The Falling (Brightest Stars, #1)(27)

Opening Facebook on my phone, I went to Elodie’s friends list and typed in Kael’s name. Nothing came up, so I searched for him again. I changed my search to “Mikael Martin” and found a profile with fewer than one hundred friends, which seemed odd to me, but made sense for what I knew of him so far. I didn’t talk to 99 percent of the people I was “friends” with, but I still had almost a thousand. That seemed excessive, having a thousand people I never spoke to have access to me.

His profile picture was a group shot of Kael with three other soldiers. They were all dressed in ACUs and standing next to a big tank. Kael was grinning in the picture, maybe even laughing—that’s how bright his smile was. It was weird to see him like that, his arm around one of the guys. Maybe this was his level-ten smile that I had been wondering about? I zoomed in on it. My stomach tingled. I went back to his profile, but apart from his profile picture and Fort Benning, Georgia, I couldn’t get any information from his page at all. Everything was private. I almost asked to be his friend, but it felt stalkerish to send him a Facebook request while he was sleeping on a chair in my living room.

I clicked out of his profile and went onto Instagram to see if he had one, though somehow I knew he didn’t. I typed his name in and searched, but nothing came up. I went to Elodie’s page like I had on Facebook, and still nothing. So he wasn’t an Instagram kind of guy; I liked that. I closed the app and threw my phone to the empty side of the bed and sat up. It was so hot in my room that I was starting to think Elodie might have accidently turned on the heat instead of the air again. My throat was dry. I could feel sweat on the back of my neck when I tied up my thick, curly hair.

Kael and Elodie would both be sleeping in the living room, so I made sure I was quiet when I walked down the hallway and into the kitchen. I knew the floor plan of my house so well I could easily navigate every inch in the darkness with only a little guidance from the night-light plugged into the kitchen outlet.

I grabbed the jug of water out of the fridge and chugged it until I couldn’t anymore and my throat burned from the cold. Every night when I was a kid, my mom had brought me a cup of ice water to help me sleep. I stopped craving it a few months ago but still kept a jug in the fridge, just in case the need for that comfort returned. I closed the fridge and almost screamed when I saw Kael sitting at the kitchen table.

“Shit, you scared me.” I wiped my wet lips with the back of my hand. “Sorry if I woke you up. It’s so hot in here.”

“I was up.”

I took a step closer to him and it took his eyes raking down my body, down my rolled T-shirt to my stomach and my exposed thighs, to realize I was barely dressed. It was dark in the room, but he could definitely see at least the outline of my body. I pulled my shirt down, attempting to undo the knot I had tied at the hem.

“Why are you up? Were you just sitting here in the dark?”

Kael’s head tilted just a bit, like he was confused by what I was saying, and he looked down at my legs. I immediately felt a wave of insecurity, thinking about the dips of cellulite peppered across my thighs. He looked back up at my face.

“Can I have some of that water?” he asked.

I flushed, wondering how the hell I hadn’t noticed him sitting there as I made my way to my fridge and chugged water out of a plastic gallon jug.

I nodded and opened the refrigerator door. “It’s just tap water. I buy one of these”—I held up the jug labeled Spring Water—“every once in a while, and just refill it with tap water. So it’s not actually spring water.”

“I can handle tap water.”

His sarcasm surprised me. I smiled at him and he smiled back—also a surprise. He took the container from my hand and lifted it to his mouth without touching his lips. I hadn’t been able to see what he was wearing, or not wearing, in this case. He had taken his uniform jacket and tan T-shirt off, and camo pants hung so low on his waist that they revealed briefs I could almost read the label of but knew I shouldn’t try to. I looked back at his face as he took another drink.

“So why are you up? Getting used to the time difference?” I asked.

He handed back the jug and I took another swig. I was still hot, but the kitchen was much cooler than my bedroom. The cold tile felt good under my feet. I checked the thermostat just inside the living room, near the hallway. It was set to seventy, and it felt like seventy in here, just not in my room. Was I getting sick? I couldn’t afford to—literally.

“I don’t sleep much,” Kael finally answered.

“Ever?”

“Never.”

I sat across from him at the dark wood kitchen table.

“Because of where you just were?”

“Not your father’s house,” he said with a hint of irony, but with no trace of humor in his face. Not in the strong, straightforward set of his jaw. Not in his cloudy eyes that were bloodshot from not sleeping.

“Ha, ha.” I rolled my eyes, trying to stop my brain from imagining him in Afghanistan.

“War, of course.” His eyes were on his hands now, not my face. He licked his lips, allowing a small laugh to escape. “I wonder if I’ll just be saying that my whole life, you know, like the Vietnam vets I meet at the VA hospital. Still telling stories from fifty years ago.”

My stomach started to ache thinking about this quiet young man in a war zone, being woken up by shells or rockets or whatever terror he went through, while I complained and whined to myself over unimportant things and the little miseries of my life. Perspective was a bracing slap across the face.