Broken (The Outsiders Series) (13 page)

She smiles and pushes forward so that her face is buried in my chest again. “There’s makeup all over your shirt,” she warns me.

I laugh and wrap my arms around her more tightly. “I won’t hurt you ever again, Vani. I promise you.”

“No more lies then, Carter? If that’s your real name, that is…”

“Carter Ian Daniels is my real name. And
SpongeBob
really is my favorite TV show.” She pulls back and turns so that we can walk together. I throw my arm over her shoulder and continue with the truths. “You are the only person that makes me truly happy. I could spend all of my time with you because you’re complicated and frustrating, and I can’t get over how amazing that makes you. Oh, and you’re kind of the only girl I’ve ever wanted to be with, Vani.”

“You can stop
apologizing for what we’ve gone through,” she says as she stops. “You never left me. That counts for something, Carter. And I never looked past that part of you. But, you do make me think of my dad.” She looks down and I pull her hand in mine.

“I don’t mean to,” I whisper.

“I know, and I should have told you the truth,” she says as she pushes her long hair behind her ear.

I shake my head. “I can’t blame you. Don’t worry about it, Vani. You can tell me sometime. But I’m not going to push you to.”

She smiles. “My dad just changed one day. At first, he just drank on Fridays. Then, he started driving out on Saturdays after we went to bed. He didn’t want us to know.”

I frame her face with my hands. I look into her eyes and wipe away the few tears that fall over her cheeks.

She swallows and nods once. “One day, he never came back. Then, the phone rang, and we had to go down to the hospital. We didn’t make it in time,” she says as she pushes into my arms again. She holds me while she cries. And I hold her too. And as I rock her back and forth, I whisper, telling her the reasons why she’s beautiful.

When she’s finished, she pulls away and wipes her tears. I push her hair behind her ears and watch as she bites her lower lip.

“Vani?” I ask her.

“Hm?” she says absently.

I hope I don’t screw this up. I hope it’s okay to ask her now. “Will you go on a date with me?”

She looks up, her green eyes sparkl
ing and her lips turning upwards in a small smile. She bites her lip again and looks down at the ground. A faint shade of pink races across her cheeks, and she looks up at me through her lashes. “Yes, Carter. I would love to.”

I smile, and i
t takes everything in me not to scream or dance or do something extremely stupid. She’s here with me, and she isn’t running away this time. No, she’s staying. And I’m going to protect her.

14

“Where are we going?” Vani asks when she opens the small door to her family’s apartment.

I can’t answer her yet, because I’m too busy staring at what she’s wearing. She’s got this black shirt that ties in a bow under her neck. It’s kind of loose but it looks good with her skinny jeans. And she’s got her black Converse sneakers on too.

“Aren’t you going to be cold in that?” I ask.

Vani shrugs. “It’s not cold enough for my winter coat and I don’t have my favorite jacket right now,” she tries to say quickly. She doesn’t want to remind me of what Anne Marie probably did with it.

“I guess,” I say as I try hard not to smile. I turn around quickly, hoping that she doesn’t notice. Of course she does.

“What’s going on Carter?” she asks as she follows me down the steps. When she reaches the bottom and sees the gift bag resting on my bike, she sucks in a breath. “What is that?” she asks nervously.

“It’s no big deal,” I say as I hand the blue bag to her.

She sighs and unties the ribbon before opening it. When she pulls out her navy jacket, she smiles and stands up on her toes to hug my neck. “Where did you find this?” she asks as she pushes her arms through it. Her voice shakes a little, but I ignore it.

I smile. “Lane said that it was in Anne Marie’s locker. We broke in.”

Vani’s eyes grow large, and she bites her lip. “Thank you,” she whispers. “You have no idea what it means to me, Carter.”

“Then tell me.” I pull her into me and she rests her arms on my chest as she tells me about how it used to be her brother’s. When I listen, I think about how she has gone through so much more than me. And she was never afraid of being herself, of telling me the truth.

I lean forward and kiss her nose. It kind of shocks me, and I pull back slowly. I’m scared she’ll slap me or something. But she doesn’t. She just smiles and hugs my waist. She feels so perfect in my arms.

She gets on the back of my bike then. Jeb offered his car to me, but I didn’t want to take it. Vani needed to be with the real, extremely broke,
bike-riding me. And I wasn’t going to deprive her of that luxury.

I swing my leg over and step down on the pedal so that we start moving. We don’t have to go too far because Mason’s a pretty small town.
And when we get to downtown, Vani’s surprised to see that I’m taking her to the most popular place in town: The Restaurant. It really does have a name. It’s the Mason County Diner, but the outside still says the word restaurant. So that’s what we call it.

“Carter,” Vani whispers when we get off the bike. “I need to tell you a couple things before we go inside here.”

I turn around. “What’s up?”

“First, my mom works here. She’s the best waitress in town. And second, Colton’s family owns this place.”

“I bet that we’re going to have the best time,” I say as I take her hand. “I wonder if we could sit in your mom’s section. It would be weird if we don’t, don’t you think?”

She just smiles and shakes her head. When we get to the door, I turn around to tell her one last thing.

“You’re with me,” I say. “I won’t let them say anything to you tonight. I promise.”

She swallows and nods a couple times. When I know she’s ready, we head inside and are automatically placed in Mrs. Tucker’s section. When she sees us, she grabs us two glasses of water and stops by after finishing another group’s checkout.

“I bet you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into when you brought my baby girl here, did you Carter?” She leans over the table. Her curls fall over her shoulders and I can see Vani’s actions and facial features in her.

“I think this was the best idea I could have come up with, Mrs. Tucker. And I’m glad you’re serving us tonight. Vani says you’re the best.”

Mrs. Tucker blushes and reaches out to squeeze Vani’s hand. “I like him,” she fake whispers.

This time, Vani’s cheeks flush, and she asks for a sweet tea. I get one too, and her mother goes to get them. We wait until she brings them back to really start talking.

“Will you tell me about your past?” Vani asks.

“I’m sure you heard a lot from Jeb,” I start to say. But then I look at her. She doesn’t want to hear the stories from him. She wants me to tell her the truth. I sigh and reach over the table to take her hand in mine. She looks up at me
, patiently waiting for me to begin.

“My mom doesn’t know who my dad is,” I say. “When I was about eight, she told me that she just needed some drugs. When she found out she was pregnant, she stopped. And she told me that she stopped for a while. But then she met Jack.”

Vani squeezes my hand, and I find the strength to continue the story of me.

“I was pretty young when she met him. And he’s the reason she started drinking
and doing drugs again. They used to go out on a lot of dates, to different parties with his friends and stuff. They would get a neighbor to watch me or something. That was when they were happy and in love and stuff. And I remember when all of that stopped, because that was the last time I saw Ms. Amanda. After that, I just saw the inside of my smoky house or the back of my bedroom door.”

“So, did you like Jack at first?” Vani asks me thoughtfully.

I shrug. “I guess I did. He was never nice to me, but he wasn’t mean either. It was like he didn’t like kids or something. And my mom never really wanted me anyway, so she didn’t care.”

“Your mom still cares about you, Carter.”

“Jeb says she doesn’t really know how to love me. I probably remind her of my real dad. He’s probably just a nasty drug dealer.”

Vani bites her lip. “I’m sorry, Carter. You don’t have to finish this.”

I shake my head, because I do. “The first time he hit my mom was when I was nine. She came home from work, drunk and laughing. He accused her of cheating. She said she didn’t but her lipstick was smeared and stuff. Even I thought she did. I still remember all of it.” I close my eyes as I relive the moment, and once again, I’m in that dark room. Jack’s in the corner, drunk and watching too much TV. And he’s angry. His messy hair is sticking up and he’s walking over to my mom. He’s trying to get her to tell him the truth, but she keeps insisting that she didn’t cheat on him. He shakes her in his anger, and for the first time, she’s afraid of him. I can see the grin start to crawl across his ugly face. The power that shines in his eyes. He’s happy to see her like this. And he wants more of the authority that she’s now giving him. So he pulls back his hand and slaps her once.

Vani sucks in a deep breath. A single tear escapes before she wipes it away. “Oh, Carter,” she whispers, “that must have been terrible.”

“It was,” I say. “And it kept getting worse. Jack would hit her with objects, with his fists. He would throw things at her sometimes. He even kicked her when she fell down once. She was just trying to get away from him.”

Vani reaches across and shakes my hand. “Stop,” she says. “I can feel you leaving me. You’re going back there, Carter. Please stay with me.”

I blink a couple times and focus on her face. I feel empty and alone, even though I’m with her. And she can tell. She gets up without letting go of me, and moves to sit next to me. She leans her head against my shoulder and rubs her fingers over my hand and wrist. Slowly, I come back.

“No wonder why you hid all of it,” she says. “It hurts you to think about
it. And I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Don’t say that, Vani. You needed to hear the truth from me.”

“You never lied when you said you cared about me, Carter. I’ve always known some things about you. And that’s all that matters.”

“You didn’t know I was damaged.”

She lifts her head up and looks into my eyes. Slowly, she moves her hands up until they frame my face. “I knew that you had a pure heart. Even they couldn’t damage that.” And there she goes again, making me fall in love with her all over again.

The rest of the dinner goes well. We talk about less serious things, like how he
r part of the presentation went – she kept my lie up - and our spring classes. She’s got two classes with me this time. The two afternoon classes, and we’ve always got lunch together. We have Spanish and SAT Prep. They seem pretty easy, so I have a feeling we’ll get to spend time together. And that’s all I care about.

“Are you two ready for your check?” Mrs. Tucker asks as she stops by to pick up our dessert plate.

I nod and start to pull out my wallet. I start figuring out how much money I need when a glass of sweet tea is set on our table. Neither of us knows which server brought it to us, but I tell Vani that she can have it. She smiles and takes a big gulp of it. Then, she spits it out on the table and floor before she starts coughing. The rest of the glass spills on the table and on both of our laps. I reach over and pat her lower back to get her to stop coughing. And then the sound of soft laughter reaches me from the other side of the room. I look up to see Anne Marie, Brooke, and a few new girls looking at us.

I move to get up, but Vani holds me in place. She’s shaking her head as her mom and a few other servers come up to clean the table and floor. One of them, a young girl, keeps looking over at Anne Marie and her friends.

I leave the money on the table and take Vani outside. This is the first time that I’ve actually seen them do something to her, and I’m pissed.

“I’m okay,” she says. She looks up at me as tears start to fall.

I pull her into my chest. “I’m here, Vani. And I won’t let them do this again.”

“I’m so embarrassed, Carter. My mom was there.”

And just then, Mrs. Tucker opens the door to come out. “What happened, Vani?” she asks. It’s almost like she can sense something.

“It just went down the wrong tube,” she says as she wipes her eyes.

“Then why are you crying?” Mrs. Tucker presses. She’s got her hands on her hips, and she’s looking pretty upset.

“I just got embarrassed in front of Carter,” she says with a laugh.

I smile and shrug.

Mrs. Tucker shakes her head but gives Vani a quick hug before heading back inside.
We watch the door for a few moments before she asks me to take her home. She’s shivering from the wet tea. And even though I want to spend more time with her, I do as she asks of me. And we go back to Jeb’s.

“Are you going to be okay?” I ask her when we get there.

She nods. “It was just some salt. I just need to go inside and shower. After that, I’ll feel much better. I promise,” she says with a small smile.

I accept her answer and kiss her forehead before stepping back. I want to kiss her, but I don’t think she’s up to it.

Vani smiles and waves before she heads upstairs. I watch her disappear. Then, I get on my bike and ride away.