped his arm around Jessi’s waist.

“Nothing, just Kelsey getting a large flower arrangement from an unknown source. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”

Landon glanced around me and saw the flowers on the desk and shook his head. “Nope. Are they from Kane?”

“I don’t think so. The card didn’t say who they were from, but you would think if they were from Kane he would have left his name, right?”

Landon shrugged. “I guess that makes sense. I don’t know anything about it if he was planning on surprising you with flowers, but I know one thing, if they are not from him it’s going to be pretty entertaining when he finds out who they are from,” he chuckled to himself.

There it was again. More people sensing Kane had this possessiveness over me. How was I the only one not to see it?

“Well if you ladies are ready, we have a barbeque to get to. I haven’t eaten all day just preparing for it. So if you don’t mind I would like to get our asses over there.”