Ruined by You (14 page)

I studied him for a second. I felt the fiery passion burning inside him. I knew it was that fire that kept him going. That kept him moving forward when others wouldn’t have. I had thrown up roadblock after roadblock, but he still kept coming.

Was that fire burning for me?

“Is any part of you worried that I would get here and say no?” I asked.

His lips curled as he considered the question. Then, he tilted his head to the side and shrugged.

“Not really,” he said.

“You’re pretty confident in yourself,” I said.

“Like my football coach used to tell me, when you get the ball in your hands, you just keep your legs moving. You keep running until you get to where you’re going.”

“How do you know when you get there?” I asked.

He grinned. “You’ll know.”

“But, what if your legs don’t take you where you want them to?” I asked. “What if you get lost?”

He grinned at me, and somehow managed to bring himself even closer.

“It doesn’t matter where you lose yourself,” he said. “The only thing that matters is who you lose yourself with.”

He was so impossibly close. His voice was barely a whisper, but I heard it loud and clear.

“So, Maggie, would you like to go down to the river with me?” he asked, his voice so soft.

I nodded, slowly, barely hearing him.

“Yes,” I breathed.

His eyes dipped down to my lips again, and my knees started to get weak. I wanted to lose myself right then and there. I was ready to lose myself. His intensity was too much to handle.

“There’s a little public area down by the river,” he said. “We can get changed down there.”

My lip curled up under my teeth, and I nodded once.

“OK,” was all I trusted myself to say.

He grabbed a canvas bag lying next to his car and slung it over his shoulder. Then, he held his hand out to me. I looked at it for a long, awkward moment. Slowly, I reached my hand out and put it in his.

We walked together, hand in hand, down to the river.

Haden led me down to the river, where we found the little public area he had been talking about. It sat next to a parking lot that dropped down from the Starbucks above. There were both a men’s and women’s facilities, and there were even a few parents milling about with their kids in tow. But, mostly, it was a quiet morning.

Haden pulled a beach towel from the canvas bag and gave it to me. I excused myself to the lady’s room and took a look at myself in the mirror. I didn’t know what Haden could possibly see in me. My skin was pale, I was thin and bony, and my hair had a freakishly bright hue to it. I was surprised that more people didn’t run from me, screaming in horror.

I changed into the bikini, quickly, and was relieved that it was a perfect fit for my tiny frame. Was it sheer luck that he had chosen my exact size?

Was there something I should be worried about? How many other girls had he bought bikinis for? The sane part of me was trying to keep up, was trying to bolster whatever shred of vigilance I had left. But, there wasn’t much. I knew I was hopelessly falling for a man that I barely knew. A man that I had only just met, a man that was probably wrong for me in more ways than he was right.

I gave myself one last look in the mirror and groaned my dissatisfaction. I poked at my side, where my ribs were showing, and was embarrassed by how thin my legs were. Would it kill me to go jogging, every once in a while? I spread out the beach towel he’d given me, and then I wrapped it snugly around my body. I looked like some prude schoolmarm, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t ready to let him see me like that. I felt too exposed.

Haden was already waiting for me outside. He was wearing the same Hawaiian, button-up, shirt, but had ditched the cargo shorts for a pair of red board shorts, with black streaks running up the sides. The front of the Hawaiian shirt was unbuttoned, and I got a full view of his chest.

I sucked in a breath and tried to keep myself composed when I saw his definition under the shirt. His abs rippled, and disappeared, into the board shorts. Heat flushed into my cheeks as my mind filled in all the blanks of what my eyes couldn’t see.

“Are you cold?” he asked, suddenly.

My eyes snapped up to his, and I hugged the towel, tightly.

“No,” I said, sharply. “I just… Can we just walk for a while?”

“I’m sure the water is still too chilly, anyway,” he said. He understood.
 

Weights lifted off my shoulders, and I was relieved that he understood what I was asking. It wasn’t the first time that he’d managed to know exactly what I was thinking. I doubted it would be the last.

Haden took my clothes, put them in the canvas bag, and slung it over his shoulder. We made our way down to the river, but we stayed along a rocky path that bordered it. Kids splashed and played in the shallow parts, their parents clucking warnings about being too rowdy. Their smiles reminded me of my own summer vacations from years past. I remembered playing in this very river, in those very same spots.

That was a different time
.

We walked on, in silence, tracing the turns of the river, until we couldn’t hear the laughter of the kids, any more. I didn’t know where we were, and it didn’t matter. There was a gentle breeze, and the smells coming off the river were invigorating.

We just kept walking along, together. One foot in front of the other. Neither of us said anything, instead, we enjoyed the peaceful quiet, until we came upon a red sign that read “Restricted Area: Keep Out.”

I stopped in my tracks when I saw it.

“We can’t go up there,” I said.

Haden frowned at me, then looked at the sign.

“That’s just for the kids,” he said. “We’ll be fine.”

My cheek pinched to the side. “I think so,” I said. “Maybe we can just stay over here? There’s plenty of river.”

He took a step closer to me, giving me a serious look.

“You have to cut loose, sometimes,” he said. He nudged me on the shoulder, playfully. “Have a little fun.”

“I have plenty of fun,” I protested. What did he know, anyway?

“Not everything has to be planned out. Sometimes you gotta go out on a limb.”

“I’m practically a monkey,” I said. He laughed at that, and I joined him.

“Seriously, when was the last time you did something spontaneous and crazy?” he asked.

I tried to blurt the first thing that came to mind, but nothing came out. I frowned, and thought about it. What
was
the last crazy thing I did? I could think of a ton of crazy things I
wanted
to do, but when was the last time I’d pushed my limits? Mom had always kept close tabs on me. She had made sure she knew where I was at all times. It was like living life on a leash.

“That’s what I thought,” he said. He nodded at the red sign. “Come on. The world doesn’t end on the other side. We’ll keep a safe distance from the river. No one’s going to find out.”

I grinned and nodded. “OK,” I said. “OK, let’s do it.”

He laughed, and we pressed on. To my surprise, he was right. The world didn’t end when we passed the sign. In fact, it felt good. I was my own person, and I could make my own decisions. Maybe I just needed a little encouragement, every now and then.

“So is this what you do with all the ladies?” I asked, out of nowhere.

Haden looked over at me, his face dark.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

I shrugged a shoulder. “You always know the right thing to say,” I said. “You know how to get me to do whatever you want, even when I know I shouldn’t.” I grinned, despite myself. “Maybe I’m not the first girl your charms have worked on.”

We walked in silence. The path led us up and away from the river. A tiny cliff loomed to our left, leaving a tremendous, but dangerous, view of the river below.

Had I overstepped myself? I hoped he wasn’t offended him by the question, but I was curious. Haden’s past was still a mystery that I wanted to solve.

After a minute, Haden reached out and took my hand in his, again. He tugged gently, and I spun around to face him. And, when he looked at me with those wild eyes, my heart crashed, wildly, in my chest.

He looked down at our hands. They were tangled in a ball.

“I don’t do this with just anybody,” he said, still looking at our hands. He squeezed my hand gently, and my heart raced.

“But, you’ve had other girlfriends before,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“I’ve had a couple,” he said. “But, none of them were real.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

He was quiet while he considered the question, then he looked out over the river. He turned and led us to a small outcropping of rocks. He cracked his beach towel out, sharply, before letting it fall over the rocks.

We sat down, side by side, my own towel still wrapped tightly around me. The rocks were hard, but I didn’t mind. The river ambled on, below us, its gentle noises putting me at ease. Haden pulled his knees into his chest, and sat on the rock, next to me, perched over the river.

Neither of us said anything for a long time. He hadn’t answered my question, but it didn’t feel as important, anymore. The day was perfect.

Why can’t life always be this easy? Why does life have to come with all the baggage?

“Do you know, the girls in LA are different than anywhere else?” he said, after a while. A gentle breeze whirled my hair in front of me, and I slid it back behind my ear. “The dating scene there is crazy,” he continued. “I’m from a small town, and, some of the things I saw just blew my mind.”

“The people all seem so beautiful,” I said. “In the movies, and the magazines.”

“They’re pretty enough,” he said. “But I wouldn’t call them beautiful. Beauty isn’t something you can
see
. Not in a movie, or a magazine. It’s something you have to
witness
. Something you have to
live
.” He reached down and picked up a stone. With a quick motion, he flung it out into the river. It gave a low
plop
as it crashed into the depths. “Besides, most of the girls there are only interested in one thing…”

“Sex?” I said, quickly.

Haden chuckled softly, and shook his head.

“Money,” he said. “They’re all after money. If you have money, you’ve got girls. If you have fame, then you’ve got girls who think you’ve got money, too.” He shook his head and looked out over the water again. “It’s all so fake. It was making me sick.”

I watched him for a while. The more and more I got to know him--the more I realized that there wasn’t a mold I could fit him in. Every time I thought I knew something for certain, he went and proved me wrong.

“Is that why you came out to Green Falls?” I asked.

“Part of the reason,” he said.

He pulled his knees in tighter to his chest, and leaned in closer to me. Every urge in my body told me to wrap my arms around him. I just wanted to be touching him. I wanted to feel him around me.

“You’re unlike any girl I’ve ever met,” he said.

“How so?” I asked.

“You’re strong,” he said. “Stronger than you even realize. You’re not afraid to go after whatever scares you the most.” He paused for a second. “I don’t know many people who can do that.”

He turned to face me, and rested his head against his knees. He gave me a soft smile.

“There was a girl, back in California,” he said.

My gut twisted in on itself.
A girl?

“I thought she was someone special,” he continued. “I thought she was one of those
forever
kinds of girls. Pretty. Smart. Supportive.” His eyes scanned the river, again. “Then, I came home, one day, and found her with someone else,” he said. “And, that was when
everything
in my life changed. That was when I knew I needed something different.”

He turned his head, and rested it on his knees, again. He gave me a half-smile that spread even wider across his face. Then, he let out a soft laugh.

“Do you know, I wasn’t even mad when I caught her?” He shook his head, his eyes watching me. “I wasn’t mad,
at all
, because, the moment was bigger than that. It was bigger than some girl cheating on me. It was bigger than realizing that the person I had become, wasn’t making me happy. It was like everything I had hated about my life got crammed down into a single, tiny, moment. A single
instant
. Everything I hated, just all balled up into…
one
.”

He held up a finger, and gave me a long, soft look.
How can his eyes still be so soft?

He turned, and looked back out over the river, and he was quiet for a time. But, something in his face told me that his story wasn’t over yet. So, I didn’t move a muscle. I gave him time to sort it out.

“In
that
instant, I realized that there were more disgusting things than beautiful things in my life,” he said. “And, I realized that if something I believed in so much, could ended up being a lie, then how could
anything
ever be real?”

His voice trailed off. He lowered his chin to his knee and he looked at the rocks in front of him. He looked at them for a long time, and then he turned back to me.

“
That’s
how I ended up in Green Falls,” he said. “I got in a car, and jumped on the interstate. I didn’t know where I was going, or what I was looking for. I just had faith that I’d know it when I found it. I knew that, if that single instant in my life, was the lowest of the low, then it didn’t matter where I ended up, because I’d be happier, there. So, I went on a search for something… for
anything
. Just… a
thing
… A thing to latch onto, and a thing to make my own.”

His green eyes were dull embers. For the first time, I could see some of the sadness behind them. For a moment, I felt guilty for thinking that I would always be the damaged one in a relationship.

Everyone has a past. And that grass isn’t always greener.

I studied him for a long time, feeling closer to him than I thought I could ever be to someone.
 

“Did you ever find your thing?” I asked, softly.

His lips pursed as he thought about it, and then he gave a slow nod.