Come to Me Recklessly (24 page)

And it hurt watching her disappear inside, because I knew with every fiber of my being, nothing was ever going to be the same.

Frantic, I pushed Samantha up against the hard brick wall.

She hit it with a grunt. Frenzied hands slipped down my sides and under my shirt, almost as fevered as my hands that sought out every exposed inch of her skin.

I plastered the length of my body against hers, desperate to feel her. “God… I miss you.”

What I wouldn’t give to kiss her slowly. To savor that sweet mouth I craved like nothing else. To have the time to tell her she meant more to me than anything else in this world.

But we didn’t have time.

We had five fucking minutes.

And I wasn’t slowing down.

I assaulted her mouth. Every piece of me was coming unhinged, this consuming want tearing through my senses.

“Christopher,” she cried when I pulled back a fraction, and I descended on her with more intensity than before.

In the last two weeks, I’d barely seen her. Glimpses of each other were all we’d been given, shadows and seconds stolen in the hidden corners at school. Her parents had even made her transfer out of the one class we shared.

It was complete bullshit.

But Samantha’s sin was spending time with me, and they were seeing to it that she repented.

Two minutes earlier, when I saw her walking out the cafeteria doors, I’d hauled her behind the building, the area obscured by tall, thick shrubs.

“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered harshly at her mouth, unsure who I was promising.

I just knew it had to be.

I deepened the kiss, my tongue slipping between her lips. Warmth skimmed my insides when she returned the kiss, but in a tender, soft way, with a sadness that weakened my knees. I cupped her cheeks and eased away, this time promising her. “It’s going to be okay.”

Anguish brimmed in those blue eyes, and she swallowed like she didn’t want to speak. “No… it’s not.”

I kissed her harder. “Yes, it will.”

She began to shake her head. “No, it’s not.” Tears streaked down her face and into the palms of my hands. “We’re moving.”

I jerked back. “What?”

She chewed at her bottom lip, and for the first time the act didn’t send my thoughts straying toward sex. Instead I wanted to weep. “What?” I asked again, a rock sinking to the pit of my stomach.

“My parents put our house up for sale. Stewart is officially in remission. They said they want to make a fresh start.”

Anger and resentment ballooned in my chest. They accused Samantha of being dishonest? Of being a liar?
Right.
There was no doubt in my mind that this had nothin’ to do with Stewart. This was all about stealing this girl away from me.

“They’re taking me away from you, Christopher.” She knew it, too.

“Where?” The word dropped from my mouth like a stone.

“Somewhere across town. They haven’t decided exactly yet.”

Distorted relief pelted me. Across town. That I could handle, and I needed to hang on to something. I forced a hopeful smile, brushing my thumb across her bottom lip. “Hey, that’s not so bad. We can figure it out.”

“Why are they doing this to us?” Her voice was a pained whisper.

I dropped my forehead to hers. “They’re just trying to protect you from what they don’t understand, Samantha.”

From what I really didn’t understand.

“There’s not anything that will keep me away from you,” I said, the frenzy silenced, and instead I pulled her into my arms, hugged her, refusing to let her go. “Nothing.”

“Nothing,” she whispered back.

When you’re young, you think the world is yours to take. When in reality, the world is just lying in wait, holding out for the perfect opportunity to show you that it’s going to
take
everything from you.

It takes time to build something good. Effort. That effort I’d been so shocked I wanted to put in when I first started things up with Samantha.

But it takes only one second to destroy it all.

Over the last four months, I’d watched while everything important to me was stripped away.

While I sat helpless.

Fucking powerless to do anything to stop it.

When it rains, it pours, and all that shit.

But it hadn’t just poured.

It was a torrential flood.

One week after Samantha told me she was moving, I got a call from my dad to come straight home.

I was busy being a punk, figuring out how the hell to get alcohol for the party we’d been planning all week. If I didn’t get to spend time with my girl, then at least I’d had this to look forward to. It was supposed to be something special for my best friend, who was turning sixteen.

For months, I’d given him crap that he was just a kid, fifteen, teasing him that I had to drive his sorry ass around.

Of course, he’d turned around and tossed it right back at me, rubbing it in that my girl was younger than him by four weeks. If he was nothing but a kid, then that made me some kind of creepy perv for touching her.

We both knew those three months really didn’t matter.

But what we didn’t realize was how much one moment did.

All it took was one moment to change everything.

Ruin it all.

Jared was driving back from getting his license and cut in front of an oncoming truck.

His mom, Helene, was killed. Jared was critically injured.

For an entire week, I’d sat beside his hospital bed, silently begging him to live and wishing Samantha could somehow be at my side. I’d needed her there, to let me know everything was going to be okay the way I’d promised her it would be. Needed her to let me know I wasn’t alone. That no matter what shit we had to make it through, we’d
make
it.

But Samantha never came, and even when Jared recovered, he never really woke up. Yeah, he breathed and his heart still beat, but guilt had robbed him of everything else.

Inside, Jared was dead, and somehow that managed to kill some part of me.

Helene had been like family, my mom’s best friend, our families best friends. When we lost her, everyone and everything fell apart. My parents became distant, not because they didn’t care, but because the wind had been knocked from them. Depressed, my mom had struggled to find her own feet, to figure out how to breathe again, and my dad was desperate to help her find her way.

All that time I had to sit and watch the guy I considered my brother,
my best friend
, lose himself. He tried to hurt himself in every way, his self-loathing evident for all to see. Before long, he was using. The only time he wanted anything to do with me was if I was up for going and getting high with him, but he’d gotten himself in much deeper than just smoking a bowl now and then. He’d done nothin’ but stare straight through me when I’d gotten up in his face, first threatening him, then pleading with him to stop.

Every day he faded farther away.

Did it make me a bastard that after all of this, after everything my family was going through, the hardest part was watching Samantha slip through my fingers?

Her parents saw to it that she had zero contact with me.

Being without her got harder and harder. I was trying to hold on, to find some kind of confidence in what we had, but every day I became more uncertain.

Loneliness had become my constant partner, this hollowness I couldn’t shake. It made it hard to breathe, difficult to get out of bed. My grades sucked, and I was one missed day away from flunking out.

Sad part? Not one fucking soul was there to notice.

So here I sat at another lame party I didn’t want to be at, drowning in my very own personal pity party.

From the corner of the room, my glazed-over gaze wandered the riot overtaking Marcus’ living room. Everyone was laughing, talking too loud, people making out, living like nothing mattered. This was the same house I’d brought Samantha to that fateful night, the night when upstairs I took the plunge, told her I loved her – and then everything fell apart.

That hollowness throbbed.

I lifted the bottle to my mouth.

Why did it feel like she’d deserted me?

I knew it wasn’t her fault, but it sure as hell didn’t feel like she was fighting for us. All she was doing was letting her parents win.

Her sixteenth birthday had come and gone. That day, I’d never even seen her. Didn’t get to kiss her. Didn’t get to tell her how much I loved her and missed her and wanted her.

I definitely didn’t get to make love to her, and that shit sucked.

But I’d wait. I’d wait forever because that’s how much I loved her.

Going to Samantha’s window at night was no longer an option. Her parents kept her under lock and key, and Samantha said trying to sneak by them wasn’t worth the risk. The only time I ever saw her was in those quick interludes at school, like when we’d sneak behind the cafeteria.

But that was never enough, and I knew that, too, would soon be coming to an end when she moved across town and switched schools.

Now the
FOR
SALE
sign in their front yard boasted a
SOLD
sign beneath it. Only three weeks and we’d lose the little contact we had.

It left all these broken, aching places vibrating inside of me.

Hating life.

Hating everyone.

Especially Samantha’s parents.

How could they do this to us?

“There you are,” Jasmine purred. The stupid slut tried to crawl onto my lap.

I pushed her off, didn’t give a fuck that she stumbled back and knocked into the wall. “Stay away from me,” I warned, knowing my voice was slurred and filled with all the loneliness that seemed magnified in my heart tonight.

She laughed. “You sure that’s what you want? Looks like you could use some
company
.”

I sure as hell could, but not from her. “Fuck you.”

She laughed again. “Whatever. You let me know when you give up on that little tease of yours and decide you want someone who can take care of you.”

I sneered. One side of her filthy mouth curled in satisfaction, before she sauntered away to join her pack of bitches at the other side of the room.

I lifted the cheap bottle of tequila, chugged the quarter that remained, and let the darkness close in.

Because all that perfect light dimmed, narrowing as it thinned, flickered as it threatened to completely blink out.

God, how desperately did I miss it?

The tortured sounds of my mother weeping echoed from behind her closed bedroom door. I stood on the other side of it at the end of the hall, reeling, my head spinning with the magnitude of what’d happened tonight.

Three months ago when Jared had caused that accident, I’d thought it impossible for my life to get worse.

I’d been wrong.

How could he?

I pressed my hand against the wall to hold myself up.

How could he?
 

Jared had been granted a second chance at life.

And he’d tried to take it.

From the depths of my soul, I
knew
it.

The two deputies from the sheriff’s department who’d sat on our couch asking us questions had left fifteen minutes before, insinuating that my best friend was nothin’ more than a drug addict, a junkie after his next fix, breaking into the neighbors’ house, tying up the owner, and stealing his car. They were charging him with all these bullshit crimes instead of realizing he’d just been crying out for help.

They’d found the car in flames in the lot where we used to play, the place that was so special to us growing up, where I’d taken Samantha just because I wanted to share a part of it with her.

Somehow Jared was no longer in the car, and they’d found him on the ground beside it.

Overdosing.

I gripped my hair, swallowing down a wave of pain.

They’d found a shit ton of heroin on him with all the paraphernalia to go along with it. Of course, I already knew about that, but like an idiot, I’d never said a word because I’d been trying to protect my friend. Even when he’d gotten busted at school a few days before, I’d tried to pretend like I didn’t know how bad it’d gotten.

Now I’d give anything to go back and take the title of snitch to save him.

Because when they mentioned the gun he’d stolen from the Ramirezes’ house, I knew.

I fucking knew.

Asshole was trying to take one more thing from me.

How could he?

How could this even happen?

The overwhelming urge to punch something rose within me. To destroy something. My forehead dropped to the wall, and I panted against it as I listened to my mother’s torment on the other side, my dad trying to convince her of all this bullshit, telling her Jared had earned whatever he got. My hand fisted against the wall, and I wished I could break through it, push all my anger out, rid my body of all this insanity.

But that anger only flared, this prowling hatred bounding through my spirit, filling me up and forcing everything else out.

What happened to the God that Samantha believed in? The one I’d started to trust?

Was he missing in all of this?

Or did he just not exist?

Because not one thing about this was fair or just.

I sensed my little sister, Aly, slowly approaching from behind. Shaking, I turned around to look at her. I’d always thought of her as so young. Innocent. But there was a profound horror in her eyes, this deep sorrow of someone who understood. I wanted to go to her, hug her, tell her everything was going to be okay.

But I knew it wasn’t going to be.

Everything was ruined.

Jared was getting sent away.

Samantha was going away.

And I was finally going to lose it all.

I clutched Aly’s shoulder when I passed, hoping to give her some kind of comfort when I had none to give.

“Christopher,” she pled, reaching for me.

I said nothing, just shook off the hand that landed on my arm, fumbled to my room and grabbed my keys, and ran out the door.

All I wanted was Samantha. For her to make it all go away.

But I couldn’t have her, so instead, I headed out to one of those parties where I didn’t belong but that were the only places where I really felt welcome.