“Is that your own anxiety talking?” I counter, eyeing her from the corner of my eye.
“I don’t have anxiety.” She rushes to cover her face with her palms, massaging her temples. “Mom says anxiety gives people ugly wrinkles way too early in life. I’m too young for that!”
Figures that’s her motivation. I want to smile so bad, but I don’t.
“I guess you like your fairytales with more than a little sprinkling of glitter, with rainbows and unicorns, thinking the world is all good?”
“Eww.” Her disgust is as quick as her blinking. “Number one, I hate glitter, that shit is hard to clean out. And two, leave rainbows and unicorns out of this. You can hate everything else.”
I want to laugh at that, but the pain in my hand makes me wince instead. In a blink of an eye, the mysterious girl, without asking, grabs my injured hand.
I tense up, watching her through the slits of my eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking your busted-up hand,” she murmurs, carefully unfurling my palm. “Please don’t tell me you play sports.”
“You really don’t know who I am?” I question, feeling skeptical all of a sudden.
“Please, the world doesn’t revolve around assholes who want to assert their need to let their anger out on inanimate objects in hospital hallways.”
Looking into her eyes, she shoots me a genuine smile that literally steals the breath out of my lungs. Good God, she’s stunningly beautiful when she smiles.
She doesn’t give me a moment longer to admire her as she gets up and turns to run down the hall, leaving a chilly breeze of loneliness and aching pain.
“Hey, where are you going?” I call after her. She spins around without actually stopping, looking like a butterfly in that moment, making my heart pound so hard in my chest. She might flutter away and be gone forever or…
“I’ll be right back. Don’t attack the chairs while I’m gone.” She turns around again, more like spins in a perfect ballet spin. But before she can run again, she looks over her shoulder. “Don’t even think about attacking that wall.”
And with that, she’s gone, her long mane blowing behind her. Who is this girl and why does she look like the face of my undoing?
My phone vibrates again. I ignore it, not knowing what I would say if I pick it up. Tell my little brother, who practically adores and worships the ground his older brother walks on, that said older brother is dying? I think not.
In her absence, my anger start building all over again, like a monster that was being held back by her presence. Fishing out my buzzing phone, I notice it’s not Liam, but the asshole who calls himself my father.
“What?” I snap.
“Julian, son,” he starts, blowing his breath through the phone. “Where are you? Your mother is worried sick.”
“Since when have you cared about Mom?” I bite out, remembering the devastated look on her face. I lost my mother last night and no matter what anyone will tell me, I know she’ll never be the same after seeing her manwhore of a husband parade around a twenty-one-year old, single brain-cell whore on national TV.
“Son, your mother and I…” he blows out another breath. I can imagine he’s running his hands through his hair. “It’s complicated.”
Sure, breaking someone’s heart and soul is always complicated.
“Stop using her as an excuse for your inability to control how many times you drop your pants to how ever many whores you sleep with, successfully ignoring your family. And we sure as hell don’t give a damn where you do it.”
“You saw.” It’s not a question.
“The whole world saw.”
Silence stretches between us for a second. There’s nothing he can say that will make me see him in a different light than the one he shone on himself.
He sighs heavily on the other end and I know he’s about to change the topic, again. He never answers a direct question, never admits to anything. I guess that’s a trait in cheaters.
“Where are you, Julian? Are you with your brother?”
“Which one?” I wait, feeling like I’m just a breath away from snapping. “Which brother are you talking about, Dad?”
I make sure to put as much mockery and sarcasm in that moniker that John Fitzgerald, the CEO of the great conglomerate, Fitzgerald House, deserves.
“Julian…”
“Which brother?” I press, my words clipped and low.
If I close my eyes right now, I swear I can see the look on his face whenever he’s unfortunate enough to see Aiden in the house, Aiden playing on the beach, Aiden in his fucking life…
Since I’ve been old enough to understand and read a room, I’ve known that the topic of Aiden has been hard on him. He never talks about him. Never mentions him. He just pretends like Aiden doesn’t exist.
“You know who I’m talking about—”
“Aiden,” I cut him off, standing up now, unable to remain seated a second longer as if my life isn’t hanging by a thin thread and that my family isn’t about to be ripped apart. “His name is Aiden John Fitzgerald. He’s your firstborn son. He has your name and you will fucking acknowledge him because he’s still your fucking son!”
Not that he has had the decency of referring to Aiden as anything less than a mistake.
“I know his name…”
“So why don’t you ever mention it?” I demand. “For you, he just doesn’t exist. Your world would be nothing short of perfect if he wasn’t here, huh?”
“Julian, I—,”
“Is it because you’re a coward who runs away from his so-called problems? Or maybe you’re not man enough to recognize that your son has Down syndrome and with that comes other health risks?”
I feel her before I hear her sharp gasp coming from behind me.
I close my eyes, the fight leaving my body as tension, pain, grief, anger and helplessness all come crashing down into my soul with a vengeance that weakens my knees and my voice.
“Julian—,”
“Mom isn’t doing well, but the doctors want both of you down here. Right now.” And with that, I cut the call, but I don’t turn around.
I need a moment to compose myself.
I have a lot that I need to do. I need to make sure that this girl, whoever she is, doesn’t breathe a single word about what she just heard to anyone or I will ruin her life.
Glancing down at my bleeding knuckles, I try taking a deep breath, but my chest is tight. Everything is tight and heavy.
Should I be feeling this way or are those just side effects of knowing that your older brother is going to die soon and your parents—who should be here protecting him—don’t give a damn?
My phone rings again, but I can’t bring myself to answer it.
Before I can react, a small, soft hand with light pink—or is it purple?—nail polish reaches for my bleeding knuckle and suddenly I stop shaking. I didn’t even know I was trembling this hard.
She grabs the ringing phone, and without blinking she answers it, pressing the iPhone to her ear.
My head shoots up so fast, catching her gaze, a sharp retort on my tongue, but it dies down the moment I lock eyes with her.
“Listen here, you selfish, shitty parent with no morals. Instead of harassing your son, why don’t you come down here and be there for your family! Stop calling and stop making excuses. Just come down here!”
And with that, she cuts the phone, switches it off, then delicately slips it in my front jean pocket, all while holding my gaze.
It’s in that moment that a tidal wave crashes into my chest, washing over me to a point where I feel like I’m going to drown. It’s like standing over a cliff with sharp rocks below and I’m about to happily fall over, drawn by her overwhelming allure. It’s her.
This girl.
She. Sees. Me.
Every single inch of me, she sees me.
I suck in another labored breath. It seems I’ve been doing this since I first saw her dancing in the
rain, but now, I think the axis of my entire world is shifting as I stare down into her beautiful eyes.
I don’t dare blink as we stare at each other in that lonely hallway, reserved for the worst cases—I think.
Grief lingers in the air, death looming over us, but somehow, I sink into the unknown depths of her eyes. Into the captivating, tortured depths of a girl I was sure was going to break my heart into shreds.
It didn’t take her long to do just that.
2
“Let’s get this cleaned and wrapped up,” I murmur, feeling like my brain was just dumped in an industrial-like, rusty deep fryer from Popeyes.
He stares at me like I’m the source of his anger, but he doesn’t say a word.
Did I overstep? Did I make him even angrier? Why did I grab his phone like that?
With burning mortification that I’d rather die before I ever show him, I quickly look away from his powerful gaze.
What the hell is going on with this stranger? What is it about him that twists me up inside and breaches my boundaries this hard?
“Why?” he questions, tracing my every twitch and movement.
“Because you’re bleeding, duh.”
“You’re not a doctor,” he growls low in his chest, that terse anger back again. “Or a nurse for that matter. What makes you think I can trust you with me?”
I don’t know why that question somehow feels like it matters, like he’s asking me something else.
My heart starts pounding hard and fast; I can’t breathe right and that makes this very moment so darn scary.
The way he watches me. The way he steps closer.
When he breathes in, I breathe out, it’s scary.
My stomach dips—for the millionth time since I first saw him earlier today. There’s something about him…
“This isn’t about trust,” I whisper, keeping my voice low, avoiding his penetrating gaze.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“What is it about then?”
I know what he wants to hear. I know that this is a serious moment but for some reason I’m scared shitless right now. So, I revert back to my default setting.
“This is about you not bleeding all over the hospital floors. Rich boys like you know nothing about the hard work that custodians put in cleaning hospitals.”
An eyebrow shoots up and then he closes his eyes for a second. When he opens them again, the moment is gone, and I feel like a stupid, self-sabotaging fraud.
“I guess rich girls like you, with your fancy shoes and designer shirts, have personal experience?” he mocks. “Don’t tell me Daddy’s a custodian and Mommy’s what, a government worker? Maybe at the DMV?”
He’s sarcastic, his words clipped and angry. I get the sense that he isn’t a guy that talks a lot, but right now, he’s hurting and vulnerable. Something I can understand.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I chide, rolling my eyes. “My father’s days of blue-collar work are long gone, thank God. No way would we afford trips to Milan every fashion week, or weekend getaways to the Canary Islands.”
I flip my hair over my shoulder, knowing that the last time my parents and I were together for a weekend getaway was two years ago. There’s something going on with my parents and the fact that Dad isn’t here to help Mom hurts. A lot. So, I push that deep down and finish.
“He married a woman that can’t cook to save her own life, but can do everything else a wife should, I think.” Or she used to. “Long story short, they had me and are now living happily ever after.”
I don’t know why I just said that. I’m never this open with strangers simply because everything I say can be used against me in my social life and I would never be caught dead being what Roxy said once about whining girls. They are “vulnerable.”
Thank God we’re both going to different high schools next week.
“Why do you say that like you’re trying to convince me?”
Gorgeous green eyes stare at me, probing my insides like he’s searching for something that I know isn’t there. He tilts his head to the left, studying me. I feel like I’m being invaded but I just stand there, letting him invade my soul like he has a right to.
“What do you mean?” I blink, unable to break away from the trance he’s weaving.
“That fairytale,” he starts, his voice dropping, eyes burning with questions neither of us wants answers to. “Is it real?”
“Fairytales are for little girls.” I look up, suddenly wanting to be something else in that moment. I don’t want to be a little girl. I don’t want to be fourteen, starting freshman year in a week because I know this guy is older. I want him to see me. “I’m not a little girl.”
“You’re trying not to be,” he counters.
Not knowing what to say, I mutely look down at his injured hand, then up at him. Pulling on a brave front, ignoring the fact that my mother is in a hospital bed for the third time this summer, I ignore the look he’s giving me and move on with my case.
“At some point, we all have to outgrow pink frill-lace dresses and pigtails.”
“Says the girl with pink nail polish on her fingernails.” He watches me, eyes narrowed. Seriously? Of all the things he could say right now.
“It’s not pink. It’s peach coral, you color blind fool. Now come on.”
None too gently, I lead him, by his injured hand, to the chairs. I have no idea why I did that, touched his injured hand instead of his other one. And now, I have bloodstains in the palm of my hand. His blood in my hands.
With the kit I stole from the nurses’ station, I grab the ointment and a cotton ball, then start cleaning his knuckles. He doesn’t so much as wince, he just watches me silently as I work.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” I ask him after a minute of agonizing silence. “When my dad cleans my bruises, this ointment hurts.”
“And Mom?” he questions when I trail off, my movements now wooden and tense.
“What?”
“You told me about your dad who finances the frill-lace dresses and peach coral manicures. What about your mom?”
“I don’t wear that stuff, talk about fashion suicide of the twenty-first century.” I shudder. The thought of dressing wrong would totally kill the social life I’ve worked so hard to grow. You don’t become me by dressing like that!
“Avoiding the question again?”
I sigh. Yes, I was avoiding the question.
“She’s a force to be reckoned with. Beautiful, smart, she’s the reason I can speak French, Italian and a little Russian.” My heart grows heavier with each thought of her running wild in my head. Nancy Montague is many things, my best friend, the reason why I’m working so damn hard to make her proud and now she’s here.
“Is that all?”
“That’s all I want to tell you.”
“Really?” He eyes me like he’s trying to size up my worth, his anger dissipating some. “You’re not going to tell me about some of the little hints and talks you have with your mom?”
I stare up into his emerald eyes, so beautiful and a bit dark with emotion, and I know he knows. The reason why I’m here. Can he smell it too? The stench of death coming from her room.
“Well, she said pumpkin spiced anything is so cliché, and we don’t do clichés in our house.” I smirk, then look down when my cheeks burn with a remembered memory.
“What else?” he probes like he knows what I’m thinking.
“She warned me about boys like you,” I blurt then slap my mouth closed.
I didn’t mean to say that, but it just slipped out. I look up and hold his gaze. He’s kind of smiling, kind of smirking, kind of not making a facial expression. It’s freaking annoying.
“Boys like me?” he questions, his emerald eyes now dilating a bit. He glances at my lips then back to my eyes.
“Hmm.”
“What did she say about boys like me?”
It’s the way he looks at me now, as if he’s trying not to laugh at me that sn
aps me out of the trance.
“That you’re probably a jerk because there’s something wrong downstairs.” I try my hardest not to laugh at the frown on his face or the way his eyes harden and narrow on me.
“Really?” His voice is low again and sarcastic. “What else did she say?”
“Oh, a bunch of other stuff.” I try to be vague, ignoring the twisting pain in my heart, trying to be brave when I’m not feeling it at all. My mother is in a hospital room right this second, alone, while I’m out here, talking to a stranger with anger issues, who I think I hate.
“Secretive and a liar.”
“I’m not a liar!” I deny vehemently. I hate the ‘L’ word. I know better than to be a ‘L’ because I know if you’re a ‘L’ then you’ll be taking more ‘Ls’ than anyone else. People who do “L” suck.
Like my father who said he’d be here but isn’t.
Like my aunt who constantly lies to Mom about when she’ll come out here, but never does, choosing a man and his wallet over her sister instead.
Ls suck.
“So, what did she say?”
“That guys like you don’t…” I trail off, my blood warming up with embarrassment. I never blush! Not when I’m trying my hardest not to! I mean, I can blush at will, just to fool a boy but genuinely blushing? That’s so not me.
“Don’t what?” he prompts, leaning in. “Your face is red.”
Way to go pointing that out, genius.
“It’s not.”
“It’s like a big cherry about to explode.”
“I’m not blushing!”
“What did your mother say about boys like me?”
“She said boys like you are jerks and you probably don’t know how to kiss a girl correctly.”
The words come tumbling out of my mouth before I can stop them. Immediately, I feel like dying—which is a foreign feeling to have. Is that what losers who trip over their own two feet in front of the entire school feel like? It’s not hot.
“Really?” His voice drops to a low pitch, making shivers race up and down my spine. “And how do good boys kiss?”
“Uh,” I stutter, then look away. “She says a real kiss is one that steals the air in your lungs, makes your entire body tingle, that by the time it’s over, all you want to do, is to do it all over again because you know, no one will ever kiss you like that. Ever.”
Devious Kisses: A Bully Enemies -To-Lovers Romance (It's Just High School Book 1) Page 3
