Disobeying Him

by M. K. Hale

  Gavin’s conquests were light flirting followed by leaving without a number or name, and telling me all about the person the next day like he or she was his soul mate.

  I was just glad Nate was not at the party, because there were far too many beautiful girls with low-cut tops to compete with. Even broken up, I would be jealous. Hell, especially since we were broken up.

  “Hey,” I said to Ryan once I stood in front of him. His glare had lessened on my walk over to him, and now his vexation appeared more mild than spicy.

  “Hey.”

  He leaned against the fridge in the open kitchen, so I moved to the side and poured myself a drink while talking to him. “How are you?”

  “Nate said you two broke up. Is this you trying to get me back?”

  Oh, jeez. “No.” What else could I have said?

  “Good. I’m taken.” His words came out in a harsh tone, as if he wanted his statement to hurt me, but it had the opposite effect.

  “I’m glad.” This was not going the way I had hoped. I just wanted to ease the tension between us. We had been friends once before.

  “Speaking of Nate,” Ryan grumbled, deepening his glare to somewhere behind me.

  I turned around to see Nate sliding through the tight crowd to the kitchen. His gaze lifted and locked onto mine the exact second I saw him.

  I forgot how to breathe.

  Nate looked good enough to eat whole. No chewing required. His dark jeans clung to his muscular but slender thighs. Instead of his normal dark button-up, he wore a black T-shirt. Mr. Professional had become Mr. Casual? Had I broken his brain that much?

  The dark brown of his hair shone even in the dim light, and he seemed…angry. Because I was talking to Ryan? Was he jealous? Was that the key to him realizing his feelings and me getting him back? We were both possessive people, and if jealousy would work on me, maybe—

  Nope. Nate turned away from us and went into a different room.

  “As cold and antisocial as ever,” Ryan remarked.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, my icy voice dripping with icicles. “He is the least cold person I know, and maybe if you cared enough to really get to know him, you’d see how funny and personable he is.”

  Ryan coughed with an incredulous look. “You think Nate is funny?”

  “I first thought I should apologize to you for how things went down, but, honestly, I’m not sorry. You lead me to Nate, so instead, I’d like to thank you. But, other than that, you have acted immaturely and rudely.” My mind went on a tangent, the words escaping my mouth without much thought. “Nate loves his rules, but he broke them for me. That’s how important I was to him—”

  “And yet he just frowned at you and walked away? That doesn’t seem like—”

  “I love him.”

  Ryan’s mouth clamped shut.

  “I love him and I hurt him, so if you’ll excuse me, I have a guy to win back.”

  After a couple of minutes of searching the house, I found Nate. He had ended up walking outside. Had he given up on being social because he had seen me? Before I slid the glass door open to join him, I put my drink down on the side table at the edge of a sofa. I needed my hands free so I could grab his hair if I kissed him. I missed kissing him.

  “Hey,” I said and shivered as I walked out into the cold where he stood.

  He stared out at the night sky, not looking at me. “Back with Ryan?”

  “If you have to ask me that, you don’t know me at all.”

  “Maybe I feel like I don’t.” His words hit me harder than the winter chill.

  “You do. I made a mistake, writing that paper. I should have never done it or I should have talked to you about it.”

  He squinted at the sky as if looking for a specific star. “I’m sure your teacher will enjoy reading about my private life.”

  I did not tell him I had written a new paper and not turned in the one about him because it would not have helped the problem. The problem was trust. I had broken his. I needed to earn it back.

  “The first time I met you, I thought you were fascinating,” I said.

  Surprised, he shifted his weight onto his less dominant leg at my statement. Trying to find his footing to face me? I wanted to shake the earth at his feet. His gaze flickered over to me.

  “Frustrating, sure, but fascinating,” I said, the wind humming like background music to my confession. “It was like everything about you called to me. On the first day of class, the teacher described the assignment. A final paper analyzing someone I knew. You were the first person I thought of.”

  “Thanks?”

  “No one captured my attention like you did. Even Ryan saw that in the beginning. I worked on that paper and got to know you, and everything changed. Nate, I saw myself in you, and, suddenly, writing the paper was about analyzing myself too.”

  I stepped closer to him, and he did not inch away. He stood like a stone sculpture, eyes frozen on me and ears helpless to listen.

  “You crave control. I crave chaos,” I said. “It stopped being something my teacher would read and started being a way for me to understand our relationship better. It was like a diary. When you found it, in that moment, I realized how much trust I had broken. I felt guilty before, but seeing your face… Nate, I’m so sorry. I never meant—I would never—”

  Tears stabbed my eyes like pinpricks, blurring the image of him standing before me. “Every day without you sucks.” I moved right in front of him now, inches separating us. “It feels like I’m no longer living because living isn’t about going on wild adventures or always knowing what will happen next. Living is loving.” I reached a hand up and touched his cheek. “And I love you.”

  “Allie,” Nate rasped in a pained and breathless voice. He sounded hurt. I hated how I made him feel anything but happy. “I can’t.”

  My heart shattered all over again, self-destructing in my chest like an over-excited grenade. I had professed my love for him and it had done nothing. Right. Time for a distraction. Remember, Allie, you are ice: cold, hard, unbreakable.

  “Well.” I swallowed my pride. Was there anything left to do to win him over? He would not even give me the chance to earn back his trust. Maybe things were really just…done. “Have a good holiday break.”

  The second I stepped back into the house, I found my drink and tossed it back, guzzling the liquid down, hoping it could lessen my feeling of being broken. I willed myself to feel better. I willed myself not to cry. Cold, hard, unbreakable.

  The rest of the night blurred. Literally. I could barely remember stumbling around for an hour before a redheaded guy came up to me and helped me stabilize, also known as not falling into walls. I had thanked him, and he had said something funny. I remembered laughing. The next thing I recalled was him giving me a tour of the house. Was it his house? What more was there to show me? My thoughts lagged and dragged, and he told me to “relax.”

  He pushed me into one of the bedrooms, and my hip hit the wooden desk hard enough to bruise. I fumbled to pull my shirt up to look at the wound, but I could not see it in the pitch-black room.

  The redheaded boy ignored my yelp of pain. He suddenly seemed less nice. “I’m dizzy.” I slapped at the wall while the room spun.

  “Rohypnol does that to a person.”

  Even the sound of his words blurred in my ears, distorting. “I need to lay down,” I said.

  He pointed. “There’s a bed.”

  I sagged onto it, my legs unable to keep me up any longer. Every one of my muscles seemed to power down like a dying phone losing its charge. I couldn’t move. Why couldn’t I move?

  “So easy.”

  “Hmm?” A noise rumbled from me, through the pillow my cheek laid on. My face went numb.

  “You’re not supposed to leave your drink unattended, you know. You’re lucky it was me instead of some sicko.”

  One of his hands trailed down my backside, and I closed my eyes. I wanted to cry but had no energy to
do so.

  White light shot behind my eyelids, and I heard a roar.

  “Who are y—” The redhead’s question cut off to the sound of a loud, cracking punch.

  “Allie?” It was Nate. Nate’s voice. My Nate. “You fucking drugged her?” There were a couple of more violent sounds followed by whimpers.

  All I could do was groan against the mattress.

  The violence stopped. “Leave,” Nate growled.

  “Look, I—”

  “I’m going to report you no matter what you say and will not stop until there are charges and you’re expelled and hopefully jailed.”

  “I didn’t even do anything!”

  “I’m sure she wasn’t your first try. Now get out before I break every one of your ribs.”

  The door opened and slammed closed. Nate’s warm hands picked me up off the mattress. He cradled me against his chest, and I wanted to cry again.

  “Saved me,” I said and hoped he understood my mumble in his ear.

  “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

  I leaned my head against him because holding it up any longer was not an option. “False.”

  “I may hate what you did, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t hate you,” he said, his voice low in my ear.

  “Love me?”

  I heard him sigh as he nuzzled his chin over my hair.

  “Irrevocably.”

  I did not ruin the moment by commenting on his obsession with big words. Instead, I passed out in his arms.

  Chapter 31

  Allie:

  * * *

  I woke up confused as to how I had gotten into my bed. My memory was fuzzy from the party the night before, and my body felt like it had run four miles. After Nate had rejected me, I had grabbed my drink and….

  Horror filled me, but I calmed myself down just in time. No. A friend of mine had been raped in high school and she said a person would be able to tell. Feel it.

  Nausea still flooded me, and I grabbed the trash can by my bed. Worst day ever.

  A harsh ringing pounded against my ears, and I groaned. Who would dare call me this early in the morning? I found my phone and hit “answer,” raising it to my ear.

  “Allie?” A low, gruff male voice sounded on the other end.

  “Dad?”

  “Allie, I need you to come home.”

  “Dad, what’s this about?” I still had two days left of studying before my last final. “I’m at school.”

  “You need to come home.” He still did not give me an explanation. His tone, however, scared me.

  “I can’t just leave. I have a final on Thursday.”

  “Your mother…” His voice cracked. “She passed away last night.”

  I blinked twice before absorbing his words. “What?”

  “She passed away, honey. She had a heart attack.”

  How? I had just seen her a month ago. My father had looked in worse health than she did.

  I waited for the tears.

  But tears did not come to me the way they did when I thought about losing Nate. Tears did not come to me the way they did at the end of Fault in Our Stars or Titanic. Was I that unfeeling? Was I a horrible person? No. No, I was just numb. But the numbness would fade at some point.

  “I need you,” Dad said.

  Statements flooded my head like liquid poison. I needed you when it came to Logan. I needed you when it came to the entire town turning against me. I needed you when the therapist had said the best cure was medication to calm my panic attacks but never learn from them. You never stood by me, helped me, or protected me—the way I needed you to. I had needed my dad.

  Now he needed me.

  “Okay.”

  I still had not cried. After emailing my professor about what had happened, he told me I could take the final exam online instead. Then I packed what I needed for winter break and left everything else in the dorm room for when I came back for the spring semester.

  After taking a taxi, a plane, and another taxi, I still had yet to cry.

  I had loved my mother. Well, I had loved her in the way one loved someone who raised her. She had always been cold to me, or seeking her own best interest in my decisions, but still never seeing her again hurt. Stung. Echoed. We would never have a chance at the best friend relationship mothers and daughters often had later on in life. If I ever had children, they would not have a grandmother. My mother would not be with me when I bought a wedding dress. All of those things saddened me, but my eyes stayed as dry as ever. Maybe I was just dehydrated.

  Seeing the “Welcome to Meadowville” town sign as the taxi driver passed it, I realized I had not been home in over a year and a half. I had vowed not to come back here.

  The last time I had been shopping at the local grocery store, a grown man had spit at me and grumbled about how my lie could have cost Logan Garth his scholarship. My “lie” being the assault and battery charges.

  No one had believed me about Logan being the one who beat me in the school parking lot after the prom. Then again, it had been my mother who told everyone I was lying and darling Logan could never do such a thing. My own mother.

  And now she was dead.

  And there were still no tears.

  The taxi pulled into the driveway of our large house, the house I had grown up in, feeling lonely and misunderstood. The house had been a symbol for me, a prison. Now I was going back to it as a free woman. I just had to remember not to put on the shackles.

  I would not stay long. After attending the funeral and comforting my dad, I would live somewhere else before school resumed. This small town still felt like something I needed to run away from. The police here had never enforced my restraining order against Logan, and I could not assume they would now, years later. Would I see Logan at the funeral? My mother had loved him and his parents. They had to be invited.

  Logan’s parents were just as scary as he was. Instead of hitting me, they had simply destroyed my life, ruining my image for every employer in the state. Logan’s dad was the mayor, after all.

  Stepping out of the taxi and grabbing my two suitcases, I marched up to my front door and knocked. It took a minute for someone to open it and, instead of it being a housekeeper, it was my dad.

  “Thank you.” His bloodshot eyes closed as he pulled me into a tight hug. He smelled like an ocean of salt tears. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said.

  “You said you needed me.”

  “I do.” He ended the hug and took one of my suitcases from me. “Come in, come in.”

  Inside, there were hundreds of white flowers in vases on tables and even some on the floor. I assumed they were there for the funeral.

  “A lot of flowers.”

  “A lot of people loved your mother,” responded my father as he led me to the living room.

  “I’m sure.” My mother had been the town gossip as well as voted “Ms. Meadowville” and prom queen back in her high school days. She was beloved by everyone but me.

  My father talked to me for two hours before he let me go to my room to unpack. When he asked me about school, I answered. When he asked me about Nate, I skirted around the subject, telling him, “He’s fine.”

  My father had not talked to me in such an open, interested manner in a very long time. His eyes focused on me, his body leaning to mine. Once I had started dating Logan near the beginning of high school, my father had stopped asking me about my days or my goals.

  Dad told me he needed help to plan the funeral according to my mother’s will. Apparently, she wanted more than the typical gathering. She wanted us to throw a large, fancy dinner party in her honor, inviting almost everyone in town, including the Garths. She had even been so specific as to have the dinner menu already planned. Roasted duck, and lemongrass and ginger tea-steamed vegetables. Classic rich people meal. My family was wealthy, but my mother had never stopped trying to appear even wealthier. It was her motive behind pushing me to date the son of the richest man in town.


  A part of me wondered how she was so prepared for her own funeral. It was a heart attack, after all. Was it not a surprise?

  I spent most of the next day calling caterers to find a chef who could cook the meal, and a store for the ice-blue blown glass decorations my mother wanted for the centerpieces at the long tables. Going to pick up the glass sculptures was embarrassing enough without people seeing me and whispering to each other.

  One woman approached me. “Will you be at the funeral?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, I’m just back in town to pick up these glass things for fun.”

  She looked shocked. She should have been.

  When I had left town, I had been reduced to a meek and quiet version of myself. Broken. The unenforced restraining order against Logan had been my one push back to the way people treated me. Some people approached me, telling me I never deserved Logan in the first place and I should have never woken up from my coma. When I left, I grew. I stopped wearing black and gray loose clothes and embraced every bright color known to man. I wore dresses, got tattoos, and let my hair grow long. I was different. I was me.

  “No need to be rude,” the woman said.

  “Me? You implied I wasn’t going to my own mother’s funeral.” I took a step closer to her. Her eyes widened, and she glanced over to her friends, who were inching away from us. “I’m the one planning it, so actually, you’re no longer invited,” I told her.

  “B-But—”

  “But it’s the biggest event in town this year? Sorry, you’ll have to miss the gourmet meal and entertainment of depressing stories full of material for your gossiping. There will be a guard and I’ll tell him exactly who not to let in.”

  She gained confidence and raised her head defiantly. “You don’t even know my name.” As if my not knowing her name meant she could slip in any way. She was wrong.

  “My mother didn’t know your name because you were unimportant.” I tilted my head and stared down at one of the women in the high school book club I used to belong to. “Amelia.”

  “You…” She blinked, surprised again at my remembering her. I remembered everyone. A person tends to remember the names of people who wronged her.