Hear Me Now (20 page)

Time to bring another stupid moron to his knees.

“You go that way and corner him. When he tries to run, which we both know he will, I’ll come from around the other side. Got it?”

“Yeah man, let’s do this shit.”

Watching as Tim takes off down the hall exactly the way I told him, I veer off down the opposite hall in order to make my way around. Picking up speed until I’m jogging, I don’t stop until I turn and see Eric boxed in against the lockers and Tim hovering over him. It reminds me of the way things went the first time we picked on him, Kayden choosing him in an effort to get Isabelle’s attention.

He’s wearing the same frightened expression and the sight of it, where before would have made me happy, actually turns my stomach. As much as I want this, want to pound on this kid for all the shit he’d brought down on me just by breathing the same air as me when he shouldn’t be, the look on his face, it stops me cold.

This is the guy that Cadence got hurt over, the person she cares about. If I go at him right now, it will hurt her when she finds out. There’s something about the idea of her hurting in any way, despite her walking away and ignoring the hell out of me that doesn’t sit right with me.

I can’t hurt her, even if hurting this kid is exactly what will make me feel better right now. Shit. The girl isn’t even here anymor
e and she’s still reaching out and bringing me down.

I’ve never wanted to hate someone so much in my life.

Shaking off the thought of the brown eyed girl I can’t seem to get out of my head, I move forward until I’m standing directly in front of Eric. When he looks up, his eyes blinking rapidly and the sweat from the fear he feels pooling at the top of his hairline, I smile. All thoughts of the girl that left me behind are gone and all that’s left is the same old rage that’s been there from the start.

I’m definitely going to enjoy this.

At least that’s how it is until I land the first punch into his stomach, his body bending with the impact, Tim hitting him with another three in quick succession, bringing the kid to the floor.

The way his hands go to his face in an attempt
to block whatever we’re about to do next, it stops me from going any further. Right now he looks the way Cadence did the first day when Amy threw her to the floor. A way I never want to see again. Watching Eric, the way he’s crumpled on the floor, I should feel great, having done what I set out to do but that’s not what’s going on at all.

It’s not Eric that I’m allowing Tim to beat on anymore. It’s not h
im I just leveled with the punch.

It’s her.

Chapter Twenty-One

Cadence

The first thing I notice when I turn off the sidewalk into my driveway is that there’s someone sitting on my front step. My heart betraying me like always, skips a beat seeing the form, but moving closer, I see that it’s not who I thought and the skip is replaced by nothingness.

Where my heart wanted to believe for a second that the person sitting so comfortably on the step was Dillon, it’s not, but it is someone he goes to school with and also the last person I expect to see sitting here. It’s not shocking that it’s him, but considering that he’s never been here before or even interacted with me outside of school, it’s definitely unexpected.

Eric Carmen, leaning against the bottom step, his head facing up toward the sky, looking so comfortable it looks like he belongs there.

“Eric?”

Lifting his hand, he waves and despite the emptiness I’ve been feeling all day, I smile in response. It looks like my plan of heading inside, going to my room and hiding under my covers is shot to hell.

What are you doing here?
I sign and he wastes no time coming back with an answer.

“Got bored waiting for my mom to come home, decided to take the bus and come visit.”

Does she know you’re here?

“Yeah, of course. She’d kill me if I didn’t let her know.”

The way his lips part and his body shakes, I can tell he’s laughing so pasting on the best happy smile I can, I laugh with him though it pains me to do it. I don’t want to fake anything and especially not with Eric.

Well come in. Mom had to stay late for some meeti
ng so I’m on my own for dinner.

“Not anymore you aren’t.” he says and smiles before I turn and he follows me into the house.

I’m not sure I believe his reason for being here. There’s something about it that just doesn’t seem right. I’m pretty sure there’s a million other places that he could have gone if he was bored being home alone, ones much closer. Coming all this way on the bus, it just seems like a total waste of money.

It’s that thinking that makes me turn on him the minute we’re both in the kitchen and I’ve passed him a soda from the fridge. Leveling him with a look that I hope says that I want the truth, I get right to the point.

Why are you really here?

“I told you…”

No, what you told me is a lie. Why are you really here?

His eyes fall away until they’re resting on the table in front of him, his lips completely out of my view. Just as I’m about to ask him to lift his head so I’ll be able to see his answer, he lifts his hands and starts signing. It’s messy and I’m not entirely sure what he’s saying is actually what he means to say, but I get the basic gist.

You wanted to talk to me about something?

“Ask you something.” He signs again, this time getting the words right.

Why didn’t you just tell me that before?

He signs his response again, this time shaking his hands nervously.

Whatever he’s got to ask me makes him nervous enough that he’s willing to lie about it. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m the last one he should feel the need to lie to.

He signs again and though I get the point, for the first time since the bathroom with Dillon, I want to rely more on speaking then I do signing.

“Can you look up?”

He does as I ask and repeats the words he signed to me, letting me know that he’s nervous because he’s never done what he’s about to do before.

“What do you want to ask me?”

His answer despite his nervousness, evident with the way he’s picking at his fingers yet still looking straight at me, is immediate and definitely not what I’d been expecting when he said he had something he wanted to ask.

“Will you go to prom with me?”

“Aren’t you a
junior?”

He nods and I’m thankful that I remembered
what my mom told me. With all of them being in the same class and it being different than it is at my school, I sometimes forget that he’s younger than some of the others.

“W
hy do you want to go the prom?”

“Because I’ve never done it before and I can’t hide forever.”

He’s got a point about that. He can’t hide forever even though Dillon and his friends sure go out of their way to make sure that’s exactly what he does. Well, they did before Dillon broke away from them. Hating the fact that I’m thinking about Dillon when there’s a guy standing in front of me asking me to be his date to prom, I shake the thoughts away and focus my attention back on Eric.

“I don’t go to your school. Why don’t you ask someone there?”

“No one wants to go with a person like me. You’re all I’ve got.”

His eyes as he admits this, they lower again, but his head stays level, as if he’s afraid to look at me but not bothered enough to turn away. Something that right now I’m thankful for because turning away would completely ruin what he’s here to do.

It hurts me inside that people treat him the way they do. If they could only see the kind of person he is, the soft heart he has and his willingness to help anyone, maybe he would be able to get a date to his prom with someone that actually goes to his school and not have to reach outside for one.

“There’s one person that wants to
go with a person like you.” When his eyes raise, I smile and move toward him. Leaning across the table, I bop my finger on his nose and laugh. “I do. Looks like you’ve got a date to prom buddy.”

“Really?”

“Yes really.”

The awkwardness that I
’d seen earlier, the picking at the corners of his fingers, the way his hand came up to his mouth and he started nibbling on his nails, it’s all gone now and all that’s left is a smile. Despite the fact that I’m not sure going to prom is the smartest move considering who’s sure to be there, I’m not taking it back. If me going to prom with him makes him this happy, then the reservations I’ve got about it don’t matter.

Eric being happy is what
matters. I can always talk myself into it later when he goes home. Surely having a couple of days to come to terms with going back there, to the place where my life was turned upside down would take all of the worries I have right now away.

Right?

Dillon

The last thing I want to do after getting out of practice is stop and talk to anyone, but no sooner do I make my way across the field and to the parking lot t
hen I hear my name being called. The quick getaway I had planned the minute Coach said we could leave falls apart around me, leaving me even more pissed off than I was earlier.

After Tim leveled him with another couple punches, I put an end to it. I can tell it confused the hell out of
him considering what I said about dealing with Eric personally, but I didn’t care. After looking down at Eric on the ground and seeing Cadence’s face, I’d seen more than enough.

It left me in a sour mood for the rest of the day. Where I saw her instead of Eric, it happened at other random times too, which did nothing for my already dwindling mood. I wanted to forget about her and everything that came along with our short time together, but
it seems that my head doesn’t want to let me.

It’s my heart that doesn’t want to let me and I know it, but since I’m trying to go back to appearing as though I have no heart; that’s the last thing I’m gonna admit to.

Hearing my name again and this time unable to ignore it as it’s closer, I turn and come face to face with the last person I expected to see.

Ms. Taylor is walking toward me and where I expect to see an angry expression on her face after everything that went down with her daughter and me, there isn’t one. She’s not smiling at me or anything, but wearing no real expression at all is better than the alternative.

“What’s up Ms. T?”

“I came by the locker room to see you but your coach told me you didn’t head in with the others. I was hoping to get a couple minu
tes of your time to talk about something.”

If she wants
to talk to me about Cadence, I don’t want any part of it. With the girl haunting me around every corner all day, the last thing I want is to bring her up willingly. She’d managed to stay out of my head the entire time I was on the field. I want to keep it that way.

“What’s up?”

“I know that you probably don’t want to talk to me about it, but it’s about Cadence.”

Yep, she’s right
. I don’t want to talk and definitely not with her mom of all people. Up until a week ago this woman despised me as much as the rest of the faculty. It’s what I want her to go back to doing now. The way her eyes look remind me of her daughter and I’ve had enough of it. I don’t want another Taylor woman looking through me.

I don’t open my mouth and tell her any of this though. I do the one thing I’m fighting so hard against. I ope
n myself up to talking.

“What about her?”

“Despite trying to appear otherwise, it’s obvious that she’s not acting like herself. I was wondering if you could shed some light on it.”

“I haven’t talked to her since Wednesday afternoon, so I’m not sure there’s a whole lot I can tell you.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

Great. Now I’m going to have to rehash everything that happened with Caddy and watch her expression change from the one she’s now giving me to one of hate. There’s no way she can hear everything that happened with us and not be pissed as hell at me. I asked her daughter out without going through her first and then I went ahead and acted like a total asshole, ruining it and her in the process.

I’ve got enough hate for everything that happened and my fault in it all on my own. I don’t need hers too.

“What ex
actly do you want me to say?”

“You can start by telling me when you decided that you wanted to be with her.”

The answer to that question is easy for me, but I’m not sure telling her the truth is the way to go, so I lie.

“The day I asked her out.”

She turns toward the school, not even acknowledging my answer and I start to think she got what she came for and she’s finally gonna let me leave, at least until she turns back and smiles.

Looks like I’m not getting out of here anytime soon.

“Come with me. If we’re gonna talk, I think its best that we do it inside and not out in the middle of a parking lot.”

Doing as she says, I follow behind her until we’ve walked around
to the front and into the office. A place I know a lot better than I should.

“Everyone’s gone home for the night, so I don’t think using Principal Daniels office will be a problem.” She says as she heads down the hall and disappears into the room.

The right thing to do would be to follow her and get this over with, but I’m sick of doing the right thing. The few times I tried, it’s always come back and bit me in the ass. I’m not looking to make a repeat performance.

“Are you coming
?” she calls out and I know its decision time. I can walk out of here now, not looking back until I’m in my car and halfway down the road away from this entire situation, or I can go into the room and get this over with even though just the thought of opening myself up and talking about Cadence is enough to make me wanna throw up.

Heading toward the office, remembering the last time I’d been here, three days before she walked into my world and turned it upside down, I want to kick myself for choosing the wrong thing and I’m about to literally do it when she speaks again.

“Dillon, I know everything.”

Wasn’t expecting that.

“What do you mean?”

“Cadence told me about what happened between the two of you before she left. Well, as much as I could yank out of her anyway.”

“If you already know, why are you talking to me? Like I said, if she’s different, it’s got nothing to do with me. Maybe something else happened the last two days she was here or over the weekend.”

“Can I tell you something?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“You always have a choice, but something tells me if you didn’t want to hear what I have to say, you wouldn’t be standing in the room right now.”

She’s got me there. I want to know every single thing she’s willing to tell me and I don’t care if it makes me look like a gigantic pussy or not. When it comes to this girl, I’d be willing to be just about anything for a scrap of information about her.

“What do you wanna tell me?” I ask, finally throwing myself down
into the chair across from her.

“My daughter spent the majority of the weekend locked in her room. Sh
e doesn’t think I’m aware because I didn’t go out of my way to call attention to it, but she was crying. Her heart is hurting Dillon and while I’m pretty sure that right now you’re thinking I’m about to lay a guilt trip on you, I’m going to do the opposite.”

Caden
ce crying is wrong. Knowing she spent the weekend doing it because of what happened with us is even worse. I know there’s nothing else that happened to her that could have caused her to cry. I made sure of it. I warned every person away from her those last two days because I didn’t want her to have to feel any more broken then I already made her.