Tuesday, March 22nd
Cat
There was no more news about Adam last night. Not a peep, and I was beginning to believe he got away yet again.
I kept replaying the moment Adam showed up. He was completely unaffected when he saw I wasn’t alone. He was so damn certain of himself and the fact that he could and would overpower me. And I know that’s what he planned to do—overpower me, do with me as he saw fit. The thought that he was still out there, still lurking, probably planning his next attack, kept me up all night. He’d make sure I was completely alone next time. It makes me never want to leave my house alone again. I hate living in fear like this.
It was around three in the morning when the anxious thoughts peaked, and I got out of bed. I could no longer lie there; I needed to move around, do something to take my mind off the fear that had taken up residence in my chest.
I picked up my phone, then dialed Ronan’s number. When he picked up after only the second ring, I began to cry—elated at hearing his voice, at the fact that he was back home, at the knowledge that I wasn’t alone.
About twenty minutes into our call, Ronan suddenly said, “Go downstairs and let me in.”
I stopped wandering my room, not certain if I understood him. “What?”
“I’m outside.”
“You are?” I whimpered, already tiptoeing out of my room and down the stairs, hoping the creaky hardwood floor wouldn’t wake my mom in her bedroom downstairs.
“Yeah. I thought maybe you’d need a hug, or… I don’t know. I can stay with you. I can sneak back out early before your mom wakes up. I just thought you needed me… maybe,” he said so sweetly, my breath shuddered with emotion.
“I do need you,” I said only a fraction of a second before I unlocked the front door.
There he stood in his gray sweatpants, his torso covered by a black hooded sweatshirt, shoulders shrugged up to shield against the chilly night air, his phone still to his ear. I smiled at his bed hair. He was perfect.
The moment Ronan was inside and the door locked behind him, he swept me into his arms, one arm under my knees, the other on my back, and carried me upstairs and into my room. He didn’t make a single sound—even the floorboards stayed silent. I don’t think I ever realized how light-footed he is, especially for someone of his stature.
“You’re stealthy,” I said once he laid me back against my pillows only to join me underneath my blanket.
He chuckled quietly. “I’ve learned to ensure that my presence goes unnoticed as much as possible,” he said and pulled me against him.
“Well, I never want your presence to go unnoticed by me.” I sighed and inhaled him deeply, my eyes closing on their own as his scent wound its way into my nose, my cells, my DNA. Finally I found rest cradled in Ronan’s arms, and I fell asleep within minutes.
***
The sound of light throat clearing causes me to blink my eyes open seemingly only minutes after I close them. But I’m wide awake the second my mom’s rosy face comes into focus, and I realize Ronan is still very much asleep next to me. So much for sneaking back out before anyone can catch us.
Immediately I begin to explain myself. “I was scared last night. I couldn’t sleep, so I called Ran, and he—”
“It’s okay, Kitty,” my mom says in a hushed tone. “I’m not mad. It’s time for school, sweet pea. I’ll drop you off on my way to the office” she says, then turns to leave my room, but looks back over her shoulder. “Just, please be safe.”
“No, Mom, we didn’t do anything. We literally just… slept.”
She nods. “Okay. But maybe don’t say anything to your dad about Ran staying the night.”
I get up and ready, then gently rouse Ronan, who looks utterly freaking adorable with his sleepy expression. “I have to go to school,” I tell him as he sits up in bed and adjusts his hoodie. It had ridden up in his sleep, exposing his beautiful, tight abs. Not me drooling over here.
“I’ll walk you. Do you have five minutes for me to head to the bathroom really quick?” he says, making my heart do stupid little somersaults in my chest.
Ronan disappears into the bathroom, and I meet my mom downstairs, urging her to head to the office and letting her know that Ronan will be walking me to school.
“Okay. Have your phone on you. Is Ran picking you back up, too, or do I need to clear my afternoon?” she asks just as Ronan descends the stairs. His hair is damp like he ran his wet hands through it to tame it, and he looks refreshed and bright.
“I’ll pick her up, too,” Ronan says. “I’ll stay with her until you get back.”
My mom wraps her arms around him with a heartfelt sigh. “Thank you, Ronan,” she says, steps back, and looks at me while pointing her index finger at my boyfriend. “Jackpot.”
Ronan and I make the walk to school holding hands, and by the time we arrive, that spot behind my ears hurts from smiling so much. Despite our now nine months together, Ronan has never walked me to school, and I never fathomed such a little gesture would bring me so much joy, yet here I am, grinning like a Cheshire cat.
“What are you going to do today?” I ask him before parting ways.
“I’ll be spending my hours pining for you,” he says with that half smile that always makes my brain turn into goo.
“Oh, so both of us, then. Good to know,” I say, returning his grin. “But seriously, any plans?”
He shakes his head. “No, not really. Gym, probably, then shower—”
I hum appreciatively. Naked Ronan is still one of my favorite things to picture in my head.
He chuckles. “Probably some food, and then hopefully it’ll already be time to pick you back up.”
“I’ll be counting the hours,” I say, then place a gentle kiss on his soft lips.
I reluctantly leave Ronan behind, looking back over my shoulder four times before I finally make it into the building and meet Vada and Tori.
Both look at me apprehensively, and I’m immediately alarmed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Yeah, so, someone on the team apparently got a video of yesterday’s happenings. It’s making the rounds,” Vada says, and the blood drains from my head.
I look around, only now noticing the quiet whispers and stares. I spot a group of girls with their heads together, glancing from me to a cell phone. I march over to them and grab the phone out of the middle girl’s hand.
“Hey, what the hell?” she asks, but makes no attempt to take the phone from me.
Vada and Tori join me as I stare at the screen in horror. “Oh no,” I whimper at the video of Ronan atop Adam, hammering his fist into Adam’s face while expertly avoiding Adam’s flailing hands.
“How… how did you get this?” I ask the girl whose phone I’m gripping so tightly in my hands, I wouldn’t be surprised if I crushed it like She-Hulk.
The girl’s eyes are wide. She’s obviously scared of me. “I… I…”
Summer strides toward us, her face set in a pissed-off but deeply hurt kind of way. “Cheyenne. It was Cheyenne. All of it.” She comes to a full stop in front of us. “The rumors, the gossiping. Cheyenne.” Summer throws her hands up in apparent resignation. “I’m so sorry, Cat. I didn’t know.”
I clench my teeth. I should’ve known. She has been way too nice to me ever since Ronan left.
I hand the unnamed girl her phone back and look around for my target. I spot her maybe fifty feet further down the hall, shoving her locker shut. I ignore Tori, Vada, and Summer, as well as their half-hearted efforts to stop me from beelining it for Cheyenne, and charge at her.
I grab the back of her jacket and spin her around. “Who took this damn video?”
“Fuck you, Cat,” she says, and makes to turn away from me.
I force her back around. “Fuck me? No, fuck you, Cheyenne! Who took this video?”
“God, Leanne took it and sent it to me last night, okay? Calm the fuck down,” she says with an exaggerated eye roll, trying once again to turn away from me as if the matter is done.
But I don’t let go of her. “And you decided to spread it around to everyone? What the hell, Cheyenne? Why would you do that? Why would you spread bullshit lies about Ronan and me?” I’m so damn done with all of this.
“Let go of me!” she snarls.
“Why, Cheyenne? You know none of the shit you said was true! You knew Ran didn’t get hurt because of me.”
“Did I, though? You guys never fucking told me what happened to him. He was just gone one day, and apparently I wasn’t good enough, even to my best friend”—she throws an accusatory look at Summer—“to get the full damn story. And you know what, Cat? You fucking deserve it. We all saw you with Drew. And there was obviously some shit between you and this guy Ran beat up yesterday. You fucking deserve it.”
“You know absolutely nothing, Cheyenne,” I yell so loudly, my voice echoes through the hallway and everyone around us falls silent. “What have I ever done to you? I’ve been nothing but nice, but from the moment you and I met you were standoffish. I haven’t done shit to you.”
She lets out a humorless laugh. “Are you kidding me? I could tell right from the start that you were a conniving little bitch, and I was right. You snatched Ran right out from under me.”
So that’s what this is about. What it’s been about. Of course it is. I should have known it was about Ronan. And not Cheyenne’s wish to protect him, but her unreciprocated desire for him. It’s jealousy. Nothing more, nothing less. I should feel bad for her, but I’m just angry.
“I didn’t snatch him out from under you. There’s no snatching Ronan. The reason he wasn’t with you is because he didn’t want to be with you,” I hiss at her more derisively than I’ve ever spoken to anyone.
It might be the culmination of the months of terror inflicted by Adam and the fact that he’s still waiting for his chance to hurt me, the relentless rumors about what happened to Ronan, the passive-aggressiveness with which I was blamed for his disappearance, but I have never been more furious in my life.
For a moment, Cheyenne looks as though I slapped her across the face, her coal-lined eyes wide as her dark-red lips curl into a snarl. Whatever she wants to say next, I don’t care to hear it. I know the truth now, I know how to move forward, and I know to take the high road. So I turn to leave.
“You think you’re so much better than me, acting all cute and innocent and shit. But I know what you are, Cat. I know you’re just a pretentious little slut who obviously goes through boys like fucking candy. Fucking slut.”
Not a second later, I feel her spit land in my hair.
I’m pretty sure this surge of rage is what Ronan experiences whenever he sees Adam, because I suddenly lose all rationality. I spin on my heels, close the short distance between Cheyenne and me, and slap her so forcefully across the face that she falls to the floor.
“You wanna fucking go? Then let’s fucking go!” I yell at her.
I feel myself get pulled away from Cheyenne, who just sits on the floor, shell-shocked, her hand to her bright-red cheek as she stares at me incredulously. Bet she didn’t see that one coming.
“Okay, Rocky Balboa,” Vada says with an admiring little giggle while she, Tori, and Summer drag me away from Cheyenne. “Let’s get you to the bathroom so we can clean that loogie out of your hair. Nasty.”
Once Vada, Tori, and Summer help me rinse the glob of phlegm out of my hair, we make it to our classes. All day I wait for the shoe to drop, for the principal to command me into her office and impose some kind of discipline. Surely Cheyenne would’ve ratted on me; it wasn’t exactly a light slap. It was supercharged with all my anger and disappointment, and the humiliation was written all over Cheyenne’s face. Good. Let her be embarrassed, let her be ashamed. That was the point of the exercise. I’m done playing nice with people who do nothing but tear me down.
But I don’t get called into the principal’s office, and what’s more, I almost instantly notice a change in the way other kids look at me, and really mostly the girls. Where there used to be derisive whispering mixed with judgmental side-glances and stares, those same girls give me a wide berth now, diverting their eyes the second I make eye contact. It’s like I’ve suddenly become impervious to the negativity and unwarranted criticism, and it causes me to stand a little taller, to walk with a little more purpose, because: fuck Drew, fuck Adam, fuck Cheyenne, and fuck everyone who thinks they can do, take, and say whatever they want without regard for others. Fuck that. I’m done.
Just because the school administration doesn’t hear about the smackdown, however, that doesn’t mean no one outside this lovely establishment knows, which is evident the moment I meet Ronan after class lets out.
“Eventful morning?” he asks with a wide, mischievous grin after I greet him with a kiss.
I blink at him, astounded. “What makes you say that?” I ask innocently.
He chuckles. “Oh, just Vada’s group text about your little ‘cat’ fight with Cheyenne,” he says, making air quotes with his index and middle fingers.
I groan. “Vada already texted everyone?” I turn on my phone while Ronan drapes his arm over my shoulder, very clearly marking his territory as we begin our way back to my house. Sure enough, the second my phone powers up I see the thirty-seven unread text messages in the group chat. They span the entire school day, and I shake my head more than once as I read through them. Ronan stays quiet, letting me read.
“Oh my god, it was not that dramatic,” I huff at Vada’s elaborate narrative on how I whirled around and smacked Cheyenne’s face, causing her to “collapse to the ground in a heap of sweat and tears.” Ronan just chuckles.
I grin at the messages from the guys praising me.
Shane:
I’m starting to understand more and more how much of a little badass Cat is. Holy shit, two-and-a-half god damn beatdowns in a month…
Vada:
A HALF beatdown?
Shane:
Well, she sorta missed that fucker yesterday, but she tried pretty fucking hard. No more little kitten over here. Total fucking lioness.
My smile widens.
Ronan:
Seriously. I don’t know what sort of boot camp you guys put her through while I was gone, but damn.