I was still trying to get my feet under me, when he suddenly grabbed my hair and yanked upward. I gave out a cry. Somehow I was standing, and not even feeling my hip or wrist because of this new pain at the side of my head. I felt a few hairs snap and pull out. I was shaking so hard I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stay standing up if he let go. This was more than leaving a few finger marks on my knee. This was scary.
He pulled my face to his again. “You won’t screw around on me, Alex,” he growled in a voice I’d never heard out of him before. “You’re not smart enough to pull it off anyway. I will catch you. Every. Single. Time.”
“Okay,” I whimpered, my hands hovering around his hand, standing on my tiptoes to keep him from pulling any more hairs out. I wanted to tell him that I hadn’t been screwing around with Zack but had actually been trying to convince my friends that he was a nice guy. But I was afraid if I protested he would pull harder or do something else, so I just nodded, as much as his grip would let me, and agreed with him. “Okay.”
He held me there for a few more seconds, then released me with a half-shove and moved back to his side of the table. He picked up his backpack and slung it over one shoulder, just as calmly as he’d do on any ordinary day. Meanwhile, I was rubbing the side of my head where he’d pulled my hair, just concentrating on staying upright, my knees were shaking so bad. Trying to make sense of everything that had just happened. It had all happened so quickly, it was almost as if I’d imagined it.
Backpack in place, he finally spoke. His voice was normal again, not that wired snarl he’d adopted just a few minutes before. Instead, he sounded spent, tired, calm.
“We’ll talk more later,” he said. He walked toward me, grabbed my chin gently between his thumb and forefinger, lifted up my face, and kissed me. “I love you,” he said as he walked toward the door. “And I won’t let you fuck me over.”
He slipped out the door and let it shut behind him with a soft shush, and suddenly I was alone.
And that’s when everything began to hurt.
My wrist.
My hip.
My head.
My neck.
And none of it hurt nearly as much as my heart.
How was it possible that this was the same guy who’d rested his hand so lightly over mine, strumming chords and putting my poetry to music? How was this the same person I’d trusted to keep me safe at the top of the spillway? Who’d kissed my eyelids in his bedroom?
I didn’t know what to do, so I got busy. I spent a few minutes straightening the table and chairs, my whole body shaking. I couldn’t really use my left hand—the one he’d grabbed—so I kind of half-pushed, half-pulled things back into place.
A part of me couldn’t believe what had just happened. Most of me, really. Like maybe it was all just a dream and I would wake up from it, shaky and upset but so glad it was over. But a part of me knew that it was true, what I’d just experienced. Part of me had known it at the lake party. Part of me had sensed something dangerous about Cole even back then. But nothing like this. Never, not in a million years, would I have sensed this.
Slowly, shakily, I slid down into a chair. I turned my hand over and stared at my wrist, which was red with welts and would surely be bruising at that very minute. I leaned over and tugged down a small space of waistband on my jeans. My hip already sported a puffy bruise, so purple it almost looked red.
And then the tears started.
How could he? my mind raged. How could he do this to me?
My thoughts spun. What would I do?
I felt that I should tell someone about what had just happened to me. Run screaming it down the hall. Call the police. Tell Mr. Nagins, the school counselor. Do something. Call Bethany. Run next door and get Zack out of lab. Get someone’s attention, and…
And what? Show them my bruises? Tell them about the lake party? About the merry-go-round when he scared me on purpose? Tell them that I’d had sex with him anyway, even after he’d already bruised me once? Tell them that I’d made excuses for him that night?
I was so embarrassed. I couldn’t even imagine telling anyone those things. Those things made me look stupid and gullible and needy, and I knew I wasn’t those things. I knew it was more complicated than that. But nobody else would understand.
Not to mention, I’d probably get enrolled in some schmucky battered women’s workshop or something by Mr. Nagins. They’d call Dad. It would be a huge deal because it happened at school. And everyone would find out.
I knew how this school worked—if one person found out, everyone would know immediately. And I was so not ready to be the school’s domestic violence example. Did you hear what happened to Alex Bradford? God, I would never be so stupid. I’d kick his ass.
They would probably pull me up to the front of the room in health class, make me tell my story so others could learn from it. All the while everyone in the classes would be thinking how I was such an idiot for not fighting back. They’d wonder how I could love a guy like that. They’d call me pathetic.
And, God, what about Bethany? He doesn’t seem that nice, she’d said. Be careful. If I told her what he’d just done, she would think she was right about him. I would have proven her right.
And God only knows what Zack would do if he found out.
And the worst—and I couldn’t even believe it myself, that I was thinking this—if I told everyone the truth, Cole would hate me. He would never forgive me.
And I hated myself for even thinking about Cole’s feelings right now, but I just couldn’t help it.
I crossed my arms on my desk and laid my head down on them and cried, thinking all these things and more. Thinking that this was not like Cole. He was stressed. He must have been, because normally he didn’t do this. It was his family problems.
And thinking that maybe I pushed him into doing this. I pushed him by letting Zack tickle me in the parking lot and by not telling him that I was going to Zack’s house that night, by not explaining to him that Bethany was there and we were eating cookie dough and talking RVs.
Maybe I should have even invited him to come along. Talked Bethany and Zack into letting him join us.
I should have made him see that it was completely innocent. That I was completely innocent.
What would I have thought if I were him? Of course I would’ve thought something was going on. I would have been angry, too, if I’d seen Cole leaving a girl’s house at night. I would have been hurt. I would have been livid.
At some point my tears turned from tears of pain to tears of sadness and regret. We would break up now. It would all be over.
And somehow that turned out to be the worst thought of all. Even though I was hurt and embarrassed and ashamed and pissed that he’d done this to me, I still loved him. I still felt as though we were meant to be together. I still wanted him. And I ruined it.
The bell rang and I sat up, wiped my face on the backs of my hands, and finished putting papers into my backpack, wincing every now and then when I’d forget and use my left hand to move or lift something. I wondered if Amanda, in the next room, had heard what just happened. Probably not, or Zack would’ve stormed in. At least I thought he would. Nobody had heard anything. Nobody had seen anything. I was the only one who knew.
I stood and took some deep breaths as I slipped the backpack on my arms, and then walked out as if nothing had ever happened. As far as I was concerned, nothing had.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Celia noticed my wrist right away.
“Holy cow, what happened?” she breathed, scooting onto the edge of my bed, waking me up. I opened one eye to find her gaping at my wrist, which was lying on the pillow next to my head.
“Nothing,” I mumbled, pulling it under the blankets. “What do you want?”
“No way,” she said. “That’s not nothing. That’s disgusting.” She threw back the blanket and tried to grab my hand.
I yanked it away and smacked it against my hip, and had to hold my breath to keep f
rom crying out. Both hurt like hell. I sat up, annoyed, hiding my wrist in my lap. “I slammed it in a door at work, okay? It doesn’t matter. What do you want, Celia?”
She made a face. “Good morning to you, too, Mary Sunshine. I was just going to tell you that Shannin called, and the grandmas are totally all over the food for Dad’s party. You ordered the cake, right?”
I rolled my eyes. Not with the party again. I swear, Celia was going to make some poor man completely miserable someday with her nagging. We still had months to put this together, yet Celia asked me pretty much every day if I’d ordered the cake, which I had not. I just had too many other things on my mind.
“I’ll get to it,” I said, sliding out of the other side of the bed and checking the clock. I had to work in an hour. Which meant I had to take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, and figure out how to hide these bruises, with not that much time. And I still hadn’t heard from Cole since yesterday. Thinking about what happened made sadness and fear wash over me all anew. “Did Cole call this morning?”
“You still haven’t ordered it? Alex, this is important.”
“So is my job. And school. And… you know, it’s not like you have to order a cake months in advance, Celia. I said I’d do it. I’ll do it,” I snapped, pulling my uniform out of my closet. “Did Cole call this morning or not?”
Celia glared at me, still sitting on the edge of my bed. “No. He did not. Not making phone calls must be one more fabulous thing you two have in common. I’m supposed to talk to Shannin today. She’s going to be super-pissed if you don’t order that cake, you know. You said you’d be in charge of it, so she’s expecting you to do it.”
“I will!” I practically shrieked, pulling underwear out of my drawer and heading for the bathroom. “Just… God, Celia. You’re such a…”
I let the sentence trail off as I shut the bathroom door. But I heard her on the other side calling out, “The whole world doesn’t revolve around Cole, you know!” Her footsteps thudded down the hall toward her bedroom, and I turned on the shower as hot as it would go.
While I waited for the shower to heat up, I turned my hand over and stared at my wrist. It was mottled and dark purple. Almost yellow. Nasty. I pulled off my pajamas and looked at my hip, which didn’t look any better than my wrist. I touched it gingerly, wincing at the little jolts of pain but feeling better. The bruises weren’t as bad as I’d originally thought they were. This, I could cover. And, thankfully, it was the weekend. I had a couple days before I had to worry about keeping covered up at school. Maybe they would heal before Monday. I touched the side of my head where Cole had grabbed my hair. Nothing. At least I didn’t have to worry about that.
After my shower, I dried my wrist carefully and thoroughly, then gently spread concealer all around it. I covered the concealer with a dollop of liquid foundation out of an old bottle I found pushed all the way back in the bathroom drawer. Probably one of Shannin’s. I finished it with powder and held it out for inspection.
Not too bad. Much better than it was. Probably nobody would even notice it. You’d have to be really looking.
I guess I was half-expecting to see Cole’s car waiting for me in the employee parking lot at The Bread Bowl, but it wasn’t. I was running too late to ruminate over it, though, so I just threw the car in park and went in. But just to be sure, I walked around to the front door to check out the parking lot up there.
Nope. No Cole.
I was so distracted coming through the front doors of The Bread Bowl, I almost ran smack into Dave’s chest.
“Whoa,” he said, a sincerely annoyed look crossing his face. He was holding a bowl of soup and raised it head-high to keep from spilling it. “Watch it, Anna.”
“Alex,” I corrected, then wished I hadn’t when he glared at me over his shoulder.
He delivered the soup to a table, and I took that as my chance to scurry back to Georgia’s office to clock in. She was sitting in there, craning her neck to look out into the dining room.
“Did you run into him?” she whispered.
I shook my head. “Close.”
“Oh, girl. He’s gonna be after you now. He’s in a hell of a mood today. Here he comes. Get your visor on, quick.”
I typed my ID number into the computer to clock in, plunged the visor down over my hair quickly, and then grabbed an apron off a peg next to the office door and tied it around me.
Georgia tapped a few numbers into the old adding machine that sat on her tiny desk, then wrote down a number on a form. “All this paperwork…” she muttered, then said in a louder voice, “There’s a new batch of bagels ready to go up front. And see what else is ready to put up. Just keep busy and you’ll be fine.”
I nodded and started toward the kitchen.
“Everything okay with you, Alex?” Georgia asked.
I stopped, leaned back into the office, and nodded. “Yeah. I’m good,” I lied. And for some reason I couldn’t totally explain, tears welled up in my eyes. I turned my face down and acted like I was brushing something off my apron to keep Georgia from seeing. When I looked back up at her, she was squinting at me, head cocked to one side.
“You don’t seem the same these days, girl. I hope you’re taking care of yourself. Not doing anything stupid.”
I thought about yesterday. About picking myself up off the floor of the tutor lab. Would Georgia think that was stupid? If I told her that I’d almost made Granite-Ass spill soup down the front of him because I was still hopefully looking for Cole’s car after what had happened yesterday, would she think I was stupid then?
Instead of telling her anything, I just shook my head. “I’m not. I’m just… stressed, I guess. I don’t want to get either one of us in trouble with you-know-who.”
She squinted at me and then shook her head and went back to filling out the forms on her desk. “If you say so,” she said. “I’ve got too much to do to argue with you. Just don’t be doing anything stupid, or I’ll come after you myself.”
I rolled my eyes exaggeratedly. “Yes, Mom,” I said. She wagged her pen in the air over her shoulder.
The day crept by, and trying to look constantly busy eventually made it so there was no work to do.
Zack came in with his parents for lunch. They brought Celia with them, who stared at me with an ultra-smug look on her face the entire time, no doubt telling them what an awful daughter I was for not ordering Dad’s cake yet. Or maybe she just looked smug because she was Celia.
After a while, Zack got up to refill his soda, and stopped by the counter, where I was refilling the chocolate chip cookie case.
“Psst! Waitress! Can I get some service over here?” he hissed.
I glanced at him. “What do you need?” I asked, straining to hear if Dave was still in the kitchen with Jerry, fiddling with the new bread recipe corporate was making all the stores launch in two weeks.
He wiggled his eyebrows up and down at me suggestively. “Well, Doc, I have this pain in my…”
“Ha-ha-ha,” I deadpanned. “I can’t play around. The owner’s here today.”
“So?” he said, fishing in his pocket and coming out with his plastic tube of toothpicks. He opened the top of the tube, and I could smell cinnamon oil waft out. That was Zack’s new favorite flavor—cinnamon so hot it made his lips swell. “I just wanted to say hi. And I’m a customer. You can’t ignore the customers, you know. You have to fulfill our every need.”
“I seriously doubt Dave would call jackassing with you filling the needs of my customers. Where’s Bethany?”
He took a sip of his drink. “Home. Babysitting, I think. Trying to earn some cash for our trip. She keeps saying something about wanting to buy some real Native American leather or something. If I get bored enough, I’ll go over and bug her. Let the kids tie me up or something. Unless you want to volunteer for the job…” Again with the suggestive eye thing.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Celia pull herself out of the booth and sidle across the restaurant, pre
tending she needed a refill of her drink, too, but keeping her eyes glued to us the entire time. “Looks like you’re too busy with Miss Personality to go hang with anyone else.”
Celia slid up next to Zack. He reached back and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“What? My girl?” Zack drawled. “She can go with me.”
“Go where?” Celia asked. “To order a birthday cake?”
I made a face at her. “Listen, kids, I’d really love to chat, but need I remind you that I’m supposed to be working here? And if I lose my job, there is no Colorado.”
Celia rolled her eyes. “You guys still talking about that stupid trip? God, when I graduate, I’m so going somewhere amazing. Like Beverly Hills or New York City. Totally not Colorado.”
Instinctively, my hand drifted to my collarbone again and touched the necklace. How could Celia have no interest? Were we that far apart?
“Mmm, Beverly Hills,” Zack said around his toothpick. “Home of hot blonds in short shorts.”
Celia made a face and slapped at his chest, wriggling out from under his arm. “You’re disgusting. Don’t touch me.”
He reached over and poked her in the side. “Touch,” he said. Then he reached across the counter and did the same to me. “Touch.”
Celia squealed when he touched her, and the faces of several customers turned toward the counter. She poked him back. “Touch!” she said. Loudly. And next thing I knew they were batting at each other’s hands, Zack hopping around in a fencing pose, talking in a French accent.
“You zink you can tek me in a battle? En garde!”
“Guys!” I hissed. “Stop it! You’re gonna get me in tr—”
I felt someone come up behind me. But they kept going at it, Celia crying out, “What, are you gonna touch me with your nasty wrist? Did you see it, Zack? It’s gross. Touch! Ha-ha!”
My stomach dropped. I was afraid to look behind me, to see who had overheard Celia’s remark. My guess was that everyone in the restaurant had heard it.