A smile lifts the corners of his lips. “Cool. It’ll be fun.” He tugs me close, sliding his arm around my waist before adding softly, “It’s been a while since I’ve been there.”
I glance up, trying to decipher the emotion that weaves its way through his deep voice. Most people wouldn’t pick up on the difference, but I’ve been spending so much time with Brayden that it’s more noticeable. What I’ve discovered is that we’re similar in how we deal with our emotions. We both tend to lock away the painful ones where we can’t inspect them too closely. It takes us a while to share our inner thoughts and feelings with other people. It makes me feel special that he’s gradually opening up, revealing the guy buried beneath all the hype.
And I like the guy he’s proving to be. That’s not something I expected to happen.
“How come?”
Brayden jerks his shoulders as his expression clouds. Gone is the lighthearted, easygoing guy from moments ago. A heavy silence descends as we continue walking. It feels strangely at odds with the bright sunshine that slants down on our heads. I’m almost tempted to change the subject or fill in the sudden stillness with idle chatter.
“When I was a kid, we used to spend a ton of time at the cabin. Sometimes the entire summer. Since my father’s death, I’ve only been there once or twice. It hurt too much to be there without him, so I stopped going.”
His earnest response has my heart cracking wide open. Even though we’re in the middle of campus and there are people rushing past on the way to class, I grind to a halt. His footsteps falter as he turns and stares at me in question. My hand rises to drift over his shadowed jaw as I hold his gaze. Only now that I’m staring at him do I see the pain and grief swirling through his dark eyes.
“If you’re not up to it, we don’t have to go,” I say softly.
The thick tension filling his muscles loosens as he sinks into my touch. “I know, but I want to take you there and share how special the place is with you. I want to have you all to myself.” He glances around the crowded path overrun with students. “We can’t do that here.”
Brayden lives in a house with four other guys, and I share an apartment with Demi. It’s almost impossible for us to grab more than a handful of hours alone together. Plus, we’re both in the middle of our seasons. Our schedules are packed tight. It’s not often that we can carve out a large chunk of time to spend with one another.
As much as I would love to get away from campus, even for a few days, it’s obvious that the cabin holds a lot of bittersweet memories for him. I know exactly what that’s like. It’s not easy to deal with.
“Are you sure? We could always drive somewhere else for the day.”
It takes a few seconds for Brayden to blink away the heavy emotion in his eyes as he jerks his head into a nod. Before I can dig any deeper, he presses his lips to mine and murmurs, “Yeah. I want to share the cabin with you. Who knows, maybe it’ll help. We had a lot of good times there, and I want to make new memories with you.”
The edges of my lips curl upward, liking the idea. “I want that, too.”
He squeezes my fingers. “Good, now let’s get moving before we’re late.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sydney
Demi stretches out on my bed as I grab a few shirts from my drawer and toss them in the duffle bag I’m packing. Brayden and I are leaving tomorrow after the game. Even though we’ll be gone for less than forty-eight hours, I’m excited to get away from school.
“I can’t believe you two are taking off for the weekend.”
Yeah, that makes two of us.
“I almost have whiplash from how fast this relationship is moving,” she muses before adding, “It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that you were ready to punch his lights out if he looked at you sideways.”
I snort.
She’s not mistaken about that. Anytime I was forced into close proximity with Brayden, I would bare my teeth like a rabid dog, ready to bite his head off at the slightest offense. A flicker of guilt slides through me at my treatment of him. Had I understood what was going on at the time, I would have shrugged it off and moved on. Instead, I took his behavior personally and let it fester inside.
I guess that old saying is true—you never know what’s going on in someone else’s life. Just because they project a happy façade to the world, doesn’t mean they aren’t splintering apart on the inside, barely able to hold it together. My heart constricts, thinking about how much pain Brayden must have been in freshman year. Instead of dealing with his grief in a productive manner, he chose alcohol and girls to drown himself in. As close as we’ve grown in the past few weeks, we haven’t spent a lot of time talking about the people we’ve lost. Right now, it’s simply enough to know that we’ve had similar experiences and understand what that kind of heartache feels like. It’s a bond that no one wants to have.