“You’ve always meant something to me,” she told him in a hoarse voice.
Asa didn’t say anything for a few heartbeats, and instead just watched her with thinly veiled caution in his eyes. And then something in his composure cracked, and exhaustion flooded his face, so many emotions flitting across his sharp features that Carmen couldn’t pinpoint them as they all rushed to form whirlwinds in his eyes.
“I want to believe you,” he told her, and she heard the underlying helplessness in his voice. She heard the slight tinge of fear and the doubt. “I really do.”
“But?” Carmen asked in a quiet tone, tearing her eyes away from his, because the heartbreak imprinted on every inch of his face was more than she could bear.
“But I gave you a loaded gun once,” he said. “And I’m wondering if I’d be a fool to give you a second.”
Carmen had no response to that.
•••
Asa supposed he’d spaced out and lost all sense of his surroundings because suddenly the stadium erupted into the loudest of cheers that night and all around him, people had jumped to their feet. It was absolute pandemonium.
It didn’t take him too long to realise the cause of the celebration when he saw that the students who were cheering and on their feet were ones he’d seen around occasionally in their school hallways. Asa trailed his eyes towards the field where the red and white jerseys of the Vikings could be seen running around the ground, victorious grins slapped on the faces of the football players of his school.
Without meaning to, his eyes drifted towards the familiar boy who was the team captain. Asa didn’t think he’d ever seen Hunter happy. But right now, the usually cold and impassive boy had a grin on his face and a kind of pride in his eyes that Asa knew too well from experience. It was probably something only an athlete would be able to recognise.
Asa caught a glimpse of the Hunter that Carmen seemed to adore so much, and Asa wondered what kind of damage must have been done to him in order for that boy to have grown thorns in every corner of his being.
“Well,” Carmen said from beside him, a soft smile on her face as she watched the players on the field celebrate for a few seconds longer before turning to face Asa. “I should probably start heading towards the parking lot.”
Was his time with her over already? It was too soon. He wondered if any amount of time spent in her presence would be enough.
“Oh?” He raised a brow, masking his unwillingness to let her go. “Your dad’s here?”
Carmen wrinkled her forehead. “No.” She shook her head. “I came with Joyce.”
Asa’s eyes scanned the bleachers, but it was hard to spot anybody since people were abandoning their seats now that the game was over.
“I don’t see her anywhere,” he pointed out, squinting as he kept looking for the familiar mop of brown hair with a purple highlight.
“Yeah, I have no clue where she is either. But we agreed to meet by her car in the parking lot.”
Asa’s frown deepened, and he glanced at Carmen. “Is that even safe? You don’t know this school, this neighbourhood.”
“It’s not like it’s going to be deserted.” Carmen shrugged. “There’ll be plenty of people about.”
Asa’s eyebrows knitted together as he stood up from his seat, casting one last sweep over the stands. “Still,” he muttered, scratching the side of his head uncertainly. “Let me walk you to her car at least.”
When Carmen didn’t respond, he shifted his body to face her and found that pair of thunderclouds he’d grown to love already examining his face with a kind of look he couldn’t decipher.
And it was so easy, in moments like these, to get lost in her eyes and allow himself to be whisked away by whatever he found in them. This time though, Asa wondered if maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to be more cautious. After all, what harm could come from deciding to guard his heart? He’d experienced his fair share of consequences of leaving it unshielded and naked on his sleeve.
And although Asa was by nature a heart-over-head person, he decided a little self-preservation seemed sensible enough this time around.
“Okay, Asa,” Carmen finally said, her voice so soft that it was almost carried away by the sudden gust of wind that blew past. Both of them snapped their eyes to the sky at the same time when they heard the rumbling of thunder; it sounded much closer now.
“It’s probably going to start raining again.” Asa sighed, stepping back and gesturing for Carmen to walk forward. “It’s been raining every night for the past few weeks.”
“Hmm.” She nodded in agreement, slinging her bag over her shoulder and walking past Asa, her arm brushing against his torso with what little space the rest of the crowd allowed them.
For that tiny heartbeat, all Asa could do was watch—and feel. Whether it was the top of her head grazing along his chest, or her arm pushing into the hollow right beneath his ribcage as people squeezed past and pushed them closer together, or the length of her leg pressing against his. And though he couldn’t put it into words, there was something hauntingly beautiful about the way the wind picked up the hair strands covering the side of her face that was in his line of sight and letting them fall behind her shoulder.
His eyes trailed down her profile, the way her eyes fluttered shut when a sudden spray of water hit her as it began drizzling; the way her lashes formed dark crescents that stood out against the ivory of her skin; the crease on her forehead that only deepened as more students began flooding the exit gates.
It
