Silver Heart (9 page)

However, I had been far from a perfect child and I was far from perfect now. I liked animals and had begged Santa for a dog every year; my mother thought all pets were harbingers of disease, dirty carpets, and house destruction. I preferred Rock and even Pop music to my father’s Classical collection. Hell, I had liked playing in the mud and splashing in rainbow-filled puddles after a rainy day. I wanted to be a photographer—not a doctor. I yearned for spontaneity and freedom, especially in relationships.

I didn’t like pretty guys named Preston; I was much more drawn to dark and unpredictable Sawyers. Okay, one Sawyer. And as I tried to maintain my balance and complete one turn without falling for the hundredth time today, my mind shifted to the day that Sawyer tried to teach me to lose a little control.

“Bend your knees!” Sawyer’s shouts cut through the cold air. He’s standing at the top of a small slope, watching me head straight for snowy doom. “Get low!”

My snowboard doesn’t want to cooperate with my shaking body. The cursed object has a mind of its own and currently it’s stuck in a “way too fast” mode.

“Turn. Now…now, Silver! Turn!”

I stick my arms out, flapping my hands in the air in search of balance. But all that does is help me gain more speed as I soar down the hill.

“Look where you want to go!” My brain hears the directions clearly, but my body can’t seem to follow them.

Crap…crap…crap! I’m gonna die!

At least we’re the only ones on the hill. Sawyer is teaching at the snowboarding school and has a key to the lift. We had snuck onto the premises after hours, so I don’t have to worry about anyone else witnessing my embarrassing demise. What fifteen-year-old looks this lost on a board? Shouldn’t I be feeling cool and rebellious?

“Transfer your weight from your back edge to your front edge! You can do it!”

Back edge? Front edge? I’m not in control of either edge! The waxy bottom of the board is perfectly flat, flush against the snow. I’m struggling to slow down and gain control.

“Toes! Toes! Toes!” Sawyer is shouting. “Turn, Silver! Turn!”

I can’t…I can’t…I can’t!

“Watch out!”

I shut my eyes and hold my breath as my toe edge connects with a rough patch of snow, sending me tumbling forward. My hands break my fall and a painful jolt rocks my entire body.

Sawyer carves down the hill and is kneeling by my side before I can even get up.

“Are you okay?” A look of genuine concern flashes in his eyes. “Are you hurt?”

I’m hurt. And mortified. And I’m pissed off that I, once again, allowed myself to lose all control of the situation.

I massage the stinging in my left wrist. “I’ll live.”

“You have to relax, Silver,” he says, brushing off some powdery snow from my jacket.

“Easier said than done, Sawyer,” I grumble.

“When I’m riding, I feel free. Don’t you feel that?”

“No,” I tell him honestly. “I feel like I’m going to die.”

My parents see fear as a weakness, so I hide it around them. With Sawyer, I’m not afraid to speak my mind. As mortifying as it may be…I don’t mind admitting that I’m scared.

He undoes his bindings and secures his board by sticking its edge into the snow. “Get up,” he says and holds both hands out to me. He’s wearing the black Burton gloves I got him for Christmas this year. He pulls me up in one smooth move. My board begins to slide, so he puts out his foot to stop it. He then spins me around so that I’m parallel with the bottom of the hill.

“Put your weight on your heels. I’ve got you.” He keeps his grip on my left hand, but slides his right one to my hip. The power of his touch shocks me.

“Okay. Now, slowly…I’m going to guide you down. At ninety degrees I want you to switch the weight to your toes and move your hips up.”

I’m trying to obey his instructions, but even through all the layers of fabric, I feel a slight tingle on my skin from his touch.

“Good, Silver…Now toes!”

I complete the turn! I actually do it!

“Awesome job!” he says and laughs. “Are you ready to turn the other way?”

“Only if you keep holding on to me,” I whisper, then immediately want to kick my brain’s butt. Hopefully Sawyer hadn’t noticed the double innuendo in my words. I can be brave and honest about most things, but there is no way that he can know about my feelings for him. I can’t risk our friendship for something as silly as a crush. A strong, inexplicable crush on a hot, sweet, kind, amazing friend.

“Are you ready?” he asks, snapping me back to reality.

I take a deep breath and nod.

“We’re going to do the same thing we did before, just opposite sides this time. Start on your toes and then shift your weight to your heels. Ready?”

I take a deep breath. “Ready.” I trust him. I trust him with my whole heart. And with my body.

Within minutes, I’m turning from side to side. What’s even better is that Sawyer never lets go of me for a second. I’m slowly gaining confidence and feeling that slight sense of freedom he always boasts about.

Then it all comes crashing down as I hit an icy patch and plummet, bringing Sawyer down with me. We collapse in a laughing fit, me on my back with my legs bound, him directly on top of me.

“This is why I insist that you wear a helmet,” he says, tapping the hard gear on my head.

He never wears any kind of protection. Right now, he’s just sporting his usual gray hoodie, gloves, and a black hat. Even in the dimness of the night I can see that his cheeks are flushed from the frosty wind.

“At least I didn’t hurt you this time,” I say. Last winter—the last time Sawyer had attempted to teach me to snowboard—I plowed into him so hard that I split his lip open.

“You’re the only girl whose touch will be permanently tattooed on my mouth,” he points to the scar in the center of his bottom lip. Suddenly I’m melting. The snow below me is freezing cold, but my body temperature is soaring, threatening to set me on fire from the inside.

I pull my bottom lip between my teeth and hold my breath as he shifts his weight off me.

He rolls over, placing the left side of his body flush against my right. “Adam told me I’m not allowed to come out here with you ever again,” he says. “He’s threatening to tell your parents that we’re hanging out.”

I shrug. “Yeah, well…”

“You know that they’ll murder me if anything bad happens to you, right?”

“Trust me, they’ll also murder me if anything bad happens to me,” I tell him.

He laughs again and props himself up on his elbow to face me. Wisps of dark hair that were previously covering the side of his face shift, revealing a deep cut running from the side of his temple all the way into the area covered by his hat.

I immediately shoot up into a sitting position. “Sawyer!” Before he can stop me, I’m taking off his hat. “What’s this?”

He jerks his head back and pulls down the hat.

“What happened?”

His jaw clenches. “Do you even have to ask?”

“I thought you said that you were done fighting with him.”

“Asshole slapped Lyla,” he said, avoiding my gaze. “So I broke his jaw. That pissed him off. I guess he wasn’t counting on the fact that his son was going to grow up one day.”

“Is this what you call growing up?” I peel of his hat, wincing at the red gash. “Your eyebrow is split in half.”

“Yeah, well…” he shrugs. “I was thinking about getting a piercing anyway. It’ll help hide the scar.”

“Did you call the police?”

“The police aren’t going to do shit anymore. Even they’re tired of the fact that my mom keeps inviting him back into the house. I think they’ve given up on her. I’m starting to give up on her too. She says she can’t leave him, but one day I swear he’ll be the death of her. Plus, I don’t want Children’s Aid to come by and threaten to take Lyla again.”

“You need to get out of that place.” This is a conversation we have on a weekly basis.

“And leave my sister alone with those two?” he scoffed. “Sometimes I think my mom is worse than him because she refuses to get out and let him rot in hell like he deserves.”

“No…I mean…I don’t know.” I wish I had all the answers. Or any answers, for that matter. “What if you take her with you and—”

“Where would a seventeen-year-old guy with a part-time job take a thirteen-year-old girl? Should we flee to Europe? Or maybe somewhere tropical like Bora Bora?” He sounds angry, but I know that his rage isn’t directed at me. It’s aimed at the hopelessness of his situation.

I have an urge to hug him, but I don’t move. I don’t want him to think that I feel sorry for him. Sawyer hates pity. “So what are you going to do now?” I whisper.

“What I always do, Silver. Ride to live.” Smoky white puffs of breath escape from his lips and float through the darkness. “I’ll get out one day. I’ll earn my way up in this sport and find a way to escape. That’s the only reason I started taking those sponsor meetings. I’ll get money and get us out. Maybe I’ll even let my mom come.”

“And you’ll take me with you.” It’s not a question, but a simple statement.

He smiles sadly and says, “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“And we’ll live happily ever after.”

“Definitely. We’ll have the best life ever. My mom will get treatment for her addiction to Asshole, I’ll snowboard, you’ll take pictures, and Lyla will play the piano. We’ll come back to visit your parents—once they calm down and get over the fact that I stole you away. But Lyla and I will never have to see Asshole again.”

For now, it’s just a fantasy we spin to escape reality, but who knows? Perhaps Sawyer and Lyla will get away from their father one day.

But that day never comes. At least not for Lyla.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Our three-hour snowboarding lesson had wrapped by mid-afternoon, but not before ensuring that I was appropriately tortured. There wasn’t a single place on my body that didn’t hurt. Snow was supposed to be fluffy and fun. To me, it equaled rock-hard pain.

The appendages I’d used most for breaking falls—knees, butt, and hands—had received the worst punishment. Each tumble down the hill had threatened to be my last, but my allergy to quitting had forced me to bravely endure the discomfort until Connor finally called an end to our session.

By the time Maddie and I had dragged our gear to the parking lot, Adam was already waiting for us in the car. Unlike me—with my messy hair, broken body, and bruised ego—my brother looked as perfectly put together as he’d been when we parted. Years away from the snowboard clearly hadn’t done much harm to his natural skills.

I couldn’t help but think that there was something missing. It was as if his passion had deflated. Years ago, returning home from a day at the slopes meant that Adam’s cheeks would be flushed, his eyes glimmering with excitement. Today, he just looked like the Adam I’d grown to know over the years. Adam the Future Doctor. Cool, collected, reserved.

In order to compensate for the chillness and the quietness emanating from his end, Maddie kept both the car temperature and the conversation on
high
. I was beginning to sweat through all my layers, so I took off my dark purple ski jacket and placed it on the seat next to me. I fished out my cell phone and busied myself with scrolling through the missed calls—five from my mother—and checking new texts.

The first message was from my old roommate, telling me that she’d found someone to take over my lease. Emily still had one more semester to go before graduating, so we’d been trying to find a new tenant to replace my empty room in our small on-campus apartment.

There was also a text from my mother, asking why I hadn’t called her back, followed by two from Sawyer. We’d exchanged numbers as he walked me home last night, and my heart skipped a beat when I realized that this was our first text communication after years of complete radio silence.

His first message had a picture of a restaurant at the top of Blackcomb Mountain, accompanied by the words:
Lunch in a public place?
The second message had come in an hour later and said:
Or private lessons?
It also contained a photo, but this time I was the subject. The picture looked to have been snapped from atop a chairlift, probably on his way up the mountain to one of the terrain parks. I was lying on my back, arms, legs, and snowboard sprawled helplessly in the air. He’d caught me right after a bad fall. I couldn’t make out my face very clearly, but I knew that there was an expression of frustration painted across it.