Exhale (4 page)

“Hey,” I said, my lips forming a tiny smile of their own as my heart continued to hammer in my chest.

He shifted off his Jeep and took a few steps toward me. “Hey.”

My stomach quivered the closer I got to Derek. I cast a sidelong glance at him before shifting my focus to the sky streaked with shades of pink and orange. Pulling at the edges of my sweater to straighten it, I realized how early in the morning it must be. The sun hadn’t even completely risen yet and there was a slight chill in the air.

“So,” I muttered, dragging the word out while trying to break the awkwardness that had wrapped the two of us together in a cocoon. “What are you doing here?”

I hated the fact that I sounded so cold and nonchalant, but I couldn't stand the tension. I could hardly look at him without my insides tying up in knots and feeling like I might vomit from my sudden onslaught of nerves.

“I, uh…” He scratched the back of his head, his eyebrows raising and nearly touching his hairline. “I wanted to talk to you about last night…about me kissing you.”

I hadn't known it was possible for my heart to beat any faster than it already had been until those last few words passed from his lips.
Me kissing you, me kissing you
. They repeated through my mind and attached themselves to the fast-paced rhythm of my heartbeat.

I swallowed hard. “What about it?” My voice sounded all wrong—too high with a slight amount of crackle.

Derek's bright eyes met mine and I knew he'd figured out how much that kiss had meant to me from the tone of my voice. I pulled the sleeves of my sweater down over my hands to conceal the fact that they had balled into fists. It was all in an immense effort to keep from biting my fingernails in front of him. I held his gaze, hoping he wasn't about to say something that would tear me even more in two than I already was, something that would break my heart.

“I was wondering…” He paused for about five seconds too long before finishing his sentence. “How you felt about it.” His hand came up to rub the back of his neck as his eyes dropped to the smooth concrete beneath us.

I felt ecstatic about it, over the freaking moon, couldn't believe it happened, must have been a dream, happy about it. But I couldn't tell Derek any of that. Not until I knew how
he
felt about it. I purposely refused to look at him, afraid that he could see the gears turning behind my eyes while I attempted to think of an answer that wouldn’t give too much away in case he didn’t feel the same.

“Well, I already told you it was better than kissing Cal Carlson.” I grinned, cocking my head to the side, hoping he hadn’t put too much thought into my hesitation.

Derek chuckled. “Right…but that's not what I mean.”

I felt like a deer caught in headlights. Suddenly my face was too hot, my throat too scratchy, and my palms too sweaty. What the heck was I supposed to say? What answer was he looking for, the truth?  Because that was one I couldn’t give. How the heck was I supposed to tell him that I’d had a crush on him since we were twelve, and that I could remember the exact moment when our friendship shifted inside of me and became something more. That it was that time when our parents had dropped us off at the town carnival. It had been the first time they had trusted us to go alone and we’d all three been so excited for that little taste of preteen freedom. We had met up with a group of friends and all walked around basking in our unsupervised two hours of fun. I had a thing for Ben Evans that summer and was incredibly giddy that he was a part of our little group that day. Ben had shared his soda with me, won me a teddy bear, shared his cotton candy, and held my sweaty hand in his at one point during the day.  I’d been so positive we had become an item, and that Ben Evans was my first real boyfriend, that there wasn’t a thing in the world that could have removed the smile from my face. Until we saw Dena Norton waiting in line to ride the Ferris wheel with a group of her equally beautiful friends, and Ben got all googly eyed. He had dropped my hand so quickly that I swore my arm had jolted in its socket, just before he sauntered over to ask Dena if he could ride on the Ferris wheel with her.

I remember standing there—my mouth hanging open, my hand growing cold and less clammy without his warmth pressed in it—unbelieving at how much something like that could hurt. How strong emotions could be. Kyle had gotten angry instantly, and began pacing back and forth, muttering words I’d never heard him use before that day. But Derek was the one who had saved me from the humiliation of crying. Without speaking a single word, he walked up to me and put his hand in mine, and then steered me until I was stepping into an empty Ferries wheel chair with him by my side.

“Katie?” Derek said my name as if he was trying to lull an answer from my lips, pulling me from my thoughts. I shifted on my feet as the memory I had just relived forced the answer he was awaiting to the tip of my tongue.

“I umm…” I slapped my fists against my thighs while I looked everywhere except at him. “I liked it and I can't stop thinking about it.”

Derek didn't say a word, but I could feel his eyes on me. I held my breath. The air seemed to vibrate between us as I waited for him to say something, anything. He stepped forward just as I shifted my eyes to him. I didn't know what I truly expected to see, which emotion I anticipated to be reflected in his eyes most, but what I saw stunned me. Derek's green eyes were wide, shocked, and slightly relieved.

“Me too,” he whispered as he leaned in.

I exhaled and licked my lips. Did that mean that he liked me too? Why couldn’t he clarify even just a tiny bit what his simple
me too
meant? Because to me, it didn’t even hold a candle to what I’d just said, the revelation I’d revealed to him with just one sentence.

“Really?” I questioned.

In one smooth motion, Derek clarified everything without the use of words. His lips pressed against mine, his warm hands pushed firmly against my lower back, burning into my skin, as his tongue softly sought out mine. My hands smoothed across his firm biceps, the ones I had noticed forming over the years and had sought out nonchalant scenarios in which to touch them. Finally, Derek pulled a few inches away from me, allowing my lungs the opportunity they desperately needed to inhale.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he whispered in an out-of-breath, sexy tone that sent a shiver along my spine.

“Oh, I can imagine.” I grinned like a fool.

Music blasted from inside Derek’s front pocket.

“Oh man,” he face-palmed his forehead. “I forgot I was supposed to pick up Brody on my way in to work,” he said, digging in his pocket for his phone.

It wasn’t until then that I realized Derek was dressed in khaki pants and a button-up, stiff-collar green T-shirt with his BI-LO name tag clipped firmly in place—his name written in thick black letters. I’d been so nervous about what he was going to say to me that I had missed the fact he was dressed up in all his bag- boy uniformed glory.

“Hey man, sorry about that. I’m headed there now,” he said into the phone, his cheeks flushing slightly as he met my eyes. “Yeah, see you in a minute.”

I folded my arms over my chest as he shoved his phone back into his front pocket, the awkwardness encasing us once more. Did this mean that we were together now? What was I supposed to say here?  Was I supposed to kiss him goodbye or hug him? Or was I just supposed to stand here, smiling like an idiot, because that’s what I was doing.

“Well, I uh…gotta go.” He smiled shyly and I was reminded of the twelve-year-old him sitting beside me on the Ferris wheel. “I get off at five, though. Can I meet up with you then?”

I bit my bottom lip to suppress my kilowatt smile some and nodded. “Sure.”

“Great, see you then.” He rounded his Jeep and climbed in the driver’s seat, his eyes leaving me for only seconds before finding their way back.

“Oh, wait!” I shouted, just as he was starting the engine. “I forgot that I have to work tonight.”

His face scrunched up in disappointment. “What time?”

“Five to ten,” I answered.

“I’ll see you at 5:15 then…just to say hi,” he said, his green eyes sparkling in the early morning light with the same amount of giddiness I felt.

A tiny giggle escaped me. “Okay, see you then.”

I watched as he pulled away, not believing what had just happened between us. Staring down at my sandal-clad feet with toenails painted a shade darker than sky blue, I smiled. Was this the official start of Derek and me.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Who do you keep texting? I know it’s not your best friend because I’m sitting right here,” Missy asked, sounding annoyed as she adjusted the couch cushions behind her head once more. “Is it Cal?  My memory might be slightly hazy, but I know something happened between you two last night. Are you guys hooking up now or something?”

I suppressed my gag reflex, as I shook my head no. “Definitely not.”

“Okay…so it’s not Cal. Then who are you texting?”

“Derek.” I bit the inside of my cheek as I waited for her response. Should I even be telling her this?  I wasn’t sure, but I knew it felt wrong to keep something that felt this good all to myself.

“Derek? Why?” When I didn’t respond right away, Missy sat up on her elbows and glared at me.  She was very perceptive and I knew that if I held her gaze she would figure it out in a matter of seconds. I felt my cheeks grow hot as I smiled impishly at her. “No freaking way! How the eff did I miss that? I didn’t even know you liked him like that!”

I shrugged one shoulder and allowed my gaze to wander back to the TV, as a satisfied smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. “You were a little busy being in a coma last night and it was just something that happened.”

It wasn’t just
something
that happened—it was huge, big, and practically life changing.

“Did you two hook up? What does Kyle have to say about you guys being together?” Her questions came at me in rapid succession.

Little pinpricks of panic spread from my already overworked stomach throughout my entire body as my satisfied smile faded. I hadn’t thought of Kyle, until now. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” She propped her head up with the palm of her hand and stared at me, her blue eyes wide. “Are you kidding me? Shouldn’t that have been like the first thing you guys talked about? I mean, everybody knows that Kyle has a thing for you. He’s gonna feel like crap when he realizes that you’ve picked Derek over him.” She laughed then and I wanted to dump the bowl of popcorn sitting in my lap over her head. “Especially, since they’re freaking identical twins!”

I slouched further down in the recliner where I was sitting. Missy was right. Kyle was going to be pissed, not just at me, but at Derek too. I stuffed a handful of popcorn into my mouth and averted my eyes back to the TV. This was going to be bad. Real bad.

* * * *

I left Missy’s house around 3:30 to head home for a shower and my uniform. At least, that’s what I told Missy. Though, in reality, my uniform was in the bottom of my overnight bag, I just couldn’t hang around her for another minute or else I was going to go insane. Telling her I was talking to Derek
in that way
might have been a bad thing, because she hounded me wanting to know how long I had liked him and all the tiny details of what had changed things last night. I swear she was more excited about it than I was, and that was saying something, because my heart was still racing from our kiss in the driveway.

I needed time to think. I didn’t regret what had happened, but the more I thought about it and the more I thought about Kyle and what Missy had pointed out, the larger my worries became. They were brothers, but not
just
brothers; they were twins, identical twins. Missy had nailed it when she’d said that Kyle would be pissed because I had chosen Derek over him, when they looked exactly the same and he was the one who had been after me for years. The thing of it was, just because they looked the same didn’t mean that they were. Their personalities were so incredibly different that I never saw them
the same
as everyone else did.

I wondered if Derek had thought about any of this yet. Cutting a right onto my street, I began playing out scenarios in my mind of the best ways to let Kyle know. Each of them ended horribly with him storming off in a fit of anger. I chewed my bottom lip in frustration, because I knew Kyle well enough to know that was exactly how he was going to react.

Then I saw him.

Just as I was slowing down to turn into my driveway, Kyle sauntered out the screen door of his house, shirtless. He didn’t notice me at first. He was focused on the push mower sitting in the halfway-mowed front yard, but when he did notice me, his face lit up and he broke out his most sexy, highest kilowatt smile ever. I swallowed hard and waved as I kept going, then I pulled into my driveway, which was just a few feet from where he was standing. Why did we have to be next-door neighbors, too? Guilt gnawed away at my insides and I hated it. This was what I imagined a person would feel like if they were cheating. I shouldn’t feel this way, because I wasn’t cheating, but I did and I knew that the feeling wouldn’t be easily shaken away.