Broken (16 page)

He
lurches
to his knees, spits blood at Alex and then
hurtles
across the space
like a football player looking for a takedown
. The tackle is incomplete. Alex manages to pivot
to the side in the teacher’s grip,
and
meets Josh’s lunge with
a knee
driven up i
nto
the redhead
’s chin. Teeth clack together loud enough to hear over the music,
and Josh goes limp,
slumps to the floor
, a bag of bones and skin
.

An em
pty ache tugs in my chest as
t
he teacher drags Alex away. Someone somewhere mutters about calling 9-1-1. A hand brushes my arm, and Bree en
velopes me in a hug. I don’t know I’m shaking until she
tells me. Her hand
skims
my shoulder and pain throbs there. She leads me past Josh and I barely control the urge to kick him
,
too. I wish the teacher hadn’t pulled Alex away.

Josh once called Alex my guard dog.

I hope the bastard regrets it
now
.

Chapter Fourteen

People linger
a few feet back
, a shadowy
costume store of
blank-faced
mannequins. The only face I see
with clarity
is Alex
’s
. Lip cut and bleeding, cheekbone and temple blackening,
the faint scar on the left not affecting the
wild light in his eyes
.

Words jam in my mouth. Emotions tear at my insides. He’s hurt because of me. Acting on an impulse I shouldn’t have yet,
I
lift a napkin
toward his chin to dab the blood shining there. Alex pushes my hand away
.

“Don’t worry about me,” he says.

I do. He’s wormed his way beyond my defenses, taken up residence like he’s always been in my heart.

Leather and bloody knuckle scent
s
catch in the back of my throat and itch like tears
when he cups my face in his hands
.
His expression is so like Daniel’s angry,
worried
expression that
my heart stutters
: pinched eyebrows, pressed lips, nostrils huffing air.
My lip trembles and I think the tears might be real. But are they for me, or Alex?
He pours his gaze over my face
, slides his fingers over my scalp then across my bare skin to my shoulder.
His eyes darken.
The corners of his lips pull down at the shadowy bruises rising
beneath his touch
.

“
Josh
hurt you.”
His tenor is nearly a growl
.

“Not really.”

I feel a completely separate anger
snapping in
the electric charge in Alex’s touch. Hair stands on my arms, and up the back of my neck.

Icy weight touches my palm, Bree appearing at my side
and
pressing
a bag of ice in my hand.
Her thumb brushes my cheek, and comes away wet. I guess the tears are real.
She jerks her head toward Alex,
mouth
s, “take care of him,”
then steps back toward the crowd hemming us in.
Her arms lift, creating a white curtain of sleeve as she herds
them back, giving us room.

My heart patters, my skin tingles from his touch. With a hesitant smile,
I
dodge his next blocking motion and
pull the black silk kerchief from the pocket of Alex’s costume
. He sits mute, watching me
wrap the frigid bag in it
and lift it toward his face. Then he
stop
s
it, a
firm
grip on my wrist
as it hovers inches from his
skin
.

“I didn’t intend the night to end like this,” he says.

“Me neither.”
With a sigh a lot like defeat, he releases my hand.
I
drop a glance down to the lack of distance between us, m
y white skirts twined in the black of his costume.
I
ce crunches in the pack when I press it to his jaw.
“Where’d you learn to fight like that?”

An elega
n
t
shrug ripples his cape, l
ike what he did was not
h
ing special. “Martial arts classes at Sadony Academy.”

“
Pretty impressive.” The deep blue-purple outside of his eye
puddles
under his lashes, too.
I stop myself mid-thought of
I bet he’s sexy with a black--
“
You’re going to have quite a shiner
.”

“Don’t care.” He winces when I shift the pack closer to his eye socket. “It was worth it.”

“To perpetuate your violent reputation?”
I know different, but have to pry.

Hurt
flashes over his face. “To protect you.” His fingers brush mine, where the
y
peek from the brace. “And to punish him.”

The raw honesty in his voice, in his
face
leaves me speechless.
It’s like a hit to my chest, the hollow collapsing inside
. O
r is it filling again? I’m not sure, but
in one week
Alex has changed me
.
He’s chased away the loneliness, loosened my grip on Daniel’s memory.
M
y throat tightens. Instead of talk,
which
would lead to crying
in front of him
,
I dab at the blood on his
lip with a napkin from the near
by table.

“You didn’t have to.”

“
Yes
,
I did
,” he
argues
, voice gone soft, almost like he’s talking to himself. “
I was d
riven.
I’ve never been that angry. I didn’t just
want to
stop him.
I wanted to hurt him so bad it
hurt
me
.”
He unfurls his hands, runs a glance across his palms and up one arm. “So bad it burned.”

“Because you’re a good guy,” I reason, “and he was hurting me.”

“It started because of that
, Emma
.
But then it became something…I don’t know.
It felt like so much…” he pauses
, clenches a fist
, “
so much
more than that.”

Alex
opens his mouth to say more, I cut him off asking, “What did you mean by ‘it doesn’t beat for me’?”

An electric caress warms my hand when he threads his fingers through mine
and pulls the ice pack away
. By
the look on his face
,
his
answer
may cut us both
. He smiles, hesitantly, but it doesn’t make it to his eyes. A different light glows there. He inhales,
with his fr
ee hand he pulls his bandana
and mask off exposing the scars on his neck. H
is
other
fingers tighten on mine
.

Then the
p
rincipal arrives
, all angry expressions and flapping coat,
to lay down the law.

Alex detaches his grip on my hand and steps away like he may contaminate me.

It’s too late for that
, I think. I’m poisoned. Bree was right, Alex
and
I
are
connected—deeply—and
I don’t know how it happened. Days ago, I wished for a graveside to mourn Daniel, today I
fret
over Alex’s hurts, the external from Josh and the ones beneath the scars I’ve seen. He’s tried to perpetuate the rumors, but I know some of the truths Alex Franks hides.

The principal
,
and head of Shelley High’s PTA group
,
separate Alex and Josh,
leading them to separate sections of the side hallway. Both
guys
watch me when the
p
rincipal leads me down the hall, past Josh to his office near my locker.

Inside
,
it smells like old carpet and new cigars. H
e
turns his narrow, rat-like face to me and
says, “Have a seat, Emma.”

I try to dislodge my heart from my throat and sink to the leather chair opposite his desk. Why do I feel guilty? I didn’t do anything wrong.
Josh started it all.

“I never expected to see you in this office,”
the older man
says, that patented tone of disappointment in full affect.

“Wasn’t in my plans,” I mutter after a hard swallow loosens the knot in my throat.

“Being flip won’t save you,” he says.

No. Alex did.

I sigh, han
g my head and let the p
rincipal think I’m properly admonished. He rapid fires questions at me in a mildly accusatory tone. Alex and what he might have answered to ‘it doesn’t beat for me’ are foremost in my mind, but
I answer
the
C
hief Inquisitor’s
questions honestly
. I stress repeatedly that
Josh is drunk
,
and I did not in anyway aggravate or come on to him. I recount the fight,
from
Josh start
ing
it
by
push
ing
first
. Afte
r making me repeat it all, the p
rincipal
makes some notes on a scratch pad and
sends me to the backstage dressing rooms with the warning that my parents have been notified and asked to pick me up.

My stomach constricts into a nauseous, achy knot.

My mom already thinks nothing but bad of Alex—her “jump to judgment
habit
” as Dad calls it. She’s going to hate
Alex
now. Helping with a deer in the mud is one thing, being the reason two guys fought is something totally different.

Backstage is blessedly vacant when I arrive. Untying the corset isn’t easy one-handed and alone. Once managed, I pull on my jeans then work
my way back into my bra and
pull Alex’s shirt from my backpack.
It doesn’t smell like him anymore, and the blood is out of the cuff
. I
want something of him with me when Mom blasts me for being “in trouble with that boy again.”

Josh sits in the hall, the sickly sweet smell of alcohol tainted with the metallic tang of
his
blood. An ice pack covers part of his face when I reach the intersection of the hall. The ice doesn’t deflect the heated glare he slings my way.

Alex didn’t beat you enough,
I think at him.

I turn away, casting a glance through the fr
osted pane of the Principal’s O
ffice door. The tall shadow on the other side freezes, and I imagine Alex’s head turning toward me.
Knowing the looming conversation
w
on’t be pretty,
I hurry out the side door and t
o t
he incensed woman sitting behind the wheel of the sedan idling at the curb.

#

My ears sting, my cheeks burn in angry flush. Mom was as angry and narrow-minded as I thought she’d be, bitching at me from the school curb to
our
home garage, calling Alex
“
out to ruin me
,”
“
a troublemaker
,”
bitch
,
bitch
,
bitch.

“He’s
on a downward spiral and
just going to pull you down with him, Emma,” she says when I shove the car door open. “I’d rather have you alone—”

“And what?” I snap. “Alone and pining for my dead boyfriend who I can never have back and won’t ever come between you and me again?”

Her mouth pops open, her brown eyes bug a little
in obvious disbelief
.

Yeah. I can’t believe I said it either.