by L. J. Stock
“I thought that was a given.” I grinned and kissed his shoulder.
“What about Megan?” he asked thoughtfully, his fingers still moving in their pattern along my arm.
“That would be a little awkward.”
The quiet chuckle from Dustin made me smile. His laughter was always something to cherish. Often, when we were together, that happy facade he put on for the school dropped. With every day that passed, his mom was deteriorating. She was frail and weak, but her inner strength had her holding on, and Dustin was torn between the pain of seeing her so poorly and his pride in her strength of spirit. This private person who I spent so much time with was the real Dustin, and I coveted those smiles and laughs we shared because they were genuine moments of happiness during a trying time for him.
“Not what I meant.”
“I know.” I smiled, my chin resting on his shoulder as I watched him. “She’s made plans with Rob that evening. She assumed we’d be together, and I didn’t correct her because I didn’t want her changing her plans for me.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Me, too,” I whispered conspiratorially. I sank back against him, but the moment was short-lived. The sound of the stones popping beyond the door had us pausing for just a second before springing from the bed and sorting through the clothes that littered the floor by the bed. When I had something of Dustin’s, I threw it over to him, and vice versa. The inclination to laugh was dampened by the very real chance of trouble that was getting closer by the second. I grabbed my hoodie and bag, kicking my shoes toward the entrance, and eventually pressing my back against the wall so I would be concealed behind the door once it was opened. Fully dressed, Dustin pulled it open, his hand white-knuckling the wood.
“Coach?”
My stomach dropped, and I froze, my heart pounding loud enough for each staccato beat to echo in my temples. If the coach came in and saw me, the school would make the correct assumptions about what the two of us had been doing in here, and they would call my dad. If he was bothered at this time of the day… Well, he’d probably yell at the principal and the principal would get the authorities involved, and I would end up in a foster home God knew where.
“Listen, kid, you’re putting me in a bind. I know you had a fight with your girl today, but you can’t just sit in here and skip classes all day.”
“I know. I just needed to cool off for a bit. It won’t happen again.”
“You’re a good kid, Dustin, but I’d prefer not to come up here and catch you doing something you shouldn’t be doing.”
“I’ll be in my next class, Sir.”
“Thanks, kid. I’ll see you in practice.”
Dustin’s shoulders sagged, and he stayed at the door as the footsteps moved farther and farther from the shack until they disappeared completely. Closing the barrier between the cold and us, he dropped his head against the wood and started laughing.
“It’s not funny.” The statement was moot as my own smile came easily. This had definitely been a near miss. A very near miss, but now the danger had passed, and I could finally breathe again, I couldn’t help but see the humor in the situation.
“That was close.”
“You think?” I giggled. “That was too close. If he’d come in here…”
“I don’t think he would have,” Dustin said thoughtfully. “Coach is a hard ass on the field, but outside of the shit he and my dad pulled, he’s a good guy. He doesn’t agree with some of the rules my dad put on me after I skipped that game, so he’s laid off a bit. I’m pretty sure he knew someone was in here with me, but he wasn’t going to embarrass us…”
“Or get you suspended from the next game,” I finished for him.
“That, too.”
I shook my head and smiled, dropping my shoes and bag to the floor so I could run my hands through my hair in an attempt to calm the rapid beating of my heart. Falling back against the wall of the shack, I tried to breathe normally through a quiet laugh. This was the first time in my life I was happy about the preferential treatment of the school’s football players. Those benefits had given me a safety net today, too.
“You okay?” Dustin asked his eyes on my face.
“I’ll let you know when my heart falls back into a normal pace,” I admitted with humor. “No more sex in Coach’s Retreat.”
“Well, fuck.” I could hear the humor in Dustin’s tone and rolled my eyes at him. Stepping toward me, he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close. “Can we do other things?”
“You’re such a guy,” I teased, my hands resting on his arms. “What kind of things?”
Dustin’s smile answered for him, and I was sure my blush did just as good of a job in responding to his request. I wouldn’t begrudge him anything,—he should have known that, especially when his request was something I wanted just as badly. Kissing me lightly on the lips, Dustin sighed and stepped back, putting some much-needed space between us.
“We should go before he comes back. Meet you after practice tonight?”
“Sure. At the trees?” I asked, my face blank.
“Why the trees?”
“I don’t like to break my own rules,” I said, squealing as he dived toward me and pulled me up against his body.
His lips dropped to my neck and made their way up and along my jaw to my mouth, where he indulged himself in a way that promised me what was to come later. When he pulled back, he left me panting.
“The trees it is.”
We both managed to make our way out of the small shack before the next classes started, and as I slid into my seat next to Megan, I could see the humor shining at me in her eyes. I hoped that recognition was because she knew me well, rather than my calm and sated state being obvious because I wasn’t sure how to hide the white-hot glow that now resided inside my chest.
Megan slid me a note, her eyes on the teacher as though nothing was going on between us.
I see you two made up.
Smiling down at the paper, I looked around to make sure no one had noticed the exchange before scrawling a reply.
He wasn’t upset with me. He was pissed at the AW.
AW was what Megan and I called Libby. Attention Whore just seemed to fit and meant that if we were caught passing notes, it wouldn’t be revealed who we were talking about. FH—Football Hottie—was Dustin, and BB—Baseball Boyfriend—was Rob. These code names gave us complete anonymity if the notes were read out in a vindictive attempt to stop them from being passed around. We’d seen too many people fall prey to the note reading. Although the reading aloud was how we found out that one of our classmates was secretly dating her best friends brother… quite the scandal.
Megan read the note and responded.
I could have told you that. You just weren’t in the frame of mind to listen.
I smiled and wrote back.
Know it all… Thank you for today!
She didn’t respond that time. Instead, winking at me before looking back at the teacher. I noticed that one of our classmates was watching us out of the corner of his eye, and if he became too curious, he could just tell the teacher and find out what was in the note when we were forced to read it aloud. Considering most of the school had witnessed the confrontation between Libby and me, the contents were golden for the gossip mill. I still wasn’t a willing subject of the purple monkey dishwasher crowd at Childress High.
Once we’d put the paper away our classmate had nothing and knew it, so he went back to work, his attention now at the front of the class rather than on us. I smiled and looked down at my notes, realizing that I hadn’t listened to a word that had been said since I’d sat down in class. My head was somewhere else, with love warming my chest as I rested my chin on my hand. Doodling all over my notebook with little hearts, arrows… and trees.
Lots and lots of trees.
Chapter Eleven
I’d thought my plan to stay away from my dad’s house for Thanksgiving had been a good one, but in hindsight,
I should have been prepared for the night before, too. For the first time in a long time, Dustin hadn’t snuck into my room to stay the night with me as he did most of the time now. He’d explained that his family started their traditions pretty early and expected him to be there, which was understandable. Even if he got up at five in the morning, he would be late, and that early, he’d have a chance of getting caught by my dad or one of his guests. He’d wanted to help his mom with the turkey as she was beginning to grow frail, and I could only admire him for his dedication. How could I not love a guy like that?
I’d gone to bed early that night, knowing I could escape my dad’s house the moment I was showered and ready in the morning. Not having Dustin to distract me, I figured it was possible to get a good night’s sleep, but I was so used to him being the source of security and warmth for me now that I’d felt restless without him snuggled up next to me with his wandering fingers and endless whispers about our future together. When I finally drifted to sleep, my slumber must have only been a light doze because the click of my door’s lock being disengaged had me grappling at consciousness only seconds before light spilled into my room from the hall.
The brightness was almost blinding after the piercing dark that had bathed my room only seconds earlier, and the only respite from the glare was an imposing silhouette taking up the entire frame of my bedroom door. Not a respite at all. My heart started pounding painfully in my chest and adrenaline dumped into my bloodstream as I took in the looming figure. After a second of intense clarity, I realized that this intruder was not my dad. I, at least, knew him well enough to process that much.
“Told you I could pick that shit.” The man’s voice was deep with mirth and rough with lust as he pulled an equally silhouetted woman against his thick form and entered my bedroom in a tangle of limbs.
My mind was going a million miles a minute as I mentally mapped out my personal space for something I could use as a viable weapon. I had a baton from Jen’s misguided attempt to get me to join a team when I was younger. That was behind my bed. Then there was my phone, which was on the nightstand and completely useless in the grand scheme of things. Those options didn’t leave me with much, but at least metal could hurt. Reaching slowly over my head, my fingers touched the cool metal bar of the baton. Wrapping my hand around my makeshift weapon, I pulled the metal stick through the bar before leaping to my feet in the middle of my unstable mattress and wielding my baton. I tried to keep my balance as my breath came in pants, but I was officially terrified, which only served to make me wobble further with instability.
“Get. Out!” I screeched, my voice pitched a few octaves higher than normal as my fear became a palpable companion. I wasn’t sure either of them heard me over the music that was playing in the living room, filtering down the hall. The silhouettes—barely distinguishable where they were melted together—froze suddenly. The huge guy reached out a hand, slapping the wall behind him, while I tightened my grasp on the bar in my hands and pulled the baton over my shoulder as though I were aiming to hit a home run as I steeled my glare in their direction. I had no idea what he was doing until light flooded my room. The overhead light I barely used hit every corner of my sanctuary, including me, balanced on my bed in the center. The couple stood staring at me with open mouths, and I knew they hadn’t expected me to be there. I doubted they realized my dad even had a daughter—let alone a self-sufficient teenager.
“Get out!” I screamed again, lifting the baton high enough to strike if I needed to. “Get out, get out, get out!”
I hadn’t realized I’d been louder than the music until another form, thin and wily, appeared at the door. This time it was my dad. His hands gripped the frame of the door as his eyes narrowed at his companions before finally landed on me on the center of the bed, the baton’s tassels twitching in my shaking grip. Worry flashed over his features, but the uncertainty was gone so quickly, I was barely sure I’d actually seen the emotion there. My father looked back to the man and the half-naked woman clinging to him, and anger stained his features.
“What the fuck are you doing in here, Eddie?” He growled, his hands white-knuckling the frame as he leaned into the room without actually entering. “I told you to stay the fuck away from this room four times, asshole. How many fucking times do I have to tell you to get it to sink in?”
“You didn’t say you had a hot teen locked up in here, man.”
“Shut the fuck up before you say something stupid and get your ass beat. Get the fuck out of here, Ed,” Dad said, finally storming inside and grabbing Ed by the shirt before towing him toward the door and the hall beyond. Still wrapped under Ed’s arm, the woman was moved by proxy, but her eyes lingered on me. A flicker of recognition passed over her glance before Ed pushed her down the hall ahead of him with a sardonic laugh of victory.
“Jeff Quinten is a fucking father?” The laugh was mocking, accompanied by the woman’s—her high-pitched cackling grating my sleep-deprived brain as I turned my glare on my father.
“Shut the hell up, assholes,” Dad countered as he flung his response down the hall in a growl and showed them his middle finger. When his eyes flickered back to me, they took on a softer appearance, and his hands dropped to his sides. “I’m so sorry, Mikayla.”
Sure he was.
Those seemed to be the magic words he thought fixed everything. He was only ever sorry when it was convenient and got him off the hook for some shit he’d been the catalyst of. When things like this did happen—which thankfully weren’t as often as they could be—he seemed to think ‘sorry’ fixed the mistake and exonerated him. That wasn’t the case.
“Whatever. If you can’t control your friends, I want a chain on my door. I can’t keep doing this.”
I waited for some kind of admonishment, my breath coming in shallow, panicked pants even with the baton still gripped and prone over my shoulder. The few times I’d demanded a chain in the past, I’d gotten a scowl or a frown, but this time he offered me an apologetic nod.
“I’ll get one for you soon as I can. I didn’t—”
A roar of laughter came from the living room, pulling his attention from me for a moment, but I still had the baton held defensively. My fingers locked around the metal bar as I looked between him and the hall.
“Just… go back to sleep, Mikayla.” The comment was a dismissal. His responsibility now over. He was bored of me already, and the party was calling to him.
I rolled my eyes and watched him step from my room, his hand fumbling at the lock on my side until the action caught with a click. Then he pulled the door closed behind him, leaving me alone, trembling and breathless. This wasn’t the first time someone had gone against my dad’s request and entered my room without permission. Most of his ‘guests’ seemed to think he was hiding something in here, and in a way, I supposed he was. He was hiding me.
I was Jeff Quinten’s dirty little secret.
There was no way I was going back to sleep in my room after that ordeal, so I did the only thing I could think of. I packed an overnight bag with a couple of nights’ supplies and crawled from my window, heading toward my car with only one destination in mind.
The road was as empty as it always was at that time of night, and when I turned into the driveway, I almost felt guilty about the brightness of my lights that lit up the house ahead of me. I flicked them off as soon as I deemed it to be safe and slipped out of my car. Throwing my bag over my shoulder, I made my way around to the back of the house on tiptoes, pausing at every little sound so I didn’t disturb the occupants. Tapping on the window, I leaned against the cool brick, smiling when Megan’s sleepy eyes appeared between two rows of her blinds to peer out at me.
“Can I sleep here?”
Megan slipped under the blinds and unlocked her window, sliding it fully open with a yawn. “You know you’re always welcome. Your dad starting the party early?”
“Oh yeah, and someone thought it would be funny to break into my room.”
“
Shit.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
Stepping aside, Megan helped me crawl in before shutting and locking the window behind us. I was beginning to feel exhausted by the whole ordeal as I dropped my bag under her desk before stumbling forward and face planting on her huge bed. I kicked off my shoes and rolled to the side, pulling my knees to my chest as I got comfortable.
“I don’t know why you don’t just move in here. How many times has Mom offered now?” Megan asked, flopping down on her side of the bed and fluffing her pillows.
“Only every day for the last eight years or so,” I replied, yawning. “But I can’t do that to them, and I’ve grown accustomed to my freedom now, so it would be weird, you know?”
“I get it, but as much as I would love to have your freedom, I wouldn’t trade my parents in.”
It wasn’t an insult, and I never took the statement as one. Megan and I had discussed the parent topic often over the last eight years. I’d been lucky to have my mom for as long as I had, and I liked to convince myself that the price I paid for that was my dad and the life I now led. Whereas Megan was quite content with what she had, even if life did get a little annoying when they enforced their rules upon her.
“I also wouldn’t have the discipline to govern myself like you do,” she added, yawning, once again.
The moment her words fell away, the peace surrounded us with the darkness as we both drifted into the place that lingered between awake and asleep. The only thing stopping sleep from claiming me completely was her last words. I was very nearly seventeen years old, and I’d never been in trouble in school. I’d never tasted alcohol or smoked a cigarette. My room was spotless. I had a part-time job. I was saving money to put myself through community college when I graduated, and though I more often than not stayed out all night, it was a necessity if I wanted to sleep at all. If I ever wanted to experience being a teenager, I wasn’t sure I would even know how to flex that muscle. I would always worry someone would find out and go to my dad, only to realize he didn’t care. That would inevitably lead to foster homes away from the people I did love and need in my life. I was sixteen years old and living like a fugitive.