by Teagan Kade
I look up at the sky. It feels like someone’s taken a wrecking ball to my face.
“Hey, you okay?”
I squint, trying to make out who it is crouched over me. I turn sideways and see a sports bag there, can’t quite seem to put two and two together.
“I can go after him if you want,” the voice says.
I reach up and find grip on something—a jacket, I think. “No,” I plead. “Stay.”
I attempt to sit up even though my body is fighting me. My vision starts to clear, and I finally realize who this mystery Samaritan is.
“Phoenix?”
It’s met with a smile. “So you do know my name?”
If I could roll my eyes without forcing a migraine, I would. “Everyone knows your name, dipshit.”
He points to himself. “The dipshit who just came to your rescue, you mean?”
He helps me up into a sitting position and I have to admit I don’t mind the feeling of his hand at my back. “He got away, didn’t he?”
He laughs. “You’re hard to please, aren’t you?”
I groan again, reaching for my lip and pulling away my finger spotted with blood. “Prick.”
Phoenix looks offended. “Jesus, I was only trying to h—”
“Not you,” I stammer, pointing to the loose direction where the mugger ran. “Him!”
Phoenix reaches up and lightly brushes my cheek with the back of his thumb, those famous King eyes penetrating even in the semi-light of the carpark. “You’re pretty banged up. I’ve got a first-aid kit in my car. What do you say?”
A new question forms. I look to his sports bag, note the team jacket he’s wearing. “Why are you even here? Aren’t the basketball courts on the other side of campus?”
He pulls back a little. “They are, yes, and I was at practice.”
“But?” I push.
He scratches his head, looking away. “Ah, I kind of was waiting for you.”
Not the answer I was expecting. “Waiting for me? Why?”
He goes to answer but I put my hand up. “No, don’t answer that.” I rock forwards closing my eyes, a sudden bout of dizziness overcoming me.
“You good?”
“Do I look fucking good?” I snap.
“Well… kind of like the lovechild of Furiosa and Gwen Stefani, so yes?”
I almost laugh at that. I extend an arm. “Help me up then.”
He hooks his arm under mine and lifts me to my feet. He takes off his jacket once I’m standing, wrapping it around me and keeping his arm over my shoulders as we walk-slash-hobble up the hill to where the student parking lot would be. I’m surprised at how solid his body is beside me, the warmth and heat it gives off.
“You want me to call the cops?” he queries.
I shake my head. “No, that won’t do any good.”
We finally make it to the student parking lot, Phoenix directing us to what looks like a brand-new Corvette parked, you guessed it, right up front in the priority area reserved for the campus’s big donors, the movers and shakers.
He pops the trunk and helps me sit down against the edge of it, the suspension not giving an inch. I watch him move to the passenger side and pull the door open, fumbling around in the glovebox before returning with a small first-aid kit.
He crouches and places the kit on the ground, going through its contents while I sit there feeling like a fool. I should have been more careful, even here at Crestfall.
“So you just carry a first-aid kit around for what? Kicks?”
He’s busy sorting the kit. “Be prepared.”
“The Boy Scouts’ motto. You weren’t a Boy Scout, I’d bet.”
“Technically, no, though my father did enjoy getting us out in the wilderness. ‘Builds resilience,’ he liked to say… while he left us alone in the middle of woods with nothing but a flint. Fucking hated those little surprises he’d throw up.”
“Your father’s Bear Grylls then?”
Phoenix laughs, dabbing a cotton ball into antiseptic and bringing it up to my face. I can smell the chemical odor of it overpowering everything else. “If Bear Grylls wore a suit and only cared about sport, sure.”
I grit my teeth when the cotton ball touches the graze on my cheek, don’t want to let him see it’s affecting me. “Isn’t that all you Kings care about? The next trophy? The next win?”
There’s complete focus in the way he operates, dabbing at the area next to my forehead where the heel of that fucker’s boot caught me. “A common misconception.”
“So you’re here to tell me you enjoy classical music and old black-and-white films, that you’re so cultured and nothing like the brutish player the folks around here would make you about to be.”
He stops, leaning back on his haunches. “First, wrong brother, and second, you don’t know me.”
I bite my lip, tasting the metallic tang of the dried blood there and feeling even worse. “Sorry.”
He puts the cotton ball down on the ground. “No need to apologize. You weren’t entirely wrong.”
“So you do like a bit of Beethoven.”
“If you’re referring to the wholesome ’90s film starring a rather stately Saint Bernard, who doesn’t?”
Touché.
“Look,” he says, the joker evaporating, “I’m no doctor. We should go the hospital. You might have a concussion.”
“I’ve been through worse.”
He nods slowly. “Yes, but I wouldn’t feel right leaving you like this. At the very least promise you’ll report this to campus security.”
“I will.”
“You’re probably going to look like a raccoon tomorrow. You know that, right? A really cute, bad-ass raccoon.”
Now I roll my eyes. “You don’t come to the dining hall for the food, do you?”
“Fuck no,” he smiles.
He was planning to ask me out, waiting around out here like some kind of weird sporty stalker, but what am I to do?
He seems to read my thoughts. “At least let me check on you tomorrow, make sure you’re okay.”
Oh, god. Why am I doing this to myself? “I’m glad you were there tonight, honestly, so I’m going to buy you a coffee, to say thank you, but that is it, got it?”
He’s suddenly smiling like he’s won the state lottery, not that the Kings need any more money. “Got it, but you haven’t told me your name.”
Shit. I haven’t. “Heather.”
He starts to pack up the first aid kit. “Well, Heather, if I see that mugger again, I’m going to damn well rip his head off.”
“Appreciated, but unnecessary.”
He motions behind himself. “You want me to take you back to your car?”
With effort I push off the back of the Corvette. “Please.”
“You need any money, a place to stay?”
I eye him. “Easy now. Take what you can get.”
He smiles wider and salutes. “Understood.”
It’s a quiet, short drive back to the staff parking lot, my muscles pulling tight when he passes the area I was attacked.
Phoenix helps me out, waits until I’m seated and belted in my poor excuse of an automobile with one faulty headlight and three working gears. “You sure you’re good?” he asks.
I start the car, pushing in the clutch and shifting out of neutral. “Like I said, I’ve been through worse.” Truer words were never spoken.
He pushes off my car, walking backwards to his own. “Coffee then, tomorrow, and don’t worry, I know where to find you.”
“Yeah,” I laugh, “just look for the bad-ass racoon.”
I wind up my window and give him a short wave, wonder how this night went so wrong so fast, or is it right? I should stick with my policy of ignoring him because I know, deep down, nothing good will come of leading him on, but at the least he deserves my thanks.
Maybe that will be enough.
CHAPTER THREE
PHOENIX
It wasn’t my intention to creep Heather the f
uck out last night, but she was lucky I was there. Might even be fate if I was that way inclined. I wasn’t joking, either. If I find that asshole who mugged her, I’m going to string him up by his balls from the campus flagpole.
Today I got a smile when I rolled up to Heather’s station in the dining hall. Two black eyes and graze that looked a lot more gnarly in the daylight, and yet that smile overrode it all. She tried to maintain her usual air of indifference, but it slipped when I mentioned our date. I certainly noticed the bottle blonde behind me raising a quizzical eyebrow at it.
“I’m a woman of my word,” Heather told me, spooning what I really hoped was ratatouille onto my plate.
I couldn’t help my eyes dropping to take in her tight body. “That you are… a woman.”
She just shook her head, but I could see the smile playing there, that inner charm waiting to be let off the leash.
So now it’s four, classes wrapping up for the day and here I am sitting with her in the somewhat new chocolate shop-slash-café that’s opened on Main Street.
Heather sits opposite me at the small table in the windowfront wearing a Sex Pistols tee reading ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’, and matching jeans that have been distressed through sheer use, not bought that way off a rack. She pauses to stoop forward in her chair, pulling her auburn hair into a ponytail and tying it off with a rubber band previously wrapped around her wrist. Most Crestfall girls I know wouldn’t be caught dead using office supplies as hair accessories, but Heather pulls it off. She looks so comfortable, so herself sitting there in the low afternoon light.
“What?” she asks, catching me staring.
She looks down at her tee. “You a fan of the Sex Pistols or breasts?”
“Both,” I confess, leaning back and noting the cheesy instrumental jazz this place has playing on repeat. “Why? Do you like the Pistols for the music or are you simply anti-establishment?”
She laughs at that. It’s light and airy and perfect, the sound of life. “I’m more taken by punk’s do-it-yourself attitude. Times have moved on, but the core issues remain and, at least from my experience, you want something done, something changed, you do. It. Yourself.” She punctuates this by tapping the table in time.
“I’m sure you know,” I tell her, “the Pistols album actually sold very little upon its release in the States, but it kept on selling, trickling in and in until it finally reached gold status in ’87.”
“You trying to show me how cultured and smart you are, or you genuinely trying to make a point about playing the long game?”
“What makes you think I’m uncultured?” I fire back. “Because I play basketball and act the part?”
“So it’s an act, is it?”
“Sometimes.”
She whistles. “Deep.”
This hasn’t started off how I’d hoped. I wasn’t expecting her to slip into my pocket, but I wasn’t expecting such resistance either. I’d have better luck conversing with a brick wall.
Mercifully, a waitress arrives with our drinks, mistakenly handing Heather my cappuccino and me her black. I switch them around when she’s gone, looking to Heather.
“You want to know about me? Sure,” I tell her. “I can barely bring myself to pick up a basketball these days. It bores me, it’s dull, and the only reason I check the clock is to find out when the damn thing’s over. That’s the honest truth and you’re the first person to hear it. I have all these expectations on me to sign to a team, play in the NBA, but honestly? It sounds like a prison sentence.”
Heather’s still eyeing me with suspicion, but I sense I’m inching forward. “So what do you want to do then?”
I throw my hands up. “Beats me, and you? Because as novel as the dining hall seems, I’m pretty sure you’re not looking at a long-term career there.”
She picks up her coffee, lips red and plump placed on the rim, a light stain of lip gloss left behind. “Right you are.”
But she doesn’t elaborate. She’s holding back and I don’t know why. Sometimes the only way through a brick wall is with brute force. I lean over the table holding my coffee with both hands. “I like you, obviously, but I get the sense the feeling’s not mutual.”
“Again, right you are.”
“Why?” I push. “You honestly going to judge me because of who I am, because of a surname and one I’d happily go without if given the choice?”
She places her coffee down and exhales, looking into it before lifting her eyes to meet mine. I notice they’re the same chestnut color as the vintage wallpaper behind her. “You want honesty? I like honestly and I can tell you I don’t like the fact I somehow, god knows why, seem to like you. I mean, I’ve heard you guys are persistent, that Pistols album just slowly chipping away at the prize, but you don’t know who I am, Phoenix King. You don’t know where I’ve come from.”
“So tell me. Tell me everything about your life down to the last detail, because I genuinely want to know.”
She relaxes. I see it in her posture, the way her shoulders drop. “I don’t hide who I am. I had a shit time growing up. I came from an abusive home where the next hit meant more to my parents than my wellbeing. I ran away from that shithole when I was fifteen, lived rough for a few years until I got friendly with the owner of this soup kitchen I used to frequent. He took me under his wing, helped me get a leg up on life, and here I am, warts and all.” She pats her chest as if to solidify the point, but all I’m seeing is a beautiful, strong woman I want in with—under, on top, inside, every which way.
She lifts her butt off the seat, turning it sideways to show me. “See? No silver spoon stuck up there.”
I can’t take my eyes off it. “No. It would appear not.”
She resumes drinking her coffee. “I don’t need to hear about your life to know we’re worlds apart.”
“I’m not sure we are,” I fire back. “So different, that is.”
“You’ve lived on the streets then, gone without a solid meal for days, shivered so hard one night you thought your teeth were going to fall out?”
There was a time my brothers locked me outside in the middle of winter because they wanted to find the porn stash in my room, but I don’t think Heather would appreciate the comparison. “No, but—”
She laughs. “Like, what could you possibly say that could compare? Daddy didn’t buy you a Porsche? You missed out on dessert one night? Gulfstream didn’t have enough fuel to make it to Spring Break in Los Cabos?”
“It was San Miguel, actually.”
She slaps her hand on table. “I rest my case.”
It’s pointless trying to argue this, because I know she’ll win out every time. And she’s right. What can I complain about, really?
I sip at my coffee, need a moment to think. I place it down and turn it slightly to the left on the saucer. I lock her gaze. “Alright, so we come from different worlds, but I don’t see that as a reason to deny our attraction.”
She’s quiet, unmoved. I don’t know how to take it, so I continue on. “Give me a chance. That’s all I’m asking.”
“So you can seduce me with your game theory, Neil Strauss BS? You might like what you see, think I’m maybe a little kinkier than your regular fare given my nose ring and tatts, think maybe I’ll peg you or tie you up.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Would you?”
She breaks composure just a smidge, enough to know I have a chance, small as it is, here. “Anally penetrate you with a strap-on dildo?”
She says it loud enough to catch the attention of half the café, though I’m pretty sure her sudden rise in volume was deliberate. She bounces her head from side to side. “Guess it could be kind of fun turning the tables.”
“No, tie me up.”
She nods slowly. “Oh, I wouldn’t mind that either. Maybe just tie you up and leave you to all those bleeding broken hearts, let them have their wicked way with you.”
“What makes you think I’ve broken hearts?” I ask.
“Call it the dangerous
glint in your eye, that mark of the hunter. Trust me, when you’ve lived like I have lived you get to recognize it real fast.”
“You still haven’t answered my question. Tomorrow evening, a real date. What do you say? Let me change your mind, break up that cliché you seem to have attached me to.”
“What’s in it for me?
And I get a glimpse of her with cuffs in hand, nothing but a pair of suspenders and that killer look she seems to have mistakenly seen in myself. “Life experience, scintillating conversation, a good meal.”
God, even with two black eyes and road rash she looks adorable, all that pent-up anger and sexual frustration just waiting to be released, simmering under the surface. “I never say no to a good meal,” she replies.
I bet, my head interjects, but this isn’t the time for innuendo. “It’s settled then.”
“I suppose it is,” she replies.
I keep cool, but instead I’m doing cartwheels knowing this is almost a sure thing. I may tire of her like the rest, get my fill, but it will be nothing if not interesting.
“Are you going to break my heart, Phoenix King?”
“Do you have one?”
She pulls back like I’ve mortally wounded her. “Ouch, and here I was thinking you might actually be more than a walking, talking penis.”
It’s harmless banter, I know, but it’s a good sign. “Where do you want to go?”
She places a finger on her lips, fingernails a mix of pink and green. “In this town? Anywhere but the diner.”
I breathe in. “Well, that doesn’t leave many options, I’m afraid. We might have to go further afield.”
She smiles. “Guess you better fuel up the Gulfstream then.”
CHAPTER FOUR
HEATHER
Early morning and the sun is still low in the sky. Most people are still sleeping. I’ve learnt the early bird doesn’t necessarily get the worm, but it sure as hell can cram a lot more into a day.
Some would call this part of town the ‘wrong side of the tracks,’ given the literal train tracks that divide the town, but it’s home enough for me.