Falling Into Us by Jasinda Wilder

Author:Jasinda Wilder
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Jasinda Wilder
Published: 2013-06-19T04:00:00+00:00

TEN: Scratching Arms and Locked Doors

Becca

November

Nell sat across from me, her hands drawn into the sleeves of her coat. She didn’t meet my eyes, just like she hadn’t the last several times I’d seen her since Kyle’s funeral.

She’d bolted in the middle of a speech, and then when I’d seen her again at the burial, she’d been with Kyle’s older brother. At least, that’s who I thought it was. I wasn’t sure, as I hadn’t seen him since I was ten or eleven. He was older than us by five years or so, I thought, and he looked it. He was hard and rough-looking, even in a suit, although I had to admit he was gorgeous. Dark hair, long and a bit shaggy around his collar, and piercing blue eyes darkened by an edge of maturity and the shadows of something deep.

I’d only heard Kyle talk about him a few times growing up. He was reclusive, I remember. Spent most of his time locked away in his room or in the old barn that served as a garage. He spent a lot of time in trouble in high school, I remember that much. Or rather, I’d heard the gossip. He’d left Michigan the day he graduated, leaving behind everything. I remember Kyle talking about it, sounding hurt and confused even as an eleven-year-old. He just left, and that was it.

Then he’d shown up at the burial, and Nell had gotten out of his huge pick-up truck. What was she doing with him? I couldn’t figure it out, standing at the awning-covered gravesite with Jason’s hand in mine. Why had he come back at all? He’d abandoned his family, his little brother, and as far as I knew, hadn’t so much as called. And now Nell was hanging out with him the day of her boyfriend’s funeral? I tried not to feel betrayed somehow. She didn’t look at me, at anyone. She just stood in front of the cherrywood casket with the brass railings around the outside, the wet grass around the hole covered by the fake-grass-turf sort of carpeting. She looked as if she was about to jump into the deep dark hole and stay there with Kyle.

When Nell stumbled on the grass, Colton’s hand steadied her. I didn’t want him to touch her. She belonged to Kyle. I felt anger radiating from Jason beside me, and I knew he was feeling a similar conflicted confusion.

Nell sat down on a chair and stared listlessly into space as a minister spoke meaningless words. I cried softly, like Kyle’s mother, like Mrs. Hawthorne, like so many people…except Nell. Nell wasn’t crying, hadn’t cried that I saw.

When the words were spoken, she had tossed a flower into the grave, then turned and ran, stumbling on her high heels, kicking them off, her cast cradled against her side. Who followed her? Colton. I heard whispers, people asking the same questions I was thinking.

Now she sat with a cup of coffee in front of her, stirring it idly with a battered spoon.

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