Exhale (9 page)

I let out the breath I had been holding when he finally turned his back to me and shifted my gaze to Missy. She still stood in the same place. I’d expected to see a sour expression on her face, but there wasn’t one. Instead, as our eyes locked, she shook her head and softened her stare.

I closed my eyes and turned to walk away. I knew Derek had been right when he said that Kyle finding out about us would crush him, I just didn’t know how right he’d been until that moment. I headed in the direction I had seen Derek go moments before, my heart feeling like a piece of it had broken. I had always known Kyle liked me, but I had never thought that it was more than that, that he
loved
me. I pinched my lips tight to keep them from trembling, as I quickened my pace, hoping I could reach Derek before he decided to come find me.

CHAPTER TEN

A tear slid down my cheek, I wiped it away and cleared my throat as soon as I spotted Derek’s silhouette in the distance. This was it, Derek had to tell Kyle, and after this night, nothing would ever be the same again between the three of us. It would all change and I could only hope for the better.

“There you are. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to be able to get away from Kyle,” Derek said, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck.

I opened my mouth to reply but nothing came out, tears constricted my throat.

“What’s wrong?” His eyebrows drew together as concern sharpened his features. “Are you upset or something?”

I nodded and wiped my nose with the back of my hand as I stopped directly in front of him. “Kyle just kissed me.”

Derek’s jaw tensed. “What?”

“He kissed me,” I repeated, even though I knew he had heard me the first time. My cheeks were on fire and my stomach flip-flopped all over the place as I waited for some sort of a reaction from Derek.

He dropped his eyes to the white sand we stood on and stared at it with the most confused expression on his face, as though he were trying to figure out what it was and how it had gotten there.  A warm breeze blew; ruffling his hair and making him appear even more bewildered.

“You said you were worried about whether or not I thought kissing you was a mistake, that you wondered if I wanted this as much as you did…I guess the true question here is do
you
want this?” Derek’s eyes lifted until they met mine. I noticed how pained they were, how worried. “We look exactly the same, Katie. You know us both better than anyone else. We all three pretty much grew up together—” He cut himself off. Silence built between us, letting me know that he did not intend to finish his thoughts.

“I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” I said, shifting on my feet and folding my arms across my chest. He shifted his eyes out to the ocean and shook his head slightly as he shrugged his shoulders at the same time. “Are you sure it’s me that you want?”

“Yes,” I answered without hesitation. It had always been him.

He let out a deep, gratifying sigh.  His eyes made their way back to mine, and then one of his hands came up to brush across my cheek. “Positive?”

“One hundred percent,” I smiled.

Derek’s lips descended upon mine then. He wrapped his arms around me, surrounding me in his scent, as he pressed his body closer to mine. The beach, the kiss with Kyle, his confession, all of it faded away to nothing. Nothing else mattered except for this kiss. This moment.

Slanting his mouth across mine just so, Derek flicked his tongue against my bottom lip, demanding access to the deepest parts of my mouth. I parted my lips and tilted my head up toward him more. His tongue slid against mine and I pressed myself against him harder, the desire flowing through my veins, making me want to erase even the smallest distance between us. Derek’s hand found its way beneath my tank top and the sensation of his warm skin on mine sent a shiver along my spine. He eased his hand upward slowly, until his thumb was able to rub against my bra.

“What the fuck is this shit?” Kyle’s voice boomed from directly behind me and I felt my heart stop.

Derek and I both jerked away from each other and turned to face a fuming Kyle. My hand flew to my chest out of reflex, as a sudden coldness swelled within my stomach. I noticed Missy standing in the distance, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She looked nervous; an emotion I honestly didn’t expect to see. Even though she was my best friend, I figured she’d be gloating right about now because everything was out in the open, and now she could proceed with her
seduce Kyle plan
without me standing in the way any longer.

“Again, what the fuck is this shit?” Kyle repeated when neither Derek nor I gave him an answer quick enough, as he pounded a fist against his thigh.

“You weren’t supposed to find out like this,” Derek said, clearing his throat as he straightened out his T-shirt where I had crumpled it. “I planned on telling you soon. I just hadn’t been able to think of the right words. I’m sorry, man. ”

Kyle’s nostrils flared. “You planned on telling me soon and you’re sorry? So that means something has been going on between the two of you for a while, right?”

“Only a few days,” Derek said, shaking his head no.

“A few days,” Kyle repeated slowly, his words sounding hollow and broken. His eyes shifted to mine and I swore even in the bright light of the moon, I could see their intense green grow dimmer as his heart shattered. “I kissed you…I’ve always…,” his stare shifted to Derek and grew dark. “You knew. You knew better than
anyone
how I felt about her. Jesus, you
fucking
knew
!”

“I’m sorry, Kyle,” I finally said. I meant the words, I felt my heart break open and bleed as they passed from my lips, but from the look in Kyle’s eyes, I knew my words held no meaning to him. They had fallen upon ears deafened by betrayal and pain.

“I bet you are,” Kyle sneered.  He started to walk toward me, but then stopped, his hands fisted at his sides. “I can’t believe this shit!” he growled, tossing his head back.

“Look,” Derek said calmly, taking a step or two closer to Kyle with his hands held up in front of him in surrender. “I understand how you’re feeling—”

“Bullshit! How could you possibly understand how I’m feeling?” Kyle interrupted him.

“I just mean—” Derek never got to finish his sentence, because Kyle lunged forward, erasing the distance between them in the blink of an eye, and hit Derek square in the jaw.

“Feel that?” Kyle asked, tilting his head to the side and puffing up his chest, his lips twisting into a wicked grin. “Hurts, doesn’t it? That’s what I fucking feel like right now.
It hurts
.”

“C’mon, Kyle,” Missy said, stepping from the shadows and draping her arms over his shoulders as she attempted to steer him away from us and back toward the party. “Let’s get you another drink or something.”

I stood still, watching as the two of them walked away. My heart hammered in my chest as my eyes misted with tears. I’d never seen Derek and Kyle fight like that. I’d never seen them take a swing at one another, not like that anyway. My insides felt numb as the guilt from hurting Kyle, the guilt I had feared since that first kiss with Derek, echoed through me, mingling with a new one—the guilt of coming between two brothers.

“I didn’t think he would follow me.” I blinked and a fat tear slid down my cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“If I had, if I’d just—I really need to go after him,” Derek sighed. “I need to explain.” He walked away, his fingers pressed against his sore jaw, leaving me standing in the place where friendships had crumbled and hearts had been broken. The last thing I heard him mutter was, “This is a mess.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I couldn’t sleep that night. I’d tossed and turned restlessly as the image of Kyle’s betrayed eyes haunted me. When I finally made it to that blissful place of being half-asleep, half not, my cell phone buzzed across my nightstand, its brightly lit screen illuminating my room. Derek’s name and number filled the screen. I hit ignore and held my phone to my chest as I stared up at my ceiling. I didn’t feel like talking. I didn’t feel like hearing about how heartbroken Kyle was, I still had the mental image and that was enough.

After Derek had walked away, I’d taken the long way to the parking lot, found my car, and headed home, leaving my flip-flops and the entire mess of a night behind. There was no way I was going back to that party to watch Derek and Kyle fight, argue, and flash each other death eyes from across the beach for the remainder of the night. Instead, I had chosen to come home.

My phone vibrated in my hand, startling me. I glanced at the screen. Same name, same number.  My thumb hovered above the answer button as I wondered why Derek would be calling so late. My heart fluttered at the thought of him being upset about the whole thing and me meanly ignoring his calls. I should answer, but I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t want to hear how their night had ended. When my house phone began ringing as Derek called me for the third time in a row, my stomach knotted.

Something was wrong.

“Hello?” I answered and heard one of my parents fumbling from their room to the living room in search of the house phone that kept ringing.

“Katie.” That was all Derek had to say and I knew instantly, with just that one word that something horrible had happened. “He’s gone, Katie.” His voice cracked. “Kyle’s gone.”

My world tilted on its axis. Somewhere in my house, the telephone one of my parents was searching for went silent.

“Gone,” Derek sobbed into my ear.

It was the first time I had ever heard Derek sob so hard. The moans and catches in his breathing filled my dark room and I wanted nothing more than to reach through the phone and hold him. How could this have happened? What had happened? A painful tightness began in my throat as my heart began to race.

The next time the house phone rang, one of my parents answered. From the inaudible ‘no’ to the pounding of feet running down the hall back to my parents’ bedroom, I knew my mom had answered and had just received the same news I had. The news that Kyle was gone.

“Derek, I—I’m sorry.” This time, when I said those words that should always mean something whenever they’re said, my heart didn’t just bleed as they passed from between my lips, it ripped apart instead.

My bedroom door swung open at roughly the same time as my bedroom light was flicked on.

“Katie,” Mom said, her eyes already puffy with tears. “We have to go, it’s Kyle.”

“I know.” My words sounded distant, wrong, like they were being said to me and not coming from me. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I told Derek before I hung up my phone, staring blankly at the wall behind my mother.

Numbly, I got myself dressed and climbed in the backseat of my parents’ car. The drive to the hospital was a blur. My parents had raced through the automatic doors and into the hospital emergency entrance ahead of me as soon as we’d parked. I wanted to run alongside them, but my body was incapable of moving that fast. I felt like I was underwater, struggling to run and getting nowhere.

I kept seeing my mother’s tear-stained face, as she burst through my bedroom door to tell me the news and hearing her sobs echo in my ears, as my father drove us to the hospital. That was how I was supposed to react to this, how everyone reacted to death, they cried. I blinked my dry eyes as I started through the automatic doors. Why couldn’t I cry? What kind of horrible person was I? What the hell was wrong with me?

My parents stood right in the center of everything, holding onto the Conners as they all fell apart at the seams in each other’s arms. I spotted Derek through the wall of Plexiglas that separated the little waiting room lobby from the receptionist area. He sat in a faded, navy blue chair with his elbows resting atop his knees and his fingers interlocked, pressing against his lips as he stared at the marbleized white and black tiled floor. His face was blotchy, and even with the distance between us, I could see how puffy his eyes were from crying. I bypassed everyone and headed directly for the chair beside him.

He didn’t move, even when I sat down, but remained still like a statue, frozen in disbelief and sadness. My eyes skimmed over him, taking in the irregular-shaped purple and blue mark just along his jawline from where Kyle’s fist had connected only hours before. A pain formed in the center of my chest, and I rubbed the palm of my hand against it in slow circles as the moment that bruise was created flashed through my mind. I rested my head on Derek’s shoulder and sunk deeper into my chair.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Derek whispered, his words muffled by his fingertips still pressed firmly against his lips. “I can’t believe this is real.  He’s gone, he’s really gone. I can feel it. I can actually feel it.”

I placed my hand on his forearm and began rubbing back and forth in a soothing motion. The same emptiness that he spoke of had seeped into me the moment I answered his call. I could only imagine how much more it must be magnified for Derek because Kyle was his twin. They say twins can feel the other’s pain, that they can sense the exact moment their twin dies. I didn’t know yet how Kyle had died, but I prayed that the theory of sympathy pains or whatever you wanted to call it surrounding twins wasn’t true.  It had to be hard enough knowing that your twin was gone, but having to feel the pain as they left this world too…that was just plain cruel.