Chapter 19 Brynn #2
I could feel the warmth of his breath lingering at the back of my head, and I knew he was wondering if he could see the scar,
or at least the cowlick.
That could have been the end of the story. We kept descending, a few inches at a time, and Sebastian didn’t pry. Maybe he
wasn’t interested. Maybe he was busy focusing so neither of us obtained any new scars that would mess with our hairlines.
And maybe I was just too aware of how much I was enjoying the feel of his body against mine to be comfortable in the silence.
For whatever reason, I decided to tell a story I had never shared with anyone.
“Laila, Addie, and I climbed together, but I was the only one who fell. I hit my head pretty good, as evidenced by the scar,
and for two days I convinced them both to pretend we were playing a round-the-clock game of Soap Opera to explain the bandage
we’d wrapped around my head.”
Sebastian stopped mid-step. “Soap Opera?”
I chuckled. “Yeah. My character, Jessica LaFontaine”—I adopted Jessica’s deep southern drawl, which I had probably picked
up from Steel Magnolias , as I said her name for the first time in decades—“had just come out of a coma and had amnesia. After a brain transplant,
of course.”
“Of course.” He began descending again, and my body went where his did.
“Wes was my twin brother, from whom I’d been separated at birth, and Cole was my husband I had no memory of—not that either of the boys were aware of any of it. We were just so scared of getting in trouble.”
My toes slipped on a loose piece of bark, and I gasped. Sebastian’s arm tightened around my waist. “I’ve got you. We’re almost
there.”
My breath was shallow after that, for a whole bunch of reasons, and without saying a word about it, I could tell his lack
of motion was for my benefit, to give me a moment to regulate my breathing. As if that was going to happen the longer we stood
there, molded together.
“So why would you have gotten in trouble for falling out of a tree?” he asked against my hair.
“There was a No Trespassing sign,” I whispered. Again, that could have been the end of it. But the truth was that the No Trespassing
sign was behind my friends’ fear. Addie and Laila had parents they respected, who set rules and boundaries, and they loved
their parents enough to not want to disappoint them. My fear looked a bit different. “And besides, I knew a visit to the doctor
would have meant a doctor’s bill, which probably would have meant my mom would have to work more hours. And I’d have been
paying for that for a long time.” I choked out a humorless laugh. “The key to my best possible life with Elaine Cornell was
to lay low and hope she forgot I was there. But when my head started bleeding at school and my vision got blurry, we couldn’t
blame it on my brain transplant anymore.”
I felt Sebastian’s pulse accelerating against me, and I wanted to make a joke. Blow it off. Maybe climb back up and settle
into my new life as a tree person. That was what I had always done, right? (Minus the tree-person part.) And that was even
among my friends. The people who loved me. Why was I telling any of this to the mysterious reporter who hated me?
Because he’s broken too.
The response came from deep within me, and I had to fight to swallow down the wave of emotion the answer had brought with
it.
“I remember crying and asking Doc if I could do chores around the clinic to pay the bill. I remember him having to shave a
spot on my head and sewing me up with ten stitches. I remember him telling me I had a concussion, and that it was really dangerous
to not have known sooner. He told me there would always be consequences for my actions, but the sooner I owned up to them,
the sooner I could start healing. And I remember him telling my mom that he needed to keep me at his house for a couple weeks
for observation. I was a lot older before I realized how unnecessary that had been.” A sob bubbled out of me but I forced
it back down. “Before I realized how wrong it was that my mother never questioned it. She was just glad someone else was footing
the bill and taking me off her hands for a while.”
He breathed against me, slow and steady, and then we were making our way down the tree again, just as slow and just as steady.
And before either of us said another word, I heard his feet crunch against the snow. His right arm joined his left around
my waist and lifted me the last foot to the ground. His grip on me loosened and he began to pull away, but I crossed my arms
across my abdomen and gripped his forearms with my fingertips.
“Thank you.”
I felt his fingers flinch, but he didn’t constrict me within his grasp again. He didn’t pull away either.
“No problem.”
We stood there like that, in silence, for a few more seconds, until a voice shouted at us from farther back on the property.
“What do you kids think you’re doing?”
I jumped away from him and turned to the angry-sounding elderly man. “I’m so sorry. We were just . . .” I shielded my eyes from the sun with my hand, as Sebastian had earlier, as I looked at another blast from the past. “Mr. Fielding? Oh my goodness. I’m not sure if you remember me—”
“Of course I do.”
Unexpected nostalgia and tenderness for a man I had never known very well washed over me. The sentiment didn’t last long.
“How many times do I have to tell you and your friends to stay away from my tree? Seb, is that you? You should know better.
You both should. Didn’t you see the No Trespassing sign? D’you think I just put that up as decoration? Go. Get. I have the
right to call the authorities, you know. Do you know that this tree is protected by the land conservancy and the state and—”
“Yes, sir. I’m so sorry, Mr. Fielding. I assure you we didn’t do any damage to the tree. She’s a beaut, alright.” Sebastian
had such an earnest expression on his face, and that was ultimately what made the giggle burst through my tightly clenched
lips.
I began backing toward his vehicle as the laughter became more uncontrollable, and I tugged the back of Sebastian’s T-shirt
to get him to move along too. “Yes. A beaut.” It was hopeless, my attempt to keep a straight face, and made more so by the
fact that Sebastian was fighting his own losing battle.
“If I ever see you near my tree again...”
I hurried around to the passenger-side door before he could finish his threat, but I jumped out again just as Sebastian climbed
in without his jacket. “Shoot!” I ran over and picked it up from the ground as the vehicle rumbled to life. “Good to see you
again, Mr. Fielding!” I hopped back into the Bronco, and we were peeling down the driveway, laughing all the way, before I’d
even shut my door.