Dare You To (20 page)

disappointed. She hasn’t stood once to watch.

“I can throw a couple more if you want.”

“Have you been resting your arm like we’ve discussed?”

“Yes, sir.” Not as much as I should. I can pinpoint the exact location of my rotator cuff: approximately two inches down from the top of my shoulder and, right now, it aches.

“Let’s call it a night.”

I roll the ball over my fingers. Beth isn’t the only issue that’s plagued me this practice and no matter how I try to ignore the thoughts, they
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keep returning. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“If you had to choose between playing

college ball and playing pro out of high school, what would you choose?”

John scratches his cheek as he stares at me with a mix of wonder and confusion. “Do you want to go to college?”

I don’t know. “If you had the choice, what would you have done?”

“I didn’t have that choice. College ball was my only option.”

“But if you did?”

“I would have gone pro.”

I slam the ball into my glove. Exactly.

Everyone with their college talk and writing competitions is screwing me up. “Thanks.”

“The question isn’t what I would have done.

The question is what do you want to do?”

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ISAIAH WRAPS HIS ARM TIGHTLY around my

waist and heaves me out the window. Mom’s hollow blue eyes have a haunting hurt as she stares at me one last time before slamming the glass pane shut and placing the cardboard back over the window.

“No!” I’ve left her behind. Again.

His grip becomes steel and the more I try to scramble back to the window, back to Mom’s apartment, the more he pulls me away. My

heart—it’s literally breaking. It has to be, because the pain in my chest slices as if glass is ripping through it.

My legs tangle with Isaiah’s. He keeps a

firm hold on my hip bones and forces

weightlessness by lifting me and moving me in the opposite direction of my mom. I struggle back to earth, kicking his shins, knocking my
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knees against his. “Isaiah, Trent’s in there.

He’s going to kill her.”

“Let’s go.” His growl rumbles against my

ear.

“Did you hear me?” He couldn’t have. Isaiah would never leave me to die, so he could never leave my mom. The one person I need.

“Yes.” He presses against me and my

smaller body yields to his.
No.
My elbows bend back and with open palms I shove at his chest. My heart convulses with the smack of my hands against his body. I hit him—my best friend.

I’ll do it again if he doesn’t let me go. “I hate you!”

“Good,” he says. His nostrils flare as he lightly shakes my hips. “Because I won’t feel bad when I toss you over my shoulder and

throw you in the damned car.”

My palms, still stinging from hitting him, rest on his chest. His heart beats wildly, matching the crazy glare in his eyes. Isaiah means what he says.

So do I. “I’m not leaving without her.”

“Get in the car before I force you into it.”

His hands tighten. A warning. A threat. My
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chest constricts, making it impossible to breathe. Impossible to think. “He hits her.”

I say it like it’s a secret. Because it is. My secret. The secret I hide from everyone. The secret that leads to my worst secret: he hits me.

Isaiah knows this already, but it’s different. I’m saying it out loud. I’m making it real. And I’m asking him to save me. I’m asking him to save her.

Isaiah presses his face unimaginably close to mine. “He will never touch you again.”

My throat swells and my voice comes out

small. “I’ll let him if it saves her.”

A visible shiver runs through his body and his hands release my waist. Becoming a brick wall, Isaiah plants his feet on the ground and crosses his arms over his chest, practically daring me to move past him.

I step to the left. Isaiah steps with me. I step to the right. He mirrors the movement. “The car, Beth. Now.”

“Get out of my way!” He doesn’t and I feel like a cat trapped in a box. I claw at his chest.

Push. Hit. Scream. Yell. Curse. Until my hands pound against him again and again and again.

Frustrated. Angry. Betrayed.

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His arms weave through my attack,

placing warm palms against my face. He

strokes away the wetness on my cheeks. A

wetness I don’t understand. I smack his arms off me. “If you were my friend…if you cared, you’d help me!”

“Goddamn it, Beth, I’m doing this because I love you!”

My heart beats once and stalls as the world becomes horrifyingly still. I see it, in his eyes—the sincerity. I shake my head. “As a friend,” I whisper. “You love me as a friend.”

We stare at each other. Our chests rising and falling rapidly. “Say it, Isaiah. Tell me you love me as a friend.” He’s silent and my mind feels like it’s on the verge of fracturing. “Say it!”

I don’t want to deal with this. I don’t have time for this. I step around him. “I’m getting her.”

“Fuck this,” he hisses as he bends. His

shoulder makes contact with my waist and in seconds my head dangles over his back, my feet kicking him. I scream and watch through blurred vision as he creates more distance between me and Mom.

A car door clicks open. Isaiah slides my

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body from over his shoulder, covers my

head, and uses his strength and size to push me into the backseat while keeping me from

bolting out of it. The door slams shut and Isaiah has a death grip on my wrist. My head snaps to the left. The other door. It’s locked. I pull at my wrist to gain freedom, to open the other door, but Isaiah retains his hold.

The car whips into reverse and the engine whines when it accelerates.

“What the fuck were you thinking, Beth?”

My eyes widen. Noah leans against the

passenger door, one hand on the wheel. He doesn’t even wait for an answer. “Isaiah said you’d come back for your mom, but I thought maybe you’d have enough sense to stay away.

Jesus, at least you’re predictable. Did you think we wouldn’t remember that you’d check the damn bar before you checked out the

apartment? Isaiah, remind me to pay Denny extra for calling us so damned fast.”

Denny. Traitorous asshole. He told Noah and Isaiah I came for Mom.

“How did you get to Louisville?” Isaiah asks in an eerily calm voice.

“Fuck you.” He told me he loved me. A cold
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sweat breaks out on my skin and my body

begins to tremble. My best friend told me he loved me. And my mom. He forced me to leave my mom.

“Did you convince that Ryan bastard who’s been messing with you to bring you?”

I glance at Isaiah and he swears. I yank at his hold on my wrist. “Get off of me.”

Anger blazes from Isaiah’s dark eyes and if the anger wasn’t coming from him, it would frighten me. He has the calm anger. The

controlled anger. The type that breaks if pressed too hard for too long. “Not until I know you’re done thinking like an idiot and doing stupid things. You could have gotten yourself killed. Trent’s been bragging at the bar for weeks on how he’ll tear you limb from limb if he sees you again. He blames you for the cops coming to his apartment the week after you went to Groveton. He forgets,

though, that he has enemies everywhere.”

I hear the snap inside my head and my entire body flinches. I’ve talked to Isaiah every night and he never mentioned this piece of local gossip. Gossip that would have led me to act faster. If Trent blames me, then he’ll blame
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Mom, and he already loves hitting her for no reason. Isaiah took me away from Mom and left her there with that asshole.

Isaiah’s hand still holds my wrist and I don’t want a backstabbing Judas touching me.

Pulling my foot off the floorboard, I kick at him, again and again. “Let. Go. Of. Me!”

He releases my arm to shove my foot off

him. “What is wrong with you?”

“You left her there to die!”

Isaiah punches the back of Noah’s chair and collapses into the seat. His head falls back and he places his thumb and forefinger over his closed eyes.

The flat and bitter notes of a Nine Inch Nails song play on the radio and I sink into my corner of the car, pulling my legs into my chest. My heart aches with the lyrics. It’s a phrase embedded in my soul, a lyric that talks about people you love and how in the

end…they go away.

Isaiah took me away from Mom; he won’t

help me save her….he told me that he loves me. What used to be my best, strongest

relationship has become a leaf withering and dying on a decaying vine.

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I guess everything in life really does

end.

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TEN MINUTES AGO, I LEFT PRACTICE and found her gone. While I stood here losing my mind, deciding what to do, Beth was out having fun with her friends. I panicked, wondering if I should call Scott, the police, my dad. I

imagined Scott’s grief and thought about how angry my father would be when he learned I lost the niece of our town hero.

Mostly, I worried about Beth. Terrified

someone took her. Praying she wasn’t hurt or scared. Now I feel like a fool.

A few minutes ago, they pulled in and now Beth argues with the overrated tattooed punk I’ve seen before. I don’t dare move a muscle, because I’m terrified I’ll rip every single black hair out of Beth’s head. Planting myself firmly next to my Jeep, I watch as Beth and her

punked-out friend continue their heated

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discussion.

Beth played me like I’ve never been played before. I made a terrible mistake. I tried to like her. Screw Beth. Let her tank her life. She agreed to go to the party with me Friday. I won the dare. Deal done.

Beth bolts from the shitty car.

“Beth!” Tattoo Guy snags her by her belt

loop. “You’re not leaving. Not like this.”

I flinch, but force myself to stay still. She wants this guy. She left me to be with him.

“Then keep the promise you made to me,

Isaiah. Take me. Tonight.” Her eyes search him and the desperation clawing at her face makes watching the scene uncomfortable. Whatever answer she’s looking for, he doesn’t have. He turns his head away with his eyes cast down.

The other guy closes his door to the car and slowly approaches them, yet keeps his

distance.

Great, I’m back to the odds of two against one. That is, if I cared enough to step in.

Which I don’t.

Isaiah glances at the other guy. “You always said you wanted a home and now you’ve got one.”

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Beth blinks. “Not this home.”

I straighten. The attitude that makes her larger than life evaporates. She’s small. Very small. Especially when standing in front of two menacing guys. Not only does she appear

small, but she seems very…lost.

“Wait until you graduate. Just a couple more months. Noah and I talked and…”

With the name Noah, Beth’s head jerks and anger blazes from her blue eyes. “You

promised.”

“Beth.” The other guy, who I’m guessing

must be Noah, uses a calm tone that even I know will send her over the edge. “You belong in Groveton.”

In a flash of black, Beth races over to Noah.

Her hand darts out, and she strikes him across the face. The sound echoes against the walls of the warehouse. Beth’s chest heaves as she gasps for air. “Fuck you.”

I push off the Jeep. What the hell? Noah

gingerly touches his cheek, then inclines his head as if to release tension. “I was starting to feel left out after your little show back at the apartment complex.”

“This is your fault!” she screams. “You and
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Echo and your new life. You turned Isaiah against me because you’re too scared to be real. You want to be fake. Just like your girl.”

Tattoo Guy—Isaiah—places his hand on

Beth’s arm and yanks her away from Noah.

Hell no. Punk or no punk, a girl is in serious trouble if she hits a guy and a guy should never touch a girl. My fingers tighten into a ball as I stalk over. “Get away from her.”

“Groveton,” Isaiah says as he ignores me.

“With your uncle. That is exactly where you need to be.” He points south, away from

Louisville, toward home. “That world can give you what I can’t. Not now. Just wait until graduation.”

“If you meant what you said,” she says in a low growl, “you’ll keep your promise now.”

A dark shadow seems to encompass the guy

and I quicken my pace. “I said get away from her.” My heart pounds in my chest. Two

against one. The odds are bad, but I’ll take them.

“Don’t you dare throw that in my face,”

Isaiah says to her, then rips his stare from Beth to focus on me. “This doesn’t involve you, man, so fuck off.”

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“The hell it doesn’t. She came here with

me and she’s going home with me. Anything that happens to her in between
is
my business.”

He angles his body toward me. “You say

that like she’s yours.”

“Isaiah,” Beth whispers. “Don’t.”

With only two feet between us, I take

another step with every muscle prepared for a fight. “She became mine the moment you laid a hand on her.”

He closes the gap and we’re standing toe-to-toe. His face inches from mine. Anger pulsates from his body. “She’s not yours. She’s mine and I don’t like how you treat her.”

A petite arm slides between our bodies.

“Isaiah,” says Beth. “Let it go.”

“How I treat her?” Is this guy high? “She doesn’t seem to want you.”