CHAPTER 16 #3
Now Beck was the one who stopped walking, his expression serious. “He found out? How?” And then, quieter, “Did you get in trouble?”
“That’s why I ran away. To avoid culpability. C-U-L-P-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y.” I smiled a little. I wasn’t sure I’d ever spelled that one before. “I’m sure it’s waiting for me when I get home. So, don’t worry. I’m sure my parents will have me clear your name soon.”
There was something almost comforting in the fact that my parents knew my biggest secret. Apparently, in the hours since I’d left home, I’d been able to work through all the stages of grief and end up at acceptance.
Beck, though, frowned. “I don’t want my name cleared. If I cared about that, I would’ve come clean four years ago.”
“Why didn’t you?” It was the first time I had the courage to ask. “Why didn’t you tell everyone that I was the one who’d set the fire? Because you thought they wouldn’t have believed you?”
Beck stared at me for a long moment, silent. His eyes were so green, and the sunlight was catching in his blond hair, making it almost a golden color. “You were scared,” he said at last, quietly. “And I wasn’t.”
“What does that—”
“Do you really want to be a lawyer?” Beck asked suddenly.
“Yes.” The knee-jerk response came out like a snap, probably because it was still a touchy subject after this afternoon with Dad.
“This isn’t the sad sob story of a girl who follows in her parents’ footsteps even though she doesn’t want to.
I want to. I want to help people and fight for people when no one else wants to step up to bat.
” I’d been waiting for Dad to ask me the same question.
“I’m not a silly girl with silly dreams she hasn’t thought through. I want this. I just wish—” I stopped.
Beck let my silence draw out as we continued down the path, waiting to make sure I wasn’t going to finish. “You wish…”
He would just be proud of me for it. “They wanted Destelle to be a lawyer,” I told Beck.
“My parents. They were almost neurotic about it. When I was little, and when Destelle was still in school, I remember how hard they pushed her toward it. They never asked her what she wanted. They wanted it for her. And it made her so mad.”
I could still remember the night she’d argued with my parents.
I’d never heard her yell at them like that before, and remembered being scared by it.
One day, when I don’t come home for holidays and never call you on your birthday, think of this moment.
I’d cried to Jamie after I heard that, because I’d been so afraid Destelle would leave us all behind because she was so angry with our parents—even us.
She’d hugged us both. Told us that’d never happen.
The irony.
“But me—I want what they wanted for her. I actually want it. I’m exactly what he wanted, and he just… doesn’t care.”
“Why do you want it? Because you think it’ll make him proud of you?”
“No,” I said quickly, my throat suddenly squeezing tight.
“No. That’s not why. I want it because… I just do.
” I barely registered that Beck started walking slower, falling behind me.
“But it would be nice if they appreciated it, you know? I’m the perfect daughter.
I don’t party, I don’t drink, I don’t sneak out.
I don’t break the rules. I don’t do anything that would disappoint them. I’m perfect.”
There was a strange quality to Beck’s voice when he spoke from behind me. “You don’t have to be perfect for someone to be proud of you.”
I was already shaking my head. “You don’t know.”
“Perfect is so boring.”
B-O-R-I-N-G. Beck used it so often that I wasn’t sure he knew what the word meant anymore.
“It isn’t. Not everything in life has to be fun, anyway.
Not everything in life will be fun. You don’t get that, and Destelle doesn’t get that, but I do.
That’s why it’s important to me.” I started to turn around to face him, because Beck seemed to have stopped in the path behind me. “That’s why I—”
Something firm slammed into my chest, causing me to jerk back. Beck crouched in the middle of the path, his wrist propped on his knee, fingers dangling toward the mud. Even from here, I could see the darkness of their tips and the slow smile curving over his mouth.
I looked down at my white sweater, finding mud splattered all over the front of it. My jaw dropped as a chunk of dirt fell from the fabric and directly on top of the toe of Jamie’s sneaker. No. Freaking. Way.
I lifted my head when another fistful of mud I hadn’t seen Beck scoop up hit me in the stomach.
“There.” Beck shook his hand off to the side as he stood, slinging the rest of the grime off. He tried—and failed—to stifle a laugh. “Who’s perfect now?”
For a moment, the middle of the trail was almost peacefully calm. There were no letters in my head. Just silence. Beck stood there smirking, and I stood still, trembling as the pressure within me built. It felt like someone was holding a match to my skin, waiting, waiting.
Until I caught fire.
I dropped to the ground and grabbed a fistful of mud, and I didn’t even bother straightening before launching it at him.
Beck turned to dodge it, prepared. It clipped him in his shoulder, but it wasn’t very visible against his dark tee.
When he turned around, the idiot was full-on grinning.
“Wow, Nell-Bell, that was actually good aim—”
I immediately scooped up another clump of mud and launched it, and this time, I hit my target’s bullseye. The mud splattered across the lower half of Beck’s face, into his open mouth, choking his words off mid-sentence.
He froze, spitting before his green eyes locked onto mine.
There was a game we’d both been playing from the start—a move and then a countermove.
Calculated. Deliberated. But as his wide gaze filled with the same fury I felt, alongside a sort of wicked glee, I knew whatever thoughtful game of chess we’d been playing was over.
“Oh.” Beck reached up with his clean hand and tried to smear the dirt off his lips. “It’s on.”
And just like that, all bets were off.
We must’ve looked like two maniacs, ripping the ground up to throw the earth at each other.
We weren’t quiet about it, either. One of Beck’s throws caught me in the eye, and I shrieked with pure rage.
I retaliated by aiming for his mouth again, causing him to choke out a growl of his own.
The mud was cold as it slipped between my fingers, but I didn’t really register it, too focused on pinwheeling the sludge at him to cover the jerk from head to toe.
We ended up close enough on the path that throwing mud became more like rubbing it on each other. I reached up to slap my fistful against Beck’s face, but he caught my arm, holding my bomb at bay while he threaded the sludge through my hair.
“You little brat,” Beck said with a grunt, holding me off.
The only thing I could really lock onto as the world was a blur of dimming sunset and dark mud was the electric green of his eyes.
Wide, fierce, bright. Like someone had turned the lights on.
“What is with you and taking your anger out on nature?”
“Me!” I scoffed in disbelief, trying to slap my muck-covered palm into his cheek. His hold was too strong. “You threw the mud first!”
Beck caught my other wrist, locking both my arms. “Because you sounded insane! Ooh, I’m so perfect, I’m so perfect—get a grip!”
“Oh!” The word echoed into the air. “I’m insane! I’d say look in a mirror, but with how big your ego is—”
I didn’t get the chance to finish my eloquent insult.
My shoe slipped in the sludge, and since they were three sizes too big, my entire foot twisted sideways.
The sudden lurch of movement caused Beck to lose his footing on the slippery ground, too.
With nothing else to grab, I latched onto the front of Beck’s shirt, holding tight, and dragged him down with me.
Right before we slammed into the ground, Beck’s came up underneath my head, bracing it as we crashed into the mud with a splat.
Beck’s green eyes were wide as he lifted himself halfway off me, but it was the whites that were more vivid amongst all the mud on his face. “Are you okay?” he asked, voice tight, fingers firm against the back of my head. “Nellie. Are you okay?”
With the wind knocked out of me, it took me a second to breathe in, heart racing in my chest. The mud was cold, but the sun was a burning flame behind Beck. He was on top of me, our legs messy and tangled. I swallowed hard—and then winced again at the grit that slid down my throat.
A laugh pressed down on my chest. “You look ridiculous.”
The mud I’d managed to comb through Beck’s hair almost completely obscured the platinum blond, turning him once more into a brunette with splotches of white. “Me?” Beck snorted, hand still at the back of my head. His fingers felt softer now, almost a caress. “You should see what you look like.”
A strangled laugh burst out of me, because he had to be right—I had to look horrible.
Lying in mud, my hair pressed flat into it, my cheeks stiffening with it.
My sweater couldn’t even be called white anymore, not with how much dirt was packed on.
I was lying in it. It’d probably never come clean.
I laughed hard, squeezing my eyes shut, and I thought I could hear Beck’s soft chuckle join in.
Light. Slightly concerned about a possible mental break. But there.
I laughed hard enough that a tear trickled out of the corner of my squinched eye. “I shouldn’t laugh like this,” I said with a breathy chuckle, the words amused and self-deprecating. In that moment, I felt like Beck. “You said it was ugly, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t mean it.”