Chapter 30
RIGGS
It was a shit thing to do.
Cornering Russ Tompkins in the locker room after weight training yesterday afternoon to tell him that if he took Gemma to prom I was going to break his jaw was more than a shit thing to do. It was stupid. I knew it was stupid.
I did it anyway and I’d do it again.
Truth is, I’ve been doing it for the better part of a year now. Ever since Gem put her finger in my face and told me to stay the hell away from her. Threatened to tell her brother what happened between us, I’ve done what she asked. I stayed away. Kept my distance.
But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing everything I can to keep my promise to Beck.
At least that’s the lie I’ve been telling myself.
After the shit Ethan started saying about her last summer, I told myself I was doing it to protect her.
That if she wasn’t going to let me walk her home and stop by Dent’s for Sunday morning flapjacks to check in on her, I was just going to have to keep my promise to her brother in a different sort of way.
I started with Ethan.
There’s a wide, lazy spot in the river, west of town, where someone cleared out some trees and replaced them with picnic tables, fire pits, and a few charcoal grills.
On hot summer days, families head out there with coolers full of beer and potato salad so their kids can swim while they flip burgers on the grill and gripe about how hot it is.
In the winter, they congregate around the fire pits, kids roasting marshmallows while their parents drink spiked cider and long for summer.
At night, it’s where Barrett kids hang out.
We meet up and night swim. Drink beer we stole from our parents.
Sometimes Clearwater kids show up. If they’re assholes, they come to cause trouble.
If they’re still clinging to the belief that we’re all the same, like Gemma is, they show up to have fun with their friends.
It was summer time, not long after I almost killed him in the club swimming pool when Ethan Pryce showed up at the river with a couple of his buddies.
He wasn’t there for all of ten minutes before he started running his mouth.
By ten minutes and thirty seconds, what he was saying about Gemma got back to me.
I bided my time.
Watched him and waited.
Let him run his mouth and drink himself stupid. When he stumbled off into the trees to take a piss, I followed him.
All it took was thirty seconds and a very sincere threat to put the fear of God into him.
If you ever even think about saying Gemma’s name out loud again, I’ll fucking kill you. I don’t give a shit who your father is. I’ll snap your fucking neck and smile in my mugshot.
Okay.
Maybe I slapped him around a little, just to drive my point home.
After that, Ethan never bothered Gemma again and I was a man possessed. Every guy who even looked at her got the same warning—if you so much as look at her again, I’ll fucking murder you. To be honest, it only took three or four of them before word started spreading—Gemma Pierce is off limits.
Things were going fine until Russel Tompkins came along and fucked everything up by asking her to prom.
I was going to let it slide. Russ seems like a good guy.
He’s new to Barrett. Nowhere near this place when Ethan started spreading his bullshit about her, so I know he didn’t ask Gemma to prom because he thought he could get in her pants.
It took a couple of weeks before it dawned on me that his motives might be even worse.
That maybe he actually liked her.
I started to watch him around her. The way he looked at her.
The way he lingered outside the classes they had together, waiting for her so he could hold the door open while she passed through it.
Every time he smiled at her, I wanted to punch him in the throat.
Every time she smiled back, I didn’t just want to punch him in the throat.
I wanted to rip it open with my bare hands.
So, when you look at it that way, by cornering Russ in the locker room after weight training and quietly letting him know that if he didn’t tell Gemma he wasn’t going to take her to prom after all, that I was going to stomp his face in so bad his own mother wouldn’t recognize him, I was actually doing him a favor. I wasn’t threatening him.
I was saving his fucking life.
I watched it happen. Stood in the shadows of the stairwell across the hall from her locker and watched Russ stammer out his excuse for cancelling on her.
I don’t know what he told her—the hallway was loud.
Lockers slamming shut. People shouting. Sneakers squeaking across linoleum while their wearers raced the tardy bell.
When he told her, Gemma looked disappointed but concerned.
Her thick, honey blonde ponytail bobbing while she nodded up at him.
Her hand on his arm while she looked at him with worried eyes and said something back.
As soon as she touched him, Russ took a step back and a quick look around, undoubtedly looking for me before he offered her a nervous smile and what I’m sure was another apology before he hurried away.
Left behind, Gemma watched him go for a few seconds before she slammed her own locker closed and walked away in the opposite direction.
“One of these days, one of them is going to tell her, you know?”
Hearing his quiet tone, I turned to offer Cade Montgomery a scowl. He was standing a few feet away, in the same pocket of shadows I was, watching the same bank of lockers. “Tell who what?”
When I played stupid, Cade gave me a jesus christ, you’re thick-headed sort of look. Even though he knew I’m not that stupid, he explained himself anyway. “One of these days, one of the guys you’ve threatened is going to tell Gemma that you’re the reason none of them will even look at her.”
“I promised Beck I’d look out for her,” I told him because I felt like I’d been caught with my pants down.
“Yeah?” Cade looked at me like I’m the dumbest motherfucker alive. “Is that why you follow her home from the diner after every one of her shifts?” Cocking his head slightly, he gave me a smirk. “Or maybe it’s why you hang out in her backyard on the weekends and watch her grandfather’s house.”
I don’t hang out in her backyard.
But I do stand in the band of trees between it and the river, watching her through the window while she makes dinner for her and Dent.
I think about marching up the porch steps and letting myself in.
Grabbing a plate and taking my usual chair across from her while I help myself to dinner.
I’ve done it so many times, Dent wouldn’t think twice about it.
All he’d say is where the hell you been, boy?
I want to.
I want to more than anything but I don’t.
I can’t.
Not because I’m afraid Gem will make good on her threat to tell Beck what I did to her on her birthday. No, even though the threat of that is enough to give me pause, that’s not why I’ve done what Gemma wanted when she demanded that I stay away from her.
No—I do it because I know that if I let myself anywhere near Gemma, I’ll do it again.
I’ll kiss her.
I’ll more than just kiss her.
And I might not be able to stop.
“Fuck you.” I growled it at him before I started to move. He’s Cam’s boyfriend. They started dating a few months ago and she won’t shut up about it. How hot he is. How talented.
Cade has a meeting with a scout from Michigan State next week.
Someone from the Astros farm league just showed up at his house last night.
Listening to my little sister word vomit about him is barely tolerable. If I had to stand there and actually listen to him talk, I might’ve lost my fucking shit.
“Says the stalker,” Cade quipped behind me on a short burst of laughter. “What would Cheyenne say if she knew?—”
Cheyenne.
I got drunk, down by the river, the night Gemma banished me, and made out with her.
She’s been clinging to me like a bur ever since and I’ve let her because I’m a miserable prick.
Because she’s another barrier between Gemma and me and right now, I need all the fucking barriers I can get.
It’s not Cade’s vague threat to tell Cheyenne that I’ve been scaring off Gemma’s potential prom dates like it’s my fucking job that had me stopping in my tracks.
It’s the fact that he seemed to know the full extent of my fucked-up behavior—that I follow Gemma home from work and lurk down by river outside Dent’s house at night when I should be at home or making out with my girlfriend—and that bothered me. Mostly because it meant he’s seen me doing it.
Turning on a dime, I was in his face before I could council myself to walk away. “How the hell do you know where I am or what I’m doing, Montgomery? You stalking me?”
“Relax, Wheeler.” Completely unfazed by the fact that I’m roughly the size a compact car and suddenly in his face, Cade shook his head on a laugh. “You’re not my type.”
“Stay away from her,” I practically snarled it, hands cranked into fists because if he’s not following me, that means he’s following Gemma.
Cade flashes me a grin. “Or what?”
Before I could show him, Cade moved around me, just as the final bell rang, leaving me there, shaking with rage while he made his way down the hall.
That was a few hours ago. It’s lunch period and Cade hasn’t so much as looked at me.
Hasn’t looked at Cheyenne either. Seems to have completely forgotten about his veiled threat to tell her about my weird obsession with Gemma Pierce.
Probably has something to do with the fact that he and Cam have been fighting for the last thirty minutes.
Ignoring them, I force myself to focus on the conversation I’m having with his cousin, Alex, while Cheyenne hangs off my arm like I’m a goddamned jungle gym. She’s been dropping a lot of hints lately—mostly about sex. Because we’ve been together for ten months and we still haven’t had it.
Prom night is going to be so romantic.
It’s going to be perfect.
I can’t wait to be with you.
I love you.
I’m not a virgin. That ship sailed for me when I was fifteen, down by the river with Natalie Davenport.
She was seventeen and definitely in the driver’s seat.
Once she realized I was a virgin, she didn’t laugh.
Didn’t make fun of me. She slowed down. Took her time.
Showed me what to do. How to make her feel good.
Afterward, she kept texting me and I kept answering.
I met her wherever she wanted and we hooked-up.
It went on for months, until she left for college.
The last time, she gave me a kiss on my cheek and said, thanks, Riggs and that was it.
No tearful goodbye. No declarations of love or promises to write.
She went off to college and I stayed behind because that’s usually how things happen here.
When someone leaves, someone else always gets left behind.
I tell myself that’s why I haven’t slept with Cheyenne. Because I’m leaving in a few weeks and I don’t want to do that to her. I don’t want to just leave her behind.
But I can’t tell her no, either. Not flat out. Not right now, anyway because she’ll freak out and the last thing I want to do is fight with Cheyenne about the fact that I don’t want to fuck her, in front of the whole school.
Especially not when Gemma is sitting thirty yards away.
Better to just let Cheyenne think?—
From the corner of my eye, I catch sight of Russ hustling across the quad like he’s running for his life.
Since there’s no way he didn’t see me standing here, that’s probably exactly what he’s doing.
Extracting my arm from Cheyenne’s death grip, I shoot Alex a quick I’ll be right back, cutting him off mid-sentence before I shoot past him to jog after Russ.
Catching up to him, I don’t bother to call out, mainly because if he hears me, he’ll probably start running for real. “Hey.” I say it right before I drop my hand on his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks before spinning him around.
“Wha—” When he sees me standing over him, Russ’s color slips a few shades and he starts to shake his head, stammering almost uncontrollably. “Riggs. I—she—I told—we’re not?—”
“I saw,” I say quietly, telling on myself before I take a step closer. “What did you tell her?”
“That my grandma is sick and—” Russ shakes his head, swallowing so hard I’m surprised he doesn’t start choking on his own tongue. “I mean, she is sick but?—”
“You tell her it was me?” Even though he just told me what he said to Gemma, I growl down at him, my tone barely above a whisper. “You tell her?—”
“No.” Russ’s eyes bug out of his head like someone’s got him around the neck and squeezing the life out of him. “No. I didn’t. I?—”
Tightening my grip on his shoulder, I drag him even closer. People are looking at us. Wondering what the hell’s going on. Why I’m about kill Russ Tompkins in the fucking quad—but I don’t give a shit. “You better keep your fucking mouth shut, you hear me?”
“Yeah.” Nodding up at me, Russ clears his throat because he knows people are watching me basically make him my bitch and that’s a tough nut to swallow. “I hear you, man.”
“Good.” Letting him go, I take a step back. My feet are barely back on the ground before Russ is turning and running for his life, trying to get as far away from me as he can get.
What’s wrong with me?
What in the actual fuck is wrong with me?
Looking up, I can’t help it. I let myself look right at her to find her watching me.
Gemma saw the whole fucking thing.
Shit.