Falling Into You (8 page)

I loved Kyle enough to shift my plan. Kyle was locked into accepting the best offers. He had a wealth of them choose from, so I wasn’t worried about that as much.
 

I sat by the fire wrapped in a towel, watching Kyle idly strum a guitar, staring into middle distance, knowing I had to decide. Did I follow Kyle for love? Or did I follow my plan for the future?
 

Little did I know, that choice would soon be stripped away from me.

*
 
*
 
*

Saturday was a lazy day spent on the pontoon boat, drinking beer and eating sandwiches, making love and listening to music on my iPod. We avoided heavy conversation and just enjoyed each other, enjoyed the rippling blue of the lake, the pale expanse of the clear sky, and the lack of expectations on each other.

Back home, we were both chased by the image of our parents. My dad was considering running for the mayorship of our town. Kyle especially had to be careful of what he did, now. With his father angling for a presidential nomination, every facet of the Calloway family was examined on a regular basis by the media. Kyle and I had to be careful not to be caught in any compromising positions, not to do or say anything to cast doubt on Mr. Calloway.
 

Here, up north, no such expectations existed. It was just us.
 

Sunday was stormy, so we spent the day inside watching movies. We went for an early dinner to the only nice restaurant within an hour’s drive, a fairly swank Italian place where the Calloways were well known. Kyle was greeted by name and given a table immediately, despite the crowd of waiting vacationers.
 

It was another nice but slightly awkward dinner, with the coming conversation weighing on us both. I knew I had to send my official acceptance to Syracuse soon, or have our dads start pulling strings to get me into Stanford with Kyle. Time was running out. We’d put this off for too long, to the chagrin of both of our parents, and now the time had come. It was August, and the universities were starting their academic year in September.
 

I opened my mouth to bring it up several times, but Kyle always seemed to head me off, as if he knew what I was about to say. We drove home in a tense silence. Kyle had his hand in the pocket of his Dockers while he drove, and he kept glancing at me, a deep, inscrutable expression on his face. We pulled up to the cabin and sat for a moment, watching fat drops of rain splatter on the windshield, listening to the wind howling outside. The huge pine trees surrounding the cabin were bending and swaying in the winds, which were approaching gale force, it seemed to me. I watched with my heart hammering as one tree in particular seemed to bending almost double in the gusts, and I found myself tensing for the moment when it would snap and fall. With the direction the wind was blowing, if it did break, it would hit the house and the car we sat in.
 

Kyle looked at me, and I noticed beads of sweat on his face, despite the coolness in the car. His hand gripped the steering wheel and smoothed the leather across the top, a gesture he only made when nervous or upset. I waited, knowing he’d speak up when he was ready.

He glanced at me again, took a deep breath, and withdrew his hand from his pocket. My heart pounded in my chest realization dawned on me.
Oh god. Oh god.
He was about to propose. No, no. I wasn’t ready for that.

He opened his hand, and sure enough, there was a black box,
Kay Jewelers
written in gold thread across the top. I bit my lip and tried not to hyperventilate.

“Kyle? I—”

“Nell, I love you.” His hand trembled slightly as he opened the box, revealing a half-carat princess cut diamond ring, simple and beautiful. And terrifying. “I don’t want to spend a moment without you. I don’t care about college or football or anything. All I care about is you. We can figure out the future together.”

He withdrew the ring and held it out to me between thumb and forefinger. Rain blatted on the windshield, and the wind howled like a banshee, gusting so hard the car rocked on its suspension.
Why now?
I wondered.
Why here
? In a car, in a rainstorm? Not in the restaurant during dinner? Not out at the firepit where we had so many memories? My heart juddered in my chest, and my eyes stung, sight wavering and blurring. My lip hurt and I tasted the tang of blood. I forced myself to release my lip before I bit straight through it.

“Nell? Will you marry me?” Kyle’s voice broke at the end.

“Ohmigod, Kyle.” I choked out the words, forced the rest out. “I love you, I do. But…now? I don’t—I don’t know. I can’t…we’re barely eighteen. I love you, and I was going to tell you I’d follow you to Stanford. Dad can get me in last minute…” I shook my head and scrunched my eyes closed against the confused hurt in Kyle’s eyes.

“Wait…” he shook his head, withdrawing the ring slightly. “Are you saying no?”

“It’s too soon, Kyle. It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just…” Doubts assailed me.
 

I’d never dated anyone else. It wasn’t that I wanted to, necessarily. But I felt so young, sometimes. I’d never been away from my parents for more than a week. I’d never left home. This was the first time I’d gone somewhere without them. I wanted to experience life. I wanted to grow up a bit. I wasn’t ready to be married.

But I couldn’t get any of this out of my mouth. All I could do was shake my head as tears fell, mimicking the rain. I pushed the car door open and stumbled out, ignoring Kyle’s shouts to wait. I was drenched to the skin in moments, but I didn’t care.
 

I heard Kyle behind me, chasing me. I wasn’t running from him, but from the situation. I stopped, high heels slipping and digging into the wet gravel.
 

“I don’t understand, Nell.” His voice was thick and rough with emotion, but the rain on his face obscured his features so I couldn’t tell if he was crying or not. “I thought…I thought this was the next step, for us.”

“It is, just not yet.” I wiped my face and took a step toward him. “I love you. I really do. I love you with all my heart. But I’m not ready to get engaged.
We’re
not ready for that. We’re just kids, still. We just graduated high school a few months ago.”

“I know we’re young, but…you’re what I want. All I want. We could live in married housing, and…be together. Experience everything together.”

“We can still do that. We could get an apartment together. Maybe not right away, but soon.” I turned away, frustrated with my inability to express why I wasn’t ready. “Kyle…it’s just too soon. Can’t you see that? I don’t want to be apart either. I’ll go to Stanford with you. I’ll be with you wherever you go. I
will
marry you, just not yet. Give it a few years. Let’s get through college and get careers going. Grow up a bit.”

Kyle was the one to turn away, this time. He brushed his palm over his wet hair, sending a spray of water flying. “You sound like our parents. You sound like your dad. I asked him first, you know. That’s why they let us come up here. He said he wasn’t sure we were ready and he thought we needed some time to experience a bit more life, but you were legally an adult now and if you said yes, he had no problem with us getting engaged.”

The rain let up then, but the wind blew harder than ever. The trees around us swayed like stalks of grass. Even over the harsh cry of the wind I could hear the trunks creaking. A streak of lightning lit up the night sky, then another. Thunder crashed overhead, so loud I felt it in my stomach, and then the rain blew over us again, cold and stinging.
 

“I love you, Kyle.” I stepped toward him, reaching for him. “Please don’t be mad at me. I just—”

He turned away from me, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I thought—I thought this was what you wanted.”

“Let’s go inside now, okay? We’ll talk about it inside. It’s not safe out here.” I reached for him again, but he pulled away.
 

Lightning struck again, closer this time, so close I felt the hair on my arms stand on end and tasted ozone, felt the crackling of energy all around me. The trees creaked and bent, the wind gusting hard enough to buffet the car and send me stumbling sideways.
 

I shook my head and stalked past Kyle toward the house. “I’m going inside. You can stay out here and be unreasonable, then.”

I heard a deafening
crack
, then, but it wasn’t lightning. It was like a cannon booming, like a firework detonating mere feet away. My stomach churned, fear bolting through me. I froze with my foot on the first step to the porch, looked up, and saw death coming for me.
 

The tree had snapped. Time slowed as the mammoth pine fell toward me. I heard the roof crunching and giving way, heard siding pop and split, heard bricks disintegrating. I couldn’t move. All I could see was the brown trunk wet and glinting black against the sky, the green needles fluttering in the wind.
 

Kyle shouted behind me, but his words were lost in the wind, in the haze of terror. I was frozen. I knew I needed to move, but my limbs wouldn’t cooperate. All I could do was watch the tree descend. I couldn’t even scream.
 

I felt something hard impact me from behind, and I was thrown to the side. I heard the crash of the tree hitting ground. My ears rang, my breath knocked out of me, leaving me gasping. I was on my side, my arm twisted beneath me. Then pain shot through me, agony like lightning in my arm. It was broken, I thought. I flopped to my back, letting a scream loose as the jarring thud sent another shard of pain through me. I looked down at my arm cradled to my chest, saw blood streaming in the rain, red slicking down my flesh. The forearm was bent at an unnatural angle, a white spike protruding from the elbow. I had to roll over again to vomit at the sight of my ruined arm.
 

Then awareness struck.
 

Kyle
.
 

I twisted and scrambled to my knees, arm cradled against my stomach. Another scream resounded, loud even over the wind and thunder. The tree was a fallen giant in the clearing. The house was crushed, the right side obliterated by the tree trunk. Kyle’s Camaro was crushed as well, windshield splintered, hood and roof and trunk flattened. The branches were like spikes and splinters piercing the earth, green needles obscuring the ground and the sky and world beyond the tree.
 

I saw a shoe, without a foot. A black dress shoe. Kyle’s shoe, knocked clean off his foot. That image, the black shoe, leather wet from the rain, a smear of mud on the toe, would be burned into my mind forever.
 

Kyle was beneath the tree trunk, his legs scrabbling for purchase in the mud and the gravel. I screamed again, not hearing myself. I felt the scream in my throat, scraping my vocal chords raw.
 

I scrambled across the gravel driveway on my hands and knees, agony lancing through me as I unheedingly used my shattered arm to drag myself toward Kyle. I reached his feet, draped myself over the trunk between foot-thick branches broken into jagged spears.
 

“Kyle?
Kyle
?” I heard the words, his name, drop from my lips, desperate pleas.
 

I saw his chest move, saw his head twist, looking for me. He was on his stomach, face down. Mud caked his cheek. Blood dripped from his forehead, smeared around his nose and mouth. I pulled myself over the tree with my one arm, struggling against the bite of the bark on my bare knees, feeling sap stick to my calves and thighs. My dress caught on a branch and ripped, baring my flesh to the angry sky. I fell free, landed on my shoulder, felt something snap further in my arm. Pain stole my breath, left me trembling and unable to even scream. My eyes fluttered open, met Kyle’s brown gaze. He blinked slowly, then squeezed his eyes shut as a pink stream of blood and rain dripped into his eye. His breath was labored, whistling strangely. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

I twisted my torso, trying to get my weight off my broken arm. Then I saw it. The tree hadn’t just fallen on him. A branch had spiked through him. Another scream ripped through me, this time fading into silence as my voice gave out.
 

I reached out and brushed the rain from his face, the blood from his cheek and chin. “Kyle?” This was a whisper, ragged and barely audible.

“Nell…I love you.”

“You’re gonna be okay, Kyle. I love you.” I forced myself to my feet, put my shoulder to the tree and pushed, pulled. “I’m gonna get you out. Get you to a hospital. You’ll be fine….We’re gonna go to Stanford together.”
 

The tree shifted, and Kyle groaned in pain. “Stop, Nell. Stop.”

“No…no. I have to…have to get you out.” I pushed again, slid in the mud and my face bashed into the bark of the tree.

I slumped to the ground next to Kyle. I felt his hand snake through the mud and latch onto mine.
 

“You can’t, Nell. Just…hold my hand. I love you.” His eyes searched my face, as if memorizing my features.

“I love you Kyle. You’re gonna be fine. We’ll get married…please…” The words tripped out, broken by sobs.
 

I forced myself to my feet. Ran stumbling to the car, red paint and black racing stripe battered and shattered, reached in through the broken window for my purse. A shard of glass cut a long line of crimson across my arm, but I didn’t feel it. I clutched the purse awkwardly against my chest with my hurt arm, dug my phone out from my purse, frantically slid my finger across the screen to unlock it, nearly dropped it as I punched the green and white phone icon. My purse fell forgotten to the mud.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” A calm female voice pierced my shock.

 
“A tree fell…my boyfriend is trapped under it. I think he’s hurt bad. I think a branch…please…please come and help him.” I didn’t recognize my voice, the abject terror and incoherent tone.

“What is your address, miss?”

I spun in place. “I don’t—I don’t know.” I did know the address, but I couldn’t summon it. “Nine three four…” I choked on a sob, fell to the ground next to Kyle, gravel biting into my knees and backside.