Crushed (32 page)

Because
they were
in the two seats closest to the door,
he could
make out bits of their conversation.

He could hear Mr. Jessen’s
concern as clearly as
he could
hear the actual question
s
. Cleo trie
d
to laugh
. She
sa
id
she fell in the shower last night. He ask
ed
her
if she need
ed
to go to the nurse. She
told him
no. He ask
ed
why she didn’t get a late pass
.
Reece
heard her tell
him that her step
-
father had already left for work by the time she got u
p
. S
o she didn’t have a written excuse for being late
. She told him her alarm didn’t go off
.
Despite the noise the class
was
making
Reece
still heard
Mr. Jessen
tell
her he
would
let it slide this time. He w
ouldn’t
mark her as late.
But if she needed anything, to let him know.

Reece
heard Cleo thank him.

W
hen they came back in Mr. Jessen wa
s still frowning
.
Cleo
was
way too interested in her shoes. She slip
ped
into her desk
, going out of her way to not look at
Reece
.

He
fe
lt
his
eyebrows shoot up. “You fell in the shower?”

She g
ave
him
an embarrassed look. “Kind of funny, huh?”

Is she kidding
?! “Are you kidding?”
he
blurted. “
No, Cleo. No, n
ot funny at all. You look…”

“Like hell?” she supplied when
he
faltered.

She did, actually. B
ut
he would rather eat hot coal than ever tell her that
. “You don’t look the best,”
he
said as a compromise. “How did you fall?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t realize I spilled shampoo on the shower floor and I stepped
in it. It was slippery. I slipped.” She said it like it should be obvious.

“Are you sure you didn’t break anything?
Or crack anything?
”
He
’d had a hairline fracture once when
he
’d been hit by a bat in Little League.

Another shrug. “Pretty sure. What do you think about blue?”

“Blue? Blue what?”
he
demanded.

“Blue for the poster,” she said as she tried to deflect the current conversation.

This was
the
Cleo
he used to know. This was what she
used to do. She avoided
and she deflected.

“What did you land on?”
he
asked.

“Land on…? Oh, the side of the tub.”

Reece shook his
head. “No you’re obviously in pain. What part of your body did you land on?”

She nibbled her lip for a minute. “Here,” she admitted as she vaguely pointed to her
thigh and stomach area.

“Then why aren’t you moving your arm?”
he
asked. She was
n’t
exactly cradling it
. B
ut she hadn’t really moved it either.

“Oh, I hit my shoulder, too” she said
. S
he tapped the top of her right shoulder with her left fingertips.

“Way up there?”
he
asked.

“Purple
might work, too
,” Cleo told
him
.

“Blue is better,”
he
told her. “How did you hit way up there?”

She rolled her lips in again. As if
she ha
d
to think about it.
Reece wondered if
she was trying to remember what happened.
But how could she have forgotten?

“Maybe I bounced,”
she suggested. “Pass me the purple
marker
, please
.”

He
tried to continue with
his
questioning but she wasn’t giving up anything more.

He
couldn’t stop worrying about her, even after class got over.

He
skipped
his
fourth hour, Cleo’s lunch hour.

He
found
her
outside with Emma. They
were
sitting behind those juniper trees that
he
hate
d
. Cleo
was
leaning up against the school. She’
d
taken an ice pack out of her lunch box. She lifted her shirt and there
was
an ugly, angry, plum colored bruise taking up most of her stomach.

His
own stomach clenched painfully at the sight of it.

She slid the ice pack onto it and let her shirt drop.

He
hate
d
seeing Cleo hurt. It kind of ma
de
him
feel like
he
was
going to throw up.

Almost a year ago, shortly after
they had
started dating
,
she
’d co
me to school with her bottom lip split open. Luci left her shoes in the living room
.
Cleo got up in the dark to get something and tripped over them, hit the coffee table.

He was
feeling a little bit now like
he
did then. Only the look on Emma’s face
as
he
walk
ed
toward them
look
ed
more like outrage than sympathy. Emma
was
talking but Cleo
had
her eyes closed as her head rest
ed
against the brick building.

At the time Cleo split her lip open,
he
had
worried that she’d been lying about what happened.
Or at the very least, h
e
had to wonder if there was more to the story
.
He
’d
wondered if maybe
she didn’t trust
him
enough to tell
him
. A lot of
people know about her step-dad. T
hat he
wasn’
t exactly reputable
.
He
’d never heard of him being violent, even though
he
did ask around.
He
’d even flat out
asked her and she’d looked at him
like
he
was crazy.
T
hen nothing else suspicious happened. Until now. And
he
wouldn’t even be feeling all that suspicious because accidents
do
happen—people do run Escalades into garage doors and people do fall down in showers—but
Emma
wa
s so clearly irate about something.

“Reece!” Emma finally realized
he
had walked right up to them.

He
nodded at her, but turned
his
attention to Cleo. “Can we talk for a second?”

She nodded and got to her feet, though
he
wanted to tell her she didn’t have to.

“No more questions, okay?” she said as she leaned against the wall.

It wasn’t okay but
he
agreed anyway. “Okay. I wanted to tell you something.
I broke up with Mia
last night, f
or sure,
”
he
said.
He
didn’t
know why this should make
him
nervous but it
did.

Somehow, more color drain
ed
from Cleo’s already pale face. “You did what?
I hope you didn’t do that because of me.”

“
I did it b
ecause I don’t like her. I
realized I’ve
never really liked her,”
he
tr
ied
to explain. What
he
really want
ed
to say, what
he
had
planned
on saying was that
he
wanted to try to make things work with
her
. With Cleo. But her attitude instantly ma
de
him
think this
wasn’t
a good idea. Being impassive would have been bad enough but she look
ed
downright
upset.

“You shouldn’t have done that.
”
Her voice wa
s a little too high.

He knew
he was
just staring at her, dumbfounded. “You don’t want to have anything to do with me
. B
ut you have the right to tell me who I have to date?
”

She groan
ed.
“It’s just
,
you shouldn’t have done that.”

“Oh reall
y
?”
he
ask
ed
, feeling beyond de
fensive now. “Because
also, she was cheating on me.”

Her face fold
ed
into a scowl. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,”
he
t
old her.

She
shook her head and glanced at Emma, who
was
still standing right
t
here
with them
. Without warning, she took off, hobbling
painfully away.

He
moved to follow her but Emma put her hand on
his
chest. “Not right now, Reece. Maybe later. But not now, okay?”

This was
not
how
he
thought this scene would go.

He had
more questions now than ever before.

He
just d
id
n’t dare push her anymore.
But that didn’t
mean
he was giving
up on it, or her, either.

They were
not done. Not even close.

***

By the end of the day
she
was totally drained.
She
was so tired of the lies.
She
was so tired of the threats.
She
was so tired of always feeling like one wrong move and
her
world would cave in on
her
.

She’d
hated Reece bei
ng with Mia but at least it gave her a solid reason for needing to stay away from
him. But she didn’t
want
to stay away from him. And he was making it clear he didn’t want to stay away from
her, either.
Aside from that, he knew something wasn’t right and
she
knew that he wasn’t going to let it go.

W
hen
she slammed her
locker door
shut, Reece was standing
there.
And while the smart thing might have been for
her
to walk away…
she
was tired of doing that, too.
She was tired of fighting this alone.

Paul may have thought his outburst would scare her into compliance. It was
having the opposite effect.
What Paul had done last night…it was so much worse than anything before it.
And last night, he’d come close to hitting Luci. That had never happened and Cleo
was determined to make sure it stayed that way.
That
, that one thing, changed
everything
.
She just wanted him out of her life. And maybe, just maybe Reece could help.