With Every Heartbeat (Forbidden Men 4)

“Nothing.” She eyed me warily but didn’t skitter away.

I arched an eyebrow, letting her know it was definitely not nothing.

She blew out a breath and stared forward, wiping frantically at her cheeks. “It’s really...nothing,” she repeated. “It’s stupid.”

Situating myself so I was sitting beside her on the floor with my knees bent up and the shadows covering us in our little nook, I waited until she stopped trying to pat her face back into order before I said, “It’s not stupid to you.”

She glanced at me. “But it’s probably stupid to you.”

“I still want to hear about it.”

After shaking her head, she hugged her knees tighter and went back to staring straight ahead as if I wasn’t beside her.

Knowing she wasn’t going to instigate our talk, I cleared my throat. “When I was little, I hated it when my mom drank. She was nicer when she was sober, hit me less, treated me as an actual human being. It was when she had alcohol in her that everything went bad. So I went to the library and did all kinds of research about how to stop drinking. I came up with a, I don’t know, a kind of step-by-step program to help her quit. I drew up a bunch of posters and graphs and spent nearly a month to create this little presentation to help her, because everything I read said alcoholism was a disease. I thought she’d thank me if she saw how much work I’d gone through to help save her.”

“What’d she do?” Zoey whispered, her eyes wide with worry as she glanced at me.

“She got mad.” I watched a new tear glisten on Zoey’s cheek, and I wanted to wipe it away. “She threw a beer bottle at me and yelled at me for being such a freak. Then she chased me until she caught me in my bedroom. She hit me until I passed out, and...I don’t remember anything else after that.”

Zoey shuddered and hugged herself. “I kind of prefer passing out during a beating. I don’t like remembering...or feeling it.”

I reached over slowly and unpeeled her fingers off her forearm from where she was hugging herself, then I squeezed her hand gently. “Will you please tell me why you’re so upset? I know what it feels like to think something’s important, only to find out someone else thinks it’s stupid. I promise I won’t think any less of you. I just want to help.”

She lowered her face and sniffed. “We had open critique in my writing class today.”

I pulled her hand against my chest and squeezed it a little bit harder. She didn’t have to tell me she’d gotten some bad comments about her story. She wouldn’t be sitting here, sobbing, if it’d gone okay.

I didn’t say anything, just stroked the knuckles on her hand and waited for her to talk. A minute later, she sniffed again, blew out a shuddery breath, and wiped at her cheek with the back of her free hand. “Not one person liked it. It was stupid, silly, immature. The teacher went into a big long tirade about the differences between true literature and...and...whatever drivel I’d written. Talking animals are bad. Stories with no connection to the human condition are worthless—”

“Now wait a second,” I butted in, frowning. “The Silver Belt had all kinds of connections to deeper things. And the frog in that was the funniest character in the entire story.”

Zoey jerked her face up, her eyes wide as she blinked them. “Y-you actually read The Silver Belt already? All of it?”

“Well...yeah. And it connected with me, like, really well. I kept thinking about it long after I finished. How Truman always felt like he was on the outside of everything, left out as if he was missing the biggest step of how to be a true fisherman. I feel that way practically every day. Not about fishing, but other things. And I’m serious about that frog. You’re not allowed to take him out of that story.”

She gave a watery laugh, and I swear, watching her smile made my entire day. “You really liked him?” she asked, her voice uncertain.

“I’ve read it three times,” I said. “So I don’t think the problem is your writing. It was just...your audience. I don’t think they wanted to teach you to be a better writer, they wanted to teach you to write a certain way. I just hope you know not everyone wants to read their kind of stories. Some of us prefer the talking animals. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

She nodded and brushed the last of her tears off her face. “Okay. Thank you.” Her eyes lifted to mine. The trust and gratitude I saw made my chest fill with this awesome pressure. “I just wish I would’ve known that before I turned in my first story.”

I pulled her closer and gave her a one-armed hug. “So do I.” Because I seriously hated to see her cry.

“Thank you again, Quinn. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t come along and—”

“Hey, no problem.” I bumped my shoulder into her to get her to look at me. Then I grinned, flashing my dimple in pleading. “Just promise you’ll let me read more of your talking animals, and we’ll call it even.”

She rolled hers eyes but grinned back. “You don’t seriously want to read more.”

“Heck, yes, I do.” I stood up, dusted off my pants and then held down a hand to her. “Until then, what do you say? Want to work on some biology?”

Groaning as she stood, she gifted me with a dry glance. “No. But...I probably should. You’re a better teacher than the professor.”

I grinned. “Thank you. Now let’s find a table around here and get our geek on.”

When I tightened my grip on her hand, she tightened hers right back. I felt good that hour, helping her with her homework and making silly jokes about people against talking animals. She finally loosened up enough to joke back with me. I was never so happy that I’d been able to get past my physical reaction to her so we could finally be friends.

Because I really liked being Zoey’s friend.