Until tonight, I reminded myself, flexing my jaw. There would be no hiding the bruise on my face.
“Psst!”
I stopped circling my arm and peered around the side of my house, beyond the dingy beige siding, past the patches of weeds to the fence that divided good from bad in my life.
And there she was in the window beyond the cherry tree. The good.
“What are you doing up? It’s late,” I scolded in a whisper.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Sloane called back.
I wouldn’t be able to now either. He wasn’t coming back. Not tonight. He’d go to a buddy’s house and drink until he passed out. I, on the other hand, would lie there awake, staring at the ceiling, wishing he’d never come back. That he’d drive that truck off a bridge and put us all out of our misery.
I looked back at my house. The lights in Mom’s bedroom were on. She’d be curling up in that tight ball like she always did after. She used to curl up around me. When times weren’t quite as bad. When he wasn’t quite as vicious. But somewhere along the way, she’d started curling in on herself, and I became the protector.
I should stay. I shouldn’t taint Sloane’s life with the ugliness of my own.
“I got a new CD. Wanna listen?” she hissed in the dark.
“Fuck it,” I murmured to myself and entered her yard.
The gnarled bark of the cherry tree abraded my hands as I climbed to her.
“Hi,” Sloane said, pretty and perky in a pair of pajama pants and a David Bowie tank top when I climbed through her window.
“Hi,” I said, carefully stepping over the books littering her window seat.
She had a pillow crease on her cheek under her glasses. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a knot so messy it was clear she’d been sleeping at some point.
She was…cute. Adorable even. I was drawn to her, but in a way that wasn’t what I was used to.
“What woke you up?” I asked uneasily.
Her gaze darted to the window and then back again. She raised her chin. “I don’t know.”
She was a good liar, but I could still tell. “Did you hear something?” I pressed.
“You’re bleeding,” she said, ignoring my question and jumping into action.
My fingers found the corner of my mouth and came away red. “Shit.”
She grabbed a box of tissues and yanked several free. “Here. Sit.”
“No, it’s fine. I should go,” I said, starting for the window. I should have known better than to bring this here. Just because I was feeling sorry for myself didn’t give me the right to bleed all over her room.
“Hey. You can’t go. You still haven’t apologized for the rock last spring.”
“Next time,” I said briskly. It was our refrain. Our promise that I’d be back. A promise I needed to give serious thought to breaking.
I got one foot up on the window seat when she grabbed me by the back of my sweatpants. “Seriously, Sloane?”
“Let me look at your mouth. I mean the blood on your mouth,” she insisted.
She clung to me like one of those fucking burrs you got stuck to your socks after a walk in the woods.
“Fine,” I muttered. I sat on the cushion between a John Grisham and an Octavia Butler.
“Stay,” Sloane ordered.
“You’re bossy for a pixie,” I complained.
She snorted as she collected the clump of tissues and a glass of water from her nightstand. Her bottle-green eyes were solemn as she approached me. And I knew then that she knew.
She knew and she felt sorry for me. My hands closed into fists again.
“So are you ready for your chem test tomorrow?” she asked.
She knew my secret, knew I didn’t want to talk about it, so she was just going to clean me up and pretend everything was normal. I didn’t deserve her.
“Sorry for never…you know…” I gestured helplessly.
“Acknowledging me at school?” Sloane guessed, filling in the blank for me. She had an uncanny knack for knowing what I wanted to say even when I didn’t have the words to say it.
“Yeah.”
She shrugged those dainty shoulders and flashed me a smirk. “Eh. It’s fine. It would ruin my street cred if the captain of the football team started paying attention to me.”
“Your street cred?” I scoffed.
She dunked the tissues into the water and began to gently dab at the corner of my mouth. It felt…nice to have someone care.
“People would start expecting me to try out for the cheerleading squad and go to the bonfires at Third Base. It would cut into my reading time. Plus, I’d have to give up my secret crush on Philip.”
“Stage Crew Phil is your secret crush?” I teased.
Stage Crew Phil’s claims to fame were his perfect grades in calculus and the headset he got to wear backstage during school productions because he was in charge of the curtain. He gave zero shits about what anyone thought of him and went to school in the same jeans and black T-shirt outfit every single day. Except for Picture Day when he wore a bow tie over the T-shirt.
“I can’t help it. I’m a sucker for a guy with power. Every time I think of him hissing ‘curtain up,’ I get weak in the knees.”
I was smiling in spite of…everything. That was the effect she had on me. She was good. Everything about her seemed to sparkle. Good people got good things.
Then I remembered Jonah.
“Your dad said you were on a date tonight.” It sounded accusatory, but I couldn’t help it.
“Relax. I went out with Jonah so I could dump him in person.”
I straightened. “You broke up?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, her gaze glued to my mouth. “He was kind of an ass. You were right.”
“Say that part again,” I insisted.
Her lips quirked as she worked. “No.”
“Come on,” I wheedled.
“No. And shut up. But seriously,” she continued, pressing the wet wad of tissues to the corner of my mouth, “I understand.”
“You understand what?”
“You can’t be seen being friendly to a four-eyed sophomore nerd. It would tear a hole in the space-time continuum of high school society.”
She didn’t know the real reason why I didn’t want anyone to know about us. If my father had an inkling that something mattered to me, he destroyed it or ruined it in whatever way he could. The only thing he “allowed” me to have was football because it meant something to him to have a son who excelled on the field.
But if he ever had a hint that Sloane meant something to me, that I valued her, he would inflict damage. And if he did, if he managed to hurt her in some way, I didn’t think I could live with that…or let him live.
“Nerd,” I said lightly.
“Does it hurt?” she asked me, changing the subject again. Her voice was husky and serious now.
“It’s fine,” I lied.
“Lucian—”
“Don’t,” I said.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“Yes, I do. And it’s none of your business.”
“But—”
“Not everyone has the family you do. Okay?” She had no idea what I dealt with on a daily basis. Not when she’d been raised by Simon and Karen Walton.
“But why can’t we go to the cops?” she pressed.
The idea of picking up the phone and calling the cops on my father was laughable.
Police Chief Wylie Ogden was one of Dad’s best friends. I was ten years old when Wylie had pulled my father over for speeding and swerving between the lines. He was drunk. He’d handed me his open beer can when he pulled over onto the shoulder.
The nerves in my belly had just started to unclench. The police would help. We watched videos about this in school. Don’t drink and drive. But my dad did.
I’d thought the police would stop my dad from making this mistake, from scaring me, from hurting someone.
“Someone started early today,” Wylie had cackled when he walked up to my father’s window.
The chief had let him off without even a warning. They’d shot the shit about a fishing boat and made plans to meet up at the bar later that evening. And then Wylie had waved my father back onto the road as if bestowing some kind of special privilege on him.
“I just can’t,” I said tightly.