11. CODY

CODY

M ost of the day was a blur. I spent a few hours training out the kinks in my shoulder with Silas watching my every move. The recovery had been hell so far. Without drugs to dull the burning roar that vibrated through the stretched and bruised muscle, it was healing slower than we had initially estimated.

I’d be lucky if I were confident enough to play during spring camp.

But I wasn’t going to give up. I had made a promise.

New season, new Cael.

That was before Clementine smashed back into my life without remorse. Now, my thoughts strayed from healing, training, and school. All of a sudden I could only think of her, and it was going to drive me insane. As we pulled back up to the Nest, the truck engine dying was barely enough to distract me from the walking nightmare I’d suddenly found myself in.

The smell of lavender burned at my nose.

The sun felt too hot and the breeze was sticky on my skin as I wandered around to help Van bring the groceries in. He lifted two bags from the back of his truck in unison with me. We had gotten the stuff to make lasagna because it was one of the only meals the two of us knew how to make that was appropriate for a family dinner.

I shifted uncomfortably in my skin at the thought of sitting across a table from Clementine, with her thick brown hair, big doe eyes, and pouty smile. I sighed and bit down on my tongue to ground myself in reality as my mind wandered into dangerous territory.

I’ve dreamed of that night with her for seven years, never trying to replicate it with random partners but always chasing that high. I never found it. I came close with Dean, but there was still something missing. Longing, maybe? The explosion of young love that I had been so blind to until it was too late.

Mama had said it was for the best that it took us so long to realize, because it would have been a lot harder to leave her if we had. It was hard anyway.

My mind might not have been aware of it, but my heart had been in love with Clementine Matthews since we were born. Connected by a rough, invisible string, we had always been two halves of one whole.

I rubbed at the frayed bracelet on my wrist. Over the years I had patiently waited for it to fall off, for it to succumb to the abuse I put it through, but it never did. The small strands of thread held strong and outlasted every binge, every blackout, and every game.

“You alright?” Van asked, and when I looked over at him, we were standing in the kitchen.

I’m sleepwalking , I wanted to say to him.

“Do you ever…” I stopped trying to find the right words—ones that wouldn’t have him running to Ella or Arlo to tell them I was slipping or losing my mind. “Do you ever feel like you aren’t fully awake?”

He set the bags on the island and started removing the boxes from inside, his boyish face confused. Van was pretty, simple as that. He had shaggy brown hair that he kept tight on the sides and long in the back, massive honey-brown eyes, and a soft, inviting smile that made it impossible to hate him.

He licked his bottom lip as those too-kind-for-his-own-good eyes flickered up to me. His half-baked inner therapist was slipping out as he watched me with caution.

“Today has felt like one long nightmare or maybe a dream?” I slide a jar of sauce across the island, trying to organize my thoughts. “No matter what I do, I can’t jolt myself from it. It’s like I’m trapped inside without the option to wake up.”

“Maybe you just need a push?” He mumbled, dark strands of his hair falling against his forehead as he rounded the island toward me.

I laughed and shoved him off as he attempted to jostle me around .

“Seriously,” I said. “What do you do when things get too much?”

I couldn’t ask Dean these questions because he was what I did when things got too much, but after our interaction today, I felt that I was the last person he wanted to see or sympathize with. On occasion, more often than not… I felt bad for using him the way I did. Guilty feelings and shame crept in like they belonged there, but there was also so much love for Dean. It was messy, complicated, and ours.

“Talk to Zoey,” he sighed.

“I don’t have a Zoey.” I rolled my eyes and ground my teeth together. “No one has a Zoey,” I added with a smile when Van scowled at me.

The truth, for once, was that no one was like her, and Van was the luckiest bastard in the Nest next to Arlo. I rolled my tongue against my teeth and slid onto the counter, letting my feet swing lazily over the side.

“I’ve never seen you so doom and gloom .” Van shook his head and wiggled his long fingers in the air to look menacing. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

A pitiful, defeated laugh fell from my lips.

“Aside from the usual?” He added between turning the oven on.

“The reporter.” I stared at the bracelet on my wrist. “I know her.”

Van stopped what he was doing to look at me. “That’s right, Texas. So?”

“I know her,” I repeated, and leaned back against the island to stare at the lights hanging from the ceiling above.

“Holy shit,” Van swore under his breath and slapped my slack thigh a few times as he figured it out. “She’s that girl. She’s lavender girl.”

Lavender girl . I couldn’t help but giggle at the nickname. It had never been a secret that there was a girl back home; it was just a topic they all tip-toed around. It took nearly four years for me to turn her into a ghost and, when I finally did, she was nothing but a whisper between them.

But somehow she was still a poltergeist with the power to uproot my entire life with a flash of her smile. Frustration rumbled from me. I hadn’t thought I would ever get the pleasure of chasing the chaos and high she created ever again.

And now I didn’t know what to do with myself now the opportunity had arisen .

“Why is this a bad thing? Talk to me,” Van said, poking me with the end of a wooden spoon.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged, rolling my head to the left so I could see him.

“Cael Cody, at a loss for words. I never thought I’d see the day that anyone could make you silent.” Van laughed, but I didn’t find the statement very funny.

Clementine had my tongue all twisted and my feelings in knots like they hadn’t been in a very long time. I didn’t know where to start untying them as the emotions flooded me like a tidal wave. I was drowning in the past and the present all at once. My hope of rescue dwindled with every second she remained at arm’s length from me.

Having her inside the Nest was going to kill me.

“I just don’t know if she…” I sighed. “...wants me like that anymore?”

That was a lie.

I could still feel the electricity that licked like a live wire at the edge of a pool of water from our conversation earlier that day like it was fresh. There was so much left unsaid between us.

So much heartbreak, anger, lust, and need.

The confusing aspect was where to start.

“So talk to her, man. I’ve seen you talk your way out of, and into, about a thousand different situations with partners. What’s different about this one?”

“She sees through it.” I sat up. “Through all of it.”

There was no hiding from her, not really. She could feel the shift in the room between my father and me the second she laid eyes on us both. Clementine had always been intuitive to the people around her, as if she were feeling what they were feeling. I used to think she was reading my mind when I was a boy, but I realized how much of a a burden it was for her as we got older; to feel what everyone else was feeling so heavily all the time. I tried to hide those dark feelings from her on occasion, to protect her in whatever ways I could, but it never worked. She always saw right through my fake smile and mass-produced responses.

Van nodded and slapped a hand to my face. “Then you, my friend, are screwed.”

“Thank you, Mitchell. You’ve been so fucking helpful.”