Chapter 16
GEMMA
I’m what Dent calls an early bird.
No matter how late I get into bed, I’m out of it before sunrise.
It’s not that I can’t sleep. I could sleep all day if I let myself.
I get up for the quiet. The settled, peaceful feeling sunk into the bones of the house.
Knowing I’m the only one awake to hear her gentle creaks and sighs.
The only one who’s watchful and alive, ready to start my day.
The second person awake is always Riggs.
Most times he wakes up not long after I do, shuffling into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee.
He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t ask me what I’m doing up so early or if I slept well.
He just gives me a faint, half smile on his way to the coffee pot.
Inevitably, we both end up in the sunroom where we sit quietly, watching the sun come up over the Barrett.
When we hear someone in the kitchen—usually Dent, making breakfast—Riggs gets up and goes inside to help.
We don’t talk about it. We don’t plan it. It just happens. Knowing that Riggs is going to meet me in the kitchen every other Saturday has become something I rely on. I didn’t realize how much I relied on it until I didn’t have it anymore.
The morning after I messed everything up, I woke up while it was still dark outside like I always do, but I didn’t get out of bed.
Didn’t go downstairs because I knew Riggs would.
I knew he’d come downstairs like he always does and I wasn’t ready.
I knew that sitting in the quiet with him would feel different.
And I was right.
It does feel different.
The quiet between us isn’t just quiet anymore.
It’s silence.
The sort of silence that carries weight.
I hate it.
I hate the way he won’t look at me. The way his jaw ticks, every time I shift in my seat. The way his shoulders won’t relax and his hands grip the steering wheel like he’s waiting for me to do the next stupid thing.
Like bite him.
Jesus, I can’t believe I bit him.
The thought would make me laugh out loud if I wasn’t so embarrassed by it.
I don’t know what happened. Why I got so mad.
Of course Riggs is going to stop me from jumping out of a moving truck.
Stopping me from doing stupid, impulsive things is what he does.
Riggs is my voice of reason. He’s there to give me piggyback rides when the pavement is too hot for bare feet and he’s there to walk me home in the dark when I’ve strayed too far to make it back on my own.
Riggs is there.
He’s always there.
Knowing that used to comfort me.
Now I can see my teeth marks—angry, red welts sunk into the heel of his hand—and comfort is the last thing I feel. Maybe that’s why I’m so angry.
Because I know that sitting with Riggs in the quiet will never be comforting again. It will always feel heavy.
And I have no one to blame for it but myself.
As soon as Dent’s house comes into view—a stately two-story, by Barrett standards, with a wrap-around porch and a sunroom that looks out over the river—I unbuckle my seatbelt.
Ignoring the warning sound Riggs makes when he hears the click, I wrap my hand around the door handle and wait for him to turn into the driveway before I speak. “Thank you for driving me home.”
He doesn’t say anything.
He just sits there and watches me from across the center console with the same look he was wearing the night he walked me home.
A look that says he’s not quite sure what to do with me.
Doesn’t know how to fix what I broke. Finally, he just bobs his head in my peripheral.
“You’re welcome.” When he says it, he sounds nothing like Riggs.
Careful and polite. Like he wants to make sure that nothing he says can be misunderstood or mistaken for something it isn’t.
Turning off the truck, he pulls the keys from the ignition and drops them in the cup holder before hitting the safety lock to open the doors.
“If you see him, tell Beck to call me when he gets home.”
He’s leaving.
Usually, he’d come inside. Hang out with Dent in his woodworking shop. Sit at the kitchen table and keep me company while I throw something together for dinner.
But that was before I messed everything up.
Giving him a head bob, I pop my door open and jump down from the cab of the truck while he does the same. Leaving the truck unlocked, Riggs starts to walk home, the wide plank of his shoulders hunched slightly as he disappears down the drive, leaving me behind without so much as a backward glance.
Rather than watch him walk away, I turn to make my way up the drive toward the back of the house, intent on going inside and hiding in my room until dinner.
Instead, I bypass the back porch entirely and decide to keep walking.
Across the yard and into the trees, ducking under the screen of low hanging branches that separates Dent’s backyard from the banks of the Barrett.
Finding my usual spot—a small outcropping of flat-topped rocks clustered under a cottonwood, I pick my way across them to sit, cross-legged on their smooth, sun warmed surface.
Looking out over the wide ribbon of greenish water, I watch it churn and froth its way downstream until the sun finally slips away, leaving only the soft grayish glow of twilight in its place.
It’ll be dark soon but I’m not ready to go inside.
Not yet.
I’m not sure what I’m waiting for until I hear him behind me, moving through the trees. That’s when I realize why I’m still sitting out here. What I’m really doing.
I’ve been waiting for him to come back.
When I feel Riggs sit next to me, I turn to find him watching me. He looks like he did that night. Panicked and half sick. Like he has no idea how he got here. Like here is the last place he wants to be.
“I’ll be just fine on my own, Riggs,” I say, looking away from him to frown at the river. “The house is right there and the porch light is on. I can make it across the yard without freaking out.”
“I know.” The corner of his mouth lifts a little in my peripheral before he turns away from me to aim his gaze out over the water. “I’m in too much pain to walk home.”
Laughing, in spite of myself, I roll my eyes. “Were you trying to walk home on your hands?”
Barking out a loud crack of laughter, Riggs shakes his head. “I guess I should count myself lucky there weren’t any rocks lying around.”
“I’m still not sorry I threw that rock,” I inform him with a defiant chin tip. “Even if it’s costing me an entire summer of washing dishes.” The truth is, I like working at June’s. I’m hoping she’ll let me stay on, even after I pay her back for the window I broke.
“That’s my Gem…” Giving me another faint smile, Riggs looks away to aim his dark gaze into the gathering dusk. “What was it like?” Frowning again when I don’t answer him right away, he makes a rough sound in the back of his throat. “The kiss—what was it like?”
“I already told you.” Jerking back because things were almost starting to feel normal again, I grimace slightly. “It was terrible. I don’t think I did it right.”
Still not looking at me, Riggs shakes his head. “Of course you didn’t do it right, Gem,” he says on a rusty laugh. “How could you? You’ve never done it before.”
“Geez. Thanks.” Rolling my eyes on an indignant huff, I move away from him to stand.
Before I can, Riggs reaches out to stop me, wrapping his hand around my wrist like he did in the truck.
Looking down at it, I can see the row of neat, red welts my teeth left behind on the heel of his hand.
Looking up, I shake my head. “You’re a hard learner, aren’t you, Riggs Wheeler? ”
Scowling at me, Riggs’s jaw goes tight before he answers me. “Well, if you’d stop trying to jump ship every time I say something you don’t like?—”
No way is he turning this around on me. “Well if you’d stop saying stupid shit?—”
“I’m sorry—” When he blurts it out, the two of us just sit here and stare at each other for a second before he lets go of my wrist on a sigh. “for the way I acted about Ethan. It’s none of my business, who you kiss, but?—”
“But what?” I prompt him when he cuts himself off.
“But I didn’t like the way he was touching you.” He shakes his head, his frown tightening into a scowl. “I know that isn’t any of my business either, but I still didn’t like it.”
“I’m—”
“I know, Gem.” Turning that scowl in my direction, Riggs shakes his head. “You’re sixteen. We’re practically the same age. You’re old enough to be kissed if you want to be—that’s not the point.”
“Okay.” Licking my lips nervously, I shake my head. “Then what is the point?”
“It’s not supposed to feel like that,” he tells me quietly.
“It’s not supposed to feel terrible and the fact that it did has nothing to do with you not doing it right and everything to do with the fact that guys like Ethan don’t care about how they make you feel.
It doesn’t matter to them, as long as they get what they want. ”
Sex.
He’s talking about sex.
Before I can assure him that sex with Ethan Pryce is the last thing I want to consider, Riggs shakes his head. “I didn’t get you anything for your birthday.”
Thrown off by the sharp, sudden turn the conversation has taken, I feel my face collapse into a puzzled frown. “What?”
“I didn’t get you anything for your birthday,” he repeats himself. “Carrying all those bags and boxes to your room, I realized that none of them were from me.”
I feel my cheeks heat with embarrassment when I think of the way my mother gave him money for helping carry my packages in like he valeted our car at the club. I know she means well, but every time she does it, I want to throw up. “So? You never get me anything.”
“Cam usually takes care of that stuff, but…” But his sister and I are no longer friends, so adding his name to her gift is no longer an option.
“It’s fine,” I tell him truthfully. “I don’t care if you bought me a birthday gift or not.”
“I care,” he tells me, his face falling into another frown. “I got a summer job, working at the club, but I won’t have any money?—”
“I don’t care.” I say it again, more insistent this time because I don’t want to talk about his sister.
Money. What he can afford or the pile of expensive birthday gift waiting for me at home.
The fact that he has to work this summer while, even though I’m working at June’s because I lost my temper and Dent is trying to teach me a lesson, I also happen to think washing dishes in the back of a noisy diner is fun. “I don’t want?—”
“The point is that I didn’t realize how much I wanted it to be me,” he blurts it out, his admission followed by a harsh expel of breath like he’s been carrying something heavy that he’s finally allowed himself to put down.
Knocked sideways by yet another one of his sharp, rocket-fast conversational turns, I feel something soft and warm start to spread inside my belly. “Riggs…”
Lifting his hand—the same hand I bit—Riggs slips his fingers around the back of my neck, and suddenly my entire world is spinning.
The tilt and turn of it knocking me off balance when the rough pad of his thumb sweeps along my jawline before it tucks itself under my chin, the pressure of it tilting my face toward his.
“I didn’t realize how much I wanted to be the one who kissed you first…” he says, the warm breath of it skating across my mouth, a moment before I feel his lips brush against mine. “Until I wasn’t.”
My lids slip closed on a soft whimper, something sharp and hot shooting its way through me when the sound of it tightens his fingers against the back of my neck.
Pushes the jut of his thumb into the soft skin under my chin.
Slants the angle of my mouth beneath his and opens it for the slow, careful sweep of his tongue.
What happened with Ethan wasn’t a kiss.
It couldn’t have been because it felt nothing like this.
Somewhere, far away, I hear the slam of a car door. Footsteps up the driveway. The bang of the back door.
Beck is home.
Pulling back on a soft groan, Riggs leans his forehead against mine.
Breath harsh and cool against my swollen mouth, his fingers still gripped around the back of my neck while he catches his breath.
“That’s what it’s supposed to feel like...
” He whispers it before his lips slip away from mine.
Kissing me again, this time on my cheek, he skims his thumb down the length of my throat. “Happy birthday, Gem.”
Eyes still closed, I feel Riggs’s fingers unwrap themselves and fall away, a moment before he gets up to follow Beck into the house, leaving me in the dark, alone.