on his mom's death, but I wondered if he might want to talk about the good times instead.
"What was she like?" I asked him. "Your mom?"
He sighed long and slow. "She was...full of life. She always had so much energy. My dad can be a moody fucker at times, but as soon as she walked into the room, she lifted everyone's spirits. Especially his. She just had one of those personalities that shone."
"Like you," I commented and he frowned at me.
"I don't think I'm like that," he muttered.
"Then you're not seeing yourself right. You make me laugh fifty times a day, Blake. Your smile is like...like a beam of light. You always know how to cheer me up or just make the day brighter just by being you."
"You think so?" he asked hopefully.
"I know so," I said firmly, squeezing his fingers. "You've just been through a lot of bad shit, you’re still healing."
"I guess," he sighed. "Sometimes it feels like I'm back to my old self, but half the time it still feels like an act."
"I know what you mean," I said gently, my heart sinking. "Sometimes I worry what people will think of me if I let myself be happy. Like it means that I'm not thinking of him, that I've moved on. But I haven't, I don't think you can ever move on from something like that. It's left a wound in me that will always split open...just less often than it did at the start."
"Yeah that's...exactly how it is. It feels like being happy is a betrayal to her memory," he growled.
"She'd want you to be happy," I promised, his pain feeling as heavy as mine. "But it's okay not to be too."
"I suppose," he muttered. "Mostly I just like to take my mind off of it." He reached into his coat pocket, producing two miniature bottles of rum and holding one out to me. "Want one?" He cracked the lid off of one, downing it in two sips.
I laughed. "Where the hell did you get those?"
"The janitor's closet. Little bastard had a stash. He doesn't anymore though." He smirked, shaking his pocket to show me had more hidden in there. “He’ll be on the prowl for the culprit though, that asshole is like an angry Pitbull when he’s riled.”
I twisted the cap off of the rum with a laugh, figuring what the hell as I tossed the contents down my throat. It burned all the way to my stomach, but the heat swept keenly through my veins too and it felt good.
"Let's head up Tahoma Mountain, I know what we can do." Blake started jogging along and I ran with him, laughing more as he led me all the way down the path to the very edge of Sycamore Beach.
Then he veered off onto the track that curled up the mountain and we started climbing steadily. The view down to the lake was incredible and I couldn't believe I'd never been up here before as we climbed higher and higher. Everlake campus really was something special and I knew when I left here, it would always hold a piece of my soul. Too much had happened in this place. So much bad and yet so much good too. It wasn't what I would have wanted when I came here, but now I had my Night Keepers, it was hard to picture life without them. And I wouldn't have given them up for anything. Even with all the shit they'd done to me and I'd done to them in return. It was messy, imperfect and twisted. But it was also my story. Our story. And I loved it in its own fucked up way.
We made it up to a cabin set near a steep cliff which was surrounded by a group of trees. Blake headed around to the back of it, pushing a window open and climbing in. He offered me a hand as I walked up to it and frowned curiously.
"What is this place?" I asked.
"In the summer, Mr Colby holds paragliding classes up here," he explained. "I bribed him to leave the window open for me so I can get in here any time I like. It's a cool place to come. And today seems like the perfect weather for paragliding." He grinned.
"Are you serious?" I gasped as I climbed inside, the space filled with paragliding equipment and a bunch of chairs stacked in one corner beside a whiteboard.
"Yep. If you want to?" he asked