Nothing has ever compared to that.
She kisses me, before I can say anything. I smile and kiss her back. Then I cup her face, my legs magnetically finding her smooth ones, tangled once again. “Better than chocolate?” I whisper.
She breathes like I took her on a marathon, not a sprint. “You’re in another league.”
I skim her cheek with my fingers. “Yeah?” I smile. “You’ve finally found the league you’re supposed to be playing in, Dais.”
“I like it here,” she whispers. “The better than chocolate league.” She wraps her arms around me, and I press my lips to her head. “How long do you think this’ll last?” Her voice turns serious, fear creeping in. Now that we’ve slept together, we could lose so much more if someone pulls us apart.
“As long as we want it to,” I tell her. “I’d f**king fight for you, Dais. You just have to let me.” She can’t be worried about hurt feelings. We’re going to upset people eventually, but if they love us, if they want us to be happy, they’ll accept this.
“Even your brother?” she whispers, her eyes closing as she dozes off.
“Even him,” I breathe, watching her begin to fall asleep. How long it’ll last, I’m not sure. I sit up and turn off the flashlight. I zip open one flap that faces the woods, the moon bathing our tent in a serene glow. I lie back, not closing my eyes. She eases into a peaceful slumber.
And I stay up and recount what I have with her and how much more I want.
One day can change everything.
So I keep hope that one day we’ll finally be there.
* * *
An hour must pass before she wakes up, unable to sleep. She notices that I’m already awake, and she rolls onto my body and traces the outline of my tattoo again, grazing her finger over the dark ink. I hear the faint sound of crickets outside our tent.
Her finger trails the inked chain on my side that’s bound around the feet of a phoenix.
“Am I the anchor?” she asks, skimming the tattoo on my waist.
My eyes darken. “Why would you think that?”
“You never told me what the tattoo meant when you got it.”
She was with me almost every time I went to the tattoo parlor to have more of the design filled in. She asked only a couple times what it meant. I would give her a look, and she’d drop it. I didn’t think she’d draw this conclusion. Not back then, and definitely not now.
“I’ve weighed you down the past couple of years,” she elaborates off my dark gaze. “I just thought—”
“I’m the f**king anchor,” I tell her suddenly.
“What?” Her brows furrow.
I know I need to give her the whole explanation. I can barely meet her eyes as I do. “When I was seventeen, my dad came to one of my track meets. He tried to watch as many of my competitions as he could.”
I stare at the top of the tent, remembering the heat of the summer in May. Jonathan Hale in the bleachers, wearing a suit and nodding at me as I met his sharp gaze. He smiled. Genuine pride.
“My mom was there. She wouldn’t look at him,” I say. “And when a lady leaned in to ask my father who he was there for, I heard his answer.” A bitter taste fills my mouth. “He said, ‘my friend’s kid. That one.’ He motioned towards me.”
I remember flipping him off, and that pride vanished from his eyes.
I didn’t care anymore.
Daisy places her hands on my abs. “What happened?” she asks with a frown.
“I still had to run, and I had two f**king choices. I could reach the finish line or just walk away. I took my f**king mark, and right when I started the race, I began to slow down. And then I f**king stopped on the track, took a couple deep breaths and walked off.” My heart beats faster at the memory. “My coach pulled me aside and he told me something…” I shake my head. “It’s stayed with me for so many f**king years. It changed me.”
I meet her eyes that are filled with my pain, sensing the hurt that travels through my body, thinning the air.
I can practically hear my coach in my ear, see him standing on the sidelines, one hand on my shoulder. “He said that I could be anything and do anything, and no one can stop me but me.” I say what he did, “You are your own anchor, Ryke. When you fail, you hurt yourself more than anyone else. Do you want to keep burning or are you going to let yourself rise?”
My brother—I don’t think he ever had someone to tell him this. He just kept failing until there was no way he could ever succeed.
I reach out to Daisy and tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. “So I’m the anchor and the phoenix, and it was around this time that I learned to run for me. I stopped winning for my f**king mom, for my dad. Every achievement, every good grade—that was mine. I started living my dreams and I stopped living theirs.”
She smiles, tears in her eyes. “That’s beautiful, you know.”
I sit up with her and kiss her cheek. It feels good to finally share that with someone. I never thought it would matter, but I can see that it does.
“How did you know that you loved running and rock climbing?” she asks me.
I think about this for a second. Take away all of my trophies, all the success, would I still run and climb? My lips rise at the answer. “Because when you find something you love, you can’t quit. Every failure pushes you harder. It’s in your soul and in your f**king heart.”
“And what if I never find what I love?”
“You have to try some things,” I say, not worried about this as much as she probably is. She’s only eighteen. She’ll figure it out. She has time, even though her mom makes it seem like she has none. “I got lucky.” I kiss her temple. “Try to sleep with me, Dais.”
She smiles and opens her mouth to make a very f**king obvious quip.
“Real sleep,” I say, lying back down with her. I hold her to my chest, keeping her safe.
And I wait for her to start dreaming.
41
RYKE MEADOWS
I unzip the tent, running my hand through my hair while the birds chirp. I can tell it’s early. Probably around six, and Daisy only fell asleep an hour ago. I didn’t close my eyes at all, and honestly, my body isn’t that tired. Fucking her was the best adrenaline rush I could have. I’m still living that high.
I immediately find Connor and Rose around the campfire, both dressed in inappropriate f**king clothes for the morning. A suit and a dress. And they’re drinking coffee from Dunkin Donuts paper cups.
I outstretch my arms. “You’re a bunch of f**king cheaters.”
Rose scoffs as though I punched her in the face. “We did not cheat.”
I slouch in a chair across from them. “You can’t buy coffee while you’re camping.”
“I’ve never heard of these rules,” Connor says. He sips his store-bought coffee with a pompous grin.
“You camp and you make instant coffee with boiled water and powder packets.” I shake my head at them. “Running to the store is like excusing yourself to go to the bathroom during a test, checking answers on your phone.”
Rose’s eyes narrow at me and then she takes a larger sip of her coffee too, not backing down. Connor looks like he could f**k her right there.
Whatever.
“You’re glowing, by the way,” Connor tells me. I don’t like that knowing expression on his face.