If I Break THE COMPLETE SERIES Bundle (64 page)

“You tired the little angel out?” She laughs.

“We had a ton of fun,” Chris says as he gets out of the car. I do the same.

“This is a beautiful car.”

“Thanks,” I say, wrapping my arms around myself as I walk behind them.

“We’re going to head this way,” Chris says, gesturing toward the back of the house. I look back at Mrs. Scott holding Caylen. She gives me an assuring nod. I let out a deep breath and change directions. I see he’s headed to the yard where I saw the horses through the kitchen window earlier. I wonder if his mom said something to him. When we reach the gate, he stops and leans on it. I do the same. The horses are beautiful. One’s a toffee color with a white stripe down its back and the other a beautiful chocolate.

“That’s Butterfinger and Reese’s Pieces,” he says, gesturing to each. I look at him to see if he’s joking and he laughs.

“Seriously?” I ask.

“My parents let me name them and when I was a kid, I was obsessed with candy.” He takes something out of his pocket. He extends his hand to me and reveals two bite sized bags of M&M’s. I laugh.

“When you were a kid, huh?” I say after popping a few in my mouth. He grins at me before pouring the whole bag in his own.

“I used to ride,” I say, leaning more of my weight on the gate. He turns around and leans his back on the gate so he’s facing me.

“Really?” he asks in a disbelieving tone.

“Yeah,” I say, finishing my candy. “Is that so hard to believe?” I ask him jokingly, and he shrugs.

“No, not at all,” he says, covering up his surprise. I frown at him.

“Hey, I look about as shocked as you did when I told you I play the guitar.”

It’s just surprising Cal had a skill that could easily get him laid and didn’t use it to his advantage, I want to tell him that but it may be a little inappropriate at the moment.

There’s a breeze but the sun is warm. I close my eyes and enjoy this small moment where I don’t feel suffocated by anxiety. At this second things are just easy.

“Do you want to go for a ride?” he asks.

My eyes snap open. “Now?” I ask a little surprised.

“Yeah. That is, if you really know how,” he says teasingly.

“That sounds a little like a dare.” I fold my arms across my chest and he shrugs a little.

“Not a dare. More like an invitation,” he says, his eyes narrowing in on mine and my heart speeds up.
Is he flirting with me?
No that can’t be. If this were Cal, it’d definitely be flirting, but it’s not, so I can’t read too much into this. He’s being
friendly.
Just because he’s being nice to me doesn’t mean he’s flirting. I just want him to be flirting with me, which is why I need to get back in that house where I’m not alone with him before I do something that’s going to make this really awkward for the rest of the day.

“Does this invitation have an expiration date?” I ask, my eyes meeting his briefly. He smiles and shakes his head.

“Not at all,” he says, folding his arms across his chest and closing the distance between us. Not so much that I feel like he’s invading my space, but enough that my heart catches in my throat. I let out a deep breath because it’s taking everything in me to keep my hormones and emotions all tied up in a neat little package.

“I’ll take you up on it when I haven’t been walking around the zoo all day,” I say lightly and turn away from him to walk back towards the house.

“Uhm, about earlier,” he says, quickening his pace to walk beside me. He’s walked next me like this all day, but now it’s causing my skin to tingle and feel hot even though it’s cool and damp from the rain.

“Yeah?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the wet grass that’s being crushed under our feet.

“When you asked me if I remembered anything…”

My heart almost stops and so do I, right in my tracks. I turn to face him and look up at him, hoping my expression isn’t showing how I feel inside. I look into his eyes. They avoid mine for a few seconds, then he looks into them briefly.

“I do want to remember,” he says quietly. I feel like he has more to say but I wish he wouldn’t, because this, what he just said, is enough to get me through the rest of the day.

“I want you to remember,” I say with way too much enthusiasm and a smile so wide I have to bite my cheeks to contain it. I see him look down nervously.

Okay, dial it down a bit.

“I mean, I want you to because if you start to remember that’s a good thing. Right?” I say, trying to turn this around from being about us or about me.

“After Cal left,” he says, pushing his hands deep into his pockets, “what made you not…You didn’t…” he trails off.

I let out a deep breath. “Get a divorce?” I say, trying to help him along and he nods. I try to think of the best thing to say. The thing that will make him the least uncomfortable, that would make this the least awkward, but I don’t know how to do that. I always tried to hide my feelings from Cal, even before things started to go wrong. When we first met, I didn’t want him to know how much I liked him. I didn’t want him to know I was starting to fall for him because I thought it would scare him away. It’s ridiculous now because he knew everything before I did, even about me. With Chris, I’ll take a different route. Complete honesty. Well, when he asks for it.

“Because I loved him and I still had hope.” My eyes don’t leave his chest. I’m afraid to look in his eyes. I don’t want to see what’s there but I wish he didn’t have on that big khaki coat he’s wearing. I want to see if his chest is heaving, to know if his heart is beating as fast as mine is right now. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. I glance up at him and see his eyes on the ground, a chill passes through the air and one creeps down my spine as I wait for him to respond…to say anything.

I hear him let out a breath, a long one, and he runs his hand through his hair. “And now?” he asks quietly, and I close my eyes and think carefully of how to answer him. I raise my gaze to meet his, and as soon as I see his eyes, even though they’re not the grey I’m used to, I love them just the same. I look up to the sky and feel myself biting my lip. Ugh. The truth. I want to tell the truth but the truth could really complicate things between us and cloud the reason I’m here.

Caylen.

“You don’t have to answer that,” he says quietly. There’s warmth in his voice, and when I’m brave enough look at him, he’s wearing a sympathetic smile, which makes me feel worse than if he were scowling at me.

He feels sorry for me.
Great. That’s just great.

We head into the house and Chris immediately heads to the kitchen. He has the appetite of a teenage boy. I don’t remember Cal ever eating as much as Chris has in past few hours. Not only did he eat two sandwiches, three Snickers, and an ice cream, he bought a container of popcorn and he ate half before he decided to save it for later. I wonder if the six-pack Cal had has morphed into a keg under that big khaki jacket.

As promised, Mr. Scott has the doll house put together, and Caylen is mesmerized by it. I return to the brown chair I sat in earlier. It almost swallows me but is one of the most comfortable things I’ve ever sat in. Mr. Scott has turned on a college football game, dividing his attention between it and Caylen, who’s hitting him with a doll they bought her. My eyelids feel heavy as bricks. I guess emotional exhaustion eventually translates into actual exhaustion.

“Lauren.” I look back and see Mrs. Scott smiling at me.

“Do you want to go lie down before dinner?”

“Oh I’m fine,” I say, a yawn escaping my mouth, and she smiles knowingly.

“Mom, something’s burning,” Chris says, reappearing. Mrs. Scott’s eyes widen.

“Chris, show Lauren where your room is so she can take a nap before dinner,” she says, scurrying to the kitchen.

“I’m fine really,” I say, fighting another yawn. He tilts his head to the side in disbelief.

“Okay, maybe just a really short one.” I stand up from the comfy brown chair and stretch. I look over at Caylen and Mr. Scott.

“I’ve got her,” he grunts, only briefly glancing up at me. His ice has melted with Caylen but with me, not so much. That’s totally fine since I’m still not too thrilled about him either. I follow Chris down the hall and up the stairs, sunlight pouring in throughout this whole house. Once we’re upstairs, he gestures to a room on the left further down the hall.

“There’s the bathroom in case you need it. That’s my parent’s room.” He points at another door by the bathroom, and we make a sharp right. He opens the door and waits for me to step in. I wrap my arms around myself and think back to the first night I stepped into Cal’s apartment. Then, I had on a teensy cloth that barely covered my butt. Now I’m in an oversized sweater and jeans and you can barely tell I have a butt at all.

Chris’ room is pretty large, surprisingly just a little smaller than ours...my room back home. I try to resist the urge to scour it looking for hints of who
this
person next to me is.

My attempts fail.

He has a queen-sized bed with a navy blue comforter. A desk with a laptop on it sits in the corner. And posters, lots of them lining the walls, mostly of bands and a few sports teams.

“I haven’t really done much decorating since high school,” he kids. He’s standing there with his arms folded across his chest, the outline of his muscles showing through his blue t-shirt, the khaki jacket gone. I look down quickly at his stomach but can’t tell if my earlier theory about his stomach ballooning outward is correct. I walk over to a shelf housing at least thirty trophies. Basketball, hockey, soccer all different years. There are two pictures near them. One is of him and his parents, all wearing Lions Jerseys, and the other of him by himself. He looks really young. His hair is so much shorter and he has a smaller build. I can’t help smiling. I’ve never seen any pictures of him this young before. He’s standing next to a girl about his age with strawberry blond hair. They’re holding what looks like a science project.

“That’s my best friend Lisa. She should be coming for dinner tonight,” he says, and I can tell he’s behind me because every nerve in my body, starting from my neck down, awakens.

“H-how old were you on here?” I ask him, my voice a little squeaky.

“Seventeen,” he replies.

I look to my right and I see more pictures on his wall out of the corner of my eye. “May I?” I ask. I hope he doesn’t think it’s intrusive, but who am I kidding? I can do it while he’s here and deal with a little awkwardness or shuffle through his things after he leaves and potentially deal with even more awkwardness if he catches me.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. I walk over to the Wall of Christopher. There’s a picture of him when he’s about six in a little league outfit. He’s adorable, his chocolate brown curls peeping out from beneath his hat. There’s one of him near a lake where he looks about twelve or thirteen. I’d bet it’s the same girl from the science fair photo but this time there’s another boy, blonde with piercing blue eyes.

“How old are you here?” I ask. He’s leaning on the chair behind the desk, his eyes on me, and I feel uncomfortably excited for just a moment.

“Thirteen. That’s Lisa again and my other best friend Aidan. He’s doing a tour in Iraq. He’s been one of my closest friends since he moved here from Chicago in second grade. His dad was in the army and they always moved around a lot. But his grandmother never left and he came back to visit every year. She has to be going on like 80-something now. And he’s obviously not as scrawny.” He chuckles and I smile.

“You guys all grew up together?” I ask curiously.

“Yeah, I’ve known Lisa since pre-school and I met Aidan when I was around seven. Lisa went to visit her dad the summer Aidan’s parents moved in with his grandmother. When she came back, it was awkward. It was pretty much a fight over who was my best friend. Turned out, Aidan and Lisa had a lot more in common than I did with either of them. They liked to fight. They’d throw tantrums if they lost at anything and basically would get into as much trouble as possible. When they figured out they were so alike, they implemented voting on everything, which was two against one from then on.”

I smile at him for being so open about his past. That’s definitely not something I’m used to. “So you were all little troublemakers?” I ask with a giggle.

He shakes his head.
“They
were the troublemakers.
I
was caught in the middle.”

There’s another picture of him and his dad sitting on the porch. He looks about 19, same green eyes, longer hair, his build a little more defined than the last teenage version of him. Then there’s the infamous pie-eating contest with his dad. The clarity of this one is much better, of course. I start to turn away, but before I do, there’s one last picture that catches my eye. It’s him and the blonde I met the other day. Who am I kidding? I know her name; it’s burned into my brain.

Jenna.

He’s next to her, dressed in a black suit and a bow tie (Cal wouldn’t be caught dead in a bow tie) and his hair is obviously styled back. He looks like he’s being suffocated in the suit. He’s smiling, and maybe I’m just jealous but this picture isn’t reminiscent of Cal or even of the Chris standing next to me...

“Her dad is a renowned Doctor. He wins a lot of awards, so lots of sitting in uncomfortable suits,” he replies like he’s reading my mind or maybe my expression. I think I’ve seen enough pictures for today.