I’m caught off guard, and my mom runs up behind me and locks me in her tight grip. I scream until what’s left of my voice goes out, tugging and trying to jerk out of her arms.
It’s not until the next door neighbor comes out of the house to see what’s going on that Mom lets me go.
With both of my hands free, I call the first person who comes to mind.
While the phone rings and my mom tries to explain to the neighbor that everything’s okay, I hurry away from her and run toward my boy.
Halfway across the lawn, Petey picks up my call.
“Hey, princess,” he answers easily.
My dad pushes Thomas again, and this time love laughs as he stands back up.
“Petey!” I cry into the phone.
“What’s wrong?” He’s frantic now.
Before I can answer, the phone’s knocked out of my hands. As I bend down to get it, my mom circles her arms around me and spins me around.
“Mom!” I cry, pushing against her chest. “Let go!”
“What’s wrong with you?” She forces our legs out from under us. “Settle down, baby.”
Between her knees, with her arms wrapped around mine and her cheek pressed on the top of my head, I can’t answer. There are so many things wrong with me. Everything’s fucked-up.
Our neighbors from across the street have come out of their house, too.
“Should we call the police?” they ask, standing on their porch.
Dad has Thomas backed against his car, but steps away from my boy long enough to answer. He holds his hand up and manages to speak without yelling.
“Everything’s okay. You can go back inside,” he says.
Unable to move, I keep my focus on love. His black eyes are wide, and his face is still busted-swollen from his fight with Oliver. My dad's questioning him, and he's pacing. He wants by, but Dad won't let him pass.
“I need to talk to Leigh,” Thomas tells him.
“You’re not going near my daughter,” Dad replies, shoving Dusty back as he tries to move past him again.
Mischief looks at me and spits in the grass. He straightens out his shirt before meeting my father face to face.
“You think you could keep me away from her?” he provokes. “You haven’t done such a good job so far, Judge.”
Dad grabs Thomas by the front of his shirt and flips him onto his stomach, shoving his knee into love’s back like he would some criminal. With the wind knocked out of him, Thomas goes down hard.
“Don’t make me hurt you, Dusty,” the man who gave me life says, detaining fate.
I dig my heels into the ground and push back until my mom falls. Her hold on me loosens, and I’m able to get onto my knees before she pulls me back down. She grabs my wrist, and I scream.
“He didn’t do this!” I yell, cradling my hurt arm to my chest.
She lets me up, and I try to go around her, toward my boy who is still under my father’s knee, but she blocks my way.
“I don’t even know who you are,” she says lowly, brushing hair out of her face.
“You can’t keep me here, Mom.”
Her head snaps in my direction. “You don’t think so? You’re seventeen, Leighlee.”
“I don’t care.”
Before she can say anything more, Petey’s black and white Caprice pulls into the driveway behind my Rabbit. He’s alone, and he doesn’t even bother turning off the car before he opens the door to get out.
I run straight to him.
“Leigh!” Mom calls after me.
I run right into Petey’s arms. Embracing me for a moment, he pushes me back by my shoulders, looking at my face.
“We’re leaving … We’re going, and he showed up. My dad keeps pushing him, and my mom won’t let me go.”
“You need to slow down. I don’t understand a fucking—”
He’s cut off by the arrival of the black Mercedes I know so well screeching to a stop right behind the Lincoln, facing the wrong way in the street. Tommy gets out first, running around the front of the vehicle. Lucas exits the car next, as collected as he always is, rolling up his cuffs as he walks up the driveway.
“You called them?” I ask Petey.
He nods.
“Get away from my son, Judge McCloy,” Lucas demands with the slightest hint of rage in his tone.
Standing back with Petey, I watch as Tommy heads toward my mother and immediately starts arguing. My mom points her finger like she always does, and Tommy listens with her arms crossed, stunning, even now. As my mother continues to explain what’s going on, Tommy’s defenses fall and confusion takes their place. My second mother looks at me from over her shoulder before giving her attention back to a woman she could never really stand.
“Did you know?” my mom asks madly. “Did you know about them, Tommy?”
“Maybe, but not like this,” Tommy answers.
“I trusted you with my daughter.” My mom says with tears in her voice. “I trusted you to take care of her.”
“I did!” Tommy defends. “I did. We love her, Teri … I would never hurt her.”
On the other side of the lawn, Thomas is upright, expressionless with a grass stain on his shirt. Our fathers are not having a much different conversation than our mothers, except my dad is noticeably upset, and Lucas is less so.
“You think I’d allow this to happen under my roof if I knew?” the attorney asks, eyeing his son with nothing less than rage.
Dad shakes his head, but his tone eases. “Do you know about anything that goes on under your roof?”
Lucas takes a step forward. “What are you trying to say?”
“Nothing that you don’t already know, Luke. Look at your boy.”
And maybe for the first time in forever, Dusty’s father actually does.
We’re two kids who fell in hopelessly in love.
Our intentions were never vindictive. We’re selfish, not malicious. All we wanted was to be together, but addiction and dependence made true liars of us and turned our innocent love into crazy love.
Somewhere along the line, Thomas and I shifted from hopeless to helpless.
While our parents talk things out, Thomas and I look at each other through the chaos. Broken, busted, and scarred, my heart beats for him—my life.
The beginning.
The end.
But he needs the kind of help I can’t give him.
I walk across the grass, and Dusty meets me halfway.
He cries, slowly and silently. Love’s lashes are wet, and his black eyes are soft, as caring as cocaine can be.
He reaches for me, sliding one hand to the back of my neck and placing the other on the side of my face. He pulls me in close and leans down until our foreheads touch and our noses brush.
“Baby, baby, baby...” he whispers. His tears fall onto my cheeks.
“Let’s just go,” I insist, clutching the front of his shirt.
Thomas smiles sweetly. His eyes are all mine.
“I remember the first time I ever saw you, Bliss. I think about that shit all the time.” He presses his lips together before continuing. “I loved you then, you know.”
His touch falls from my face to my shoulder and slides down my arm. He takes my discolored wrist and holds it up, showing me.
“I’m looking at you, girl,” he cries around his words.
“What are you saying?” I ask, pulling on him.
He closes his eyes, and I see the shadow of the boy he used to be, lost behind pale skin and addiction. He hides behind Dusty, declared mini-foul before he ever had a chance to be anything else. He’s mixed with the purple under his eyes and the cut on his lip. He’s in the sweetness in his smirk and the kindness of his touch.
I haven’t forgotten him.
I haven’t given up.
“Bliss,” he says under his breath.
“Thomas,” I break, pulling him down.
He hugs me and kisses down the side of my face with wet lips. He cries against my skin,
holding nothing back. He sobs. He shakes. He whispers love.
“I wish I could take you with me,” he says, pressing his lips to the corner of my mouth.
I shove him away and stare, trembling with a thin heartbeat and misunderstanding.
“I am going with you,” I insist.
He looks over my head toward the willow tree that means more to me than he’ll ever know.
With his fingers tied up in his hair, he shakes his head. “No, you’re not.”
Refusing to believe what my heart already knows, I ask, “When are you coming back for me?”
Love’s hands drop, and he wipes his eyes on his forearm. “I don’t know.”
His face is expressionless, like he’s turned everything off. The black in his eyes has shifted from soft to hard and all too consuming. Tears fall, but he can’t help it. He can’t turn that truth off.
“Don’t lie to me,” I answer without air.
He clears his throat, patting his pockets. He breathes in through his nose, flaring his nostrils as he looks at me.
There is no light in him when he says, “I promise.”
The breaking of my heart is unlike anything I have ever felt in my entire life.
It’s being put to death with no life to give.
It’s being full of dread, but feeling entirely empty.
It’s being completely still when all I want to do is collapse.
Heartbreak is having every moment play before my eyes like I’m dying.
It’s pink spinning wheels and soccer balls, cake in baggies, and teachers that smell like peanut butter. It’s zombies and princesses. It’s clothes that smell dirty and butterfly tattoos. It’s finding the dock at the lighthouse and kissing for the first time. It’s accidentally saying I love you, and “If you were here, I’d probably eat your elbow.”
It’s seat belt bruises across his chest and being a gentleman. It’s when he kicked my backpack across the empty room, and “Tell me you’re with Oliver so I can lay that motherfucker out.”
Heartbreak doesn’t feel a thing like falling. It’s a decade under the influence and The Fault in our Stars. It’s saying no every time he asked and staying up all night until he got home. It’s “Tell me a secret, Bliss. Come on, tell me something.”
It’s remembering the way his face looks when he’s inside of me. The way his lips part and pout. It’s feeling him between my legs and around my body. Heartbreak is the memory of his muscles under my palms and his breath on my lips. It’s his hair between my fingers and, “I knew it. I fucking knew it.”
It’s Sluts and Boys, secrets and lies, cocaine and peppermint marshmallow, and love is a traitor. It’s birthday candles and gray bed sheets. It’s creating dozens of rules to break and one to keep so it can never be broken.
“Rule number six: no promises.”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“And that’s it.”
“That’s the only one.”
My heartbreaker lifts my chin, pushing hair away from my face. “It’s okay. It’s better … it is.”
I grab the collar of his shirt and pull. I cry like I’ve never cried before. I fight like I have nothing to lose, because I don’t.
The worst part is he lets me. This life taker just holds on while I tug and punch and yell. I rip his shirt. I re-split his lip. I scratch his face. I pull his hair. I take us to our knees.
“You can’t leave me, Thomas.”
Our eyes meet and they stay for a moment—remembering, loving, memorizing.
Thomas reaches up and twirls a lock of my hair between his fingers. He watches strawberry-blond dance in his hand before letting it fall.
Then we’re being pulled away.
The next morning I tell my parents everything I think they should know, which is just enough to stop the questions. They assume the story I tell them is a half-truth of what the last eight years really were anyway.
My parents blame Lucas and Tommy. They blame themselves and Dusty. They don’t come out and say it, but they blame me, too.
The only thing we can all seem to agree upon is that Thomas needs help.
As days pass, the bruises around my wrists fade, but the ache in my heart remains. Dad puts new locks on all of the doors without giving me a key, and Mom has our home phone number changed. I haven’t seen my cell phone since the day the truth came out. I’m made to sleep with my bedroom door open, and to leave the house is out of the question.
Mom goes through my room, confiscating anything she recognizes as a gift from the Castors. When she finds pictures of me and Thomas, she cries to herself quietly, but doesn’t take them all.
I let her have the hoodie that was already ruined with bleach, and I don’t say anything when she carries my computer and iPod away.
I keep pink Jadeite hidden.
As days turn into weeks, Mom and Dad have no problem reminding me that I won’t be eighteen for another four months.
Their house, their rules.
I don’t care.
Time doesn’t mean much.
Nothing does.
I’m just a girl with a broken heart, half-alive.
Without him, that’s my deal.
It's the fourth of July, and Mom needs two more eggs to finish something else that's going to solve all our problems. I'm not surprised when she takes off her apron instead of asking me to run to the store like she would have before.
“Let me and Bliss get it,” Grandma speaks up, back in town for the summer holiday. “Some fresh air will be good for us.”
Aimless, too heavy to even drift, made of wreckage anchored by a heart that I hate for keeping me alive, I go along. Unwashed and unmade up, I follow Grandma outside. She winks as she starts her car and opens the roof to let light in.
“There's vitamins in sunshine you can't get anywhere else, you know,” she tells me.
I'm silent as she drives.
At the store someone stops her to talk, and I amble inside. Grabbing a carton of eggs, I turn the corner of the aisle and walk right into the last person I ever expected to see again.
The eggs don't crush, but Valarie smiles, and everything rushes over me in a wave.
The girl whose lighters and hair ties I found on Dusty's floor when I was too little to even be in a boy's room smiles a little. She still looks older than her age, but fuller, clean. Diamonds stud her ears and black is all gone from her green eyes. They gleam brighter than they ever did under streetlamp light, and she's ditched cigarettes, holey jeans, and Chucks for white shorts, flip-flops, and hummus.
She's the most stunning girl I've ever seen all over again.
For the first time in months, I laugh. It's small and hoarse and mostly air, and nothing really, but I do it without even meaning to.
Naturally, cool as ever, so does Valarie.
“Hey, little sister.” She beams. “Long time no see.”
I have a fleeting, ridiculously intense and intensely ridiculous urge to hug her.
“Hey,” I say, and as I go to tuck hair behind my ear, I feel my deficiency in every dirty strand. I look down to avoid looking at her, but my own flip-flops are old and their color is dull. The paint on my toes is chipped and the ends of my sweats are stepped-on and frayed.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, looking up and around the store, scanning faces.
Same as always, she runs her fingers through her dark tresses. Even in the corner of my eye, her hair looks healthy, split-endless and satiny, nothing like my own.
“My mom wants to cook for her boyfriend of the week or whatever. I wanted to help.”
I glance at the package of sun-dried tomato and basil humus in her hands, and she rolls her eyes.
“I'm kind of addicted to it,” she says, looking me over. Her smile stays. “What are you up to? How are you?”
Stuck between fate and suffering, I look up and don't know what to say.
Valarie and I are not the same, especially in
this moment, but we're more similar than we've ever been. We've both put obsession before wellbeing. We've both fucked ourselves and other people in search of love. We've both been chosen over and left behind. The difference between us is how she stands. This girl has always walked with her shoulders back and her chin high. She owns who she is, broken pieces and all.
“Shitty,” I answer honestly. “Kind of … yeah, really shitty.”
She laughs and it's weirdly relieving.
“Yeah?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Pete said he tried to call you.”
“Yeah.” I nod again, bitter inside with my parents, Thomas, the world, and myself.
“They took my phone,” I explain, tapping my thumb against the egg carton. “Not that anybody wants to see me anyway, but you know.”
We're quiet as a family walks by, and I think I should maybe stop talking, but I don't want to. The truth sucks, but honesty feels good. Getting it out feels good. I suddenly want to tell her all the worst parts of everything, but I don't know where to start.
“Hey,” I start over, shifting the eggs to my hip and standing straight. “How's Ben?”
The girl who scratched love up while I was teeth-chattering over hot chocolate smiles. Like a teenager, like exactly her age, she ducks her head and peeks at her toes while her cheeks go pink, and she truly smiles.
“He's good,” she says, and I know the sparkles in her ears are from him. None of the rest of us stayed any kind of together, but Valarie and Ben did. “He's coming home tonight.”
There's a sting in my chest. Jealousy and hunger and soreness stretch the hole between my lungs wider open, but it's not this person's fault.
“That's good,” I say.
Not a lie.
It's quiet again, and the urge to pour my broken heart out grows, but I see my grandma at the front of the store. Following my eyes, Valarie glances over her shoulder.
“Hey, here,” she says, handing me the hummus. She digs through her purse and retrieves her phone. “What's your number?”
My iPhone was the first thing my parents took away, but then they didn't want me going to school without one. My replacement phone is little and cheap and not smart, and I literally never use it. I don't have a single number, and don't even know my own without looking it up.
Delinquents (Dusty #2) Page 35