Kyland (Sign of Love #7) (4 page)

We stared at each other for a minute, something flowing in the air between us. I looked away first, unsettled again.

"Royal family jewels, huh? You so sure you can trust me with that information? I'm already a known sandwich-bandit."

She tilted her head. "Yeah," she said softly, seriously. "I've got a feeling you're mostly trustworthy."

We stared at each other for several beats again, something quickening inside me. Something that felt dangerous—something I didn't exactly recognize, but something I wasn't sure I liked at all. I needed to break the damn spell.

"I trust you with my family jewels, too," I finally said, winking, trying to lighten the sudden, strange mood between us. "I'd like to show them to you sometime."

Tenleigh leaned her head back and laughed. I had wondered what her full-out laughter sounded like, and now I knew. And I suddenly understood that it would have been better if I didn't. So much better. Because I wanted to
lose
myself in the sound of that laughter. It alarmed me and that same feeling came into my chest again, only now increasing. I sat up straighter, something instinctual telling me I needed to run.

Her expression seemed to change as if she could sense my inner turmoil.
Ridiculous.
She stood and I squinted up at her. "Come here," she said, turning her back on me. "I want to show you something."

I stood up and followed behind her to a large rock. I watched as she went to the front of it and ducked down, disappearing somewhere. I leaned over cautiously and saw a tiny, dark cave. Anxiety swept through my body, and I stumbled backward. Tenleigh peeked out, a smile plastered across her face.

"Come in. It's big enough for the both of us. I want to show you something."

"No," I said, a bit more harshly than I meant to. The smile disappeared from her face and she "walked" out, nearly squatting as she shuffled along. She stood up and looked at me worriedly. I realized that my hands were fisted by my sides, and my body was tensed. I relaxed, shoving my hands in my pockets.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "Do you not like small spaces? I—"

"It's no big deal," I said, dismissively.

She put her hand on my shoulder timidly and I jolted at the contact, squeezing my eyes shut for a second and then opening them. I pulled away.

She watched me acutely for just a moment. "There are some drawings on the wall in there," she finally said and shrugged. "Really, really faint and most likely something someone did recently, but who knows. Maybe a cave family lived in there thousands of years ago."

"Hundreds of thousands."

"What?"

"Cavemen, they lived hundreds of thousands of years ago, not thousands."

She put her hands on her hips. "Okay,
professor
." She arched one delicate eyebrow, and I let out a small laugh on a breath.

"Come on, Princess Tenleigh, we better get back to the road before it's pitch black." I went for a casual tone to my voice. Tenleigh had obviously noticed my strange behavior when it came to the small cave.

The sun had almost set and it was twilight, the sky a deep blue, the first stars just appearing. A few minutes later, we were back on the road and we walked along in silence. It felt comfortable again and Tenleigh smiled a small smile at me, just tilting her head slightly in my direction.

She adjusted her backpack and a book fell out of the tear on the side, the one she had closed up as much as possible with a safety pin. A fucking safety pin. That safety pin filled me with anger. "Oops." She leaned down to pick it up just as I did and we both laughed as our heads collided. She rubbed hers and laughed again. "There's that charm again. I'm a goner for sure."

I laughed. "Don't say I didn't warn you." I picked up the book and held it up. "
The Weaver of Raveloe
?"

Tenleigh's eyes met mine and she nodded, taking the book from me. "I read a lot," she said, stuffing the book in her backpack and looking embarrassed for some reason. "The Dennville library doesn't have much of a selection so I've read some twice . . ."

"That one?" I nodded my head toward her backpack.

We started walking again.

"Yes, I've read that one before."

"What's it about?"

She was quiet for a minute and I thought she might not answer me. Truthfully, I didn't really care to hear about the weaver of whatever. She could tell me anything. What I wanted was to hear her pretty voice cutting through the cold mountain air—and I liked the things she said. She was different. She kept surprising me with the things that came out of her mouth and I liked it. I liked it way too much.

"It's about Silas Marner who . . ."

I halted. "Silas?"

Tenleigh stopped, too, and looked at me curiously. "Yeah, what's wrong?"

I shook my head and we both started walking again. "Nothing. That was my brother's name."

Tenleigh bit her lip and looked up at me, a sympathetic look on her face. She must know my brother had been at the mine that day. "Yes, I think I remember that." She smiled. "Maybe your mama read the book and the name stuck with her."

I shook my head. "My mama didn't . . . doesn't know how to read."

"Oh." She glanced at me and then was silent for a minute. "I know it happened years ago, but . . ." She touched my arm and I jerked slightly. She pulled her hand away. "I'm really sorry about your loss, Kyland."

"Thanks, I appreciate that," I said, clearing my throat.

We walked in a sort of awkward silence for a few minutes, passing by my dark house. "So what about this Silas Marner?"

"Um . . . well, he lives in a slum in England and, ah, he's falsely accused of stealing, by his best friend. He's convicted and the woman he's engaged to marry leaves him and marries his best friend."

"Jesus, sounds like a real feel-good sort of tale. I'm glad you've found a way to escape the harshness of Dennville."

Tenleigh's sweet-sounding laughter made my heart jump in my chest and I looked over at her. Somehow making this girl laugh filled me with some sort of pride.
Not good. Very, very bad.

We arrived in front of Tenleigh's trailer and she stopped, leaning back against a tree next to the road. "Well, he leaves the town and settles in a small village near Raveloe. He sort of becomes a hermit, feeling as if he's hidden—even from God." I unconsciously leaned in so I wouldn't miss a word. She tilted her head, looking off into the distance. Then she looked back at me and widened her eyes. "But one winter’s night, his whole life changes when—"

"Tenleigh!" someone called from the trailer, an older woman with long brown hair the same color as Tenleigh's. "It's cold out there. Come inside."

"Okay, Mama," Tenleigh called before looking back at me, a worried expression on her face. I didn't remember seeing Tenleigh's mama much. She must not leave the trailer very often. "I gotta go. I'll see you around, Kyland." And with that, she turned and left me where I was standing. She ran inside so quickly, her sudden absence jarred me and made me feel lost somehow. I stood staring at her trailer for several moments before I turned and headed for home, the wind cold at my back.

Tenleigh

The unfortunate thing about being fired from Rusty's—other than the obvious issues of lost income, humiliation, and possible starvation—was that it was the only place to buy groceries in Dennville. Normally, I'd make the six mile walk to Evansly just on principle alone, but today it was raining cats and dogs and I just wasn't up for it. So I sucked up my pride and entered the convenience store. Rusty was a dick, but he wasn't going to turn down my money. Thankfully though, his sister Dusty was standing at the counter. Yes, Rusty's sister's name was Dusty—the gene pool in that family was clearly something special. Dusty had an
In Touch
magazine plastered to her face and didn't even look up when I entered. I let out a sigh of relief. I moved through the store throwing things in my basket. Rusty didn't carry any fruits or vegetables, not even the canned variety. Marlo and I had a small garden planted on the far side of our trailer—tomatoes, green beans, watermelon, and potatoes—and in the summertime we sometimes ate from it exclusively for weeks at a time. Most of the people living on the mountain had at least a small garden and sometimes we traded one homegrown item for another. It was a good way to save money . . . and a good way to avoid the scurvy you were likely to get if you ate food solely from Rusty's.

In the winter months, I'd usually make it a point to walk through the snow to Evansly at least once a week to stock up on canned fruits and veggies. When we were heating our trailer, we couldn't afford the fresh variety, so for three or four months we made do with canned. And then when the spring came, Marlo and I watched the ground with something close to glee as the first shoots unfurled.

You had to appreciate the small things in life when the big things made you want to curl up in the corner in the fetal position and give up.

"Hey, Dusty," I greeted her when I was ready to check out.

She didn't acknowledge me and still didn't look up, blindly grabbing at my items until she felt something, glanced at it, and typed the price into the cash register.

"So how's life?" I asked, leaning my hip on the counter.

Dusty finally looked up at me, a blank expression on her plain face. "Life sucks," she said.

I nodded to the magazine in her hand. "Not for those Kardashians."

She narrowed her eyes, smacking the gum in her mouth before glancing quickly at the magazine and then back at me. "Khloe and Kourtney are taking over the Hamptons," she offered.

I nodded slowly, running my tongue over my front teeth. "Must be nice."

"Yeah," she said. "Must be real nice." Then she grinned, showing me a mouthful of rot—commonly referred to in these parts as “Mountain Dew Mouth.” Then, as if to make my point, she picked up a half-full bottle of Mountain Dew and took a big swig. I struggled not to flinch. She finished ringing up my items, I paid, took my bags, bid her farewell, and walked to the door. As I was walking through, Dusty called my name and I turned around and looked at her questioningly.

"Rusty is a rat-faced motherfucker," she said.

I blinked at her and tilted my head. "Yeah," I agreed. "He really is."

She gifted me another brown and yellow grin, stuck her hand up and gave me a thumbs-up sign, and then plastered the magazine back up to her face. I left the store.

I started walking back toward home, lost in my own world, trying to decide what I'd do today. Marlo was working and then she had plans with some guy she'd met at Al's. I really wished she wouldn't have anything to do with the guys she met there—most of them were far from worthy of her. I thought Marlo and I had good reason for distrusting men, but while I had sworn them off, Marlo had decided that dating lots of guys she didn't care about meant she was the one in control.

Marlo had opened her heart once, and things hadn't gone well.

A few years before, she had met
Donald
, a young, handsome executive in town for some big corporate meeting at the mine. He'd come into Al's every night for a week just to sit in my sister's section and watch her work, talking about
fate
and destiny, which swept her right off her feet just like he was her prince charming come to rescue her from her dreary existence. As if any prince was ever named
Donald
—that should have been her first clue right there.

She kissed him up against his shiny, red BMW and he made all sorts of promises to her about moving her out to his condo in Chicago. Then three minutes after she'd given him her virginity, he drove her to the base of our mountain and dropped her off at the side of the road. When she asked him what happened to the condo in Chicago, he laughed at her and told her he'd never bring an ugly, bucktoothed hick home with him. And then he'd sped off, splashing mud up on her new, white sweater, the one we'd walked six miles into the Evansly Wal-Mart to buy, the one I could tell made her feel pretty. At least up until then. After that, Marlo never seemed to feel pretty, and she'd started laughing with her hand over her mouth to hide her teeth. Truth be told, they
were
sort of bucked, but not in a way that was ugly, in a way that showed off those full movie star lips of hers, in a way that was sweet and endearing. In a way that was
Marlo.

Whenever I thought back to the day we excitedly walked through the aisles of Wal-Mart, talking about how her night would go, squirting testers of perfume on our wrists, and spending the last of our money on a sweater for her date, it made me so angry. Angry that we'd allowed ourselves to include Donald in our dreams, that we'd spent even one second giving him the power to dash our hopes. And most of all, that Marlo had given something precious to a loser who didn't deserve it.

Marlo had told me the story of Donald that night when she'd come into our trailer, muddy, shivering, and defeated. She'd cried in my arms and I'd cried, too, for her, for me, for dashed dreams, for the pain of loneliness, and the deep hope that someone would come along and save us. And the fact that no one ever did. Of course, we both should have known better after what happened to our mama, but I guessed the promise of love is about the strongest pull there is. I didn't blame Marlo. Our father had been the first one to teach us that men were ultimately selfish and uncaring and would put themselves before anyone else, regardless of who depended on them. And even still, for me, it was so hard not to dream that somewhere out there, there was someone strong and gallant who would dance with me under a starlit sky and call me his beloved—and mean it.

"Hey."

I let out a small scream and jumped back, dropping one of my bags, my groceries rolling out onto the ground. When I looked up, it was Kyland. "This is funny to you, isn't it?" I asked.

He held his hands up in a surrender gesture. "Sorry, sorry. I swear, this really is a coincidence. I was walking back from Evansly. I saw you come out of Rusty's." He bent down, picked up my bag of groceries, and then gestured for me to give him the other one. I almost resisted, but then I decided he should at the very least carry my bags after giving me a mini heart attack for the third time in a week.

"Hmm, likely story," I said, cocking an eyebrow.

He grinned when I handed the bag over and some sort of strange tickling feeling moved through my ribcage. I frowned.

"Still holding strong, huh?"

"It's been quite the effort, let me tell you," I said.

He laughed and my stupid heart flipped. Evidently I was kind of bad at this swearing off men thing—a few smiles and I had a full-blown crush. Truthfully, he hadn't even worked that hard to get me to this point. How completely annoying.

"How's the ever-charming Rusty?" he asked after a minute, moving his head backward to indicate the store.

"Rusty wasn't there. Dusty was."

"Oh, well how's Dusty? In-bred as usual?"

I laughed, but sucked it back in. "That's mean." I paused. "Dusty, she's all right."

He chuckled. "I know. I'm just kidding. I mean . . . mostly." We walked in silence for a few minutes.

I looked to my left when I heard a car engine approach and watched as a black Mercedes drove slowly by. I averted my eyes quickly, turning my head away and toward Kyland. He furrowed his brow. "You know Edward Kearney?" he asked.

I kept looking at him until I heard the car drive past us. I shook my head. "No. Not really," I said, blushing slightly as I watched the back of his car move away—the car that cost more than the yearly salary of three miners. Kyland didn't need to know my family's dirty laundry. I wondered what Edward Kearney was doing driving through this town, though—there was nothing here that would interest him. I should know.

"They found all kinds of safety infractions at the old mine," Kyland said, his eyes still on the back of the car. "After the collapse, Tyton Coal paid a fine. A
fine
," he repeated bitterly.

"I know," I said. "I heard that." I couldn't blame him for being bitter about that. He'd lost so much. We walked without speaking for a while, the birdsong in the trees ringing out around us, filling our silence. After a few minutes, the mood seemed to lift, Kyland's shoulders relaxing.

As we were about to approach the trail that led to the cliff where Kyland had followed me a few days before, he said, "The sun's about to set. Should we catch the show, Princess?" He winked and my hormones went a little wonky.

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. "Well . . . I was going home to soak in our multi-jet hot tub, maybe eat some bonbons, but . . . Oh, sure."

Kyland smiled and steered me onto the damp trail. "By the way," he said, "if this is your way of luring me into the woods so that you can take advantage of me, I want you to know, I'm not that kind of boy."

I snorted. "Oh, you're exactly that kind of boy."

He looked behind him, pretending to be offended. I laughed. "And you're the one luring
me
, by the way. This was
your
idea."

His glance was quick this time, his cocky smile just a shade darker. "You can trust me."

I laughed. "Doubtful." As we walked, I wondered, though—he'd never seemed wanting of female company, so what was he doing with me? Why
did
he keep showing up where I was?

We came out on the other side and settled ourselves on the same rock we'd sat on before, Kyland placing my grocery bags next to him on a rock that was mostly dry.

We sat for a minute, looking out at the sunset that rose red and orange above the line of fog as if the whole top of the sky had lit on fire. Our thighs touched, his warm against mine. The smell of the rain was still in the air and raindrops glistened in the trees around us.

We had been joking and laughing a few minutes before, but suddenly, the mood between us had shifted once again. I glanced over at Kyland and his face was tense. What was he thinking when he suddenly started brooding like that?

"So you never told me what that Silas dude found that changed his life," he finally said.

I squinted over at him. He was staring straight ahead as if he didn't care what my answer was.

"Why don't you read the book?" I offered.

"Pfft. Just what I need. To waste my time reading about someone else's sucky life."

"Then why are you asking about it?"

"Just making conversation."

"Oh, right." I said, raising one eyebrow.

We were both silent for a few moments before I asked, "So, what colleges have you applied to?" I knew that like me, he must have if he was hoping to apply the scholarship to one.

"All schools on the east coast," he said, still looking out to the sky. After a second, he turned to me and said, "Mostly schools in or near New York City. All my life, I've just felt like . . ." he paused as if searching for the right wording, "I was meant to
do
something, you know?
Something.
" His voice had become animated as he was talking and he suddenly looked embarrassed. "What about you?"

I cleared my throat. "I applied to a couple around here and a couple in California."

He looked at me. "California?"

I shrugged. "I've always wanted to see the ocean."

Kyland kept staring at me, finally nodding slightly. "Yeah," he said simply. I stared back at him, my eyes darting down to his lips and suddenly, something ignited in the air—something unseen, but real all the same. I felt it and I knew Kyland felt it, too, by the way he startled very slightly. He adjusted himself where he sat. I felt my cheeks flush and was surprised at how hard it was to breathe properly. There was something intense and almost pained in Kyland's expression. He moved just a little bit closer and up close like this I could see a light sprinkling of freckles on his nose, under his tan—as if his childhood sat just beneath his skin. And the outer rim of his gray eyes was a soft blue, like sunny days were just off in the distance.

"Kyland—"

"Tenleigh." He leaned toward me, his breath just a whisper away, his voice strained. I breathed in his scent, a thrill racing down my spine. He smelled like a mixture of clean, pine-scented mountain air and something that must just be him—something that whispered to me in an intimate, secret way. Something I didn't need to analyze to understand. My eyelashes fluttered. I glanced down at his lips again. God, his lips were nice. And they looked so soft. Would they be soft on mine? My heart beat wildly in my chest as I waited for him to kiss me. He moved a centimeter closer and I held my breath.