Breakable (21 page)

I reminded her of everything Lieutenant Watts said in class, knowing that she’d missed some of it when she’d mentally checked out. I’d watched her do it. ‘The key is to get away,’ I said, and she nodded.

I asked if she remembered the moves, and she closed her eyes and shook her head, as if she was ashamed. I took a deep breath and forced my fists to loosen. My rage at the degradation forced on her would not help
her
, and that was all that mattered. If this was going to work, she’d have
to go through it several times. It needed to be a programmed response that her body simply executed, without a lot of thought.

‘If you find yourself in this position, you want to do these moves automatically, without wasting time or energy trying to buck him off.’

When she went stiff, I asked, ‘What?’ I searched my words for the one that could cause that response and came up empty.

‘That’s his name. Buck,’ she said, her voice thin as a thread.

I found myself fighting for control again, and I knew that it would be best if I never ran into
Buck
on campus – or anywhere else. There was a high likelihood that he wouldn’t live through a reunion. ‘I will remember that.’

The move was one of leverage, backed up by simple physics – something very clear to me, but not necessarily so to most people. Dislodging a bigger, stronger foe meant impairing
his
leverage first. I had her perform the move without my weight on her, and then I suggested trying it with me holding her down, promising that she could say the word and I’d let go.

She was so clearly panicked, her shoulders rising and falling beneath my hands. She shut her eyes to hide tears I’d already noted.
Goddammit
, I wanted to murder that son of a bitch.

I was careful each time, but increased the pressure as she gained confidence, until finally I put my full weight on her. She got flustered and pushed up with her hips instead of
rolling to one side – which she’d been doing perfectly moments before. I reminded her to fight that inclination. ‘Yes. Okay.’ Her voice was noticeably stronger, and I locked on to that.

‘Ready to try it for real?’ I asked, watching her closely. She nodded. ‘I won’t hurt you, but you’ll feel the force behind it more than before. It will be fast and hard – are you sure you’re ready for that?’ She nodded again. Her pulse thrummed, just under her ear, and I prayed she could do it. I had to know she could.
She
had to know she could.

I grabbed her shoulders and shoved her down, and one arm shot up over her head, but she couldn’t get the other one under her. She struggled, and I waited for her sign of surrender, but it didn’t come. Instead, she switched arms, pushing the one beneath her above her head and shoving the floor with her free arm, propelling me off.

I lay on my side, amazed and laughing. ‘Shit! You swapped sides on me!’

She smiled, and my gaze swung to her lips.

Mistake.

I told her this is where she’d get up and run, but she didn’t take the hint.

‘Won’t he chase me?’ she asked, and I gave the answer Watts always gave – that most rapists don’t want to chase a screaming, fleeing target. They don’t want a challenge. I knew from experience as a guy that
Buck
probably wasn’t one of these, though I would not say this to her. In all probability, she knew it already.

‘I was supposed to show you your portrait, I think,’ I said, taking her hand as we lay on our sides, facing each other.

In a small, teasing voice she asked, ‘So it won’t seem like you brought me here under completely false pretences?’

I admitted that I wanted her to see the charcoal sketch, but that fact was secondary to what we’d just done. I asked if she felt more confident, and she said, ‘Yes.’

Her hand gripped mine. My thumb lay across her wrist, and I was soothed by the steady rhythm of her heartbeat. The expression in her eyes – the faith and the expectation – was too strong to ignore. I brought my free hand up to her face. ‘I did have one other concealed motive for bringing you here.’ Slowly, carefully, I angled towards her and leaned in, staring into her eyes, measuring her response.

When my lips touched hers, she shut her eyes, kissing me back, parting her lips, inviting me inside. I stroked my tongue across hers, gently. Exploring her mouth was all I wanted to do – sucking her full lower lip, so sweet, and then the upper, my tongue tracing the heart-shaped curve before diving back inside and teasing across her teeth.

She gasped, and I released her hand to tuck her to my shoulder, my hands skimming down to her hips and holding her close. There wasn’t a millimetre of space between us, but I couldn’t get her close enough. I kneaded her hip and she pressed into me while my fingers meandered across the base of her spine.

I felt her hand on the bare skin of my abdomen just before she leaned up on one elbow and asked to see my tattoos.

When I found that she’d unbuttoned my flannel shirt without my notice, I laughed softly and her cheeks flushed a rosy pink. Chucking the shirt, I pulled the thin thermal I’d worn underneath over my head and tossed it aside, too, reclining and letting her eyes and fingers peruse the ink beneath my skin.

My first tattoos – the ones ringing my wrists – were seven years old. I’d added a few since then, but not many since I left home, and nothing at all in the last couple of years. Tattoo artists are like doctors. You have to trust them – not just their skill with the needle, but their ability to read you, personally. To know what you need, and what you don’t. I’d never found anyone I trusted as much as Arianna.

I waited for questions that didn’t come, as if Jacqueline knew they were more than body art to me. As if she knew their significance to me ran deeper than the ink.

Finally, her fingers brushed lightly over the hair trailing below my navel, and I was instantly ready to answer that touch – an answer she might not have meant to invite. I sat up. ‘Your turn, I think.’ I wanted that sweater off. I wanted my fingers roaming over her, exploring.

She frowned. ‘I don’t have any tattoos.’

Big surprise, Jacqueline
. I smirked. She had no idea what I meant, and I wasn’t about to explain it bluntly while reclining on my living-room floor. ‘I figured as much. Would you like to see the drawing now?’

The emotions flickering across her face were amazingly readable – confusion in the slightly puckered brow, desire
in her dilated eyes. There was a touch of indignation, as well – but I wasn’t sure why. As she reached up and took my hand, her grip secure, one thing was certain. She’d accepted me as the bad boy her friends wanted her to have, and I would be an idiot to fight it.

I led her into my room and turned on a lamp as she examined the room and my wall of sketches. I’d not brought many girls to this apartment, and even fewer to my bed – and I didn’t bother with the lamp when I did. I knew the room by feel – the placement of the bookcases and desk. The night table where I stored drawing pencils and a small sketchpad, glasses for late-night reading or studying, and condoms. Finally, the bed, where all that was required was finding the centre of it. Pitch-black darkness – I led, they followed.

Or we just never left the sofa.

That was not for Jacqueline.

‘These are amazing,’ she murmured, and I waited, watching her eyes scan over the wall, letting her find her sketch, knowing she was hunting for it. When she spotted it, she sat, staring. I lowered myself next to her, all too aware that I was already half undressed.

She turned and watched me, and I had never wanted to read someone’s mind so badly.
Your turn, Jacqueline
, I thought, wondering how far she’d want me to go. I didn’t want to go one centimetre beyond it. Or stop one centimetre too soon.

I leaned to run the tip of my tongue over her ear, following the curve and sucking her diamond stud into my
mouth. My tongue pressed against the post in the back and ran lightly over the flesh behind her ear, and she moaned softly. I nuzzled her hair aside and kissed her neck, licking her skin lightly after each kiss, lower and lower until I met the wide neckline of her sweater.

Going to one knee on the floor, I pulled off her boots, returned to the bed, and removed mine. I lifted her directly to the centre of the mattress, rising over her and waiting until she opened her eyes. She blinked slowly, one hand lifting and grasping my arm, drugged with my kisses and craving more. Exactly as I wanted her.

‘Say stop, whenever you want to stop. Understand?’

She nodded.

I asked if she wanted to stop now, and thanked God when she shook her head
no
. She gripped both my arms when I thrust my tongue into her mouth, unravelling me when she sucked it deeper still. I pulled away just long enough to tug her sweater over her head and toss it away, returning to run my fingers and mouth over the beautiful arc of her breast above the black satin of her bra.

Her hand against my shoulder stilled me, and I shook myself internally.
Stop
.

I drew back, but before I could interpret what she needed, she sat up and slid one leg to the other side of my hip and leaned over me, into me, and I dragged her down to kiss her, my hands smoothing over her shoulders and down her back. She rocked against me and there was no containing the groan that movement yielded, a coarse rumbling deep in my chest that spurred her on. Mouth angled and open,
fostering intense, mind-blowing kisses, she rocked forward again, and my fingers found and freed the hooks of her bra and tugged the straps down. Grasping her waist, I pulled her higher and sucked a nipple into my mouth.
Goddamn
if she wasn’t sweeter than anything I’d ever tasted.

Her arms wobbled as she panted her satisfaction, and I rolled her under me, sweeping my tongue over the other breast, teasing the nipple to a hard nub before sucking it deep. My fingers forked into her hair at the nape, holding her mouth to be kissed as I stroked my opposite palm down her side and returned my mouth to hers. When she arched against me, I unbuttoned her jeans and pinched the zipper between my fingers.

Breaking the kiss, she gasped, ‘Wait,’ and I went motionless, watching her. She panted, looking up at me, a worried crease touching her forehead.

‘Stop?’ I asked, and she nodded, catching her swollen lip in her mouth. ‘Stop everything, or just go no further?’

She paused before answering, and I wanted to tell her how far I would go to give her exactly what she needed – that I would do, or not do, whatever she wanted from me.

Her answer was almost inaudible. ‘Just … just no further.’

My body geared up for a battle of restraint, but my mind rejoiced. ‘Done.’ I pulled her back into my arms and kept my hands and mouth above her waist or over her jeans, clasping her hips to drag her along my thigh, creating strokes of friction and employing the benefits of gravity. She minded none of it.

I turned her on to her stomach and moved her hair aside to kiss the nape of her neck, and she sighed, relaxing. The soft hairs tickled my nose and I smiled, running my tongue over the small rise of each vertebra, moving lower as I knelt over her, massaging with long strokes of my hands – over her hips and thighs, to her calves and back up. I squeezed her hip and she giggled, so I pressed a kiss to her mid-back and flipped her over, sucking a nipple into my mouth. Her laughter cut short and she plunged her hands into my hair and held me, trembling.

Sliding to her side, I didn’t have to coax her to follow – she turned with me, alongside me, dipping her knee between my legs as we kissed. My hand inched from her hip to her thigh, prodding her, begging just enough room to sink between us. She shifted and I slipped my fingers between her legs. ‘This okay?’ I asked, and she nodded and pressed against me, her small fingers tight round my bicep.

I stroked the tips of my fingers over the denim and she moaned in response.
Come, baby
, I urged silently and leaned to kiss her, stretching her mouth wide and sinking into her. Heat radiated from her body against my hand, and I knew her imagination was filling in the blanks as my tongue thrust into her warm mouth and my fingers found the exact spot to orbit in gentle, measured circles, the exact pressure that tumbled her over the brink.

When she fell, she tore her mouth from mine and muffled her cries against my shoulder, her nails scoring my arms. Her breathing slowed and softened, and she shuddered one final time as I withdrew my hand.

Moments later, she touched her fingers to the button of my jeans. Without raising her eyes, she said, ‘I should, um …’

I tipped her chin and stared into those blue, blue depths. ‘Leave me something to anticipate,’ I whispered, kissing her gently.

‘You were just a rebound,’ Clark Richards said, Monday morning, right before the homeroom bell rang. ‘Don’t you get it, Maxfield? Yeah, I fucked up – but I came to my senses. She’s mine. Girls like Melody don’t stick with guys like you, freak.’

Guys like you
.

Under his arm, Melody stared at the hallway tiles and said nothing. No explanation. No
see ya
. Nothing.

‘Want me to kick his ass?’ Boyce asked when I threw a metal, lidded trash can in the men’s room ten minutes later, denting a stall door and nearly knocking it off its hinges.

Hands gripping the sink’s edge and swearing I would not cry or puke or scream the obscenities rolling through my brain, I shook my head, once. Clark Richards was just being the dick he’d always been.

Melody was the one I let inside. If anyone’s ass should be kicked, it should be mine.

I woke up in my bed the next day with no idea how I got there. My phone was dead, so I didn’t know what time it was, but there was light under the pantry door and the house was quiet. The previous school day was a blur, and the hours after dark, blank. I closed my eyes and concentrated.

Boyce and I had skipped out after shop and he drove to the beach, which was still littered with remnants of spring breakers – wrappers, plastic bags, cans, the occasional abandoned beach towel or bikini top. The sky was light grey. Overcast. We sat on the rock near one of our usual hangouts and stared out over the water.

Boats motored across my line of vision, but my eyes wouldn’t follow anything. A family with a blanket, picnic basket and cooler had staked out a spot near the water. Brother and sister were the same size – twins, maybe. Preschool age. They kept daring each other to submerge in the still-cool water. They’d each taken a few turns darting up to it. Neither got further than their ankles before tearing back out like there were ice cubes in the water.

‘My offer to kick his ass stands, man.’ Boyce took a drag on his cigarette.

I shook my head. ‘She’s not worth it.’ The words were untrue. I knew it, but it didn’t matter, so I didn’t correct them.

I couldn’t fathom what she had wanted from me. Was I only a ploy to make him jealous? Get him back? Had she wanted to escape her life but wasn’t fearless enough to actually do it? Or maybe it was more straightforward than
that. Maybe I’d imagined anything between us, and I’d never been good enough for her. I was filler, nothing more.

‘Still thinking about getting your tongue lanced?’ Boyce asked. The smoke from his cigarette cleared suddenly from a gust off the gulf that lifted my hair and dropped it forward. I twitched it out of my eyes. Boyce’s military-short hair didn’t move.

The little kids by the water threw their hands in the air and squealed, chasing each other in circles. It was hard to believe that I’d ever been that small. That young. That happy and clueless. They had pain ahead. Heartbreak. Loss. They didn’t know and I didn’t want them to – but at the same time, I hated that I hadn’t known. I’d taken everything for granted – my mother, my friends in Alexandria, playing hockey. I dreamed about the future because that’s what people persuade you to do when you’re a kid, but that’s the biggest lie of all – that you can plan. Reality is, you have no fucking clue what’s coming and neither do they.

A few weeks ago, Grandpa was teaching me to drive on Sunday afternoons. He was there every night to make dinner and buffer the sour desolation between Dad and me. Yesterday, I thought I was falling in love with Melody Dover. Now he was gone, and so was whatever ignorant, naïve thing I’d felt for her. And I should have known better. I felt like the stupidest fuck alive because
I should have known better
.

‘Fuck, no,’ I answered Boyce and downed the last of my soda. ‘Lip, I think.’

Boyce made a horrified face. The guy wasn’t afraid of anything – except needles. It was kind of hilarious.

I pointed at him. ‘That right there – that’s why. Everyone who looks at it will have that reaction.’

‘So … you’re doing it to tell everyone that you’re certifiable and like pain?’

‘Okay.’ I offered my empty can and he dropped his cigarette butt into it. Boyce was inexplicably anti-litter – an odd, singular holdover from his days as a cub scout. Before his mother quit this town, his father, his brother and him. Before his dad started using his sons as punching bags, and things like scouting were no longer an option.

‘Huh. Makes a weird sort of sense. I like it.’

He got a text from Rick, who’d skimmed enough off last week’s merchandise to party tonight for free. ‘Thompson’s got molly and weed out the ass. He says bring beer. Up for it?’

‘Fuck yeah. Why not.’

How Boyce typed anything coherent with his Neanderthal thumbs was a mystery, but they flew over the surface of his phone. ‘
Score
. We’ve got a few hours to kill. Let’s go get your truck from the lot and get some food.’

I’d forgotten about the truck. It was alone in the school lot when we arrived, with
FREAK
key-carved into the driver’s door.

‘That’s it,’ Boyce said, staring at it. ‘I’m kickin’ his ass.’

I didn’t care what Clark Richards did or said to me, but my truck was an extension of my grandfather, and he’d disrespected him. ‘Get him invited tonight, Wynn.’

Boyce had an evil grin that was all too familiar from my ninth-grade memory vault – if he’d sprouted horns and a villain moustache along with it, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

‘Thatta boy, Maxfield,’ he said, thumbs flying, texting someone. ‘Consider it done.’

According to the bathroom mirror, I’d had a hell of a night. Black eye. Swollen nose. Bruised jaw. The wall clock in the kitchen said it was early afternoon, so school was officially ditched for the day. I plugged my phone in, drank a Coke, started coffee and went to take a shower while it brewed.

My ribs were sore and bruised, too, and my knuckles were scuffed raw. I smeared ointment on to everything still bloody after the soap and water, before pulling on dark grey sweatpants and a red-and-white baseball tee, wincing from the sharp pain in my side the whole time. Deep breaths were agony and coughing was worse. I weighed the possibility of a cracked rib. Head in my hands at the kitchen table, I stared into my empty mug and tried to recall how I’d got that particular injury.

When we’d gone to buy beer, our usual clerk had been out. The woman across the counter wasn’t willing to give us the benefit of a doubt that we were older than we looked. ‘Scram,’ she said, heaving the twelve-pack of Bud Light to her side of the counter. Her mouth hadn’t moved from its disgruntled, horizontal line.

In its stead, we nicked a bottle of the Jim Beam from Bud Wynn’s closet.

‘You sure about this?’ I asked Boyce, who’d be the one paying for it, one way or another.

Boyce shrugged. ‘Maybe he’ll forget he had it.’

I arched a brow. ‘Right.’ His father was one mean-assed alcoholic. And he never forgot anything.

Mateo Vega, one of Boyce’s buddies, was the first to greet us when we hit the beach. The three of us exchanged greetings, Vega tipping his chin when Boyce asked if Richards was there. ‘Yeah, man – saw him five minutes ago.’ Boyce asked something else I couldn’t hear, though I was pretty sure it had to do with whether or not his girlfriend had tagged along. Vega shook his head once. ‘But he brought a couple bros from the team,’ he warned.

‘Gotcha,’ Boyce said.

We handed the bottle to Thompson and scored enough shit to get us both seriously fucked up. ‘I don’t wanna roll until I find Richards,’ I said, unaware until I said the words that I
needed
to beat the shit out of him, and I didn’t want anything dulling the rage.

Ten minutes later, I got my wish. Richards was parked on a cooler with a blue cup in his hand. Once I saw him, I didn’t see anything else. Not his friends, not mine.

Boyce:
You up?

Me:
Yeah. Trying to remember last night. You at school?

Boyce:
Yeah. Richards is out today too. Man you pounded him. I knew you had it in you but holy shit.

Me:
Do I have any possibility of a cracked rib?

Boyce:
Shit. Maybe. I’ll be over after school.

I poured another cup of coffee and opened the door to Grandpa’s room. It already smelled musty. Sunlight filtered through tiny gaps in the ancient metal blinds, which were rusted in a few places where the paint was scratched. Dust motes drifted in the beams, disturbed and swirling from my entry. The furniture was stripped bare – no sheets on the bed or glasses on the night table. Dad had stacked a few ledger boxes against a wall. The years were labelled in his jagged scrawl.

It hadn’t occurred to me that I could ask to move into this room instead of remaining in the pantry. Evidently, it hadn’t occurred to Dad, either.

I sat on the edge of the bare mattress and sipped a second cup of coffee, my head clearing little by little. After my fight with Boyce, Grandpa had taught me the proper way to make a fist and throw a punch.

I’d stalked straight to Richards last night and yanked him up, fisting both hands in his shirt. He dropped his cup and jerked free, stumbling back a step. If his friends moved to defend him, Boyce and Mateo convinced them to stay out of it. No one interfered.

‘W-what the fuck, Maxfield?’

I stepped closer and leaned into his space. ‘You’re a cowardly fucking pussy, Richards.’

He drew himself up, eyes shifting to the gathering audience, and laughed. ‘Whatsa matter, freak – upset
because my girlfriend didn’t wanna suck your dick?’ He shoved me back with both hands, or tried to.

I felt my mocking half smile shift into place. ‘Oh, she sucked it all right.’

His eyes blazed wide and he swung a fist that glanced off my jaw. I drew back and punched him in the mouth, his teeth scraping my knuckles. He tried to land a body blow, but I blocked it with an elbow and belted him in the gut, and he gave a satisfying
oof
. We separated and circled each other.

‘You’re a sore loser, freak,’ he panted. ‘You need to learn not to get between another guy and what belongs to him.’ He repeated the hit to my jaw with the same glance-off result.

I laughed, the sound caustic. ‘You think this is about
Melody
?’ I didn’t expect the spear of pain that shot through me from saying her name. He took advantage of my pause and landed a better blow. My nose crunched and I saw stars. He moved in for another hit but I ducked and drove into him, knocking him flat in the sand.

‘Of course it’s about
Melody
,’ he said. We rolled and punched each other a couple more times, each landing solid enough hits to draw blood. ‘You want what you can’t have and will never be good enough for.’

As soon as we were on our feet, I swung too wide and missed. He tackled me and I landed on the ice chest, but I took him with me and used his momentum to throw him back over my head. Before he could get up, I jumped on him and punched him twice.

‘I don’t give a
shit
about her, you conceited fucking
dickhole
.’ I hit him once more and his eyes unfocused. Before I could knock him unconscious, I felt hands hauling me up and off him and he struggled to rise with the help of his friends. Clutching my side and panting shallow breaths, every one of which generated shooting pain, I pointed a finger at him. ‘But you touch my truck again and I will
end
you.’

When Boyce showed up, he brought, of all people,
Pearl
. I had no idea they were on speaking terms. ‘I won’t be a doctor for ten years, you know,’ she said, glaring at Boyce. ‘He should go to the ER. I don’t see the big deal. It’s not like he’s got knife wounds from a gang initiation.’

Boyce sighed. ‘You’re here. Just look?’

‘
Fine
.’ She rolled her eyes and turned to me. ‘Lie down on the sofa.’

After pressing in several places – painful but not excruciating – and listening to my lungs with a stethoscope borrowed from her stepfather’s dresser, she said she didn’t think anything else was injured. ‘You may have fractured a rib – but there’s no treatment for that. It just has to heal. It’ll take six weeks. No
fighting
and no
roughhousing
.’ She levelled a scowl at Boyce.

‘What? I didn’t do it. And shouldn’t we like, tape him up?’

‘I’m sure you encouraged it. And no.’ She looked at me. ‘Take deep breaths as often as possible and cough several times per day, to make sure your lungs stay clear.’ Turning towards Boyce, she stored the stethoscope in her purse and
said, ‘Taping him up would keep him from doing those things. He could use an ice pack for the pain – you can make one from a Ziploc and ice – crushed, if possible.’

Boyce said, ‘On it,’ saluted, and headed for the kitchen.

‘Thanks for coming over,’ I said, still confused. Pearl and Boyce never spoke at school unless required to in biology, and though he clearly lusted after her, she’d never seemed the slightest bit interested. Plus, I’d just beat the shit out of her best friend’s boyfriend.

As Boyce dug ice from the freezer, she sat next to me on the sofa, her dark eyes level with mine. ‘For the record, I was wrong about Clark. He’s a jackass, and I can’t believe she took him back.’ She sighed and stared out the front window. ‘He’s the devil she knows, I guess.’

When I dropped Jacqueline off at her dorm, I wasn’t paying attention to anything but her. Not until she reached the steps – at the top of which her ex stood, his gaze alternating between the two of us. She didn’t see him until she nearly walked into him.

I didn’t move except to cross my arms and watch his body language closely, and hers.

As they spoke, he continued to flick occasional glances at me over her head until finally, she turned and waved, as if to tell me she was fine. I wasn’t leaving, because her body
language said she was agitated – hands on her hips as they spoke, and then arms crossed defensively. They were too far for me to decipher words, but the tone of their voices drifted just far enough to reach me. Hers was irate. His was placating.