Keep From Falling (Markson Grove Series Book 1) (54 page)

“It still works.”

“You can't text!”

“I can make calls.”

“Who the hell makes calls anymore, really?” Kelsie points out with a chuckle.

Derrick laughs, “Apparently Evan does,” he says, shooting me a discreet wink. I guess he still hasn't told Kelsie about
The Misfit Mansion
yet and how I called him to save Skylar that night. But she does know that Tris is the one who hurt Skylar, so I guess Derrick is good at telling stories and omitting anything having to do with the mansion while he does so.

The bus suddenly becomes unusually quiet, and the three of us simultaneously look up to see what has everyone’s attention.

Tris.

He steps up onto the last step and turns to face everyone. No one, other than Parker, has seen him since he left The Loft that night. He wasn't at school all last week and I'm not going to lie, I was beginning to think that Parker killed him and buried his body somewhere.

But honestly, looking at him now, I bet he wishes Parker had. Even after a week to recuperate, Tris still looks like shit. It's obviously clear to everyone on this bus that he got his ass handed to him by someone who knows how to fight. I wonder how many people suspect that it's Parker? I wonder how many people will see Skylar and see Tris and put two and two together?

Tris notices the three of us staring and shoots us a dirty look before scanning over the heads of everyone else already sitting on the bus.

I turn around and watch Bree get up from where we were sitting together and return back to her seat between Spencer and Adrienne. I'm grateful for it, the last thing I want is for her to be anywhere near that piece of shit, even if that means she'll be spending the next six hours talking with Adrienne about God knows what.

Tris stops in front of Adrienne just as Bree takes her seat. He leans into Adrienne and whispers something into her ear. She shakes her head and then I see her mouth distort into a frown. She's realized something. She looks back at Skylar and Parker and then turns to Bree. “It was him, wasn't it?” she asks loud enough for the whole bus to hear.

Bree and Spencer don't say anything, but she isn’t waiting for an answer anyway. Adrienne is many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. She knows.

She stands up and without any warning, slaps her hand across Tris' face so hard that it leaves a hand-shaped red mark. Everyone on the bus gasps.

“You sadistic, abusive asshole!” she hisses, giving him a quick shove.

He raises his hand as if to strike her back and without thinking, I get up from my seat and dart toward them. Spencer, obviously having the same idea as me, yanks Adrienne away from Tris and then pushes himself in Tris' face instead.

“We got a problem here?” he challenges in a much more intimidating manner than I would have ever imagined from him.

Derrick and I are both on our feet waiting to see if we do, in fact, have a problem. At the back of the bus, I see Parker on his feet as well.

Tris looks around, seeing the three of us ready to pounce. He smirks at Spencer. “No problem,” he says, taking a step back. He points a finger in Adrienne’s face. “You do that again, bitch, and you'll get to see just how sadistic I can be.”

“Been there, done that,” she replies with a roll of her eyes. I cringe.

He turns around, and without another word, takes an empty seat a few rows behind them, closest to the window.

A few minutes later our chaperones and the driver finally decide to board the bus, conveniently having missed that entire ordeal. Finally, we are on our way to Madigan City and maybe it's just me, but I already can't wait for the damn trip to be over.

Skylar

“Piece of shit,” Parker mumbles as he sits back down in the seat next to me.

He wraps his arm around me once again, pulling me in even closer to him than I had been before Tris stepped onto the bus. It’s as if Tris’ presence makes him more protective of me like he’s scared that he’ll try it again. And maybe he would, Parker doesn’t seem to scare him. He doesn’t have Tris under that type of control, at least not anymore.

“I should have killed him the night he attacked you,” he says, seeming to be reading my thoughts.

“Why didn’t you?” I ask quietly. I’m not saying it to be mean or to make him think that I’m upset that he didn’t avenge my attack to its full potential. I am honestly curious why he stopped himself because it seemed that, for a few minutes there, he was definitely going to.

He sighs and leans into my forehead, kissing it. “I have a feeling you understand the concept of a best friend being your family. You probably get it even better than I do, actually, since you fell in love with yours.”

“Yeah, I get it,” I admit.

“Well, Tris
was
my family. He was like a brother, an extremely angry brother who hates me at times as much as he loves me at others. And he would do anything for me too, just like I would do anything for him. He’s had my back more times than I can remember, and I think it’s important for you to understand that he wasn’t always like this.”

“I’m not judging you. I would never do that.”

“I know, baby,” he says, squeezing my hand. “I just feel like I owe you an explanation.”

“You really don’t. I get it,” I say.

I don’t want to tell him about how Tris made me feel that day at The Loft before everything got ugly, but I know that I felt connected to him. I understand his charismatic charm, and though I’ll never admit it to Parker, for a moment, I saw some good in him. “So what happened to make him change?”

“I don’t know, the drugs maybe,” he replies. “Or maybe it was what happened with Adrienne… I’m not sure. He just became fucking crazy and after a while, things got really out of control between the three of us in that
Misfit
room. We did things with each other that I hate to even remember, let alone talk about. There’s a reason I don’t like to discuss any of that with you.”

“I never expected you to tell me about it. I can tell it makes you uncomfortable.”

“It does,” he confesses. “Ever wish you could erase parts of your past like they never happened?”

I nod. “Every day,” I reply. “
The Goddess
haunts me. I’d love nothing more than to take all of those drug-induced nights with strangers and turn them into something meaningful. But what’s done is done, and we can’t go back. All we can do is recognize it, and move on as better people.”

He smiles and slouches lower into his seat so his cheek is pressing against mine. The stubble of his facial hair tickles me as I inhale the scent of his skin. “You make me a better person,” he says with a sigh.

“You don’t need me to make you a better person. You’re a good person.”

“No, I’m serious, from the moment we first met, you made all the shit in my life feel better and you did it without even trying. You made me smile and laugh again, you made me want to care about people again.”

Why does he give me so much credit? I didn’t do anything spectacular. I was actually pretty horrible to him for most of the time I knew him.

“After the first night I met you, I told Tris and Adrienne I was out. I said I met someone and it didn’t feel right doing what I was doing with them anymore. Adrienne was ok with it, she knew she didn’t have much choice in the matter; she kind of owed me the pardon. But Tris… God, he flipped out on me and accused me of just wanting to have a piece of
The Goddess
like everyone else. He said a lot of asshole shit and so I punched him, just once, to shut him up.”

I’m beginning to see a pattern here. Tris seems to have always been a loose cannon when it came to Parker, but I think it’s safe to say that once I entered the picture, he became completely hostile.

Is Parker so blind that he doesn’t see the connection here? Or does he see it but simply chooses to ignore it? He must because even though I’ve already brought it up to him, he still doesn’t let on that Tris’ behavior could possibly be connected to unrequited love.

“What did he do after that?”

“He took his anger out on Adrienne, is what he did,” He tells me angrily, his voice rising slightly. His body tenses at the memory that seems to be creeping into his mind. I trace my fingers on his arm in hopes to soothe the anger that’s visibly invading his thoughts.

“I shouldn’t have just walked away like that,” he goes on. “I should have known better. I knew his sex preferences and I knew how much he liked to inflict pain on her. When I was there, I was able to keep him under control. But with him being so pissed at me for leaving—” his voice catches in his throat for a moment. “He had her all tied up and was whipping her, Sky,” he says, looking into my eyes with a pained expression. “When I finally busted into the room and got to her, she had gashes all over her body! I punched him out so fast he didn’t even see it coming. All I could see was red. I was so pissed at him and at myself for letting it happen. I wanted to kill him… but I couldn’t. I wanted to kill him, and what stopped me was my compassion. The thing that made me beat him the minute I saw what he did to her body, is the very same thing that stopped me from killing him. I didn’t actually have it in me. Not back then anyway.”

“Oh my God. I had no idea. Was she ok? Did you have to bring her to the hospital?”

“I wasn’t allowed. It happened under the mansion’s roof, they took care of her there,” he tells me. “Tris told everyone that it was the drugs that did it. He said they fucked him up so bad that he didn’t know what he was doing. He promised he wouldn’t do it to anyone ever again and I really wanted to believe him. He has a way about him, you know? You want to trust him, you want to be his friend, and you want to believe that he’s a good person. But that night was the first sign for me. After that night, I knew there was something very wrong with him.”

Wow! I can’t even process my thoughts right now. I’m shocked. Tris really is a monster in every way possible.

“But I eventually forgave him and so did Adrienne. We let it go, Adrienne seemed to have moved passed it, somehow, and things got back to normal for a while after that. But then, when I killed your attacker that night, on the beach, my whole world changed in an instant and so did his. I was his boss after that, not his partner. And if I thought he was bitter and jealous before, that was nothing compared to how he was after. Everything was a rebellion, and everything was a fight. He pushed and pushed and pushed till I had little patience left. I still cared about him, but I honestly was beginning to forget why. He really is the worst type of friend anyone can be cursed to have.”

His last words hit a chord with me. I can’t help but feel incredibly saddened by them. I think it’s odd that he describes his friendship with Tris as a curse. It’s almost as if he associates his condemned life with this friendship; like he’s being served with karma for every wrong turn he took in life that got him to where he is today.

“And then Tris hurt
you
and I wanted to kill him again. Fuck, I can’t even tell you how much I wanted to kill him that night. I’m shaking just thinking about it. You asked me what stopped me, why I didn’t go through with it? It’s not that I don’t have it in me now because, believe me, I do. It’s actually the complete opposite of the first time it happened, and it’s the most selfish excuse imaginable.

“I couldn’t do it because I’m desperately clinging to the little bit of humanity I still have left inside of me. Killing him would have taken that and just tossed it to the wind. I want to be a good person, Sky. I don’t want to lose what I have left.”

My heart aches. It literally aches hearing those words being whispered from his mouth. I push my lips onto his in attempt to kiss all of the pain away from his soul. “You won’t,” I assure him in a hush. “He doesn’t need to die.”

“He’s a sociopath, something needs to happen to him, or else what happened to you and Adrienne is going to happen again to someone else. And next time it might go further than a beating, and I might not be around to stop it.”

I know he’s right. “But it doesn’t have to be up to you,” I say, and in that very moment I see calmness come over him.

He takes a shaky breath. “You’re right,” he says, sitting himself upright again. I close my eyes and rest my head on his shoulder. After a moment, he leans his head down and rests it on the top of mine.

The struggle for him to remain good in his world of evil is consuming him. I suddenly realize that I’m much more to him than a girl who he’s in love with.

I’m his anchor.