Bad Intentions (14 page)

“One dog for the lady,” Tank places another hot dog in the palm of my hand. I inspect it. She
was
listening. It has red sauce all over it.

Zoe – 1.

“Thank you.” I attempt to curtsy and end up wobbling and losing my footing.

“Whoa, easy.” It isn’t Tank or Zoe’s hands that steady me. They’re Ryle’s. One hand grasps my upper arm. The other gently holds my back. As if from a welder’s torch, the skin under my shirt feels as if it has ignited in flames. The burning slowly spreads across my body, warming me in the most inappropriate places.

I can feel the tips of my ears turn red from embarrassment. Not only am I eating a hot dog like a trucker would, but I’m swaying from foot to foot, like a child learning to walk for the first time. I ignore the part of my body that craves him, as I reluctantly pull away from his embrace. My lips protest.

“You might want to skip the party tonight.” His flat tone deflates me like a balloon.

“Party?” My ears perk up as my eyebrows raise in interest.

Tank chimes in, “Hell yeah, we’re partying tonight. We just kicked some ass, Kitten! It’d be a shame for you to miss it. Eat. It might help sober you up.”

“I don’t think she’s in the best shape,” Zoe responds, eyes on me. Once again, they’re talking about me while I’m standing smack dab in front of them.

Annoying as fudge.

“I’m fine,” I swallow a bite and wipe the corner of my mouth. “I just need like—a half an hour— and I’ll be good. Promise.”

“Maybe you should sit this one out. No one likes to play babysitter.” Naomi’s cool voice cuts me like a sword to my chest.

Without hesitating, I open my mouth, only to notice my voice raise an octave, “I can always tell when you’re being an bitch. Your lips move.” Without waiting for an unwarranted response, I turn and leave my two friends behind me, standing with Ryle and his…whatever the hell he wants to call her.

For the life of me, I don’t know why I’m on the brink of crying, but clearly I am. I try and walk fast so that no one sees the pools of unshed tears forming in my eyes. But the faster I walk, the more upset I feel. During one of my dad’s come-to-Jesus talks with me, I remember him telling me that alcohol reacts differently with everyone. Some people are mean drunks. Some are emotional. Clearly I’m the latter.

The sound of someone rapidly approaching doesn’t stop me. “Slow down,” Tank calls out. I slow my pace, allowing us to walk together in a steady stride, shoulder to shoulder. “You let her have it back there.”

“I know.” I clear my throat.

“How come?” he pries.

I blow out a breath, but don’t answer his question.

“I bet I could guess.”

Tilting my head, I bite my bottom lip. “I bet you could too, but I wish you wouldn’t.”

He ignores me. “This would all be a lot easier if you admitted you have a thing for my boy.”

“It’s not even that. It’s just her. She’s so… rude. Always throwing in her two cents. I think she does it just to irk me. Like she can tell that I like him, and she’s tossing out her cruelest tactics on me.”

“So you do like him?” he asks, wanting to set my admission in stone.

I nudge his side and stumble in the process. It only makes me feel worse. Naomi’s right. No one wants to hang out with someone who can’t handle his or her liquor. “It’s not like me to be mean to people. Even if they push my buttons— and trust me—that wench knows how.” I sniffle and continue briskly walking toward the sidewalk.

“I think it was hot. Someone needs to put her in her place. She has no right treating people like she does. It’s not just you. She’s plain rude to anyone who crosses her path. I don’t know why Ryle keeps her around.” In my periphery, I can see him shake his head. “Just between us,” he leans closer to me as we walk. “I think he feels sorry for her.”

That gets my attention. My feet stop moving and root themselves in the grass. “Why on earth would he feel sorry for someone who is cruel for fun?”

“Not like he told me himself or anything, but they were both foster kids when they were younger. There’s a bond there, whether we think she deserves his friendship or not, they share something deep. I don’t know the deets. I just heard stuff from the team here and there, but I guess they find comfort in one another.”

The water main breaks. Seconds after, warm arms embrace me.

Tank’s touch puts me at ease as I cry in his arms like a dang fool over a boy that I shouldn’t like, and a girl that makes it hard to.

“Thanks for walking with me. Sorry about that,” I point to the mascara stain on his shoulder.

“Whatever.” He shrugs nonchalantly. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not. Besides, it’s not every day I have the pleasure of consoling a pretty girl.”

I don’t feel very pretty right now. I feel like I’ve made an ass of myself and have been punched in the gut by the Hulk. Twice. I can’t deny that it was deserved.

“I shouldn’t go tonight. Zoe was right. I just need to sleep this off.”

He reaches for the door handle. “You might need to sleep it off. But I know you’ll be upset tomorrow if you miss an opportunity to make right with them.”

“Why do I feel like you know me so well?”

He ushers me into my dorm room and then leans against the wall. With arms crossed over his chest, he looks at me—really looks at me. For a split second, I’m scared that he sees the real me –the girl who wants to be freed but is scared of exactly what that means. I’m the one who used her old boyfriend as a safety net and then, when she couldn’t face her reality, she ran. I’m frightened that he—anyone—will see me for what I am. A poser. A girl who’s desperately trying to be something she’s not.

Fierce.

The sound of a door slamming in the hall resonates through the room. Tank leans forward, his mouth hovering an inch over my ear. It may seem too intimate of a gesture, but what comes out feels totally brotherly. “I see straight past the girl that you
want
me to know
.
But, I want to be introduced to the
real
Adaley Knight. Not the version of her that showed up with chapped lips.”

The last part makes me smile, but the first makes me feel naked in every sense.

“I lost the Adaley you want to know along the highway.”

He nudges my chin up with his hand. “I’m sure you have a reason for abandoning her.”

“Par-tayyy tonight, Young!”

Some guy comes running down the hallway with nothing on but a green turtle tube around his waist. Thank goodness, because I don’t know how much more of a heart-to-heart that I can take. I force a smile.

“Don’t think that you’re getting off the hook that easily. Phone,” he demands with an outreached hand. Placing it in his palm, he grabs it and enters in what I assume are his digits. “Go get a shower. Cold water always helps me when I’m a little too sloshed.”

“The infamous Taylor Young gets too wasted for his britches?”

His laugh is deep. “Watch it, missy. Text me when you’re ready to come to the party, if you decide to. I’ll walk back over and get you.” I slowly nod letting him know that I understand. “I’m not kidding. Please don’t walk on campus alone. Not in the shape you’re in tonight. Hell, not ever. I know they didn’t exactly hand every female a rape whistle on campus.”

“I’ll text you.”

Baseball was his ticket to a better life. He’d known it even as a kid living with his third set of foster parents. Over and over, he’d tossed an empty soda can in the air and hit it with a plastic tube he’d found floating in an algae-covered pond. Not having much else to do, he’d practiced for hours, day in and day out to hone his craft. At the time, he’d truly believed that he’d become famous and would be whisked away from his daily hell.

The dream of fleeing was crushed repeatedly as Ryle matured. By the time he was in his early teens, he’d been disappointed in the human race countless times. Aggression became the mainstay of his personality and resulted in him being shuffled from one despicable home to another. The solidarity of bashing a bat at an object kept his fury in check. It had been his only outlet.

Not only had Ryle been abandoned by his mother in favor of the crack pipe that eventually stole her life, but he also believed that no one else on this god forsaken planet gave a rats ass about him. The system only saw him as a number, and each set of foster parents viewed him as a monthly paycheck, and nothing more.

He’d thought about taking his own life on several pitiful occasions, but he couldn’t stomach the fact that he’d go to hell and probably be sitting next to his mother for eternity.

He lived on hope.

He lived for a day that someone cared.

As a result, he merely
existed
, never really understanding the meaning of truly
living
. Until the day when even God himself felt sorry for him. That day, Ryle met Dr. Meredith Benson and her husband Thomas. His life would be forever changed.

He’d been fifteen, a high school sophomore, when a complete stranger had rushed him to the local emergency room after he was found in an alley, lying in a puddle of his own blood. He’d been beaten, stabbed and left for dead. Dr. Benson was the surgeon who’d sewed his wound closed and became interested in why this child was lifeless and alone. No one had reported him missing, and no one came looking for him.

The Bensons had already dedicated their lives to helping others, but after suffering from numerous miscarriages, they’d decided that having biological children wasn’t in the cards for them. As excruciating as it had been, they’d masked their pain by devoting their lives to helping those who were too young to help themselves. Ryle wasn’t their first adopted child. Naomi Reynolds had come a couple years before him and was doing as well as anyone could have hoped for having had her innocence stolen by a random.

The couple had proven to have a knack for helping others, and they’d made it their sole mission to help bring Ryle back from the darkness that had continued to linger in his eyes months later. But even then, with new lavish surroundings, four wheelers, and a stocked pantry that could feed half of Africa, Ryle still found solace in nothing but baseball.

Which is why today had been so special to him. He’d made the game-winning pitch as the crowd sang his praises. He was no longer a scared little boy fighting through the depths of other people’s depravity just to survive. He was Ryle Benson, baseball extraordinaire. He was a
survivor
.

F
orty-five minutes
pass before I grab my phone off my nightstand. Zoe never came back to the dorm—which is good—because I needed a break. I needed to be alone, and I needed to re-group.

With a deep, cleansing breath, I open a new text message and type in Tank’s name. I’m not even surprised when it doesn’t come up under Tank or Taylor. Scrolling through the list of contacts, I laugh out loud when I stumble upon a contact titled,
The Kitten Master.

He’s an idiot.

My fingers slide over the screen quickly as I type out a message.

Me: Hello?

The Kitten Master: Hey baby.

Me: Are you wasted?

The Kitten Master: I’ve only been drinkin’ 4 like 20 min. I know how to hold my liquor. You ready?

Me: Yes, sir.