“Yeah. Maybe I need to go back to focusing on just finishing this stupid project and getting him out of my life.”
“Wasn’t that already your plan?”
I worked my lips to the side. “Yeah. Totally was.”
18
Tristan
I pulled in front of the house, stopping the car when I noticed a white note taped to the door. I got out and grabbed it.
It wasn’t my dad’s handwriting, but I knew he’d been the one to have it put there. The entirety of the note was a single, hastily written sentence.
Two weeks.
I crumpled the paper up and tossed it in the bushes.
I thought about going inside and getting drunk. Or maybe just passing out on the couch, but I felt an overwhelming urge to see Wheels. It wasn’t that I felt bad about how today had gone. Granted, I probably should have. But she’d brought it on herself. I was in a perfectly good mood before she decided to tell me she wasn’t even sure we could be friends.
My mood had only spiraled downward as the day went on.
Finding out I couldn’t even get hard with Abbie was an unwelcome surprise, for starters. Knowing Wheels had rolled into the bathroom at exactly the wrong moment had only made it more frustrating. And then the shit she pulled at the game took the cake.
It was almost like she wanted me to feel pathetic.
Fuck that.
I got back in the car and drove to her house. I decided she could use a little reminder about who had the power. Her mom’s car was parked out front, which made it even better.
I knocked on the door, fixing my hair quickly with my hands. When the door opened, her mom was staring up at me like she wanted to end my life. I smiled as charmingly as I could. “Really sorry about the hour, Miss Stills. I just hoped I could check on Kennedy. She wasn’t feeling that great at school today, and I didn’t get a chance to make sure she made it home from the game okay.”
Kennedy rolled into view behind her mom. She was staring at me like I was an anaconda that had just slipped into her bathtub. I smiled and waved, giving her a little wink.
“Mom, I can—”
“No, honey,” her mom said. “Since you apparently didn’t think I needed to hear about these symptoms, I need to invite this young man in and find out what he saw.”
“Mom, he’s—”
“Kennedy.” Her voice was quiet, but it might as well have been a knife for how well it cut her off.
I smiled again, letting myself in. “Kennedy is working with me on a school project,” I explained. “We’ve actually become pretty close over the past few weeks.”
“Is that right?” her mom asked. “Do you drink tea?”
“That sounds wonderful.”
Her mom flashed a tight smile, then headed to the kitchen. I was left alone with Kennedy, who bulged her eyes at me in a silent expression of utter confusion.
I licked my lips, making sure my voice was too low to be overheard by her mom, who was clattering dishes around in the other room. “Just checking in on my partner.”
“You need to leave,” she hissed.
“Why? I can’t come visit my friend? Oh, that’s right. You’re not sure we can even be friends, right? What if I don’t want your friendship. What if I just want—”
Her mom appeared with two plastic cups of dark liquid. I grinned. I’d been expecting little British cups on saucers, but apparently her mom was talking about the Southern style of tea—the kind that tasted like cardboard with a few heaping helpings of sugar. I smiled anyway and took a sip, trying not to wince at the taste.
Kennedy was glaring openly.
“So,” her mom said. “You mentioned Kennedy wasn’t feeling well. She hardly tells me anything lately, so I’m going to need you to be as detailed as possible.”
I nodded, though I found myself a little surprised by her mom’s interest. Wheels didn’t look any worse off than usual. But I guessed being a nurse and having a daughter with all the problems Wheels had would make a woman paranoid. I dredged my brain for the most amusing version of bullshit I could find. “Well, every time I looked at her, it felt like her pupils were dilating. You know? Her cheeks were a little flushed, too. And her skin was really, really warm. Oh, and her lips—”
Kennedy cleared her throat loudly. “He’s right, mom. I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you sooner, but yeah. I was feeling a little feverish, but I started feeling better on the way home. I didn’t want you to worry about it.”
“Sweetie,” her mom said sternly. “You know better than that. With your conditions, every flare up’s important. We might need to keep you home a few days next week. If you’re starting to get fevers, this whole school thing might be too much for you to handle.”
“Well, thank you so much for letting me check on her,” I said, smiling again as kindly as I could. “I worry about her.” I walked over to Kennedy and bent down, hugging her tightly and putting my lips beside her ear. “Your lips were like fire, Wheels. I’m still thinking about them.”
“Okay, okay—” her mom said. She actually took me by the shoulders and pulled me away from Wheels.
I stole one last look behind me before I left and nearly laughed at how red Kennedy’s face was. Suddenly, she didn’t look so sure of herself anymore.
19
Kennedy
Thanks to Tristan’s surprise visit, mom had made me stay home Monday and Tuesday, despite the fact that I wasn’t showing the slightest hint of a fever.
The few days away only made me appreciate being back more. Tristan and his friends added an element of fear to my school day, but even they couldn’t stop it from feeling like heaven. I’d spent my whole life cooped up.
Cooped up in a chair.
In my house.
With my mom.
It always felt like we were running or hiding, even though the only hint I’d heard of my dad looking for us was what my mom decided to tell me. At times, I wasn’t even sure I believed it anymore. Worse, the only memories I had of him were from when I was a little girl, and they’d all been good ones. According to her, he was a bastard when I wasn’t looking. In the end, I always decided he was really gone. If he was the good guy I remembered, he wouldn’t be gone, right?
Being at school let me pretend I was mostly normal.
I headed out to the practice fields after study hall, which was my final “class” of the day. A little bit of the heat of summer was starting to ebb away, and the shady spot I found at the edge of the football field felt nice.
Most of the players were stretching already. I spotted Tristan near the center of the field. He noticed me, then gave me a knowing nod.
Bastard. He was probably still patting himself on the back for whatever that had been Friday night. I wasn’t sure how he could’ve known the one thing he could say to get my mom to let him in was something about symptoms of an illness.
Logan came toward me on a pair of crutches. “Woah,” I said. “What happened?”
“Last play of the game on Friday. Just rolled up on it.” Logan looked down at the cast around his foot. “Shouldn’t be more than a week or two and I’ll be good to go.”
“I guess we can be cripple buddies.”
Logan grinned, but seemed to notice when Tristan looked our way again. This time, Tristan didn’t look nearly as pleased with himself.
“What’s the deal with you two, anyway?” Logan asked.
“Our deal is that he’s the asshole I got assigned to for this project.” I held up the camera, showing Logan. “So I’m stuck with him until I finish this video. But he’s also not exactly being Mr. Cooperative. Part of our assignment is to get an interview and a sort of day in the life scene. Every time I bring those up, he blows it off.”
“If you want my advice, stop trying so hard.”
“The project is half my grade. If I don’t—”
“No. Not the project. I mean with Tristan. You’ve been trying to fix him. But you don’t fix guys like Tristan. You stay out of
their way, or you get behind them.”
“What about you? If he’s such a problem, why are you two friends?”
“I can handle myself.” Logan hopped back on his crutches and left me sitting there, more confused than I was before he came.
Logan could seem really nice at times, but if I ever tried to get him to talk about Tristan, it seemed like he suddenly wanted out of the conversation.
I waited through the whole practice, grabbing some token footage of Tristan in action, even though I had more than enough of that kind of film by now. An hour and a half later, I caught up with him when the players were leaving the field.
“Hey,” I said. “Can we get this interview out of the way?”
Tristan stopped, staring down at me. “How much footage do you need, Wheels? Jesus. You’ve been out here every single time we have practice. The other dweebs have all but disappeared by now. Keep this up, and I’m going to start thinking you’re just collecting footage for your spank bank.”
“My spank bank?”
“Forget it.” He started walking away with the rest of the team.
“Tristan,” I said. “I need the interview. It’s part of my grade.”
“Interview this,” he said, holding a middle finger up over his shoulder.
I watched him go, seething. Why was he acting like I had done something wrong? It was infuriating. But I decided I had two choices, and the correct one was obvious. Don’t give him the satisfaction of getting mad about it. He wanted something from me—anger, annoyance, rage. I didn’t know what, but I knew if I didn’t give it to him, he wouldn’t win. So, I just let him leave, trying my best to pretend I wasn’t boiling inside.
20
Tristan
I headed into the cafeteria a few minutes later than usual. I expected to see Cassian, Logan, and Gage holding a seat for me. It was an unspoken thing between us. We could butt heads all we wanted, but we still stuck together. It was just what we did.
So when I saw Cassian and Gage sitting without Logan, I asked what was up.
Gage set his phone down. “Take yourself a seat, Tristan.”
“Why are you talking like that?”
“Because you’d be happier if you just sat down and stopped asking questions.”
Cassian nodded, although he looked darkly amused. “He’s probably right. Because if you see who Logan ditched us for, you’re going to lose it.”
I followed his eyes. Logan was sitting by one of the windows with Kennedy. First, they’d been standing together at practice all buddy buddy. Now this?
I walked over to them. “What are you doing?” I asked Logan.
“Talking,” he said. He threw his arm over the back of the bench, looking up at me.
“To her?” I added a little extra sneer to my voice.
Logan raised his eyebrows, nodding slowly. “To Kennedy. Yeah.”
“Whatever. Come on, Wheels. We can film that shit you wanted now.”
I jerked my head away from the table, sticking out my hand for her to take it so I could help her into her chair.
“No.”
“No? You’ve been pestering me for this footage for days now. Come on. You can have it.”
“I was talking to Logan. And I still have half a sandwich to eat. So if you want to film the interview so bad, we can wait until after practice today.”
“Come with me,” I said coldly.
Kennedy surprised me by slamming her sandwich down on the table. She pushed up, standing while supporting herself on the back of the bench. She tried to stick a finger at me, but then her eyes lost focus. She slumped backwards, legs crumpling from under her.
I barely managed to catch her in my arms before her head hit the bench. My heart was pounding as I eased her into her chair. I got to the back and was about to push her to the nurse when Logan started to get up.
“I got this,” I said.
“I’ll come with you.”
I put my hand on his chest. “This is my fuck up. At least let me be the one to fix it.”
He stared for a few seconds, then sighed, grabbing the remains of Kennedy’s sandwich. He pointed it at me. “You do anything shitty, and I’m done playing nice. Got it?”
“What am I going to do?” I asked. I wanted to punch him, but I knew I was pushing my luck already. I’d been in too many scuffles at school lately, and another public fight would probably get me benched.
“Just take her to the nurse,” he said stiffly.
I turned, wheeling her out of the cafeteria and ignoring the way people were looking at us. Wheels looked like she was slowly coming to. She put a hand to her forehead and groaned.
I was halfway to the nurse’s office when Kennedy finally spoke. “Wait, where are we going?”
“To the nurse. You passed out.”
“No. You can’t take me to her.”
I paused. “What? With how paranoid your mom is, I think she might try to kill me herself if I didn’t.”
“She doesn’t—” Kennedy cut herself off, making a frustrated noise. “I’m fine, okay? Just let me go back to class.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not having your death on my hands. We’re going to the nurse.”
“Tristan, please,” she begged.
I hesitated. Something about the sound of her begging undid me. I gripped the handles of the chair tighter, running my mind over my options. “I’m not taking you back to class. You can go home, but you need to take it easy.”
“You’re being ridiculous. I’m fine.”
“The nurse, or you go home. You choose.”
Wheels groaned. “Fine. Take me home, then.”
She sat in my passenger seat with her arms crossed, staring out the window. She looked good. The sun was catching the red in her hair, making it look like it was on fire. I decided that was fitting. Wheels had more fire in her than any other girl I’d ever met. Maybe that was what kept drawing me back to her. I’d always embraced pain and trying to hold on to Wheels was like holding onto an open flame.
“You really don’t know what’s wrong with you?” I asked.
“You know the placebo effect?”
“Yeah, like someone gives you a sugar pill but tells you it’s aspirin, so it fixes your headache anyway.”
“My mom says it works the other way, too. If I know all the things that are wrong with me, I’ll probably start feeling even worse. I’ll look up symptoms and start convincing myself I have them. Same with the medications. It’s why she takes the labels off.”
“Seems like that should be your choice,” I said. “I’d want to know.”
“My mom is a nurse.” Wheels’ tone was clipped, like I’d hit a nerve. “I’m pretty sure she would know better than you or me.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Wait,” she said as we drove by her house. “Where are you taking me?”
“You can either go sit in that boring ass room of yours, or you can come to my place and have some drinks.”
“Just take me home.”
“We still need to film that interview.”
“I don’t care about the interview right now, Tristan. Just take me home.”
I stopped the car in front of the gate to my place. “Look. I get it, believe it or not. I’m a shitty person. I’ve been shitty to you. I’ve had plenty of experience being that guy. But the guy I’m trying to be isn’t something I have a lot of practice with. So, cut me a little slack.”
She squinted. “What are you saying?”
“That I’m trying to apologize.”
She shook her head, staring ahead. “It’s not that simple.”
“Yeah, I get that. So let me take you to my place, have some drinks with you, and we can start the not simple process of unfucking this thing between us.” It wasn’t completely a lie, either. If anything, it was a truth and a subtle sidestepping of another truth at the same time. Yeah, I wanted to start undoing the damage I’d done. But it wasn’t because I wanted to be friends. Ever since I’d k
issed her at Cassian’s, I knew one thing: I’d never be satisfied until I got more from Kennedy Stills. It felt like walking by a buffet and only getting a single bite. I wanted to stay the fucking night until I’d had so much that my stomach hurt, and I couldn’t even dream of eating for the rest of my life.
I wanted to consume every inch of her, and the more she told me no, the more I wanted it.
“Maybe I don’t want you to fix things.”
“Then tell me to fuck off and leave you alone for good.” I waited until she met my eyes. “Tell me to leave you alone, and I will.”
My heart thumped against my ribs as I waited. I was gambling that I’d read her right, and every passing second made me more certain I had. Finally, Kennedy looked down at her lap, cheeks reddening.
“That’s what I thought. So, we’re going to my place, drinking, and filming this interview.”
21
Kennedy
Letting Tristan push me and my chair into his house felt like stepping into the wolf’s den. I wasn’t sure how he’d managed it. I’d been more and more sure I was done with him—with his shitty apologies that inevitably seemed to be followed by a personality relapse on his part. He couldn’t handle being completely kind. It was like the nastiness inside him had to bubble up again and again.
Agreeing to come here had been a mistake. I knew it, but here I was. I thought about what my mom was going to say when she found out I missed classes and knew I was going to be in a world of trouble. But this time, instead of making me scared, the thought just made me feel more reckless. I’d already doomed myself, so why not enjoy myself before the punishment caught up with me?
Tristan opened the fridge and cracked two beer bottles open, handing me one. He leaned against the countertop in his kitchen. The whole house was like a monument to money. Everywhere I looked practically glittered with darkly expensive items, from oil paintings to carved wood paneling on the walls. Tristan looked oddly at home here.
Ruthless Love Page 9
