When Gracie is humiliated after following her best friend's brother to college and finds he's moved on without her, she grows closer to his rival--the captain of his basketball team--the infamous Kalen Rush, and suddenly Gracie wonders just what len...
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His hands were in my hair, his lips were on my neck, and my mind was lost to the rhythm of his heartbeat as it slammed against my chest.
The heat from his body was a welcome change to the chill that had entered my bones through the cracks in my skin after I learned about my mother.
The pads of his fingers as they glided along my body were a prickling balm to the distracting thoughts flowing and eddying in and out of my head.
Kalen was my distraction and my salvation, though somehow even his hands and his tongue couldn't keep me from the force of the grief sliding unbidden into my mind.
He pulled away suddenly, noticing the way my body locked up the moment I realized it.
"Are you okay?"
"No, not really."
I pushed the words out from swollen lips and a raspy throat.
Kalen immediately grabbed my chin in between his hands and angled my face up towards his, analyzing the mist in my eyes and scooped me up in his arms.
His warmth was all encompassing, something I needed even if I didn't realize it.
He was my subconscious need and my conscious want.
The stride from the door to his bed was unhurried and gave me an unobstructed view of navy colored walls and matching bedding, sports posters hung up all over the walls along with a few stray photo frames with both his family and his roommate's family in them.
I noticed his father wasn't in any of the photos by his bed.
The bed that he deposited me onto so gently it was like he viewed me as fragile or vulnerable—something breakable.
The soft rays from the late afternoon were trying to peek through navy curtains, dust motes sparkling through the light beams like glitter.
Kalen's eyes were on mine, but I couldn't meet him.
The bottom of my chin quivered but still I didn't relent.
I breathed in a ragged breath through my nose, the ache in my throat intensifying as one escaped my left eye, then two, then suddenly there was a river running down my cheeks and I couldn't stop it.
Why couldn't I stop it?
His hands were rubbing circles on my back, but why was he comforting me when he was practically a complete stranger to me?
Why was Kalen the one making me feel safe, when no one else who was supposed to take care of me was?
My father hadn't even called me once.
"I don't know why I'm doing this. She didn't even w-want me. Why should I cry over her?"
"She was a part of you—she gave birth to you. Whether you see her as your mother or not, that still means something. You're allowed to grieve what you could've had with her."
