Operation Reunion by Justine Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

in her voice. Just the sound of it made her sadder still.
    “And you?”
    “I’ve loved him in one way or another since I was fourteen.”
    Hayley simply waited. Kayla sighed.
    “That’s when we moved here. I met Dane the next day. I climbed the tree between our houses and couldn’t get down.”
    “So he is literally the boy next door?”
    “He was then, yes. And he was...wonderful.”
    She hesitated. She didn’t want to say anything that made them think badly of Chad, not when she was asking them to believe her and help prove him innocent, but she also couldn’t not give Dane his due. He might have given up on her, on them, but she couldn’t deny he’d stuck with her longer than anyone else would have, that he’d been there for her every step of the way until even his considerable patience ran out.
    “He was like a brother at first,” she said. “Only nicer.” The subtext “compared to Chad” was there, and she guessed Hayley knew it, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. Besides, didn’t all siblings abuse each other in that familial sort of way? “Dane laughed with me, not at me, for being a skinny, bookish girl with braces. He knew how it felt to be the odd one. You wouldn’t believe it now, but he was kind of a geeky-looking guy back then. People teased him, so he understood how I felt.”
    “He certainly grew up nicely.”
    She smiled. “Yes, he did. We kind of made a pact. To work on ourselves, but not to let them change who we were inside. We couldn’t change other people, but we could change ourselves, challenge the stereotypes.”
    “That’s pretty deep.”
    “That’s the kind of thing we talked about. We used to have long, esoteric conversations about the state of the world and how to fix it, what era of time we’d like to go back to and why, that kind of thing. Even though he was a couple of years older, Dane never treated me like a dumb kid who didn’t know anything.”
    She missed those days, she thought. And wondered if Dane did, too—missed those long talks about everything but themselves because they were fine and destined for a long, happy life together.
    “So, you set out to what, change what people assumed?”
    Kayla nodded. “Dane started working out and found he actually liked it. Pretty soon he was so fit and strong nobody bullied him to his face anymore. He could throw a football better than any guy in school, but no matter how much they recruited him he wasn’t interested. That caught people’s attention. He never changed who he was. He was still into computers, but he was making that cool.”
    “And you?”
    “I swore I’d never be ashamed of being smart. Never try to hide it. I’d kind of started to do that because I thought the cool kids might like me better.”
    “It’s been my experience,” Hayley said with a wry smile, “that most of the ‘cool kids’ are in fact anything but.”
    Kayla laughed. “That’s what Dane said.”
    “When did he stop being your surrogate brother?”
    Kayla blushed. “I always had a crush on him. But he...well, I was just a kid. The difference between fourteen and sixteen is a lot bigger than sixteen and eighteen.”
    “Is that when it changed?”
    “Sort of. At least, it started to, and then...my parents were killed.”
    “And Dane was there for you.”
    Kayla nodded. “Every minute. He never left my side. He took care of things I couldn’t, did things I didn’t have the presence of mind to even think of.”
    She fought off the memories, trying not to let them swamp her. It didn’t happen often anymore, but when it did, it was as fresh and vivid and horrible as if it had been yesterday.
    She felt the warmth of a touch and realized Hayley had reached across the table to put her hand over hers.
    “I can’t imagine.” Those vivid green eyes were fastened on her and full of warmth and concern. “That you’re even upright is a testament to your strength.”
    “Dane used to think that,” Kayla said