Won't Let Go (10 page)

“Sorry?” The wheels of the chair squeal again.

“I—I just hate those pictures.” The yearbook staff was never kind to me. I swear they each had a personal grudge against me because in every picture, I look stupid—mouth full of food, dazed look on my face, and I’m sure, even though I never had proof, they photoshopped each picture in some way. I seem to have a big zit on the tip of my nose—and I can’t remember the last time I had a zit. But Bryce on the other hand, always looked stellar, and not a single picture of us together made it in. Either way, I should have burned the book, torching it until nothing but a pile of ashes was left.

“I didn’t think they looked bad. You’re very pretty.”

Heat swells over my cheeks, flushing them.
Was that a compliment?
His admission sends more than just heat through my veins. It sends excitement, too. “Thank you,” I say, having no idea what else to add to that.

“Did you have lots of friends before you came here?”

I sigh. “Yeah, I did.” But then I think about my phone that hasn’t received a single call or text in the last few days. “Though I don’t think they were as great as I thought they were.” I imagine Bryce parading his newly single status around the school, eyeing the cheerleading team, maybe making passes at every girl who will give him her attention.
Hell, he’s probably on a date right now.

Embry folds his arms over his chest, leaning back against the high chair. “Why do you say that?”

Because for a relationship as long as Bryce and I had, he didn’t actually seem that torn up about it
,
did he?
And Rachel, Darcy and everyone else...if they were the kind of friends you had for life, wouldn’t they have called by now.
They’re probably happy I’m out of the way.

Suddenly I feel as though I’m drowning in my own self-pity. I could have easily made new friends. Insisted to Bryce we try a long distance relationship. And I suppose I could have made the first move too, texting or calling Darcy and Rachel instead of waiting for them to get in touch with me. But really, what’s the use? It’s not like we will be spending summer vacations together or partying at the beach. I’m a million miles away. And that’s for the better. No matter how many times I disagreed with Mom about my choice of friends, she was right. Even if it took a few years, a few bad choices and community service to realize that. I’d gotten so caught up in everything, I forgot who I was, the direction I wanted my life to take.

“Let’s talk about something else. Those people—” I motion towards the drawer with the year book deep inside,“—aren’t important to me anymore.”

“What is important to you?”

Ignoring the fact I need to slip into my pajamas, I stride back over to the bed and flop down again. I bring my arms up and rest my head against them. “Right now?”

“Yeah, right now. What’s important to you?”

Figuring out why your brother tried to kill you
. “I don’t know. Helping you. I guess.”

I hear the chair wheels slide against the wood floor. Then footsteps come towards me. I lift my head up slightly. Embry stands at the edge of my bed as if asking permission. I pat the empty area with my hand.

Slowly Embry sits down. It’s weird. The mattress sinks down as if it’s affected by his weight. He’s a ghost, disappearing in the blink of an eye, seeming to be a mix of gas and vapors. Yet he touches things, opens doors and now, he sits on my bed like a solid mass of real human flesh and bone.
I don’t get it.

“I’m sorry I make you cold.”

I didn’t realize I was shivering, but when he lifts up a corner of the blanket, I slip under, eager to wrap myself in the comfort it offers. I smile. “Ever the gentleman.”

He tilts his head to the side, eyes looking blank. “I think—I think my mom told me to always be a gentleman in the presence of a lady.”

I laugh. “She did not,” I say.
That sounds like a corny line straight out of a romance novel.

“Maybe not, but she could have,” Embry says seriously.

“Well, then, she taught you well. I think she’d be proud,” I say, and wonder where his parents are right now. Why haven’t they visited in over a year?
So many questions.
I stifle a yawn.

“It’s late. We should talk more in the morning. You can tell me all about your day tomorrow,” he says, but makes no attempt to move.

Instinctively I reach out. “Please stay.”

Embry quickly pulls his hand away from me and rests it in his lap.

 I inch my own hand further, faster until it’s resting on top of his.

 A shudder of electricity courses through my hand and up my arm.

I gasp with surprise.

He shakes my hand free, making an effort to stand.

“Wait. Don’t go,” I say, grabbing at his hand again, forcing him to clasp his fingers with mine. “You—you feel so real,” my voice trembles. His hand is cool to the touch, but firm, solid. Like it’s skin covering a web of veins, blood, and bone. Real. “How is this possible?” I breathe.

Embry looks down at our clasped hands, his own eyes wide with surprise. Taking his other hand, he places it over the top. “I don’t know,” he says. “But I feel you. The tingling. It’s almost warm. Do you feel it?” he whispers.

“Yes,” I exhale, searching his eyes. They usually hold a shadow of darkness, but now, they’re a bright sparkling azure blue.

“Curious,” he says, letting go of my hand. Before I have a chance to protest, he takes a finger and draws a line from my forehead, down my cheek and across my jaw. I hold my breath as my skin tickles with the current of his touch and the coolness that follows.

I never thought it possible, but my heart swells with emotion. Feeling. There’s no reasonable explanation, but I think—no— I know, that something inside me just fell a little bit in love with Embry Winston.

The second he pulls his finger away, pausing to brush a few strands off my face, I sigh with the loss of contact, frustrated because I want to feel it again.

Is it possible to love a ghost? And what about the
real
Embry? 

My eyes flutter open, and at first, I only see black. Blinking, I force them to adjust to my surroundings. I’m still in my room. I can make out the posts of the bed, blankets still envelope me with warmth, and the bright orb of an almost full moon peeks through the sheer curtain of my window. But a dark figure in the corner catches my attention. “Oakley?”

“Yes. I’m here.” The leather of the chair squishes as he stands. “Is everything alright?” I’m sure if I could see his face it would match his concerned tone. His dark silhouette moves closer, outlined by the moonlight. The only sound he makes is the light tap of his sneakers and the swishing of his jeans until he’s standing over me.

Looking up to him, I smile. “Everything’s fine. I just woke up and was—surprised you’re still here.”

Embry bends his body into a crouch, arms folded on the mattress. “You asked me to stay,” he whispers, his head only inches from mine. His breath is icy as it brushes the exposed flesh of my cheeks and neck. A shiver works its way up my spine. “I—I shouldn’t be so close to you. I don’t want you to freeze.” And for the first time, the low rumble of a chuckle escapes his lips.

I pull the blanket tighter against my body. Right now, I feel as though he’s not close enough. The shivers that spread over me and raise bumps on my flesh, happen at will. But the truth is, I don’t feel the cold the same way as before. Now, knowing that Embry won’t hurt me, that in a way he’s so perfect and innocent, lost even, I find the chill that surrounds him comforting. I stare at his features, the straight line of his jaw, the perfect arch of eyebrows and his eyes. From here they look like dark spheres—the secrets that I’m holding in are tearing at the strings of my heart.
Would he ever lie to me?
Somehow I doubt it.
So, maybe I shouldn’t keep things from him.

I push my body up against the headboard of my bed, bringing the blankets with me. Reaching out, I take his hand, cold and soft, and I tug. If I’m going to have to tell him everything, I want him even closer.

He looks at me with a questioning gaze. “What are you doing?”

I tug more as I twine my fingers with his.

“Come here, lie with me,” I say.

Embry lifts himself onto the bed, stretches his legs out and crosses them at the ankles. Releasing my hand, he tucks the blankets tight against my body. He’s tall, his feet reaching almost to the end of the bed, and he has to tilt his head down to look at me, into my eyes.

I’m not sure what I’m more nervous about, his closeness, the way his gentle eyes search mine for understanding and answers or that when I tell him the truth about who he is, and what happened, he’ll never look at me this way again.

Embry reaches out and smoothes down my unruly hair. “Are you comfortable?” He then tucks some strands behind my ear, thumb sweeping a trail of coolness across my jaw.

I swallow the lump in my throat. “Yes,” I croak as my lungs take fast shallow breaths. I form the sentence in my mind, the one that will start everything;
I have something to tell you
. Only when I open my mouth to say the words, they are trapped. I take his hand again, squeezing it, hoping it will give me strength. But not only does he not seem to notice, it doesn’t ignite me with the power I’d hoped.

I can’t do it. Not yet.
I still feel like I don’t have enough information, that there’s a piece to the puzzle I’m missing. How could his brother, his
only
brother, purposely and with thought out intention, try and take his life. What could have happened between them that was so horrible—unforgivable? I hope to find that answer tomorrow when I visit Elliot Winston
in
prison.

So it’s settled.

I’m a chicken, a big fat scaredy-cat.

I won’t tell him anything, not until I have more to go on. So that when he asks the questions I’m sure will swell his mind, I’ll at least be able to answer them. I think he deserves that.

Embry’s voice, smooth and velvety, pulls me away from my thoughts. “What’s your favorite thing in the whole world?”

I can’t help but giggle. “I have no idea.”

“Think about it. Please.” His thumb rubs tiny circles on my hand.

I shrug my shoulders, “Um—” I would have said my friends, even Bryce, but in California I’d become something different. Now, I realize how silly I was because it was as if they were all that mattered. I didn’t care about school, about what was on TV, or most of all my parents. I only cared about what my friends and I had going on. They were my favorite thing, because with them I always felt I was a somebody.
Shallow.

Now I’m realizing there is so much more out there beyond friends and parties. Embry has no one, and I understand a little bit about what that’s like. I’d rather be with him, just the two of us, because we matter, than be with a dozen people just as shallow as I was. You don’t need a whole bunch of people to show you are a somebody. You just need the right person to make you feel like you are. And right now, for me, that person is Embry. Dawsyn and Allison both enter my mind, and one day soon they might almost fit that bill, too.

“I honestly don’t know. But I’m hoping that living here will become something to add to the favorite list. However, my favorite breakfast is a nice big bowl of Apple O's. I’m pretty sure I could eat those every day. I love my car to pieces and my worn out collection of concert tees.”

Embry nods with what I think might be approval, but I’m so caught up in the idea of favorites, I don’t think before I ask, “What’s your favorite thing?” As the question slips out, and looms in the air, I realize my mistake. “Oh God. I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that.” And I literally want to smack myself in the head.

“It’s okay. I’m not sure what the old me would have said but—but now—I think you’re my favorite thing in this world.”

“That’s cheating. You don’t have anything else to compare it to,” I say.

“All the more reason to believe it’s true.”

My breath hitches, body tenses up, and
God
, the surge of electricity I felt earlier rushes through my veins, lighting me on fire, again. And just when I think I can’t take any more heat, Embry cools my body off with an explosion of frigid iciness as he presses his lips gently against my forehead. The ragged breath
I
take comes out as a wheeze when I exhale, as I tilt my chin up, looking into his eyes. I’ve been rendered speechless.

Embry whispers, “Amazing.”

I nod. I’ve never been so over taken with emotion; it’s swelling in my heart, begging for him to kiss me again. To feel that sensation over and over. But just as I’m enjoying the high that Embry’s kiss brought, I realize it can’t last. Not really. Because one day Embry will be gone for good. Suddenly the desire that caressed my body is taken over with a depressing amount of misery.
This isn’t right. I shouldn’t let myself get so attached.

It’s as if Embry realizes something is jammed inside my head, possibly being over analyzed because he asks, “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

Letting go of my hand, he traces the line of my eyebrow. “You are—thinking about something. You’re eyebrows were twitching—” he lightly drags his finger across my bottom lip, “—and you were gnawing on your lip.”

I lick my lip—sure enough, I taste coppery blood. Hope he can’t see the red that has flushed my neck.

“I was thinking about what’s going to happen to you, I mean after we figure out who you are.” I gulp. “I don’t think I want you to leave.” It’s a selfish admission but one full of so much truth it hurts.

Then as if it’s the most natural movement, an instinct I’ve developed over a long period of time, I move my head to rest in the crook of his arm. It takes a few breaths and the speeding up of my heart before my eyes grow wide with amazement, again. He’s so real. I expect his body to stiffen, for him to realize I’m even closer and pull away; instead he wraps his arm around me, pulling me in further. “How do you feel so real?” My breath billows from my mouth like fog.