Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
Carter
What the fuck do I have to do? What do I have to say? How can I get her to stop looking at me as the enemy? Running a hand through my hair, I let out a deep sigh, lost in resentment.
“Carter. What the fuck, man?”
Great. This is what I need now. To be followed out here by these two assholes. Jackson and Dave come straight at me, because why make it a fair fight?
“I didn’t start any shit with you,” I remind Dave, who just sat there silently before. “So don’t fucking start with me.”
With a sneer, he replies, “You started shit with my friend, and you’re the one who sent those fucking pictures around, man.”
“I took them,” I correct him. “I didn’t send them.”
“Oh, is that what you need to tell yourself so you don’t feel like a slimy fucking prick?” Jackson demands. Now that we’re out of the classroom, he’s found his balls, placing both hands against my chest and shoving me against the wall at my back. “Don’t waste your time. Everybody knows what you did, and everybody knows you’re acting like it wasn’t your fault. Fucking hypocrite.”
Something inside me is going to explode any second. “Just get out of my face,” I warn, breathing heavy, looking back-and-forth between them while people passing through start to pay attention. “I mean it. Walk away.”
“Or what?” Jackson sneers before lunging at me.
Nobody can say I didn’t try to stop this.
“Fucker!” That’s all Jackson gets out before he collides with me, swinging for my jaw. I move in time for his punch to glance off me, and it throws him off balance. All it takes is my fist against his stomach for him to double over, gasping for air before dropping to his knees.
Dave’s face is red by the time he steps in and takes me by my collar before I can react. The world goes bright white when he makes contact with my cheek. It feels like my face is on fire when I double over, then drive my body against his, slamming him against the opposite wall and knocking the breath out of him. He’s gasping when I do what he did to me, taking a fistful of his T-shirt and hammering him with one punch after another.
“Lay off!” Jackson bellows in my ear, and all that gets him is a sharp, upward strike to his face from my elbow. He falls back so I can continue painting Dave’s face red. He’s barely conscious and slumped against the wall by the time I finish, and I let him drop before turning back to Jackson.
“Bet you wish you hadn’t started shit now,” I mutter, smiling at the sight of blood coating my right fist. “You want some more?”
I don’t give him a chance to answer, taking him by the shoulders with both hands and bending him forward so my knee can make contact with his nose. It feels too fucking good. I can’t stop. Now there are shouts around us, people telling me to stop, but what the fuck do they know?
“Enough!” I barely hear the voice bellowing close to my ear before something stops my fist from cutting through the air again. Another hand is wrapped around it.
A hand belonging to Richard Kingsley.
Fuck my life.
There’s shock in his eyes, maybe even horror. “Carter! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He looks back to where Dave is on the floor, and I follow the direction of his gaze. Am I supposed to be sorry the fucker is lying there, his face covered in blood? He has a hand pressed to his jaw, and he’s sobbing like the pussy he is. Richard goes to him, crouches beside him, barking for someone to call an ambulance. For fuck’s sake. I barely did anything to him.
At least, that’s what I think before Richard joins me. “It looks like his jaw is broken,” he announces in a soft but deadly voice. “My office, if you know what’s good for you.”
Now that the white-hot rage is starting to fade, I see what I did. More importantly, I see what it could mean for me. There’s the sound of soft weeping from some of the girls gathered around as Richard steers me through the crowd, his hand now wrapped around the back of my neck.
“I cannot believe what I just witnessed,” he mutters as we walk.
“I can explain?—”
“Save it until we’re alone. What the hell do you think your father is going to think about this when he finds out?”
All of a sudden, my insides go icy. What’s Dad going to think? I don’t have to imagine it. Might as well kiss my ass goodbye, along with my truck, my phone, my freedom.
“You realize if his parents decide to press charges, this is going to get much worse. I might have to expel you,” Richard whispers as we make our way down the hall toward his office. “I won’t have a choice in the matter. How could you do anything that stupid?”
I wish I knew. Like he said, I can’t really talk about it out here, so I keep my thoughts to myself as we walk past his assistant’s desk. He only lets go of me once we are alone in his office with the door closed.
Then he steps up toe-to-toe, not bothering to hide his anger. “Well? Why did you do it? What were you thinking, Carter?”
“They came at me. I swear,” I insist when he rolls his eyes. “I told them to walk away. It started in class. They were…”
Shit. It’s only now that I see I’m incriminating myself. Either I tell him why those pricks were messing with Elliana, and I’m the bad guy in the end, or I don’t, and I’m still the bad guy when he finds out by word of mouth about the pictures. I’ve basically backed myself into a corner there’s no way out from.
“They were what?” he snaps. “Explain yourself. Now.”
Pussy. Coward . “They were bullying Elliana. My stepsister. Ask anybody who was in Professor Hayworth’s class just now. I told them to stop, and she ran out because she was so upset. I followed her. They followed me.”
He doesn’t look convinced, eyeing me warily, but at least he backs up a step. “Can Elliana confirm this?”
Like she would, hating me the way she does. “She ran off before they came out, but I’m sure she would tell you the things they were saying to her in class. I only wanted them to stop. I guess they didn’t like me telling them off or something. I don’t know.”
“They attacked you outside the lecture hall?”
At least I can be honest about that. “I really did warn them not to do it.”
“Because you understand the way this looks, don’t you? What it means for the son of the chief of police to break another student’s jaw here on campus?” Eyeing my bloody fist, he jerks his head in the direction of an open door close to his desk. “My bathroom is that way. Wash your hands and face.”
Gladly. Anything to get away from his disapproving glare for a few seconds. There’s a welt coming up on my cheek, but that’s pretty much the worst of the damage either of them managed to hand me. I guess that will teach them a lesson about starting fights they can’t finish.
My satisfaction is short-lived, though, because Dad is in Thailand, living it up with his new wife, clueless to what’s going to happen. Richard’s going to have to tell him, especially if Dave ends up in the hospital with a broken jaw. Fuck, I didn’t hit him that hard, did I? It’s sort of a blur now. I wasn’t thinking, I was acting. I was letting go of the rage and frustration that had me locked up tight.
At least I’m feeling more clear-headed by the time the pink-tinged water runs down the drain. I was able to vent that anger before it rotted me from the inside.
But what’s the cost? Because my peace of mind sure as hell doesn’t last long. By the time I’m finished, Richard is on the phone at his desk, speaking quietly. Our eyes meet, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I burst into flames on the spot. “I understand. We’ll be waiting to hear your decision. In the meantime, let me assure you we’re dealing with things on our side.” After a few more endless moments, he hangs up, then leans back in his chair with his eyes closed. “His parents are going to press charges.”
I know what that means, and the thought makes my stomach churn. Pressing charges means a police report, which means Dad finding out about this. “Are you sure? Can you talk them out of it?”
“Carter. Are you serious?” He opens his eyes just wide enough to give me a bitter look. “Are you asking me to talk them out of reporting this attack to the police? A couple of angry, horrified parents who are now on their way to the hospital to meet up with their son? You think I would try to influence them for your sake?”
“I’m just saying. Maybe there’s a way?—”
“You think you’re very grown-up,” he seethes, cutting me off like I wasn’t even speaking. “A lot like Tucker. You go and do something like you did just now, thinking you understand consequences—or disregarding them in the first place, because nothing can touch you. I hate to break it to you, but you should know better by now. You broke a student’s jaw. The policies behind that kind of violence are the same for you as they are for anyone else. The fact that I’m even sitting here with you, having this conversation, is more preferential treatment than you deserve. I’m already going against my principles.”
The truth behind his heavy, disappointed speech starts to sink in. I can’t avoid this. “Can we at least keep it quiet until Dad gets back?” I ask. “He’s still in Thailand for another week—they get back next weekend. Can we keep it quiet until then, so it doesn’t ruin their honeymoon?”
Rubbing his temples, he shrugs. “I really don’t have any say over that. There’s a point where I have to step aside and let the police handle this the way it has to be handled.”
“What should I do?”
“Are you honestly asking?” I nod, leaning forward with my elbows on my thighs. He must have some idea of how to help me, because I am lost. “If I were you, I would call your dad. Right away.”
Not at all what I was hoping to hear. “Do you think so?”
“I would rather hear from my son than from a coworker.”
I see the point. That’s the way Dad thinks, too. “Okay,” I murmur, with my stomach churning, as I pull my phone out of my pocket. There are ten new texts waiting for me, most of them from Briggs and Tucker. Word spreads fast around here. I have to ignore them for now, pulling up Dad’s contact instead.
He doesn’t need to know the whole truth. What if Dave tells his parents where the photos came from, if he mentions them at all? I can always say it’s a lie, that they didn’t come from me, but I’ll deal with that if and when it happens. First, I have to get through this phone call.
It doesn’t hit me until the phone starts ringing on the other end that I have no idea what time it is in Thailand. It’s probably the middle of the night. But before I can point that out to Richard and promise to call later, Dad answers. “Carter? What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I…” It’s not so easy to have this talk with a witness sitting in front of me. He gets that, standing, raising a hand like he’s the one who needs to feel uncomfortable because he leaves the room to give me privacy.
“Carter? Where did you go?” Dad asks with worry in his voice.
“I’m still here. I got in a fight, Dad. A bad one. The other guy’s parents want to press charges, so I thought I should call you and warn you in case somebody reaches out from the department.”
“A fight? Carter, what were you thinking? How serious is it that they’re pressing charges?”
“Pretty serious,” I groan, nauseously. “They ended up having to take him to the hospital. I… I might have broken his jaw.”
“Jesus Christ!” It’s something between a whisper and a scream, telling me Irene is asleep, and he doesn’t want to wake her. This might be the only time I’ve ever been grateful for her presence. “Why would you do that? What possible reason could you have had to beat a kid until you broke his jaw?”
“He and one of his friends were making fun of Elliana in class. I told them to stop. When they came at me outside of class, I told them to walk away. I did. I didn’t want to fight them. But they wouldn’t let up. And I…”
“Got carried away?” There’s not so much anger in his voice now. Hardly any at all, really. “Oh, Carter. This is a mess.”
“I know. I just couldn’t sit there and let them say those things to her while she was just sitting there, not bothering anybody.”
“What were they saying? No,” he decides before I can come up with something that doesn’t involve the truth. “You know what? I don’t need to know. I know she gets a lot of shit—she always has, according to Irene. At least now, she has somebody who is willing to stand up for her, and that means everything. I can’t say I’m proud of what you did, because I wouldn’t want anybody saying that to their kid if things were reversed, and you were the one with a broken jaw. But you stood up for family, and I’m proud of you for that.”
This just keeps getting worse. He might not be screaming at me, threatening to kill me, losing his shit about having to come home early to deal with me, but it turns out there are other punishments that are even worse. Like getting credit I don’t deserve. Like knowing if I wasn’t so cruel, none of this would’ve happened to begin with.
“Thank you for telling me,” Dad concludes in a heavy, almost sad voice. “We’ll deal with this when we get home. For now, I’ll handle any calls that come my way. If anyone questions you, tell the truth, be upfront, don’t be antagonistic or refuse to cooperate. Understood?”
“Understood.” I hope that doesn’t happen, but I know it probably will. They’ll want to get my side of the story.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt this conflicted. Knowing Dad thinks I’m some kind of hero when I know I’m anything but. Realizing I would like to be the kind of man he thinks I am. Somebody who stands up for family, who protects the people close to him. I didn’t protect Elliana. If anything, I was trying to protect myself, because the guys were right. I went after them not only for her sake, but for mine. Knowing the worse things get for her, the worse she can make them for me.
That needs to stop. I need to face up to my shit. I need to be the kind of man Dad thinks I am, because that’s the kind of man Elliana deserves.