Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (76 page)

For some reason, I’m not too sure that she wants me over there to comfort her. I feel so much distance suddenly, and can’t separate my misgivings about Kellen’s sudden departure with Dessie’s coldness to me. Some dark, piteous part of me feels like I deserve this.

But then why did she agree to come over?

Brant’s door opens suddenly and he peeks his head out, his eyes finding mine.

I guess we aren’t as alone as I thought we were.

Since Dessie’s eyes are closed and she’s cuddled up with one of my pillows, I let her rest, closing the door softly, then draw up to the kitchen counter where Brant’s perched himself on a stool, snacking straight out of a cereal box. He asks me if things are okay—I assume he means between Dessie and I, according to the nod of his head at my room. I shrug, pushing palms into my eyes and sighing deeply.

Brant taps me on the arm and puts a screen in my face, causing my eyes to squint:

Shes not mad at u

bout the Chloe thing,

is she??

I read his text several times. Then, I put two-and-two together, and a whole new wave of anger finds its way up my neck, reddening my face. “What the fuck did you do to Chloe?” I ask, turning on him.

“Dude, it wasn’t serious to begin with
,” he tells me, raising his hands in defense, “
and she got all clingy, and then she said she loved me, and
—”

“You have hundreds of girls on this campus to choose from,” I throw back at him, my temper set off in an instant, “and you pick one of Dessie’s friends?”

“I didn’t pick her. She picked me.”

“The fuck you did,” I retort, shoving a hand into his chest. Brant falls against the wall, and whatever trace of humor was in his face is now gone. “I taught you how to even talk to girls. Remember, bitch? You seem to forget that fact, you scared piece of shit. Back then, you couldn’t even approach one without pissing your little pants.”

Angry, he tries to throw some signs at me, saying that
I’m
the scared piece of shit—but, for the word “scared”, he just wiggles his hands in the air, and how can Brant ever forget his favorite sign “poop”?

“I taught you how to talk to girls to give you confidence,” I say over his dumb signing. “Not to turn you into the fuckin’
philanderer
you’ve become. If the girls you meet were smart, they’d stay the fuck away.”

He says something to me, but I’m not in the mood to read lips; it’s his turn to read mine.

“And respect?” I push on. “Where the fuck’s your respect, Brant? You can pull it out all you want, put your mark on every tree you pass, but you keep that dick away from my girl and away from her friends. It’s called fucking
respect
.”

He lifts his chin and starts shouting at me. I don’t have a clue what he’s saying.

“Real smart,” I say through all his shouting. “Keep it up, Brant. Keep screaming and yelling at your deaf friend. Scream a little louder, help your buddy out, I can’t hear you yet.”

He shoves his hands into my chest, still yelling. I hardly budge.

“That all you got, you fuckin’ slut?”

He shoves me again. I put a hand on his chest and give him my own version of a shove, and that puts him flat against the wall once again. I see the stunned look in his eye as his hat flips off his head from the impact, dropping to the floor.

I come up to Brant, nose-to-nose, and pin him to the wall with my mere presence. With a growl that’s summoned from somewhere dark and deadly, I say, “You’re not worth any decent woman’s time.”

His eyes meet mine. I expected him to knock me really good in the face for that one. Maybe I want him to. Maybe I need to be knocked the fuck out so I can quit feeling all this rage inside me that has nowhere to go. This rage has lived in me for so long, the rage of being submitted to a silent world, of being thrust off the pedestal I didn’t realize I was standing on at the smart and tender age of twelve. It makes it so much easier to be alone. It makes it so much easier to hate people. The rage has been my friend since day one, protecting me from the assholes who tried to fuck with me.

All the fury seems to drain from Brant’s eyes. This close, I see that anger slowly replaced with hurt.

I swallow hard. I don’t know whether to regret the words, apologize, or punch a hole through the wall by his head.

Then his eyes shift. I turn around. Dessie’s standing in the hallway.

How much of this did she hear?

She signs:
Is this the “you” that you’ve been hiding? You have an anger problem?
Her signs are all wrong, but I get the gist, and the gist sucks.

My fists are so balled up, I could draw blood from my own palms.

“I don’t have an anger problem,” I growl through the stinging silence, then sarcastically add, “I have a
deaf
problem.”

He texted me,
she returns with her hands, and then she spells out his name:
K-E-L-L-E-N
.

My fist breaking his glasses in half replays ten times in my head. I feel my teeth clattering together.

“
He told me to beware of you,
” she says and signs. Instead of “beware”, she signs “scared”, which I guess is just as accurate. I watch her lips, each word causing its due damage. “
He didn’t tell me why, but I know he left early. Eric told me at rehearsal. What happened? Did he leave because of you?”

All I can do is stare at her. What would be the easiest thing to say? I punched him because of what he said about her, making me sound like some possessive jerk? Or, had I not stopped, I would’ve thrown fists into him until there was nothing left of his pompous fucking face?

Why does it feel like I lose no matter what I say?

“He just … He just had to go.” My words ride on the last wisp of breath in my lungs.

Her bag’s hanging at her side. I just now notice it. She pulls it over a shoulder, telling me
she
has to go.

“Dessie,” I plead.

Then I follow, calling after her. Only once she’s outside the door does she finally glance back. It isn’t her leaving that hurts me the most.

It’s the look of fear in those eyes.

DESSIE

The rain hasn’t stopped all week. They’re saying if it keeps it up this badly, our turnout for the weekend may suffer.

To that, I say,
let it suffer
.

I couldn’t dream of a better outcome than to perform in front of an audience of three.

Or two.

Or none.

I listen to the spattering of rain against my dorm window, not wanting to go to sleep just yet, because that means it’ll be Friday, and with Friday comes the dreaded opening night.

I breathe deeply, willing myself to calm down.

I’ve spent days trying to reconcile how I feel about Clayton, about Chloe and Victoria and their judging eyes, about Kellen and his cryptic warning—or Clayton and his cryptic explanation of said warning. The enraged look in his eyes when he’d finished yelling at Brant keeps resurfacing, scaring me anew.

I know what it’s like to get close to someone, only to have them turn into someone else entirely. I know how far a man’s willing to go to convince a woman he’s the best thing under the sun, while actually being as unreliable as the moon, its phase changing each night.

And I’m so scared to experience that again.

No matter how good his arms feel around me.

Or his tongue.

Or his …

I run a hand down my body, squeezing shut my eyes and trying to envision his sexy face from the first time he stared at me with that hunger in his eyes. My hand is cool as ice as it makes its way between my legs. I gasp as a finger teases me below. Clayton Watts.

He’s bad news, Des.

I huff, annoyed at the invading voices. I try to recapture his face, my finger searching for pleasure. I moan, finding it again. I breathe deeply.

All the new students want him. Stay away.

He’s bad, bad news.

No one goes near the Watts boy.

I huff again, pushing away all the stupid warnings from my stupid friends.

Their thorns will prick you just the same. It’s in their nature.

I touch myself. I feel my heart picking up pace. I lick my lips and run my fingers up and down my
other
lips. My legs squeeze together instinctively, then open up, desperate for him.

He didn’t hear your song. Not one note.

He’s deaf.

My eyes flick open. Suddenly, it’s not his sexy face that I see; it’s his half-turned, oblivious face at the Theatre mixer. The first time I ever saw him. I hear myself trying to get his attention again.

Then, I see him walk away like I wasn’t even worth his breath.

I see him after he caught me singing to myself in the auditorium. The menacing twist of his lips into a frown … the tattoo drawn up his neck … his heavy-lidded eyes as he stares me down.

I don’t have an anger problem.

I have a deaf problem.

For some reason, it strikes me harder now than ever. My fantasy is shattered, and as fast as it’d come, suddenly I’m just a girl on a bed with a hand between my legs.

My eyes pool with tears. I bite on my lip, refusing to let them fall. Then when I turn on my side to sleep, they spill onto my pillow.

I don’t know if I get any sleep. I feel like I blink and then the morning’s come, and magically Sam and her light snoring are back from wherever she was, and the date on my phone is the one Friday in all of time that I’m most dreading.

It’s like I have stage fright and I’m nowhere near the stage.

I want to throw up, but my stomach is so empty and I haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday.

My head spins when I sit up, the morning light touching my face in orange, fiery stripes through the blinds. There isn’t a speck of rain spattering on the window; only golden sunshine and birds chirping.

Fucking great.

After I’m dressed for the day and have a bag packed for tonight with my post-show outfit and stage makeup, I catch Sam sitting on the edge of her bed wearing one of her old shirts and staring forlornly out the window.

“You alright?” I ask, joining her by the window.

She smirks and says, “Well. There’s this guy Tomas. Spelled without an ‘H’. And he wanted to do something with me this weekend.”

“That’s good news! Oh.” I frown. “Do you even like him?”

“That’s the problem. I mean, he’s cute, I guess.” Hearing Sam call a guy “cute” in her monotone voice is probably an experience I’ll never be able to compare to anything, ever. “But, like, he plays the bassoon.”

I lift my eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“I can’t be with someone who plays the bassoon.”

I spot the frat boys playing Frisbee in the courtyard, but today they have their shirts on. I wonder if the rain brought a cool front with it.

“There’ll be some things about the guys we’re into that we think we can’t handle,” I tell her in a wistful tone, watching as one of the guys races across the grass, nearly colliding into the fountain to catch the Frisbee. “Maybe if we tried to hear the bassoon in a new way, we might find that we can …
sympathize
with the bassoon. Maybe it doesn’t sound as awful as we thought. Maybe it’s even … sort of beautiful.”

Who exactly am I talking about right now?