Hear Me Now (21 page)

“I don’t follow.”

“Cadence wasn’t crying because of something you did to her, Dillon. She was crying because of what she thinks she did to you.”

Huh—
what? She’s got to be joking. Cadence doing anything to hurt me is crazy. Sure, I asked her not to go, telling her I loved her, but she had every right to do what she did and leave. I knew the way she felt about things and I completely disregarded it to act like an imbecile.

“She didn’t do anything to me.”

“I figured that would be your answer.”

“Ms. T;
what happened that day, it’s on me. I went after Tim knowing I was going to scare her. I knew she hated fighting and with everything she tried to do to help with my dad and what he’s got me doing, it should have been enough to stop me, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t see anything but making him pay for the things he said.”

“Can you tell me exactly what it was that he said?”

“She didn’t tell you?”

She laughs and I’m confused. How there is anything funny right now is beyond me.

“Cadence hates admitting when people call her names. There’s something about repeating the words that make her feel that she’s as bad as the people saying it. As if repeating it somehow means she believes it. So, no, she didn’t tell me.”

“When he showed up, he asked if I minded walking away from the retard so he could talk to me. I reacted to that one, but that’s not what got me in his face. It didn’t make me attack him.”

“What else was said?”

“I told him that we, Caddy and me, didn’t wanna hear what he said to say and he ripped on her for being de
af. I couldn’t handle it after that. I lost it.”

“Thank you. I’m sure it wasn’t easy, considering your friendship with the guy in question.”

My friendship with the guy. That’s a joke. There’s no friendship with him and that was obvious today with the way I reacted to what we did to Eric. I’m over doing that now, despite wanting to be the way I used to be and the only thing between Tim and me now is familiarity.

As long as he’s with me, I don’t have to be alone.

“Can I be honest with you and have it stay between us?”

“If there is something you want to speak
to me about in confidence, of course. I will never speak of it, not even with my daughter. That is who you want me to keep it from right?”

“No, I want it kept from everyone else. I think Caddy already knows it anyway.”

“Well what is it?”

“The other day, Kayden said something to me. At the time I didn’t pay much attention to it because well, your daughter was there and when she’s around, I don’t really pay attention the way I should. Anyway, he sai
d something about realizing the day in the parking lot with Isabelle that he was tired of the way things were. When I got here today, I thought things were going to go back to the way they were before. I even tried to make them the way they used to be, but I can’t do it.”

“Because what Kayden experienced is now what you’re facing?”

“Exactly. I get what he was talking about now. I knew it last week, but again, I ignored and buried it because it just didn’t seem important at the time. The truth is, I haven’t been right for a while. What happened at Homecoming, it was up to me to see it through and there was a second there where I almost didn’t do it.”

“Why didn’t you follow through on it?”

“Because it’s not what I do. I’m not the good guy, Ms. T. I’m pretty sure you know that; especially now.”

“Here’s what I know. You’re a misguided boy who when faced with the right decision backs down because doing the right thing is harder than going through with the wrong one. You’ve spent the majority of your life having excuses made for you and your behavior and it’s m
ade you entitled. For whatever reason, you’re starting to see it yourself and for a while even wanted to change it.”

“Except I didn’t change anything.”

“But you did. You changed. I know what happened to Eric today. He told me about it after class, when he was sure you and Tim were not in the vicinity. Where you would have been the one hurting him before, that’s not at all what happened. Tim will be dealt with, but it was your behavior that stood out.”

“Did he tell you that too?”

“As a matter of fact he did. He said that you’re the reason he was able to get up and walk away. You may have gone into it with a different outcome in mind, but something stopped you and you want to know what that something is?”

“Your daughter haunting me?” I answer, realizing too late that I just gave away the real reason the stuff with Eric ended up the way it did. She laughs and I just shake my head. Now that it’s out there it’s not like I can take it back. If she finds it funny there’s not a whole lot I can do to stop her.

“No, though I can see that happening. It’s you, Dillon. Your desire to do the right thing. As hard as you try to bottle it, it’s not letting you anymore and it has nothing at all to do with how you feel about my daughter or the impact she may have made on your life. It’s all on you. You were ready for the change.”

“That’s not right at all.”

“She was right about you. She told me what you said to her the last time you spoke. That you wanted to change for her because you want to be worthy of her. What you need to realize is you were worthy of her the whole time. You just couldn’t see it because you’ve buried yourself so deep in self-hatred and the way you think things should be that it’s impossible to see much else.”

“Even if what you’re saying is the truth, what does it matter now?”

“Before I answer your question, can you answer one for me?”

“If I can.”

“How did it feel today, walking away from Eric the way you did?”

“Pretty damn good.”

“Then you’ve answered your own question. It matters because despite her being gone, the two of you having no contact, you’re staying true to what you told her from the start. You’re becoming the person you’ve always been, the one that’s been buried for six years under a weight no child should ever have to carry.”

I don’t want to admit it, but she’s right. I told Cadence the
reason for me changing was her, but it wasn’t. I made it about her, putting the weight of it on her but it was me the entire time. I’m just like Kayden. I got tired of being someone I couldn’t stand looking at in the mirror every morning and was just looking for the right motivation to change it. I found it in her and I’ve been changing ever since, even though my reason is no longer there.

“Her not being here, I’m not okay with it. I’m not okay with the way we left things.” I confess, not sure where it comes from but needing to get it out before it eats me alive.

“Well, if you’re not happy with the way things are, you know what you have to do, don’t you?”

Yeah I do. I need to fix it. I need to go to her and I need to make her understand everything that I’ve learned here today, what I’ve been learning since before she even left four days ago. I can’t do it though. I ran out of chances.

“I can’t fix it this time, Ms. T. I tried that day to make her see the truth, the way I felt about her and it wasn’t enough to make her stay.”

“You want to know a secret? A little bit of information I’ve picked up over the years?”

“Sure.”

“Love isn’t about trying, failing and giving up because it didn’t work out the way you wanted it to
o. It’s continuing to try despite it.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Dillon

I’m not the guy that tries. If it doesn’t come easy to me there’s just never been a point. That’s probably because I’ve been handed everything for so long that trying never entered into the equation.

Two weeks.

Fourteen days.

One girl.

That’s all it took for everything I’ve spent the last six ye
ars believing and feeling secure in, to change. I’m not sure from one second to the next if I’m moving up or down, forward or backward, but what I do know is that everything I’ve been through these last two weeks, I wouldn’t change for the world.

It started out so simple. Spy the new girl in the special needs class, get her to talk to me, bring her as close as possible to me and then completely destroy her for my own amusement. That’s not what ended up happening at all. If anything, she brought me in as close as she could and been the one to destroy me.

Who knew that being destroyed could feel so good?

After talking with her mom, putting everything out there and being on the receiving end of support and understandi
ng for the first time in my life, I’m clear on what I’ve got to do now. I need to do what Ms. T said and I’ve got to try.

Cadence walking away from me can’t be the end of this. I
can’t let it be the end of me or of us. I might not be all that familiar with the way I feel about her, never feeling like this about any girl I’ve ever been involved with, but I know enough not to turn away from it just because for the first time in years, I don’t have all the control.

That’s what it’s been about all this time. I need to be in control. When I’m in a fight, whether one of
the ones my father plans or the ones at school, I control it. Even that day in the parking lot with Kayden, even though he took me down, I was still in control because I didn’t let it end there. When I pick on kids, especially ones like Isabelle and Eric, I feed off the control I have over their fate.

When I’m in control, I’m strong and that’s what I’ve been holding on to for six years. It ends now. If it means that I have to appear weak for
the first time in my life, then so be it. I care about this girl, more than I’ve ever cared about anyone in my pathetic existence and I’m willing to give it all up to prove it. Not only to her, but to me too.

The ride over here, I tried to work out what
I would say when I saw her again. How I wanted to start things off and even how I would react to her response. I even had the entire way it would end mapped out. I wouldn’t settle for anything less than her being in my arms again.

Pulling up into her driveway, thankful that I managed to beat her mom home even though we left at the same time, I put the car in park and watch as the door opens and two bodies walk out on to the steps. One I expect to see, I mean it’s her that I’m here to see, but the other one surprises me. The knot in my stomach seeing them together gets even worse as I watch her wrap her arms around him in a hug.

The doubt creeps in as I wonder if I’ve been deluding myself all along. Eric is the one standing on her front step with his arms around her and I’m the chump sitting in the car staring them down, wanting nothing more than to get out of the car and slam his face off the side of the house.

Am I too late? Did
Cadence not feel the same as I did during our time together and Eric is the one she’s wanted this whole time?

There’s no denying that he would be a better fit for her. He understands her in a way that despite wanting to, I don’t think I ever will. I’ve seen him signing to her before, which means he knows enough about her to want to make things easier. If I really want to be with this girl, learning all that I could about her disability and ways I can make it easier on her should have been the first step.

Instead I’d been the idiot and jumped ahead fifty steps. Yeah, Eric is definitely a better fit for her even though I can’t stand the thought of it.  She’s mine and no matter what happens now, she’s always going to be mine. I need her. She makes me want to be a better person. She makes me want to be me again.

Wh
en they separate, I see her eyes lock on the car and her forehead creases. She’s spotted me. Now not only do I look like a stalker, sitting here watching them the way I have been, but I’m also bothering her.

I want to turn the key in the ignition and leave. She may have caught me in her driveway, but since we haven’t spoken and she’s not making
a move to come closer, I can still pull out and take off. I don’t do that though. Instead, I keep her mom’s words running through my head and open the door and get out, not stopping until I’m directly behind them.

It’s time to face this head on. Even if the way I pictured it going in my head i
sn’t the way it turns out.

Looking up, seeing her eyes
on me, I smile, hoping that with the small action, I can somehow put her at ease. I didn’t exactly want an audience doing this, but now that he’s here, I know he won’t leave until he knows she’s safe.

“Can we talk?”

Her hands start moving and it takes me no time at all to see what she’s doing. Her lips are frozen in the straightest line and she’s making no move to separate them, which means whatever she’s signing, it’s not meant for me. She knows I don’t know how to sign. It only makes me wanna kick myself more for not even attempting to learn.

It’s only when Eric turns and faces me that it all becomes clear.

“She has nothing to say to you.”

“Well, I’ve got some things to say to her.”

“Dillon, you really want me to tell her that?”

“If she can read lips, she already knows.”

Eric turns back to her and I watch them as they silently carry on a conversation. It bugs me. It’s like watching two people speaking in a different language and wondering if they’re saying something bad about you.  I know I said I don’t care what people think of me, but Cadence is different. I actually give a shit what she thinks and I hate the idea of her saying anything right now that might be bad.

“Can you please just say this out loud?” I ask, no longer willing to sit here and watch the two of them go back and forth.

Eric turns back to me and takes the final two stairs down until he’s on the ground beside me.

“I was just telling her goodbye and to be careful with you.  I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I don’t feel right leaving her alone with you.”

“I’m not going to hurt her.”

“You’ve done that enough already don’t ya think?” he asks and it takes every bit of restraint I have not to punch him. He has no idea what’s going on with me and Cadence so he needs to butt out and keep his opinions to himself.

“None of your business. You don’t know anything.”

“So you didn’t single her out a couple weeks ago?”

His words make my blood run cold. How the hell does he know about the plan? The only people that knew what I wanted to do in the beginning were Tim, Amy and the others and I’m damn sure they didn’t go out of their way to tell Eric about it.

“You not arguing means I’m right. You did single her out. You wanted to hurt her.”

“Does she know?” I ask, thankful that Eric is facing toward me more than her so she isn’t able to see what he’s saying. If she doesn’t know, I don’t want her to know. It will ruin everything.

“No. Seeing how screwed up she is over what happened with you, I figured it was smarter to keep it to myself.”

I want to breathe a sigh of relief so bad I can taste it, but I don’t. As thankful as I am that he didn’t tell her, I know it’s only a matter of time before it does come out. It means I need to be the one to tell her the truth, even if it screws up the entire way I had this planned in my head. I won’t try to fix this by keeping things from her.

She was a game to me in the beginning, but that didn’t last long once I got to know her. She pulled me to her in a completely different way and now that she has, I never want to look at her like a game ever again.

“How long have you been playing her?”

“A day or two at most. I tried to do it and couldn’t. I don’t expect you to believe me, but this is about more than a game now.”

His eyes lift, surprised with my answer, but his body tells a different story altogether. He doesn’t trust me even though for the first time since I’ve known him, I’m telling the truth.

“She said she’d be fine with you, so I’m gonna get
out of here, but Dillon, don’t hurt her. She’s had enough of the stuff you and your friends do. You wanna pick on me, go ahead, but don’t do it to her.”

He walks away before I can respond and my eyes instantly make their way back up to where she’s standing on the step waiting. When our eyes meet, she motions behind her into the house and I make my way up and inside, not moving once I’m inside. Hearing the click of the door behind me, I turn and again flash a tiny smile her way.

I need to break the ice and I need to do it quick.

She moves and before I know it, she’s going around the corner into the kitchen and I’m jogging to catch up with her. When I see that she’s seated at the table, a paper in front of her, I follow her lead and sit down to her right. It’s only when I’m completely seated and comfortable that she slides the paper over to me and I read what’s on the page.

What are you doing here?

“We need to talk.” I say, passing the paper back to her and waiting as she starts writing across the page. I know that I’ve earned her doing things this way again, but I really hate that she’s not speaking to me, especially with the way I feel about the sound of her voice.
Right now I need to hear it. Hearing her will make me right again.

What do we need to talk about?

Here goes nothing.

“I attacked Eric today. With you gone, I thought it would
be easy sliding back into my old routine, so I went after him. Landing the first hit on him, it didn’t make me feel right at all. It felt wrong. All I could see when I hit him was you.”

Is that supposed to make me feel good? You saw me when you were beating up my friend?

“No Caddy, it’s not supposed to make you feel good. It’s supposed to make you hate me. Make you see that what you saw in me weeks ago, it was wrong from the start. I really am the asshole everyone makes me out to be. The way I make myself out to be.”

That’s a lie and an excuse.

I can’t argue with that. She’s right. I’m on my default setting right now and I need to stop. No more excuses.

“I thought in the beginning that me changing, it was because of you. I had to change in order to be good enough for you. The thing
is, you were right. I didn’t have to change for you, it was just easier throwing it all on you. I didn’t think at all about what that kind of pressure would do to someone. What it would do to you.”

And you know now?

“Yeah I do. I wasn’t always an asshole. I think I might’ve been a pretty decent guy before, but I let things and people change me. I used you as my excuse to be better, but I wanted to be better all on my own.”

If that’s true, why did you attack Eric today?

“To feel something again, even if it was the wrong something. To deny what I just told you.”

Okay.

Her response isn’t much and seeing the one word on the paper should just make me quit while I’m ahead, but I can’t do that. I made a plan to come here and try to make things right, walking away wouldn’t solve anything but put us right back where we were before.

“Caddy, I miss you. I don’t want to miss you. I want to just go back to school and forget yo
u exist, but I can’t do it. You’re there in my head, in the school. Every damn corner I take, there you are, your words on repeat. I can’t escape you. I don’t want to escape you. Not anymore.”

What do you want me to say?

“I want you to tell me the truth. Can I fix this? If I walk out right now, am I ever going to be able to come back? After everything that’s happened, can we be friends the way I wanted to be in the beginning?”

She sits completely still, her head fa
cing down toward the paper, the pen dangling in her hand, no intent to write in sight. It physically hurts watching her like this. The silence is deafening. I just want her to say something, write anything so this torture can end.

After minutes pass and I come to terms with the fact that she’s never going to answer me, I try one more thing. So far, everything I’ve told her
is the truth, but there’s still one thing she doesn’t know and even though it might mean she’ll be done with me forever, I need to make sure she knows it.

I need to be able to leave her, no matter what the outcome knowing that I left nothing unspoken.

Sliding the paper out from under her hand, not wanting to reach out and touch her so she can read my lips, I reach across and slide the pen out of her limp fingers and start writing, not looking up once until it’s all out there.

When I walked into your mom’s class the first day and saw you, after I got over how good looking I thought you were, I focused on just what was wro
ng with you that made you end up in the class. I decided that day to talk to you, get you to open up to me, even make you like me so that I could screw with you in the end. You were a game to me. I didn’t know at the time how I was gonna do it, like what I would do to you to end it, but I wanted you to hurt.