Keep From Falling (Markson Grove Series Book 1) (67 page)

“You still there?” I ask.

When he finally speaks again all the joking in his voice has completely vanished, as I suspected it would. “Is there something going on between them now?”

“I don’t know,” I say. I see it in the way they look at each other, but I don’t know where it’s going to go. I have no way of knowing that, so I don’t elaborate.

“Did Bree,” he begins but allows his voice to trail off when he realizes that he already knows the answer.

“Yeah,” I answer anyway.

“Ev, man, I’m so sorry.”

“Whatever, it’s done,” I say, brushing off the pity. “Bree’s a lesbian and I’ve finally accepted it. In a way, it’s good that I saw them kissing. I needed the push.”

“It still must suck.”

“It’s the worst. Looking at them sleeping in the bed right next to each other… it just sucks, you know? I need to get out of here. I need time to gather myself before I can tell Bree that I don’t hate her for it. I know it’s who she is.”

“That’s really good of you, I don’t know if I could be so calm if it were me.”

“I’m kind of pissed at Adrienne, but it’s not her fault either. It’s not anyone’s fault. It just wasn’t meant to be, you know?” I sigh in defeat. This is going to be so hard to get through.

“You should leave now anyway, man, all of you. It’s a little after five right now, the chaperones will be waking up soon and you’ll never be able to sneak in once they are up. I covered for you last night, said you were in the shower when they came to do head count, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to get away with that again this morning.”

I reach for my shirt hanging off of the corner of the mirror over the sink. One of the girls must have cleaned it for me and hung it to dry. “Yeah,” I say. “I’ll go wake them and we will be there ASAP.”

I hang up and put my sorry excuse of a phone down beside the sink as I pull the shirt over my head. I wet my hands and pat down my hair as good as I can so that it isn’t so out of control. The final result is still rather unattractive, but who the hell am I impressing anyway? Definitely not those two girls in the next room.

“Get up,” I say to them the moment I reach the edge of the bed. They both stir slightly and then after a moment, open their eyes. Adrienne first, followed by Bree a few seconds later.

“What’s going on?” Adrienne asks groggily.

“We have to go,” I say to her, attempting to keep my face expressionless. “They’ll be doing head-count at breakfast, and we need to be there before that.”

“They must already know we’re gone. I mean, who would have covered for us?” Bree asks.

“My roommate said she’d cover for me,” Adrienne replies with a shrug. She focuses on my emotionless expression for a moment and seems to see the reason behind my attempted detachment. She frowns and then looks away.

“My roommate is probably not even… oh my God, Skylar!” Bree exclaims, sitting up in the bed franticly. “I need to text her to see how everything turned out last night with Parker and Tris. And you know, both Spencer and Parker were gone and so were Skylar and I, there would have been no one in our rooms to cover for us. There’s no way the four of us aren’t busted.” Bree franticly climbs out of the bed in search of her phone. She reaches to the floor for her jeans and pulls her phone out of her pocket, texting something to Skylar.

After waiting a short while she turns back to us. “No reply,” she says, looking to Adrienne for guidance. I see an unspoken exchange between them that makes me uncomfortable. I hate the connection they seem to share. I turn away and open the door to the hallway. “I’ll wait for you guys downstairs,” I say, without turning. I can’t watch the way they look at each other anymore. I noticed it during their very first conversation on the bus yesterday morning, and it has only gotten more obvious since then.

“We’ll be right down,” I hear Bree say as I shut the door behind me and try not to think about what will happen now that I’ve finally walked away from her for the very last time.

Skylar

My eyes flutter open the moment I hear a beep from my phone, sitting on the TV stand across the room. I’m in the hotel room Bree and I are sharing, only Bree isn’t here. She didn’t end up coming home at all last night. I covered for her, as any good friend would, but if she doesn’t get back before the chaperones are up, I don’t think my lies will continue to hold.

I look over at the clock on the bedside table. 5:23. It’s way too early to be woken up by a text message. It must be Bree.

I toss the blankets off of me, and just as I begin to ease myself out of bed, Parker pulls my body back to him, his arms delicately wrapping around my midsection. “I’m never letting you out of my sight again,” he says, burying his face into my neck and kissing me softly.

I sigh, allowing my body to fall back into his. “And I don’t want you to,” I say, turning around to face him. I trace my finger along a fresh gash on his face that begins at his ear and travels at least three inches down his neck.

My mind is instantly drawn back to last night. The vivid memory of Parker standing before me, drenched in blood, Tris’ blood, the look of emotional pain visibly clear on his face. Only eighteen and forever tainted with darkness. We all are. Misfits, the corrupted youth of Markson Grove.

I remember moving toward him, wanting to hug him but he wouldn’t let me. “Not like this,” he said simply, in a hollow voice. I nodded, knowing he needed time, and took Spencer’s hand into mine. We watched Parker walk away to a room to clean himself off.

Parker readjusts himself in the bed and lets out a hiss of pain as he does so. He’s in terrible shape, alive, but utterly ravaged.

“You broke something, I think,” I say.

“I broke a lot of things,” he replies with an attempted shrug that only causes him to wince in more pain.

“You should go to the hospital.”

“Can’t,” he says. “The only person I’m allowed to see after a fight is my assigned um… caregiver, I’d guess you’d call her.”

“Isabelle,” I say, trying to keep my tone light but it isn’t easy. She seems to know him even better than I do, and I hate that.

“How did you know?” he asks, looking surprised and a bit confused.

“I met her last night. It’s how we found
The Onyx
,” I say.

He shakes his head in disappointment. “She shouldn’t have told you.”

“I was worried… so was she.”

“You had nothing to worry about.”

“So what exactly do you mean by caregiver, anyway? I thought you just stay there while you’re in town.”

“No, she’s assigned to me. Well, she was. Now that I’m out, she’ll be assigned to someone else.”

“Will she be sad about that?” I ask with a raised brow.

He smirks. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were jealous?”

“She seems to know you really well. And she knows all about me.”

“Because I told her all about you. Because I’m a hopeless sap,” he says with a small laugh, being careful not to laugh too much so that it hurts his ribs, which I’m fairly sure are broken. He goes on, “When Dimitri made me his star after what happened that night on the beach I had just finally accepted that you and I were really over. But I was drowning in my guilt of what had happened to you and she tried to… alleviate that.”

“I bet she did,” I mumble.

“Bu-ut,” he says in a long drawl, interrupting my sulking, “nothing came of it, all right? I couldn’t stop bellyaching over what had happened and how I’d lost you. She listened to me and gave me advice. You have nothing to be jealous of with her. She’s always known exactly where my heart lies.” He kisses me softly on my nose and smiles.

I smile back. How can I not? He’s too adorable for words. “Ok well, if you can’t go to the hospital, you should go see her today then. What if you’re bleeding internally or something?”

His eyes narrow, but it’s visibly clear that he isn’t as annoyed as he’s pretending to be. “You sound like Bree when she came to see me the night you were attacked. She was angry at me for not bringing you to the hospital.”

“She’s protective,” I say simply.

“Apparently. Are we going to talk about that kiss you had with her yesterday?”

I sigh. “Stop trying to change the subject. Will you go get yourself looked at, or what?”

He nods. “Yes I will. I’ll go see her as soon as the chaperones do their little head check and it’s clear. Now, tell me what happened with that kiss.”

“Do we have to?” I ask with a pout.

“We don’t have to. I believe you when you say it was goodbye. I just thought you might want to talk about it.”

Talk about it? I wish I could forget it. I wish I could forget everything about yesterday, actually. “I thought I lost you because of that. I was so pissed at her, so angry with myself. I promise you that it wasn’t a passionate kiss. It was sad, and it was goodbye. That’s all. She was going to choose Evan over our friendship because she couldn’t have me as more than a friend.”

“She’s still in love with you,” he says knowingly.

“I’m the only girl she’s ever been with. She’ll move passed it eventually. Adrienne seems to have an effect on her, there’s chemistry there. Maybe it’s something she will explore in the future.”

His eyebrows raise and he looks at me curiously. “Is Adrienne into girls now?”

I shrug, “I don’t know, but she looks at Bree as if she is.”

He thinks about my reply for a moment before nodding. “That actually would make a lot of sense,” he says with a little chuckle.

“I’m not even going to ask,” I return, wrinkling my nose.

My phone beeps again telling me that I still have a text waiting for me. “I should go answer that,” I say to Parker, attempting to move away from his body once again, and once again he holds me in place.

“I told you I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”

“You can still see me. I’m only going to the dresser,” I laugh.

“You have a point.” He lets me go and leans back into his pillow, grinning at me.

I’d be lying if I said that his mild joking and casual attempt at chatting didn’t concern me. He just killed his friend and there’s no way that it isn’t affecting him emotionally, but he’ll be damned if he’s letting me see it.

I start toward the dresser. “I hope it’s Bree,” I say, attempting to keep the conversation casual for his sake. “She stayed out all night taking care of Evan. She and Adrienne stayed at Isabelle’s bar to take care of his sorry drunk ass last night.”

Parker struggles to sit himself up in the bed and after a few moments finally succeeds. “You should cut Evan some slack. He was crazy about Bree and she broke his heart.”

I close my eyes and shake my head. “He knew what he was getting himself into right from the start. It’s not like he didn’t.”

Parker sighs. “I get it. He disrespected what was yours. He knew, and he didn’t care.”

“Exactly,” I say bitterly. “Are you and him going to be pals now or something? You freed Colton last night, and in turn got Ellie out of danger. I bet you guys will be all buddy-buddy like how you and Spenc are,” I say with a little smirk as I pick up my cell from the dresser and look at the text from Bree.

She’s asking about what happened with Tris and Parker and I can’t bring myself to text that information to her. I’ll tell her in person when the time is right. Right now, it’s too fresh and still too much to think about. I frown and put the phone back down on the dresser.

Parker doesn’t seem to notice my uneasiness at Bree’s text. He wraps his arms around me the minute I sit back down next to him on the bed. “I really doubt it,” he says. “But you know, he called me when Tris took off with you at The Loft that night. I kind of owe him. Tris would have killed you if he hadn’t.”

“I know,” I say, laying my head on his shoulder and then peering up into his eyes. He looks haunted and sad. I can finally see the pain he’s feeling about what happened last night. I wish I had been able to stop it. I never wanted this for him. “Are we going to talk about last night?” I ask him, taking his hand into mine.

“I don’t think so,” he says, his entire demeanor changing in an instant. He pulls his hand away.

I sit up so I can look him in the eye. “You killed your best friend last night, you can’t just pretend like that didn’t happen.”

“Watch me,” he mumbles.

“Baby,” I say with a sigh.

After a long silence between the two of us he finally whispers, “I know it happened. I’m not pretending like it didn’t. But I can’t talk about it. I need time. Just don’t worry about it, ok? I’m going to be fine.”

“Ok,” I say, knowing in my heart that what he just said is a lie. He won’t be fine. This will torment him for the rest of his life, but all I can do is be here for him through it. That’s it. That’s where my power lies.

“We have a future together now,” he tells me, his eyes hopeful and sad all at the same time.

It breaks my heart.

I force a smile. “I love you,” I say, kissing his cheek and he closes his eyes at the touch. For the first time since I’ve known him, his face relaxes and his forehead isn’t creased with lines of worry.

“I love you too,” he breathes. “More than life.”