Push and Shove

  “It’s not fun if you’re not going to do it right.”

  “You don’t want me to beat you all the time,” he said.

  I dropped the controller in his lap, folding my arms over my chest. “Kota, they said to take it easy. They didn’t say baby me.”

  Kota did a tiny eye roll and picked up the controller, passing it to me. “All right. One more time.”

  We did the same course again, the same race. There were five other cars besides ours. This time when we started, Kota took off right from the start. I managed to make my way into third, but ended up tailing the computer-controlled second place car.

  When we got to the sharp turn again, I slipped again, crashing. Before the game corrected my car, Kota’s car zoomed over the finish line.

  “You can’t take the sharp turns head-on,” he said, dropping the controller into his lap. “You have to hit the brake.”

  “You can’t slow down. It’s a race,” I said, finishing the lap and ending up second to last again. “You sped through the whole thing.”

  “I braked at the turns,” he said. “And I drifted when I needed to.”

  “Drifted?”

  Kota pushed the button on his controller, turning it off. “Here, play the next race.” He lifted his arm, tucking it around my back, leaning against me.

  I stiffened, not meaning to, but his body was suddenly pressing up against mine. It made it hard to focus. I pressed the buttons and started the race, but I was thinking about his hip up against mine, and his fingertips tracing along my collarbone.

  “Ignore the other racers for a moment,” he said. “When you get up to the next turn, hang on to the brake and turn your car. When you even out again, release the brake and hit the boost full on.”

  This was the Kota I was familiar with. I kind of liked when he took time with me to teach me something new. I tried focusing on the race. I avoided the other cars, got up to a good turn, and slapped at the brakes. The car came to a complete dead stop in the middle of the track. “That doesn’t work.”

  “You’re going in too slow on the turn,” he said. His hand dropped down on my knee. “Don’t slow down when you get there. You can keep your finger on the gas, just hit the brake and turn at the same time.”

  I tried again, but while I was racing, Kota traced his knuckles along the top of my calf, sliding smoothly against my skin. It was a gentle motion, almost absentminded as his eyes stayed on the game.

  But that tiny bit of movement set my heart thundering.

  At the next turn in the game, my car started to drift, but as his fingers traced back up toward my knee, my thumbs slipped and my car spun around until it was facing the opposite direction.

  I released a small noise, expressing a bit of pent up tension he had instilled in me from his touch and from failing again. I bit my lip, trying to get myself to focus.

  At the next turn, I managed to drift, but it was cut short and my car shook a little from side to side before I managed to straighten it out.

  Kota tapped at my leg with his knuckles. “You’re getting better.”

  “I’m wobbly,” I said.

  “It takes practice.” His fingers slid down my calf until he caught my foot hanging off the side of his leg. He picked it up, bringing it closer. He bent over my knees to inspect my toes.

  “Kota...” His tug at my legs had me bending away from him. I had to sit up awkwardly, readjusting so I didn’t fall off the bean bag chair.

  “Polish doesn’t last very long, does it?” He traced his fingertips over my toes, poking at the chip marks across the beautiful pink flowers Gabriel had painted for me a couple of weeks ago.

  I’d known it’d been chipping, but I didn’t have the heart to take the polish off. “Gabriel said he was going to redo it sometime. He hasn’t had a day off in a while.”

  He nudged my legs until my feet were on the floor and he got up. “Hang on a second,” he said. “Keep practicing.”

  When he thudded up the stairs to his bedroom again, I breathed out a sigh, settling into the chair. Maybe I was making too much of being alone with him before. Now that we were doing something, it seemed easier to handle Kota by himself, and he wasn’t too bad. Why did I still feel nervous?

  Or maybe I wasn’t. What I thought was nervousness. I was more anxious. Excited. Anticipating what he might do next, because as much as my pulse quickened and my hands shook, I didn’t want to run like I used to. I wanted to stay next to him, even if I wasn’t sure of what I was doing.

  When Kota returned, I’d finished the race and started another. I started to lean back over to give him room, but he waved me off. “No,” he said. “Sit back.” He dropped a couple of bottles of polish on the ground, a bottle of nail polish remover, a package of cotton balls and a roll of paper towels.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, releasing the controller to gingerly move on the chair, unsure of where he wanted me.

  “I’ll fix your toes,” he said, as plainly as if he’d told me to do my homework. He dropped onto his knees in front of me, then stopped, tilting his head as if trying to figure out where to put himself.

  I knocked my knees together seeing him kneeling in front of me. I curled up into the bean bag chair and lost focus on the game and crashed the car. I couldn’t believe he was going to redo my toenails. I should have figured. Show Kota something broken...

  Max got up from his spot on the couch to stick his nose at Kota’s elbow.

  Kota waved him off. “Not now, Max. Go sit on the couch.”

  Max snuffed and padded back to the couch, climbing back onto it and curling up into the cushion.

  “Max knows the word ‘couch’?”

  “He knows a lot of things,” he said. He sat down on the floor, with his back against the beanbag chair. He picked up my calf, hung it over his shoulder. He bent his knees, and planted my foot on top of his thigh.

  He started with the bottle of nail polish remover. He doused a cotton ball with the liquid. He cupped his hand under my toes and pressed the cotton to my nails.

  “Like what?” I asked. I’d never seen Kota training Max to do things. “What can he do?”

  “Max,” he said, using a commanding tone and without looking up from what he was doing. “Light.”

  Max dropped down from the couch, and trailed over to the wall. He jumped, hitting the switch with his nose. The light flicked on overhead.

  “Neat,” I said.

  “Max,” Kota said. He tore a square of paper towel from the roll, crumpled it, and tossed it across the room to land on the floor. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the towel. “Throw it away.”

  Max padded over to the towel. He nosed it once, clipped the very edge with his mouth and picked it up off the floor. He wandered off with it hanging from his mouth and headed toward the kitchen.

  “He’ll throw it in the trash?” I asked.

  “He’s pretty clever,” Kota said. “He’s also great at security. He’ll scan the house to see who is at home and will report back to me if something’s wrong. If I say the right thing, he’ll sit in front of someone and guard.”

  “What if someone breaks into the house?”

  “If I’m not home,” he said, “Max could probably stop an entry. He’s had the training.”

  “He’d bite?”

  “He may bite a bad guy if provoked, on the leg or ankle. He’d probably knock them over and bark a lot.”

  Something nagged the back of my head after he said that, stirring a memory. “So if someone walked in, you could say something and he’d go jump on them?”

  “Of course,” Kota said, as he scrubbed at the corners of my toenails with a fresh bit of cotton ball to get the polish off. The acetone smell was burned my nose.

  I fiddled with the controller in my hand, eyeballing Kota. “So, he’d knock someone over and sit on them until you told him to get up?”

  Kota’s fingers slowed, making small circles against my toenail. The edges of his cheeks tinted. “Oops.”


  I dropped the controller, boosting myself to sit up slightly against the beanbag chair. “Kota? Did you tell Max to jump on me that night?”

  Kota’s head ducked slightly, his shoulders hunching. “I might have said something...”

  My eyes widened. I couldn’t believe it. I attempted to recall what he’d told me when I was trying to run off for the night to escape my parents and Max jumped on me. “You’d said the lead was old.”

  “It was old,” he said, gently tapping the wet cotton ball to my toes.

  “And that it broke...”

  He cringed again. “It might not have broken that much.”

  “Kota!”

  He held onto my foot, cupping around the top and smoothing his fingers over it. He turned partially to look back at my face. “You looked like you were running away.”

  I darted my eyes away to avoid his. I didn’t like the term running away, even if it was probably accurate. “How did you know I was out there? I mean, it was dark.”

  “I’d just gotten back from some Academy work and I noticed you standing there in your drive. I thought you were going to change your mind and run back into your house like you usually did. But then I saw the book bag you were carrying. So I grabbed Max...”

  “Wait, wait,” I said, holding out a hand onto his shoulder. “What do you mean, ‘like I usually did’?”

  His cheeks brightened. One hand released my leg to hook into the collar of his shirt and tugged. “Um...”

  “Kota?”

  He ducked his head a bit. “I might have seen you around the neighborhood a few times before that night.”

  I tilted my head back, surprised. “You knew who I was? You were watching me?”

  He spun around until he was on his knees in front of me. He planted his hands on either side of my hips and his eyes locked with mine. “Yes,” he said quickly. I sensed he was done tiptoeing around the subject. “I did. I saw your family move in, your parents, you and your sister. Your sister basically disappeared into that house and never came back out again, as did your mom. You would creep out the back door and race off into the woods like you didn’t want anyone to notice. I didn’t understand at the time why you made it look like you were trying to avoid being seen.”

  My cheeks were on fire. I didn’t know how to respond. He’d noticed me, when I thought I was still the invisible girl. “So you had your dog run me over?”

  “I’d tried to approach you before,” he said. His fingers stretched toward my face, capturing a lock of my hair, tucking it behind my ear. His fingertips slid down my cheek. “I tried to approach you when you walked through the woods. I thought it’d be easier if I just happened to cross your path and said hello. You’d change direction before I got close. If I tried to cut you off, you’d dart through a patch to avoid me and race back to your house again. You were impossible to approach. You never just walked out in the open.”

  My mind flickered to the memory of hearing rustling in the woods when I used to go for walks. While I hadn’t seen who it was, I never waited to find out who, either. I knew I wasn’t alone on the street, and that other people probably used those paths, and I’d done my best never to run into anyone. I was too shy. “I just... it’s what I was used to.”

  “I didn’t want to run after you and scare you,” he said. He sat back on his heels. “When I saw you out that night, I just pieced a plan together. I didn’t mean for Max to hurt you like he did.”

  I sat back, pushing a palm against my forehead. “I can’t believe you knew...”

  Kota’s palms slid over until his hands were warming my outer thighs. “Sang? You’re not mad, are you?”

  “Why?” I asked.

  Kota blinked at me. “Why what?”

  “Why me? Why did you bother?” Maybe it was stupid to ask, but I really didn’t understand. I was no one to him at the time. I was being an idiot that night and he’d stopped me from doing something unbelievably foolish.

  Kota’s eyes fell until he was gazing at my knee. His palm slid over the top of my thigh, warming the skin. “I’ve told you. You were this little haunted girl. You snuck out alone, and spent hours walking, or sitting in a tree staring off and watching the street. All I had to do was look at you and I knew. Something was wrong. I saw someone like us. Beautiful girls like you don’t hide themselves in trees all day like that.”

  It was true. Back then, I’d climb a tree and spend the day dreaming about a normal life. My heart strangely warmed at the idea that not too far away had been Kota. I could imagine him sitting under some tree, just out of sight, trying to figure out a way to talk to the invisible girl. It was like something out of a book I’d read. And I couldn’t totally blame him if he was trying to talk to me and I was the one making it difficult, and I had been.

  “Maybe it wasn’t the best way to approach you,” he said, “but when I saw you that night, I really thought you were running away for forever. I didn’t want you to just disappear. I thought I could just talk you out of it. Then I met you.” He lifted his eyes, meeting mine again. “And you were smart and sweet.” His hands gripped my legs tighter. “The next thing I knew, I was inviting you to spend the night. I was surprised you agreed to stay.”

  Heat rose in my cheeks. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  He looked down at my knee, and traced a couple of fingers across my skin, following the outside of my leg. A small smile played across his lips. “I probably should scold you for spending the night in the bedroom with a guy you don’t know.”

  “Then I should scold you for inviting strange girls into your bedroom in the middle of the night.”

  He rocked back on his heels, laughing. “Okay. I guess we were both a bit reckless that night.” His smile caught fully this time. “So you’re not mad at me?”

  “For what?”

  “For practically stalking you when you first showed up. And for Max. I didn’t realize he’d hurt you that badly. That was my fault.”

  Angry? Kota had flipped my entire world upside down. Before him, there weren’t people like Hendricks to tell me what to do, or McCoy who haunted me still, or people like Jade or any mysterious Academy secrets.

  But there also wouldn’t have been any of the guys. Despite my own messed up and confused feelings for them, they were there for me, in the only way they knew how. Maybe it wasn’t the best, but it was who we were now. And being who I was, the haunted girl with a broken family, where else did I belong?

  I could only offer Kota a small smile. “I can’t be mad about something I don’t regret. Unless you wish you hadn’t.”

  Kota did a small eye roll and popped me on the thigh playfully. “Sorry, sweetie. Too late to change your mind now. You’re one of us.”

  I giggled. “Yeah well, joke’s on you. Mean’s you're stuck with me.”

  Kota chuckled. He slipped back down until he was on the floor. He caught up my legs, holding onto one of my feet. He smoothed his palms over one, massaging my toes. He picked up one of the polish bottles, a clear coat, and opened the top. He stuck his nose close to the top, sniffed and recoiled. “This stuff is worse than Gabriel’s shampoos.”

  Kota swiped at my toes with the polish, and while he was painting, he directed me on how to play the game. He told me the rules, taught me more about drifting, when and how to use the speed bonuses.

  When the clear polish dried, he picked up the other polish bottle. This one was a deep hunter green.

  “Where’d you get that stuff, anyway?” I asked.

  “I’ve borrowed some of this from my mom before,” he said. “The clear polish was for red bug bites. The nail polish remover I’d gotten when you painted our nails so I could get this green color off.”

  “Did you take the green color from Gabriel?”

  Kota nodded. “I don’t know why. I picked it up and just brought it home.” He opened the top and wiped the brush against the lip. “Sorry it’s not pink.”

  “I don’t need pink all the time. I
like other colors, too.”

  Kota smiled. He held my foot against his thigh, and aimed the color at my toes.

  He managed to finish the first coat of color and was halfway done with the second when the sound of keys in the door rattled through the house.

  “Dakota?” Erica called from the door.

  I stiffened, dropping the controller in my lap and turning slightly.

  “Hi mom,” Kota said, unflinching. He held on to my foot and continued to focus on one of my toes. “You’re back early.”

  Erica groaned from the hallway beyond where I could see. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe it. There’s a new manager and she has completely muddled the schedule. Why does every new manager think they have to redo the entire system when they arrive?” Erica appeared from the hallway, her dark hair down and wearing light blue nurse scrubs. She dropped her purse, jacket and nurse’s badge on the table. She turned, her face lighting up when she spotted me. “You’re not Kota.”

  “Down here,” Kota said, applying polish to the brush and aiming the tip at one of my smaller toes. He hovered the brush as he did it, trying to position it just right.

  Erica crossed the room until she stood over us. She planted her hands on her hips. Her lips parted for a moment and then broke into a crazy smile. “This is adorable.”

  Kota looked up, lifting an eyebrow. “What is?”

  “Stay right there,” Erica said. She went back for her purse, fished out her cell phone, and came back. She held it up, poked at some buttons and snapped a picture of the two of us.

  Kota dodged his head, blinking and holding a hand up in front of his face. “What are you doing?”

  “You guys look so cute together.” She tapped at her phone again and snapped another picture, then turned it to show me. “Kota, you’re so sweet on her, it’s ridiculous.”

  “I’m just fixing her toes. They were chipping.”

  “I’d expect that of Gabriel. From you, it’s romantic.” She dropped a palm over her heart and sighed loud. “None of my high school boyfriends did that. What have you two been doing alone in the house?”

  “We were playing games and then I painted her toenails,” Kota said. “We’ve been downstairs the whole time.”