A touch on my arm, and when I look over, Chevy’s standing beside me. One hand on me. His other hand on Brandon’s back. His eyes a storm full of pain and sorrow, as well. We stare at each other and the same question burns out of his eyes as the one that’s circling my brain—will we ever be okay again?
CHEVY
VIOLET LIVES IN a brick two-story Cape Cod. Wouldn’t know the official name of it if Violet’s mom hadn’t made a big deal about it when they moved into the place when we were eight. Oz, Razor and I were in charge of lugging all of Violet’s boxes into her room upstairs. Violet was in charge of ordering us around.
The guys of the club helped unpack the truck and they unloaded and repieced together furniture. It was a fun day, a great day, and it was the first time we were able to walk the woods straight from Violet’s house to Cyrus’s and back. It was a big hike, epic at age eight, but it was my first huge adventure and I loved sharing it with my best friends.
Typically, I’d ride my Harley to school, but I’m giving a ride not only to Violet, but Stone, so I’m driving Eli’s truck. Plus Violet shouldn’t be riding until her knee is healed.
Violet’s mom drove them home this morning and Dust tailed them so Violet could get ready for school at home. Violet explained how her mother had forgotten some “personal” female items, and after an awkward moment where the men in the room wanted to kill themselves, Violet and Eli agreed that going home in the morning was okay.
No one, including me, wanted to ask what the personal items were.
I pull up to the house in Eli’s truck and Violet and Stone walk outside.
Captivated. That’s what Violet does to me whenever I see her. Her red hair is pulled into a bun that looks too good to be thrown together, but messy enough that wisps of her hair fall around her face. It’s perfect and makes me want to lie in bed with her all over again.
She wears jeans with rips above the knee and a blue shirt that has a hippie look to it. Like always, as if she never missed a beat, her bracelets dangle from her wrists.
Fiend had stolen her bracelets from her when they shoved her into the back of the car and Stone had picked up each and every one as he called Eli. By himself. In the dark. Only a few of us understand how much courage it took that boy.
Violet squishes her lips to the side as she ambles down the stairs of the porch. Stone reaches the truck first, opens the passenger-side door, and Violet pulls herself up. Irritation leaks through me. Stupid. I should have gotten out and helped her in. Too late now, but it won’t happen again.
“Hey, Chevy!” Stone smiles at me, and I smile back. He’s a good kid who kept his head in a scary situation.
“What’s doing, Stone?”
“Nothing much.”
I’m a football player and a McKinley, so I take up enough room in the cab of the truck. While Stone is thin, the kid has legs like an overgrown spider and he can’t seem to find a place to put himself, so he’s spread out, too. Violet’s got the raw end of being jammed between us, but she takes it in stride.
As if it’s natural, Violet lets her thigh rest against mine and her arm brushes along my skin. Electricity shoots through my veins, and as if she felt it, too, Violet snaps her head in my direction. Beautiful. She’s beautiful. Blazing red hair. Deep blue eyes. Color back in her cheeks.
Beautiful.
And I’m driven by need.
The impulse is to shove Stone out of the truck and tell him to go inside. Then I’ll pull Violet tight to me and kiss her until I forget who I am and she forgets who she is. Memories flash of her in this truck, of her in my arms, of the way her hot breath tickled my neck.
Yeah, I’ve thought of kissing Violet, but I haven’t felt these strong desires in a long time. It’s a heaviness in my belly. A fire in my blood. I shift, trying to readjust and relieve some of the pressure built up in areas below, but it doesn’t help. It’s going to be a damn long day.
“Violet thought she was driving us to school,” Brandon says.
“You did?” I glance at her out of the corner of my eye and she’s looking longingly at the parked Chevelle as if she’ll never see it again.
“I don’t need my left leg to drive.”
“No. Just to walk.”
She smirks like it’s painful to admit she thought I was funny.
“So.” She draws the word out as I pull out onto the road. Dust stays behind to be Violet’s mom’s tail for the day. “This is what that long look in the diner was about? I lost the tails, but I picked up you as my bodyguard?”
I scratch the back of my head. Violet’s watching me, but not with an I’m-going-to-kick-your-ass expression. That’s good, because even with one leg, she probably could. “I got you what you wanted.”
“Are you carrying?” she asks quietly.
“Do you really want the answer?”
“You hate carrying.”
Yeah, but I love her. Never stopped. Just tucked it away as deep as I could so I wouldn’t be in pain all the damn time.
Her head falls back to the seat. “Please be careful.”
“Always am.”
She rolls her eyes. I switch hands on the steering wheel and place my free hand on her knee. Violet rests her hand over mine. Together. This is how together feels and I missed it.
The ride to school ended too quickly, and I pull up next to Razor, who’s leaning against his parked bike. Stone opens his door, slides out and waits for Violet to move.
“Give us a few?” I ask him.
With a hop in his step, he closes the door and rounds the truck for Razor. The two share a handshake Razor created just for him.
I slide my finger back and forth over Violet’s thigh. Each caress makes me wish we didn’t have six-plus hours of torture in front of us. “I want to kiss you, Violet.”
Her breathing hitches, and when I turn my head to look at her, she’s regarding me from below hooded lids.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted to kiss you as badly as I do right now.”
She licks her lips, making them wet, making them a deeper shade of red. Her pulse increases under my touch and it’s matching the beating of my heart.
“I’m not going to do it now, but I want to later. You’ve got to figure out where you’re standing on this. If all you can handle is me taking your hand, holding you at night as we sleep, being next to each other so we find some peace, then that’s where I’ll leave it, but I want to kiss you, and if kissing you crosses lines that are going to cause you pain, I won’t even try.”
“Chevy—” she starts.
“Don’t answer now,” I cut her off. “If you tell me yes, we’ll never make it out of this truck.” If she tells me no, I’ll want to nurse my bleeding wounds in private.
Regardless of my words, I tuck her silky hair behind her ear, enjoying how the strands fall between my fingers, then caress the heat radiating off her cheeks. I love how her blue eyes are smoldering. Love how she’s angled herself toward me. Love how her hand has wandered to my leg. It’s all good signs, but this can’t be the time or the place.
With a flick of my wrist, I produce a daisy. Stole it from a vase of them Mom had on the table. Violet lights up like I’m handing her the world. Damn if I understand why girls like flowers, but Violet does and I like making Violet happy.
“I never get tired of your magic,” she says.
That’s a good thing.
Violet squeezes my thigh once and I groan as I reach behind me, crack open the door and welcome the cold air that blows into the truck. I fall out and the little devil giggles as I help her settle her good leg to the ground.
Violet
I CAN’T THINK about Chevy. I can’t think about how his hand was hot on my thigh. I can’t think about how his fingers against my face caused sweet tingles, I can’t
think about how there’s this pulse in my body that won’t go away after he suggested kissing.
Kissing Chevy. Once I do that, there will be no going back and that’s the equivalent of throwing myself over a cliff.
There is no thinking about Chevy.
None.
Instead, I focus on surviving high school. At least this day in high school. In high school you need armor and armor are other bodies of people you can surround yourself with and that’s what you call friends.
After dad died, I made new friends.
Considering we live in a town small enough that when someone sneezes you can hear the echoing bless you from the other side of the county, new is a relative term. They were people I had known most of my life, but I was too consumed with the Terror to notice.
Some are nice. Some are not so nice. Some need to die and be damned to an eternity of being roasted like a marshmallow. But that’s life, that’s people. I can’t control them, I can only control me and so far I’ve done a suck job at controlling me.
I’m doing what my physical therapist requested and I’m slowly, steadily, on my crutches yet using both legs to walk. As if a turtle had been let loose on the autobahn. My pack is on my back, so my hands are free to drop my crutches and catch myself if I should trip. Chevy walked with me to my first class, but I’m on my own for second, third, then going into lunch.
I barely beat the bell for Business Economics, and like the first two periods of the day, the class goes deathly silent. Yep, they heard about the Amber Alert, heard Chevy and I were kidnapped, and if I’m going to be honest, if it didn’t happen to me, I’d be staring, too.
Kidnapping only happens to strange people in big cities and we hear about it on investigative news programs. Even for the Terror, it’s a stretch and now I’m the girl who lived.
The moment my butt hits the seat, there’s shouting outside in the hallway. A scuffle. A banging of a locker and my blood pulses in my veins.
They’re here. The Riot are here.
Teachers run down the hallway, a blur of white shirts, and our own teacher sprints to the doorway and he mumbles a curse. “Get in groups, read twenty-four and finish the questions at the end of each summary.”
He leaves, the class breaks out into conversation and my body feels like I’ve been put into a meat shredder. It’s not the Riot. Not every sound is going to be the Riot.
The person behind me leans forward and says, “Jordan Johnson was fingered as the last guy in the picture scandal. Twenty bucks the fight in the hall is Leeann Matteson’s boyfriend beating the hell out of him for posting those pics of her changing in the girls’ restroom.”
I turn and blink at the sight of Addison. We’re friends, but not friends. Associated, but not associated. She’s blond hair, blue eyes and a cheerleader for our school. She’s talented and can flip like those people on TV during the Olympics.
Some of my new set of friends are friends with her, but Addison mostly hung out with her best friend, Breanna, and this is where the association comes in. Razor fell in love with Breanna this fall, Breanna fell for him and her parents recently sent her to a private school far, far away to keep the two of them apart.
“I thought you’d want to know,” Addison continues. “About Jordan.”
She’s right. Five guys tormented girls from our school with pictures they took of us in vulnerable moments and blackmailed us. If we didn’t do what they wanted, the pictures went up on a social media account they created.
I use us because it happened to me, but Razor helped catch the asshole who was blackmailing me. The guy wanted me to make people think I was dating him. Honestly, he wanted more, and when he suggested sex, I threatened to kill him and he believed I would happily sit in jail with his blood dripping from my fingernails.
I tried to flat out refuse the pretense of dating and he uploaded a picture of me. It was taken during a black time in my life. After I broke up with Chevy, after Mom and I had our millionth fight, after I didn’t understand why I wanted to keep breathing.
I drank too much and blacked out at a party. Turns out boys at parties have cameras and like to play dress up with the passed-out girl. To keep any more pics from going up, I fake dated him. Had to kiss him a few times. Even though it was just kisses, I still felt like a whore.
“Why wasn’t Jordan suspended like the others?” I ask.
“He was. Last week. But his daddy’s on the school board and is fighting the accusations and punishment. You know, the whole—” she performs air quotes and drops her voice to mimic a man “—my son would never do such a thing. He’s an angel. He was about to improve his failing grades and had told us over dinner he was going to become a rocket scientist.”
I laugh, Addison cracks a hesitant grin and I turn fully around. “I hope he gets the hell beat out of him.”
“Me, too,” she replies. “I hope they all do. What they did wasn’t okay.”
No, it wasn’t.
“Were you really kidnapped?” The question comes from a few rows over and all the chatter stops.
Don’t know why, but I search Addison for an ally. I can tell, though, she’s just as curious. Regardless of Breanna’s parents’ efforts, Addison’s best friend is entwined with the Terror. Razor loves Breanna. I don’t see signs of him letting her go as long as she wants him, so that means, in Addison’s eyes, her best friend is in danger.
I can’t argue with that logic.
“There was an Amber Alert and it said she’d been taken,” someone else says. “So of course she was kidnapped.”
“Was it people you knew who took you?” I know that voice. It’s a girl I’m perfectly fine with being one of the people who burns in hell. Her name is Jana and she was over-the-top nice when I first tried to break free from the Terror. It turns out she’s one of those who wants people to worship her as she kicks everyone else down.
Jana got mad at me when I told her to back off when she informed her, in theory, best friend she was fat. Never understood why girls wouldn’t stand up for themselves. But I did take a stand and I ended up tossed from her inner circle.
Boo flipping hoo.
“Mom says people in motorcycle clubs all know each other and treat each other badly,” continues Jana. “I bet you knew the people who kidnapped you and you’ll be mixing it up with them in a few weeks.”
Mixing it up. The way her cold eyes slide up and down my body suggests mixing it up means me on my knees performing certain acts. I don’t know why my face heats with shame, but it does. Like somehow this is all my fault and I deserved it. Yet I keep my head held high. “My life is none of your fucking business.”
Jana flinches. “I was trying to be nice. Excuse me for asking questions. And to think I was nice to you last year when you wanted to make new friends. I told everyone not to believe you. That you would always be biker trash.”
“You’re such a bitch,” Addison says like she’s bored, and I’m shocked by the unexpected backup.
A guy in the back mumbles, “Burn,” and a few other people nervously laugh.
Jana turns her little serpent head in Addison’s direction. “All I did was express concern for Violet and she yelled at me. I didn’t do anything wrong. She’s the bitch. Not me.”
The look of disgust on Addison’s face is humorous—at least for me. “Nothing works up there, does it? Like your mind—it’s a ghost town. Somebody else asked her about being kidnapped. You decided to get nosy, then get nasty. You’re still mad because Violet made you look like a fool last year at lunch. Let it go, Jana. With the way your mind ticks, you’re going to be made to feel like a fool a lot in life.”
“All right.” Our teacher walks back in. “I don’t see enough books open or groups formed or actual work being done.”
“You just dug your grave,” Jana whispers to Addison.
> Addison cracks a smile that’s so bitter it’s sweet. “What are you going to do? Talk badly about me? Go ahead. You spouting off words you don’t even understand is the least of my problems.”
The distant look in Addison’s eyes—I’ve seen that before in Dust’s eyes. An old soul. A soul that’s seen too much, done too much.
Addison opens her book, the sleeve of her cheer warm-up hitches up and the world freezes. There are bruises on her wrist. Those are the type of bruises I had on my arm from when Fiend manhandled me. My stomach roils, and I have to breathe in to keep from getting dizzy.
People form into groups, and when Addison begins to work by herself, it hits me. Breanna, the person Addison always partnered with, is gone.
Her world is tilted. My world is tilted...and it’s a terrible feeling. Like being caught in a landslide and no matter how you grasp at the mud around you nothing can keep you grounded.
I want to feel safe. Maybe Addison does, too. High school is a war zone. The people who surround you are your best form of defense. “Want to partner up?”
Addison raises her head, and as casually as I can, without being overly obvious, I pull back my long sleeve and expose my own fading bruises. Recognition darkens Addison’s face and she yanks down her own sleeve in such a slow way I’m not sure she’s aware she’s doing it.
She finally meets my gaze. “Sure.”
I go to try to turn my desk, but Addison moves hers instead. People with two fully functioning legs can do such things faster. She slides her book for me to share with her, then places her hand over the page to stop me from reading. “This doesn’t mean I like the Terror. I’m really pissed at them. If they weren’t around, maybe Breanna would still be here.”
Yeah—“I get it. I’m pretty mad at them, too. I have been for a while.”
A few beats of her digesting my answer and then she asks, “Where are you sitting at lunch today?”
I used to sit at a table that contained Jana. I sat as far from her as possible, but we still shared the large round plastic space. “Not sure.”