Page 74 of Blade

“Babe.” I encircled my arms around her from behind.

Resting my chin on her shoulder, I whispered in her ear, “I’ve got you now.”

Chapter Seventeen

Beck

“Babe.” Blade wrapped his arms around me from behind. Resting his chin on my shoulder, he whispered in my ear, “I’ve got you now.”

I closed my eyes and sank back into his warmth as the first tear fell.

“Tell me about him,” Blade encouraged.

“I can’t even bring myself to say his name,” I cried. “How can I tell you about him?”

“It’s ok, start from the beginning. Where did you meet him?”

A chuckle escaped before I could stop it. “We met at school. We were seven years old, and he was the new kid. He told me years later he hated being the new kid. His family moved around a lot and with every new school, he would make new friends just to leave them less than a year later.”

I smiled at the memory.

“The first time I talked to him, he wouldn’t even tell me his name. Said he didn’t want any friends.”

I looked over my shoulder at him. “Kind of reminded me of how you got up and walked away when I said hi to you when we first met.”

He looked a little ashamed at that. “Sorry, babe, it was a bad day for me.”

“I told him I always got what I wanted because Grams told me I was te-na-sis. That was how I pronounced it when I was a kid.”

I turned around and looked at him.

“Can we sit down? This might take a while.”

I gave him a watery smile, and he pulled me over to sit in the grass.

“It was lunchtime, and he was sitting all alone. He told me he was too mean to have friends. That was when I enlisted Ryder to help me. Rachel was pretty quiet back then,” I added, thinking about how shy she was and how different she was now.

It must be Cash’s influence.

“We were relentless. Ryder and me. We didn’t give him the option of not being our friend. Once he finally gave in, we were like the four musketeers. We did everything together at school, lunch, recess. We even got in trouble together.”

I sat with my legs crossed and I reached over to pick a few blades of grass. Anything to distract me while I tried to get this out.

“He and I had a unique connection, though. Maybe it was because we both had a parent we hated. Whatever it was, it drew us together.”

Releasing a heavy breath, I steeled myself and continued.

“We started spending more time together outside of school. He would come to Grams’ house and hang out. Sometimes, when things got bad with his dad, he would sneak into my room and sleep in my bed with me.”

I took a minute to sift through my memories, deciding on which ones I wanted to share.

“His dad bought him a dirt bike. He had done something he needed forgiveness for and chose that as a grand gesture. I used to ride with him all over town. He used to bring me here, actually. We found that trail and rode up here one day. It was our spot. Whenever either of us needed cheering up, or to scream, we came up here. Sometimes, we just came up here to lie in the grass and watch the clouds. There were also times we would sneak up here at night and look at the stars.”

I peeked over at Blade to see how he was handling everything so far. He was just staring straight ahead. I wondered what he was thinking. I hadn’t even gotten to the bad stuff yet.

“Elementary school turned into middle school and before we knew it, we were in high school. We were still super close, but things were also different. He had noticed girls. I kept hoping he would notice me.”

“He noticed you, babe.”

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