The Falling (Brightest Stars, #1)(14)

He shrugged. “Yeah. My truck’s there.” He looked down at his uniform. “And all of my clothes.”

“But it’s so far from here to walk. Why don’t you call an Uber?”

He shrugged again.

Was he really going to walk three miles?

I looked at the digital clock on my dash: 7:06. I should be knocking on my dad’s door right now, but here I was, sitting in my driveway, debating with myself whether or not to offer him a ride to his company. We were both going to the same place, after all . . . well, depending where his company was—Fort Benning wasn’t as big as, say, Fort Hood, but it was spread out and took a while to get from one side to the other.

Without saying a word, Kael stood up straight, his upper body disappearing from view as he walked away. I called out for him again and leaned toward the passenger side, almost by instinct.

“Do you want a ride? I’m going through the West Gate—where’s your company?”

He leaned down again. “It’s near Patton, same gate, but I’m good. Thank you, though.”

I was a bit annoyed and surprised by his blunt response, so it took me a second to say anything.

“I’ll literally pass it on my way. I’m already late anyway, it won’t kill me to be a tiny bit later.” I said that, but I knew every second would count with my dad.

I could only see Kael’s hands, because they were no longer in his pockets. He was fiddling with his fingers, picking at the skin around his fingernails. An anxious tick? I could have watched him stand there for an hour, taking in the tiny bits of character he was giving me. My mouth was physically dry, desperately drinking in the smallest details, the freckle on the tip of his thumb.

The way he dug at his skin reminded me of my brother. He had skin peeling around every visible finger. Austin used to get so antsy during car rides, especially those to visit our mom in her apartment right after she’d moved out. She bounced from place to place and my brother’s hands bore the evidence of his pain and her instability. The first place on Clear Creek Road was right outside of Fort Hood . . . we ate frozen pizza off paper plates while my dad stood over us. The second one, only a block away from the first, was a little smaller and a little messier, and she said she lived alone but the soldier’s boots by the door said otherwise. By the time she was in the third and final apartment, with a handful of roommates she didn’t even try to hide, Austin had such thick scabs around every finger. One of Mom’s roommates walked in smoking a cigarette and offered it to my brother, who was sixteen at the time. Our mom and dad screamed at each other for so long that night that I fell asleep on Austin’s shoulder, and I woke up to my dad yanking open the car door and shouting that we were never, under any circumstance, to be around her without his supervision.

As I sat in the driveway, I shook my head, trying to jumble up the memories enough to lose them and stay present in this moment with Kael.

“Do you want a ride or not? I really have to get going,” I repeated my offer, annoyed at myself for persisting.

“Aren’t you already late? Elodie seemed pretty worried about you being late.” He leaned down to look at me and I noticed his eyes on my cell phone screen. “More worried than you, at least.”

I smiled sarcastically and plugged my phone into the cord connected to my car. “Are you going to get in or not? Last chance.”

He made eye contact with me and held it just a second too long. I looked at myself in the rearview mirror while I thought of something witty yet sarcastic that I might say as I drove off, leaving him in the driveway.

He changed my plan by trying to open the passenger door behind me. I pressed the lock button to prove a point.

“This isn’t an Uber,” I told him, only half joking, and unlocked the doors.

He walked around the car, opened the passenger door, and sat down next to me. This was different. Usually my only passenger was pint-sized Elodie, but here was this big guy sitting next to me with his knees touching the dashboard, smelling like my coconut body wash.

“You can adjust the seat,” I told him.

I put the car in reverse and my gear shift stuck for a second. It had been doing that lately. My reliable Lumina had been on this earth for more years than I had and was one of the few constants in life since I bought it for five hundred dollars on my eighteenth birthday. It was the first thing that was solely mine, and I didn’t ask for a penny from my dad.

I was the only one of my friends to have a job in high school, working part time and weekends as a server at a local pizza place. My small group of friends would complain, trying to pull me away from work to go to parties, to the lake, to smoke weed in the parking lot of the elementary school where we hung out. Yes, elementary school. We were mildly delinquent, but at least I could pay for my own delinquency. All of them relied on their parents for allowance, and all three of them had since moved away. One went to Kentucky for college, one to Colorado for a change of scenery and a more exciting life, and one to Kansas for a soldier who promised to love her forever.

“Ugh,” I groaned, and jiggled the gear, frustrated at my car and the lie of forever. No one could ever love someone forever. After all these years growing up, love itself was the biggest lie I’d been told throughout my life.

“Yeah, my car and my house are falling apart. I know,” I said, before Kael could.

He looked over at me, confusion clear on his face.