Hear Me Now

by Melyssa Winchester

  “What does that even mean?”

  “I told you that someone turned you into the person you are when you’re here and now I know who. He shouldn’t be doing that, but now that I know he is, I know what I have to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Fight back.”

  Cadence Taylor is the strongest person I know. She’s sitting here with me, her eyes never wavering from mine, standing her ground and saying that she’s gonna fight my father. If I didn’t already believe her to be strong, especially with everything she has to deal with because of her disability, it would be right now where my mind would be changed.

  “How do you plan on doing that?”

  “When are you supposed to fight?”

  “Two days.”

  “Then I know what I have to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Talk to my mom. Dillon, you’re not gonna fight in two days. In two days, after school or practice, you’re coming home with me and you’re not leaving.”

  It’s in that moment, when she speaks, every sound she makes like music to my ears, I realize it for the first time. What I think I’ve known since the day in the bathroom but had been too afraid to say out loud. Her determination to do right by me despite knowing the person I am, standing to her feet the way she is now and holding out her hand to me, wanting me to come with her, it’s never been so clear.

  I’m falling for her and for the first time, I don’t want to catch myself before I fall completely. This time, with this girl, I want to crash and I want to crash hard because when it happens, she’s going to be there and she’s going to pick me back up.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cadence

  So much has changed since I got here a week and a half ago and sometimes, like right now, I find myself stepping back and giving myself the chance to take it all in because a lot of it seems so unbelievable that I feel like I’m dreaming.

  When I came here, being with someone was the farthest thing from my mind. Sure, I found guys attractive, I even had crushes on them a time or two, but actually stepping out of my comfort zone long enough to act on it was unheard of. It just wasn’t something I spent a whole lot of time fussing over. My life is hard enough as it is; adding boys to the mix seems like overkill.

  That’s the first change because now I’m with someone and it’s the last person on the planet I ever would have imagined being with. I attracted a bad boy, the worst really and in the span of a week, what at first appeared bad, has never looked so good.

  Dillon, for all of his perceived failings and things about himself he thinks he needs to protect me from, is underneath all of the bravado one of the softest people I know. When you look at him, it’s easy to believe that he was born without a heart; especially with all the things he’s spent the last four years doing, but I know different. He does have a heart and it’s the kindest, most delicate one I’ve ever come into contact with.

  He’ll never admit to that of course because despite all the changes he’s made, he still believes that showing any form of real emotion makes him weak. It’s something that for him, he just can’t be, but in the moments when we’re alone together or even hanging outside with the others, it’s there and it’s so powerful that even he has a hard time denying it or pushing it down.

  That’s another thing that’s changed since I got here.

  It seems that something’s going on with the two football players that’s bringing them closer than they’ve been in months; years really if everything Isabelle tells me when we’re hanging out is right. Apparently that day when Amy cornered me, they worked together to find me. It was looking for me that the two of them bonded in some way, at least that’s how I see it and now, over the span of a couple of days, we’ve been hanging out with them and this time, it has nothing to do with some plan Dillon wants to put in motion. This time it’s real.

  I know all of this because I’ve talked with Dillon and then when he’s off at practice, I’ve talked to Isabelle. There’s no one else alive that knows Kayden the way that she does, so when I talk to her, it’s like I can see things through his eyes and it makes understanding him easier.

  We’re a lot alike, Isabelle and me. We both saw something in these broken boys that we knew the rest of the world needed to witness. We didn’t back down even when it was probably the smartest thing to do and now we’re reaping the rewards that come with never giving up.

  Things are so different that we’re even sitting around making plans together. Where Homecoming had been a complete disaster in the fall, this time around, the Senior Prom, it’s a chance for yet another fresh start. The havoc Dillon put into motion all those months ago has the ability to be wiped clean and if the way Kayden and Isabelle are responding to our talks of going together, means anything, this might be the night that everything gets set right again.

  Where everything becomes what it should have been.

  Before I can think about prom though, there’s something else that needs my undivided attention.

  I made him a promise two days ago. Dillon isn’t going to go through with the fight his father has planned for him tonight because I’m going to bring him home with me and make sure that the man doesn’t get anywhere near him. I’m not exactly sure why I promised something like that considering I’m maybe a hundred pounds tops and his dad is a whole lot bigger, but I did and now it was time for me to live up to it.

  That’s another thing I’ve learned since I’ve been here. It’s really not about the size of the person in the fight, but the size of the heart, the sheer determination of the person in it that decides which way something is going to end. Bruce Murphy might be bigger and stronger than me, but there’s one thing he doesn’t have and that’s heart. A heart that his son stole from me that day at the ravine and the heart I never want him to give back.

  It’s that heart that’s going to get us both through this, no matter what happens along the way. I’m sure of it.

  “You’re sure your mom’s alright with this? I know she’s been cool with me lately, letting me slide on some stuff, but I mean, hanging out at your house all night? Isn’t that a bit much?”

  To be honest, she’s not all that pleased about it, but after my attempt at asking her if Dillon could just come over and hang out for a while failed, I had to resort to telling her a half truth. I mentioned his dad, but left the fighting out of it and she seemed to get it. While she wasn’t pleased that this boy she still had concerns about would be spending the entire night with her daughter, she understood why it had to happen and why it was so important to me.

  “You worry too much. You’re gonna get gray hair.”

  “I’ve had gray hair since I met you.” He laughs softly. “Keeping up with you is enough to give gray hair to a baby.”

  He might be right about that, but there’s no way I’m gonna admit it. He’s not used to being with someone like me. I think at first he thought that because I’m deaf, I was going to be like Isabelle or Eric and back down from him at every turn. When he realized I wasn’t like that, he struggled to keep up. I’m starting to think that’s one of the reasons why we ended up together. I represented something different for him.

  Reaching across and smacking him on the arm, he catches my hand the minute it makes contact and brings it down to his leg, wrapping his own around it and smiling. The smile is subtle, not as bright as I’ve seen him do before, but the tenderness behind it and the entire move itself melts me. That’s another way everything’s different.

  As heightened as my senses are, touch being the biggest, I tend to shy away from a lot of physical interaction. It’s too much for me sometimes. I can handle it when it comes from my mom or dad, but for anyone else, it has to be a slow build otherwise I’m just not comfortable. With Dillon though, that all just seemed to get thrown out the window. It’s when I’m not touching him that things become harder to deal with and I’m thankful that he seems to feel the same.

  For the last two days, the o
nly break we’ve had from each other is when he’s at practice and we’re at home and apart during the night. When we’re here like we are now, we’re both reaching out and bridging the gap between us because the distance is too difficult to take. Aside from watching his lips move and noticing the changes in his eyes when he speaks to me, holding his hand, brushing up against him, any way interacting physically is my favorite part of being with him.

  “I thought since we’re gonna need to kill a lot of time, I’d bring over some DVD’s and we can have a movie marathon or something. I think I might even have a few your mom might like.”

  “Unless you’ve got a collection of romantic comedies, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing you can bring over that my mom’s gonna like.”

  “That’s all she watches?”

  I nod and he laughs.

  “Maybe if we show her enough cars blowing up, we can change that.”

  Just as I’m about to answer him, I feel his hand, the one connected to mine start to tense and just as I look up in protest, the squeeze hurting a lot more than I think he’s intending, I see the sun get blocked out by a shadow and it all starts to make sense.

  He’s reacting to whoever it is that’s standing there.

  It only takes swerving my body a little to see who the person is that’s causing him to act this way and where I expected to find Amy or one of the other girls, it’s not any of them. It’s actually the last person I expect to feel this reaction from.

  Tim Bradshaw is here and he’s smiling.

  Dillon

  A couple days ago when I asked Cadence to be my girlfriend, I knew something would happen that would turn everything upside down. I thought at the time, it was my dad because when he called that day and I reacted the way I did, it seemed like he was going to be the thing that ruined everything before it began.

  When I caught Tim walking up behind us, that feeling I had when my dad called, it came back again and I realized that this time, it wasn’t going to be one singular thing that turned everything I was beginning to feel on its axis. It was going to be two things.

  Since the day in the hall when I dumped and walked away from Amy, I haven’t spent any time with Tim or the others. I see Tim on the field when we’re at practice and even in the locker room, but we haven’t said shit to each other and as weird as that is because for the past four years we’ve been inseparable, I’ve been enjoying the break.

  I used to think that we were friends because of how similar we all were. The way we felt about the people we went to school with, our idea of fun being the same bonded us somehow. I know different now. We didn’t hang out because we’re alike, we hung out because there was never a better alternative. Tim is nothing like me, he’s definitely nothing like Kayden, so why he ended up with us, I don’t think I’ll ever know, but now that I’ve taken the steps away from them, I’m not itching to go back.

  The new version of me; the better version, wants no part of whatever it is that’s bringing him over here. I just wanna sit here under this tree, enjoying the way it feels laughing and joking with my girlfriend and watching the world move on around me. Nothing more, nothing less. It seems that I’m not going to be allowed to have my way.

  Story of my life.

  “What do you want?” I snap the minute his shadow falls over us. No doubt he’s here because Amy sent him over, which if that’s true, just makes me wanna deal with it even more. I might be different now, more like the old me than I’ve ever been before, but that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to get in this guy’s face if he’s over here in an attempt to start something.

  “You mind breaking away from the retard for a few so we can talk?”

  Retard is a word I used a lot before I met Cadence. I even used it after I met her that first day, but where it was my go-to word before, it’s not anymore. Since we started getting closer, I’ve been going out of my way to erase that word from my vocabulary all together and the last thing I want is to hear anyone else saying it.

  Cadence doesn’t know this, but when I get home every night, I’ve been looking a lot of stuff up on the internet. At first, I looked up all I could find about being deaf, but then it changed from that to searching for stories about kids being bullied because they were deaf. Some of the things I read could put what Amy did to her and what I’ve been doing to people for years to shame, that’s how bad it is for them. I saw the words retard and deaf mute thrown around so much, it woke me up pretty quick to the hell I’ve been putting people through all these years.

  I never want to use those words again.

  “Don’t wanna talk to you; especially if you’re gonna call my girl that.”

  “Are you shitting me right now, D?”

  “Nope. Go away, Tim. No one wants you here.”

  “Amy was right about you.”

  Of course she was. I’ve spent enough time with her to know that she’s probably said a lot of things about me, made assumptions and tried treating them as facts based on my behavior; all in an effort to get the others to hate on me as much as she did, but the thing is, even knowing that she’s done it, I just don’t care.

  She can say whatever the hell she wants about me because she never really knew me to begin with.

  “Yeah, I bet she is. So why don’t you run along back and tell her that. I don’t wanna hear it and I’m pretty sure Caddy doesn’t either.”

  “From what I’ve been told, she can’t hear shit anyway so I don’t think anything I say matters to her.”

  The tense hold I’ve had on Caddy’s hand since Tim walked up, I finally release it and as I see her start shaking her hand, free of my grip, I slide backwards and jump to my feet. There’s no way in hell he’s going to say that shit about her. She might not be able to hear it, but I can and that’s enough for me.

  Fighting in front of the girl that’s trying to protect me from it isn’t right, but this is a different kind of fight. What I’m about to do to Tim’s face, he deserves for saying what he did. No one talks about my girlfriend that way; especially not this moron.

  “You wanna repeat that, Tim? I didn’t quite hear you the first time.” I say as I shove into him, causing him to stumble backwards. Stalking forward, nowhere near done with him, I hear my name from behind me, but it doesn’t even matter.

  Grabbing Tim by the shirt, I bring him into me and catch sight of his eyes the minute I do. He knows me. He knows where this is about to go and any second now because of the fear he feels, he’s going to stammer off a half assed apology so I’ll drop him. The thing is, that’s not what’s gonna happen this time.

  “What the fuck has gotten into you man? Since when did you become a mute lover?”

  “Since now.” I snarl before tightening the grip on his shirt, lifting him off the ground and throwing him forward, watching as he stumbles and falls to the ground. Moving quickly I stand over him, bending down on one knee and grabbing his shirt up into my hands again, yanking him to me, rage boiling over inside me and needing to break free.

  Reaching my free arm back, I hit him, his head dipping backward before coming to rest in front of me again. Shoving him down, I start hitting him, first in his face until I see the blood start to drip from his nose, and then moving downward, hitting him once in the throat before making my way down to the stomach and leveling him with as many hits as I can. I continue to assault on him until I feel my body being pulled off. Leaving Caddy behind in order to wail on Tim, I thought for sure she was the one behind me, but with the strength needed to get me off the son of a bitch who called her names, I know it isn’t her.

  It’s only when I’m completely off and away from Tim and I make out Caddy out of the corner of my eye, standing with her arms wrapped around herself, a look of fear on her face that the person that’s restraining me speaks.

  “You’re scaring her. Knock it off. I get what you’re doing, but it needs to stop before Daniels catches wind of it.”

  Kayden.

  My ex best friend.

 
; The one that made sure to haunt me at every turn for the last three months, looking for any chance to see me fall, just yanked me away from beating on the guy that until a few days ago, I considered the only friend I had left.

  “He needs to pay.”

  “And he will, but not now. Dillon, you need to chill out.”

  I see the shadow moving and I turn toward it. Where Cadence had been standing a few seconds ago, there’s now a wide open space and following the shadow as it moves farther away, I see it’s her and she’s running. Kayden telling me to chill out, in my anger I didn’t get why he was saying it considering he knew why I was beating on Tim, but the faster she moves away from me, I see it crystal clear.

  He’s right. I did scare her and now, she’s running for her life, but not toward me the way I always pictured her doing if anything ever happened. No, this time she’s running away and the further she gets, the more pieces of my heart she takes with her.

  Tim wasn’t the one to turn everything to shit after all. My father hadn’t even been the one to do it. She heard all of that and still chose to stand by me and fight.

  The thing that blew all of this apart has been here the entire time.

  Me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cadence

  I don’t know why I’m running, all I know is I can’t stop.

  The minute his hand gripped mine in a hold so strong that I actually felt my fingers going numb, it should have been an indicator that things were about to take a turn for the worst. That the peaceful easy feeling we had sitting together, joking the way we were was going to come to an end, but I stupidly believed that what I was experiencing would work itself out differently.

  Tim standing behind us smiling, I caught his first words to Dillon. The hold on my hand became that much tighter and I knew he was close to the edge. Just because we’re together and he’s trying to be different doesn’t mean that the way he was before is just erased completely. Dillon is still driven by a deep seeded anger and it’s that anger that took control the minute Tim said the words.