Breakable (26 page)

‘In my room.’

I shoved my feet into the boots and grabbed my hoodie on the way out the door. ‘Be there in ten minutes.’

Her answer, before disconnecting, was a near whisper. ‘Thank you.’

I got into her dorm as easily as I had last time, took the stairs two at a time and thumped softly on her door. A tremor passed through me. I had no idea what waited on the other side of this door, but whatever she needed me to be, I was ready to be it.

She opened the door, but didn’t push it aside. Her eyes filled with tears when she looked up at me.

‘Jacqueline – what –’

‘He did it again, Lucas – and it’s my fault.’

‘
WHAT?
’

‘Shhh.’ She shook her head, laid a hand on my arm and scanned the empty hallway. I heard voices from inside her room in the same moment she said softly, ‘Another girl. At a party, last night. She’s here. Erin and I don’t know what to do next.’ She swallowed. ‘She’s a freshman. She’s so upset, and scared, and we didn’t know who else to call. I’m sorry.’

I cupped her face in one hand. ‘Don’t ever apologize for calling me for help. I’ll do whatever you need. Will she talk to me?’

She nodded. ‘I think so. Erin’s told her that you teach the self-defence class and you’re campus police. Little white lies, but she’s just so scared …’

‘I understand.’ I took a calming breath and composed my features. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Mindi.’

Jacqueline’s roommate sat on her bed, one arm tightly surrounding a girl who reminded me of Carlie – pale blonde hair, heart-shaped face – every feature small and delicate except for her huge eyes. But I’d never seen Carlie like this.

‘Hi, Mindi. I’m Lucas.’ I approached her slowly.

‘Y-you don’t look like a p-police officer,’ she stuttered, breaths shaky, speech broken from crying.

Lip ring, longish hair, hoodie – I didn’t look like the most trustworthy guy, and I certainly didn’t look official. I squatted in front of her, but not too close. ‘I’m actually a student. But I have a work-study job with the police department.’

She seemed to accept this.

‘So the thing is, we need to get you to the hospital so you can see a counsellor and a doctor, and see about filing a report.’ Her eyes filled with tears, and I continued. ‘You’ll need to be really brave to do that stuff, but Erin and Jacqueline think you can do it, and so do I.’

‘Absolutely,’ Erin said, holding her hand. ‘And I won’t leave you for a minute.’

Mindi sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. ‘Okay.’ Her voice was high-pitched, like a child.

‘Do you have parents nearby?’ I asked, fighting to unclench my jaw. I could have ground glass between my teeth.

She shook her head. ‘They’re in Pennsylvania. But I can’t call them. I
can’t
.’ Her hysteria escalated with each word. ‘They’ll be so mad that I was drinking –’

‘You don’t have to call them yet,’ I said. ‘But there’s no way they’ll be angry with you.’ I hoped this was true. If this was Carlie, or Jacqueline … best not to go down that path just now. I took another calming breath. ‘You can talk to the counsellor about how to tell them, okay?’

She nodded, mimicking my deep breath with one of her own, shuddering and gripping Erin’s hand.

‘So we should go to the hospital, then, Lucas?’ Erin asked. ‘We can take my car.’

‘Will you be there?’ Mindi asked me then, her voice hoarse. She must have cried for most of the day. I recalled Jacqueline the night of the Halloween party. The tears in her eyes. Her shaking hands. If I knew where that asshole lived, he’d be dead by the end of the night.

I glanced at Erin and she nodded. ‘If you want,’ I answered. Mindi nodded. Fifteen minutes later, the four of us entered the ER, and I found out how difficult it is to
tell
.

I fixed my poker expression in place when the details of last night’s party began coming out, before we even left the room. It had been a big deal event – a formal, multi-frat party, with both Buck and Kennedy Moore in attendance – and
Jacqueline went
. She’s not Greek, so there was no requirement for her to go, no expectations of her presence there.

‘Erin needed me as a buffer with her ex,’ she offered in the backseat on the way, her voice a murmur. I hadn’t asked her why she went.

Once we were alone in the waiting room, I had to know if Buck had approached
her
. ‘So did he talk to you? Last
night?’ I didn’t look at her or tag the question with a name. I was certain she knew who I meant.

‘Yeah. He asked me to dance.’

I sat stock-still and couldn’t look at her. I wasn’t angry with her – I wasn’t. But the thought that she’d put herself that close to him without me there scared the unholy fuck out of me. Finally, I raised my eyes to hers.

‘I said no,’ she said, as if she was at fault for any of this. As if she was placating jealousy, when all I felt was
terror
and an unconditional, all-encompassing need to protect her.

‘Jacqueline,’ I spoke low, forcing my jaw to release. ‘It’s taking everything I’ve got right now to sit here and wait for law-abiding justice to take care of this, instead of hunting him down myself and beating the
fucking shit
out of him. I’m not blaming you – or her. Neither of you asked for what he did – there’s no such thing as asking for it. That’s a fucking lie argued by psychopaths and dumbasses. Okay?’

She nodded, saying nothing, and I asked if he accepted her
no
. My temper was in danger of snapping. I felt it, twisting and stretching, striving to free itself, promising retribution and vengeance I had no right to mete out. I was just this side of containing it.

She told me her ex was with her, and he’d noticed her discomfort. She told him what happened that night. ‘He was angrier than I’ve ever seen him. He took Buck outside and talked to him, told him to stay away from me … which probably made Buck feel weak, and that’s why …’ Her words trailed off.

Jacqueline thought Buck’s resentment over Moore’s dressing-down was why he’d raped Mindi. The sad truth was, that was possible – guys like him are weaklings who act out when they feel powerless – but what Jacqueline couldn’t understand was that his actions were still
no one’s fault but his
.

‘What did I just say?’ I told her. ‘This is not your fault.’

I wished I could make her believe me.

Unless Francis had learned to make a fist, there was someone at my door at 1:15 in the morning. I glanced through the peephole with a baseball bat in my hand. And then I dropped the bat back into the corner, unlocking and yanking the door open.

‘Jacqueline? Why –?’ I pulled her inside and relocked the door. ‘What’s wrong?’

She stared up at me, her eyes wide and frightened, and my heart nearly quit beating.

‘I wanted to tell you that I just – I miss you,’ she blurted, her voice frantic, almost winded. ‘And maybe that sounds ridiculous – like we barely know each other, but between the emails and texts and … everything else, I felt like we did. Like we do. And I miss – I don’t know how else to say it – I miss both of you.’

The distress on her face was … because she missed me?

She shouldn’t be here. Heller was right on the other side of the yard. I’d promised him to be
appropriate
with her for the remainder of the semester, but the desire coiling through me was anything but appropriate. It was fire and
possession, adoration and need, hunger and thirst and an impossible, unbearable hope. I couldn’t stand the thought of her leaving me for five minutes, let alone forever. I couldn’t have her, but I wanted her so, so badly.

Her bad-boy phase. Her rebound.

I felt it like a physical, internal malfunction – the split second my control snapped. When I no longer cared what I lost outside of this moment, because I couldn’t stand to lose what was right in front of me.

‘
Fuck it
,’ I said, shoving her to the door and caging her with my arms, prising her mouth open with mine and kissing her as if I could swallow her down and keep her from breaking me.

I pulled away long enough to strip her coat off and haul her to the sofa, to my lap, my hands behind her knees, spreading them into position on either side of my hips and tugging her to fit against me. My left hand pressing her closer, I cradled her beautiful face in my right and kissed her. I wanted to kiss her forever. Make love to her all night. Fuck her until she belonged to me and no one else, without care of consequences – and there were so many consequences to choose from.

I tossed the glasses I wore late at night, uncaring whether they hit the side table or flew across the room. I ripped off my T-shirt and then slowed to remove hers, my hands shaking with a gentleness I had to force. As I slid my hands to her sides, she huddled closer, slipped her arms round my neck and her hands into my hair. I kissed the side of her mouth, her sigh containing the softest little moan,
and ducked below her chin to kiss and suck the fragile skin of her lovely throat – the origin of the passionate sounds and garbled words she uttered as her head fell back.

I paid particular attention to the singular freckle that drove me insane – it was like a tiny clue, put there for me to find – the
start here
on a treasure map. I lapped my tongue across it, and she pitched against me, hands gripping my hair. Fantasies exploded in my mind, too good, too perfect. I wanted her, like this – all of her.

Everything slowed.

I removed her bra, cupping her breasts and teasing them with my fingers – light circular trails round each nipple, thumbs sweeping underneath. She leaned down to kiss me, drawing my tongue into her mouth and sweeping hers across and round it, sliding her hand from my chest to my stomach to the still-tied strings on the front of my pyjama bottoms – thin, soft flannel that couldn’t conceal what my body wanted from her.

But I’d made a promise.
I’d made a promise
.

My hands slid into her hair at the nape and I pressed my forehead to her shoulder, eyes closed. ‘Tell me to stop,’ I breathed.

‘I don’t want you to stop,’ she whispered, her breath in my ear, temptation incarnate.

For a suspended minute, I let her honeyed words absolve me of the promise I
wanted
to break, the ethics I was trashing, the heart I was letting her slice open – mine. I rolled us to our sides, unzipped her jeans and slid my fingers down and into her, curling them up and pressing as
she gasped my name and gripped my arm like she’d never let go.

I could make her love me. I could be that next man for her …

Ah, I knew better.

‘Jacqueline. Say stop.’ I was begging her, unable to make myself let her go.

‘Don’t stop,’ she repeated, kissing me, and I clawed for solid ground when I wanted nothing more than to sink into her. She opened her mouth, kissing me, hinting at what could be mine if I just let go.

I promised
.

Five seconds. I would pull her jeans away and take her right here on the sofa. ‘Say stop, please.’ Three seconds. I would carry her to my room, drop her on my bed, and begin with my mouth on her thigh. ‘
Please
.’ One second. I would betray the trust of the one person who’d never given up on me.

‘Stop,’ she said.

Thank you
, I said. Or wanted to say, before I fell asleep, holding her.

When the sun went down, the temperature cooled and the light disappeared, and spring-break festivities heated up.

The redhead straddling my lap took the last drag off the joint we’d shared, the embers singeing the tips of her index finger and thumb. ‘Ouch!’ Her voice was a mousy squeak. She dropped the last bit into the sand, where it extinguished and disappeared.

‘Hey!’ I frowned, squinting down from my perch on a piece of ragged driftwood and toeing the immediate area like an idiot. The last thing I wanted was to find a possibly still-lit joint with my fucking foot.

‘What? It was all used up anyway.’ Her petulant voice was grating, though I knew damned well there hadn’t been enough left to pull a full hit from it.

I started to retort, but when I glanced up, she was sucking on her injured thumb. The nearly consumed joint dropped out of my mind and my thoughts veered towards other cravings. Pulling her closer, I drew her index finger
into my mouth, sucking it gently while she sucked the thumb next to it, eyes lidded, just as high as I was. My jaw rested on the heel of her palm, and I sucked harder when she curled her sharp-nailed fingers into my cheek. I wanted to feel those nails scraping down my back, and I didn’t want to wait or move. A short, loud fight with my dad over another round of failed classes, the long, weirdly hot afternoon and the weed had left me sluggish and lazy, but horny. Opening my lips, I ran my tongue along the V between the finger in my mouth and the thumb in hers. She closed her eyes.

I tugged one thin cup of her bikini top down, liberating one tit. Her eyes flashed open, but she didn’t pull away. If she didn’t mind this, I’d see how willing she was to do me right there, twenty feet from the bonfire and the two dozen or so people drinking, smoking and/or paired off around it. With any luck, she was as lazy and horny as I was.

Releasing her finger with a faint
pop
, I ducked my head and tugged her nipple into my mouth. She arched into me, gasping, her burnt thumb forgotten. Reaching between us, I moved the crotch of her bikini bottoms aside. She gasped again, her arms sliding round my shoulders like bands, before saying the magic words. ‘
Oh, God – yes. Now. Now
.’

Hell, yeah
. I hadn’t even kissed her yet. Maybe I wouldn’t. A no-kiss fuck –
that would be a first,
I thought – and I was always looking for firsts. They were getting fewer and further between.

That’s when I heard Amber Thompson scream.

Certain it was her customary attention-seeking shriek,
I was determined to ignore her. There was a wobble of panic to it that I hadn’t heard before, but she was likely having a paranoid delusion brought on by her dumbass brother passing her a joint. Scrawny fourteen-year-olds shouldn’t smoke weed. They didn’t know how to ration. The same amount that made me ready to screw this girl on my lap, find something to eat, and then fall into a mercifully dreamless sleep could freak them the fuck out.

I’d just ripped open a condom – the only one I had on me – when I heard another scream.

Goddamn Amber’s useless brother. A tall can of beer in one hand and a joint in the other, he was visible in the firelight, stumbling side to side, laughing with two other guys.

The girl on my lap moaned and pressed herself against me. Clutching the condom in one fist and a thick ponytail of soft red hair in the other, I yelled, ‘Hey, Thompson!’

Rick glanced round once before going back to his conversation. ‘
Shit
, man,’ I said, and then tried again. ‘Thompson, you asswipe!’ This time he only lurched in the opposite direction, to the other side of the six-foot flames.

‘Why are you yelling?’ Redhead whined.

Then I heard Amber a third time – but this time, her voice sounded both scared shitless and further away. Not one goddamned person was paying any attention – except me.

Standing, I slid the warm, pliable girl off my lap and handed her the condom. I pressed her to sit down and her hands went straight for the drawstring of my shorts. In
that second, I knew she thought I wanted her to blow me before I screwed her, and she was totally prepared to do it.

Fuck
this night.

Gripping her shoulders firmly, I said, ‘Be right back.’ Her lip curled slightly and she blinked, confused. I couldn’t blame her. Even high, I was fully aware that I’d just said the stupidest fucking thing I’d ever uttered.

Amber screamed again, thankfully not sounding any further than she had seconds ago, and I turned and ran towards her voice – away from the bonfire, away from my sure thing for the night, cursing Rick Thompson and my conscience.

Out of the firelight, my compromised eyes adjusted slowly to discern two figures, kissing.
Great
, I thought.
Fucking great
. I’d abandoned the hottest girl I’d met in weeks to run down the beach and find out Thompson’s little sister was a screamer while making out. Then the smaller figure jerked away, the larger one lunged and pinned her, and they both went down in the sand. That wasn’t a
do me
scream – that was a
get off me
scream.

I took off towards them, cursing the weed buzz that made me zigzag across the goddamned sand. The last thing I was fully conscious of doing was ripping the guy up from the ground with my left hand and swinging my right fist straight into the side of his face. The initial impact of my fist to his cheekbone hurt and felt awesome. When he didn’t go down right away, I hit him again. And again. And again. Until the euphoria and rage came together and spiked, and I sort of blacked out.

I broke most of the blood vessels in the top of my hand and fractured a couple of knuckles. I didn’t even know you could do that. My right hand looked and felt like hell and was in a splint. Other than that, there wasn’t a bruise on me.

The other guy suffered a concussion that bordered on a coma for a few hours. I could have killed him. I could have killed him, and I couldn’t remember doing it.

What I did remember: handcuffs. The backseat of a police cruiser. Getting booked at the station. A jail cell that smelled of BO and piss, but thankfully housed only me. Because I wasn’t in juvie. Seventeen-year-olds are tried as adults, so they go to regular jail. As I crashed from the weed and the fight, I started shaking and couldn’t stop.

‘Maxfield!’ an officer barked sometime later, and my head shot up. ‘Bail. C’mon, move your ass outta there – unless you’re wantin’ to stay.’

I scrambled up from the bench.

I expected to see Dad. He was there, but Charles Heller was next to him. I’d forgotten they were visiting for spring break. I hadn’t seen much of them while they were here. Hadn’t made the time.

In the back seat on the way home, I didn’t make a sound. All three of us were dead quiet. Instead of dropping us off and going back to his hotel, Heller followed Dad inside.

‘I need a shower,’ I mumbled, and no one objected.

When I turned the water off, I heard their voices through the cardboard-thin door.

‘You’re losing him, Ray.’ There was a pause, and I held
my breath. ‘You’re my friend, and I love you – and because I love you, I’m going to tell you the truth. You’ve fucked this up from the beginning.

‘Cindy begged you to get him into therapy, and you chose not to. We begged you not to take him away from his friends – away from
us
– and move him halfway across the country, but you didn’t listen. He was in a private prep school and now he’s … he’s letting everything go. The fight tonight wasn’t his first, was it? And the drugs – there must be drinking involved, too. He’s using every method of escape he can. Because
you did
.’

Dad murmured something.

‘I know. But it’s not enough. He needs a goal. He needs to see worth in himself.’ Another pause. I swallowed, my eyes stinging. Heller’s voice lowered, and I couldn’t hear what he said. I left the bathroom, towel round my waist, and didn’t look at them – seated at the kitchen table – before closing myself into my pantry room.

I pulled on a pair of athletic shorts, which took three times as long with the use of one hand. It meant something to know Charles Heller cared about me. Didn’t change anything, but it meant something.

A goal. He said I needed a goal. Maybe it was time I gave up on school – my jaw clenched at the thought of giving Ingram that satisfaction – to work on the boat. If I didn’t end up in prison for the assault. I knew enough about bail to know I was only out until I got a trial date.

Funny, that out of all the fights I’d been in, the one I had good reason for would be the one that caught me. If Amber
refused to testify, I was screwed. The guy I’d nearly killed was a rich college kid. He’d flashed enough cash last night to make Thompson’s dick hard – buying stashes of whatever we had and handing it out to his friends like Halloween candy. Guys his age who dressed like he did and drove Range Rovers didn’t come by money like that alone.

You got your wish, Grandpa
, I thought. The boat would be my saviour. My future. My way out. It was better than prison. I closed my eyes.
Better than prison
.
Wow
,
that’s fucked up
.

The second my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep.

I couldn’t resist catching Jacqueline’s eyes for just a moment when she entered the classroom.

Her smile was tentative, unsure, and after last night, I couldn’t blame her. When I woke to find her leaving, I walked her to her truck and kissed her goodbye. Watching those tail-lights recede, I knew I could give her what she wanted, once I was free of the restrictions of being her tutor. I would be what she needed, and then I would let her go.

Because I was in love with her.

At the end of class, the blonde who’d been interested in Kennedy Moore earlier in the semester was asking me about my review session. I couldn’t remember her name. ‘It’s Thursday, regular time,’ I answered, watching
Jacqueline pack up. Talking to that Benjamin guy, who flicked a glance my way, she rolled her eyes and looked at me, too.

I got a definitive answer to how much he knew about what was going on between Jacqueline and me when he batted his lashes and said, ‘I’ll take
Hot Tutors
for two hundred, Alex,’ as he left their aisle. Jacqueline full-on blushed as he hummed the
Jeopardy!
theme song, climbing the steps towards the exit. He grinned at me before disappearing.

Neither of us spoke until we were outside.

‘Does he, um, does he know? About …?’ My teeth grazed over the ring as she told me that her classmate was how she found out.

‘He’d noticed us … looking at each other. And he asked me if I went to your tutoring sessions.’ She shrugged, as if she was beyond it.

I could imagine that conversation and how she must have felt, after Moore’s betrayal, to be lied to again. ‘God. I’m so sorry.’ But words couldn’t make up for those lies, and I knew it.

We walked towards her Spanish class, silent and hunched into our jackets. My old friends in Alexandria would laugh and say this sunny, late fall day was
shorts weather
.

‘I noticed you the first week,’ I said then. Like a flash flood after an unexpected summer storm, I confessed everything – watching her in class and cataloguing her mannerisms, from tucking her hair behind her left ear to her musical fingers. I told her about the rainy day – her
thank you
, her smile, and how those two things affected me. I told her about my jealousy of Moore, before she ever knew me.

‘And then, the Halloween party.’

She went very still. We’d never discussed what happened that night – my view of it.

I admitted that I’d watched her leave. That I’d watched Buck follow her. ‘I thought maybe … maybe you two had decided to leave early together, without everyone knowing. Meet outside or something.’ My heart thumped beneath my ribs, revealing this failure to her – the fact that I’d been standing inside, debating following her at all, while a predator wound through the parking lot behind her.

As I suspected, Buck was more than a guy she just knew by name. He was someone she’d seen as a friend. ‘He’s my roommate’s boyfriend’s best friend,’ she said, no condemnation for me or my too-slow reaction that night in her voice. From my childhood, I recalled the symbolic gesture of absolution from the priest, and I felt she’d just given it to me.

In the same moment, we realized we weren’t surrounded by masses of fellow students any more. It was past the hour – she was late to class. ‘I have an A. I don’t really need the review,’ she said. I had an hour before my next class. I stared at her cold-reddened lips, running headlong into inappropriate territory. I wanted to kiss her, right here in the middle of campus.

‘You never did sketch me again,’ she said. She licked her lips, a small brush from the tip of her tongue, and by some
miracle, I jerked my eyes away instead of pushing her into the bushes and taking possession of that mouth.

‘
Coffee
,’ I said.

I seldom stopped by the student union Starbucks as a customer. There was a line, but Gwen and Ron were a well-oiled machine.

‘Lucas,’ Gwen smiled tightly, refusing to look directly at Jacqueline. She was unhappy that her wise words had fallen on deaf ears, no doubt.

‘Hey, Gwen. A couple of Americanos. And I don’t think you’ve met Jacqueline.’

Like an owl, Gwen swivelled her head to eye Jacqueline. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said, her teeth clamped.

Jacqueline smiled back, as if my usually sweet coworker wasn’t bristling with frostiness. ‘Nice to meet you, Gwen. I love your manicure – so cute!’

Gwen’s nails were painted like wrapped, multicoloured Christmas gifts. They looked kind of hideous to me. But she turned her large, dark eyes to Jacqueline, enhancing the owl likeness. ‘Oh. Thanks. I did ’em myself.’

‘You
did
?’ Jacqueline held out a palm and Gwen put her left hand in Jacqueline’s for closer inspection while ringing up our order and swiping my card with her right. ‘I’m so jealous! I can’t paint even one colour on mine without making a mess. Plus, I play the bass, so I have to keep my nails too short to do anything fun with them.’