My Soul to Keep (The Soul Keeper Series - Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (4 page)

In the cafeteria the only thing edible is the salad
bar. I take my rabbit food and buy a dark chocolate candy bar from the vending
machine. I sit in the grass under my favorite tree, alone in the courtyard,
warming myself in the sun.

“Excuse me is this seat taken?” I hear a voice say.
I recognize Ft. Worth’s drawl without even seeing him. He is standing in front
of me blocking the sun like the glorious towering Virginia Pine he is.

“Hey Sam, you’re always welcome under my tree,” my
mouth says, but my mind says -no, no, go away cute boy
. Look away Brennen – look away!

He eases down next to me stretching out those long
legs and crossing his boots. He takes a bite of his hamburger and nearly chokes
on it. His brows turn like he is in agony.

“Yeah, I should have warned you the food here is
pretty terrible.” I feel sorry for him. My face contorts into a wince as if I
just ate the questionable meat myself.
 
He finally manages to swallow, chasing it down with half of a Dr.
Pepper.
 

“I’m pretty sure that was possum.” He makes a bleh
motion with his mouth. I give a quiet chuckle to his joke.

“Salad?”
I offer.

“Doritos!” he says triumphantly. I smile at his
victory over the ambiguous burger.

Emily has found us as well and joins our little
picnic.

“Emily, Sam, Sam, Emily,” I introduce them and
wonder if they would hit it off. I don’t know either of them well enough to
gauge that sort of thing yet.

We make small talk and eat our lunch. I enjoy my
dark chocolate a little too much. It makes me think of him and I don’t need to
daydream about those sapphire blue eyes. I need to get into Harvard and that is
going to take every ounce of my time this year.
 
My mind wanders to the difficulty of all of the
A.P classes I have undertaken this year. I hope with all sincerity I make it
through without drowning in my coffee cup one late night when I am all alone.
They may not find my body for weeks. I digress – consuming
myself
with school work on a daily basis is the only way that I know how to get
through each day without snapping.

Once it is quiet for a moment Emily breaks the
silence. I can tell by the absence of her smile that she is going
there
. The question I had managed to
avoid all day from her and concerned teachers alike, is coming. I feel trapped,
ensnared by one toe, dangling from the tree above me with no knife to free me
from the rope she is about to strangle me with.

“So Bren, I’ve been meaning to ask, how are you
holding up?” She is sincere and I know she means well. But I do better not
thinking about what I have lost. She is a good person; I could see us being
great friends maybe even lifelong friends. She wants to know how I am coping
with losing my dad. She has no clue about my grandmother and I intend for it to
stay that way. Come to think of it she has no clue about my mother either. I am
by all accounts an orphan. Even the word orphan sounds sorrowful.

My mother was in a fatal car wreck the same summer I
survived the plane crash. The ironic part was that I was supposed to go with
her on the short trip to visit her Aunt. I should have been in the car with her
when she crashed, but at the last minute I asked to stay home. I don’t know
what made me change my mind. I know I was an emotional wreck that summer
already, so maybe I wasn’t in the mood to be canoodled by my estranged family.
She was only going two miles down the road. The weather was clear the drunk
driver’s head was not. He struck her head on, killing her instantly.

My father was on a classified mission that went
terribly wrong when he died, which means he was in a place that never existed,
doing things that never happened, for a cause that most likely carried over
into shades of gray in terms of right and wrong.
 
That’s about all I know. He was my light and
now I am forever in the black room.

As for Grandma, my sole living relative, the
doctor’s called it rapidly progressing Alzheimer’s. They say one day soon her
body will forget how to swallow and how to breathe. So how am I?

“Oh I get by one day, one hour or one minute at a
time.” Just like the rest of us I suppose.

“Bren’s dad died last year,” she tells Sam. I furrow
my brows at her. My dad and I were stationed in Japan for a couple of years
when we got the news he was being deployed for a month long excursion. Grandma
flew in to stay with me until I finished school for the semester of my
sophomore year, like she had done many times before. She was always my back up
parent when my dad was deployed. I even spent a year with her here when my dad
went to Afghanistan. Grandma liked Japan, and she liked getting to see new
places. Two weeks went by, and then I got
the
knock on the door. And just like that, my Daddy was gone.
 
I still feel like a piece of me is missing
without him. I moved to Sandbridge with my grandmother and we helped each other
through the great loss. This past June, Grandma started to slip further and
further away from me, I think her grief was too much for her to bear. She
wouldn't even recognize me some days and she started to wander off to random
houses. We tried hiring a full time nurse, but Grandma was able to give her the
slip and ended up naked in the ocean, bless her heart. By the end of this
summer, her condition had deteriorated in such a swift manner that we both
agreed she would be much safer at Sunset Haven, Norfolk's finest Alzheimer’s
care facility.

“I lost my mom a few years back,” he states with
quiet reverence.

“Bren it looks like you two have a lot in common,”
Emily blurts like a cheer, clasped hands and all. Sam and I both look at her
sideways.

Yes
Emily, the dead parents club is uber exclusive; people are just dying to get
in. Cue maniacal laugh.

“Well there ya go,” Sam quips. The same line my dad
overused like a favorite t-shirt. It causes a wave of emotion to hit me like a
wrecking ball. I feel the tears crawling to the surface and I make a run for
it.

“Excuse me.” I smile politely giving nothing away. I
explode into the double doors and run up the stairs two at a time attempting to
out run the tears. I round the corner of the third level and crash into a body
or a brick wall. Tears bust through the dam and I look up bleary eyed.

“I’m sorry,” realizing as I look up that it’s
Elijah.

“Hey, it’s okay, come here.” He wraps his arms
around me. It doesn’t feel odd being in his arms even though he is a complete
stranger to me. It reminds me of my dad’s crushing hugs. It reminds me of the
stranger on the plane. I just feel comforted.

I have had to learn how
to deal with so much death and loss in my life. Death changes you, it teaches
with brutal stark honesty how fragile life is. After all, what if we only get
today? I don’t want to be invisible anymore, faded into the background of my
own life. All of those people on the plane died and I lived, why? Why do I get
to live when everyone I care about ceases to? Am I really living or just
getting though one meaningless day at a time? Elijah doesn’t ask what’s wrong,
he just holds me in an embrace that soothes me all the way to my toes. I relax
into him as my knees weaken.

He smells delicious
still, like warm chocolate chip cookies and clean laundry. I bury my head into
his chest, and breathe him in. He rests his cheek on my head and nuzzles me. I
am going to start living right now. My heart is beating for someone else
finally. Will I listen to it or bury it with the rest of my feelings and
emotions? Lock it away in the steel cage of my mind. I look up and meet his
eyes. Cerulean blue orbs gaze deeply back at mine asking permission and I move
my lips up fractionally to give it. His soft lips touch over mine. It’s the
first time I have ever been kissed. I never knew it would feel so soft, so
sweet. He is impossibly gentle for being such a strong guy. I tighten my grip
on him and his fingers wrap into my hair, closing in any gap between us. His
chest is pressed against mine and I can feel its rise and fall like undulating
waves on the ocean. His hands run along my back as he deepens his kiss.
 
The feeling is ineffable.

He releases me like
he’s been stung by some invisible wasp. Alarm and confusion fills his eyes.
What’s wrong why are we stopping? Did I do
something wrong? Why did I let him kiss me? Oh my God, I just learned his name about
five minutes ago.

“I’m sorry Brennen, I
can’t.” I nod trying to understand why. I sway, bereft of support, still woozy
from his intoxication over me. He turns and bounds down the stairs with the
ease and grace of a cat; popping the doors on his way out, the sound echoes in
the corridor. It is the loneliest sound in the world. I touch my lips, still
damp from the kiss. I sink into the top step curling one long blonde lock of
hair around my finger. What the hell was that? What if I am a horrible kisser?
It was my first real kiss, Elijah has probably had many. Maybe that’s it, he
has a girlfriend. He is beyond handsome and perfect in every way; he has to
have a girlfriend. Guys like him just don’t stay on the market very long,
unless he is a player. That makes sense, but he doesn’t seem like that type
either. Why did I even kiss him? The question repeats in my head over and over.
This was a horrible mistake, and one I will have to relive everyday of
Calculus. I wished that when I got home tonight I could curl up next to my dad
and tell him all about it. He would know what to make of it. He always knew
what to say.
 
We were tell-each-other-everything
close so to speak. I grieve for him every day.

“Brennen?”
Emily’s voice calls up the stairs.

“Yeah I’m here.” She meets me on the top stair.

“There you are I was worried about you.” She puts
her arm around my shoulders and gives me a tight squeeze.

“I’m okay.”

“No you’re not but that’s okay.” Someone is finally
calling my bluff. Relief creeps in like a cool stream of water trickling down
from my core and out my fingertips.

“Do you want to come over after school today? We
could talk, not talk, whatever you want to do.” I do want to go, but do I trust
her enough to let her into my situation? It’s not like I have to spill my guts
to her about everything. I don’t even do that with my shrink.

“Sure.” I bump her shoulder with mine. “Thanks.”

She writes her address on my hand and then pulls me
up and leads me to the bathroom. My nose is red from crying; I am a flipping
mess. I wet a paper towel and pat my face to cool off my eyes. I reapply my
gloss; it reminds me of his soft heated lips brushing with mine. My green eyes
reflect back asking what’s wrong with me. Emily powders her nose and pops a
mint in her mouth and in mine. “Thanks,” I say as the bell sounds. I get the
impression she is unpretentious. I don’t think this girl could hurt anyone,
ever.

“Anytime, and I mean it,” she says. There is a new
hole in the wall I keep up, the wall that imprisons me in that little pitch
black room. Emily is pecking her way into it and into my life. I am grateful
for my new friend.

My next class is Spanish II. Since I am already on
the third floor I’m the first one to take my seat. Mr. Sanchez is a middle aged
Hispanic man with coal black hair and a fatherly essence to his teaching. I had
him last year in Spanish I. He is also our quarter-back’s dad.

“Buenos
dias
, senorita
Hale.”

“Buenos
dias
, professor.”
I am getting fair at the language. Sam enters the room like the stallion he is
and sits in front of me.

“Hey stranger, it’s been a long time.” He’s being
playful. His eyes dance as he gauges my take. He probably thinks I can’t stand
him since I ignored him in first period and abandoned him at lunch. I glint a ghost
of a smile. His dimples deepen as he smiles. “You didn’t come back, is
everything alright?” He is so sweet to worry.

“Mm Hmm.”
No
. A glimmer of smile is all I can
produce.

Before I even see him, I feel him enter the room.
Elijah walks down my isle in slow motion. Those lips were just on mine, his
scent still lingers on me like a veil. He never takes his eyes off of me. Our
eyes lock for a moment, he meets mine laced with unmistakable regret that nails
me right in the gut. I look away, ashamed for letting him get so close to begin
with. He takes the seat behind me. I replay the scene again in my head trying
to make sense of what went wrong. His hands pulling me in wanting, exploring my
lips, his hand in my hair, all felt as if he didn’t want to stop. Just thinking
of it sets my neck on fire. I may be inexperienced, but that moment will never
be forgotten. I turn to him and whisper.

 
“Can we talk
later?”

His midnight blue eyes shift as if he is searching
for the right answer.

 
“Meet me in
the lot after school,” he finally says.

Being that he is so cool about it, I wonder if it
happens to him on a daily basis – random girls kissing him in the hallway. No
doubt he is capable of attracting girls en masse. Case in point, every girl in
the class is looking his way now. He’ll be on every cheerleader’s radar by days
end and Sam is no exception. The fact that I am bookended by the two hottest
guys on the planet is not lost on me.
 
I
feel horrible for leaving Sam at lunch. I put my hand on his arm to get his attention.
His arm is well toned and my hand lingers a little too long to be perceived as
friendly, I retract.