Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
The Hero
“Jackson!”
I hear my name shouted like a vile curse from behind me and I stop walking.
I knew he’d come for me.
I got a couple of texts from my old high school buddies that Ledger has been asking about me, about where to find me. They didn’t tell me why but I could figure it out.
I could figure out that they knew.
That she’d told them.
I knew she was home this weekend. Pest told me because I asked. Because I’m done pretending that I don’t want to keep tabs on her.
Especially now.
And so I’ve been waiting for him, for Ledger, to come for me.
Like I was two years ago.
When I broke his little sister’s heart and him and his friends jumped me in the woods, the ones where she danced for me for the first time. Took him two days to come get me back then.
I’m glad he’s working faster now.
Turning around, I fist my hands at my sides as I watch Ledger stride through the parking lot. I just got done at the office, poring over this new construction project in the town of St. Mary’s, a strip mall.
It’s exactly as boring as it sounds but I don’t care.
I don’t fucking care that I have to work at this company. That now I might have to keep doing it for the rest of my life.
Before, I used to think I might get out one day.
When she’s graduated from St. Mary’s and she’s at Juilliard, too far away for my father to touch, I might think about winning this war.
But now I don’t care about getting out.
I’ll work here, if I have to. For the rest of my life. If that’s what it takes to keep my father happy and out of my life.
I have other concerns now.
Other goals. Other wars that I need to win, like protecting people.
Keeping them safe and untouched at all costs.
At any fucking cost.
When her brother reaches me, I nod at him. “Ledger.”
His chest is moving up and down in agitation. I can hear his furious breaths.
He’s always been a hothead. Not a good quality in a soccer player, but extremely helpful when you want to screw with someone. And I have. Screwed with him. A lot.
Just because I could. Just because it was fun.
Just because I was at war with my father and I wanted to win and Ledger was in my way. He’s more collateral damage. So I don’t blame him when, instead of using his words, he uses his fist on me.
I even see it coming.
I see his shoulders twitch and tighten, his right arm shifting back a little before he swings it and lays one precisely on my jaw.
Fuck.
He’s gotten stronger, hasn’t he?
The pain explodes in my jaw and I ricochet back, almost stumbling. But somehow, I don’t go down. I manage to stay upright, and that pisses me the fuck off.
This is all he’s got?
After what I did to his sister.
So when I finally straighten up, crack my neck and tap my pulsating jaw to get ready, I decide to up the ante. “Well, good to see you too, Ledge.”
My casual response enrages him more, as I knew it would. And so the next time he comes at me, he does it harder. So much so that I go back a couple of steps, my jaw on fire.
Yet I don’t go down.
Yet I straighten back up and face him, his wrathful eyes, his furious face as he bites out, “You fucking asshole.”
What the fuck is he doing?
He’s embarrassing himself. He’s embarrassing me.
I need him to do better than that.
“Yeah, same to you.” I jerk my chin at him. “Not that I don’t enjoy our witty repartee but care to enlighten me on why we’re meeting like this? Feels like old times.”
The vessel on his temple seems to be on the verge of exploding. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”
I pretend to think about it. “Not really, no. If I was, you’d be laughing. Trust me. I’ve got a killer sense of humor.”
Another punch.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
“You know, we could go back and forth like this,” I tell him, panting, wiping the blood off my chin, “or you could just tell me what the fuck your problem is. So I can properly thank you for this special treatment.”
That does it, I think.
That gets him going and he stares at me like I’m the lowest of the low. “Yeah. Yeah, let me tell you what you did. Let me tell you exactly what you did, you motherfucker.”
With that, he launches himself at me.
His fists come crashing down, his bones connecting with mine, over and over and over.
And I take it all.
I welcome it all. I welcome his wrath, his fury, his anger.
I welcome his disgust at me.
It finally matches mine.
It finally rivals my crime. What I did to her.
And yet it’s not enough. Not for him or for me.
So he keeps going.
He keeps punching me, hitting me, and I keep taking it and stumbling back and when I think he’s finally beaten me down enough that I’m going to lose my footing, my back connects with something.
My Mustang.
My fucking Mustang saves me from going down.
And Ledger grabs my collar, pulling at it and smashing my back against the metal. “Did that jog your memory, huh? You remember what you did now?”
I’m panting; every muscle in my body throbs and pulses. My fucking legs are trembling and yet I’m still standing. It pisses me the fuck off.
“I think…” I breathe out, tasting blood. “I’m gonna need a little more.”
He shakes me again, making my bones jar, and I groan.
“You fucking asshole, you ruined her life. You ruined her life. You realize that, don’t you? You realize what you did to my sister.”
I do, yeah.
I do realize it. I realize that I’ve ruined her now. I’ve destroyed her.
I speak through the pain in my chest, in my body. “You really don’t wanna know… what I did to your sister.”
As expected, he pushes me into the car again.
“You’re a fucking piece of shit, aren’t you?” He tightens his grip on the collar of my dress shirt. “I should kill you for what you did to her.”
“You should.”
“But if I killed you tonight, then you wouldn’t be able to see.”
I spit out blood. “Yeah? See what?”
He chuckles then, his fingers tightening. “What I’m going to do to your sister.” Another chuckle. “She’s a firecracker, isn’t she? Tempest.”
I don’t know where I get the energy, the strength to move my hands, let alone grab his collar. I don’t know where I get the strength to shake off his hold and fucking maneuver him so I have his back against my Mustang now.
All I know is that if he says my sister’s name again, I’m going to rearrange his face in a way that he’s not going to like.
“Don’t talk about my sister,” I growl, my body screaming in pain.
“Yeah?” he bites out. “Pisses you the fuck off, doesn’t it? And I haven’t even done anything yet. To her.”
“You want to kill me, Ledger, you better stop talking. Because if you rile me up enough, it’s going to be you who dies tonight.”
He laughs, sharp and hollow. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”
And then, I feel the sharpest, fieriest pain that I’ve ever felt in my life. So much so that I finally stumble back and my body goes down.
I finally fall on my knees, my vision going blurry for a few seconds.
Because Ledger has kicked my ankle. My right ankle, which has weakened from years of playing soccer. And since he’s played with me, used my weakness against me on the field due to our rivalry, he knows about that.
Like I know that his left knee bothers him more than the right because of an old injury he had back in our junior year.
“Watch your back, Jackson,” he says, moving away from the car and laying a last punch on my jaw that makes me go completely down on my back. “You don’t want to mess with people who know your weaknesses. Years of soccer should’ve taught you that.”
He leaves then.
While I stay on the ground, my entire body on fire, chuckling at the pain, watching the night sky.
In a white dress and a flimsy green cardigan, she stares at something.
Through the window of her darkened studio.
She doesn’t know that there’s a Mustang parked a block over and I’m sitting in it. And that I’m watching her. I’ve been watching ever since she scared the fuck out of me when she appeared out of nowhere, walking down the street.
In fact, I don’t think she knows anything that’s happening around her.
And with every second that passes, my anger mounts.
What the fuck is she thinking?
What the fuck is she doing here in the middle of the night?
Where in the fucking fuck are her brothers now? Especially now when they know that she needs to take better care of herself. Especially now that they know how I fucked her over.
Again.
Only this time I’ve done it worse.
And so this is pissing me the fuck off.
That she’s out here alone.
But more than that, it’s making my chest tight, my lungs contract as I watch her stand there, looking at her dream through the glass.
I’ve been watching it too.
That dream.
For the past week, I’ve either been working on my Chevy at Auto Alpha for long hours — Pete thinks I’ve gone crazy but he doesn’t interfere because he knows what I did — or I’ve been driving here to this street, watching her dark studio.
Just so I can imagine her, dancing, spinning on her toes inside that building.
Like a fairy.
Like she was born to do.
She moves then.
She walks away from her studio and I can’t get air inside my body. I choke on the pain as she stops a few paces down. In front of another ballet studio: Baby Blues.
A sister branch of Blue Madonna, where they teach ballet to little girls.
It was the studio she went to before switching over to Blue Madonna, I know. I’ve seen her through the glass window countless times.
She’s pressing her hands on that same window now, as if she can see something. As if she can see, she can imagine, picture her — our…
“Fuck,” I mutter quietly as my sternum almost caves in on me, and climb out of the car.
I snap the door shut, the sound of it echoing in the night and finally alerting her that someone’s here.
She spins around, her eyes finding me.
I stride toward her and I see her shoulders sag in relief. I even see a small, trembling smile on her lips and I think I’ve lost my mind, that pain is making me hallucinate.
But at least I have enough sense left that I know it’s real when she stumbles on her feet. And I hasten my steps to get to her, catch her, before she falls.
I wind one arm around her tiny waist and the other behind her knees and pick her up.
“Reed,” she gasps, her blue eyes wide. “Thanks.”
I clench my jaw. “What are you doing out here?”
She frowns and clutches my t-shirt. “I’m taking a walk.”
“You can barely stand.”
“I can too.” She sticks her bottom lip out. “If you put me down, I can show you.”
“I’m not fucking putting you down.”
She rests her head on my shoulder, peeking up at me through her eyelashes. “You know, you curse too much, Reed.”
“That’s the least of my crimes.”
She sighs. “I know.”
I squeeze her body in response and it feels much too thin.
She’s small to begin with, tiny bird-like bones, but I know that she’s lost weight. I can feel it.
I can see it too.
I can see that she’s ruined. Completely and irrevocably.
Her cheeks are sunken and there are deep circles under her eyes. Eyes that are red and swollen. From all the crying, I assume.
This is me.
I’ve done this.
She raises her hand and lightly grazes her fingers over a bruise, studying me as I’ve been studying her. “Ledger did this, didn’t he?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“You look completely destroyed.”
I have to chuckle at this. Harsh and angry.
At the fact that she’s been thinking the same thing as me.
“It’s fine,” I tell her again and begin to walk.
“That’s what you used to say. Two years ago.”
“Yeah, things haven’t changed much since then. I’m still the same asshole. Besides, this isn’t anything that I didn’t deserve, so.”
Her eyes fill with tears and I squeeze her against my body again, her tears enflaming my pain, making my injuries throb.
“I told them,” she confesses. “I only wanted to tell Con but Ledge was home too. I didn’t know that he was going to be there. And Con, he wants me to get an a-abortion and —”
“Doesn’t. Matter,” I snap out again.
Abortion.
My body recoils at the word and I almost fall down on my knees. The only reason I manage to stay upright is because I’ve got her in my arms and I’ll be fucking damned if I’m dropping her.
Fucking abortion.
I want to do something drastic, fuck up this world because of how much I hate that word, but it’s not my decision to make, is it? It’s not my motherfucking decision.
I can feel her blinking up at me, all drowsy. “Where are you taking me?”
“To my car.”
“The one I stole?”
“Yes. The one you stole.”
“How did you get it back to how it was before?”
“What?”
“The car,” she explains. “It feels like before.”
“I worked on it all summer. Back then.”
“All summer?”
“Yeah.”
She hums. “I didn’t mean to do it. To steal your car.”
I squeeze her again. “You’ve already said that.”
“Why were you so mean to me? You said all those things that night. I can never forget them.”
“Because I wanted you to hate me,” I say against the tightness in my throat.
“Why?”
“Because I broke my promise to you.”
She has an adorable frown on her forehead. “Oh. Well, I did. I do. Hate you. And that’s why I’d never tell you.”
“Never tell me what?”
“That you’re a genius.”
“A genius.”
She hums again. “Yeah. A car genius. And a soccer genius. I hate how good you are with things.” She gasps then. “Maybe you should do it for a living. Build cars. And get out of your awful job.”
“Just go to sleep.”
She doesn’t. She rubs her cheek against my neck, making her geranium and sugar scent explode over my senses. “I’m going to miss it.”
“Miss what?”
“Spinning on my toes.”
Not yet, I tell myself, I can’t fall on my ass while I have her in my arms.
I squeeze her featherlight body again – I can’t seem to stop – almost plaster her to me, and somehow she likes that.
She likes my brutal grip and sighs happily, her eyes closed. But she won’t stop talking. She won’t stop making my body hurt with her words. “But it’s okay. I don’t care about ballet anymore. I don’t even care about Juilliard. I care about other things now. Her…”
“Go. To sleep,” I growl.
And she does.
Fucking finally.
When I deposit her in the car and buckle her in, my eyes drop down to her flat stomach. I stare at it for a few beats, feeling my heart thunder in my chest.
Before lifting my eyes up to her peacefully sleeping face.
I promised her the other day at the bar that I’ll never make a promise to her that I won’t keep. And so I repeat the promise I’d made a week ago — as soon as I saw her touch her stomach — now.
I promise that I’m done hurting her.
I’m done ruining her.
From now on, along with protecting her from the rest of the world, from my fucking father and his evil clutches, I’ll protect her from me.
I’ll protect them both.