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Peyton
Xander didn’t blink.He didn’t do anything. Just stared at me as if he was seeing me for the first time, and I wanted to believe it meant something. I wanted so badly to believe that this was it, the moment we ignored all the rules and gave into this thing building between us.
But he didn’t lean in.
Again, he didn’t kiss me.
He didn’t do anything.
Dejection sank into me. Cold, cruel dejection. God, how many times was I going to do this? Wait for him to make a move? To prove me right and confirm what I felt every time we were together.
“Why did you bring me here, Xander?” I managed to force all of the hurt out of my voice. I didn’t even sound angry, just resigned.
“My parents are buried here. I come here every year to see them. Twice, actually. Once on the anniversary of my mom’s death and once—”
“On the anniversary of your dad’s death.”
He nodded. “He died seventeen years ago today in a collision. Three-and-a-half years after I lost my mom. I was eleven.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
Without thinking, I reached for his hand. It didn’t matter that I still felt the tang of rejection on my tongue. Xander had comforted me when I’d needed it most. I could do the same for him.
As our fingers twined together, I don’t know who was more surprised. Me or him. But it felt so natural to be close to him, so right. Like a part of me knew he was mine, regardless of what society said.
Love wasn’t always an easy road; it was often hard and messy and chaotic. Not that I loved Xander. But I knew I was falling for him. I’d collected the scraps of attention and comfort and soft moments and now I wanted more.
I wanted everything.
“It’s my birthday soon,” I blurted, wishing the rain would drown my words out.
It didn’t.
Xander tensed beside me, reading the hidden meaning in my words. There were only twelve days until I turned eighteen. Twelve days until my age would no longer be an issue.
“The rain is letting up,” he said, untangling his hand from mine, the moment gone so quickly part of me wondered if I’d imagined it.
If it didn’t hurt so much, I would have been impressed with how effortlessly he burned hot and cold with me.
“I’m going to go…” He got up and motioned to the nearest row of headstones.
“I’ll wait here,” I said, suddenly feeling out of my depth.
He’d brought me here, to the place he visited his parents. It was too intimate to not mean something. Wasn’t it?
I wished I knew.
I wished I had experience with guys like Xander. Older guys with life experience and stories to tell. I’d lived a lot for my almost eighteen years, but I still felt so clueless around him. I was ruled by my emotions and it showed.
But I’d vowed a long time ago, to never be anything less than myself.
The rain had created a mist over the cemetery, and I watched as Xander moved down a row to two headstones side by side. I knew he and Ashleigh’s dad had lost their parents when Xander was a young boy, but I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for him to watch his mom suffer only to lose his dad in a tragic accident three years later. He’d been eleven and had his entire world ripped apart. My heart ached for him: for the boy he was then and the man he was now. It was obvious Xander carried a lot of unresolved grief and pain over what happened.
Cameron and Hailee had raised him. What a huge responsibility for them when they were so young themselves. But there was also something so beautiful about two brothers who stuck together when their worlds imploded. From the little snippets I knew about their relationship now though, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. I’d been to enough Ford and Chase family gatherings to know Xander didn’t always show, and when he did, he often kept to himself.
The vibration of my cell phone pulled me from my thoughts, and I dug it out of my pocket.
