Page 7 of Mend My Soul (Shattered Hearts of Carolina Ghost Psychic Mystery Romance #2)

Chapter Seven

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XAVIER

…I’d know Amara’s knock anywhere. She has the camper door open and is sitting on the bed that’s hardly big enough to fit me before I tell her to come in.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she says, out of breath and blowing on her hands to warm them up.

It’s dark outside, and she’s run all the way from her dad’s house near the gas station to the woods where I’ve parked my tow-behind.

“I’m glad you could come at all.” I lift the pink tulip-print sleeping bag she stole from the linen closet, and she tucks into my side.

It doesn’t make a difference that it’s off-season and the campground is closed. I don’t have an electric hookup for a space heater anyway. The only way to stay warm is sharing body heat under a pile of blankets.

“Oh, are you hungry?” Amara rifles through her coat pocket, producing two shriveled hot dogs in a zip-top bag.

“Sorry, I shut off the roller grill early, but they still dried out. Tomorrow I’ll see if the sandwich delivery guy brings any garden salads, and I’ll hide one at the back of the case until it reaches the sell-by date. ”

The nights she closes, Amara brings me whatever expired snacks are left that need tossing. The nights I close, everything makes it into the garbage. I won’t let Mr. Henderson accuse me of stealing or dock my pay for an overpriced wiener.

I’ve worked at the gas station for a few months.

Her dad’s a fucking hard-ass. The kind of prick who tells me to show up at nine, then changes the schedule to nine-thirty, knowing I don’t got a phone.

Then he waits a half hour to say I’m early and refuses to pay me for taking out the garbage or making sure the coffee is fresh for his regular customers.

According to Mr. Henderson, I can’t stock a shelf to save my life. I swear he’s even pissed on the floor to make me go back and clean the restroom a second time. Outside of being brilliant at science, nothing Amara does is right either. I’m not sure how Amara’s mother put up with the guy.

At least, I get to see Amara. At work, and after her dad pops the sleeping pills he started taking after her mom died.

He’d probably shit a brick if he found out she sneaks out to see me.

It was important to Amara’s mom for her to be the first in her family to go to college.

I’m definitely not moving up in the world, living in a shitty camper with no electricity, and eating expired food.

I put the overcooked protein on a ledge. “Beggars can’t be choosers. You probably shouldn’t be here if you don’t want your dad to catch you before prom. He’ll ground you forever.”

And I’ll lose the only person worth sticking around for.

“Meh, it’s not like I really want to go with Sidney or he wants to go with me, either. He’s got a massive crush on the guy who sits in front of him in calculus. Maybe I’ll come hang out with you instead.”

“Why would you ditch your junior prom to hang out with a friend?”

“The question you should be asking is why would I sneak out and steal shitty hot dogs so you didn’t starve if all I wanted was your friendship, Xavier?” Amara presses her lips to mine.

I know getting involved with me is the wrong move for her. But I kiss her back.

Amara’s future’s been mapped out forever. There are eight months before she begins her freshman year.

I’m no dummy. However, her grades, compared to what mine were in high school, make me look like an illiterate fool. I couldn’t afford college even if I wanted to go, but I’m excited for her and proud of her for getting into a great school.

I glance over the top of her early acceptance letter. My smile falls, seeing her frown.

“What’s wrong?” I reach over, brushing her hair behind her shoulder. “Babe, you’re not worried I won’t come through for you, are you? You’re not getting rid of me that easy. I’ll camp in your dorm parking lot if I have to.”

I’m in love with Amara. Before she even applied, we’d talked about how she’ll only be an hour away in the fall.

Amara’s dad will make her work at the gas station over the holidays.

We’ll see one another all the time. Not to mention, with her gone, I can pick up her shifts and save extra money to support us later on.

“It’s not that.” Amara twists her hands, looking everywhere but at me.

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t want to go.”

“Babe, you have to go to college.” It’s her ticket out of here and out from under her controlling father’s thumb.

“I want to go to college. I just don’t want to go to college near Charlotte. I want to go to Pinewood State.”

“Why don’t you apply there?” It’s where I thought I wanted to go, and the idea of Amara attending Pinewood excites me.

“Because it’s not what they wanted.” Meaning her mom and dad. “My mom planted this dream in my dad’s head that I should go to this school because its campus is beautiful and where she’d have gone had she had the chance.”

Family dynamics are hard for me to understand.

I never met my dad. Quitting soccer and caring for my mom before she died was the most time I spent with her.

Until then, I was clueless about how hard she worked to afford the next size up in cleats and keep a roof over our heads.

Any money I thought I’d get went toward paying her medical bills.

I was already eighteen when Mom passed. The rest of my senior year, I pulled all-night shifts at a factory to feed myself and went to school during the day. The principal handed me my diploma and the landlord an eviction notice within hours of each other.

When I asked where I was supposed to go, the landlord let me buy the camper he was about to list on a buy-sell-trade site.

Then, my phone drained and my alarm didn’t go off one too many times.

That was the beginning of the end of a decent paying job that let me save a few bucks.

After that, the factory manager got nit-picky about everything from my appearance to the two spots I took up with my tow-behind in the parking lot.

They didn’t care that I was homeless and trying to get back on my feet.

Knowing what I know now—moving on and dealing with Amara’s hard ass dad as a boss—I probably could’ve parked the trailer illegally. But hindsight is 20/20, and I was just a kid with nobody looking out for him, who got frustrated, shot off his mouth, and got fired.

“It’s not even a bad college!” Amara throws up her arms. “Sidney wants to go there. I should just suck it up.”

“No, you shouldn’t. Follow your own dreams. Apply to Pinewood. See what happens.”

“With what money, Xavier? My dad said by paying me to work for him, he was already paying the fee for this application.” She shakes the paper.

That’s so unfair. It’s also consistent with the way he treats women. Amara’s mother died in the parking lot of a ruptured appendix. He told his wife the pain was all in her head. The very next day, he expected Amara to step into her mother’s shoes, both at home and at the convenience store.

“Your dad’s also depending on you to get scholarships and take out loans. So, if you’re paying for college on your own, shouldn’t you have a say in where you go?” I sit forward and pull out my wallet.

I have a hundred-dollar bill I found cleaning out my mother’s drawers. It was in a graduation card addressed to me, which makes me feel like my mom was aware she wasn’t going to make it for a lot longer than she let on. Even falling on hard times, I’ve kept it for sentimental reasons.

“I want you to have this,” I say.

“But—”

—but nothing, Amara. I’m never amounting to anything. At least let me die having paid it forward.”

“Don’t be melodramatic.”

“Don’t roll over, baby.” I pause, regretting for a moment I’m about to use the shitty circumstances we bonded over against her. “I bet if your mom had to do it all over again, she’d be on your side, too.”

The air is warm. Well, warmer than it’s been all winter.

Amara and I won’t have to huddle under the blankets in the camper much longer.

Not that we haven’t found ways to stay warm.

Springtime is coming. After August, we won’t have to look over our shoulders whenever we’re on a walk in the woods, and hear a twig snap.

To celebrate her acceptance to Pinewood—and the fact that neither of us can see our breath in front of our faces—we’ve ventured out.

They’re doing bridge work a mile from the brush I’m squatting in on national forest land.

We’re not afraid anyone will see us and report back to her father because the road crew closed the road in either direction.

Stars dance in the night sky. The bridge, bathed in moonlight, is about as romantic as I can afford. Although things are looking up. There’s a possibility someday I can give Amara everything she deserves.

“I’ve got a surprise for you.” Unable to remember the last time I felt this happy, I lift a leg over the parapet and straddle the concrete. My toes dangle a foot off the road on one side, and a lot more than a foot down on the other.

“Ooh, I love surprises.” Amara pushes up her sleeve, exposing the gold bracelet I gave her that was my mother’s.

Although I think Mom got it from someone other than my DNA donor, I heard her once say it was a gift from her first love. That stuck with me, and I wanted Amara to have it.

“What is it?” she asks, giving me a playful peck on the lips.

“A friend I played soccer with has an off-campus apartment at Pinewood State. They’re looking for a roommate. I said I was interested.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to move with me!” Amara squeals.

When she hugs me, my thighs tighten like I’m riding a horse to stay balanced.

“How hard can it be to find a job at a gas station?” I shrug when she lets go. “If I can save a few bucks, I thought I’d try taking a community college class or two. Maybe I could be a licensed plumber or do HVAC or something.”

I love Amara. I want to be the best version of myself for her. But most of all, I don’t want her trapped like her mom was by some guy who’s turned into her dad.

Lately, he’s been at home asleep more than he’s minding his business. I suppose that’s been good for us. Amara hasn’t even told him yet that she’s going to Pinewood and studying horticulture and agroecology instead of engineering, which is what her mom pushed on Amara as a major.

The more heart-to-hearts Amara and I have had since we started seeing each other over a year ago, the more I’m convinced her mom wasn’t a bad person.

I think her lack of opportunity got her stuck in a lousy situation.

She put pressure on Amara to get good grades and to go to college so her daughter could escape a life she couldn’t.

Maybe that’s why my mom worked so hard to pay for me to play soccer, even though it hurt that she missed more games than she attended.

“Whatever you decide to do, you’ll be brilliant.” She voices her confidence in me.

I flip my dangling leg roadside to hold her.

“I wanna build a life with you, Amara. I want you to be as proud of me as I am of you.”

“What? I am proud of you, silly.” She tucks herself into my chest, and I wrap my arms around her.

“You never know why bad things happen to good people. You didn’t do anything wrong to deserve what happened to you, Xavier.

Maybe if my mom was here for me to talk to and your mom was around when you graduated, you could have gotten a soccer scholarship and we would have met at Pinewood.

” She burrows into my chest. “I love you, so, so much. Things were different when my mom was alive. Being stuck here with my dad felt like my soul was ripped in two, and when you came into my life, it was like you sewed it back together and filled the empty places she left behind.”

She looks up at me, a beacon in the darkness. I’ve often wondered why I took the shitty-ass job and why my boss’s daughter would risk stealing food for me, but now I know. It’s because we were meant to be together.

Right before I kiss Amara, I see nothing but love shining in her eyes.

“Oh,” she gasps as we pull apart.

The tiny hearts on her bracelet have gotten caught in the threads of my sweater. She tugs. I grab her wrist to stop her. I can get it untangled if she’ll hold still.

The quick motion unbalances me. I’m tumbling backward.

The expression on Amara’s face changes from adoration to terror. She reaches out, but it’s too late.

My arms and legs pinwheel. I hear the whoosh of air by my ears. My spine hits the water with a terrible sting, and the cold makes me gasp. My lungs fill, and I choke on brackish water. Something hard hits my head, erasing my sluggish thoughts of swimming to the surface.