Chalk

18

Before I knew what had happened, I was flat on my back in the dust, the rock tumbling into the base of a gnarled tree beside me with a thud that shook the earth beneath my head. I could hear faint cursing, but only barely, my ears were ringing and my vision was wobbly and my hand still hurt, but now my arm hurt and my ankle hurt as well.

Edward’s face, obscured in falling hair was suddenly fish-eyed in my view.

“Are you ok?” he asked, hastily checking me for blood. Jasper’s face appeared above Edward’s, peering down at me and they both looked a little ashen. I coughed, my lungs coated in a fine sheen of dust, and struggled to sit up past Edward’s protests.

“I’m fine.” I pushed his hands away and closed my eyes against the spin until my head righted itself. My ankle was fucking throbbing and my arm was on fire. I gulped before I blinked my eyes open and found Edward less than a foot away, gripping his fists together and staring at me intently. He sighed heavily before exchanging a look with Jasper and before I knew what was going on, they were packing up.

“We don’t have to leave,” I told them.

They both looked at me like I was insane and continued on without responding.

Edward carried me the entire way back to the car, absolutely refusing to let me walk and getting more and more mad at me every second I fought him on it. He’d eventually threatened to knock me over the head and do it without my permission and I gave in under his piercing stare. Jasper shouldered all of the gear himself and followed us down the mountain, the sun starting to sink and the sky going pastel. I rested my head against Edward’s chest, his heart thumping agitatedly beneath my ear all the way back to the car.

The drive home was silent.

I’m sure we were all thinking the worst, the could-haves that only ever amounted to something terrible. That rock could have easily crushed one of us, could have left us for dead. I curled up in the back on top of one of the crash pads and dug a sweatshirt out of the jumble of gear and clothing to go fetal in. It was big enough for me to pull my knees up inside and even though it really hurt my ankle, the fabric smelled so much like Edward that it sort of distracted me from the pain. I lay there the entire drive home, watching the boy’s faces in the fleeting flashes of headlights. Edward looked furious, a scrape still bleeding down his temple from falling shrapnel. Jasper was staring out the window, his face hollowed out and, even though he hadn’t been hurt, I thought that maybe he had it the worst of all, having witnessed the action in every agonizing detail.

Suspended in a few bottomless moments of fear that he might lose one, or both of us.

We dropped him off in front of his house and watched him lope inside with his head hung. Edward drove to my house in silence and I didn’t move, still tucked up into his sweatshirt and full of unanswered panic. I stumbled from the car and he watched me take four limping steps toward my front door before I felt him rush up behind me and scoop me into the air. I stared at the pulse beating underneath his ear as he carried me inside and set me on my feet the moment we were in the door. I tottered on my aching ankle, slumping against the door to keep my balance as he strode into the hallway.

“You should have let me fall,” he ground out between his teeth. I’d heard that statement from him before. He paced in front of me, half-naked and agitated, his hands leaving traces of chalk everywhere he touched. His arms and face, his hair, dusted in white. He looked ashen even underneath the powder and mad enough to crush a stone in his bare fists.

“I was trying to spot you. I-”

“No!” he bellowed, rounding on me with his breath caught in his chest and his face livid. “I told that you’d only get hurt! I told you to stay back. You should have listened to me!”

“Why are you yelling?” I shuffled my feet to get the weight off my leg and tried to hide the bruise on my arm between my body and the door.

“Because I feel fucking responsible for you!” He launched his words at me like grenades, flaming red around the edges and breathing heavily.

“Why? Because I’m your Gabby?” I shot back at him and knew instantly that it was the wrong thing to say. His face hardened a million eons worth of age and he looked as ancient and imposing as some of those rocks we climbed together.

“No. It’s not that,” he snapped, jaw tight. “I don’t want to call you that anymore. I don’t want anyone to call you that.” He took four fast steps toward me, closing the space between us down to mere inches and I gripped the doorknob behind my back to keep myself up right. My hand screamed in protest, still sore and achy but I just gripped tighter. Set my toes back down on the tile and pressed them down hard enough to send a bolt of liquid fire clear to my hip.

Maybe the pain would keep my head on straight.

“That’s why you call me Sparkles,” I huffed, trying not to belie the inner agony I was subjecting myself to.

“I don’t want to call you that anymore, either,” he grumbled.

“Then what do you want to call me?” I thought that he’d maybe come up with that nickname he’d been working on which was unfair because I hadn’t even started thinking about his. He shook his head slightly from side to side, awestruck and determined, swallowing around something in his throat.

“Girl.”

“That’s the best you could come up with? Girl? Not very creative, Edward.” I rolled my eyes at him, mostly to break our gaze because it felt like he was singeing holes in my skin.

“Not just girl. My girl,” he exhaled his words as he put a hand on my hip, fingers digging into my skin to pull me away from the door and into him. Our hips met and I went weak-kneed.

“Yours?”

“Yeah. If you’ll let me.”

Fuck it. I released the doorknob and pressed up on my toes, my ankle flaming acid pain up my leg and flung my arms around his neck to steady myself. He seemed to sense my unease and wrapped his arms around my waist, lifting me up until my toes just barely brushed the carpet before he kissed me.

Jesusgod, remember when I was saying that nothing is ever like you expect it to be and that life will always, always surprise you? Let’s add this moment to the statement as a prime example, shall we? Far too good to be true, as though I was living life through a rose-colored lens and had stumbled blindly across some boy with a body to die for, magical fingers, and apparently that trait graced his mouth as well. He pressed against me, opened mouthed and damp, before swiping his tongue across my lower lip and capturing it in between his. He dug his fingers into my thighs and picked me clear up off the ground, wrapping my legs around his waist before returning his grip to my ass. I sighed when I settled against him, hating my t-shirt for getting in the way of all the bare skin he had on display. He kissed my lips again before dragging his mouth along my jaw and licking the soft spot below my ear. I’m sure my pulse was hammering underneath him hard enough for him to feel it.

“Ok,” I panted, palms pressed to his back.

“Ok, what?” He spoke against my neck, his tongue and teeth to my skin and his dusty fingers dug deep into my hips.

“Ok, but you can’t ever call me Sparkles again.”

Edward groaned and pressed closer, his thumbs sinking below the elastic waist of my leggings. I sunk my fingers into the hair at the base of his scalp in response, gripping his face to try to pull him closer to my mouth.

“Ahhh,” he winced, pulling away, my thumb smeared with a faint trace of red from the drip-dry blood meandering down his temple. He looked at my thumb skeptically for a moment and readjusted his grip on my ass, eyes pulling far enough away that I knew he was back at the boulder, falling rock and all, even though he really only had me pinned to my front door.

“Just fucking listen to me next time, ok, Sparkles?” he sighed gently, his face strained.

“Hey, you-”

“Last time. I promise.”

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