Faster We Burn

  “He doesn’t want you to make the same mistakes he has. My sister’s the same way.” Kayla always used to catch me sneaking out of the house, usually when she was doing the exact same thing. She might have been my parents’ golden child, but that didn’t mean she had been absolutely perfect. She just hadn’t gotten caught.

  “There they are,” she said as Stryker and Max came back inside. Neither of them had a black eye, and they were talking at a normal volume.

  “Everything looks okay,” I said.

  “I’d better check,” she pushed herself away from the counter and went over to Max, putting her arm around his waist. His arm went around her automatically, like he wasn’t even thinking about it. As if it was natural.

  Stryker said something and then shook his head, and I saw that he was smiling. He shook Max’s hand and looked around the room, stopping when he saw me.

  Max and Trish went to go sit on the floor again and Stryker came over to me.

  “Please don’t say you threatened him,” I said.

  He pretended to be appalled, putting his hand to his chest.

  “I am shocked that you think I would do such a thing.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Yeah, okay, Stryker. What did you say to him?” He came over and put his arms around me.

  “I just said that it was about time my sister trusted someone enough to let them get past her incredibly thick and high walls and I hoped he was worthy of it, even though I doubted it. But I said I’d be watching him.”

  I smacked him in the chest.

  “If you didn’t say the last part, the first part would be a lot sweeter. Look at her,” I said, turning both of us so we could see Max and Trish together. He’d pushed some of her hair back and she smiled as she told him something.

  “She’s happy.”

  “I just hope she stays that way,” he said, pulling me close. “I don’t want her to have a hard time. I want life to be better for her, you know?”

  “Yeah, I do,” I said, pushing myself up to give him a kiss. “You’re a good brother, Stryker Grant.”

  “You’re a good girlfriend, Katherine Ann Hallman. And a good kisser, and a good singer, and you’re really good at giving—”

  I put my hand on his mouth, because I knew what else he was going to say I was good at, and I didn’t want anyone else to overhear.

  “That’s not for you to advertise, or else I’ll never do it again.” I removed my hand and gave him a glare for good measure. The threat was enough to get him to press his lips together as if he was sealing them.

  “Are we gonna play now?” Allan called as he tried to sit next to Zoey, and she pushed him away with disgust.

  “Coming,” he said, letting go of me. “Which is what you’ll be doing later tonight after everyone leaves. Over and over again,” he whispered before walking back to the couch.

  Damn him. He played dirty.

  It took me a second to get my legs to work so I could get back to the couch and it was a relief to sit down, even though sitting next to Stryker made me really uncomfortable in certain areas. It was torture for the rest of the session, but the sweetest kind.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Stryker

  “So I think I should pick a major,” she said as she lay naked in my bed and I drew a sunburst in the middle of her back. I’d kept my promise from earlier, and she’d reciprocated, so we were both worn out physically. “Don’t you think?”

  I shrugged one shoulder and looked up from my drawing to meet her eyes.

  “Do you want to pick one because you want to, or because there’s all this pressure from other people to?”

  She thought about it for a second.

  “I think it’s both. I just…I want to know…what I want.”

  I laughed a little.

  She smacked my shoulder. “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “I’m not laughing at you. I’m just laughing because that’s the human condition. Nobody really knows what they want. They just know what they think they want and then they get it and they realize they don’t want it anymore.”

  “Like what?”

  “Money, power, prestige. Mostly money.”

  “I don’t care about money that much.”

  “I know. That’s one of the things I love about you. I don’t really care about it either, except that it’d be nice to have enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about paying the electric bill.”

  She yawned. “I should probably get a job now. Mom and Dad mostly footed the bill for everything, and I’ve been living on my summer babysitting money, but that’s almost gone. I don’t want to take more money from Mom, because she needs it more than I do. I’ve thought about dropping out,” she said, which made me look up at her again.

  “To save money?”

  “Yeah, and to take care of her. She’s all alone.” Katie spent every weekend at home, and it was taking its toll on her. She always came back reluctantly, and it took a day for her to recover emotionally. Kayla had gone back to Africa, and had decided to postpone her wedding for a better time.

  I stroked my fingers down her spine.

  “Is that what you want?”

  She sighed heavily.

  “It’s not about what I want.”

  “Fine, then what do you think your dad would want?”

  “He’d want me to finish school.”

  “Then I think you should do that.”

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to tell me what to do.”

  “I’m not. Just suggesting.” I’d said the same thing when I’d told her not to go see Zack.

  “Okay, then. If I’m staying, I have to pick a major.” I had an idea. If she wanted to pick a major, we were going to pick her a fucking major.

  “Stay right there,” I said, standing up to get my laptop.

  She pushed herself up. “Where are you going?”

  “Just a sec.” I grabbed it from the kitchen, booting it up on the way back to my bedroom. I went to the DU website scrolled down until I found the list of majors the university offered.

  “Okay, how do you feel about accounting?”

  “What?” She rolled over and saw me holding my laptop.

  “Accounting, yes or no?” I sat down and she moved closer to me.

  “Um, no. Not big on math.” I went down to the next option.

  “Okay, how about Animal Science?”

  She shook her head.

  “Anthropology?”

  “Put that in the maybe column.” I grabbed the marker I’d been using to draw on her back and wrote ‘anthropology-maybe’ below the sun.

  “Art education?”

  Another head shake. “But that would have been a good one for you, if you weren’t already doing your genius thing.”

  I went down the entire list of majors and she nixed almost all of them, except for a few that I wrote on her back. When we were done, I put the cap back on the marker and admired my work.

  “Well Miss Hallman, I think we’ve got a list. Why don’t you make an appointment with a guidance counselor and they can help you out. They’re professionals so they know what they’re doing.”

  She made a little snorting noise. “You want me to go in to the guidance office, take off my shirt and say that this is the list of majors I’ve narrowed my choices down to?” She pointed to her back.

  “I meant that we should probably transfer this list to paper and then take it in,” I said, kissing ‘anthropology’.

  “Good plan,” she breathed as I kissed my way lower on the list before flipping her over and making us both forget about majors for a while.

  ***

  The following Tuesday Katie came back from her meeting with the guidance person with a sad look on her face.

  “What’s wrong?” I’d been working on a lab, but I threw it aside, even though I was halfway through a tricky calculation.

  Her face split into a smile.

  “Gotcha. It went fine. Basically they told me th
at if I’m really not sure, I should just take a bunch of classes for things I’m interested in and go from there. So, I’m signing up for art history, another anthro class, British lit, vocal performance, and food science and nutrition.” She flopped down next to me, giving me a quick kiss.

  “That’s very…eclectic.”

  “I would have taken more classes, but that’s a full schedule, and I wasn’t sure if I could do more.”

  She definitely could. I’d seen what she could do when she put just a little effort in. Katie was one of those girls who didn’t have to try too hard to get good grades, so she’d just done just enough for years and gotten by.

  “So my life makeover is in full swing. Now I just have to find a job.” She mimed shooting herself in the head.

  “I could always use an assistant. You could hold the flashlight for me,” I said, pulling her onto my lap.

  She giggled. “Not that that isn’t tempting, but I gotta do my own thing. I just don’t know what that is. I started looking online.”

  “You want to make another list?” I stroked her arm.

  “I think I can do this one on my own, but there is one part of my makeover I would like you to be with me for.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I was thinking…” she said, twirling some of her hair around her finger and staring at it. “I was thinking I’d like to do something with my hair. Like, maybe put some pink in it.” She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, searching for my reaction.

  “Pink, huh?” I grabbed a few strands and ran them through my fingers. I could picture that. She’d look so cute with pink hair, especially with her glasses.

  “You don’t think it’s dumb, do you?”

  “Sweetheart, I would never think you were dumb, and even if I did, I’d never tell you. I might call you an idiot, but I’d never say you were dumb.” I kissed her nose. “No, I think you would look beyond adorable with some pink in your hair.”

  “Okay then.” She relaxed against me.

  “I have some…changes I’d like to make as well, involving you, that I wanted to talk to you about,” I said. It was now or never.

  “And what might those changes be?”

  “I was thinking…” Now it was my turn to be nervous. “I was thinking that since you’re here so much anyway and Lottie and Zan are thinking about getting their own place, that maybe you might want to move in. Here. With me.”

  She sat up and turned around. “Move in with you?”

  “I know it’s really soon, but I thought I would throw it out there. I mean, you already have tampons stashed everywhere, and my bathroom looks like a cosmetics store blew up in it. Not that I’m complaining.” I was still at the stage where seeing her stuff around made me happy instead of annoyed. I was sure I’d get to the annoyed part eventually.

  “Move in with you.” She said it as a statement, not a question. “I…Are you sure? I’m just afraid that you’ll get sick of me, or find something you don’t like about me, and I don’t want that to happen.”

  “What about me? What if you find something you don’t like about me?” That was the first thing that had crossed my mind and the reason I’d put off asking her in the first place.

  “I guess that’s a risk we’re just going to have to take,” she said, leaning into me for a kiss. “I would love to move in with you. You and me.”

  “No space.”

  “Nope, it’s going to be our space, and it’s going to be covered in pink.” Her eyes gleamed maniacally.

  “God help us.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Katie

  “Please say that is the last box,” Will grumbled as he shoved yet another box into my Mazda. We were moving the majority of my crap into Stryker’s today and then the rest at the end of the semester. I hadn’t told Mom yet because I didn’t think it was something she needed to be worried about at the moment. She was doing a little better with the help of her support group, and she’d become close with another woman who had also lost her husband suddenly. Still, I didn’t want to mess with the careful equilibrium we’d established by telling her that I’d moved in with Stryker.

  “That is the last box,” I said, shutting the trunk. Lottie had roped Will and Simon into helping me. Zan would have been there, but he had a class, as did Stryker. Or so they said. I had my suspicions.

  “You sure about this?” Will said, crossing his arms and leaning on the back of the car.

  “Not really, but there’s only one way to find out. I mean, we’ve already been through so much.”

  “True.” He glanced over at Lottie and Simon, who were playing rock, paper, scissors for no apparent reason.

  “Hey, how are you and Aud?”

  He shrugged.

  “I don’t know. She’s…I always feel like she’s hiding something from me, you know? Like she lets me get close enough and then shuts the door in my face. It’s driving me crazy.” He yanked his hand through is hair, which didn’t do much. Will always looked like he’d come from the beach, with his blonde wind-blown hair.

  “That sucks.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Simon and Lottie had started what looked like a slap fight.

  “Sometimes I don’t know about those two,” Will said, shaking his head as I got my keys out.

  “So I’ll see you guys later. Thanks so much for all the help.” It seemed anti-climactic for me to be leaving like this, but they all seemed to have things to do. Supposedly.

  “Bye, roommie. I’ll miss you,” Lottie said, giving me a hug.

  “I’ll see you tonight, you idiot. Remember? Girls’ night?” As much as I wanted to spend the night having no-space time with Stryker, I still needed my girl time. Especially now that Trish could dish on her new guy.

  “Right,” she said, not looking at me as she let go. “So, I should get to that thing. That I’m doing. You know.”

  “Riiigggghhhttt,” I said, getting into the driver’s side. She was a terrible liar. Something was up, but I sort of knew that already. None of them could keep a secret very well. Not even Stryker.

  Driving back to his, I mean our, apartment wasn’t easy because I couldn’t see out my back window. When I pulled into the lot, there were more than a few cars that I recognized. The least they could have done was park down the street, but they weren’t that stealthy. Amateurs.

  “Knock, knock,” I said loudly at the bottom of the stairs. Frantic movement ensued and then Stryker appeared, looking flustered.

  “Hey, best friend. What you doing up there?” I said.

  “Oh, um, nothing.” He made sure to close the door behind him.

  “Sure.” I let him kiss me for a really long time. Clearly, he was trying to stall me, and it was working. His hands worked themselves under my jacket and shirt, hot and demanding.

  “Are you trying to have your way with me right here, right now?”

  “Maybe,” he said, kissing down my neck. He was very good at distracting when he put his mind to it.

  “Uh huh,” I said, biting my lip as my legs threatened to buckle. “And this has nothing to do with the surprise you guys are trying to get together upstairs.” My words were all garbled, but he got the gist, raising his head from my neck.

  “Were we that obvious?”

  “Well, Lottie couldn’t keep something like this a secret to save her life, so yeah.” He rested his head on my shoulder.

  “Damn.”

  “Nice try, though.” I patted his head and he sighed, which tickled.

  I nearly jumped when a very fake-sounding bird call emanated from Stryker’s partially open door. He called back, sounding very much like a wounded seagull.

  “You are ridiculous,” I said as he led me up the stairs. He stopped me and put his hand on the door, and I heard some scurrying feet. Stryker waited a second longer and then swung the door open.

  “Surprise!” Unlike with Lottie’s car, they all yelled it at the same time. Simon had practiced with them, no
doubt. They were here, Simon, Brady, Lottie, Zan, Will, Audrey, Trish and Max. All smiling at me like idiots. God, I adored them.

  “Oh my God, you guys,” I said, pretending I had no idea. There was a huge pink banner that said, CONGRATS ON LIVING IN SIN TOGETHER in white lettering.

  “Thanks for that,” I said, giving Stryker a look. He just raised his hands in defeat.

  “It was Trish’s idea.”

  Of course it was.

  She grinned from ear to ear, but at least Max had the decency to look sheepish, blushing under all that blue hair.

  “We also have another little surprise for you,” Lottie said, coming around from behind the couch. “So you know how we are not going to be living in the same room for next semester, which made me crazy sad.”

  “Uh huh.” I had no idea where she was going with this.

  “Weeeelllll, there just happens to be an available apartment right below this one,” she said, giving me a huge wink.

  “You didn’t,” I said, looking at Zan, who gave me one of his rare smiles.

  She put her arms in the air in celebration. “We did!”

  “And guess who is getting her own place, just down the street, and away from her psychotic roommate? This girl,” Trish said, raising her hand.

  “Thank God,” Max said. “I didn’t think I could stand her staring at me every time I came over. I was afraid she was plotting to murder me in my sleep, or at least use me as a human sacrifice.”

  “Don’t worry, I had a knife and a Taser under my bed. You’re safe,” Trish said, patting his arm.

  “I love how prepared you are,” he said.

  Simon made gagging noises, but he was wrapped around Brady, so he couldn’t really say much.

  “So, who wants to help bring all my stuff up from my car?” I said and they all groaned in unison. They must have practiced that too.

  ***

  As soon as we got all my crap up the stairs, Lottie announced that she wanted to get her stuff moved as well. Apparently Zan had already moved his things, by himself, in one trip. But he was a guy, and he was kind of a minimalist anyway. They thought my stuff was bad, but Lottie had all those books.