“She left some shit out though that might have been helpful that first day when I saw you struggling to put boxes in your car and I stopped to help.”
Knowing Gran had talked about me to Saul felt strange. I had never heard her speak of him or Lily, but he had known about me. He had stopped that day to help me because he knew who I was and what I was doing. It made sense now.
“What did she leave out?” I asked him.
He let out a hard laugh and shook his head then looked off into the yard again instead of at me. “She left out that your eyes express your every thought,” he replied. “She left out that when I looked into your eyes the first time I would find it hard to fucking catch my breath.”
He turned his gaze back to me again. “She left out that I could see just how damn sweet you were by looking into your eyes and she left out that it would be impossible for me not to want to be around you after I met you.”
There were no words for this. I stood there staring at him, thinking possibly I may have fallen asleep and this was a dream. I knew what I looked like the first time we met and I was well aware that there wasn’t anything about me that would make a guy like him want me.
“But if she loved you so much then why the hell did she ever tell me about you? If she hadn’t told me about you, I wouldn’t have stopped that day. I wouldn’t have known who you were. I wouldn’t have given a shit that you needed some help.” He sounded angry.
“What does that have to do with her loving me?” I asked confused by his train of thought.
“Because, Henley, I am fucked up. She should have kept you from me. My life is a dark fucked-up mess. Everything about it. I’m not nice. I don’t have a damn clue what my path is or where to get on it. All I know is I have an addict for a mother and if I don’t keep her alive then no one else will. That’s what I fucking know about my future. It’s a dark, sad story and you don’t fit into it. You’re light and motherfucking rainbows. Me? I’m some level of Hell.” He stopped ranting and ran a hand through his hair, causing the curls to fall in a messy disarray. There was so much pain in his eyes I wanted to cry. This beautiful boy who I thought had walked out of a tropical vacation commercial appeared to have it all, yet he was tortured.
I took a step toward him and reached out my hand to take his. He looked down at our hands as I threaded my fingers through his. I wasn’t sure there was anything I could say that would make him see things differently but I wanted to try.
“You watch over your mom, you bail your friends out of jail, you stop and help a complete stranger because you liked her grandmother, and you risk your safety to save a girl who is acting out just to get your attention. That’s not things a dark person does. I don’t know what your life has been like, but I do know that through all the crap you have been dealt, you are still a nice person. You can say you’re aren’t but that’s not true.”
He closed his eyes tightly and let his head fall back as he let out a frustrated sigh. “God, Henley. You can’t say shit like that,” he said then looked at me again. “I came here to push you away so that you didn’t let me get close enough to kiss you again. I came here to warn you.”
Saul was nothing like Will. I had loved Will, knowing he would never hurt me. There had been a security with him that would never come with Saul. If I allowed myself to develop real feelings for Saul, if I spent time with him, if we kissed some more, I could be hurt. He could break my heart. It was a risk. I wasn’t a risk taker.
“What do you want from me?” I asked him.
“What do I want?” he asked and I nodded. He ran his thumb over my hand as I continued to hold his in mine. “I want to know you. I want to see you smile, at me. I want to be around you,” he paused. “And I want to kiss you again.”
I pulled him toward me with the hand I held. He came up the last step and I had to tilt my head back now to look up at him. “Then do it,” I said.
He grinned then. “Are you telling me to kiss you?”
“I’m telling you to do all of it. I’m not scared of you,” I assured him.
A look of pain crossed his eyes. “You should be,” he whispered.
“I think you’re wrong. Gran thought you were wrong,” I said.
He frowned. “Your gran would never be okay with this.”
“Oh really? Do you think that her sending me to Lily’s was innocent? Because I can tell you it was not. I am finding out more and more every day that the list she left me is a very well laid-out plan that Gran is conducting from her grave,” I informed him.
He chuckled and shook his head. “No, your gran would have never wanted you with me and I owe her a lot. Problem is, I don’t think I’m going to be able to stay away from you. I’ve fucking tried.”
My mouth curled into a smile. There was so much I didn’t know about my life and about Saul, but I liked being here with him. Talking to him like this. I was happy. That was all I needed to know for now.
“SAUL!” Drake yelled out.
Saul let go of my hand and turned to look back as Drake was getting out of the passenger side of Rio’s Jeep and Rio out of the driver’s side. Our moment was over.
“What the hell, man?” Drake called out, throwing his arms up in the air. “We were about to call Archer!”
Saul tensed at that name and I realized it must be his father. “I was about to call you back,” he replied.
Rio was looking at me and I could see the questions in his eyes.
“Replying to a fucking text message would have been nice,” Drake told him as he started toward the stairs. Rio came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him from coming up.
Drake looked back at Rio.
“He’s okay. We don’t need to stay,” Rio said and Drake turned his head to look back up at us. It seemed to slowly dawn on him that they may have interrupted something.
“Ooooh, so you two.” Drake waved a finger between the two of us. “You came here first. To her. I see… niiiice. She’ll be a helluva lot better to have around than Fleur’s crazy ass.”
Saul was looking at Rio and ignoring Drake. There seemed to be some challenge in his gaze. Rio held up his hands and backed up. “I told you we were friends. That is it. That’s all it ever was. You didn’t believe me.”
“I know you,” Saul replied. “You don’t have female friends.”
“I do with this one,” Rio said, nodding his head at me.
Drake hit Rio’s arm with the back of his hand. “Dude, she’s hot. He’s not an idiot.”
“Shut up,” Rio said to him with a roll of his eyes.