The Summer I Fell (The Six Series) (8 page)

I could feel the effect of the pain meds, and I didn’t like the fuzziness they’d blanketed me with. The worst part was, I wasn’t ready to let them pull me down into the clutches of sleep. I wanted to savor every part of the night until my memories were stuffed with these last moments of being with the Six.

I forced myself to walk over to my chair and sit down. When Mark came back out from the cabin, Jared walked over to the box and pulled out a rolled-up piece of paper.

He cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. “Is everyone ready?”

Ready for what?
I wanted to ask, but I kept my question to myself. I was eager to know what the paper in Jared’s hand said.

JARED’S VOICE RANG OUT, MIXING
with the sounds of the crackling fire.

“The rules of the Six.

Rule number one: No matter what happens, we will always be friends.

Rule number two: If someone’s being an ass-hat, the other five have the right to punch the ass-hat in the face.

Rule number three: At least once a month, we will hang out at the cabin for the weekend.

Rule number four: There will only be the six of us, except for Riley. She’s a girl and will be treated as the silent seventh.

Rule number five: We will have each other’s backs—no matter what.

Rule number six: No dating clingy girls who get in the way of the Six.

Rule number seven: Riley is off-limits. We will love her from afar until the day we graduate. After graduation, it will be up to Riley to show us how she feels. We will not intimidate her, push her, or even approach her. By now, she’s put up with enough of our shit and is probably sick of us.

These are the rules and if not followed, will result in an ass kicking by the other five.”

I shot up from my seat. My throat burned with the need to freak out on them.
How dare they make me a part of their stupid rules! How dare they make me seem like their possession!
My chest heaved with the added weight of feeling like a joke to them. Mark tried to steady me, and I shoved him away. “Don’t touch me!” I heard the snarl in my voice and wished that it were enough to inflict the pain I felt on them. I’d loved these boys, they’d been my world for so long, and it felt like the floor had been ripped out from under my feet. I clutched at my neck to ease the ache. It felt like I was trying to breathe out of a straw. I needed to get away, so I started searching for my keys.
Ace had given them back to me, right?

“Riley, what are you doing?” Jared asked as the others sat in silence.

“Where are my keys?” I asked through clenched teeth.

“You’re not getting your keys, Riley,” Ace said as he approached me.

I held up my hand. “You just stay right there!”

“Come on, Riley. That was written four years ago. We didn’t mean anything by it,” Aiden said, not moving from his seat.

“Yeah, Riles, it wasn’t meant to hurt you.” Eli’s voice came out more like a plea than a statement.

“Hurt me? Are you kidding me right now? How long have you guys been dictating the way my life would go? Why bother even keeping me around? You make it sound like I was some sort of poison you had to contain! What, were you afraid that if one of you liked me that the whole ship of brotherhood would go down? You know what… don’t even answer that. Just give me my keys, so I can go.”

“You’re not leaving, Riley.” Ace’s voice had the commanding tone he always used to make something sound final.

“The hell I’m not. Give me my keys, Ace.” I stalked towards him, hell-bent on physically hurting him if he didn’t give me what I wanted.

“No. I think you need to sit down before you fall down,” he said, shaking his head.

“I don’t care what you think, Ace.”

Ace waited until I was about a foot away and tossed my keys to Josh. I shoved past him and set my sights on Josh. His eyes rounded, and he looked past me to where Ace stood. I felt my body waver, so I stopped and steadied myself the best I could.

“Give me my keys, Josh.”

“Riley, why don’t I help you inside? You can get some rest, and we can talk about this in the morning.” He talked to me as if trying to calm a spooked wild animal.

“There is nothing left to say. Please give me my keys.” The sob I’d been trying to contain broke past my lips, and I clamped my hand over my mouth to keep myself from doing it again.

“If you want to go home so bad, I’ll drive you there.” Ace brushed past me and gestured for Josh to toss him my keys. “Go get in the truck, Riley.”

There was no point in arguing with him. Ace wouldn’t take my shit, not like the rest of them did. I think out of all of them, Ace and I knew each other the best. And I knew without even looking at him that he meant what he said. It was either stay there or let him drive me. I turned my back on Josh, Mark, Aiden, and Eli and walked around to the passenger side of my truck and got in, slamming the door hard enough to make the cab of the truck rock in place.

Ace slid in behind the wheel, turned the key, pulled the knob for the headlights, and shifted into drive. I sat with my back to him and watched the side mirror, angry at the five faces that watched us drive away, and hoping that wouldn’t be the last time I saw them. I was pissed, sure, but they were like brothers, and that was what hurt the worst.

Ace waited for a few minutes before he spoke. “I know you’re hurt…”

A strained laugh was my only reply.

“Come on, Riles. Do you even know how bad we feel for hurting you?”

Ace swerved to miss a dip, which told me that he was paying more attention to me than he was the road.

“If you’re gonna drive like that, you should’ve just let me take myself home.” I clutched at the door handle and hissed with the jolt of pain that ran up my back.

“You can’t drive with the medication Eli gave you. Even you know better than that.” Ace slowed the truck and shifted in his seat, as he rolled his window down. The warm night air felt good as it pushed through the cab and whipped my hair around.

My thoughts cleared a little, as I was hit with the reality that Ace had suckered me into letting him drive me home. “You did this on purpose.” I turned on the bench seat and reached out to smack him on the arm.

His hand caught mine, keeping me from snatching my hand back. The truck slowed, and Ace pulled onto the shoulder.

“Riley, can you just stop? Just for tonight, can you try to look at both sides of this? Do you know how long we agonized over you knowing the truth? Do you know how freaked out we’ve been that you’d find out about it tonight? We’ve been on pins and fucking needles for days now. We’ve been tied up in knots over what you’d think or do because of it.”

I looked away. I didn’t want to see the truth in his eyes, the raw hurt that was reflected there. I wasn’t that important. I was just me, a girl lucky enough to have some really amazing guy friends who were my support system for as long as I could remember. They should have left it alone, left me out of their brotherhood, and just accepted me as Riley, the girl who was a good friend and that was all.

When I didn’t turn back and answer, Ace put the truck in drive again and pulled back onto the road.

The worst part was that Ace’s words made me think. They made me pick apart everything he said and analyze it for the truth. So what, they decided to protect me? Didn’t any brother or best friend do that? And so what, they at one point thought that they loved me. It couldn’t have been love, because love, real love, makes you crazy and selfish. You wanted to be with that person so badly that you forsook the consequences. You jumped in with both feet, hoping that you’d find yourself sinking so deep inside the other person that you welcomed drowning with open arms.

Ace’s voice broke the silence. “Aiden and Eli were the first to admit how they felt about you the summer between eighth and ninth grade. Do you remember that summer?”

My mind shifted back to those days. Aiden and Eli had started to pick at each other and at one point, they were always trying to show each other up. That didn’t mean anything though, right? They were boys. Didn’t boys always feel the need to one-up each other like some kind of male dominance thing?

Ace took my silence in stride, giving me a few minutes to process what he’d said. “Then Jared figured out what the deal was when he made a comment about how much you’d grown up that summer, and Mark just about broke his nose.”

A flash of Jared popped into my thoughts. He’d said they’d been wrestling before I’d got out to the cabin. Looking back on the memory, I thought about how everyone had acted that day. They’d been broody and snarled a lot at each other. Again, I’d just passed it off.

“And then right before we started school, you and I were out helping Old Man Willis, and there was something about you. I don’t know if it was your laugh or the fact that you’d just witnessed a colt being born for the first time, but you turned to me, and the sunlight hit the side of your face, and I swear it was like… You smiled at me. That was all it took. You had me from that damn moment on. None of us have been the same. I knew right then and there that you’d be our undoing if we didn’t do something about it. You meant too much to all of us to let our feelings get in the way of the friendship we have with you. You were too important to us. It was my idea and my fault that you’re so upset, Riley. Be mad at me, but please, don’t turn your back on them.”

I gripped the door handle tight and fought to control my voice. “Ace, please tell me that they’ve gotten over me. Please tell me that I’m not going to have to walk away from them, because I can’t hurt them. It would kill me if I hurt them.”

“Riley, all of that…” he said, jerking his thumb towards the back window of my truck. “All of it was years ago. They’ve all come to terms with how they feel. Most of them were over it within the first week of high school. We shoulda never done that… opened that stupid box with you there. It would have saved all of this from coming out. It would have been buried in the past where most of it remains.”

“What do you mean by most of it?” I wanted to recall my question back after I asked it. It was like I just wanted to see how far I could dig myself and the situation into the ground. They were all going their separate ways—we were all supposed to be going our separate ways after graduation. How had things got so turned upside down and sideways? How did I allow myself to fall so deep into the feelings I had for Ace? He was supposed to be the one who’d be around the most. He was going to be just up the road, like always, when I came back on college breaks. What the hell was wrong with that? Nothing and everything now.

“…Riley.”

I only caught my name. Ace had said something, and I missed it because I was too busy mentally kicking my own ass. Beating myself up on everything that I’d thought was a truth, but ended up being a lie. The last four years had been an illusion.

Ace’s hand slid along my jaw, and he stood in front of me. When had he stopped the truck and how did I get out?

“Riley, please baby, you have to breathe.” He forced my eyes to meet his, as he cupped my face and looked down at me. My chest tightened and ached, as I heaved to collect a breath that wasn’t making it down into my lungs.

“Riley, focus on me, look at me… I’m right here with you. You have to calm down.” His face wavered in front of me, and I caught a glimpse of true fear. I blinked once, twice, and static filled the inside of my head—like an antenna TV with its volume turned up as far as it would go.