Chapter Sixteen. Reid
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
REID
THEN
THE EARLY HOUR OF the sunrise hike could have accounted for the reason Clara and I were both silent as we walked, but not for the tension hanging between us. That had been there ever since the hot springs, when I realized I couldn’t keep things casual anymore.
Knowing that if I told her that, I could lose her.
“You’re…” Clara trailed off, cocking her head to the side as she examined me. “Different today.”
“Different?”
“Yeah … Everything okay?” she asked seriously.
I wasn’t sure it would be once I gave her the card.
“Of course.” I forced away my nerves with a cocky smile, just like I did before a race. “It’s your birthday.”
We were on a part of the trail that had narrowed to a single-file footpath. When the scrape of her boots stopped in the dirt, I turned. She was fighting a smile when she said, “You remembered.”
I let out an exaggerated scoff. “You think I arranged a sunrise hike to your favorite overlook because I like getting up before dawn?”
“You athletes are weird like that.”
I brushed the ponytail off her neck, placing a soft kiss below her ear. “Happy birthday.”
She sighed. “You’re trying to distract me. But something could still be up with you despite the global sensation that is my eighteenth birthday.”
That pulled a laugh out of me. “If only we’d planned a parade.”
“You mean you didn’t?” Her mouth fell open in dramatic shock.
“Missed opportunity,” I agreed wistfully.
She tapped the tip of my nose and grinned. “You’ll do better next year.” Our gazes caught, and she looked away quickly. “I mean, not that we’ll still—” She squeezed her eyes shut. “You know what I mean.”
Sometimes being with Clara felt like walking a tightrope of uncertainty. One minute we’d be joking or kissing or talking, and the next, something would happen that made everything shake.
As if trying to get us back to solid ground, she pulled out her camera and asked, “Message for the birthday girl?”
Instead of smoothing the moment, the silence extended as I held her eyes with mine, so ready to tell this girl how I felt. The words had formed on my tongue, only she stepped back and changed the subject with a joke the way she always did when she was uncomfortable.
“You forgot to get me a birthday present, didn’t you? That’s why you’re being weird.”
It was my turn to flush. I didn’t forget.
That was why I had her card with me. I’d spent the previous week writing it, throwing it out, rewriting it. I brushed my fingers across the edge of the envelope in my back pocket, my heart hammering.
“Actually—”
Both of our phones buzzed with a text from Delaney in the group chat.
We read it quickly: I have it on good authority Legacy spots have been chosen!!! Can’t believe we have to wait until tomorrow!!
“Doomsday approaches,” I joked.
But Clara didn’t laugh.
Birds chirped in the surrounding trees, their calls faintly echoing across the canyon.
“I have a bad feeling,” Clara said quietly. “What if I don’t get it?”
If I had learned anything from my years running, it was how competition really worked.
Who was serious and who would fall away when the course tested them.
Clara was as serious as they get. Determined to see her dream through.
She’d already done the hard part by actually getting into California Film Academy.
The day she found out was probably the happiest I’d ever seen another person.
“In that highly unlikely scenario, it wouldn’t stop you. Nothing can stop you.”
“Do you really believe that?” she asked, her eyes round with a mix of fear and hope.
“Yes,” I soothed, grabbing her hands. “You’re going to be chosen as a Legacy, get the scholarship you deserve for film school, and make amazing films that change the world.” I trailed my finger under her jaw and lifted slightly. “So chin up, Suarez.”
“What am I going to do without you next year?”
That stung, but for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate. Why did she keep saying stuff like that? “CAFA is only a few miles from Stanford,” I reminded her.
She pressed her forehead into my chest. “I know.”
I tried to decipher that torn look on her face as she looked up at me again. To figure out what she was thinking.
To know if I was alone out there or if those two words meant she’d finally changed her mind about the future of us.
If she hadn’t, I’d respect her choice like I had all year. It’d tear me apart, but I’d respect it. And I’d keep the card to myself.
But if she had …
I leaned down, losing myself in the softness of her mouth and that gasp across my lips when my palms found the bare skin of her waist under her shirt.
Though I tried to slow us down and savor it, she threaded her hands through my hair and tugged.
Was she trying to kill me? I let out a gruff, urgent sound, and she smiled. Yep. She was.
Holding her jaw, I deepened the kiss. She gripped me to her, kissing me back hard and hungry. As if trying to convey something new. Something that we were both chasing as we clung to each other.
It wasn’t until the footsteps from nearby hikers approached that we broke apart. Her gorgeous eyes were half-lidded, her breaths heavy. It pulled a smug smirk out of me. I wasn’t the only one dying here.
As we started moving again, those two soft words clanged around in my head.
“I know.”
She could act tough all she wanted. But the way she kissed me—the yearning in her voice a mirror to my own—told me she felt the same way.
The next day at the assembly everything would change. She’d become a Legacy, we’d get out of Woodhurst and away from all this pressure, and she’d see that we could do this for real.
With a quick glance to make sure she wasn’t looking, before I could quadruple-guess myself again, I pulled the card out of my pocket and slipped it into her backpack.