Hear Me Now (22 page)

I see her face drop the minute she reads the words and I know I’ve put the final nail in my coffin. Any hope of getting her to forgive me for all the shit I did that final week is now blown to shit because of the way it a
ll began. I did the right thing telling her the truth, but that right thing didn’t give me the calm I wanted.

Doing the right thing this time, knowing that I hurt her—again, it made me sick inside.

Whoever said that the truth will set you free was full of shit.

Cadence

His words, what he wrote to me, I already knew all of this. No one had to tell me, it’s just something I knew all on my own. I’ve heard my mom talk about Dillon, the way he is, the things he does, so him seeing me that first day and choosing to play a game to keep himself entertained, it’s not surprising.

With the way I feel about him, there’s no way his words won’t get to me. They hurt, because like I told him when we got into it a couple of weeks ago, I think there’s more to him buried underneath, but not enough to change anything.

I should probably hate him, but I can’t. He’s standing here admitting to things that are probably better left quiet. Picking on Eric, playing a game with me, wanting me to hurt the same way he does, you don’t admit to those things unless you’ve got nothing left to lose. I believe everything he’s telling me despite the nagging voice inside that wants me to think this is just another game.

So after a few minutes of complete quiet, where I process everything he’s said and done since he showed up in my driveway earlier, I do the only thing left to do. If
he’s gonna stand here now, putting everything on the line in order to tell me the truth, it’s time I do the same.

Picking the pen up off the table and flipping the sheet over so that I’ve got a free space to write, I let the words pour out of me. I don’t know what he’s going to think, but this, what I’m writing to him now, good or bad has to be the end of it. Walking away from him should have done it, but it didn’t. This has to be it now.

I’m deaf, Dillon. Not blind. I know what you thought about me the first day. I show up in a class full of special needs kids, it’s obvious that I would have been one of them. It must have felt like Christmas for you that day. You had someone new to pick on.

I get it. It hurts hearing it, but I get it.

I miss you too.  You’re not the only one that’s haunted. It should have been easy to get back to my life here, going back to school and hanging out with my friends, but I haven’t been able to separate myself from the last two weeks and I’m not sure I’m ever gonna be able to.

You’re not the only one that changed during those two weeks together. I did too. I don’t know if we can fix this, but the only way that this is your last visit here is if you let it be. The same thing goes for the friend thing. It only changes if you want it to change.

There’s so much that I want to put on the paper, but the words won’t come, at least not yet, so I just slide it across the table to him. It’s going to have to be enough for now.

When his eyes finish scanning over the paper, he slides his hand across the table until his fingers are barely resting on top of mine. As I look up his lips start moving and just like every other time he’s spoken to me, I’m locked in place watching, completely unable to look away.

“You mean it?”

No
dding, I watch as his lips lift in a smile.

“Will you go to prom with me?”

I shake my head slowly and using my free hand I reach for the paper, knowing that he’s going to take this the wrong way and needing to explain before things get out of hand. Dillon might be different, but things just don’t change overnight and with one misunderstanding already happening between us because of something I said, I’m not eager to repeat it with another one.

I can’t go with you because Eric asked me and I said yes. I want to do this for him. He deserves it.

He sighs, pulling his hand away from mine and raking it through his hair.

“You know he likes you right? He asked you because he has a thing for you.”

I shake my head the second he says the words. He couldn’t be more wrong. Eric doesn’t have a thing for me other than wanting to be my friend. I don’t know where he gets his information, but this is most definitely wrong.

“Shit. I sound like Amy right now.”

Now he’s lost me. What this has to do with Amy, I don’t get but I hate anything remotely attached to me being compared to her.

What does that mean?

“When we were together, all I did was ride her about her jealousy. I hated the way she always thought every girl on the planet wanted to get in my pants. Pissed me off huge.” As I nod my head, he continues. “Your mom told me that Eric likes you, so I swear it’s not jealousy. Well, it is a little, but it’s more than that. Caddy, you can’t go with him.”

I want to know how my mom knows that Eric likes me, but since she’s not here to ask and I’m pretty sure she didn’t share that much with Dillon, it looks like I’m gonna have to wait until she’s home later and ask her. Right now though, it looks like I’ve got to deal with the rest of it.

I already said yes to him. I’m not backing out. I’m sorry.

“Do you want to be with me?” he asks as he reads what I wrote. Reaching out to take the paper from him, more than ready to give him an answer
, he pulls it away from me.  “No more writing. Just say it.”

The way the muscles in his cheek twitch make me think there’s an edge to his voice and I’m thankful I can’t hear it.
When he asked, my answer, it was so easy. Now though, I’m not so sure. He knows how I feel about speaking, no matter how comfortable I feel around him. I might be able to do what he says and say it out loud easily enough, but forcing me to do it, it’s not going to work out well for him.

If I can accept him for the way he is, then he needs to do the same for me or this, whatever it is going on with us, won’t go anywhere.

“No.”

“No?” he asks and my heart sinks with the surprise and hurt I see in his eyes. I can’t go back though. It doesn’t matter how I feel about him. If he can’t understand even the simplest thing about me, than he’s never going to be able to be with me in the way I want him to be.

I was right before. We’re just not right for each other no matter how much I wish it were different. Reaching across and grabbing the paper that’s now loosely hanging in his hands, I start writing.

No Dillon. I don’t want to be with you.

“You’re lying. I see your words, but your face…” he says, his lips closing before he finishes his thought.

I’m not lying.

“Yes you are! You said you missed me! You said that things would only change if I let them. I don’t want them to change. It’s the whole reason I’m here. This isn’t a game to me anymore, Cadence. I want to start over. I want to be with you!”

With as worked up as he is, his hands dangerously close to ripping what’s left of his hair from his head, my next words, I know what they’re gonna do. It doesn’t make them any less true. What he said to me just brings it all back around again.

We’ve always been a game, Dillon. The game’s over. You lose.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Dillon

This is much better. I don’t know why I w
as so against it. I’ve never felt more alive.

Watching all the people making their way in through the barn doors, walking off to different corners of the room where my dad’s got a ton of metal chairs lined up, I shake off the remainder of the shit with Caddy from my mind and focus my attention on the beast standing in front of me.

Stripping off my shirt and throwing it toward a group of girls that are huddled in the far corner of the back row, flashing them a grin as one of them catches it, I turn back just in time to see Frank step forward and nod his head at both of us. Stepping closer, more than ready to get the show on the road, I see my father standing a few feet behind my opponent for the night.

I’ve known about this fight for a few days now. With me hiding out and bailing on the last one, driving as far out of Wexfield as the gas in my car would take me, Bruce set this one up as a way for me to pay him back. Where I figured I’d just take off out of town again, after everything that went down with Cadence a few hours ago, a fight sounded pretty damn good.

Thinking about her can’t happen. I owe Bruce a fair fight. One where my head’s completely in it and I take this asshole down exactly the way he taught me years ago. Not thinking about her is impossible though so as I stand here, waiting for Ricky to make his way toward me, his mammoth size alone proving this is going to be as far from a fair fight as it gets, I let my mind go over it all again.

“We’ve always been a game, Dillon.”

Maybe in the beginning that’s exactly what we were because that’s how I looked at her, but from about the second day in, it stopped being about that. The way I felt when Amy threw her down proves that. I couldn’t handle that it was happening to her. I might have fought against the truth for a while after, but Kayden dropping the truth in my lap, it woke me up.

Telling her
I loved her the day she walked away from me, back then, I think I still might have been fighting against what I was feeling, but now, I’m positive. I don’t have the first clue what love feels like, I’ve avoided it for as long as I can remember, but if the way I was with her has anything to do with it, than I know I did love her.

I still love her even if she doesn’t believe a word of it.

She pissed me off calling us a game. It was that anger that drove me here now. It’s what is gonna drive me to win this fight. I’m gonna take this son of a bitch down or die trying because no matter what I do, I can’t get some stupid deaf girl to believe in me.

Shit. I don’t mean that. She’s not stupid. She’s not even some girl. Cadence is
the
girl.

When I asked her if she wanted to be with me, she wanted to say yes. I don’t give a shit what came out of her mouth after it, she wanted to say yes, but something stopped her. Maybe it was how I reacted to her g
oing to prom with Eric, or it was when I took the paper away from her, forcing her to speak to me. Whatever it is, I know it’s my fault she said no.

That’s another reason I’m fighting now. I fought myself in order to be with this girl that even I admit I don’t know the first thing about and I lost. Standing here now, I know I can’t lose. This is the kind of fight I was born to win.

“You know what you gotta do now, don’t ya son?”

Shaking off the chill I get hearing him
speak, I nod my head. I do know what I have to do now. I’ve gotta wait for Frank to start this thing and do whatever’s necessary to bring this big guy to his knees.

The same way that Cadence brought me to mine.

“Good, because I got a lot of money riding on this fight and a loss is unacceptable.”

God, I’ve never wanted to turn ar
ound and level him so much in my life. Even if he didn’t have money riding on this, a loss would still be unacceptable. He’s half the reason the slash over my eye was as deep as it was. He took what they did to me and made it worse.  Bruce hates to lose.

“Ya, I got it. Let’s just get this over with.”

Putting my focus back where it belongs, I stare Ricky down. He’s at least 6’4 which isn’t a whole lot taller than me but enough that I’m gonna have to work harder to win this than if it was against one of the guys from the other day.

“You ready?” Frank asks me and I nod. His eyes before he turns to ask the same of my opponent surprise me. He’s been in a ton of fights since I started doing this and never once has he looked at me like that. If I didn’t know any better I’d say he looked concerned.

Hearing Ricky’s grunted reply, I turn, just in time to duck to the right avoiding the first punch and sensing what his next move is about to be, I dodge before his left hand can land the uppercut he so obviously wants to on my jaw. Reacting I bring my left arm up with an uppercut of my own, landing it square in his stomach as he’s reeling from his missed attempts.

Watching as he stumbles backwards, I run at him, throwing the full weight of my body into his until I’ve tacked him to the ground. Once Ricky falls, his back hitting the floor with a crack so loud it reminds me of the day Cadence fell in the hall, I
jump up and stomp on him with my legs, one after the other until his body is still.

Leaning down until my knees are level with the ground, I start pummeling him, not letting up for a second, landing shot after shot on his face, the rage inside of me now at an all-time high. It’s not Ri
cky’s face I see anymore. First I see Kayden and what I should have done to him that day in the parking lot and again at the dance, and then it quickly turns to Eric, my anger at Cadence accepting his prom invitation, the jealousy so strong I feel like my heads gonna explode.

His face is bleeding now, I can
feel the wetness on my hands but I don’t stop, knowing that nothing is gonna please Bruce more than for him to see me decimate Ricky, leaving him within an inch of his life.

That’s what no one gets. I could have easily taken down my best friend months ago, but I deserved to be hit so I let it happen. It’s exactly why I love beating on the
weak babies at school too. They deserve to be beat on as much as I did and maybe even do now.

I want them to hate me as much as I hate myself.

Backing away, catching my breath, it gives Ricky enough time to get his bearings and before I know it, he’s shoving his arms into me, making me stumble until I lose balance and fall to the floor across from him. In the time it takes me to blink, he’s hovering over me and this time, he’s the one leveling me with his fists, putting my arms up to block coming two seconds too late and it’s the final punch that does me in.

The minute I feel it connect with my jaw, my head snaps to the side and my body completely goes li
mp. The shooting pain rising to the surface and making me want to scream from the sheer agony of it. In a weak attempt to keep him off me, I raise my hand up to swing, but it falls flat as it barely rubs his shoulder.

The room around me is spinning now and I know it’s not going to be long before I pass out, essentially pissing Bruce off even more and losing him a shit ton of money.  Forcing my eyes to stay open as Ricky prepares to level me with his final blow, I dodge out of the way at the last second and crawling across the floor, attempting to find anything I can lift myself up with, that’s when I hear it.

First the scream and then my name from a familiar voice, a voice that I would think would be the last person to show up to one of these things. Since I never told him about any of it, what he’s doing here at all makes no sense.

I feel myself being grabbed from behind before I can look up or even respond to the sounds I’m hearing and it’s not long before I’m being swung through the air and slammed hard and fast down on to the floor below, the hay doing nothing to soften the blow. I feel my legs go numb and even though I can still hear the voices around me, one stronger than all the others, it starts fading as my eyes start clouding over with dark spots.

The last thing I hear before I completely pass out is the most beautiful music in the world. The sound of my name being said by the only person in the entire world I ever want to hear it from.

Cadence.

Cadence

When Dillon left
after I pretty much ripped his heart out, my mom came home. I’m not sure if it’s because I didn’t wipe away the tears that she noticed something was wrong or if it’s because the minute she came in the door I bolted for my room, but whatever the case, she caught on and prevented me from hiding away.

After signing it all out to her in excruciating detail, so much so that b
y the end my hands physically hurt from the constant movement, she stood up and went to the front door after telling me to hold on. I watched as she opened her briefcase, slipped out a legal sized notepad and a couple of pens before turning and making her way back to the sofa.

When he left here, how did he appear to you?

How do you think? He was upset. He thinks I don’t want to be with him.

That is what you told him, Caddy.

I sigh before focusing my mind on the paper, trying again to make her understand everything I’d just spent the last thirty minutes signing to her.

I know what I told him, Mom. You weren’t here. The way he told me to speak to him instead of writing and the way he reacted when he heard Eric asked me to Prom, it was too much. I can’t be with someone who doesn’t understand what it’s like to be me. No matter how I feel about them.

When I hand her the pad and she makes no motion to write back to everything I’ve said, I take a chance and look at her. It’s only when she meets my eyes that I see why she’s not writing. She’s disappointed in me.

“Oh, Caddy.” She sighs, her eyes falling to the pad and my words and then coming up to meet mine again. “He doesn’t understand you because you aren’t giving him the chance to.”

Do you ever think that we’re just not compatible
? I sign to her before stopping completely and thinking out what I need to say next.
You’re the one that told me he was bad news remember?

“I know what I said an
d I also know when to admit I’m wrong. I’ve been teaching a group of kids and for years I’ve preached to them how wrong it is to judge a book by its cover. How can I expect my students or even my own daughter to listen to my advice when I don’t even take it myself?”

Unsure of what to say in response to her admission, I lower my head to my hands and just stare at them resting on my leg. She had a change of heart and a lot of that had to do with me, she didn’t have to come out and say it. I’m the one that went at her so hard about Dillon in the beginning and now it’s like the roles are reversed.

After a few minutes of neither one of us making a move, I reach out to the pad and pull it into my lap. I don’t know how much good it’ll do, but maybe with as much information as she has, not only about me and the kids she teaches but the stuff she’s learned about Dillon in the short time he’s been present in our lives, maybe she can tell me what I’m supposed to do now.

How am I supposed to feel, Mom? How am I supposed to react to him? I don’t want to change him but the way he is, it’s hard to handle. I get that he might be upset that I said yes to Eric, but we weren’t together when he asked me. I said yes because I want to do right by Eric and if Dillon
really wanted to get to know the real me the way he claims to, he should understand that and want me to go through with it too.

Her response is immediate the minute her eyes scan the page.

Dillon can’t let you go through with this because he’s in love with you, Cadence. I know you don’t have a lot of experience with that outside of the way I feel about you, but one look in the boy’s eyes and you can’t deny it. A boy or even a man in love is not going to handle his girlfriend being with another guy in any way that’s smart or right.

Dillon’s in love with me? I know what he said to me before I came back to school,
but I just figured he said it to try and get me to stay. It’s not like he went out of his way to tell me earlier or give me a clue that he felt it.

My mom’s right. I have no idea what being in love is even like. No one’s ever cared enough to want to try with me and the feelings been mutual. At least it was until Dillon.

Caddy, what does Dillon do when he’s upset? You’ve heard me speak about him more than enough times over the last year and now you’ve interacted with him yourself. When he gets upset or gets thrown into a situation that doesn’t turn out the way he expects, what does he do?

He hurts people.

In other words, he fights.

I nod my head
and that’s when I figure it out. What she was asking me first, how he reacted to everything that happened between us, she was making a point, one I didn’t catch.

Dillon’s default setting when he’s mad is to find someone to take it out on. He will bully anyone he believes to be weak at school or worse, he’ll go looking for it elsewhere when he doesn’t have the school option. Knowing what I do about his father and what the man puts him through, everything makes perfect sense now.

“You think he left here and went to fight don’t you?”