Chapter 19 – Thomas
Chapter Nineteen
Thomas
I wasn’t thinking. I should have controlled myself better. She got close enough to me to know the truth and… where the fuck is she?
I pull out my phone to send her another email, but before I can open my messages, the lights in the tennis courts shut off. I didn’t see switches on the walls. Maybe the janitor popped by and shut them off.
“Hello?”
There’s nothing.
“Hello?”
Nothing again.
I hear footsteps and then there’s pain searing through my body as something hard slams into my torso with incredible force. The wind knocks out of me and I grunt before swearing loudly. “Fuck’s sake!”
It’s a bat. I think it’s a fucking cricket bat.
Someone in the dark swings a cricket bat at my torso and nearly knocks me over.
I can’t breathe. My body aches from the point of contact.
I stumble forward, grabbing desperately.
It’s too dark for me to see. I hear footsteps, heavy breathing, and then there’s another swing.
I duck, which saves my head but not my arm.
I cry out in pain again and run backward a few steps. There’s a faint red EXIT sign in the distance but I don’t have enough light to make it there without running into something. My attacker hits me with the bat again and I scream. Fuck it, I’ve got to get out of here.
“Who the fuck are you?” I scream.
My heart races as my body hurts. If I had a weapon, or if I could get my hands on them, I would do something.
But I’m powerless against my attacker. All I have is my words, or this fuck could beat me to death on the Fox Academy tennis courts.
Dad would be so angry with me for dying at school. He’d call it a déclassé scandal.
“I SAID WHO ARE YOU?”
My breathing gets heavier as I wait for a response or another hard knock from the cricket bat.
“You know who I am.”
Are you fucking kidding me?
“Clover?”
Why the fuck is she hitting me with a cricket bat in the dark?
“Don’t move,” she snaps. “Don’t move or I swear, I’ll get your big ass head.”
Fuck. Okay, I have to be calm. I can’t move. She might be beating the fuck out of me, but she won’t kill me.
“How can you see in the bloody dark,” I snap, still gasping for breath, still expecting another hard thump in my torso.
“I can’t,” she says. “I just have damned good instincts.”
“Are you going to hit me again?”
“Maybe.”
“Can you turn the lights on so you can at least aim properly?”
“I think I hit you where you needed it.”
“Fuck’s sake, Clover. Lights. Please.”
My body hurts, and I’m bold to beg her for the slightest bit of mercy when she doesn’t owe it.
Clover has plenty of reasons to whack me like this with a cricket bat.
The only problem is, she’s not supposed to know that.
Did she trick Sylvia into setting up this meeting so she could attack me?
I hear her footsteps moving away from me and then the lights come back on.
She’s on the other end of the courts dressed in all black and wielding a cricket bat with the last name HARGREAVES written on it in a Sharpie.
She just stands there and watches me once the lights come on. I don’t move, not because I can’t, but because I don’t want to give her a reason to hit me again. If she tries this time, at least I can defend myself.
“Are you going to just stand there?”
“I don’t want you getting near me,” she snarls.
“What the fuck did I do?”
“Don’t play games with me, Thomas.”
She crosses the tennis courts back to where I stand, a few feet away from the net.
“That’s not a tennis racket. You’ve got the wrong sport,” I mutter, although it’s probably a bad time for a joke.
“You should have seen this coming,” she responds, which is the strangest bloody apology that I’ve ever heard.
“I’m going to bruise.”
“Good.”
She lifts the cricket bat to hoist it over her shoulder and I wince. Cricket bats are supposed to drag on the ground, but I don’t bother correcting her American confusion — and it’s not just because of the terrifying look in her eye.
“I’m not afraid of that thing,” I tell her. “I would have caught you eventually.”
“Cut the shit, Thomas. You’re the guy aren’t you.”
“What?”
When you grow up in a family as big as mine, you learn to wriggle your way out of trouble with a few simple steps. Clover takes her bat and whacks my thigh hard.
“OUCH!”
“Talk, English boy. The party. The dance studio. It was you, wasn’t it?”
Fuck. How the fuck does she know?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Haven’t I hit you enough?”
She hoists the bat high and I have no choice but to talk. She apparently doesn’t have a lick of hesitation about bludgeoning me. I gravely miscalculated.
“Clover…”
“Why did you do it?”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I tell her.
We meet each other’s gaze. We both know that’s a fucking lie. Even if you don’t hurt her, holding a woman down and touching her like that, pressing your cock against her. It’s definitely wrong.
She runs her tongue over her lips and my cock gets inconveniently stiff. It’s not my fault, is it? She’s just one of those girls that affects you that way. Doesn’t she realize I hate how I lose control around her?
“I couldn’t sleep for weeks. Was that your sick idea of a joke?” She grips the handle of the bat tighter like she just wants to hit me again. Please don’t break my nose.
No. Not a joke. She just lights a fire in me and makes me want to do incredibly fucked up things. I can’t have sex with her. I can’t have sex with another girl after what happened. I should have stayed away from her.
“Not a joke.”
“I want to hit you in the nuts with this bat.”
“I don’t recommend it,” I mutter.
“If you touch me again—
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
She lets go of the bat and puts her hands on her hips, shaking her head.
“This doesn’t make any sense. You attacked me, I figured that part out… but why send the weird ass emails Thomas? What kind of sick game is this?”
Emails? What the fuck is Clover talking about? I never sent her any weird emails, just normal stupid flirty emails. What does she mean?
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