Chapter 3 The Promises We Were Never Meant To Keep
THE PROMISES WE WERE NEVER MEANT TO KEEP
My legs are on fire and my lungs aren’t much better off. I’m not unaccustomed to a good workout, but this is something else. Before it leaves my lips, I hear it ring out into the space between us. The childish tune I’d outgrown years before. Or I thought I did.
It rings out plenty clear now, with that same practiced hint of whine.
“Are we there yet?”
Holt chuckles, a tease in his voice as he vows, “Just a bit longer.”
I groan but push on. It’s worth the muscles that jump with exertion under my skin when I see the patch of deep, clear blue that glistens beneath the burning sun, reflecting a vivid picture of the jagged mountain that stands sentry over this place.
I wheeze, “Wow.”
“Right.” He swings his leg over his bike, setting his kickstand as I do the same. “I’ve always loved it up here. One day, I’m going to buy a bike, and this is the first place I’m going to ride it.”
“A bike?” I glance at his. “You have one.”
I shuck my backpack and groan a little at the sweet feel of fresh air hitting the wet of my sweat-drenched shirt. I don’t know about Holt, but I plan on staying here a while. My legs need a break. So do my lungs.
“A street bike.”
I feel my nose scrunch. “A death-mobile?”
He shoots me a half-cocked grin. “You’ll be my backpack.”
I shake my head. “No way.”
He moves in closer, and my over-used heart kicks into high gear before it even had a chance to settle. His hands find my hips and he pulls me to him, just a little. My kicking heart lurches to a full-blown stop when he dips his head.
For a moment—a hopeful moment—I think he’s going to kiss me.
My first kiss.
“You know I’d never let anything happen to you, right?” His eyes search mine in a way they have never done before, and I feel somehow seen in a way I’ve never been before. Like he can see into the deeper parts of me. The hidden parts. The parts that haven’t yet developed into more.
“I—”
“You’d be safe with me. You are safe with me.”
“Okay.” Something is humming under my skin. Something wild and consuming and so, so—everything.
He’s still close, so close I can taste the scent of him. Earthy and dangerous and yet somehow safe.
I want him to kiss me.
His brown eyes drift to my lips. Fireflies explode in my belly, infecting my heart.
“Tell me you’ll be my backpack, Faye.”
“I’ll be your backpack, Holt.” I’m really not sure there’s anything this boy could ask me to do that I wouldn’t do. I want to be everything he wants; I realize.
“Do you promise?” He turns my words back on me with a devilish grin. Really, there’s no other way to describe the fleck of light in his eyes, or the slight curve of his upturned lips.
My breath snags, but I somehow manage. “I promise.”
That slight curve transforms into a full grin that melts me. Seriously, the hot sun has nothing on this boy. Nothing.
He slides his hand from my hip to weave his fingers between mine, breaking the connection of our gaze for another connection that has the fireflies in my belly tittering in a whole new way.
Holt pulls me from the trees where we’ve left our bikes, to the rocky shore of a very secluded, very clear lake.
He picks a giant boulder and lowers to it with his hand still linked with mine.
Then, I’m being pulled onto the boulder with him.
I laugh as he tucks me into the space between his legs, caging me with his body the way he seems to like.
This position, I realize as he looses a content sigh, is natural to him.
I can’t help but wonder if he’s had other girls, he’s sat like this with. It’s a sour thought that tints my sunny mood.
Holt feels it. “What’s wrong?”
“Hmm? Nothing.”
“You tensed. Something is wrong.” He starts to shift away. “You don’t like sitting like this?”
I catch him with a hand on his bare knee, holding him in place with my touch alone. He freezes, instantly stiff. “I like it, Holt.”
“So, what’s wrong?”
“I’ve never sat like this with a boy,” I admit, my face flushing hotly. “It seems like a natural position with you—and I was wondering…”
“You were wondering…?” he prompts when I let my words fall away. The sun dips behind a cloud, giving me a moment of much needed reprieve from the August heat.
“I was wondering if you’ve done it before—with—with other girls.”
I somehow know he’s smiling, even though I can’t see him. I don’t dare look.
He admits, “I’ve had other girlfriends.”
“Other girlfriends…” Words feel stuck in my throat. It takes effort to push them into the space between us. “Is that what I am?”
“That’s what I’m hoping for.”
“Oh.”
He laughs. I love the sound so much.
This boy.
He dips his head, and I can feel the breath from his lungs on my neck as he asks, “Will you be my girlfriend, Faye?”
I don’t know that I’m breathing.
“Yes.” Why am I so breathless?
“Promise?” he presses.
“I promise,” I vow, with my whole heart.
He tugs me back against his chest then, his sigh a thing of beauty. And that’s when it happens. Content in the cage of his body, I fall for him. Completely.
My heart cracks all the way open wide to let him inside. It’s a youthful thing, this unrestrained, unafraid offering of the most sacred part of myself. Some might call it folly, but I think it’s a right of passage. A girl teetering on the cusp of womanhood.
We all start out with whole hearts, and then that one boy comes along—that first boy. He slips inside, easier than all the others who will come after him—and he plants himself deep.
His roots aren’t shallow, not at all. Maybe that’s why, no matter the years that pass, he’s still there inside us, twisted in the undergrowth of life.
We haven’t learned to harden the earth of our hearts yet.
The tender parts of us haven’t yet been scorched by the burn of a broken love, a promise we were never meant to keep, shattered.
We sit like that for a long time, his limbs bracketing my body, his roots sinking deeper inside me with every breath scented of him that I pull into my lungs.
My gaze drifts from the still water of the glassy lake to the far side where I think I spot a burnished brown, tinted faintly with red, rooftop. I point. “Is that a house?”
“Yeah.” His voice is deep. So, so deep. And I love it so, so much. “There’s not many up here, though. Six, maybe seven, total.”
“Really?”
“See that?” He points to the massive slope of jagged rocks and trees—the mountain, quite literally—that dips into the lake. I get an odd thought that the mountain, after basking day in and day out in the hot sun, stretched a leg to dip his toe into the cool water, and just stayed that way.
“Yeah.”
“That’s why the town is named Rubble Ridge,” Holt tells me.
“The town started up here, when the first settlers came to this place. There’s still an old store up there, run by Mrs. Crawley.
It carries a bit of everything. She’s a stickler for preserving the town’s history.
Her great, great, great granddad was one of the first in the town.
” He looses a small cough. “He—uh—well, they say he died when the mountain slid.”
I blink, staring at the stretch of the mountain into the lake. I can’t unsee the toe-in-the-water-theory.
“That’s awful.”
“Before that, I think the settlers were calling the town Blue Valley. Which is probably why the subdivision up here is called Blue Valley Estates.”
Tragic, and kind of sweet.
Holt continues, “Anyway, that rubble fall convinced most of the settlers, and the new ones who came, to build lower down the mountain. It blocked the little road they’d built as well, so that’s why there’s only one entrance, one exit.
” I can hear his frown as he says, “If they got caught up there, I guess they could cross the lake to get further down the road to town.”
“Why didn’t they just clear the road?”
“Back then, I don’t know that they had the equipment.
Or maybe they were just too secluded for anyone to care about the new little town.
” He shrugs. I feel the movement in my own body and snuggle closer to him.
He inhales through his nose, a sharp sound that spears me in the deep of my belly as he slides an arm around my waist, holding me tight like he’ll never let me go.
I hope he doesn’t.
“That’s really sad,” I say quietly.
He grunts. “It’s the way of it, I guess. Now it’s called Mount-U Road, because you’ve got no choice but to make a U-turn.”
I laugh. “Cute.”
“You think?”
“Kind of. I like the history,” I admit. “I kind of like the towns’ name more now, knowing there’s a story behind it. Even if it is tragic.”
“Yeah?” he asks. “You like it here in Rubble Ridge, then?”
The way he asks has me shifting in his arms to peer back at him. He’s gazing out over the water, but his eyes slide slowly to me. There’s something hard in the softness of his gaze that makes me frown. A shadow of cautious curiosity. Something that makes me hesitate.
Finally, slowly, I say, “I like it here.”
“More than Victoria?”
I’d missed home when we moved. When Mom and Dad told me we were uprooting all I’d ever known from life, I can’t say I’d been pleased. Now, though? I’m happy we moved. If we didn’t, I never would have met Holt.
“I’m happy here.”
“Happy enough to stay?”
A half-laugh bursts from me. “Are you afraid I’m going to leave?”
I’m only half teasing.
Holt shakes his head. “More that you’ll never want to go.”
A wash of something cool moves through me. More serious, I ask, “Where do you want to go?”
“Vancouver.” There is no hesitation in his reply. “I want to play for the Vancouver Vikings.”
I’m surprised. “The Hockey Team?”
He nods with confidence. “Yep.”
I feel my brows inch up my face as a tiny fracture nicks my heart. Disappointment, I do my best to hide, leaks inside. “Well, that’s a big dream.”
“I’m going to do it, Faye.”
Suddenly, I believe that he will. My smile isn’t exactly forced. “I believe you.”
He relaxes a little, like he needed that. “You’ll come with me, right?”
“Me?” I’m surprised. I can’t help it, I laugh. “We’re fourteen.”
“I’m fifteen.” He’s offended I would state anything less. “And you’re almost fifteen. Your birthday is this weekend.”
“We’re kids.”
He sniffs. “We’re not kids. We’re young.”
I laugh again. “Holt.”
He presses, “You’ll come with me, right, Faye?”
I’d never given much thought to how my life would go. I don’t have a passion for anything quite like Holt seems to love hockey. There is no burning ember fueling me to move in any which direction. I know I want a family of my own one day. A marriage like Mom and Dad have. Maybe a hobby-career.
I’ve always imagined that my life would be a quiet life. Sure, it would be meaningful, but in a quiet way. I don’t dream of riches or things, but rather love and laughter. Of all the small moments that craft a collage of dreams someone, someday will call my life.
This life Holt dreams of isn’t quiet at all. It’s loud. It’s a life that shouts, always. A life that burns bright and constant. A life of abundance.
He’s a star on fire in a black, black sky. You can’t miss him. Where I’m more the pebble of sand on the beach. I blend into life’s dips and move gently with the tides.
Still, I hear myself agree, “If you want me to come with you, I’ll come.”
Holt sighs, like he needed those words more than he needs the air in his lungs. “Promise?”
As is becoming our way, I give him a promise with the confidence only youth can offer. “I promise, Holt.”