“Asa?”
Carmen’s voice snapped Asa from his walk down memory lane, bringing him back to the present. Bringing him back to this place, where the girl with midnight hair sat right beside him and didn’t look like she was in a hurry to leave.
“She had the wrong idea of me,” he found himself saying. “Willa, I mean. She thought I was an airhead, that all I had going for me was a pretty face. That I tossed girls aside like it was just another sport.”
“And?” Carmen asked gently.
“And,” he paused, not really knowing what to say. “I don’t know. I just…I guess I wanted to please her?” He ended up questioning himself rather than stating something to Carmen, as if he himself was discovering this small part of him only now. “She didn’t just think of me wrong. She looked at me wrong. And I guess I just wanted that to go away.”
“You thought that maybe you could change how she saw you if you befriended her,” Carmen murmured, no longer looking at Asa but getting lost in thought as she frowned to herself.
“You’re frowning.” Asa sighed softly. “Am I making you upset again?” he asked quietly, his eyes finding the courage to look away from nothingness and at her.
The creases on Carmen’s forehead smoothened, and her gentle gaze met his. “You don’t make me upset, Asa,” she told him. “The world does.”
“I used to think the same.” He smiled in an almost nostalgic manner. “That the world was a cruel place. But then I look at my parents and I remember that when people like them exist, not all hope is lost, you know?”
“You exist too, Asa.” She smiled then, illuminating the cracks in Asa’s heart some more. And when she leaned forward and laid her palm on his cheek, his chest felt so full he thought it would explode. “And when you find yourself thinking the world is a cruel place again and if even looking at your parents don’t seem to help, look at a mirror. You owe yourself that much.”
Asa was sure school had taught him how to arrange the letters of the English alphabet into words, and words into sentences. He was sure he’d been taught to pronounce these words and voice out these sentences. Hell, Asa was pretty darn sure AP Lit was one of his favourite subjects and that he was a die-hard bookworm. Words were his strong point; they’d always been.
But Carmen…goddamn. Carmen robbed him of his speech every single time she spoke with her heart on her sleeve and her soul in her eyes. Words would never suffice, not when it came to her.
“You can’t mean that,” he whispered.
She moved her thumb against his cheek in small strokes like she was blurring the edges of one of her charcoal drawings. “I can.” She dropped her hand and leant back. “And I do.”
He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t. There literally was nothing he could say that would show her how much his heart swelled with an emotion so profound that it made him want to bring down the moon to her fingertips.
But a part of him already knew that Carmen would never ask for the moon to be plucked out of the sky. And that was what made her the phenomenal being that she was. She loved everything and everyone as they were.
Asa wouldn’t say Carmen was pretty; she didn’t have Willa’s incredible hazel eyes that could catch anyone’s attention at first glance. She didn’t have Marlene’s sharp facial features that made guys turn their heads when she passed them. Neither did she have one of those hourglass figures like Isla that made everyone in the hallway do a double-take in wonder when she walked past.
Asa wouldn’t say Carmen was pretty.
Because Carmen West was, in every definition of the word, beautiful.
She was beautiful right down to her bones and her soul, and that made everyone else pale in comparison.
And if Asa wasn’t careful, he could fall in love with Carmen for it.
He could.
Oh, he could.
31.
Clipped Wings
Carmen had only ever known noise. Up there, in her head, it was always so loud. Too loud, even. But here, in the passenger seat of Asa’s truck, which was beginning to feel a little like home, there was only silence. Asa brought that calm with him, silencing the chaos that stirred up storms in her mind and easing the turmoil in her heart. In his presence, she found some quiet. She’d only ever thought that art had the power to bring her peace.
Then again, hadn’t she always believed that Asa was a work of art himself? It was only obvious then that he could bring her the kind of solace she often looked for in the pages of her art journal.
“Hey, Carmen?” he spoke after a long stretch of silence.
“Mmmm?” She averted her eyes from where they were staring blankly at her shoes tucked in a corner and met Asa’s inquisitive gaze.
“Can I ask you something?”
She nodded in response, and right then, she felt an odd sense of content wash over her.
“The first time I drove you home,” he said and paused, “you told me you didn’t think I was a player.”
“Yes.” She smiled.
“Why’d you say that?”
“Honestly, Asa.” She playfully rolled her eyes, attempting to put him at ease. “For someone who loves words so much, you’re pretty dense when it comes to definitions.”
She saw his eyes widen in mild surprise but watching the grin that crawled over his face brought her relief after hearing him spill his heart out to her just minutes before.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He chuckled, and that sound alone lit a spark in Carmen’s heart. She knew it would only grow into a fire which
