Vertical Lines (The Vert Series Book 1) (17 page)

When his hands reach beneath my shirt, I tense up. Sensing it, Brooks stops, looking at me from hooded eyes.

“Jordan?”

I know he’s waiting for me to decide, to tell him
yes, take me
, or
no, I’m not ready
. And I know this isn’t fair, this stopping when I’ve done nothing but flirt and tease and kiss him back for nearly two weeks.

But this moment—it’s more than anything I’ve ever felt. Suddenly, I’m drowning in insecurity. He’s said so many beautiful things to me, made me feel so important. What if taking my clothes off reveals that I’m not what he thought? What if I’m sharp angles and pale features? What will I do if he sees me and it changes how he feels?

“I’m not… I’m not like a lot of the girls here, Brooks.”

He scrunches his brow, confused at my words, no doubt. I want to take them back, but I can’t, because even now I’m terrified he’s going to strip my shirt off and see the plain, boring girl beneath. Or that he’ll touch me and I won’t be able to respond; my body won’t be enough, my response won’t be enough.
I
won’t be enough.

“I’m plain, and sometimes I’m awkward. I don’t always remember to think before I speak, and though I’m not hideous, I’m not lush and curvaceous either. Skinny, my mother has always said.” I close my eyes, horrified at the words coming out of my mouth, even more so because I just mentioned
my mother
when a man is on top of me.

My heart breaks and my lungs stop when he shifts so he’s no longer laying over me. When he stands up from the bed completely, I have to keep the tears from spilling out.

“Have I given you the impression I wanted you to be someone else, Jordan?”

His voice is low, deceptively so, because the bedroom is bright from the daytime sun and I can see his face through the sheen of tears. Brooklyn is livid.

I shake my head, sitting up. “No, I just…” Tell him. Tell him you’ve never done this and you’re scared. “I just don’t want you to be disappointed.”

“Too late.” Those words lash out like a whip, and I freeze. “You have disappointed me, Jordan. You want to know why?” I shake my head
no
, weak and terrified I’m going to fall apart. “Because you’re afraid. Because you refuse to look in the mirror and see the same gorgeous, enticing, fucking amazing person I see. The person I wanted.”

The use of past tense is almost as painful as the rest of his words. I stay where I am, frozen, even when he heads for the door. “Jesus Christ,” he says and turns halfway toward me again. “Did she win, Jordan? Did they win? Has your family really made you believe you’re nothing special?” I don’t answer, because I don’t know. I don’t know anything except that I’m terrified. “I thought you were different—the girl who wanted to find out who she was, the one who needed just a little help opening the door. I wanted to be that help, Jordan. I wanted to be the guy who opened you up and made you see the color you bring to the world.”

Turning, he walks away from me. He doesn’t stop to say anything else. But he doesn’t need to—he said everything, and he was right. I am scared. And I hate that I just let the one person in my life who doesn’t scare me walk away before I could tell him I wanted him to be that person too.

Chapter 26

Brooks

I don’t have a right to be angry. Not really. And I definitely don’t have a right to yell at any girl the way I just yelled at Jordan.

I need to apologize, to explain why I said what I did, but not yet. I’m not calm enough to explain to her why it physically hurts me to see her insecurity, to notice the way she seems uncomfortable in her skin at random times. Even though I know the strides she’s made in the past weeks, the way she’s turned her life in a new direction and begun making it her own, there’s still a large part of me that wants to rage at her to see her beauty, her intelligence. Her goddamned
worth
.

My whole life I’ve watched women falter—wish for more, for less, for something other than who they were or what they had. My sister’s dying. There’s no saving her from herself anymore. My mother’s falling apart again because my sister is dying, blaming herself for not being stronger, and I’m trying to hold both of them together. It’s like holding wet sand, packing it tight and hard, hoping that when the sun comes out and dries it up, you did enough that the foundation holds, even if a little sand falls away.

My castle is crumbling, and I know eventually, no matter how sturdy I’ve made its foundation, it’s all going to come down.

My mother called me yesterday because Ashton hasn’t come home this week. Apparently, Mom forced her to go to a doctor’s appointment when she threw up steadily on Sunday. An IV bag of fluid and some heart tests confirmed our largest fear: she’s not improving.

Her body temp is low, her vitals are low, her heart is going to give. She’s walking and breathing, but it’s only a matter of time until she’s not. She can go into the program again, but that is only a temporary fix at this point. She’s killing herself, and even if she wakes up tomorrow and decides she wants to eat, she will be permanently changed.

I’ve been dealing with that knowledge as best I can. Being with Jordan helped—her outlook, her wit, her brain… every time, it made me feel something. Today, it made me feel needy—all I could see when I was touching her was
her
—smooth, soft, gorgeous Jordan. And then she froze.

I worried I had hurt her—my hands are big and I was using them roughly, but then her eyes were terrified and she said she wasn’t like other girls.

At first, I thought she was warning me that this was a big deal—she wouldn’t be sleeping with me because she wasn’t a girl who put out. And then I saw her face—and I realized she was warning me about her imperfections.

There I was, ready to worship her, and she was too afraid to show me everything because she didn’t think I could find her beautiful. Jesus Fucking Christ.

I haven’t wanted anything the way I want her, but I had to walk away. There was nothing left for me to say or do that was constructive; I learned a long time ago that if someone doesn’t love themselves, it doesn’t matter who else wants to love them, it will never be enough.

Her eyes were wet, her face pale, and even when I wanted to shake her, there was this need inside of me to lift her and shelter her from everything, to make her better and show her how much she means. But I can’t, because I’ve been there, and the fear of failing someone else is too great.

I showered and contemplated using my hand to relieve the ache, but in the end, I didn’t. I want Jordan, not an image or a substitute. Which means at some point, I need to go and find her and see if we can talk this out. But not yet—not until I’ve given us both time to calm down.

My charcoals are spread out in front of me, and I’m clicking through the photos I have downloaded. There are some strangers, some of Nala and Mal and Hunter, all doing their thing, unaware for the most part that I was photographing them. And then the rest are of Jordan. Anyone who didn’t know me would think this was an obsession.

It might be.

Staring at her, bright and carefree in her polka-dot bikini, her big straw sunhat shielding her face, my chest aches. She’s laughing, her hair in wet ropes over her shoulders because I’d just walked into the water with her. As mad as she said she was, she never did anything but laugh afterward.

What changed?

As if she will tell me, I take my hand and press it to the computer screen, wondering how in the hell someone so beautiful could ever question herself. And how in the hell I’m going to show her that the minute I laid eyes on her, the rest of the world dimmed, until she was all the light I needed.

Chapter 27

Jordan

“You have to go after him and show him you aren’t afraid.”

“I am afraid.”

“
Not of him
. Of the physical stuff? Please, who’s not? But are you afraid of
Brooks
?”

This was from Nala when she walked into our dorm room and found me—after Brooks left and I didn’t stop him. After Brooks told me he wanted me and I covered myself up, because I was too scared to let him inside all of the way, fearful of rejection or disappointment.

Am I
afraid of him?

Nala’s words haunt me as I walk up through the courtyard to his front door. My heart is slamming in my chest and my palms feel clammy. I knock anyway, because more than Nala’s words—more than my desire to show Brooks that I am the brave, adventurous girl he’s seen in the last month—is my desire to be with him.

Lord, I’m insane.

I don’t have time to dwell on this because Brooklyn opens the door and all of the saliva in my mouth dries up with just one look at him. He’s beautiful. His hair is damp and pulled back in a stubby ponytail, highlighting his strong jawline and chiseled cheekbones. I can see the planes and hollows in his face, his sharp nose and smooth lips, eyes the color of midnight framed by even darker lashes. I shouldn’t be able to see anything in them they’re so dark, but I do. I always do.

When I finish my perusal of his face, I look into those eyes once more and see it—the same something that had me trusting him all those weeks ago.

Brooks
sees
me. I don’t know how or why or what I did to deserve this, but somehow this stranger has given me the gift of
the look
, the one that tells a girl everything she’s unable to trust when it comes in words.

It’s that look that has me speaking, has me straightening my shoulders and trying to live up to the girl he sees—the same one I want to be.

“May I come in?”

He doesn’t say anything; he
does
push the door all the way open, extending his arm far enough I can slip underneath. I breathe in slightly and take his scent with me, part paint, paper, and the sea.

Stepping into the open space he created for function and still managed to make beautiful, I wipe damp palms on the thighs of the cropped Paige jeans I changed into. The sun is setting on the beach, bleeding brilliant oranges and reds through the almost-night sky; its strong colors are filtering through the wall on the far side of the room. The tile floor is open and uncluttered as usual. I look to his bed—the white comforter and sheets in disarray—the light shining over his drawing table on the other side of the room.

He’s added stuff to the walls since I was last here. I take a second to look at the black-framed photos splashing across the stark-white surface, still lifes brought to life not by the camera, but by Brooklyn’s hand, his vision. His heart. It makes it his—the pieces of him show this space—this open, airy space which brings the outside in—is all Brooklyn.

Just like he brought me to life out on the sidewalk of a convenience store only weeks ago.

I hear the door close, nothing else. He’s waiting, probably as confused by my presence as I am by his attention.
Brave
, Nala told me when I was leaving. Be brave and show him it’s not him I fear. I can do that.

Turning away from my study of his pictures, I stand in the middle of the room and look at him. He showered and changed, so he’s wearing dark jeans faded at the stress points and resting low on his hips, ending over his bare feet. His shirt is white and stretched out, thinned from so many washings; there’s a small tear at the neck. Fresh color and charcoal streaks mar it, so I know he was at his work station before I knocked.

Finally, I meet his eyes, those near-black eyes with sooty lashes that have the ability to look at everything and see beyond its surface and into its potential. I’m hoping that’s still true with me.

“I’m sorry I panicked.”

I see his sigh before I hear it. Closing my eyes, I wonder if this was a bad idea—if I’m too late. Or if I overthought Brooks’s reaction earlier, and his annoyance was purely physical, the idea of being rejected, not specifically by me, but by anyone.

Oh, God, what if he doesn’t really want me?

“Stop, Jordan.” My eyes snap open, and I find him watching me from a mere foot away. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop. And don’t apologize, either. You have a right to say no,” he finishes, and his voice is strained. “You
always
have a right to say no.”

There’s a lingering anger in his eyes, but something else, too, and it’s that something else which pushes me forward to finish what I came to tell him.

“I wasn’t saying
no
to you. I realize earlier, when we were texting, I made it seem like I was, well, adept at this. The thing is, I’ve never… I’ve never,” I finish and leave it at that, too embarrassed to say
sex
even after everything. When he freezes, his whole body going rigid, I ignore the chill that hits my skin and step closer to him, breaching the physical gap I’ve put with the emotional one. “I panicked because I’ve never been in that situation… never been like that with someone—so raw, so open. It wasn’t you,” I whisper and look up, clearing my throat, because however much I want to shrink into the ground and pretend this never happened, it
did happen
and Nala is right, he needs to know why.

“I’m scared, but I wasn’t afraid of you. I could never be afraid of you,” I say, but I know that’s a lie. Physically, I don’t fear him. I
am
afraid of what he makes me feel, though, of what he makes me want to do. I’m afraid of the fact that when I’m with him, I feel like I can do anything.

“What about yourself? Are you afraid of
you
, Jordan?” he asks, and my eyes flash to his again. That’s why Brooklyn is different than anyone else: he asks what they wouldn’t even think to. He sees where no one else has ever looked. And he touches me… god, he touches me with words and looks and questions.

“I don’t know.” It’s the truth. I don’t know if I’m afraid of me. I don’t know who I am, and that’s scary. Scarier is the way I want to discover myself; it’s not in line with my mother’s view of who I am or how I should act. Whoever she is, however much I’m mad at her and she’s mad at me, she’s also someone I love and respect. Rejecting her version of me seems like rejecting her, and I’m not ready to do that.