Ruin(20)

Ways to live, I read.
My heart clenched in my chest. Did she know about me?
1. Kiss a hot guy. 2. Go skinny dipping. 3. Finish one fruity drink with the little umbrella. 4. Read Pride and Prejudice all the way through. 5. Learn how to swim. I paused. “You don’t know how to swim?”
Kiersten’s eyes flickered to the ground so I kept reading.
6. Make two real friends. 7. Get off my antidepressants. So I’d been right about one thing. She was depressed, but why? What girl, as perfect as Kiersten, would be depressed?
8. Go bungee jumping. 9. Eat cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving and try to eat a beet. 10. Fall in love. 11. Get heart broken. 12. Fall in love anyway. I could help her! Oh, not with all of them. I mean, she couldn’t fall in love with me. I wouldn’t let her. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us, and she was eighteen. I sighed and folded the paper back in half.
“So?” She twisted that glorious red hair around her fingers. “What do you think?”
“Let’s do it.”
Her face lit up like a Christmas tree. Before I knew what was happening, she’d charged toward me and wrapped her arms around my neck. Um, if that was the response I was going to get for helping her with a silly list, I was going to freaking buy her her own island before I… The thought died in my head. Ironic.
“You mean it? It’s not weird? I’m not weird?”
I kissed her cheek. “Not weird, and I did tell you I wanted to help you with all things crazy, right?”
She nodded. A piece of lush red hair fell across her face meeting her flushed cheek like a caress.
“Good.” I kissed her cheek again. Mainly because I could. “I say we can get most of this done before Thanksgiving.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.” I helped her stand. “You know… minus the whole falling in love part.”
Kiersten laughed. Damn, I loved that sound. “Right, well, I figured go big or go home.”
“My kinda girl.” With a wink, I put the paper back on her desk. “Now put on a shirt so guys don’t lust after you. We, my dear, are going for a run.”




Chapter Sixteen

At least running next to him meant I wasn’t running from him, that was progress… right?

Kiersten
When Wes said we should go running, I mistakenly thought he meant jog. You know, as in go kinda slow, not like a bat out of hell.
The guy wasn’t even talking.
But he was sweating.
So I guess it was a good trade off, especially considering he’d opted to run without a shirt. I, however, had to look much less than sexy as I gasped for breath next to him.
“We’re crossing something off your list right now, you know,” he said in a perfectly normal voice.
My side sliced with pain as I wheezed out, “Oh yeah, what?”
“You want off your anti-depressants.”
“So you’re…” I coughed. “Trying…” Holy crap I was going to pass out. “…to kill me?”
“Negative.” He chuckled. Seriously. How. Was. He. Breathing? “Studies show that hard exercise, the kind that evokes physical pain, actually releases happy chemicals in your brain which heal emotional as well as physical pain. Kind of like a drug. Running is the quickest and most efficient way to get those happy chemicals in your body. You start running, and I guarantee that you’ll feel better, possibly good enough to go off your drugs.” He stopped running. Thank God.
I bent over and held up my hand. “I need a minute.”
He patted my sweaty back and chuckled. “The thing is, Kiersten, drugs aren’t bad. They’re there to help you.”
“They give me nightmares.”
“So sleep with me.”
“They make me feel weak.” I exhaled another breath.
“Only because you’re looking at it the wrong way.”
I waited for his usual wisdom. Seriously, was the guy a shrink in another life?
“Just because you need help to cope doesn’t make you any less strong. The truly weak people in this life are the ones who can’t admit they need help. They’re the ones who can’t admit that they can no longer go at it alone. Those are the people who are weak. By asking for help, by taking help, you’ve just admitted your weakness and in that, you find your strength. The weak of the world are those who think they’ve got it all figured out and flaunt it to others.”
I paused a minute and then looked up. He was grinning from ear to ear.
“When did you get so smart?”
Wes shrugged as a bead of sweat ran down his jaw. “Lots of therapy. Believe me. You can’t go to therapy your whole life and not walk away with at least a little good advice.”
I snorted. “Clearly I need to switch therapists.”
“Great, because I take appointments, and dates are my currency, so pay up.”
“Friends don’t date.”
He squinted against the sun and laughed. “Sure they do.”
I bit down on my lip and told my heart to stop doing cartwheels across my chest. “That wasn’t on my list.”
“The date is.”
“Is it?” I smiled. I couldn’t help it. He was a freaking expert at peeling back all of my carefully erected walls.
“This weekend. Friday. You and me. Date.”
I looked away, trying to at least make it appear like I wasn’t ready to jump all over him and scream yes in his face. Of course, the guy had girls throwing themselves at him. Just walking with Wes got me weird stares and gaping looks from the entire female population.