When the bell rang, protection mode kicked in, like it had oh so many times in the past. I wasn’t even aware of what I was doing. An old instinct reared its head like a sleeping dragon, an instinct that I’d spent four years beating into submission, but had already caved to once today.
Standing, I scooped up my book and grabbed my bag off the floor. My heart slammed against my ribs as I darted around our seats, and I didn’t look back, didn’t give him a chance to walk away first. My sandals smacked off the floor as I hurried down the hall, easing past slower-walking students as I shoved the textbook into my bag. I probably looked like an idiot. Well, I felt like an idiot.
I burst outside and into the hot sun. Chin down, I followed the path to the parking lot, hands trembling as I opened and closed them, because it felt like the blood had stopped at my wrists. The tips of my fingers tingled.
The silver Honda gleamed up ahead, and I drew in a ragged breath. I would go home and I would—
“Mallory.”
My pulse spiked at the sound of my name, and my steps faltered. I was feet from my car, from escape, but I turned around slowly.
He stood beside a red truck that hadn’t been there when I parked this morning and that I hadn’t even noticed on my mad dash to my car. In the sunlight his hair was more brown than black, and his skin deeper, his features sharper. There were so many questions I suddenly wished I could ask. What had he been doing for four years? Did someone finally adopt him? Or was he moving from one foster home to the next?
Most important, was he safe now?
Not all group homes were bad. Not all foster parents were horrible. Look at Carl and Rosa. They put the awe in awesome. They’d adopted me, but before them, this boy standing before me and I had not been lucky. We’d been fostered by the worst kind of people who somehow managed to pass inspection. Caseworkers were underfunded and understaffed, and most did the best they could, but there were a lot of cracks to slip through, and we’d fallen right through one in the worst way.
Most foster kids didn’t stay in the system or one house longer than two years. Most kids were reunited with parents or adopted. No one besides Mr. Henry and Miss Becky had wanted us, and I still couldn’t figure out why they wanted us and yet treated us so badly. Our caseworkers came and went with the frequency of the seasons. Teachers in school had to have seen what we’d been going through at home but none risked their jobs to step in. The bitterness of being overlooked and stepped on for so long in an overburdened and broken-down system still clung to me like a second skin that I wondered if I’d ever shed.
But there was good and bad in everything. Had he finally found some good?
“Really?” he said, his fingers tightening around the old notebook he held. “After everything, after four years of not knowing what the hell happened to you, you just show up in fucking speech class and then run away? From me?”
I inhaled sharply as I lowered my arms. My bag slipped off my shoulder, hitting the hot asphalt. Shock flowed through me, but in the back of my mind, I wasn’t surprised that he’d caught up to me. He never ran. He never hid from anything. That had always been me. We had been yin and yang. My cowardice to his bravery. His strength to my weakness.
But that wasn’t me anymore.
I wasn’t Mouse.
I wasn’t a coward.
I wasn’t weak.
He took a step forward and then stopped, shaking his head as his chest rose and fell unsteadily. “Say something.”
I struggled to get the word out. “What?”
“My name.”
I wasn’t sure why he wanted me to say that, and I didn’t know how it would feel to say it again after all this time, but I drew in a deep breath. “Rider.” Another breath shuddered through me. “Rider Stark.”
His throat worked and, for a heartbeat, neither of us moved as a steamy breeze tossed strands of hair across my face. Then he dropped his notebook to the pavement. I was surprised it didn’t burst into dust. His long-legged pace ate up the distance. One second there was several feet between us, and in the next breath he was right there in front of me. He was so much taller now. I barely reached his shoulders.
And then his arms were around me.
My heart exploded as those strong arms pulled me against his chest. There was a moment where I froze, and then my arms swept around his neck. I held on, squeezing my eyes shut as I inhaled the clean scent and the lingering trace of aftershave. This was him. His hugs were different now, stronger and tighter. He lifted me clear off my feet, one arm around my waist, the other hand buried deep in my hair, and my breasts were mushed against his surprisingly hard chest.
Whoa.
His hugs were most definitely different than they were when we were twelve.