Breakable (3 page)

Mark
snorted into his palms. “I knew he’d get mad. But I thought he was under
control. I thought I’d shown him he
couldn’t
hit us anymore.” Mark’s
entire fabulous, six-foot-two frame, shuddered under my arm. Tears tightened
the back of my throat. I swallowed them because he needed me right now and I
couldn’t get weepy.

I
hugged his back, curled my free arm around his bicep. “Tell me.”

He
needed to get it out. He knew he needed to get it out. He’d learned the hard
way that this stuff ate him up when he didn’t.

He
ran a hand through his hair and sat up, pulling out of my embrace. But he took
my hand, held it on his thigh, and spoke to it.

“He
got angry,” he said in that dark voice.

My
turn to snort. “Understatement.”

Mark
nodded, still looking at our hands, fingers twined and squeezing so hard our
knuckles were both white.

I
hated that he got hurt this way. But there was no better feeling than the times
I could touch him like this.

“Mom
tried to get him to calm down. But he went crazy. Shoved her into a wall trying
to get to me. I had to…” he swallowed convulsively. “I punched him. Put him on
the floor.” He opened and closed his free hand. I stared at his red, swollen
knuckles, feeling sick. Two of them were scraped raw.

“Oh,
man.” I tried to sound like I wasn’t about to gag.

“When
he got up… Stace, even
I’ve
never seen him like that before. He just
kind of roared, and came at me. Mom screamed at him to stop. I caught one of
his arms, but I missed the other.”

He
stopped. His face had gone pale.

“Mark?
What happened?” I really was whispering now, afraid of what he was going to
tell me. Afraid of the silence in this awful house.

But
suddenly he just let go of my hand and stood up, started across the room. “I
need to change if we’re going to make it to the dance.”

The
change of tone was so abrupt, it took me a second to realize what he’d said.
Then I gaped. “You can’t be serious. Mark, we can’t go to dance after this.”

Mark
scowled. “I’m not staying here.” Then he grabbed his shirt at the back and
pulled it over his head and I was left juggling the fierce desire to protect
him from himself, with the dry-mouthed awareness of the ladder of muscle that
climbed his stomach. He turned, pulled out a drawer, and I got to watch his
back ripple and his shoulder blades almost punch out of his skin as he selected
a shirt and closed the drawer again.

Everything
he did had this restraint behind it. His movements were sharp and measured. I
knew he was seething. Still upset. It was just a little harder forming an
argument while he got half-naked in front of me.

“Mark–”

“We’re
going.”

I
glared. Marcus Thomas Gray was my best friend, and the nicest guy I knew.

And
he was a stubborn ass when he wanted to be.

I
got to my feet, ignoring the twist of nerves in my stomach. If he didn’t want
to talk about it, it had to be
really
bad. “Mark, you can’t just stop
halfway through that kind of story.”

“Leave
it alone, Stacy. I’m fine.”

“You
are clearly not
fine
.”

“Let’s
just go to the dance. We can talk about it later.”

“I
don’t want to talk about it later – and you won’t want to either. You’re just
trying to make me stop asking.”

“Would
you back off, Stace?”

“No!
You told me I wasn’t supposed to let you stop talking until it was all out. I
won’t back off until you tell me–”

“Fine!”
Mark yelled, whirling to face me.

He’d
just put on a blue-checked, button-down shirt. It gaped open to reveal a fierce
line in his skin. It was an inch thick and angrily red – turning purple in
places. It took me a second to realize it was a bruise, forming even as the
skin around it swelled.

Right
at the base of his neck.

The
line of his jaw flexed as he met my shocked gaze. I knew my mouth had fallen
open, but I couldn’t seem to keep it closed. “He-he tried to–” I reached for
him, but he stepped back.

“I
don’t want to talk about it.” Mark yanked the shirt closed and started
buttoning it. The line mostly disappeared behind his collar.

“But
that’s…
Mark.
”

He
shook his head. His lips pressed into a thin line. “I put him on his ass. He
isn’t going to do it again.”

“That’s
what you said last time!” My voice had gone high and thin.

“Well,
this time I’m right.” He grabbed his wallet and shoved it into the back pocket
of his jeans. Checked his phone, then put that in the other pocket.

When
he started combing his hair I realized he was serious. He was going to show up
at this stupid thing they do once a semester in the gym where they get in a DJ
and some lasers and pretend the school is a night club for a night. He was
going to dance and flirt and pretend his life was completely normal.

He’d
pull it off, too. He always did.

But
he shouldn’t have to.

I
didn’t find the words until Mark had readied himself, checked his reflection in
the mirror, and taken a step towards the door.

I
didn’t move. “He could have killed you.”

Mark
jerked to a stop. He stood profile to me, just a foot away. But the tension
radiated from him. I was afraid to touch him in case I snapped something.

“No,”
he said quietly. But the word lacked conviction. “It was never that bad. He
never… I could always breathe.”

“I
didn’t say he tried to kill you. I said he could have.”

He
stared at the floor. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I get it, okay? But I’ve handled
this. I handled
him.
And I told you the truth. I let you see that I was
mad.” He turned and locked eyes with me. “Now I want to go be normal.”

Inhale…
Exhale…

“Let
him go.” The words were a bare whisper, rising out of the mirror behind Mark.
How long had Older Me been there? I didn’t know whether to feel grateful, or
violated. After all, she must have been through this already. She was the one
who told me how important it was for him to talk everything out when it
happened. So he could process. So he could hold himself together.

So
he wouldn’t turn into his dad.

Mark’s
eyes were hard.

Older
Me sighed. “He’ll do fine, Stacy. Let him go.”

I
swallowed. Nodded, and threw a hand up toward the door. “Fine.”

Mark’s
granite jaw softened and he gave me a half-smile. The one that warmed me to my
toes. With a frustrated groan, I turned toward the door. Mark threw his arm
across my shoulder as we crossed the room.

“You’re
my best friend. You know that right?” he said, dropping a kiss on my hair.

“Yeah.”
Though the word made me cold.

I
wanted to be so much more.

Chapter Three

Mark
played with my music the whole way to school. I knew that meant he didn’t want to
talk anymore, so I left him to it. But in my head I kept seeing how it must
have been – Mark up against a wall, his father red-faced and roaring, pinning
him there…

I
swallowed and shook my head. I had to get it together. Mark hated it when I
dwelled and kept reminding him about that stuff. And besides, if we were
actually going to the dance, I needed to brace for impact. No doubt Karyn and
Belinda would already be there.

So
I drove and Mark fiddled with my player, and the five miles to school seemed to
pass in a heartbeat.

Our
school took up three town blocks, bordered on all four sides by tall fences.
Like a zoo. Only occasional gates broke the lines and let us animals in. The
entrance to the parking lot was lined by imposing, stone walls, left over from
the days it was a private hospital. Rumor said it had been a mental
institution, but I was pretty sure kids only said that to freak each other out.

We
drove around the lot until we found a spot under a tree halfway down. I pulled
in and turned the rearview mirror to check my make-up. Older Me wasn’t there,
which seemed odd. I couldn’t stop jiggling my leg, and the corners of the
letter poked into my thigh every time I did. It seemed like after everything
that had happened, this wasn’t the time for a confessional. Or maybe it was.
Maybe it was
exactly
the time to–

Mark
cursed, low and hard.

I
looked at him, surprised. “What?”

“I
forgot. I need to talk to you,” he said. He kept running his palms down his
thighs.

Twitchy.

This
was good.

“Okay.”
I tried not to smile, because something in the way he’d cursed left me
uncertain.

“Look,
I’m really sorry about this. The thing with Dad just took my head out of the
game and… I wouldn’t normally do this this way. Okay?”

“It’s
okay,” I told him softly. “Whatever it is…this is
me
.”

I
leaned a little closer. Mark grabbed my hand and looked into my eyes and
swallowed hard.

“Right.
Okay. I need to tell you… do you remember that youth leadership conference
thing I went to a couple weeks ago?”

“Um…
yeah.” This seemed random.

“Well,
while I was there, we had to do this assignment thing and we all got paired up.
The only other person from our school was Karyn. So her and I worked together.”

I
froze. The ball of hope in my chest shivered.

That
was when I saw what I’d noticed in him through a new filter. The nervous
energy. The inability to meet my eyes. The twitchy.

And,
because it was the story of my life, I didn’t really need him to say anymore.
Though of course, he did. But the loud pulsing in my ears meant I only caught
snatches of it.

“…one
of those things. We were working late at night by ourselves. You know how it
is…”

“…hadn’t
really thought about her that way before. I knew how mad you were at her…”

“…we
really got to know each other. Like
really.
She’s different to what I
expected…”

“…wanted
to pretend I didn’t feel that way too. But…”

I
sat back in my seat and the corner of the letter pricked my thigh again. I
wanted to scream at it. I turned away from Mark, towards the windshield, seeing
but not seeing the groups of people walking along the sidewalk, laughing and
talking, completely unaware that my heart was turning hard and brittle,
threatening to snap clean in two.

“Stace…
Stace, are you listening?” Mark squeezed my hand.

I
wanted to yank it out of his grip. “Of course.” My voice sounded dead, even to
me.

“I
told her you were my best friend. That I’d never date someone who made your
life hell. Okay? She said she didn’t have a problem with you. She said she felt
terrible about how things had been between you. That it started because she
thought
you
didn’t like
her
.”

He
smiled a little and shook his head, apparently warmed by the memory. I wanted
to smack the grin off his face. Stupid, gullible,
idiot.

He
squeezed my hand again. “Nothing’s going to change, okay?” he said quietly.

I
nodded because I had to. “Yeah, sure. It’s fine.”
Like hell.
I took my
hand back, resisting the urge to wipe it on my jeans. “I wish you would have
told me sooner, that’s all. I just…”
Are you serious?
“I mean, you can
date whoever you want, of course. But… Karyn? I mean… why her?”

Why
the sniping, spiteful, two-faced cow who everyone
else
thought was a
princess? Why the one who whispered in her friend’s ears and set them on me
like well-trained dogs, then stood back and laughed? Couldn’t he see the glare
from that perfect-girl façade she painted on every morning?

Because
he was a guy, I expected him to wax lyrical about her pale, platinum hair, or
her flashing blue eyes. Or her dimples – everyone loved the stupid dimples.

Instead,
Mark stared at his feet, squeezed my hand and said the words the sent my heart
into freefall.

“She
helps me forget.” He smiled uncertainly and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “She doesn’t
know anything about Dad. She doesn’t care if I’m on student council, or if I
make starting guard next season… She doesn’t care about anything. She just
wants to be with me. And when I’m with her, I don’t care about that stuff
either.”

The
expression on his face was a mallet to my frozen heart. It shattered.

I
tried to breathe.

“Stace?”

I
was saved from replying by his door opening. But then the most irritating
little-girl voice on God’s green earth piped up.

“There
you are!”

Mark
swung around and I didn’t have to see the smile break on his face like a
sunrise, because his voice dropped into the deep, heavy tone he reserved for
whoever he was lusting after at the time, and he said “
Hey
.”

That
one syllable held more desire, more
pleasure
in it than every kind word
he’d ever said to me. It took the broken pieces of my heart and stamped on
them, because I’d been so sure that the next time that voice showed up, it
would be for
me
.

“You’re
late,” Karyn squealed. Like a tiny, fat, piglet.

“Sorry,
got held up.” Mark pulled himself out of my car and wrapped his arms around
her, his chin dropping to rest on the top of her head.

You
got held up by your abusive father, Mark. Tell her that. Go on. Tell
her
about your screwed up life.

Oh,
wait… you don’t want to. I’m the one who gets to mop you up, then watch you fall
into someone else’s arms.

I
couldn’t bear it. I threw my door open and jumped out.

I
should have known she wouldn’t let me leave unscathed.

“Hey,
Stacy,” Karyn squeaked.

“Hey,
Karyn.” I said without looking at them, then locked the doors and muttered “See
you guys inside.” I started towards the building as fast as I could go without
actually being seen to flee.

Which,
unfortunately, wasn’t fast enough to avoid hearing the stage-whispered “You
told her? Finally!”

And
to hear Mark murmur, “I told you I would. Don’t worry. It’s all good.”

It
was all good.

Yeah,
Mark. Sure. It was brilliant.

Just
freaking wonderful.

Excuse
me while I go bleed to death internally.

It’s
all good.