Broken (29 page)

“Screw you, Gentry!” He bark
s and storms closer. He’s chest-to-
chest with Alex now and pushing to get
past
to him.
He pokes a
callused
finger at my face.
“You have no idea what
I did that
day!”

“You two fought.
I went for help.
I came back just as Dani
el fell.” I drop my voice to tones of acid, spewing the truth I’d kept bottled for months. “
And y
ou let him.”

Josh’s hand pops up, nearly smacking Alex. His muscles tense in front of m
e
and I know he’s going to do something, use one of his martial arts move on Josh.
The redhead
stumbles back a step when Alex shoves him and slides into a wider stance with his feet. I step to hi
s side, watching Josh warily. He’
s a contained storm, ready to split and destroy.

“You let him
fall
, too,” Josh says, spittle flying from his lips.

I
t’s too much.
How dare he?
The barb hits my heart like I’m sure Josh intended. I
snake around Alex, and
slam my braced right hand into Josh’s face. I feel the crack, and hear it too. White-hot pain flares in my hand and I know I’ve rebroken it.
Josh slams into the pool table behind him
, eyes glazed and mouth dangling open
.
He comes to quickly, focusing a scathing glare on me.

“Go to hell, Josh Mason.”

“I’m already there. Been there since the day I met you!”

Moving
my fingers in the
brace rekindles all the hell I’d put there two weeks ago.
I wince, and draw my hand to my chest. Josh lunges forward and
Alex reacts. He grabs a fist full of Josh’s sweater, and sweeps his feet out from under him. The jerk drops hard on his rear, spitting cusswords and dribbling blood from the lip I split open again.

Bree swear
s
, calling Josh every horrid name she can think of. Jason has her hand and pulls her back.

B
ouncers
pour
down the stairs.
The biggest one
hauls
Josh up fro
m
the floor and traps him in
a bear hug
.
Josh, struggling and shouting nasty cusswords, digs in his heels as the bouncer
drags
him
backward toward the rear exit
.
Foul words fly from Bree
, Jason restraining her
while two other burly guys step between us.
I stand in hollowed-out shock. Josh said
I
let Daniel fall.
He was already over the railing
, I couldn’t have helped him, but God the pain and guilt geyser up anyway.

The Bull Ring guy from the door crosses his arms and says in a solemn, seen-it-too-many-times voice, “You four are gonna have to leave.”

Bouncers flank o
ur exit from DarkHouse, and a waitress runs a bag of ice to me for my hand.
On the way to the parking lot
,
Jason mutters, “That guy likes to ruin nights.”

“And
ruin
lives,”
I
huff
.

The pain is
under
cutting my temperament, cleaving away my calm and manners.
I cling to Alex and fight tears.
Josh’s hateful words keeping whispering
through my mind, and I know if h
e was here, I’d punch him again, then kick him when he was down
.

At Jason’s beat-
up Ford
Bronco
, Alex releases my hair from the bun, pulling his finger through the blond strands before
sweep
ing
a kiss across my lips.
The sight of his car and
knowing he’s leaving
scrapes me raw somehow. How could I have come to need him so quickly like my hand needs the brace to keep it steady?
“Go to the clinic,” he says, “and get your hand taken care of.”

“Yessir,” I pout. The last thing I want after sneaking out, and lying by omission to do it, is call my mom. Telling her I rebroke my hand by punching Daniel’s old best friend in the nightclub I wasn’t supposed to visit is going to send her over t
he deep end.
I’m not even sure what punishment she’ll wield—it’s sure to be big, nasty and thorny.

“Monday will be better,” he promises.

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

Chapter Twenty

“A plaster cast?” Bree asks, eyeing t
he new hardware on my right arm
with pity.

“Yeah.” I cast a glance a
t the hot pink painted cast on my right hand, then a
cross the quad
. S
cudding clouds
cast
choppy
darkness
on the ground.
People kept to the
shadow
s
beneath the catwalk, faces turned skyward
, waiting
.
“Apparently, rebreaking your hand while in an immobilizer is a bad thing.”

“Considering
the silence since we dropped you off,
” she says and sips her chai tea, “I’m guessing you’re grounded?”

“Totally.” A far off rumble promises to deliver on the thunderstorm the weatherman forecast this morning. “Within an inch of my life, as my mom put it. No cell phone, no overnights, no homework at your house. Just school and home for the next month.”

A delicate shudder ruffles Bree’s denim and white outfit.
“Harsh.”

“M
ore like slow m
urder.”

“She didn’t take into consideration
that Josh is a Class A
a
sshole and des
erved to get punched
?”

“Oddly enough…” I pause and let out a sigh when I see Alex at the Walk-Up Window of Mugz-n-Chugz.
“The cast and
me
punching
Josh
isn’t why I’m grounded.
Alex showed up at the clinic and explained how horrid
Josh
was.
Mom’s pissed because we went to DarkHouse.
”

“
There goes next weekend’s plans
.
” She gives me a wink.
We both knew there was a high pos
sibility of me getting grounded—we went anyway.
Next weekend was never an option.
“
So they’re okay with the new boyfriend, and the fact that he was there at DarkHouse, too
?
”

“
Thanks to Alex
…
” I wave when he leaves Tiny’s Walk-Up window. “M
y parents think he was there to protect me.”

“Oh, sure
.” An Olympic eye-roll
flashes silvery eyeshadow at me
. “T
hat slow dance, with his hands all up in your hair
and
grazing your butt was for protection…”

“Of course it was,” Alex
agree
s
, appearing from Mugz-n-Chugz
, his long fingers wrapped around a cup I know
has b
reve in it
.
“Best way to guard her body was to keep a firm grip on it. Look what happened when I let go of her for a
couple
of
minutes. She
slugs
Joshhole.”

Bree burst
s
into giggles at the combination of Josh’s name with the way he was behaving. I don’t get a c
hance to giggle. Alex takes my coffee
, slips an arm behind my back and drags me to him.

“There are rules about PDAs,” Bree warns.

Public Displays of Affection have earned suspensions at Shelley High before.
Alex chuffs a breath between a laugh and a snort,
like silly school rules don’t affect him, and
l
ift
s me off my feet
.
Bright pink cast
trapped between us and
my shoes dangling
above his
,
Alex
back
-
walks
to
the curb
where
he steps down into the street.

T
ingles course my skin, tickle my lips
when he tips his face within kissing distance
.

My
cast
is in the way, and I don’t mind.
Close isn’t enough
with
Alex.
I
lean up
,
a
jolt of energy coursing through me when I
press
my
mouth
to his
and nip his bottom lip.
Pressure squeezes the
air
from my lungs when a sound between a sigh and a groan escape
Alex, and he crush
es
me to him.

Then
my
good mood chokes and dies on the fog of car exhaust
.

A roaring engine
precedes
Josh’s slur about whores and payment. Alex breaks our kiss
,
cuts a glare in Josh’s direction
,
and whispers, “Best revenge is a better boyfriend.”

“
Then
I’m getting the best revenge of all.”

Standing close to Alex, I know electrical energy when I feel it
. W
hen the hair on my arms and neck stands, I know it’s seconds before
the storm hits
.
Then, lightning
rips down into the quad,
and a clap of thunder tears open the gray skies.

“
We need to go in
.
” I say.
“We’ll get soaked.”

And the rain starts. By the time we’ve made it to the shelter of the side door
,
the sky tears open and rain
sheets
down in earnest.
Alex opens the door and ushers me in. The halls teem, people pushing, jostling and shouting. Then life grinds to a halt, all eyes on us as we walk into the main hall, hand-in-hand. Alex eats it up, looping an arm over my shoulders and pulling me to his side. He nods at guys to
o
busy staring to nod back, and ignores the petulant lip-puffing pouts from the girls.

“By the way,” he says, “my dad called the school and in
sisted my schedule g
e
t changed.”

“What?” I hate the note of panic in my voice.
“Why?”

“He didn’t feel classes with Josh
,” his tone
is a perfect
mocke
ry
of his dad’s
, “
would be good for my academic career.”

“Oh,” is all I manage around
the
sinking
feeling in my gut
. Will we have lunch together? What about Dune Eco? I’ll be alone with Josh in that class. My jaw clenches, and my fingers flex—then the fresh hell in my hand reminds me not to make fists and not to punch people…for a while.

“Nice locker,”
Alex
says, a hint of teasing elevating his tenor.

“You should know
—you bought it.
Did you also set the combination for the date we met?”

The white scar near his eye flexes when he bats his eyelashes and makes an innocent face. “Who? Me?”

“Yes,
” I poke him with the index finger
not
trapped in
a
cast. “Y
ou.”

“Are you always so persistent?”

“Yep.”

“Well, Ms. Persistence.” He unclips th
e barrette holding my hair back, then runs his long fingers through the blond strands. “
I’ll see you at lunch.”

“Sounds great.”

Mrs. Johnson’s T
rig class is more of a pain than last week.
Shockingly, people want
to sign my hot pink cast, and Mrs. Johnson seems to have caved and purchased hearing aids. She narrows a glance at my cast,
tsk
s through her teeth
. Her shoulder bl
ades chop and cut under her thic
k sweater
,
while she
butchers the white board with ridiculously tough equations.