Faster We Burn

chapter Twenty-eight

Stryker

I let her kiss me, and she let me kiss her back as I cried, bitter tears and regret tears and happy tears. There were so many emotions flooding my mind that I was afraid I was going to burst with them. The world felt like it was about to end.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” I said, finally pulling away from her sweet lips. I had to get this all out. It had been slowly killing me.

“Shh, there’s nothing to be sorry for. Granted, I’m not thrilled you had sex with her, but it’s not going to make me stop loving you. And it’s not your fault what happened to her. How could you possibly think that was your fault?” She shook me a little, as if trying to shake the thought out of my head.

I led her to the couch and sat her down, telling her the whole story. About how I’d slept with Ric and the entire time I’d thought of Katie, and how Ric had been threatening to tell on me and how she’d showed up and the awful things I’d said to her and…now she was dead. I could never take those words back. They were the last I’d said to her, and that would never change.

She stayed in my lap as I talked, stroking my hair and listening in silence. It felt good to hold her, to have something to ground me while I talked, slicing the words out with the sharpest of knives. They came, little bleeding chunks that left holes, and pain behind. Finally, I was done and we both listened to the silence that filled the room.

“Blame is easy, isn’t it? Blaming yourself, blaming someone else,” she said, resting her head in the perfect spot on my shoulder. It felt like had been made just for her.

“I wouldn’t say it was easy.”

“Maybe easy isn’t the right word. Maybe…it’s like you want to do something, and blame is the easiest path to find. It’s simple, and it gives you something to do. Something to focus on, because the reality is harder.”

“I think you’re right.” I pulled my fingers through her hair. “Thank you for saving me.”

“I didn’t save you. If anyone has gotten saved, it’s me. That day in the hospital, you were…you were everything I needed. I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for you.” She took the hand that wasn’t in her hair and kissed it.

“How about we just agree that we saved each other?” She tilted her head up.

“Deal?”

“You and me,” I said.

“No space.”

“Always.” She kissed my lips and I believed her. Believed in us.



***



For the second time in two months, I attended a funeral. Ric’s was smaller than Mr. Hallman’s, and there were significantly more piercings and tattoos present. This time, though, I had a beautiful girl by my side, her hand in mine.

Things are always sadder somehow, when someone young dies. Trish was a wreck again, but she had the whole gang holding her up, and I saw her chatting with some guy in the parking lot afterward. She was smiling and not crying anymore, which was what made me look, even more than the fact that she was talking to a guy.

“Who’s that?” Katie whispered to me.

“Um, I think that’s Ric’s stepbrother, or cousin or something.” I remembered seeing him with her family.

“He’s cute,” she said, looking him up and down. He had electric blue curly hair, which clashed with the crisp black suit he was wearing. I watched Trish talk to him, putting her hand on his arm and laughing.

“Oh my God, is she laughing?” Simon said, letting his eyes leave Brady’s for one second.

“Should we call someone?” Will said, putting his coat on Audrey’s shoulders, despite her assurances that she wasn’t cold. “Like, maybe there’s radiation in her apartment and it’s caused a brain tumor that is altering her personality. Or maybe it’s aliens.”

“You always think it’s aliens,” Lottie said, rolling her eyes. “Have you ever thought of the fact that she might just be attracted to him? That has been known to happen every now and then.” She gave Zan a wink and he gave her one back. “I think it’s romantic, in a weird way. Has Nicholas Sparks written a book where the couple meets at a funeral?”

“No, but I think there was a movie. You made me watch it once,” Will said, snapping his fingers. “You know, with that British guy and the hair.”

“Hugh Grant?” Katie said.

“That’s it,” Will said, snapping his fingers again.

“Well anyway, I think it’s great,” Katie said. “There’s a lid for every pot.”

“Do you want to be the lid or the pot, baby?” Simon said to Brady.

“Whichever one you don’t want,” he said, giving Simon a kiss as we continued to watch Trish.

“You think she knows we’re staring at her?” Lottie said. A second later, Trish turned a little, as if to brush her hair back and held her middle finger in our direction.

“Guess that answers that question,” I said, as we all looked in different directions. “You ready to go?” I said to Katie.

“I think so. How you holding up? No new attacks of guilt?”

“Just a little one. Nothing major.”

“I might have something that can help with that,” she said, shoving her arms into my coat and looking up at me.

“Oh, really? A cream, or a pill or something?”

“Ah, no. It involves you…and me…and no clothing.”

“I think I can work with that,” I said, kissing her.

I couldn’t believe how she’d accepted everything with Ric. I knew it bothered her, but she did her best not to let it. We hadn’t really talked about it since, but I knew we needed to. I still had moments, especially in the middle of the night, when I would wake up hating myself for being so happy with Katie, or replaying my last moments with Ric.

Katie suggested I go to her therapist, and I made an appointment. It wasn’t going to solve everything, but maybe it could help make things better. She was still having a hard time dealing with her dad’s death. I knew she carried around the bag of his ashes in her purse because I’d seen it once when she was searching for some gum, but I hadn’t confronted her about it. We both needed more time.



***



Time passed, as it always does. The first snowfall bathed the world in white silence and made driving an even more dangerous exercise, and soon it was time for Christmas.

Katie and I hadn’t talked about what we were doing, or more exactly, what I was doing. It was one of the things we’d been avoiding.

“Are you going to sing tonight?” I asked her as we set out the trays of snacks she’d made for Band. She’d come a few times, but I hadn’t been able to convince her to sing again. Ric had left a hole and no one seemed ready to fill it yet.

“I don’t know,” she said, setting out a few plastic cups. She had practically moved in, but I wondered what she would say to making the arrangement more permanent. Lottie didn’t stay much in her dorm room either, so it seemed pointless to pay for it when they were both living other places.

“It seems…I don’t know.” She shrugged.

“No one is going to think that you’re trying to be a fill-in.”

“It just doesn’t seem right.”

“We’ll put it to a vote.”

“Stryker,” she said, giving me a look. “I don’t want you to make a big deal out of it.”

“And I don’t want you to hide it anymore. You have a beautiful gift and I just want you to share it with everyone.”

She came over and put her hands on my shoulders. “Did you read that off a greeting card?”

“Damn. You’ve discovered my secret. I get all my words of wisdom from Hallmark,” I said, kissing her cheek.

“Your secret is safe with me,” she said, moving her face so our lips met. A crashing sound downstairs announced the arrival of the rest of The Band.

“Showtime,” I said.



Katie



Things had been more than somber with everyone since Ric’s death, but nobody really liked to talk about it. It had hit them all hard, especially Allan.

“Hey, how are you?” I said as he came up the stairs, hauling a guitar case and a bottle of alcohol. Great. That was just what we needed. A bunch of sad drunk people.

“I’m good, Pink, how you doing?” He gave me a one-armed hug and a tight smile.

“Stryker wants me to participate tonight, but I don’t know if I’m up for it,” I said as Perry, Zoey and Theo came up the stairs behind him.

“Why not? From what I heard that one time, you’ve got pipes.”

“I didn’t think it was really appropriate. You know, given the circumstances.” Baxter had left the group after everything with Ric. Stryker had talked to him, and he said it was just too hard. He’d really loved her.

“Oh come on. If not now, when?” He patted my shoulder and went to set up with everyone else.

“You ready?” Stryker said, putting his violin under his chin. He swapped out his instruments frequently, and he’d been in a violin mood as of late. I claimed my spot next to him on the couch as everyone else caught up and set up their own.

“How about we start off with requests tonight for a change?” Stryker said, swiping his bow across the strings. “Anyone?”

“How about a duet,” Allan said, staring pointedly at me. “You two.” He pointed at us with his guitar pick. “Mads Langer, ‘Beauty of the Dark’, duet. You up for it?”

I looked at Stryker, but he didn’t look surprised.

“What a good idea, Allan. I’m mad I didn’t think of it myself.” Stryker turned slowly to face me, a grin on his face. Oh, he so planned this. He’d played the song for me a few days ago, and I’d loved it so much that I’d been listening to it ever since and humming it under my breath.

“You set me up,” I said, shoving him a little.

“Hey, anything to hear that gorgeous voice of yours.” I looked around and everyone else looked guilty.

I pointed at all of them. “You all suck, by the way.”

That response elicited laughter just as we heard footsteps on the stairs before Trish walked through the door with the blue-haired cousin/stepbrother from the funeral. I nearly choked when I saw that they were holding hands.

“Sorry we’re late,” she said, blushing. The guy, who was still nameless, gave us all a little two-fingered wave.

“Hey, that’s my bad. I’m Max.”

“Nice to finally meet you, Max,” Stryker said, and it wasn’t my imagination that he gripped his violin extra hard. Haha. Protective big brother strikes again.

“That’s my brother, Stryker. You can ignore him. I know I do,” Trish said, leading Max into the room and making the other introductions.

“This is Katie,” she said when she got to me. I stuck my hand out and he shook it, his eyes widening at the mention of my name.

“So this is Katie. You were right,” he said, turning toward Trish and putting his arm over her shoulder. “She does wear a lot of pink.” She shrugged and he gave her a kiss on the forehead.

I always thought Will was crazy for thinking about alien abductions or radiation poisoning, but I was beginning to suspect that Trish either had a concussion, or she’d swapped personalities with some other girl. That was the only plausible explanation for this behavior.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, watching Trish’s personality shift. Oh, she was going to dish later.

All of us had made an attempt to get her to spill about Max, but until now she wouldn’t even give us his name or speak about him in any way.

“I hope we’re not intruding. Just…keep doing what you were doing. We’ll be over here,” Max said after the introductions, taking a seat on the floor and pulling Trish down after him. She settled against him, and they shared a secret smile.

I gave Stryker a look, and he was giving Trish the Grant Glare. I usually only saw it on her face, but now he wore it like a favorite, well-worn t-shirt.

“Hey,” I said, poking him in the ribs. “Your overprotective is showing.”

He turned off the glare when he looked at me.

“I don’t like him,” he hissed at me. “He’s…got blue hair.”

“Yeah, you can never trust those blue-haired guys. As opposed to those guys who bleach their hair.”

He looked at me and I tried to do the eyebrow raise, but I didn’t think I got it quite right.

“Okay, okay.” Everyone else was sort of watching us and also watching Trish and Max, who were in their own little world.

“So, we ready to do our duet?” I was willing to go along with it if it would take some of the heat off Trish. I had to poke him in the chest to get him to focus. Damn. I’d never seen him like that. For all the fighting he and Trish did, I had no idea that he’d be like that when Trish finally found a guy. Yet another side of the mysterious Stryker Abraham Grant.

“Let’s rock it,” I said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. It took a second, but he set his violin under his chin as a hush fell over the room. Why had I agreed to do this again? I was about to stand up and say “never mind” when Stryker started playing, and I had no choice but to start singing.

Stryker came in with me and even without practicing, we followed each other’s lead and melded our voices together. It was like making love with him. In some ways it was just as intimate. Another way for us to have no space.

We finished and the room was silent. Then Allan started a slow clap that turned into a round of applause complete with whoops and whistles. I blushed and Stryker put down his violin so he could give me a steamy kiss. I had to pull away before it went any further. Even with a room full of people, I was ready to rip his clothes off and have my way with him.

“Get a room!” someone yelled, and we broke apart.

“Wanna do another?” he said, nibbling on his bottom lip.

“Sure. Can I pick this time?”

“As long as it’s not that Beaver kid.”

We all laughed.

“Nope. How about ‘Stay’?” It was a song that he’d gotten from my collection. I wasn’t the only one who needed a musical education. I’d widened his range as well, and that was one of the songs I’d caught him playing more than once. It was also a real duet, with me taking the Rihanna part and him taking the Mikky Ekko parts. Stryker’s and my voices were completely different from Rihanna’s and Mikky’s, but no one seemed to care.

We got another round of applause, and shared another sexy kiss.

“Okay, that’s enough of that,” Allan said, throwing an empty can at us. “Time for some real music instead of singing intercourse.” Everyone else took up their instruments and started playing a new song, and I sat back and watched Stryker do his thing again, but kept one eye on Trish and Max. She caught me watching and gave me a wink. Oh, we were soooo going to have a little chat.

They played a few songs and then it was time for a smoke break and I nabbed Trish before she could escape. Max gave me a kind of scared look and stuttered something about enjoying secondhand smoke and scurried away.

“You have some serious explaining to do, Trishella.” Instead of slapping me for using her real name like she probably would have a few weeks ago, she just watched Max walk away.

“What?” she said, tearing her eyes away from his back to finally pay attention to me. The girl was completely gone on him.

I snapped my fingers in front of her face.

“I said that you have some serious explaining to do. When and how being the most pressing questions in my mind right now.” She motioned me into the kitchen so we could have some privacy. Stryker had gone out with the smokers to get some secondhand. He was still having trouble quitting, but he’d get there. Plus, he’d probably seen that Max had gone outside and was interrogating him. He was probably about to start the waterboarding any moment.

Trish leaned against the counter and looked down, a little smile on her face.

“Honestly, I don’t know. It just…happened. I was so upset at the funeral and he came over and made some stupid comment that made me want to punch him, and then I just started crying again and he hugged me. Out of the blue. And I let him, and it felt nice. He started talking about how he’d lost his best friend when they were kids and he knew what it was like. And I don’t know…I just started talking and he talked and we’ve been talking ever since.” She shrugged.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone about him?”

“For the same reason you kept the whole Stryker thing in the dark, Miss Kettle.” Oh yeah. I had done that. “I just didn’t want a big deal made out of it, which is exactly what happened anyway, but at least I got to give Max some warning ahead of time.”

Half of the smoking crowd came back, loud and boisterous, but Stryker and Max weren’t a part of the group.

Trish looked concerned. “God, I hope Stryker isn’t trying to beat the shit out of him. Max is a third degree black belt in Tai Kwan Do, so I’m pretty sure my brother would be shit out of luck.”

“I don’t know. Never underestimate a brother trying to protect his little sister.”

“He always does that,” she said, tossing an empty cup into the trash. “But it’s like he doesn’t want me to do anything. Even when he’s screwing things up, he refuses to let me do the exact same things he’s doing himself.”

“He doesn’t want you to make the same mistakes he has. My sister’s the same way.” Kayla always used to catch me sneaking out of the house, usually when she was doing the exact same thing. She might have been my parents’ golden child, but that didn’t mean she had been absolutely perfect. She just hadn’t gotten caught.

“There they are,” she said as Stryker and Max came back inside. Neither of them had a black eye, and they were talking at a normal volume.

“Everything looks okay,” I said.

“I’d better check,” she pushed herself away from the counter and went over to Max, putting her arm around his waist. His arm went around her automatically, like he wasn’t even thinking about it. As if it was natural.

Stryker said something and then shook his head, and I saw that he was smiling. He shook Max’s hand and looked around the room, stopping when he saw me.

Max and Trish went to go sit on the floor again and Stryker came over to me.

“Please don’t say you threatened him,” I said.

He pretended to be appalled, putting his hand to his chest.

“I am shocked that you think I would do such a thing.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Yeah, okay, Stryker. What did you say to him?” He came over and put his arms around me.

“I just said that it was about time my sister trusted someone enough to let them get past her incredibly thick and high walls and I hoped he was worthy of it, even though I doubted it. But I said I’d be watching him.”

I smacked him in the chest.

“If you didn’t say the last part, the first part would be a lot sweeter. Look at her,” I said, turning both of us so we could see Max and Trish together. He’d pushed some of her hair back and she smiled as she told him something.

“She’s happy.”

“I just hope she stays that way,” he said, pulling me close. “I don’t want her to have a hard time. I want life to be better for her, you know?”

“Yeah, I do,” I said, pushing myself up to give him a kiss. “You’re a good brother, Stryker Grant.”

“You’re a good girlfriend, Katherine Ann Hallman. And a good kisser, and a good singer, and you’re really good at giving—”

I put my hand on his mouth, because I knew what else he was going to say I was good at, and I didn’t want anyone else to overhear.

“That’s not for you to advertise, or else I’ll never do it again.” I removed my hand and gave him a glare for good measure. The threat was enough to get him to press his lips together as if he was sealing them.

“Are we gonna play now?” Allan called as he tried to sit next to Zoey, and she pushed him away with disgust.

“Coming,” he said, letting go of me. “Which is what you’ll be doing later tonight after everyone leaves. Over and over again,” he whispered before walking back to the couch.

Damn him. He played dirty.

It took me a second to get my legs to work so I could get back to the couch and it was a relief to sit down, even though sitting next to Stryker made me really uncomfortable in certain areas. It was torture for the rest of the session, but the sweetest kind.