Kyland

  He shook his head slowly again. "That I have nothing to give you. That I can only take from you. And that's wrong."

  "It's not wrong if I'm offering it."

  "Yes it is. It's still wrong."

  I studied the angles of his face in the near-darkness and ran my finger over his cheekbone, down his jaw, and over those full, beautiful lips.

  "Well. I'm sorry to render your moral dilemma null and void, but I'm only in this for your body, Kyland Barrett. So you can let yourself off the hook."

  He laughed, pulling me into him. I inhaled the scent of his skin, masculine and clean.

  After a minute, I asked, "Were you having a bad dream again? Is that why you couldn't sleep?"

  He paused and I wondered if he'd answer me, and so when his deep voice filled the silence, I stilled completely. "The dreams aren't the hard part. It's not talking about my family that's been the hardest. And I guess I didn't even realize it until last night." He let out a shuddery sounding breath. "It was the first time I've talked about my mama, dad, and brother aloud since I lost them."

  I tilted my head back and stroked his cheek again. "That must have been so hard. I'm so sorry you've been holding all that pain inside."

  He nodded. "I've spent so many lonely nights here in this bed and last night, having you here felt so damn good." He made a sound in the back of his throat. "This, you here. It feels so good."

  "I know. It feels good to me, too," I whispered.

  We lay there forehead to forehead, breath to breath, and toes to toes for a few minutes, until I finally got up the nerve to ask, "Will you tell me about your brother? I saw him around town now and again, but I never met him."

  He released a breath. "He was . . ." he seemed to take a few seconds to consider, "full of life. He was a smartass and a practical joker." His lips moved into a smile in the darkened room. "He was always laughing. I can still hear his laugh if I close my eyes. He laughed with his whole body, you know? Like he doubled over and stumbled and it was just . . ." He laughed a small laugh and I smiled. "He could be such a goofball. The other day when we were sledding, I swore I heard his laughter echoing through the mountains when I was coasting down that hill. I swore I did."

  My heart squeezed so tightly that I gasped out a small breath. And then we were both silent for a minute. I allowed him to gather his thoughts.

  "He was five years older than me, but we did everything together. We ran through these mountains, pretended we were part of a band of wild Indians." He smiled again, but then his face sobered and he was quiet for a second. "We were always afraid of the dark when we were kids. Silas, he always begged our mama to keep the hall light on." He paused again. "He died in the pitch darkness underground, Tenleigh." He choked out my name. "The power went out after the cave-in and they were all under there in blackness. And I can't help . . . I can't help but think he was afraid. He was probably so scared. I hear him over and over in my mind whispering to me like he did from his bed when we were kids, 'Get up and turn on the light, Ky.' And there's nothing I can do for him. Nothing at all."

  I squeezed my eyes shut against the tears that threatened. "They were together, though, your dad and your brother. All those men. I bet they helped each other cope. All the ones I knew, they were such good men. I bet they were all there for each other in the end."

  "Yeah," he said softly.

  We lay there in silence for a few minutes until Kyland leaned forward and kissed me slowly and deeply and there was something different in his kiss, but I didn't know exactly what.

  He pulled his lips away, but moved his body closer to mine. "You drive me crazy," he murmured. He brushed his lips across mine lightly and I shivered. "And you make the darkness go away. You bring me some kind of peace." He let out a harsh exhale of breath and I drank it in. "I don't know what to do with it."

  "Take it, Ky," I whispered. "You deserve some peace. Let me give it to you."

  "And what do I give to you, sweet Tenleigh?" he whispered, sounding broken. "What can I possibly give to you?"

  I thought about it for a second. "You help me believe."

  "In what?"

  "In goodness, in strength."

  In the fact that there are good men out there who are honorable.

  He smoothed a piece of hair back out of my face.

  "Plus, your ass. You have a really great ass," I said.

  He laughed and then sobered quickly. "I know."

  I punched him lightly on his shoulder and he grinned, crossing his eyes.

  I laughed. "You're touched," I said, using a word mountain folk use to mean "crazy."

  Still grinning, he nuzzled his nose into my neck. "Hmm. I like how your inner hick comes out when you're annoyed."

  I laughed, not feeling annoyed at all. "Did you know that mountain dialect can be traced back to Elizabethan English?"

  "No, I didn't know that," he said, running his nose along my jaw. I smiled.

  "Hmm hmm. Appalachia and other places have held onto it because there are so many areas that are so remote—cut off from the rest of society in a lot of ways . . . like how we add a "t" to the end of words like twice and across."

  "Ah. So when I go to New York and say, 'Pull up a cheer and set a spell. You look a mite peaked,' they'll think I'm speaking the King's English?"

  I laughed. "No, they'll think you need a translator, but you do sound sexy when you talk all hillbilly-like."

  He made a humming sound and nipped at my jaw. "You like that, huh? Good to know. Because later," he trailed his lips down my neck, "I reckon I'll go down yonder."

  I laughed again and pushed him away, as he laughed, too. As our laughter faded, Kyland pushed my hair back out of my face tenderly, his gaze filled with something I wasn't sure how to read, his lips still turned up in a small smile. My eyes moved over his beautiful face, trying to discern what he was feeling.

  After a moment, he leaned forward and kissed me lightly. "What are your dreams? Tell me," he whispered.

  To fall in love with someone who stays. To stop wishing so hard it could be you.

  "Hmm. To see the ocean. To dance in the surf. To go to dinner at a restaurant. To have more than one pair of shoes. To get one of those store-bought birthday cakes with the perfect pink roses in the corners. To get my mama a good doctor who knows how to heal her. To be a teacher—to inspire kids to love books as much as I do. To live in a house with a yard and a garden and my very own bed."

  He was quiet for a second. Finally, he said very quietly, "You should have all those things and more."

  "What are your dreams, Kyland? Other than leaving here . . . what things do you hope for?"

  He was silent for several beats. "I want to be an engineer. I want to have a refrigerator that's always stocked with food. I want to do something that matters—that really, truly makes a difference. And I want to recognize that thing when it shows up."

  I smiled, grateful he had shared that part of his heart with me. "I bet you'll do all those things, and even more," I said, feeling just a tinge of sadness. I wanted him to achieve his dreams, but I wondered if, when he did, I would only be a small memory in his head.

  He wove his fingers into my hair and put his mouth on mine again and I melted into his kiss.

  We found release in each other's bodies like we'd done the night before and then we slept, wrapped around each other—the loneliness and the cold left outside the warm cocoon of our blankets.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Tenleigh

  I went to Kyland's bed almost every night of Christmas break. He wouldn't make love to me despite my often and shameless begging. But we became experts on each other's bodies nonetheless. We whispered in the dark of night, telling our secrets and revealing our hurts. He told me about his father and his brother and the more he talked, the easier the words seemed to come—the more he smiled and laughed at the memories he shared. He told me about his mama, about the hurt he'd harbored for so long, the confusion and the pain.

  "Do you think
you'll look for her?" I asked one Saturday morning as we lazed in his bed. "When you leave, I mean?" Just as it always did, pain speared through my heart at the word “leave.”

  He seemed to consider my question for a few moments. "I've thought about it. But, what would be the point? She left me. She never came back. Even if for some reason she didn't know about the mine accident, it doesn't take those two facts away."

  I turned on my side to face him. "Maybe she didn't know, though. Maybe she thinks you were safe and living here with your father and brother. I know she left, but whatever her reasons were, she knew you were with your dad. Maybe she's afraid to come back because she thinks you won't ever forgive her for what she did."

  "Do you forgive your father for abandoning you? Do you want to seek him out? What about you?" His tone was cold and I flinched back from it. Kyland rolled toward me and squeezed his eyes shut briefly, putting his hand on my cheek.

  "I'm sorry. That wasn't fair."

  I took a deep breath. "No, it's a fair question. The difference is, I never knew my father. I think . . . I think I do forgive him. But to me, he'd be a stranger. Your mama, though, you loved her, and she loved you."

  "I thought she did." Pain moved over his face. "But that's not even the worst part—do you want to hear the worst part?"

  I nodded slowly.

  "The worst part is that as hard as I try, as hurt as I am, I can't stop loving her. Even though I know she doesn't deserve it. She abandoned me and didn't look back, and I still love her. What kind of stupid fool am I?"

  "You're not a fool," I said softly, pain making my voice scratchy.

  I reached over and held him. There was nothing else I could do.

  And as I held him, I thought about how strong and tenacious he was, moving forward, never stopping, never giving up, even though he had all the reason in the world to do just that. I thought about how intelligent he was, how caring, how selfless, how filled with love. "You're going to be just fine. You're so strong," I whispered. "In every way. You're as strong as a bull and twice as stubborn."

  I smiled and I felt him smile, too. "You've kept that fire burning all this time, despite all you've lost. There's nothing stronger than that. Nothing."

  We didn't get out of bed that day until the noontime sun was beaming through his window.

  **********

  When we went back to school two weeks later, I grieved the loss of being in his bed, but it simply wasn't practical. The pressure was on now to start the final semester off right—this was it. This was our last chance to do well enough to win that scholarship. Problem was, for me, suddenly that scholarship was the very thing that was going to take him away from me, or me away from him. It had been the one thing I'd focused on for almost four years, and suddenly, I didn't know how I felt about it. I didn't even know if I wanted it anymore. After all Kyland had been through and as strong as my feelings were for him, how could I hope to take his dream away even if it meant achieving my own? How could I?

  Kyland had told me that whether he won it or not, he was going to leave Dennville. And so he had a plan either way. But could I really hope that he would have to walk out of here with not much more than the shirt on his back? Could I really hope that he would have to suffer even more hardship than he already had? Just that thought alone filled me with fear for him and an aching loneliness.

  You worry about your own self, Tenleigh Falyn, I thought, admonishing myself. Lord knew no one else was. I wondered, though, if Kyland thought about that scholarship differently, too. If he did, he didn't share it with me. It seemed neither one of us wanted to discuss it.

  I saw him in school and he grabbed my hand as we passed in the hallway, but we didn't have any classes together and a different lunch period, so we didn't spend much time together there.

  But we studied together in the evenings, among other more pleasurable things, and one day in mid January when I finally got around to checking out a new book in the library, I noticed a small white piece of paper sticking out of the one I had returned several weeks before.

  I pulled The Catcher in the Rye off the shelf.

  Holden Caulfield: A whiny, unlikable narrator. Insults those he calls "phonies," but he's really just one himself. – KB

  I laughed softly and scrawled out my own note.

  Holden Caulfield: A boy who feels alienated from society, is struggling to understand his place in the world, and is looking for someone he can relate to. A story about loneliness. – TF

  Always the optimist, Tenleigh Falyn, even when it comes to unlikable characters. – KB

  I smiled at his note. I'd never thought about myself as an optimist, but maybe I was. And maybe we all saw books differently based on our own hearts.

  In February, the top four students were announced, the students who were in the running for the Tyton Coal Scholarship. It was down to me, Kyland, and two other girls. I received my letter of admission from San Diego State University and I accepted. It seemed like a cruelty to accept something I may never get the chance to use, but if I won the scholarship, I had to have a school to apply it to. If I didn't win, I'd rescind my acceptance, as would the other two students. I didn't ask Kyland where he'd accepted. I didn't want to know.

  All that winter and into early spring, we studied together, we kissed long and slow anywhere and everywhere, we hiked through the hills, and we showed each other the secret spots we loved deep in the Appalachian Mountains, where there was only beauty and only peace. We sat by streams and fished with Kyland's homemade fishing pole, my head on his lap, the sunshine warming our skin, the tall grass whispering in the breeze. We walked through meadows sprinkled with wildflowers and I collected them and put bouquets in old tin cans in my trailer and Kyland's house. We spent glorious nights exploring each other's bodies, learning every spot that brought pleasure. We read book after book, only discussing them through very short written notes that somehow gave a brief insight into the heart of the other.

  I worked when I got the shifts. I struggled, I went hungry some nights, and I scraped together pennies to pay for mama's medicine.

  And I fell in love.

  Deep, hard, utter and complete love.

  And he was still leaving. And he still wouldn't look back.

  Maybe I'd be leaving, too. Anxiety and worry moved through my body whenever I considered it. It wasn't only the confusion of the scholarship and how it would impact Kyland if I won it, it was also the thought of leaving my home. I'd dreamed of going to college for so long and, suddenly, leaving my mama, leaving Marlo, leaving everything I knew and . . . yes, loved—for I did love Dennville, Kentucky despite the fact that misery lived here, too—suddenly, all of it filled me with fear and panic.

  Maybe it also had to do with the fact that my mama was doing so much better since she'd been on the new medications. She seemed almost normal, and I had never, ever used that word to describe my mama. She was better, and she was worse, but she'd never been normal. It was like Marlo and I were getting a second chance with her. But what would happen when I left? We were barely scraping together the money it took to buy her prescriptions as it was. When I left, there'd be that much less of an income, as small as it was. Of course, they wouldn't have to feed me anymore either.

  But when I thought about not winning it, my heart plummeted to my feet. What would I do then? Would I work full-time at Al's like Marlo did? What other choice did I have? There were no jobs here that paid more than minimum wage, and unlike Kyland, I didn't have the courage to start hitchhiking across the country with little more than a knapsack on my back. Plus, I had people here tying me to Dennville. Kyland didn't have anyone . . . well, anyone except me. And despite the fact that we'd gotten very close, he couldn't stay for me. And I wouldn't ask him to.

  Sometimes I caught him looking at me with this strange expression on his face—a mixture of pain and decisiveness. I wasn't sure what it meant, but it made me feel jittery and nervous.

  Could I handle getting any closer to Kyland o
nly to have him leave and never look back? Could I handle loving him more deeply? Or could he . . . would he change his mind about cutting all ties now that our relationship had deepened to . . . well, to more than it was?

  Stupid Tenleigh, I muttered. I'd gotten myself in this situation despite the fact that Kyland had done everything in his power to warn me away. But I couldn't regret it. I couldn't. I loved him. He was a part of my heart and I hoped desperately that I had become enough of a part of his that it'd be impossible for him to simply leave me behind.

  Persuasion by Jane Austen:

  "But when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure." Do you believe this, Tenleigh? – KB

  I leaned back on the library bookshelf and put my pen to my lips, considering. Finally, I wrote:

  I think that when enough time has passed, when you've survived that which you didn't imagine you could, there's a dignity in that. Something you can own. A pride in knowing the pain made you stronger. The pain made you fight to succeed. Someday, when I'm living my dreams, I'm going to think of all the things that broke my heart and I'm going to be thankful for them. – TF

  Even you, Kyland.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Kyland

  Things were out of hand with Tenleigh. I couldn't stop myself from craving her—her voice, her thoughts, her laughter, her smell, her taste, her delectable body, her lips—just her. I'd done the exact thing I'd vowed not to do—I'd formed an attachment that I wouldn't be able to simply leave behind in a couple months. An attachment? Hell, I was practically obsessed with her. I was screwed, completely royally screwed. And yet, I would leave her behind. That's exactly what I'd do. Because anything else was unthinkable. I felt like I was drowning in her, and just like a drowning person, my instinct was to thrash and resist—fight. Fight this thing that had taken over my body and my heart. Fight her.