Believe: (Intermix) (True Believers) (22 page)

This was so illegal. This was the end of my life as I knew it if I got busted. But I knew it was safer for me to do it than Phoenix. Not to mention his personal feelings about drugs. It would go against everything in him to run drugs for Davis, and most likely what would happen was they would wind up in a fistfight. And while Phoenix certainly had rage and a fair amount of skill, Davis was huge. I doubted that Phoenix would come out of it unscathed.

So I had to do it.

I was never brave.

For once I needed to be brave.

If I expected Phoenix to have my back, I had to have his, right?

But this was illegal. So wrong. Phoenix wouldn’t want me to do this. “What if I say no?”

He shook his head slowly. “You don’t want to say no, trust me.”

My heart was racing, and I felt sick to my stomach, but I knew this was too risky. Either way it was risky, so it was better to take the legal risky route. “Yes,” I told him. “Yes, I do.”

He took a step forward, the knife in his hand, and I was pulling out my phone, dialing 911 already when the front door opened.

It was Tyler, Phoenix, Riley, and Rory. It took the guys all of three seconds to assess the situation.

“Go,” Tyler said to Rory, shoving her back out the front door while shielding her with his body. “Lock the car until Robin comes out, then go.”

I was already bolting toward the kitchen, knowing full well Davis would reach for me, which he did. But I was fast, or maybe too scrawny, because only his fingertips touched my arm. Or maybe Phoenix or Riley pulled him backward. I didn’t turn around to look, I just ran.

But I did hear Phoenix say to him, “If you ever come near my girlfriend I will fucking kill you with my bare hands, you know I will.”

A shiver slipped up my spine. Once I was in the driveway, I finally let out the breath I was holding and got in the car with Rory. “Who was that?” she asked, looking scared.

“Drug dealer. Drive around the block. Do you think we should call the cops?”

“I don’t think the guys would like that. Easton, you know, the custody. Did he have a gun?”

“Not that I saw.” Rory cruised down the street, but she was already using voice command to call Tyler. He didn’t answer.

Suddenly feeling like I was going to throw up, I stuck my head between my legs. “I don’t think I handled that very well,” I told her, my words muffled from the fabric of my dress.

“I think you handled it better than I would have. I would have peed my pants.” Her phone rang, and she answered it. “Are you all okay?” Relief crossed her face. “Okay, good. We’ll be back in a minute.”

She hung up. “Everything is okay. They’re all fine and Davis left. He knew he was outnumbered. Phoenix wants you to meet him at the park in half an hour.”

***

I expected it to be awkward when I saw Phoenix. I had been shut down physically and emotionally when he left my parents’, and we hadn’t exactly had the best conversation. I also knew he would be feeling guilty about Davis.

But when I pulled into the parking lot at the park, he was sitting on a bench already waiting for me, hair in his eyes, arm tossed carelessly over the back. His eyes were closed, like he was enjoying the sun, and any nerves I had evaporated.

God, I loved him. I looked at him, and it just made my heart ache.

When I stepped out of the car, he was already standing, and he came toward me, steady, his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. He was wearing one of the band shirts I had given him for his birthday.

Without saying a word to me, he just cupped my face with his hands and kissed me. It was a deep, intense kiss, his tongue sliding across my bottom lip, his breath hot and sweet. His fingers were rough and callused on my skin, but his touch was gentle, worshipful, his kiss everything I could have hoped for and more.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered into his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he said in echo. “I shouldn’t have left like that. I was an asshole.”

“I shouldn’t have screamed at you. You’re right, I was shutting down.” I snaked my arms around his waist and leaned into the familiar feel of him, taking in his masculine scent, the warmth of his shirt from the sun, the muscles in his thighs against me.

“Come here,” he said, pulling me to the bench, and onto his lap. “God, when I saw you with Davis . . . I’m sorry. I never thought that he would find you.”

“I know, it’s not your fault.” I perched there, fingers clenching his T-shirt, kissing him again, and sucking lightly on his lower lip, relieved that he didn’t seem furious with me. I started crying, I couldn’t help it. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.

“Thank you for the card.”

He smiled. “You make me sappy.”

“I like sappy.”

His thumb rubbed over my hand and his expression grew serious. “Robin, you know that I’ve always been someone who lived in the now, who dealt with the now. But for the first time ever, you made me believe in a future. You made me want a future. You made me believe in you and me. And when I saw Davis with you . . . I thought, how can I drag you into my shit like that? I can’t ever walk away from the past. It’s always going to be with me.”

“I know that.”

He nodded. “And I also realized that it’s not up to me to protect you or save you from being with me. That you’re smart and you know what you want and I trust that.”

That meant more to me than anything else could have. “I know that what I want is you. I believe in you and me, too. And when I was there in the house with Davis, I realized what it must have been like for you to find me passed out, and I never want to hurt you like that again.”

He didn’t say anything. He just kissed me, a deep, tender kiss that made my whole body tingle.

“Phoenix, what happened to your hands?” I had looked down and realized his knuckles were bruised and scabbed, and his hands were actually swollen. “Is that from your fight with Nathan? It looks too old for what happened today.”

But he shook his head. “No. I have to tell you that you were right—I can’t react to every crisis with anger. That’s my problem that I have to deal with. When I was a kid I was diagnosed as having intermittent explosive disorder. It means I lose my shit uncontrollably. I always think I can control it, which is dumb considering the very definition means I lose it. So I have no right to criticize you for slipping and drinking. I went off on that car, and I would have preferred to go off on Nathan.”

It wasn’t surprising to me. I knew his anger was different, deeper. “I start alcohol counseling next week, just so you know. What scares me is how I sat there with that bottle and knew that it would make feel better, short term, but worse long term. Yet I couldn’t resist it. Not really.”

“My rage is alive . . . it’s like it’s moving cell by cell through my body. I should probably take the medication.” He gave me a small smile, brushing my hair back. “If you can deal with your stuff, I can deal with my stuff, and we’ll deal together. Fair?”

“Fair.” I nuzzled my lips over the side of his face.

“So what do we do now?” he asked.

“‘There is no remedy for love, but to love more.’ That’s Thoreau,” I murmured.

Phoenix kissed the corners of my mouth. “‘The future for me is already a thing of the past. You were my first love and you will be my last.’ That’s Bob Dylan.”

I smiled.

Chapter Twenty

Phoenix

My mom was actually crying. “Seriously?” I asked, rolling my eyes. But secretly I was pleased that she cared.

“Shut up,” she said, sounding annoyed, wiping at her eyes. “I’m entitled to fucking cry when my only kid moves a thousand miles away.”

We were standing in the driveway at Tyler and Riley’s, a dusting of snow on the ground, the dead Christmas tree that Jessica had decorated the month before now on the lawn, waiting for garbage removal. Robin’s car was packed with all her belongings. I had a duffel bag of my stuff on the front step, waiting to be crammed into whatever space was left.

My whole family was next to my mom, bundled up against the cold, saying good-bye. I was excited about me and Robin heading south, but I realized I was going to miss these motherfuckers, every one of them. My cousins had given me a place to stay and legit friendship, and my mom and I had been working on being nicer to each other. She had even finally told me my father’s name, but I hadn’t pursued getting in touch with him.

I rubbed Easton’s head. “I’m going to miss you, dude.”

“Can I come visit?”

“Sure, you can,” Riley said. “When I win the lottery.”

“We’re going to have a lot of cool stuff when we win the lottery,” Jayden said. “Because you always say that.”

I laughed. And how could I not miss that guy and his unintentional humor? I gave him a fist bump. “Keep sending me those stupid pictures of dogs being shamed. They make me laugh, cuz.”

“I will,” he promised.

Riley and Tyler both gave me a one-armed hug. Jessica, who still didn’t seem to particularly like me, managed to give me a hug and a smile, probably because she was glad to see the last of me for a while.

Rory’s hug was more genuine. “Take care of Robin,” she told me.

“Not a problem,” I assured her.

Robin was in the house, using the bathroom before we left. We had already said good-bye to her family, who had been amazingly accepting of me over the last few months. I think the tattoos were overlooked by the fact that I was sober. They liked that I offered no temptation to Robin to drink. Which she hadn’t. And I was taking my little bottle of prescription meds to Louisiana with me, working through my issues with taking any sort of pills, knowing it did help me feel less tight inside.

But truthfully, I hadn’t had a whole lot to be angry about.

Robin came out, zipping up her winter coat, a smile lighting up her face when she caught my eye.

“Ready?”

Yep. She still made my mouth hot and my lips turn up in a stupid grin I couldn’t contain.

“I can drive first,” I told her. “Now that it’s, uh, actually legal for me to drive.” I had gone and finally ordered documentation online and had taken the test to get my license. I had also given Davis three hundred bucks to put a deposit down on an apartment and had cleared my debt to him. I had been worried that moving would violate my parole, but I’d been given the go-ahead.

Robin had spent the fall semester with a whole new schedule, dropping out of all of her business classes before it was too late and quickly trading them out for art classes. The one that she had taken on a whim, glassblowing, had turned out to be something she had completely fallen in love with. Which was why we were moving to New Orleans. She had transferred to Tulane to study at their glassblowing program, which was supposed to be one of the best in the country. I had gotten a job at a tattoo shop by answering an online ad, and we had a studio apartment waiting for us.

“See you all in May!” Robin said, giving out hugs. She even hugged my mom, who looked like she’d swallowed a bug.

I had never left the Cincinnati area. Not in my whole twenty-one years.

As I crossed the bridge into Kentucky, Robin singing a song off the radio in the passenger seat, I focused on the road stretching out in front of me.

Hell to the yeah.

Reaching over, I snaked my fingers through hers.

Yep. The future for me was already a thing of the past.

Keep reading for a preview of the next book in the True Believers series

SHATTER

Available from InterMix June 2014

Kylie

Two hours later my head was spinning, but I at least had a game plan for further studying. Darwin/Jonathon had shown me that the class was divided into elements, mixtures, compounds, gases, and measurements. He subdivided each of those for me into additional categories and talked me through every definition and gave example formulas, which I almost maybe understood if I squinted and thought really hard.

I had three days before my exam so if I spent every waking moment between now and then reading the notes over and over and over again, I might pass. Maybe.

But I was getting a little loopy. While he was in the bathroom I was going through some online study sites and I found a bunch of chemistry jokes. I couldn’t help it. I copied one and emailed it to him.

He was looking at his phone as he came out. “Did you just email me while I was in the restroom?”

He really was cute. It just wasn’t right. His jeans fit the way they were supposed to and I found it interesting that he only needed a T-shirt in November. His tattoo was a complex sleeve of numbers and diagrams.

I nodded. “Yes, I did. Jonathon.” I was still testing his dual personality names.

He gave a low, husky laugh as he settled back into his chair while reading his screen. “Really, Kylie?”

My head was propped with my palm and I smiled, feeling comfortable with him. He smelled good. Like coffee and clean skin.

“What did one ion say to the other?” he read back to me, even though I knew what it said since I’d sent it. “I’ve got my ion you.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It was stupid, and even I understood it.

To his credit, he laughed with me. “See? Chemistry is
fun
.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s a laugh riot. Hey, what do you do with a dead chemist?” I asked him, glad to rest my brain for a minute. I was a little afraid it was smoking from overheating.

“You barium.”

No way. He’d heard this one before. “Damn it! How did you know the answer?”

He tapped his temple. “Me use my head.”

“Well,
Darwin
.” I let the nickname roll off my tongue. I still wasn’t sure which one suited him better. “I guess I should let you get back to your regularly scheduled life. Thanks for all your help.”

“You’re welcome.” He efficiently packed up all his stuff. “You’ll do fine on this exam as long as you don’t panic.”

Easy for him to say. “So what all is in your tattoo?” I asked, reaching out and running my finger along his arm, over the maze of numbers.

He looked startled that I had touched him and I realized that probably wasn’t appropriate. But I came from a touchy-feely family and I had always been someone who reached out and made contact without any thought about it. I hugged my friends, I put my hands on arms when I spoke to people, I squeezed knees. If I liked you—and it was rare I met someone I truly didn’t like—I touched. The me before the RAN incident wouldn’t have even thought twice about it, but now I suddenly felt like I needed to apologize or something. Like he would think I was hitting on him.

But he just started pointing out parts of his sleeve. “The periodic table of the elements. Avogrado’s number. The molecular graphic for propane.”

After that, I couldn’t follow any more. “But won’t professors think you’re cheating? If you have stuff on your arm?”

The smile he gave me was patronizing. I don’t think he meant it to be, but his answer told me how clearly stupid my question was. “When you’re studying reactions kinetics and advanced nucleic biochemistry you don’t need to cheat on basic chem.”

“Oh.” I felt heat in my cheeks. Most of the time, I was perfectly happy with who I was. But then there were other times, like then, where I just didn’t want to be the dumb blonde. Just once, I wanted to be taken seriously, instead of having everyone think I was cute, but ten IQ points off from needing the short bus. “Duh.”

“In between are dates representing people and events that are important to me. My birthday. My mom’s birthday. The first time I—” He looked up and gave me a grin. “Well, you get the idea.”

So genius or not, he was still like any other guy. Needing to brag. “Are you seriously telling me you inked the date you lost your virginity on your arm?”

“I never said that.”

But he did wink at me, and I thought he was actually growing even cuter the longer I sat with him. “Honestly, it should look like a total mess, but the artist did a really good job. It’s very cool.”

“Thank you.” He pushed his chair back. “You ready to head out?”

“Sure.” I stood up and pulled my coat off the chair.

“Do you have any tattoos?” he asked.

“No. I do have a piercing though.”

“Bellybutton?”

“No.” Let him interpret that however he wanted to.

His eyebrows shot up. “Are you telling
me
you have your love button pierced?”

I laughed. “Love button? And I never said that.” I winked back at him after echoing his words.

“Oh, my God,” he said, standing up and picking up his messenger bag. “You’re dangerous.”

I wished. “To be dangerous you have to be evil or super-smart and I’m not either.”

“Those aren’t the only ways to pose a threat.”

Suddenly I was afraid to hear what he might say. So to distract myself, I looked at my phone, and was immediately sorry I had. I had a text from Nathan.

I love you.

My smile evaporated and I shoved my phone in my pocket. I didn’t want to see that. He kept coming at me like that, trying to apologize, begging me to take him back. But how do you trust someone who not only hooked up with your friend, he spent the next two months trying to repeat it?

He didn’t love me. You didn’t treat someone you loved like he had treated me.

Resolutely, I put a smile on my face and looked at Darwin/Jonathon. “Thanks again, Jonathon. Have a good night.” I started to walk away, wanting a private moment to myself.

“I’ll walk out with you,” he said easily, falling into step beside me.

Damn it.

“Are you okay?” he asked, as he held the door open for me.

Cold air hit me in the face. I winced. “Fine. I’m stressed, but I’ll do the best I can on the exam. If I fail, well, at least I tried.”

“I’m not talking about the exam.”

Puzzled, I glanced over at him, hovering on the sidewalk, not sure which way he was going. “What do you mean?”

“Whatever was on your phone upset you.”

That it was that obvious made tears instantly rise to my eyes. “No, it’s fine.” I gestured to the left. “I’m this way. Have a good night.”

“You’re walking?” He frowned.

“It’s just a block.”

“It’s dark. I’ll walk with you.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” I started walking, anxious to get away from him. He was being too nice and I felt vulnerable, like a loser. I couldn’t keep a boyfriend or understand basic chem. What he considered chemistry for dummies.

But he continued to walk with me. “You’re a junior, right?” he asked casually, like I wasn’t struggling not to cry.

I nodded.

“What’s your major?”

“Education. I want to be a kindergarten teacher.” I gave him a wan smile. “I don’t need to know chemistry to teach that.”

“I bet you’d be good with kids.”

“I love kids.”

There was silence between us as we walked, the heels of my boots sounding extra loud in the dark; the street, which was normally filled with students, mostly empty. It was a bit of a creepy walk at this time of night and I’d known a girl who had been mugged. I would pee my pants if I were mugged and if I wasn’t feeling so bummed, I would be more grateful for him walking with me. But mostly I just wanted to get home.

Then I realized what I was going home to—a dark, silent room.

And the tears I’d been holding back fell along with a sob that burst out unbidden.

We were in front of my building and I just about ran to the door, digging in my bag for my key.

“Kylie.” Darwin/Jonathon touched my arm. “Hey. Look at me.”

I shook my head.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I shook my head harder.

But then, because I’m not someone who stuffs my feelings down, and because all my thoughts come out like a toddler commentating from their car seat on every car, cow, and house they see out the window, I blurted out, “My boyfriend cheated on me with my best friend.”

“What?”
He sounded horrified. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

It gave me a sense of relief that his reaction was so strong. “That’s what I thought. I mean, it’s like the worst thing ever.”

“I hope he is your ex-boyfriend.”

“He is. Because the thing is, okay, so it was a drunken hook-up which is really bad, but I don’t know, maybe I could have forgiven him for that. But I found the texts he sent her for months afterwards, creeping for a repeat. He said it was the best blowjob he’d ever had and that she had a . . .” I shook my head. “Never mind. It just was obvious he wasn’t even remotely sorry.”

“Wow. That’s rough. He sounds like a complete asshole. I’m sorry.”

My shoulders fell as my breath expelled. I ran out of words for a second. It was the right thing for him to say, but every time I heard someone offer sympathy, I just felt worse. Because while they were all genuinely sorry for me, they were also a little bit glad it hadn’t happened to them. “Thanks.” I finally found my key and I noticed my hand was shaking a little as I tried to unlock the exterior door to my building.

Darwin/Jonathon put his hand over mine to steady it. For a second, I just stood there, drawing in a breath to calm down. He waited then helped me turn the key to the right.

He was close behind me when I looked up at him, my hip shoving the door open. “Thanks,” I whispered.

“He’s an asshole,” he repeated, his voice serious, eyes earnest.

“Do you want to come in?” I asked, because I really, really didn’t want to be alone. My thoughts were too scattered, my anxiety high. Failing chemistry, moving out of my old apartment, hating my jealousy over my friends’ relationships . . . it was hitting me hard. I didn’t want silence.

His eyes shuttered for a minute and I felt silly. He was like twenty-five years old, a grad student with labs and research and probably a brainiac girlfriend who did physics for fun. Why would he want to spend the rest of his night with an undergrad who didn’t know biochemistry from her butthole and kept threatening to cry? “Sorry, I don’t know why I said that. I’m sure you have better things to do. Things that don’t involve me boring you with my pathetic love life.” Shame wasn’t an emotion I’d felt a lot in my life, but the last three months it had become a familiar feeling. One I hated.

I stepped into the vestibule, intending to close the door behind me, letting Darwin off the hook. But he came with me. “I’d love to.”

Oh, God, he totally felt sorry for me. The shame increased, but at the same time, I still didn’t want to be alone, so I didn’t hold firm and send him home like I should have. I trudged up the stairs to the second floor and he reached out and put his hand on the small of my back when I stumbled a little on the third step.

Darwin was clearly a nice guy. Whatever he was getting paid by the university to tutor wasn’t enough. How many hours a week did he spend coaching crying undergrads? Probably half the freshman class was failing chemistry. Yet here he was, being pretty damn sweet when it was obvious he could be doing about a million more interesting things.

“Do you have a roommate?” he asked.

“No, it’s just a studio. I moved here in September after classes started, so I had to take what I could get and this was it. But I couldn’t live in an apartment with Robin after what happened, so this was the best solution.” I unlocked the door and shoved it open. Flicking on the light, I felt depressed all over again looking at the glum. “It has terrible lighting.”

He wandered in to the small room and bent over to inspect my two lamps. “You only have twenty-five watts in here. You could get brighter bulbs.”

“Oh.” Of course I could. But that had never once occurred to me. I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to be logical. “Yeah, I guess I could do that.”

He dropped down onto my bed, which also acted as my couch, because I had no furniture and no space. “It takes awhile to settle into a new place.”

“I never wanted to be here. So it’s hard to care.” Setting my backpack on the floor, I sat next to him, crossing my legs and tucking my feet under them. “Do you have a roommate?”

“Yeah. My friend Devon. I’d rather live alone, honestly, but I can’t afford it.”

“And I would rather live with people. I’m social.” My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I wasn’t going to look at it. I didn’t want to look at it. It could be nothing. It could be Jessica or Rory or my mother. But compulsion drove me to pull it out and check. I was sorry I did. A pit formed in my stomach as I read the text from Nathan.

This wouldn’t have happened if you had stayed here this summer like I asked you to. We would still be together and happy.

My lip curled. So it was my fault that he had fucked my friend? Because I wasn’t around for a few weeks?

“Why don’t you block him?” Darwin asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe because I keep wanting and waiting for a better apology.”

“I don’t think there’s a better apology for what he did. I don’t think he can ever really give you a good enough reason for why he had sex with your best friend.”

I nodded. “You’re right.” I knew it. “I also know it’s not my fault, but I can’t help but feel like if only I’d done something different . . .”

He held his hand up, palm out. “Stop right there. There is no way that you could have done anything different so that it would have prevented this. If a guy is willing to cross that line, you could be perfect and it still wouldn’t matter. Don’t put yourself through that.”

The tears started again. I nodded, my lips trembling.

“It’s not your fault he’s selfish, stupid, immoral, and an asshole.”

“Well, I don’t know if he’s stupid.” I could concede the rest, but for some ridiculous reason I felt the need to defend Nathan, even just a little.