Page 55 of Save Your Breath

My father offered to fly her to Chicago for Christmas, but she declined. We assumed it was because she’s got three other kids still under her care. We understand now that it was because she was too sick to travel that far.

I’ll never get the chance to meet the woman Aleks loves so much.

And sitting next to him, I know she took a piece of him with her when she left this Earth.

I’m sorry.

The words are on the tip of my tongue, but my mouth is too dry to say them. They sound so weak and tired and not enough.

Instead, I just sit next to him. I try to keep steady where he can’t stop moving. I try to stay calm because I know there’s a storm raging in his heart.

“You should go home,” he says after a while. His voice is strained, like there’s a hand around his throat.

“I will when you do.”

“It’s too cold out here.”

“I have my coat.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be here.”

“I don’t need a time.”

“I want to be alone.”

“Too bad.”

He finally looks at me with that remark, and I cock a brow at him, daring him to try to argue.

This is how we’ve been since the summer. I learned quickly that Aleks Suter didn’t respond to meek.

He scares everyone else around him — his teammates, our peers at school, sometimes even my parents.

But he never scares me.

Because I see it, that thing he tries so desperately to hide with his scowls and his scars and his bad attitude.

He thinks no one in his life is meant to stay. He thinks he lives a life so terrible, no one could possibly understand or relate. He thinks he’s alone and that’s just how it’s meant to be.

I don’t know why I’m determined to prove him wrong, but I am.

When I don’t budge, his stare softens a bit, his nose and eyes red from the cold wind. He’s only seventeen, but he somehow looks so much older, as if he’s lived a thousand lives he can’t tell a single soul about. His skin is pale, his face long, eyes dull and tired.

He’s still handsome, though.

He’s always that.

With a sigh, Aleks relents, realizing I’m not going anywhere. He still has his hands in the pockets of his coat, but he sticks an elbow out, a silent invitation for me to slide closer and slip my arm through his.

When I do, I have to fight not to sigh myself at the instant warmth. I snuggle in closer to him, laying my head on his shoulder.

I talk to Aleks about more than I talk to anyone else about. Even Jessie, my best friend at school, doesn’t know the things I confide to Aleks. I don’t know how it happened, but Aleks earned my trust.

Sure, I want to smack him upside the head more times than not for being a stupid jerk, for teasing me or just being dumb with his own well-being, but still…

He’s always there for me, and for some reason, it’s just easy to tell him things I never tell anyone else.

I don’t know if he feels the same, but I do know that I like when he talks back to me. I like when he listens, but it’s better when he talks, too. I like when he tells me about Switzerland,when he shows me pictures of the mountains he used to climb in the summers and the lakes he’d skate in the winter when Annaliese found a way to afford them traveling. I like when he confides in me about hockey, when he tells me something is challenging him.