by Bethany-Kris
“It’s all right, Catty.”
Except it wasn’t.
Not at all.
Cross used his thumb to wipe the tears sneaking from the corners of Catherine’s green eyes. He didn’t need to ask then if she understood what she was doing to him—again—because he could see all too damn well she was doing it to herself, too.
He didn’t know if that made it better or worse.
“Friends,” he said, his voice a rough murmur. “That’s what you said, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
He couldn’t just be friends with Catherine Marcello. He didn’t know how to be just anything with a girl he was pretty sure he had loved since she was thirteen. A girl who watched him with pretty eyes, and he smiled with a bloody mouth. He didn’t know how to be just anything with her, but he didn’t have a choice.
He hooked his pinky finger around hers, holding tight.
“Friends, then,” he said.
“Friends,” she echoed.
Cross’s fingers circled tight around Catherine’s wrist for a quick second, and his thumb rolled over her pulse point to feel her heartbeat. It raced.
Like his, too.
“You need anything, you know where I am, Catherine. I’ll always have your back, no matter what. For anything, all right?”
“Yeah, Cross.”
One more kiss to her forehead, and he wiped the last tear on the tips of her eyelashes away, before saying, “You know I love you.”
“Promise?”
It was torture.
Brutal.
Unforgiving.
He fucking hated first love.
But he didn’t hate it, too.
He couldn’t hate her at all.
Even when she was breaking his heart.
Promise?
“Always, Catherine.”
Cross did well, or as well as he was able to manage. He lasted one week, and then two. He made his way through final June exams, and barely blinked the whole while.
But he felt dead.
Or maybe he was still dying inside.
He wasn’t sure.
He wasn’t sure how he did any of it at all; getting his ass to school, keeping calm while he wanted to rage, and seeing Catherine every day.
Maybe he was trying to prove to himself that he could do exactly what she asked for. They could be friends, and nothing else. It didn’t have to be a lie if he told it well and believed it.
It still was.
Cross still made it those two weeks, though, despite how the pressure continued to grow all through him. Like swirling clouds, the most dangerous part, the funnel, felt as though it was ready to finally touch down and make a tornado with him as the eye.
It started with a slammed door, and then another. His sister, likely. He really just wanted quiet in his mind, but that was getting to be damn hard. His irritation picked up again, but he ignored it. He knew through experience that brushing off his anger, instead of feeding it or doing something to end it, would only lead to something bad.
The problem was not anyone else’s fault but his own. How could they know, that he had been hiding anger until it turned into rage, and pain until it turned into agony? And now, instead of bleeding it out slowly, it was going to explode.
They didn’t know anything because he didn’t tell. Instead, he stayed hidden in his room because there he didn’t have to talk. Or he chilled in the library; he could play music on the piano or guitar until his fingers bled, and drowned out someone else’s attempt at conversation at the same time.
His parents and sister probably thought he was fine. So he was a little quiet, and he stayed hidden away a lot. He already did that, anyway. He was busy with the end of year, and that could excuse his lack of leaving like he normally would, too. Even Wolf had laid off the mentoring because he wanted Cross to study.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Cross’s anger and irritation grew until it spilled over. “Stop slamming those goddamn doors, Camilla! You’re going to take one off its fucking hinges, Christ. Do it again, and I’ll rip the stupid thing off for you.”
“Cross!”
His step-father’s bellow from the downstairs floor filtered up from the stairwell. He heard a similar warning float from the upper level down to him, too. They all sounded the same at the moment; he didn’t want to hear any of it.
“What did you just say to me?” Camilla asked, coming out of her room from down the hall.
She was mouthier and louder and bitchier now that she was thirteen, almost fourteen. She didn’t take very much shit from him, or anybody else.
“I said, stop slamming your damn doors,” Cross repeated. “Get it this time?”
“Fuck you,” his sister said over her shoulder.
It was so flippant, so uncaring, and laughable.
Goddamn hilarious.
Any other time, and Cross would have laughed it off just to piss his sister off more. But he didn’t. What he wanted to do kind of scared the shit out of him. He wanted to put his fist through her door, and be done with it.
Yeah, damn.
He needed to go.
He needed to get the hell out of here.
Today. Now. Yesterday.
Cross should have already been gone because that was just his nature. He fucked off when he needed to reset or recharge, and he shouldn’t have thought he could do this differently.
“Cross, what are you doing?” Calisto asked from the bedroom door.
He didn’t answer; he just tossed jeans and shirts into a bag. A couple days’ worth, and a hoodie, too. The handgun from between his mattress and box spring went into the bag, too.
“I need to get out of here,” Cross said.
“You’ve got—”
Cross pushed past his step-father in the doorway, acting as though he didn’t hear his shout behind him. His Doc Martens beat against hardwood as he took the stairs three at a time. Like a bat out of hell, he just needed to get the hell out.
“What in the hell just happened upstairs?” Calisto demanded.
Cross didn’t stop or slow.
He didn’t speak.
“Cross!”
“What’s wrong?” he heard his mother call down.
Cross was already heading for the front door, and grabbing his vehicle keys out of the glass bowl on the shelf as he passed it by.
“Just give me a second, Emma,” Calisto called back.
Shit, Cross wanted to be what his parents needed, and what they kept hoping for. He wanted to be able to show he listened when his step-father spoke, even if Calisto didn’t think so all that much. He wanted to settle. He wanted the balance his step-father talked about.
He couldn’t be those things or what they needed. He couldn’t because he didn’t have it. He never had.
He was restless, unsteady, unsettled, and bored far too often. He was difficult, different, tired, and here. Always here, or there, or somewhere. He had to go, go, go, and move. He had an edginess in his blood, pumping from his heart, because relaxing only came easy when it came with someone he no longer had. He was dumb to think this would be different.
Cross didn’t know how to explain that, though. It was easier to just go because that was what felt good. Wild, they called him. They had said that since he was little. They were right, but they were wrong, too. He couldn’t be settled, or balanced, or anything else when he had never really been those things to begin with.
“Cross,” his step-father shouted out the front door. “Wait a minute, son.”
He was already slamming the driver’s door of his Rover, and lighting the ignition.
What the fuck was he supposed to say?
Shit happened.
It’s messed up.
I don’t want to feel like this.
Being friends is a lie.
None of those explained anything well enough, Cross knew. Not without more words, and more time being spent trying to just breathe.
He couldn’t do th
at.
Calisto’s hands wrapped around the rolled down window, and his knuckles turned white from the pressure. “Cross, talk to me.”
“I’m going to head to Zeke’s for a couple of days.”
There, he let them know.
They didn’t need to worry.
He told them.
“Exams—”
“Finished the last one today,” he interrupted.
Maybe he should have expected this, and not let it surprise him so damn much. It had been looming anyway, this spiral he was currently in.
“Cross.”
Cross bet his step-father could see it in his eyes, if only because what he felt was reflected back in familiar dark irises. Pain and sadness and insecurity. Weakness he didn’t want shown to someone else; a wound he needed to staunch before it bled just a little too much. Calisto could see it. They shared the same eyes, after all. Soul-black and way too deep. He hid nothing there. He didn’t know how to.
And he had already been hiding it for two long weeks.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Cross muttered, putting the Rover into reverse.
“You’re not fine.”
“I am.”
“Son—”
“She keeps breaking my fucking heart,” he uttered, wishing it came out lower than it did. Instead, his voice was broken and hoarse, but clear and aching. “Okay, she keeps doing that, so fuck it.”
Calisto let go of the window.
Cross made sure his tires smoked on the way out of the drive.
The last few days of school were a special kind of hell for Catherine. She finished her exams on the first days of the last week, which left three more days that she had to go every day, whether she wanted to or not.
It was go, or stay at home and do nothing.
She was only allowed her phone at school, and that was to call someone if she needed something. At home, she handed it back over to her father.
There was a tension in her home that she hadn’t felt before, too. A silent fight that constantly brewed between her mother and father, fueled by resentment and stubbornness. The two didn’t speak, or when they did, they spoke very little.
Her mother took Michel to Detroit the first week of June. Dante chose to stay home with Catherine.
Catherine’s guilt was a killer. She felt like everything that was happening around her, was entirely her fault. And it was.
She didn’t want her parents fighting over her, yet they were. She didn’t want to hold her father back from taking Michel to Detroit like he had planned for an entire year, yet she had. She didn’t want breakfast and supper to be loaded with silence and shifting stares.
This wasn’t her family.
Not at all.
Maybe if all her sadness was focused on just her parents, then Catherine could deal. She could make things better, do what she needed to do, and be who they wanted her to be.
Except it wasn’t.
It was also Cross.
It was a lot Cross.
Catherine hated school the most because she hurt and her eyes burned and her lungs ached every time she had to pass him in the hall. Forced smiles and guarded eyes were their favorite thing, now. He didn’t come too close, and she ducked and dodged just to avoid a pass-by in the hallway, if she could.
Friends.
That’s what she had said.
Friends.
Catherine was pretty sure being friends wasn’t supposed to hurt this much.
This was heartbreak, and it sucked.
After breaking it off with Cross two weeks ago in an empty classroom, her only goal now was to make it to the end of the year.
Make it, and not break down.
She had ten minutes left.
“Hey, Catherine.”
Unsure she had actually heard her name be called, as she was zoned out with an earbud in one ear, and a book spread open in front of her, she didn’t look up. The library had become a safe haven for her those last few days of classes when she didn’t need to attend, but went simply to avoid another conversation with her father. Hiding in the library when she didn’t need to attend homeroom or final assemblies meant she didn’t need to risk running into Cross or faking being okay.
She was so not okay.
Without him, that was her thing.
Apparently.
“Catherine,” a guy said again.
He tugged her earbud out.
Catherine found one of Cross’s friends standing next to her table. “What?”
“Do you know where Cross is at?”
“Um … no.”
The guy—Erin—frowned. “He hasn’t shown up the last two days.”
“Maybe he didn’t have exams these days.”
“Sure, but none of us can get a text back from him, either.”
Catherine suppressed the nagging anxiety bubbling in her chest. “Sorry, I don’t know where he is.”
“Yeah, all right. Thanks, I guess.”
She waited until Erin was gone from her sight, before she pulled out her cell phone. It was probably going to cost her another punishment to use the phone for something other than what her father demanded, but she was willing to take that risk.
Just to be sure …
Is everything good?
Catherine stared at her phone, and sent the text message to Cross before she could think better of it.
It took a few minutes before she finally got a response.
Why?
That was it.
That was all he replied.
You haven’t been to school the last couple of days, so I thought maybe something was up. Friends can worry or ask things like that, right?
God, she felt stupid even saying that.
And damn, it hurt.
Friends can. Later, Catty.
The bell rang up above Catherine’s head, signaling classes were over for the day. She didn’t really hear it because she was too busy staring at Cross’s reply.
He didn’t answer, she realized. He didn’t say he was okay, or fine, or anything at all.
The drip of wetness that fell on the back of her hand made Catherine blink. More drops fell. Her tears. Great. She quickly wiped the tears away, but they just kept forming. The stupid things kept falling.
Catherine had already cleared out her locker. Her mother was probably waiting in the parking lot, and she just wanted to go home. She kept her face hidden by tilting her head down, although the hallways were mostly empty, anyway.
Sure enough, Catrina waited in her white Porsche, a car she only drove in the summer months. Catherine slipped inside the vehicle, dropped her bag to the floor, and buckled up. She kept her gaze stuck out the passenger window, determined to not cry again, and to not let her mother know she was upset.
Catrina Marcello had never done very well with tears. She didn’t have time for them. Catherine remembered time and time again as a child when her mother would repeat to her that tears helped nothing and no one.
Girls like her, Catrina would always say, do not cry.
Catherine didn’t want that spiel again.
“How was the last day?” her mother asked, pulling out of the school parking lot.
“Long.”
“I bet.” Catrina reached over and patted her daughter’s knee. “Next year is a new year. It can be a better year, Catherine.”
She kept her shoulder turned. “Yeah, Ma, I know.”
Catrina wasn’t the type of woman who filled silence with useless chatter, so the long drive home to Freeport was mostly quiet. It was only once Catherine was safely inside the Marcello home that she finally felt as though she could breathe again.
Dropping her messenger bag and kicking her shoes off, Catherine didn’t even bother to put them away.
Catrina’s number one pet peeve.
“Don’t you leave those things there, Catty. I am not your slave in this house.”
Catherine flinched at the nickname, and while her mother using it should have been a sign that
she wasn’t angry, her instinct to fix, fix, fix kicked in hard. It wouldn’t leave her alone lately. “Yeah, okay. I’m sorry, Ma.”
She quickly grabbed her things and headed for the hallway closet.
“Catherine, wait,” her mother said.
“It’s my fault, Ma. Sorry, I’ll put it away.”
“Catherine, look at me.” Her mother grabbed her arm, and pulled hard, spinning Catherine around to face her. Catrina’s gaze skipped over Catherine quickly, her eyes softening, and her hold loosening. “Why are you crying, reginella? I was only kidding, I—”
Catherine shook her head, and pushed the hair that had fallen in her eye out of the way. “It’s okay, Ma. It’s just been a long day, and I’m really tired.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not, I’m—”
“Lying to me,” her mother interjected softly. “Why are you lying to me?”
Something painful lodged in Catherine’s throat, but she got the words out anyway. “I don’t want to keep causing problems, Ma. It doesn’t matter what’s wrong, I can handle it, okay? There’s enough problems in this house without me adding to it with something that won’t help at all, so please leave it alone.”
“Problems.” Catrina blew out a slow breath, and still kept hold of Catherine, refusing to let her move. “There’s no problems, Catty.”
“That’s bullshit, Ma, but whatever. If there’s nothing wrong with you, then there’s nothing wrong with me. No lies and secrets, right? It’s Daddy’s new thing—no lies or secrets here.”
Catherine pulled from her mother’s grasp, and dumped her stuff in the closet without care.
“Please talk to me,” Catrina said.
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Then why are you still crying?”
“Because, Ma!”
Catrina blinked, and straightened a bit in her heels. “Catherine.”
“Everything sucks right now because I did something stupid. If it’s not you ignoring Daddy, then he’s ignoring you, or he’s ignoring me, or he’s pissed off because you took Michel to Detroit. We can’t even have dinner without it being silent and awkward, since nobody wants to talk or even look at each other! Me, I did that, and I just want this not to have happened. I’m sorry, Ma. I messed up, I know. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Catherine. You have to know that. It’s more than you, especially with your father and I.”