Fissure (15 page)

     Shoving off my back, I flipped to a stand as the goon platoon made a rush at their enemy target. An explosion of fists and feet peppered me. In holding to the man code I ascribed to, although
man
was a stretch in this instance, I allowed them all their one hit, punch, kick, or sucker-shot.

     And then it was my turn.

     I knew I had this great advantage known as Immortality, but even at that, it shouldn’t have been so easy. Yes, my muscles were like a kind of pliable adamantium, but they weren’t wielded with invincibility. Yes, my instincts were the sharpest kind of sharp, but they weren’t so perfect that they didn’t let a single shot land on me. Yes, I was a helluva good fighter, but throwing down with these guys was different.

     I was fighting for a purpose, a personal vendetta, a war I’d actively participated in instead of being told I was going to play a role in and that brought an intricacy to my fighting that shouldn’t be allowed in life, both Mortal and Immortal.

     Everything stilled, sound blurred into a dull echo, and I used this stolen moment in time to locate Emma. She was in the same place I’d left her, eyes bulging, hands covering her mouth, looking every shade of terrified, but she was far enough to the side she was in the danger free zone.

     But, just to be safe, I pushed our ball of man rage a few feet in the opposite direction. With the force of a tidal wave, time and sound crashed down on me again, right along with ten bodies weighing in at a deuce to a deuce and a half each. Calming my mind, the rest of me went into a frenzy, fists connecting with flesh, knees smashing unprotected soft spots, forearms crushing windpipes—it was all too easy.

     Like swatting away a handful of snowflakes swirling around me.

     Laughably easy, like world champion fighters shouldn’t engage in a fight with two year olds easy, but I was too deep into the rage zone to make adjustments. To pull my hits just before they landed. To put a lull in the whirl of blows escaping from my body. To call surrender before I really hurt someone. I’d become the animal, the mama bear whose cub was threatened. I was merciless, unrestrained by a conscience, and out for blood.

     The blood was splattered up to my elbows when a laugh cut through the almost silent room. It was a laugh that didn’t need a face. I would have recognized it a millennium away, it was that chilling. And menacing.

     Pulling the punch that was aimed at the cheek hollow of the guy I was keeping trapped with a fistful of tee-shirt in my other hand, I shoved him away, knowing who I wanted to be taking all this rage out on was behind me. The poor kid slumped to the ground as soon as I let him go, joining eleven others that were being dragged from the makeshift fighting arena.

     “Pretty boy can fight,” Ty’s voice snaked through the room. “Gotta say I didn’t see that one coming.” Another laugh, low and lazy—like he thought this unworthy of his attention—exploded into all the silent spaces of the room. “But I suppose the water boy could have done the same against a few guys that were so drunk they couldn’t locate their dicks to take a piss.”

     I wasn’t sure when a dozen men became classified as a few. I must have missed that memo. “I see your manners are still as confused as your sexuality,” I said, grinning at him in mock innocence.

     Ty Steel wasn’t a man who could take a joke, as was evident from the red hulk trembling before me. I’d learned from my psych course that a person sensitive to a personal jest was insecure and likely harbored a belief that he or she was exactly what the jest was implying. Was I to assume, given Ty’s reaction, that he was indeed confused about his sexuality? I didn’t really believe it, but man, it gave me a good laugh thinking about it.

     The first valuable, real world application thing I’d learned in college.

     “I have a strict no bitches policy allowed at my parties,” he said, breaking through the shoulder-to-shoulder circle around me. He was shirtless and fumbling with his belt. At first I thought it was because he was trying to take it off to use as a do-it-yourself weapon, but he was cinching it back on. A glance over his shoulder revealed the girl no boys’ mamas had met, hard at work adjusting her dress into the right spots of barely covering those spots. I didn’t think there was enough hate within me to loathe Ty more, but lo and behold, there was plenty.

     I glanced over my shoulder at Emma and, while there was a selfish piece of me that wanted her to see the cheating monster of a boyfriend in front of her—still slicked in sweat, girl of questionable reputation flushed and panting behind him—but every other unselfish bone in my body hoped she’d missed it. Prayed she’d be looking any other direction but Ty’s.

     Of course she wasn’t.

     And instead of looking furious, or ready to crumble in tears, her face barely registered emotion. Staring at her boyfriend, freshly sated from someone other than his girlfriend, her eyes narrowed the teensiest bit, like she was nothing more than mildly irritated at his “indiscretion.”

     However, I knew Emma, and unlike the rest of us, what brewed inside her rarely surfaced. She was the epitome of keeping her emotions bottled, but I hoped when that lid burst one day, it scalded Ty to a lumpy, unrecognizable blob.

     “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from this ass-wipe?” Ty directed at Emma, waving a flexed arm between her and me.

     “Ty—” she began, her eyes flickering to me.

     “Shut up,” Ty interrupted, lifting a flat palm at her. “I’m sick of hearing your voice. In fact, I’m sick of seeing your fugly face. Go grab me a beer. I’m going to need it when I’m done with this little bitch.”

     I saw red like I’d never seen it before. It took up my vision like a curtain of blood. The scrap of restraint I’d been grasping the past minute slid like sand through my hands and, once again, I was the thing of which nightmares were made of.

     I leapt in his direction, tackling him to the ground in the same movement. Ty’s eyes hadn’t even had a chance to widen in realization before my first fist pounded the side of his face. A splatter of blood exploded from his mouth, mixing with the rest of the guys’ blood that stood in my way on the floor.

     Ty didn’t put up a fight, not because he didn’t try, but because he didn’t stand a chance with me. My fists came one right after another, keeping a beat that surpassed the music that faded into the background. I found I had no conscience, no mental bells chiming, when I fought Ty.

     A man of his caliber didn’t deserve consciousness. A man like him deserved exactly what he was receiving, exactly what I was doling out, unsure if I could stop. I felt no guilt, no remorse, no bone crushing beneath my knuckles, like pounding a lump of bread dough.

     Blood was everywhere, taking up more real estate than the skin, clothing, and floor around us when the only voice that could have gotten through to me screamed behind me.

     “Enough!” Emma shouted, racing up behind me. “Patrick, enough!”

     I heard her and understood her words, but my rage wouldn’t obey them. When the elbow of the opposite arm that was landing a punch punctured the air, something reached out and snagged in.

     Her hands wrapping around me did the trick—I stopped mid-strike.

     “He’s had enough,” she whispered beside me, her voice shaking. Kneeling beside me, the ball of adrenaline, and the unconscious Ty, she tilted my face until I was looking into her eyes. Calm entered me then, chasing the rage back into its cages. “You need to go,” she instructed, lifting her eyes to the exit.

     When I stayed frozen, splayed over Ty, she added, “Now.”

     And then she turned her attention to Ty, her face lining. Looking up at a couple guys in close proximity, she said, “Let’s get him to his bedroom and get him cleaned up.”

     The duo did as asked, giving themselves a shake before carrying out their duty of dragging a limp Ty out of the bloodied arena. Emma watched him being dragged off, slumping where she kneeled and closing her eyes.

     What had I done? This wasn’t a fight between a bunch of guys. This was a massacre. I’d known it would be, and I still allowed myself to be engaged in hand to hand battle with Mortals. Inebriated Mortals. It was clear I wasn’t safe to be around, at least for any low life of the Ty Steel variety. Now, and maybe never.

     As long as Emma was in Ty’s life, I couldn’t be in hers. Look what I’d done to it. I’d gone all silverback on her boyfriend right in front of her eyes. Blood splatters dotted the side of her face. The blood I’d spilled from her boyfriend’s face.

     The one I’d just come close to killing.

     I leapt up, fighting a formidable urge to embrace her when it looked like she’d never needed one more, and plunged through the gape-mouthed crowd towards the door.

     This time, my guilt gave me unparalleled speed, not my Immortality. I was out the door and loping across the lawn towards the Mustang before anyone knew I’d left.

     The frat house was still silent from its shock, and those that had been puking, humping, or rambling in the front yard had succumbed to the slumber of the inebriated, so when the Mustang’s engine fired to life, it exploded like a sonic bomb. Yet through the growls and snarls of the engine, I heard her voice, soft and urgent.

     Fighting over heeding her words or punching the Mustang into reverse and driving until the road ran out, my choice was made for me when a soft knock came outside my window.

     Sucking in a breath through my teeth, I rolled down the window. I couldn’t look at her—my eyes stayed glued to the steering wheel. Again, the shame and guilt taking the lead.

     “Are you okay?” she asked, crouching down until her head hung just outside the window. Still, I couldn’t look at her. I didn’t deserve to.

     “I’m not sure,” I answered honestly.

     “Do you need me to drive you to the hospital?” she asked, misunderstanding.

     It was almost funny, in that sick I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry kind of way, that she was offering me aid when I wouldn’t have a bruise tomorrow to prove I’d been in a fight of a lifetime and her boyfriend, a hundred feet away, was five punches away from dead.

     “No, no. I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks, though. You should probably get Ty to an emergency room though. He’s going to need some stitches.” I swallowed
compliments of yours truly
. “I’ll cover all his medical expenses.”

     Emma cut me off. “Don’t worry about Ty. His dad has this great medical insurance plan known as being a doctor.”

     Bloody doctors. I was surrounded by them at every turn in my life. I was going to become the anti-doctor, whatever that was. Although, I suppose after my actions tonight, I’d become just that.

     “Good for him,” I answered, not able to stand much more of this. I wasn’t good with long goodbyes; any goodbyes at all, in fact. Ty wasn’t safe around me, but he was around Emma most of the time. Therefore, Emma wasn’t safe around me either. At this juncture, good-bye was the only option.

     “Wait,” she said, reaching her arm across me, stalling my efforts of shifting into gear. “We’ve got a date scheduled for this weekend. Girl’s choice,” she said, like the fight that would become a legend at Stanford for the next two generations hadn’t just gone down. “Meet me at this address tomorrow night. Six o’clock?” she said, handing me a piece of paper with a location scrolled on it.

     She waited for me to show some recognition that I’d heard her and would be there, unmoving, her hand still folded over the one of mine gripping the shifter. She wasn’t allowing me to run away like I wanted to. She was holding me accountable, holding me to her.

     Knowing this was my chance to end it, to save her from the mess that was Patrick Hayward, I nodded my answer. “I’ll be there.”

     “Good,” she said, obviously satisfied as she removed her hand from mine and stepped away from the window. “Don’t be late.”

     As the tires screeched over the pavement, tattooing the road with a couple of black streaks, I knew I shouldn’t go. Emma getting stood up on our “pretend” date was a million times better than me showing up and dragging her further into my dangerous life. We were two different beings, our paths in life would never intersect, no matter how hard we tried to force them. When the stars had aligned, mine had been as far away from hers as the universe could put us. The only answer, the only
acceptable
solution, was to stay as far away from Emma Scarlett as Stanford would allow.

     A few miles, an on-ramp, and a hundred and ten MPHs later, all these warnings were forgotten. Setting barricades up between Emma and me was pointless—there was nothing that could stop me when I came charging through, as I knew I would every time.

     I wouldn’t only be on time tomorrow night, I’d be ten minutes early.

     That night, I slept. I forced myself to. Knowing I could overanalyze with the best of ‘em, sleep was the only thing that would keep me from relapsing into the land of empty brown bottles and mountain man bad looks.

     And when I woke up at eight o’clock the next morning, I forced myself to go back to sleep because it was eleven hours away from seeing Emma. Eleven hours of staring at the ceiling, wondering if I should have done this, shouldn’t have said that, should have refrained from pummeling the snot out of her boyfriend. Those were questions I didn’t want to agonize over, questions I didn’t want to know the answers to.

     So when I woke up three hours later, knowing sleep was a futile effort at that point, I’d grabbed my favorite board and let the killer surf brutalize me until my mind was empty of everything but achieving oneness with the ocean. And brutalize me it did—I felt like the great Pacific’s sparring partner when I stepped onto solid ground finally.

     I wasn’t one of those guys who could shower, throw on some deodorant, and be out the door in five minutes, so I bid the ocean good night a little before five and prepped myself for a date about which I had no details other than a time and an address.

     Could I have Google earthed it? Easily. Could I have driven by and scoped it out earlier? Of course. Could I have teleported myself there and gotten out just as quickly? Hells yeah.

     Why didn’t I? I was still trying to answer that doozy, but I’m sure it had something to do with liking surprises and, mostly, trusting Emma. Whatever she had in mind for us tonight, she hadn’t felt it important to tell me what we’d be doing or exactly what the place behind the address was, but I knew it was intentional. So I trusted her, although I’d had my thumb positioned over my cell’s send button a dozen times tonight when the debacle of settling on what to wear became almost too much to bear.

     But I refrained and went with a can’t-go-wrong classic slack, a button down shirt—cuffs rolled to the elbows—and a dazzling smile to finish it all off. The Mustang was freshly waxed, had a full tank of gas, and didn’t mind my zeal when I hit the interstate. Technically, I lived thirty minutes from campus, but for me and the Mustang, that was more a round trip time.

     The window was down, the unseasonably warm—even for California—fall weather finishing the job of drying my damp hair. The address Emma had given me was a ways south and east of campus—maybe only an hour or so—but, as with all places one can’t wait to arrive, it took an eternity getting there.

     Rolling down the street of a residential area that had probably been nice seventy years ago, I caught the number I was looking for fading from the mailbox slanting in the front lawn. Where in the world had Emma led me? To some ramshackle house in the middle of the Palo Alto equivalent of the projects? I doubted if anyone even lived here anymore; this was probably just some prank she’d tossed my way for beating up her beloved Ty.

     Even as the thought flamed through my mind, I knew it wasn’t in Emma’s style, though it was nothing I didn’t deserve.

     Deciding I’d get out and check this place out, I cut the engine just as a flood light above a garage that was more tilting than standing blazed on. Four bulging figures immediately stepped into the light, arching basketballs into the net-less hoop hanging above the garage door.

     Scarlett boys. Emma’s four older, rather large, brothers who’d tear off a man’s balls and staple them to the back of their pickups to send a message.

     So I had my answer as to why she’d brought me here. She wanted me dead.

     I hoped it would be a quick one.

     Oblivious to, or ignoring, the red Mustang and its occupant, the guys continued assaulting the hoop, so I grabbed the items I’d picked up on my way over and got out of the car. I’d never been one to run away, and I wasn’t going to start when the end was likely four Scarlett boys away.

     Slamming the door shut, I announced my arrival to a crowd that was either deaf or giving me the brush off. I growled something under my breath, wishing my three brothers were here with me now and we’d settle this the old fashioned way. A game of around the world. Winner takes all—loser’s dignity, lunch money, or underpants, didn’t matter.

     And then I saw Emma. The lights under the porch were shimmering around her, casting her in a beam that was too ethereal to be made of this world.

     She was smiling at me in grand Emma style and dressed up like she was heading to a picnic in the park. Feminine skirt folding around the breeze, a pale tank hugging what it covered a tad too closely for my pulse’s sake that was thankfully mostly covered by the white cardigan hanging on her like it was a size too big.

     She’d never looked more beautiful.

     She waved at me, gesturing for me to come towards her and stop staring like an ignoramus.

     This wasn’t a trick, not a prank, not an attempt to get even—it was merely an opportunity to spend an evening with her family. Families were serious business, the best pieces of us we protected at all costs. You didn’t just introduce anyone to these people you loved more than yourself. The fact that Emma was doing just that did something to my insides. Like she’d just carved away another piece of my heart for herself.

     At the rate she was going, I’d be robbed of it in about six more seconds.

     “You came,” she said, bouncing down the stairs towards me.

     “Of course I came,” I answered, looking at her like she was full on crazy.

     “Hayward!” a voice charged across the lawn at me as one of the Scarlett brothers turned his attention from the game of street ball.

     I tilted my chin in acknowledgement and was about to return the greeting in the form of a
hey, what’s up,
or
how ya doing?
when a basketball with a case of terminal velocity decided to cruise my way.

     I would have had to drop the items in my hand to stop the ball before my chest did, but since I’d agonized over my selections, taking a speed ball to the chest was the only option. Just as I was bracing for impact, Emma pivoted in front of me, freezing the ball between her hands.

     “What do you think you’re doing bringing flowers to a girl who has a boyfriend?” rocket launcher asked me, smirking at his little sister.

     Think fast, think fast, think fast. He was right, in his way, but I was right in my way. Emma liked flowers, Ty didn’t see fit to get her any, I—as her pretend/project/wannabe/hopefully future boyfriend—should be allowed to get her some. However, I knew this response would start the night off on,
what would you call it?
the wrong foot, so I put my fast on my feet thinking cap on and pulled out an explanation.

     “These are for your mom.” I raised the bouquet, lifting my shoulders like it was the most obvious thing.

     “Who’s the fancy box of chocolates for then?” was the immediate response when his eyes moved to the item in my other hand.

     Giving another shrug, I said, “Your mom.”

     “So what did you bring for Emma then?” he said, his smile identical to Joseph’s when he was taunting me in a similar way.

     “Give it a rest, Tex,” Emma said, firing the ball back his way. “And great first impression, by the way. What a way to welcome a guest to our home and lead him to believe we’re nothing other than a bunch of dumb rednecks.”

     “You know I love ya, Emma-Bema,” Tex called out before spinning and landing a swisher. Judging by their performance, four Scarlett boys could have or could still represent the starting lineup for Stanford’s men’s basketball team. That is, if they could keep themselves from fouling out in the first quarter.

     “Oh, and Hayward?” Tex called out while he waited for his ball to bounce back to him. Swinging an arm to the chateau de Scarlett, he said, “Welcome to our humble abode.”

     Emma puffed out a breath of air, shooting a glare at her brother’s back before turning back at me. “So how do I recover from that warm, disjointed welcome? Take two?”   “Miss Scarlett.” I bowed, all 1700’s Southern gentleman like, extending the gifts in my arms at her. “As a token of my gratitude at you and your family’s boundless hospitality,”—I arched a brow at the basketball court—“please accept my humble gifts. Oh, and I might have lied about these being for your mom,” I admitted. “Seemed the best way to stomp out the fuse before it ignited.”

     Plastering on a Gone with the Wind smile, Emma fanned her face. “Why I declare,” she said in a drawl that was as Southern as my manners, gathering up the oldest trick in the man book of gifts.

     I wasn’t one for clichés, but in this case, it was a well proved one. I hadn’t met a woman who wouldn’t melt a degree or two at the arrival of flowers and chocolates.

     “And you’re right,” she whispered in her Emma voice. “The boys would have no qualms over hanging you from the basket by your underwear and leaving you overnight if you would have admitted these were for me.” Weaving her elbow through mine, she led me across the front lawn that was more soil than sod. “But thank you for the gifts. I’m sure my mother will enjoy them,” she said, jabbing an elbow into my side.

     “You know, I’m surprised your brothers need another excuse to draw and quarter me,” I said. “After last night and everything.”

     “I told them what happened. Exactly what happened, not what got blown up by the rumor tank,” Emma said, stopping at the foot of the stairs. “And friend or not, no one talks to their sister like that. By their estimate, you did them a favor by teaching Ty a lesson.”

     “So your brothers like me now?” I asked, thinking they had a strange way of showing it.      “Gosh, no,” she said, making a face. “They still hate you. They’re convinced you’re the big bad wolf and I’m little red riding hood.”   

     “Big bad wolf?” I said, hitching my hands on my hips. “As in a werewolf?” The twisted irony of it was kind of funny.

     “They watch too many movies,” she offered with a shrug. “But even though they’re quite convinced you’re out to get me, they still owe you a debt of gratitude for standing up for their sister’s honor. It’s safe to say you should escape a session of Scarlett Slapping. I think,” she added, her mouth twitching.

     “You think?” I said. “Scarlett Slapping?”

     Climbing the stairs, she said, “Exactly what it sounds like.”

     “Super,” I muttered, following behind her. Our steps made a symphony of creaking all the way up.

     “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you. They may outnumber me by three and outweigh me by eight times, but I have secret super powers over the male species.” She smiled at me over her shoulder, kicking a pair of boots to the side.

     “That’s old news to me,” I said. “I’ve been a victim of your power for awhile now.”

     Her shoulders tensed, just barely, but just enough for me to know I was bridging a delicate area. “Dinner’s in five,” Emma yelled across the lawn at the foursome, two of which were swinging from the rim like a couple of monkeys. “If you’re late, exceptionally stinky, or slightly rude, you’ll be eating your dinners on the back porch.”

     A couple of waves and nods answered her while the Scarlett brothers thundered on with their game.

     Emma stalled with her hand on the screen door handle. “Oh, and by the way, my mom is kind of . . .” she paused, brushing her hair behind her ear. “Quiet,” she settled on. “So don’t be offended if she doesn’t respond to your attempts at creating sparkling conversation. Okay?”

     I caught the signs of someone coloring the truth with an easy to swallow color, the lowering of her eyes, the muscles clenching in her shoulders, the tone of the words, but I had secrets too. So did she. At last, a sign that this girl was for real.

     “Well, wait until she gets a load of me then. She’ll be a changed woman after spending fifteen minutes with me.” I placed my hand over her back, in a way I’d meant to be reassuring, but ended up feeling more intimate than anything else.

     She shot me a look of
we’ll see
as she tossed the screen door aside and stepped inside.

     Following after her, I stepped into Emma Scarlett’s home. It wasn’t what I’d expected. Someone like her came from a two-story colonial with emerald green lawns and pancakes and maple syrup present in the air no matter what time of day it was.

     It was hard to reconcile how a woman like Emma came from a shoebox of a home that was absent of warmth, charm, family photos, and that intangible quality of a safe haven. Even in my mother’s absence, my father had somehow managed to create that sense of peace and safety, but until I’d stepped foot in this home where it was glaringly absent, I hadn’t realized how vital it was to making a house a home.

     A chill weaved up my spine and I automatically moved nearer to Emma, and the chill evaporated. She was my personal sun, without even applying for the job.

     “Mom?” Emma said, passing a nervous smile back at me where I lurked by the front door. “Mom, we have company. You remember the guest I told you we’d have tonight? He’s here.”

     She tip-toed across the decades old carpet, worn bald in areas, towards an upholstered chair floating like an island in the middle of the room. “Mom?” Emma repeated, her hand rounding over something midway up the back of the chair. A shoulder, a woman’s shoulder. I could have jumped from surprise if Emma’s eye hadn’t found mine right then. A woman so frail she looked a few days better fed than a runway model slouched in the chair, eyes focused on the black and white television flickering a few feet in front of her, propped up on a milk crate.

     “This is Patrick,” Emma said, her voice low as she crouched beside her mom. “He brought these for you.” She set the flowers and chocolates in her mom’s lap, but she could have been laying them in a coffin for all the recognition she received.

     Emma glanced at me from the side, where I loomed a foot away from the exit, and I knew what she was experiencing. That her secret, one of them that she’d let me in on at least, would be enough to scare me away forever. This was a fear that plagued me as well.