A. Jackson - When We Met

She swallowed and nodded, and I smiled against her soft skin before gently biting down on it. “Good.”

Indy

I had never hated finals week as much as I hated this one. It never seemed to end, and it was only halfway done. It had been six days since the promise of what was to come. I’d finished my second day of finals, and I still had two days left. Well, technically one and then turning in a paper on Thursday morning, but Kier still had a final Thursday afternoon, and we weren’t leaving for wherever he was taking me until after that.

Studying had been nearly impossible Wednesday and Thursday. No matter where we were, we ended up going to the pillow room, one of our rooms, or to his SUV to practically attack each other. After we realized that even being in public didn’t change anything, we started staying away from each other. I saw him once in the morning, afternoon, and right before one of us went to sleep, but only for a couple of minutes each time. Anything more than that and studying went out the window all over again.

Not that I would have minded.

“I need to go,” he whispered against my lips.

“Probably.” I slid my hands inside his shirt, grazing the tips of my fingers over his muscled V in a way I was quickly learning drove him crazy.

Kier growled and backed me up against the wall of the entryway as he deepened the kiss. “Five more minutes.”

“Thirty. Pillow room is free,” I suggested, laughing when his golden eyes flashed open before narrowing.

“Indy,” he said in warning.

Hooking two fingers inside his jeans, I pulled him closer and he put one of his hands against the wall to stop me.

Quick footsteps sounded on the stairs, and I frowned when Kier smirked. “Two more days, Indy.” Cupping my cheek with his other hand, he leaned in for a slow kiss.

Chloe cleared her throat, her eyes wide when Kier and I pulled away from each other, and I was pretty sure I looked like a kid who got caught with her hand in a cookie jar—but then Kier’s thumb brushed against my cheek and I kind of didn’t care anymore.

“Time to go. See you tonight,” he whispered. Kier nodded toward Chloe before giving me one more light kiss and walking out the door. I had a stupid, giddy smile on my face when I turned toward her again.

“When did that happen?” she asked, her face full of surprise as she pointed at the door.

I shrugged. “It’s kind of been happening since the middle of November, but Thanksgiving break is when it all changed, I guess.”

“Where have I been?”

I shot her a look. “Uh. Work?”

She glared at me for a few seconds before moving her hand so she was pointing in the direction of the guys’ house. “Don’t get me wrong, because he’s—damn—but don’t you find him . . . weird? He doesn’t ever talk to anyone.”

“He doesn’t talk to anyone else,” I said as I began walking toward the stairs, a sly grin now replacing the giddy smile. “I can’t get that boy to shut up. Have fun at work!” I called over my shoulder as I ran up the steps.

After taking a hot shower and bundling back up in multiple layers of sweats and jackets, I hopped on my bed and tried to study. Tried being the keyword there. If it weren’t for the fact that it was snowing outside, and our heater could only do so much with the drafts that came in through our house, I would have stripped back down and taken a cold shower because of the way my imagination was getting me so worked up.

I was lying back on my bed, books, study cards, and laptop forgotten as I thought about Kier’s muscled body. I wished I’d gotten more time to run my hands over the planes of his chest and the lean muscles in his arms before he put his shirt back on last week. Two days, Indy. Two. Days.

“Hey.”

I jolted at the sound of his deep voice, and looked over to find him in my doorway, a sad smirk playing on his lips.

“Looks like you’re getting a lot of studying in.”

Sitting upright, I glanced at everything scattered around my bed and tried to figure out an excuse before shrugging. “Yeah, not really. Are you okay? You can’t already be going to sleep, and you left just a couple hours ago.”

Kier shut the door behind him and walked over toward my bed, dragging the chair from my desk behind him and sitting down in it.

“I could’ve cleared off—”

“I need to talk to you.”

My body stilled and I straightened my spine when I saw the haunted look in his eyes, and realized that he wasn’t even sitting close enough to the bed for me to lean over and touch him. “Okay . . . ,” I said warily, drawing out the word. “Should I—should I be worried?”

His eyes had fallen into his lap, but at my question, they snapped back up to me. Hunching over, he clasped his hands, letting them hang between his knees as he shrugged and slowly shook his head back and forth. “Honestly, Indy, I’m the one who’s worried right now . . . because I don’t know how you’re going to react to this.”

That didn’t help relieve any type of worry at all. I scooted back so I was pressed against my wall, facing him, but didn’t say anything else as I stared at him—waiting for him to begin whatever it was he needed to talk to me about.

“I haven’t been fair to you, Indy. The last year and a half I couldn’t help noticing you. You’re beautiful, you have this smile that makes other people around you smile, and you always seemed happy. But even then I somehow knew it was an act, knew there was something you were trying to hide that was controlling your life. I wanted to save you even back then, but you were with Dean, and our paths just weren’t meant to cross then. Then this school year began, and this whole semester all I wanted to do was take care of you, help you, save you . . . be with you. Even before you finally started noticing me during times where you weren’t drunk, I was already falling for you so hard.”

There was a “but” coming; I knew there was. Because none of this sounded like a bad thing yet, and all of it I already knew. And by the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes, this was about to be bad.

“And then I kept putting everything on you, letting you make the decisions, waiting until you were ready, because—well, like I’ve said, I knew there was something you were hiding behind and needed to get out before I’d push you into any form of a relationship with me. But the thing is . . .”

There was that “but,” and now he wasn’t talking, and I had this feeling creeping through my body like ice and fire were flooding my veins at the same time. Kier swallowed roughly and sighed before looking back up at me.

“The thing is, I’ve been kind of hiding behind my own shit. Keeping things from you, things that have made me into the guy you know, and into the guy who wanted nothing more than to save you. And I knew I had to tell you, but after you told me everything about your life—I felt like I couldn’t. I was afraid if I did you wouldn’t be able to see me the same way.”

My eyebrows slammed down and my mouth popped open with a huff. “And you thought I didn’t feel the same? You thought I wasn’t terrified that you wouldn’t be like, ‘Yep, she’s not worth it,’ and just leave?”

His lips tilted up in the faintest of smiles, but he looked anything but happy. “No, I knew that was exactly how you felt. But I knew that nothing you could say would change my mind.”

“And nothing you—”

“Indy”—he cut me off—“you can say that, but you’ve barely known my name for a month. I’ve been waiting for you for a year and a half, knowing that whole time that you were going to have something in your past. It’s different. And as much as I want Thursday afternoon to be here, I’ve been dreading it,” he groaned. “Because I knew I couldn’t take you with you not knowing about me.”

When he didn’t continue for a while, I scoffed. “Well, what is it? Unless you somehow caused my brother’s death, I can’t imagine anything that would make me not want to be with you anymore. And seeing how they slid off the road, I’m positive you didn’t.”

“I didn’t kill your brother, Indy.”

“Then just tell me, Kier!”

“I killed someone else!” he shouted, and then grabbed at his hair, turning to look at the bedroom door before dropping his elbows to his knees—his hands still firmly gripping his thick black hair.

I was frozen. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t blink. That—that couldn’t be right. I must have misheard him. Because the Kier I’d come to know wasn’t a—I couldn’t even think it. Not because it was too terrifying a thought, but because it didn’t fit what I knew of him at all.

“What?” I finally choked out. “You—no.”

When Kier looked back up at me, his eyes were glassy and tortured. “I didn’t pull the trigger, but I made him do it.”

The fistlike vise that had been tightening on my chest slowly started letting up, and I blew out a deep breath. “What do you mean?”

“A guy from my school committed suicide because of me.”

My heart sank. “Kier, no. No, I don’t know what happened, but you can’t think that—”

“Indy, it was in his note. I was the reason he did it. Cops questioned me, they showed me the note, his parents—fuck, his dad put me in the hospital when I walked out of the police station that day.”

“But it was his decision—”

“Stop.” He raked his hands down his face and leaned forward, only to sit back in the chair again. “You know how you always told me that I was quiet? That I don’t talk?” When I nodded, he asked, “Did you think it was because I was shy, or . . .”

I shrugged. “No, you didn’t seem shy, just like you didn’t want to talk. Like what everyone was doing was bothering you in a way.”

He huffed and shook his head. “I was popular in high school. I was the quarterback of our football team. I was dating the hottest girl in school. My parents gave me anything I wanted and were never home anyway—so my house was always the party house. I don’t think anyone ever liked me. They liked what I was . . . if that makes sense. Rich, cocky, varsity QB . . . the whole bit. Everything back then was a label—it was dumb. But I was such a dick back then I wouldn’t even have liked me.”

I tried to see it, but I couldn’t. Kier was handsome in a way you only ever saw on silver screens, but he was always in the background, never letting anyone get close to him . . . except for me. And the kind of guy who was quiet and in the background was the exact opposite of who he was explaining now.

“I made fun of anyone who wasn’t ‘us’ basically, but there was this one kid, Alan Schwartz—God, I don’t know why, but I just wanted to ruin his life. He never did anything, he stayed away from me, shit, he’d run when he saw me . . . but I just had it out for him for some reason. Picked on him about everything. His weight, his looks, and the way he dressed—and it was constant. Every day, every time I saw him. I think because my buddies wanted to seem cool around me, or something, they all started picking on him, too, and soon he had half the football team after him. We’d have our girls put tampons in his locker. We’d steal his clothes during P.E. and sometimes replace them with girls’ clothes. And he wasn’t gay; we were just doing anything to embarrass the shit out of him. He started missing school, and that’s when I should have started realizing something was different about him. But I didn’t notice anything; I just kicked up embarrassing him on the days he was in school.

“Spring came, he kept wearing long sleeves . . . and now that it’s all over and I look back on that time, I remember how dead he looked. He didn’t cry anymore when we embarrassed him, he didn’t run away from me anymore, he just stared—like nothing mattered anymore. But when it was happening, I didn’t notice. I noticed the long sleeves, though, and, of course, I made fun of him for wearing those, too, when it was hot outside. Every. Day. Never. Stopping. I was on my way to my junior prom when I got a call from my parents saying that the police were looking for me, and that they would meet me at the station. Funny that I thought they were joking when they said the police were looking for me, but as soon as they told me they would meet me somewhere, I knew they were serious. My parents were never anywhere for me. They only care about themselves; there was always some party or resort they had to go to with colleagues or friends.

“I took my girlfriend to the prom, told her I would be back soon, and left. Alan had been cutting his wrists for months apparently, and that night, he shot himself. There was a letter on his bed addressed to me. Asking what he ever did to me to make me hate him, to torture him, and to make him wish he’d never been born. He said he’d tried to ignore me, then hoped I would see what I was doing to him, and then finally gave up . . . saying he couldn’t take it anymore. At the bottom, he wrote a line to his parents saying he loved them, and it wasn’t their fault—they did everything they could. It just wasn’t enough.”