Believe: (Intermix) (True Believers) (10 page)

“But why should you when I have all this credit? Last year there was, like, two hundred bucks unused at the end of the year, and it doesn’t get credited back to you.” I didn’t have a meal plan anymore since I wasn’t living in the dorm, but he didn’t know that. I had a swipe card that billed everything to a central account where my tuition and books showed up, too. I figured I would go in and pay the food expenses myself before my parents saw it and it would allow me to trick Phoenix into letting me pay for lunch.

“Okay,” he said, but he looked reluctant. He did insist on carrying my tray back to the table after we ordered. I got a bowl of soup and he got a burrito the size of my head.

When we sat back down, the group of girls at the table next to us stared boldly. I knew one of them from my literature class, and the others I had seen at parties, but I didn’t know their names. I smiled tightly at them when we made eye contact, but they didn’t look away. I could hear them whispering.

“OMG, who is that chick Robin with? Is he like her bodyguard or something?”

I knew that Phoenix heard them, too, because his shoulders were rigid, but otherwise he showed no change in emotion. He was better, a thousand times better, at hiding his emotion than I was. I knew I probably looked uncomfortable. But I just sat there and spread out my napkin in my lap.

“Bodyguard? She doesn’t need a bodyguard, she needs a stylist. She looks like hell this year. WTF happened to her?”

I paused with my spoon halfway to my mouth.

“I heard she has cancer, that’s why. I mean, look at her. I’m surprised she’s even here for classes.”

“I heard she spent the summer at rehab. Drugs.”

“No, it was for sex addiction.”

Phoenix made a sound of disgust and he leaned over and touched one of the girls’ arms. She jumped and looked at him like he was a zombie out for her flesh.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your gossip session,” he said. “But we can hear every word you’re saying and it’s rude. In case you didn’t realize that.”

Their mouths all dropped open. Two had the decency to look shamefaced, but the third just sneered. “Sorry,” she said, and it was about as insincere as you can get. “But now you can clear up the mystery for us. Who are you? I’m Frannie.”

“Go fuck yourself, Frannie,” he said in a very polite voice, a tight smile on his face. Then he picked up my tray and his and moved us three tables over.

They had no response, clearly as shocked as I was.

I followed him, their gasps of indignation washing over me, not sure how I felt. I was embarrassed that people were talking about me, that my appearance was so noticeably different it was grounds for gossip. But at the same time, I didn’t really give a shit what they thought of me. They weren’t my friends and never would be. They were bored girls with no real worries in their lives. I had been one of them. But now I knew I had no business judging anyone else.

I also wasn’t sure how I felt about Phoenix feeling like he had to defend me.

“You shouldn’t have to listen to that shit,” Phoenix said, his jaw tense, his nostrils flaring. He moved back and forth in front of the table for a second before he yanked the chair out and sat down. I could see him pulling himself in, controlling his emotions and his body.

“It’s okay,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter, and they are right, you know. I do look like hell. But I’m okay with it.” I was. If it truly bothered me, I would put on makeup. But I couldn’t work up the energy to worry about it. It was nice not to have to reapply lipstick every hour.

“You do not.” Phoenix glanced away for a second, and when he looked back at me, my breath caught in my throat. He looked at me like I was important, special. “You’re beautiful, you know.”

To him, I was. I could see that and it had more impact than any bitchy comments from girls I didn’t know. “Thank you,” I whispered.

“Are they right, in any way?” he asked, and I realized his face was pale. “Do you have cancer?”

Oh, God. I shook my head rapidly, feeling guilty all over again. “No! No, of course not. I’m not sick at all. And no, I didn’t go to rehab either, though I did stop drinking because I had one of those nights where I blacked out and it scared the shit out of me.” That was as close to the truth as I could get, but I wanted him to understand that he shouldn’t feel sorry for me. I didn’t deserve his pity or sympathy.

He gave a sigh, one that seemed like relief to me, and he nodded. “I’m glad to hear it. For a second I thought, what if they’re right?” He looked like he was going to say something else, but he didn’t. He just shook his head. “Anyway. Eat your soup.”

I took a spoonful, but my appetite was gone. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t either super charged or totally generic chitchat, which seemed almost insulting. Conversation for strangers, and whatever Phoenix was, he wasn’t a stranger. So finally I asked what I wanted to know. “Can I ask you something?”

He nodded, chewing his burrito. “Sure. But make sure you’re prepared for the answer.”

That was a good point. But I still asked it anyway. I needed to know before I let myself fall any further. “Did you love Angel? Do you still love her?”

His eyebrows rose. It obviously was not a question he was anticipating. But then he smiled and shook his head. “No. I never loved her. She was interested in me. I figured why not? And I did care about her. But then for someone who claimed to want me so much, she couldn’t be bothered to visit me when I was in.”

“So you’re more angry than hurt?”

“Yeah, I guess. But I suppose I’m not even all that angry, because anger on me is a lot louder and messier than what you saw.”

It seemed like a warning. Or maybe I just took it that way. I didn’t have a lot of experience with anger. Passive-aggressive behavior? Sure. But not pure anger. “Well, I’m still sorry that she wasn’t an honest girlfriend to you.”

“It’s okay.” Phoenix leaned forward, closer to me. “Can I ask you a question now?”

“Sure. Just be prepared for the answer,” I parroted back to him, hoping he wouldn’t ask me anything I felt like I couldn’t answer.

“What’s his name?”

“Who?”

“The guy everyone thinks did this to you.”

“Did what?” I asked, heart starting to race. “No one did anything to me.”

“What those girls noticed.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and starting swiping at it. “I am being honest, you look beautiful to me, but you do look different. What happened at that party where you blacked out?” he asked.

Then he showed me a picture of myself from early in the summer. I was drunk, yelling, plastic cup in the air. I was in full makeup, cleavage out, hair hot-rolled into waves. My lip curled before I could stop myself.

“No one did anything to me. That is the truth. And even if they did, why would you want his name?”

“So I can beat the shit out of him.”

I tore my eyes off his phone screen to stare at him. He sounded serious. He looked serious. Tightly wound, the caged tiger, ready to attack the minute the gate was raised. “I don’t need you to do that, but even if I did, aren’t you on probation or something? And why were you in prison anyway?”

“For beating the shit out of someone.”

My jaw dropped. It made sense. I mean, if it wasn’t drugs or driving under the influence, what would it be? I didn’t think he was the kind for stealing. It just didn’t match the behavior I had seen. But fighting? It wasn’t that hard to picture. A five-month sentence seemed harsh for assault, though it wasn’t like I really had any clue about sentencing and the justice system. Maybe I had been avoiding asking because while I wanted to respect his privacy I also just didn’t want to have to face the fact that Phoenix had done something wrong. I wanted to hold onto the belief that like Tyler, he had been wrongfully imprisoned in some way, despite what Tyler himself had hinted at.

My pause where I processed that information grew too long, and he gave a sound of exasperation.

“Don’t worry, I only beat the shit out of people who deserve it.”

“Who deserved it?” I asked in a quiet voice, wondering if anyone ever truly deserved it.

“My mom’s piece-of-shit boyfriend, who just happens to be a drug dealer. Some of his inventory went missing and he decided my mother took it. I caught him with a knife, carving up her stomach while he . . .”

I was horrified, and my face must have reflected that.

Phoenix cut his words off, shaking his head. His lips were pursed. “Never mind. But he deserved it for that and for all the times he hit her before that. And I’m not even sorry for it. I’d do it again if the circumstances were the same.”

I saw that he meant it. All for a woman who hadn’t bothered to tell him where she was moving while he was in prison for defending her. So I just nodded, because I had no idea what to say. I didn’t understand that world and I didn’t know what it would feel like to watch your mother being abused or how instinctive it would be to use violence to stop violence. I did think that it was the right thing to do to stop someone hurting another person, that in a situation where nothing was right, it was more wrong to walk away and pretend it wasn’t happening.

A knife carving up her stomach. Good God.

Phoenix pushed his tray away. “I should probably just go.”

“Why?” That upset me. I didn’t want him to walk away with anything awkward between us. I wasn’t even sure how I felt, but I knew I didn’t have any right to judge something I didn’t know anything about.

“Because . . .” He looked away and shook his head.

“Why?” I repeated, both of our lunches totally abandoned.

“Because I like you.” Phoenix turned back and met my gaze. “And I won’t be good for you.”

My throat tightened. “I think maybe you think I’m a better person than I am.”

But Phoenix shifted his chair closer to me so we were sitting next to each other, and he took my hand. “Robin.”

“Yes?”

“I’m no good for you. And you’re probably no good for me. But we’re going to do this anyway, aren’t we?”

I nodded, because looking into his dark eyes there wasn’t any other answer. I couldn’t walk away from him, and I couldn’t let him walk away from me. “Yes. We are.”

“I thought so,” he murmured, and he kissed me in the food court, a quick brush of his lips over mine.

My skin tingled, and I sighed.

Oh yeah, we were definitely going to do this.

It was the only thing I’d been sure of all summer.

When the truth was that an ordinary life with an ordinary family hadn’t just made me ordinary, it had made me naive. Because in that moment, I genuinely thought that Phoenix’s background, his anger, my secret, didn’t matter at all.

It did.

Chapter Seven

Phoenix

The very minute I knew I was done for? When Robin asked me if I loved Angel. Because when a girl asks that, she wants to know if there is room in your heart for her. I knew that not only was there room for Robin, she could probably work her way through it until she was in every single crevice, spreading like octopus ink across the ocean floor. I got in to octopuses in fourth grade, checking out every book I could at the library about them and featuring them in all my reports and art projects. The teacher wrote a note to my mother about my obsessive behavior, which I never gave her. But I remember thinking, what is so wrong with digging octopus? They have eight legs and suckers and spew ink, is it any wonder I was fascinated?

But there is a fine line our world dictates between an appropriate and healthy interest in something and obsession. If you express too little interest in anything in particular, you’re lazy, a slacker, lacking in hobbies and liable to fall in with the wrong crowd. If you show too much interest, then clearly you’re obsessive-compulsive, unnatural.

I had already been fixating on Robin, I knew that. But when she made it clear that she was interested in having me fall in love with her, or that she wanted to know if the possibility was there, I knew that I had moved into octopus territory. I wanted to know everything there was to know about her—I wanted to see her all the time, touch her, smell her, unlock the mysteries of her body.

There would be disapproval from somewhere—maybe everywhere—but I didn’t give a shit.

I walked her to her class after she mostly didn’t eat her lunch, holding her hand, which felt small and delicate in mine, ignoring everyone who glanced at us. “So what are you studying?” I asked her. “Art?”

“No. Art isn’t practical. Graphic design. It’s a way to be sort of creative and actually make a living.”

“That makes sense.” Still, I had a hard time picturing her in an office or whatever. I thought of her head bent over the kitchen table or her sketching in the park. That was when she seemed happy. “Did you ever wonder why you were born with a talent if you can’t fully use it? I mean, we can’t all be Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, so why are we born with this burn to draw?”

“Maybe because we’re people and we’re flawed.” She glanced up at me, her hair tumbling around her face wildly as we walked down the path, students rushing past us on bikes. “For every ten thousand people who have that talent, only one will fully realize their potential.”

Sad but true. I didn’t know anyone who had reached their full potential. Most gave up long before that when the daily grind beat the crap out of them. “Life has a way of doing that. I mean, look at you and me. Neither one of us can pursue studying art. We have to be practical.”

“Yeah. I used to want to run off to Italy or France and study the masters or at the very least have the courage to set up a stall in New Orleans or some place like that and sell my paintings. The starving artist’s life. But I’m too . . . I don’t know. Afraid, I guess. Plain and simple.”

“It’s harder to let go of fear when you have something to lose. Being fearless is easier if you have nothing to risk.” In my case, I had absolutely nothing to lose. But I’d never had particularly grand ambitions. “I suppose I could just as easily be homeless in New Orleans as I can be here, so if I really wanted to do something like that I could, if I could figure out how to get there.”

Her hand squeezed mine tighter. “You’re not homeless.”

For the moment. “Riley politely asked me to leave as soon as I can. He’s worried about his custody of Easton. You know, the whole felony conviction thing.” I was glad I had told Robin about why I’d been in. I didn’t want her to find out from someone else, and I didn’t want secrets between us if we were going to have a shot at a relationship. Granted, I hadn’t told her the full truth, how I had found Iggy raping my mother, but she knew that yes, I was in fact guilty of the crime I’d been in jail for. I had nearly killed him, and I had done it for my mother, whether she appreciated it or not, because no man should be allowed to use his physical power over a woman.

Robin still had a secret, I knew that. Something had happened the night she had blacked out and she knew what it was. She just wasn’t ready to share, and that was okay. I was about 99 percent sure it had something to do with Nathan, because that made the most sense. It wasn’t that hard to imagine she was wasted, his girlfriend was gone, he pushed her mouth down on his dick because everyone is always after what they can get.

I was going to get the truth, and then I was going to make Nathan pay for it.

But that was for later.

Right now, I just wanted to sit back and let Robin work her way inside my heart with her shy smiles and her big, brown eyes.

“Oh,” she said, and she bit her lip. “I guess I can understand that, but it still sucks.”

“I don’t blame Riley or Tyler. They’ve done a lot for me.” More than I had actually expected. But it did feel like with our mothers gone, the bond between us was stronger. “I’ll figure something out.”

“You can stay over with me whenever you need to,” she said.

I smiled. The words were said casually, like she was being polite, but I knew better than that. She wanted me there. I wanted to be there. “Cool. Thanks. But I don’t get off work until eleven and I don’t want to keep you up.”

She stopped walking. “This is my building.” She gestured behind her to a glass monstrosity. “What are your days off work? Do you know yet?”

“Wednesday and Thursday. Weekends are big for tattoo walk-ins.”

Her face lit up. “Those are my days off, too. Well, and Mondays and Tuesdays. I work Friday through Sunday.”

“That works out then.” I glanced up at her classroom building, knowing she had to go, not wanting to let her leave. I had never felt this, the compulsion to be with a girl every second I could, and I didn’t know what to do with it.

“Have a good first day at work,” she told me. “This is going to be a great opportunity for you.”

“Thanks,” I said, surprised. It was just a standard thing to say, I guess, but it wasn’t what I usually heard. What might just be politeness sounded an awful lot like caring to me, and I was hungry to hear that. It might be what prompted me to say, “Tonight I’ll probably be really tired, but can I stay over tomorrow night? What time do you go to bed?”

“I don’t usually go to bed until midnight.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Yes, you can stay over.”

It was there again, that intriguing shyness she had, where she met my eyes, then glanced away, as if she were embarrassed by her willingness. I can’t lie. I found it fucking adorable. It also increased my confidence in her feelings for me.

God only knew what she was seeing when she looked at me, but she was willing to give this a shot, and that was all I could ask for.

“Okay, cool. I’ll text you later.” I tucked her hair behind her ear after it sprung free again. She had thick hair. “Now you’d better go.”

“Right. Talk to you later.” She turned and jogged up the steps without looking back at me, her dress swirling around her feet.

At work as I booked tat appointments and watched artists doing ink on customers, I felt pretty goddamn grateful.

Exactly one week earlier I had been sitting in my cell in a jumpsuit praying my release didn’t get messed up or delayed.

Now here I was, working at a cool shop where no one judged me, my cousins at my back, and a new girl who didn’t seem to care where I’d been, just about who I was.

Pretty fucking awesome.

When I showed up at her house on Tuesday night around eleven thirty, Robin let me in with a smile. “Hi.”

She was wearing pj shorts and a tank top that made my mouth water. Her nipples were clearly outlined beneath the cotton, and I wanted to suck each of them into my mouth and listen to her groan softly in my ear. We’d barely even kissed so far, but I had every intention of changing that in the next twenty minutes if she was down with that. I kept thinking about how it felt to lie in bed next to her, hearing her steady breathing, and I wanted to do that naked, her body as close to mine as it could be.

“How was work?” she asked.

“It’s going good. I mean, it would be better if I could ink customers myself, but I can be patient. And maybe I can talk Riley and Tyler into letting me practice on them.”

She was about to jog up the stairs to the third floor, but I pulled her to a stop in the stairwell and drew her into my arms. Her breath caught as I rested my palms on the small of her back, giving her a smile. “Hey.”

“Hey what?” she asked, though she obviously knew what I was after. Her eyes were wide, and her fingers had crept onto my chest.

“How about giving me a kiss? I think that’s a standard greeting.”

“Not for just anyone,” she whispered, but she went on her tiptoes and kissed me, her eyes drifting shut.

She kissed the way I liked, with soft lips and little sound, just the quick increase in breathing as her grip tightened on my chest. The kiss dissolved into a sigh, and she pulled back, her mouth still close to mine. “Is that a good hello?”

“Very good. Now show me how you say that you’re glad to see me.” I nuzzled into her neck, kissing her tender flesh there, my thumbs slipping under her waistband.

Her body shifted closer to mine, and I felt the press of her breasts on my chest, her tight nipples scraping across my T-shirt. Goddamn it, I wanted her so bad. When she kissed me again, pulling my mouth to hers for a deep kiss with a hot tangle of our tongues, I buried my hands in her hair to hold her against me. To keep her with me.

But when I started to grip her ass to rhythmically bump our hips together, she turned her head with a groan. “Phoenix. We should go to my room.”

I took it as a green light, and my dick got harder in anticipation. Before work I had stopped at the drugstore and bought condoms with my under-the-table pay from the day before, and they were in my back pocket. Hopefully she was on the Pill for a double dose of birth control, but I still wanted to use a condom to show her that I cared about her and wanted to keep her safe. I didn’t think I had anything skeezy, but it wasn’t like I really knew that for a fact.

“Sure.” I kissed her softly and took her hand. “Unless you want to watch a movie or something.”

But she said, “No. I’m ready for bed.”

There was a double meaning there, I was sure of it. She was telling me she was ready, if going braless hadn’t already been a clue.

Or maybe I was reading it all wrong.

I was debating that as we went up the stairs, me leading her by the hand and into her tiny room. The answer was obvious when I went to turn the light on and she shook her head.

“Can you leave it off?” she whispered.

“Sure, baby, sure.” Something shifted inside me and I didn’t even want to think about what it was. So instead, I peeled off my shirt and kissed her in the dark, feeling my way across her body for the first time. Exploring her breasts and her ass and the hot V between her legs with my thumb, listening to her soft sighs and sounds of encouragement.

When my finger slipped inside her shorts and panties, into her wet heat, she gave a sharp cry of excitement and it almost undid me. After stroking her for a few minutes, learning the angle she liked best, finding her clit and brushing over it, I stepped back and lifted her tank top off over her head. She had breasts the perfect size, just enough for me to cup while I sucked at her nipple until her nails clawed at my bare back and her breath came in short gasps. Not wanting her to come just yet, I moved up and kissed her deeply, the taste of her flesh still in my mouth, as I took her hand and slid it across my cock over my jeans.

“Are we going too fast?” I asked her when her fingers jerked reflexively. “I can slow down.” Unless it was good for her, it wasn’t going to be good for me.

“No,” she whispered, and I could feel her warm breath on my neck. “It’s just that I don’t have a ton of experience, and almost none of it was sober. It’s stupid, but I’m nervous.”

That she was trusting me to be the one here with her, totally sober, made me want to do anything to protect her, to make her happy, to please her. Love wasn’t something I knew, or had felt much of before, but I was starting to wonder if it was possible for it to happen this fast, because what I felt for Robin was . . . more.

“Babe, it’s fine.” I kissed the corner of her mouth. “I’m glad you told me, and it’s not stupid. What you feel is never stupid. We’ll just do whatever you’re comfortable with, okay?”

She nodded, and I felt the movement more than I saw it. Her hands were clutching the waistband of my jeans and I felt a complete wave of tenderness come over me. God, I was actually grateful for the dark myself because if the lights came on she was probably going to see me staring at her like a total jackass.

“Can I feel it first?” she whispered, her fingers teasing across the snap of my jeans.

Oh, hell, yeah, she could feel it. “You can do whatever you want.”

I closed my eyes and clenched my jaw, getting control as she undid the snap and pulled my zipper down with trembling fingers. When her hand went into my pants and she brushed down the length of my dick, I was pretty sure it was right up there with the top ten best moments of my life. She stroked me softly, and I resisted the urge to close my wrist over hers and have her squeeze harder, stroke faster. I let her do what she wanted, and her exploration was slow and thorough.

At one point I did reach back and pull the condoms out, then shoved the jeans down so they fell toward my knees, but other than that I just kissed her, my hands stroking in her hair while she stroked me, my dick, my chest, my ass. I’m not going to lie, I liked that she said she didn’t have a lot of experience. I liked the idea that as I maneuvered downward, over her breasts and across her stomach and pressed my finger inside her, that somehow my stamp on her would be greater than any other guy’s. She responded by gripping me tighter, and I felt a hot rush of urgency.

“Come to the bed,” I said, encouraging her forward and pushing her down on her back.