The Falling (Brightest Stars, #1)(40)

“I think that’s okay,” I told him. “There are so many different religions . . . too hard to get people to agree on one thing. I think it’s okay to take a little time, learn a little more. Don’t you?” Such a heavy question, and wrapped in the most casual bow.

He sighed, blowing out a puff of air. I could hear the whisper of his words coming together but couldn’t quite make them out. The longer he sat on his opinion, licking slowly at his lips, chewing on his cheek, the more I anticipated his answer. Time melted as I waited.

“Thinking for yourself is better than being blindly led,” he said at long last. “I just want to be a good person. I know a lot of people inside and outside the church who are both bad and good. There’s so much out there that’s bigger than us . . . I’d rather focus on how to make things better than wonder how we got here in the first place. For now, at least.”

He sounded so sure. These were the deepest thoughts he had shared since we met.

A car door slammed, and my phone buzzed with a text from Elodie. She was going to someone’s house—someone named Julie—where all the wives, except her, would start their evening with a few drinks and catty conversation. I dimmed my screen and put my phone facedown on the concrete porch.

“I have a lot of shit to make up for before my life is over.” Kael’s confession startled me. His voice slipped a little at the end and the gravity of what he was saying ate at me. My throat burned and I swallowed, trying to dilute it, but it didn’t work. It was physically painful to think about the kinds of things Kael had seen at his age—at our age.

I wished I was someone who wasn’t so affected by the emotions around me. It would have been easier not to take on other people’s troubles, not to make them my own, but I’d always felt so much, ever since I was a child. I was always either burning or floating, moving from one extreme to another. “Karina feels things deeply,” my mother said of me. “She takes things to heart.”

Kael cleared his throat. I wanted so badly to ask him what he had to make up for, but I wanted him to tell me at his own pace, not because I asked. I could feel him next to me, brewing, but I kept my eyes on the sky, blinking and watching as blue swirled into orange. I pictured him with a gun strapped to his chest, a boyish smile. I didn’t know what he’d experienced over there, but that blank stare on his face . . . I had to say something.

“I don’t think it works like that. Your life isn’t a debt for someone else’s sins. You’re a good person, you deserve to be safe.”

My words fell short of all that I wanted to say, but I wanted him to feel everything I felt for him in that moment.

“Safe?” he asked, as the clouds drifted over us. “From who?”





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE




Somehow between our talks of gods and war, Kael accepted my invite to the party tonight. I was a little nervous for him and Austin to meet. My brother liked everyone, but I really wanted Kael to like him, and this house party probably wasn’t the best way to make that a reality. I drove there, and when we arrived I didn’t hear loud music or see bright lights as we pulled up. And nobody had spilled onto the lawn. That had to be a good sign.

“Doesn’t seem too bad,” I said.

The stately brick house was in the far corner of a quiet cul-de-sac, with a field at the back and other houses all around. I had to park on the street because three cars were already in the driveway—two of which I didn’t recognize. Plus, there was my dad’s van, an ugly white thing that he hadn’t touched in at least a year. I’d come to hate that van after ugly arguments and resentments that spilled over from the front seat displaced the happy memories of our one Disney road trip long ago.

My parents didn’t have typical husband-and-wife shouting matches. Even as a child I remember wishing for some of the honest anger I had heard in other families. Theirs was worse. My mom would use a cold, flat voice to deliver her punches. She hit hard, and she knew instinctively where to strike, how to make it hurt the most. I was a needy girl and wanted her anger and passion to reassure me that she cared. I think my dad wanted that, too, but she either couldn’t or wouldn’t give it. My dad and I both navigated her cold indifference the best we could.

Kael’s phone lit up in his hand. He glanced down and put it into his pocket. I felt important. Prideful as it was, I still felt it.

We were walking up the grass when someone I didn’t recognize came out of the house and walked toward the street. I saw Kael watch him until we were safely inside. It wasn’t anything obvious, a slight tilt of the head, an almost imperceptible scan of where this other guy was and what he was doing. It made me wonder what Kael had experienced, and what he might fear. I tried not to let it affect my mood, thinking about what he had seen in Afghanistan. I was sure that was the last thing he wanted to talk about at a party, the night before his birthday.

I led Kael into my dad’s house for the second time in a week. Brien had been there only a total of maybe three times during our entire four months of dating. He liked my dad . . . well, he liked trying to impress him while staring at Estelle’s boobs. She was new back then, her boobs, too.

Ugh Brien was the last person I should be thinking of. I looked at Kael to edge him back into my mind, but also to make sure he was still following me up the steps.