Page 81 of Wild Hearts

“Am I what?”

“Are you happy with your life?”

“Of course I am,” I manage to choke out.

Brady’s humourless laugh and intense stare lock me into place as he comes over to stand in front of me “I’ve always known when you’re lying, Rookie.” His voice is raw and gravelly. “Your cheek twitches, right here.” He reaches up and runs his fingers down the side of my face, causing me to shiver involuntarily.

“I’m not lying,” I whisper, but the fight in me is gone. I don’t know if it’s a result of Brady seeing straight through me, or the car accident, or both, but my emotions finally overwhelm me and I drop to the ground, wrapping my arms around my knees as tears fall freely down my cheeks.

Brady takes a seat at my side, wrapping his arms around my shoulders as I bury my head against his chest desperate for comfort. “I’m so sorry, Rookie. I’m so, so sorry.” He runs his hands along my back in soothing circles. “For my behaviour back there, for Ivy, for the way I treated you last year. For just now, for everything. But I want you to know, I’m not going to stop fighting for you.” He draws in a shaky breath. “How the hell did we end up here?”

A sob rips from deep within my chest as I think about everything that happened after I walked out on Brady last year. He was supposed to be the one I took to the formal. If he had been, then maybe I wouldn’t be so broken. I was kidding myself earlier. I’m not a survivor... I’m a mess.

“Shh... It’s all going to be okay.”

“No, it’s not,” I cry into his white shirt, cringing at the black mascara stains already the fabric. “It’s not going to be okay. I’m broken, Brady. He broke me.”

Brady’s body tenses and he leans back, fitting his hand under my chin so he can tilt my head up to look at him. “Who broke you?”

I pull my bottom lip between my teeth and shake my head. I try to look away, but he doesn’t let me.

“Who did this to you, Rookie? Who broke you?”

I’m a sniffling, sobbing mess. “I can’t,” I whisper.

“Wren, please.” Brady’s voice cracks. He may have been drunk and high at the Baptism, but something he saw in me sobered him up. “The guy back there, Tarshia’s brother, I saw your face when you saw him. What did he do to you?”

“It wasn’t him,” I manage to say before I break down again, failing to catch my breath as large sobs rack my body.

Brady stops pressing me, holding me tight and rocking us back and forth. I don’t know how long he holds me for, but eventually my sobs turn to hiccups and I suck in a couple of deep breaths to calm myself down. He digs into his pocket and pulls out a silver serviette from the Baptism, using it to wipe my face.

“Come on.” Brady pulls me to my feet, keeping his arm around my shoulders as he opens the boot of his car, grabbing a picnic blanket and a Blue Haven Surf Club hoodie. He moves to the driver’s door, winding up the windows and taking the keys out of the ignition, before locking the car.

“What are you–”

He shakes his head, slipping the hoodie over me and pressing his lips to my forehead as I breathe in his familiar scent.

I let him pull me into the treeline. He moves slowly as I navigate the brush in my heels. After a couple of minutes, we come to a wire fence. He lets go of me, bending down to pull the wire apart enough that I can climb through. There are no trees on this side of the fence. The salty wind whips at my face. I jump slightly as he steps up beside me, taking my hand in his. We make our way down the sand dune to the beach below. It’s less windy down here, and Brady leads me in between two cliff faces. He indicates for me to sit, and I do, my cheeks burning as he sits down behind me, pulling me against him and wrapping the picnic blanket around us.

I’m locked in his embrace, and for the first time in a long time, I feel safe. I rest my head against his chest, staring out at the angry ocean in front of us. White caps roll into shore, roaring as they attack the beach before rolling back out to sea. It’s oddly comforting.

Brady doesn’t say anything, but I know he’s waiting for me to start talking. I’m not sure I’m ready to tell him what happened. We sit there in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

“It’s always been you, Rookie,” he finally murmurs into my hair. “Since the moment you skipped across the road in your pale blue tank top and denim cut-offs with your hair in those two braids. You took my breath away. I was a goner.”

“You always teased me about my braids,” I whisper, a smile playing on my mouth. “You said they made me look like Pippi Longstocking.”

Brady groans. “Didn’t your mum ever tell you that if a boy teases you, he likes you?” He presses his lips into the back of my head, causing my heart to flutter. “Besides, you were my sister’s friend and she never would’ve let me hear the end of it. I was immature and scared, I kept you at a distance so you wouldn’t know.”

“There were all those other girls... every summer...”

“Jeez, Rookie,” he says with a laugh that rumbles through his chest. “You make me sound like... like Jordan. There weren’tthatmany girls.”

He nudges my shoulder so that I turn and look up at him, a wanton fire blazing in his emerald eyes.

“You were twelve years old when we first met. I was fourteen. I had to wait for you to be ready, and every spring I would work myself up into a panic. What if this was the year your parents decided to stop bringing you to Blue Haven? What if I never saw you again? Those were some heavy thoughts for a teenage boy. So, I thought if I could only get over you then everything would be fine. Only it wasn’t, because all I ever did was compare all those girls to you. You were my standard, and you set the bar ridiculously high. No other girl held a candle to the way you made me feel.”

My cheeks flush as Brady runs his tongue over his bottom lip. Our eyes lock on each other, and his head moves closer to mine, but when we get close enough to be share the same breath, I turn my head back to the water, leaving his soft, warm lips to brush against my cool cheek.

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