First Chances (3 page)

Chapter Three

Hadie

Nausea hit me hard as my eyes fell on his locker across the hall.

My stomach turned as I thought of him.

Lincoln.

He had taught me things that no one else had—to open up my mind and create new experiences. When I’d been at my lowest—when I’d been cheated on and then bullied and picked on by the popular kids, Lincoln had taught me how to laugh again. He’d taught me how to trust and love again.

Opening up my locker, I pulled out the text books I was supposed to take home yesterday for homework. There was no sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach from the prospect of being in trouble. Math. English. History. What importance did they have in the grand scheme of things? I couldn’t care less.

As I slammed my locker shut, my eyes fell on my two best friends approaching me down the hall. Estella was tall and stunning, and immediately stood out in the throng of students. Mariah was shorter, though not as short as I was, and stood out because of the mass of red curls spilling down her shoulders.

I had never been as attractive as Estella or as outgoing as Mariah—the norm for boring Hadie Swinton was to study and read books. Sometimes I even re-watched the
Harry Potter
movies out of order to bring some variety into my life. It would probably come as a huge shock to them if they found out I’d been hanging out with a member of the Madden gang. Unless Estella already knew, which was entirely plausible since Three was best friends with Estella’s boyfriend, Vincent.

Three and I had been hanging out for almost two weeks now and Estella still hadn’t said anything, so I was assuming Three had kept silent about our friendship. We’d never promised to keep it a secret, but we’d never talked about telling anyone either.

“Hey, you!” Mariah said brightly. Too brightly.

Ever since Lincoln had passed away, she’d been trying too hard to be cheerful. I got what she was trying to do, but it seemed so forced that I’d rather she acted sad if that was how she was actually feeling.

“Hey, Ray.” I hugged my books to my chest, trying not to focus on Lincoln’s locker, trying not to picture him standing there with his tall frame and broad shoulders and crinkly, blue eyes.

“How was your night?” Estella asked, with a glowing smile. “I called to see if you wanted to study, but your phone was off.”

Swallowing, I dragged my eyes away from Lincoln’s locker and to the students milling around us. “I went to bed early.”

“Well, maybe we could study tonight? Maybe have dinner somewhere?” Estella tilted her head to the side, watching me expectantly.

“Sorry, I’m busy,” I said curtly.

Which wasn’t a lie. Three and I had plans.

“Oh.” Disappointment showed on her face. “What are you doing?”

“Uhm.” I wracked my brain trying to come up with a reasonable excuse. “Christmas shopping with my parents. We’re going to Penthill.”

Penthill was a bigger town than Statlen was and had a Walmart and Super Target, so everyone always went there to do all their Christmas shopping. Christmas was a week away so it wasn’t that hard to believe.

“Sounds like fun!” she said, that warm smile returning to her face again.

Mariah’s gaze fell on something behind me and her face lit up. “Hi, Eddie!”

Oh, no. Not Eddie. I wasn’t ready to face him just yet—not after our heated exchange last night. I was still mad at what he’d said, but I was also mad at myself for him having seen me in that state.

“Hi.” His tone was tense. It sent shivers up my spine. Eddie was always sweet and polite; that tone wasn’t like him at all.

When I turned around, Eddie’s face was just as tense as his voice. His brows were knitted above hazel-brown eyes as he stared at me in silence. The mussed, brown hair and broad shoulders were as familiar as always, yet something was off in his demeanor.

As though sensing the tension, Estella spoke. “Eddie, is something wrong?”

“Um, yes,” he responded, still staring at me with the same expression. “Can I talk to you for a second, Hadie?”

My heart immediately sank. I didn’t want to talk to Eddie alone. I didn’t want to hear the impending lecture that I could feel coming. I didn’t need him to be disappointed in me; I was already disappointed in myself. I was disappointed with life itself.

“Hadie?” Estella turned to me with question in her eyes when I didn’t say anything.

“What’s going on?” Mariah asked from beside me.

I felt caught up in the middle of a situation I didn’t want to be in. Who was Eddie to get involved in my business, anyway? My choices were mine to make, not his. Not anyone else’s.

I met Eddie with defiance. I wasn’t going to give into the games. “What’s up?”

He took a deep breath as though he was preparing himself for what he was about to say. “I’m really sorry about what I said last night. It was completely out of line and I understand if you’re upset about it.”

There he was being Mr. Nice Guy again. I didn’t know why he had to be so good to me. He had no reason to. Since I’d started hanging out with Three, I’d been ignoring Eddie’s calls and messages. You’d think the guy would have given up on me by now.

“What happened last night?” Mariah asked, being nosy as usual. “I thought you went to bed early.”

Eddie’s eyes widened, staring past me at Mariah in confusion. “No, she-”

“I was with a friend,” I cut in quickly.

“Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?” Mariah asked, sounding annoyed as her too bright demeanor fell into something I was familiar with.

I shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal.

“Which friend?” she asked, not backing down.

Mariah definitely had a future as a gossip columnist; she was all about getting details out of people.

“
Three
,” Eddie supplied. The way he said Three’s name made it clear he didn’t approve of him at all.

Mariah gasped. “What!”

“Three?” Estella finally spoke, her face filled with lines of confusion “You were with Three? I don’t understand.”

Estella herself was quite close to Three, so I couldn’t exactly imagine her telling me to stay away from him. It would be a little hypocritical of her if she did.

I tried to act cool, even though my heart was hammering at being exposed by Eddie. “Yeah, I was. He’s a nice guy.”

“He is a nice guy,” Estella agreed with a nod, chewing on her lower lip. “But I didn’t know you guys had anything in common.”

I wasn’t sure if we did either. Maybe that was the point—to spend time with someone who took me out of my normal routine. Around Three, I didn’t have to be myself. I could be a new kind of Hadie, one who could lose herself in alcohol and conversations that purposely avoided Lincoln. Three didn’t know Lincoln—he gave me an escape from Lincoln’s death and the sympathy I received from it.

“Yeah, we have plenty in common.” Though, right then if they asked me to list our similarities, I wouldn’t have been able to. I redirected my attention to Eddie. “I told you last night I don’t need you to keep checking up on me. You need to leave me alone.”

Eddie’s face immediately fell. I knew I sounded horrible, but I didn’t know how to say it any other way. I just wanted everyone to leave me alone and stop worrying about me.

“Hadie, that was a little mean,” Estella said, her brows scrunching together.

I took a deep breath. Now Estella was disappointed in me, too. Just what I needed.

The cross-examination from my friends was starting to make me feel sick. I didn’t want to stand here a second longer and have to defend myself. I just wanted to live my life the way I wanted to live it; the way I needed to live it to get through days that seemed to suck the breath right from my lungs.

“I have to get to class,” I said, pushing past them and hurrying down the hall.

“Hadie, wait!” Eddie called out after me, but I ignored him.

I knew what he was trying to do. He was holding out for the girl who used to be me. But he was going to be disappointed. I couldn’t be that girl anymore. I had to be someone else. I had to be a girl who could survive, and this was the only way I knew how.

Walking outside into the biting cold, I snuck around the side of the school building and made sure no one was around. The bell for the start of school didn’t ring for another five minutes but it was too cold to be outdoors, so everyone was hurrying inside to stay warm.

Reaching around the side of my backpack, I unzipped a pocket and pulled out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes that Three had given me a few days ago. He’d said that I seemed stressed and that when he was stressed, a cigarette really helped him.

In this moment, I needed all the help I could get.

Lighting the cigarette, I hesitated. I’d done this a few times with Three, but it wasn’t something that I described as enjoyable. Preparing myself, I brought it to my mouth and inhaled deeply.

Too deeply.

The disgusting taste was only offset by the overpowering smoke that filled my throat, and I immediately began coughing and spluttering.

I stared at the burning cigarette in disgust. This wasn’t me. I didn’t do these things.

Then my chest tightened at the memory of ocean blue eyes and a smile as warm as summer, and I pushed away any resistance to what I was doing.

It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore.

Counting to ten in my head, I inhaled the cigarette again, trying not to let the taste and smell put me off this time. I was making my own choices. I was doing things differently.

All I had to do was breathe.

Chapter Four

Eddie

“Dude, if you stare at her a second longer you’re gonna turn from admirer to serial stalker,” Riley Adamson’s voice broke into my thoughts.

My eyes shot to where my blue-haired best friend was standing beside me as we lined up for lunch in the cafeteria.

“I’m trying not to, okay?” I grumbled as I grabbed an orange juice and paid for my food, doing my best not to glance back at where Hadie was standing with Mariah and Estella a few feet behind us.

Sure, I was still mad at Hadie for what she’d said to me this morning, but that didn’t mean I could just erase the way I felt about her. Hadie was awkwardly cute, and I really dug that. She often did this thing where she would begin rambling if she was nervous or embarrassed—most people would find it strange, but it was pretty fucking cute to me. Every time she was around me, my heartbeat sped up a little. It was sappy, but I wasn’t going to lie about it.

Riley snorted as he paid for his lunch and picked up his tray. “Yeah, right. If you call that trying then I don’t think you really get what that word means.”

I shoved him with an elbow. “Oh, yeah? You a walking dictionary now?”

He simply grinned in response as we headed back to our table. I hesitated, glancing back at Hadie as she progressed in the line. She still hadn’t seen me yet, but I couldn’t stop watching her.

I knew it was lame, but for a long time now she had affected me like no one else did. Even when she was with another guy, I still couldn’t get her out of my mind. All I wanted was for her to see me; to really open up her eyes and see how much I cared about her.

I wasn’t asking for much. I just wanted her to let me in the way she had right after she’d lost Lincoln; when she’d pushed away even Mariah and Estella. During that time, Hadie and I had connected—I’d take over her homework and help her catch up on school work she’d missed; we would take short walks around the neighborhood, just as an excuse to get her out of the house; she would share her deep silences and a spare, few words with me—but in a matter of weeks she’d completely changed. Now the only thing that mattered was that Three guy.

Her attitude wasn’t the only thing that had changed. She’d started dressing differently, too. Gone was the sweater-wearing girl I was used to. Her clothes hugged her body, accentuating her figure. She had started wearing makeup—black eyeliner and pink gloss that accented the features I already loved. Her hair was straighter. She dressed
sexier
. It was probably to impress Three. Didn’t she realize that she didn’t need to change herself for anyone? That she was perfect just the way she was?

“You’re like a lovesick puppy,” Riley said as he stuffed fries into his mouth. “You actually can’t take your eyes off her.”

“You’re one to talk,” I said with a grin as the table our friends were sitting at came into view.

Staring intently at us was Stacey Parker, our closest girl friend. She was hard to miss with her messy, dark red hair, and Bohemian sense of style. Right now she was wearing a floral, orange and white dress with a denim jacket over the top. She definitely wasn’t afraid of looking different, and I knew Riley was hot for her.

Sitting across from her were Luca Byron and Ashton Summers. They stood out like two sunflowers in a garden filled with weeds—well, if one of the sunflowers insisted on dressing in black and was covered in tattoos. Luca and Ashton were dating, and they were one interesting looking couple. Luca had dark hair, tattoos, and a grungy look about him. Ashton was tall, slim, blonde, and gorgeous. She’d previously been a cheerleader, but now she was one of us. Basically, she was a social outcast, looked down on by the self-appointed popular kids for not being cool enough.

My friends and I had always been too lame for the popular kids; we weren’t athletic enough and our parents didn’t have enough money, plus we played in a pop punk band. Hey, if being cool meant I had to go around belittling other people for being different, then I was perfectly fine being at the bottom of the social scale. And so was Ashton.

Elly Marles—brown hair, brown eyes, curvier girl—sat beside Stacey. She was on the quieter side, and only really spoke when she had something worthwhile to add to a conversation. She was a recent addition to our group, along with Ashton, and I feel was still trying to find her place amongst us.

In a weird twist of events, Ashton, who had once been Queen of Popularity at our school, had bullied and humiliated Elly and then become a social outcast herself. It was a long story; the point was they were both part of our weird group now, and good friends, too.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Riley asked, looking offended as he chewed with his mouth open.

I nodded in Stacey’s direction. “So you and Stace haven’t been getting busy in the back of your van?”

Riley choked on a fry. “How did you know that?”

“I know everything,” I said with a serious expression. I found that it added to the mystery a little more. “In fact, I bet that blueberry bagel is for Stace. I’ve never seen you eat anything related to fruit in my life.”

Actually, the only reason I knew about the two of them hooking up was because last week after school I’d driven past them climbing into the back of his van. It was coincidence, really, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Yeah, well.” He fell silent as his face turned as purple as the blueberries in his bagel.

Even though I didn’t think they needed to hide their relationship, I understood why they were doing it. Not too long ago, Stacey and Luca had been hooking up, before Ashton had come back into his life. Luca wouldn’t care that Riley and Stacey were together, but I could see that maybe Stacey didn’t want us to think she got around.

“Hi!” Ashton said with a wave as we reached the table. 

“Hey,” I said, slipping into the chair across from her and barely dodging the banana peel that flew over the top of my head.

I freaking hated eating in the cafeteria.

During the warmer months, we usually occupied the courtyard outside, but now that the temperature had dropped it was impossible to stay outside so we had to endure the noise and chaos of the overcrowded cafeteria.

“You guys took ages,” Ashton commented as she played around with her chicken salad.

Luca had an arm draped around her shoulder and was studying her like he wanted to devour her. He caught my eye and grinned when I shot him a knowing look. We both knew how proud he was to be dating one of the hottest girls in school. Plus, he’d been in love with Ashton since they were kids. It was pretty much a win-win for him.

“Eddie was eye-screwing Hadie again,” Riley said without pause.

I turned my head to shoot him a glare and found Stacey sidling up to him. I gave him a pointed look and his face turned red.

“Oh.” Ashton’s eyes sought out Hadie in the overcrowded cafeteria. “She seems
different
.”

Ashton and Hadie had never been friends, but I knew they had always been cordial towards each other. Ashton was really the only one out of my friends who could understand how much Hadie had changed.

“Yeah,” I mumbled, unwrapping my sandwich and biting into it a little too aggressively.

“If you like her then do something about it,” Luca spoke up from beside his girlfriend, his green eyes serious as he studied me. “Don’t let her slip away from you. Show her that she means something to you.”

I noticed Ashton turn her head towards him and smile. The two of them knew all about slipping away from each other.

He was right, though. She did mean something to me, and I wasn’t about to lose her three times in a row, especially not to Three. Pun intended.

***

Coming home every day was a strange kind of torture for me. Not because of my family—no, my mom and sister were great—but because of all the financial problems we had.

As I headed up the path to our house, I couldn’t help but let all the worries sink into me.

I was only seventeen, but my problems were beyond my years. We could barely afford to continue living in our house.

Mortgage. Endless bills to pay. Groceries. School. The dream of going to college.

After Dad disappeared on us last year, it had fallen on Mom to pay for everything by herself, plus take care of Hailie and me. I helped out as much as I could with my part-time job at
Belle’s Diner
, but it wasn’t the greatest paying job.

We were lucky we had a great family that helped us out from time to time, but we didn’t have the same comfortable life we’d lived before Dad had bailed on us. Where was he? I couldn’t say for sure. All I knew was that there had always been something a little off about him, as though he was trapped in a life he didn’t really want to be in.

To relieve some of the stress, I played in a pop punk band called
Skeptic Coil
with Luca and Riley, hoping it would take us somewhere one day. For now, we played small shows around the Midwest and barely made enough to pay for our gas.

The guys had no idea what was going on in my personal life, and I liked it that way. Everyone thought my dad had been deployed to some faraway country for two years and that’s why he wasn’t around. Really, he’d just been deployed to wherever douchebags went.

Unfortunately, Hailie still remembered him. Sometimes I wished she didn’t have memories of him, but she was old enough to remember that she looked exactly like him with her sunshine blonde hair and cyan blue eyes.

All I could do was try to be there for her and be the best male role model for her that I could be. There were a lot of bad days, but I had to make them the best that I could for my little sister.

Hailie had a ballet class this afternoon, so Mom had taken her to it and then gone directly to work. One of Hailie’s friend’s mom was going to bring her back home after class was done, which was nice because it gave me time to unwind.

Today had been a tough day. Hadie’s words, and the way she’d acted, had made me want to retreat. I could tell she wanted to do her own thing and she was absolutely entitled to do that. But I couldn’t let her. I had to be there for her, not only because I wanted to, but because Lincoln had wanted me to.

Shutting the front door behind me, I entered the house and headed straight to my room. Today was one of those days where I needed reassurance that what I was doing was the right thing—that getting through to Hadie was my job alone.

Dropping my bag to the floor, I reached under my bed and pulled out an old shoebox. When I lifted the lid, nothing of much interest stood out. There were a few things in there from when I was a kid—a few rare Pokémon cards, some cool-looking marbles, old photos, and a folded up piece of paper.

It was the paper that my fingers instantly reached for. I put aside the box and unfolded the paper, suddenly feeling nervous.

Every time I read the words on that paper, I felt completely out of depth. I felt like I wasn’t doing enough for the boy who had lost his life.

The note was from Hadie’s deceased boyfriend, Lincoln. No one, apart from my mom, knew about it, and I was happy to keep it a secret for now. Lincoln had written the note in his dying days and given it to my mom who was a nurse at the hospital he’d been admitted to.

I had barely interacted with Lincoln, but now I felt like I owed him something. I owed it to him to make his dying wish come true.

I wasn’t sure what Lincoln had seen in me, or how he knew about the way I felt about Hadie, but nevertheless he had known. And he had wanted to tell me somehow, to let me know that someone had to be there for her. That he was setting her free and wanting me to step in and take care of her.

My eyes flickered over the spidery handwriting that belonged to Lincoln. The five crucial words that he had wanted to relay to me so badly before he passed away from this life.

Don’t give up on her.

I sucked in a deep breath as the weight of the words hit me, like they always did whenever I read the note.

I didn’t intend to give up on her. Not only because Lincoln Bracks had asked me to, but because I loved Hadie Swinton. My love for her had always been there, steady and unwavering, and it was the kind of love that never really leaves us.