The Lonesome Young (18 page)

He shoved my shoulder, and I stumbled back. Then suddenly someone lifted me clear up off the floor and to the side, and it was Mickey. I leaned back against him for a moment, breathing in his unique scent of fresh air, spring grass, and leather, and then he moved in front of me and confronted the guy who’d pushed me.

“Picking on girls now, Oliver? What’s the matter, Coach make you run too hard in practice, so now you have to beat up on a girl to feel like a man?”

I could see Oliver’s face twist in confusion. “What the hell, Mick? This chick’s family just fired my dad and a boatload of other people for the big crime of being related to Rhodales and now
you’re
defending
her
? Are you nuts?”

“I don’t care what her father did. That doesn’t make it right to take it out on Victoria, does it? No more than it’s right to blame me for Ethan’s crimes or for defending my sister from those animals, but you didn’t bother to stick up for me either, did you?”

I realized that several other guys had started crowding around, and their mood was dangerous. All I wanted was to get out of there and take Mickey with me. I put my hand on his arm. “Mickey, let’s just go. We don’t—”

“Why would he want to go anywhere with you, bitch? Maybe we’ll take you out in the woods and teach you a lesson about fucking with people,” one of them taunted, leering at me so viciously I started shivering.

“Yeah,” Oliver said, his eyes lighting up. “Maybe we’ll take our turn to be the ones doing the fucking.”

“Over my dead body,” Mickey said, his voice low and razor-edged. “I don’t need you to fight Rhodale battles for me, Oliver. You want to go after her; you’re going to have to get through me first.”

“It’s not your battle, dickhead. It was
my
father he fired,” Oliver roared, bunching his hands into fists.

No. Not again. I wasn’t letting Mickey take the heat with everybody at school over this, like he had with my father over driving us home. I pushed forward and put myself in between them.

“No. Listen, I’m so sorry. I tried to stop my dad—”

I don’t think Oliver heard a word I said, or even noticed that I was there, because his gaze was locked on Mickey as he threw the first punch. Mickey shoved me out of the way, but Oliver’s fist was moving too fast. If the full force of the blow had struck me, it probably would have broken my jaw or cheekbone. As it was, even partially deflected, it sent me flying back and crashing into a table of freshmen girls.

Before I could move, or think, or even breathe, Mickey went after Oliver. He wasn’t as tall or as broad as Oliver, but it was like watching a panther tear into a sheep. Mickey knocked him to the floor in two blows and then yanked the bigger boy up off the floor and hit him again. When Mickey tried to pick him up again, some of Oliver’s friends got between them, but Mickey was fighting like a wild thing, his eyes blind with rage, and suddenly I knew exactly what had happened when those monsters had attacked his sister.

“Jesus, Mickey, I give up,” Oliver panted.

His mouth was bleeding, and one of his eyes was already swelling up, but I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for him, because I could feel my own right eye trying to do the same. I ran up to them anyway and threw my arms around Mickey.

“I’m here. I’m okay. You have to calm down,” I told him over and over, feeling his big body shake in my arms like a tree caught in a tornado. He finally took a deep, shuddering breath and his eyes cleared, and I knew he’d come back from wherever he’d gone when Oliver hit me.

“Touch her again and I’ll finish this,” Mickey told Oliver, deadly calm.

I was quietly trying to keep from puking or having my head spin off my shoulders, so when Mickey tightened his arms around me, I gasped. I’d never been struck in anger before, and I fervently hoped it would never happen again.

Mickey caught my chin with one suddenly gentle hand and tilted my head, staring at the side of my face that had taken the blow. His eyes narrowed, and I could almost feel the heat of the rage pouring off his body.

“That son of a bitch. I’m going to
kill
him.”

I caught his arm before he could turn away.

“Please, no. I need—will you help me get out of here?”

The principal ran into the cafeteria—where had
he
been all this time?—and started yelling.

“Rhodale! Oliver! My office, now. You’re both going to be suspended for this, and I—”

He broke off when he caught sight of my face and winced, which didn’t make me feel any better. “Victoria, are you okay? Do you want to press charges?”

“No. I’m fine. It was all a misunderstanding,” I said, glancing at Oliver, who’d gotten up and was wiping blood off his mouth with a napkin.

“I don’t think so,” Principal Scott fired back. “The lunch monitor ran into my office yelling that you were all trying to kill each other.”

“She was a little off base,” Mickey drawled. “It was the food. Lunch is so bad today that you nearly had a riot on your hands.”

The principal narrowed his eyes. “Don’t give me any of your lip, young man. And let me tell you something. We will not tolerate this kind of violence on school grounds, do you understand me?”

The unfairness of it scorched through me. “He was only defending me!”

Principal Scott rounded on me. “Really? Why did you need to be defended from a misunderstanding?”

“She’s telling the truth. It was a misunderstanding all the way around,” Oliver said, backing my story, but he trained his hard gaze on Mickey the whole time, promising retaliation.

“Well, this kind of misunderstanding is going to result in a two-day suspension for both of you,” Scott said. “And you, young lady, are going to the nurse to get checked out.”

“I need to go home,” I said. I couldn’t face the rest of the day, and I wanted ice and Tylenol more than anything else in the world right at that moment.

Denise, who’d been hovering at the edges of the fight, handed me my backpack and volunteered to take me home. Before the principal could answer, Mickey scooped his backpack off the floor and took mine out of my hands.

“No. I’m driving her home,” he said flatly.

Principal Scott folded his arms. “You’re going nowhere, young man. We have—”

“You’re suspending me anyway, so it can start now. I’m taking Victoria to make sure she gets home safely,” Mickey said, sweeping his hard gaze over the guys who’d crowded around me earlier and were now pretending they’d had nothing to do with any of it. “You can take it up with my pa. You will, anyway.”

With that, he swung both backpacks over one shoulder and put his other arm around me and led me to the door. The crowd in front of us shrank back, nobody wanting to get in his way.

The principal called out after us. “Victoria, do you want me to call the police?”

I took a deep breath and turned around, facing him but speaking to the whole room.

“No, I just want to go home. I’m sorry for the trouble my father caused. I fought him on this, and I’m still fighting him. I don’t know what else to say.”

A surge of pain stabbed through my cheek and made me flinch, and Mickey pulled me back around and held the door open. As we walked out, I was already having second thoughts.

“This is a bad idea. When our families find out we left school together—”

“They can go to hell. They got us into this mess to begin with,” Mickey said.

I dug in my bag for my keys and handed them over, and then I leaned my poor bruised and swelling cheek against the cool glass of the window as we drove away from the school and all the unresolved conflict still seething inside.

“I’ll have to face them again tomorrow,” I said.

“Tomorrow’s Friday. Skip school. Your face is going to get worse before it gets better,” he said grimly.

I made a sound—of denial or protest, I didn’t know which—and he glanced over at me.

“I’m sorry. Hell, I’m not good at words of comfort, am I? It’s the truth, though. I’ve been on the receiving end of a fist often enough to know that you’re likely going to have a black eye from this.”

“I can’t imagine that,” I whispered, closing my eyes.

“Having a shiner?”

“No. Having enough experience with being punched to diagnose what’s going to happen next. Your life has been so different from mine, in some ways. And so similar, in others.”

He put a hand on mine, and I closed my fingers around his almost convulsively, taking comfort from the same hand that had beaten Oliver so savagely and thoroughly such a short time ago. I didn’t know how to reconcile the two Mickeys, and I was hurting too much to even try, but I knew he was only violent when he was protecting somebody he cared about.

We drove along in silence for a while, and when he pulled off the road and stopped the truck, I opened my eyes to see we were in the parking lot of a small restaurant called the Buckeye Diner.

“Buckeye? Really? Here in the heart of Kentucky?”

Mickey grinned. “He’s an old ex-Navy guy, and his burgers are so good that everybody puts up with his Ohio State origins.”

“I don’t think I can eat anything.” My stomach was tied in six different kinds of knots.

“Well, let’s at least get you some ice for your face and some Tylenol, and then see how you feel,” he said.

He unbuckled his seat belt and then leaned across to unfasten mine, and his breath feathered across my cheek and made me shiver. He stilled, and then he moved back and stared into my eyes.

“I won’t let anybody hurt you again, but I can’t stay away from you, Victoria. Please don’t ask me to,” he whispered, and then he kissed me, a gentle caress of his lips on mine, and I shivered again as an almost too-powerful sensation raced through me.

“I won’t,” I promised, and his beautiful blue eyes lit up with triumph, or joy, or simply intense satisfaction, and I had to force myself not to hurl myself into his arms right there in the truck, in a public parking lot, in broad daylight. It didn’t make sense, this fierce connection between us, but it was so intensely real that I didn’t even try to deny it.

“I—ice,” I finally stammered, and he grinned.

“Ice.”

Chapter 24

Mickey

M
r. Judson’s thick eyebrows came together when he saw me walk in. “Little early on a school day, isn’t it, Mick?”

“We got early dismissal, so I thought I’d bring Victoria by to try the best burgers in the state,” I told him.

She was hiding her cheek under the fall of her hair and staring at the floor, and I thought I’d wait till we got to the table to ask about ice so as not to attract any more attention than we already had.

“Well, at least the best burgers in the county,” he said, grinning at both of us. He started polishing his spotless counter again, and I led Victoria toward the last booth in the row, so we could have a little privacy to talk.

Nora, the diner’s only waitress, pointed at the rack of plastic-covered menus, and I took two as I passed by. Nora preferred to work hard only on days of the week that didn’t end in “Y,” but she was always cheerful about it, so nobody ever complained much.

“Drinks?”

“Water, please,” Victoria said.

I waited until I got closer and nobody but Nora and Victoria would hear me. “A Coke for me, Nora, and can I get an extra cup of ice, please, and a clean cloth?”

Nora’s sharp eyes scanned Victoria’s face, but she just nodded and headed toward the drink dispenser.

I gestured to Victoria to take the seat with its back toward the rest of the diner, and I slid into the seat facing her.

“Is it really bad?” She looked up at me, lifting her hair up out of the way so I could see, and rage flooded me. I wanted to go back in time and knock Sam Oliver down all over again.

“It’s bad,” I admitted. “Your skin is so fair that the bruising really shows up. I’m so sorry.”

“It was my fault.” She attempted a smile, and my gut clenched at her courage.

I doubted many girls—hell, many guys, either—who’d been clocked by one of the biggest guys on the Clark High football team would be brave enough to smile about it.

“If I hadn’t tried to get in his way, my face wouldn’t have punched him in the fist so hard,” she said, but then she flinched and put a hand over her face. “Okay, smiling actually hurts quite a bit. No more smiling.”

Nora showed back up at the table with our drinks, the ice, Tylenol, and a furious expression.

“Who did this to you, young lady? Mickey, I hope you beat the shit out of him, whoever it was,” she said fiercely, and warmth spiraled up through me at the complete sincerity in her voice.

She obviously hadn’t thought for a second that I’d been the one who hit Victoria, and it was almost pathetic how grateful I was for someone who didn’t condemn me on the spot—guilty of nothing more than being born a Rhodale.

Victoria studied the menu while she took a couple of Tylenol and put some ice in the cloth Nora handed her and then against her cheek. She ordered a chocolate milkshake and I asked for a shake, too, and a double burger and fries to go with it.

“Extra pickles,” Nora said, and I nodded my thanks.

She rested her hand briefly on Victoria’s shoulder. “Honey, if you want to call the cops on whoever did this, or you need a place to crash for a few nights while you get away, you let me know. Any friend of Mickey’s and all that.”

Victoria’s beautiful green eyes shimmered, but she didn’t let the tears spill over. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that, Nora, but it really was an accident. I got in between two stubborn guys—”

“No need to say anything else, honey. Mickey, you make sure she doesn’t do it again, you hear me?”

I nodded and waited until Nora headed off with our order before I spoke. “She’s right. I need to make sure it doesn’t happen again, but first you have to tell me how to keep a stubborn girl from standing up for me whenever she thinks I need it.”

Victoria’s cheeks turned pink, and she shrugged. “You keep trying to take the blame for things that are my fault. What else can I do?”

“You can let me sink or swim on my own efforts, like everybody else in my life. Except my mother,” I said.