Chapter Thirty-Seven. Reid
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
REID
@haikuforyou
If love means chasing
fading light, I’ll run, chest burning
into your night
WHEN CLARA’S DONE TALKING to her mom, I waste no time. I wrap my hand around hers, desperate to get her alone.
“Can we—”
A stern voice cuts me off. “Reid.”
Damn it. It’s my dad. Impeccable timing as always.
“We can talk after,” Clara says with a reassuring squeeze of my hand. But I don’t let her pull away.
“Come with me?”
She looks at my dad over my shoulder, uncertain. “You sure?”
I nod. It’s the only thing I am sure about.
Watching her documentary confirmed what I’ve long known. That despite so many people judging her and accusing her of being a bad influence on me, she is actually the one person who makes me want to be better.
We walk across the Lodge, the event clearly over. Most people have left, and the tables are scattered with discarded napkins, wineglasses, and utensils.
I lead her to the table where my dad and stepmom are sitting. Coach Andrews is gone, and Dad looks more stressed than ever, a wounded expression on his face as we get seated across from them. “How could you not tell us about all this, Reid? How—” He clears his throat. “How could you not tell me?”
I look down at the table. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how,” I admit. “And with the bills and everything, I didn’t want to worry you.”
Dad’s eyes go wide. “Kiddo, believe me, I’ve already been worried.”
That hits me square in the chest and I snap my gaze up, breathing out a light laugh. “You haven’t called me ‘kiddo’ since I was little.”
“Probably because that’s how it’s feeling right now. You aren’t sleeping again?” His eyes are red and full of dismay.
I swallow and shake my head.
“You’ve been in pain,” Dad states.
I straighten. “I’ve been icing it and—”
Dad shakes his head vigorously. “No.” He presses a splayed palm against his own chest. “In pain.”
I go still. Silent. The muscle in my jaw is taut against the swell of emotion clogging my throat. Clara squeezes my hand, her touch strong and reassuring.
After a long stretch of silence, I finally manage a quiet “Yeah.”
Dad stands and comes around the table. He pulls me up and practically swallows me in a hug. The kind I’ve needed from him for years. I bury my head into his shoulder, and I realize I’m crying. By the way his breath comes out uneven, I know he is, too.
We stand in a long embrace, and when we pull apart, both Clara and Julianne swipe their eyes, too.
“I hate that you haven’t let me be here for you,” Dad says.
I shove my hands in my pockets and shuffle awkwardly. “It’s because you always—” I stop.
Dad frowns and urges me to keep going.
“You always try to fix everything for me. You had this plan that just doesn’t make sense to me anymore. And I think I wanted—needed—to figure this out for myself this time.”
We settle back into our chairs and Dad studies me closely.
“You do have a habit of that,” Julianne says, nudging him.
I shoot her a grateful look when Dad nods. “Fair enough. So … what have you come up with? Tutors? Trainers? Some time off?”
Hope leaps through me. “Something like that.” I glance at Clara just before shocking the table silent when I say, “I don’t want to go back to Stanford.”
Dad looks like he might pass out. “Wait— Hold on—”
But I cut him off. “I do want to finish college. I want to run again. But it isn’t a good place for me.
I never see my coach, the guys on the team are toxic as fuck.
” My mind is still reeling with the fact that my own teammate revealed all that stuff about me online.
“I’m failing because I’m so tired. I can’t focus and I need…
” I trail off and look at Clara, gathering my strength.
“I need help. I haven’t felt like myself for a long time, but I didn’t even realize it until I came home. ”
I wait in silence for my dad to say something. He’s raking his hand back and forth across his forehead, the lines of his weathered skin smoothing and pulling. “I know college is a tough transition…” He trails off and sighs. “This is a big decision.”
Clara’s entire doc showed me what I needed to know in no uncertain terms. Not only did she capture what it takes to become a Legacy, but she showed what being a Legacy took.
From me and all of us. As deft and nuanced as it was, it was still a stark awakening.
Reminding me who I was before all this. The whole of me.
I summon the strength to say it even as my voice shakes.
“It’s not the transition. I’m not okay, Dad. ”
Silence descends over the table while my dad’s eyes fill. I hate it, putting this on him, but keeping the stress and pain from him is crushing me. I need him to see that if I have to do this alone any longer, I’ll fall completely apart.
“I hear you, kiddo.” Dad drags a hand across his mouth. “I knew it as soon as I saw Clara’s video.” He fixes his gaze on her, gratitude and newfound respect in his eyes. “Thank you.”
She seems too overwhelmed to do anything but nod. I don’t want to push the subject now, so I tell Dad we’ll really talk it through tomorrow before I have to go back.
Once they leave, I feel as though a boulder has been lifted from my chest. I grab a hold of Clara’s hand again.
“Come with me.” My voice is gruff.
She frowns as I lead her away from the Lodge, away from the lights and anyone else still around.
The air is fragrant with the heavy scent of the surrounding pines.
We get to the enclosed solarium that overlooks the lake.
It’s an extra guest area beside the Lodge with plush couches and large windows. Most important, it’s private.
“I’m really proud of you for talking to your dad,” she says as I close the door behind us. “I’m so sorry if I ruined your chances with that coach, or if I forced your hand about school in some way. I was just trying to help—”
I cut her off as I crush my mouth to hers. Her surprised whimper is enough to set me on fire. She has nothing to be sorry for. I know that video was her love letter to her friends, to Woodhurst.
To me.
I break away to look at her. Cup her jaw with my hand and just take her in. Her flushed cheeks and bright eyes. Holding her in this moment, knowing in my marrow that she is going to change the fucking world.
She pulls back and raises an eyebrow. “Big fan of documentaries, huh?”
“Yours, yes. I’m so proud of you.”
She turns my favorite shade of pink, her smile radiant. “Then you’re not mad that I included all that stuff?”
I shake my head. “The opposite. It helped me realize … I need to face this. Only…” I trail off.
“What?” she prods.
Our breaths are heavy and loud in the quiet space, our lips so close. But something holds me back from brushing them together again. It’s hard to believe this broken-down version of myself is really the one that she could possibly want.
“I’m obviously not the same as I used to be. What if—” My voice catches unexpectedly, and I have to wait several breaths before I can speak again. “What if I can’t be who you need now? I don’t ever want to hold you back.”
“Reid.” She grazes her lips across mine. “You’re the only reason I’m still pushing myself forward.”
A satisfied noise sounds from the back of my throat as I catch her mouth with mine again. I wrap both hands gently around the side of her neck, tracing my thumbs down the column of her throat, down farther around her shoulders, her torso, her waist, every part of me ablaze.
I kiss her harder, touch her softer. Urging her mouth open with my tongue as I press her against the wall, my body flush with hers.
She pushes her hands under my jacket around to my back, yanking my shirt up until her fingers find skin.
Clutching at me. Moving against me. Dragging her nails across my back so fiercely they’re sure to leave marks.
One of her dress straps slips down, and I pepper kisses across her bare shoulder. Her head falls back, and she threads her fingers into my hair as I reach around her, grasping for the zipper.
But it catches halfway down her back. I grip it tighter and try to loosen it—pulling it up again, then down the other direction. But it doesn’t budge. It’s completely jammed.
I huff a laugh against her collarbone. “Sorry—it’s stuck.”
Her exhale comes out in shaky streams across my neck. “Of course it is. Here.”
She spins around so I can get a better look at it. My knuckles graze the notch of her spine, and goose bumps cascade across her soft, bare back in response. I see where it’s caught, and after working it a moment, the zipper relents and glides all the way down.
I graze my fingertips across her skin, gently nudging the fabric open to finally reveal her tattoo. My heart completely stops.
The plant is larkspur. A flower that’s all over the mountain and one that survives through the heaviest of winter snowfalls. It frames the words of a short poem that I underline now with the lightest of touches, barely comprehending what I’m seeing.
“This is…” I trail off.
She nods.
“From the card?” I ask.
“From your account.”
I freeze. That’s— What?
She turns to face me, rushing to explain. “I found it over the summer and connected with the poems in every way. I didn’t know they were yours—but they felt like you. They always felt like you.”
My breath stutters.
She goes on. “And when you mentioned the card this morning—I didn’t know what you were talking about. It’s been buried in my backpack, untouched, since last year. But I found it today and”—she exhales in disbelief—“I couldn’t believe it was the same one. I still can’t.”
I clutch her rib cage, holding her in place with my palm. The odds of this are so close to impossible I can’t wrap my head around it.
“So, you did this because it reminded you of me?” My thumb swipes across the spot for emphasis, sending a soft shudder through her.
“Yes.”
I meet her eyes again and ask softly, “But … why?”
The word has cracks. As much as I can believe that things between us are different now, I don’t understand how she could’ve done this then.
She lifts her eyes to mine. “Because I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
A part of me wished. Even knew. But I’ve never been more stunned to finally hear her say it.
That she loved me.
That she loves me.
She curls her fingers around the lapels of my jacket, and my voice is unsteady, reacting to her touch.
“This is— I’m overwhelmed—”
Clara sank my words permanently into her skin. The poem I wrote in the dark of night in my bed, unable to sleep, thinking of her. Craving her.
The first poem I ever posted to an account I’ve told no one about. It isn’t technically a haiku, but I couldn’t alter it any further. It was exactly what I wanted to say. Exactly how I felt about us.
The love I’ve felt for her is a burning, blazing kind that has never—not once—dimmed.
She takes a step back. “I didn’t do this expecting anything. If this whole weekend has been about closure—I understand. I really wouldn’t blame you if you hate me.”
I huff out a laugh. “Hate you?”
“Last year…” She trails off. “I messed up. I’d wanted only one thing my entire life, and I didn’t know how to handle wanting you just as much.”
Jesus, she’s trying to kill me.
But this is nothing like last year. She’s not hiding from me or pretending with me. Because we’re talking more openly, it no longer feels like she’s about to slip through my fingers any moment or like I’m pushing to make something work.
We sink to the couch that’s pressed up against a wall. I brush her hair off her shoulders, and when I cradle her face in my hand, she leans into my touch. I just want to look at her all the time.
“I tried to let you go,” I admit. I kiss her again, softly, then pull back and finally—finally—tell her what my feelings have been building to since she dared me to jump into that lake full of eels. “But I love you too much.”
I feel her smile again across my lips and we get lost in each other. She climbs onto me, her dress riding up to her hips. She gasps when I open the back of it just enough to look again.
There it is. I drag my lips across the inky words, press kisses into each of them, causing her to bare her throat and cling to me by the time I’m done.
Her name falls from my lips more than once. Her sighs and moans drugging. I’m so delirious, so gone for her, nothing exists but this. No one exists but us.
She may not be engraved on my skin, but she’s under it in a way that’s just as permanent.
What was I thinking pushing her away? I know now that I never could.