Fall Guy (A Youngblood Book)

by Reinhardt, Liz

  "Go to school," I tell my sister. "I'll take him home, make sure he's got an icepack on his face and takes a few aspirin. He'll be good as new before you can sneak out with him again."

  I nod at Andre, who looks a little anxious, but tries to brush it off and act tough in front of my sister.

  "I'm not going." Ithaca plants her feet and squares her chin, and I have to bite back the world's biggest sigh. She's a stubborn, spoiled brat, and she's about to unloose all her aggravating mule-headed stupidity on me; I'm getting the beginnings of a migraine just thinking about how this will go down. "Why isn't she in school?"

  "She has a name," I bite back, not about to let her little tantrum make Evan feel like shit.

  My wildly rude sister backs down. "Sorry. Why isn't Evan at school?"

  "Mine and my girlfriend's plans aren't your business," I counter. Ithaca kicks the toe of her dressy little shoe into the dirt with ferocious energy. "Look, you're in hot water. You should be begging me not to tell Mama all this, and don't even get me started on our old man. You know the rules."

  Her kick moves past ferocious and onto borderline criminally insane.

  "I hate the rules! I hate them! I'm not marrying some stupid guy from Hungary Pop knows we can keep some dumb company in the family. I'm tired of all of our family's idiotic rules." Her eyes are wide open, rolling wildly, and her hands are balled into fists. "I love Andre. I love him and there's nothing anyone can say about it."

  Andre looks like he's ready for the ground to open up and suck him deep into it. I try not to freak out over hearing my little sister declare her love for this guy. It's all dramatics, as usual with her, and I know the best thing I can do is just ignore it.

  "Alright, alright." I hold up a hand. "Go wash up. Get to class. You can drop out and run away with your boyfriend tomorrow, alright? I'll take him home. He needs his rest after getting his ass handed to him." He makes a protesting noise, but I cut him off with a look he realizes means business. "I'll give you ten minutes. Exactly. In ten minutes, I expect you," I point to Andre, "in my car and you," I point to my sister, "better have your ass in class." She opens her mouth, but I cut in before she can argue. "Your other option is me calling Mama and Andre's parents. If he's not in the car in ten minutes, I get on the phone."

  I grab Evan's hand, and we walk slowly back to my car. She squeezes my hand tight.

  "You're a good brother."

  "Don't count on that." I look at her sidelong and feel a lump in my throat, because I have a feeling Evan isn’t going to like what I’m going to have to do to manage this situation. "She's too attached to that kid already. I'm sure he's a nice guy and all, but she's not ready to be that serious. And he would never be accepted by my family." Evan's mouth swings open, but I push ahead, dragging her along. "I know it's harsh. But I can see how this will all pan out. I gotta do what I do."

  "What is that again?" Her voice is low and accusatory.

  She tries to pry her hand away, but I hold tighter.

  "I do what needs to be done."

  I don't want her to see what I'm about to do, because I know it's going to look cruel, but in the end? In the end, it's a quick, painless way to do away with something that would otherwise drag on to its inevitably bitter, painful end.

  "What needs to be done?" She turns her head, her dark hair whipping into her face with the rising wind. "They're two kids in love. What exactly needs to be done?"

  "My family won't approve. They'll drive Andre away, and it will wind up a big, messy thing. Ithaca will wind up hurting more. Even if my family did approve, the girls in my family don't date until the parents allow it. Ithaca has to focus on school and her future. Not this guy."

  Evan looks at me, her eyes bright with fury.

  "This guy?" she repeats, throwing my words back at me. "So, if someone doesn't meet the Youngblood standards, they just get thrown to the side?" Her voice shakes, and she twists hard to get away from me.

  "Evan." I pull her close, run a finger along her jaw and try to meet her eyes, but she keeps them to the side. Her nostrils flare from her deep, angry breaths. "This isn't about me and you. I don't care what they think of you, okay? We're different, okay?"

  She shakes her head, whipping her dark hair.

  "No. Not okay. Not okay at all. How, exactly, am I different than Andre?" she asks, her voice a knife staking in my ribs over and over with every bitter word. "I mean, I'm a little older. A little more refined. Maybe I'm the right color?"

  "It's not like that," I grind out. "Remy's daughter is half African-American. We have no problems with that..."

  "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know," she cuts in. "I didn't get the Youngblood handbook. I have no idea what's good enough for you and your family. I would assume I'm not. Andre's not. Who meets your standards anyway? And who the hell are all of you to have these standards?"

  I try to slow her down, quiet her, but she slaps my hands away and points a finger at me.

  "No! No, I will not be quiet about this! Last night, I thought for a few minutes that we could be together in spite of your crazy family. That maybe we had a chance. But no one has a chance, do they? And I get it, okay, I get it! Andre and Ithaca are just kids in love. They'd probably break up in a few months over something dumb anyway. That isn't my point." She gasps a breath in and bites her lip. "That isn't my point." Her words come out shaky and sad. "What chance do we really have? Tell me the truth, Winch. Because I love you so much. I do. But is this just you dragging out the inevitable? Because if you know we won't last anyway, tell me and we'll end it now."

  She looks back at Ithaca and Andre, twisted around each other, kissing like it's the last time they'll ever see each other.

  And I choke on that thought. Because I realize that my sister knows me. And she probably realizes, somewhere deep down, that this is the last time she'll see this guy she thinks she loves so completely.

  "Evan, you're overreacting. You and me--"

  "Is there?" she interrupts. "I thought there was. I think there is. And then there's not. This entire time, you and me, we've always just been a pipedream, haven't we, Winch? Tell me." Her voice is thick and her eyes are full of tears.

  "No." I hold her at the shoulders hard. "We're not. We're different."

  She shakes her head. "Impossible." She points back at my sister and her boyfriend. "Tell me. Tell me your super sensible plan for those kids."

  I swallow hard, ashamed again about what being me entails. About the decisions I have to make.

  But I have to. I have to make these decisions, and they’re not easy, and I don’t always like to do any of it, but I have to.

  "I'll offer him a couple thousand, enough to make life easy on him for a while, and then tell him that he's banned from seeing her again. He won't want the money, cause he's a good kid, but I'll make him take it for his mom or grandma or whoever he cares about. He'll feel guilty. He'll be scared. If he comes around again, I'll scare him off. He'll leave her alone, and my parents will find someone who will make her happy in the long run."

  She's shaking her head, her eyes squeezed shut.

  I reach out to her, but she smacks my hand away.

  "I know,” I plead, begging her to understand. “It seems harsh. It seems mean. It's what's best, Evan. It's how my family does things."

  "It's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard," Evan says quietly, her head bowed, her arms crossed tight over her chest. "You've lived around it for so long, it's the way you think now. You don't even question it. But you justify an awful lot for them. There's no way..." She looks up at me, her eyes brimming with tears that spear at my heart. "There's no way you actually believe this is a good thing. Are you that brainwashed?"

  I hate that Evan is quietly crying. I hate that my sister is looking across the field, her hand pressed to her mouth. I hate that Andre is walking towards me like a gladiator about to enter the arena, and I'm the monster he's got to fight.

  I hate that I have to do what I have to do.

&nb
sp; I hate that they can't see the situation for what it is. That they're all blaming me for doing what's expected of me, the job no one else will take. I hate that my family put me in this position.

  We get into the car, Evan silent with fury, Andre silent with resignation, me silent with frustration. Evan speaks first.

  "I understand that you're going to do what you think is right, Winch. But I have to, too. Drop me at my grandparents' house. I can't be around you right now."

  Evan 13

  "Believe it or not, it wound up being too much drama for even Evan Lennox."

  I force myself to sigh dramatically, mostly to drown out the sound of Brenna's gasp of frustration. We're well into hour three of our Evan and Winch Relationship Dissection Marathon, and we're both grossly worn out.

  "I just...I just don't believe you," she cries, her voice pitched high in preparation for a full-blown reality protest. "You guys had so many obstacles to get through, but you were getting through them. Giving up now just feels--" She breaks off and lets out an aggravated moan.

  "It was too much, Bren. It was too much! It never even got started, and then it would get messed up. We'd take a step forward and fifteen backward. Every amazing day would end with a crazy, stupid night. Every magical night would spin out with some weird, panic-filled day. Even I'm not this dramatic, and I can't watch him self-destruct. I'm not going to do it. I'm just going to get through my last few weeks of community service with him, and that's it. Winchester Youngblood and I are from two very different worlds. We won't even have to try to avoid each other."

  I squeeze the tears out of my voice and focus on the college applications I'm filing neatly in color-coordinated folders. "You were against me and Winch being together, remember? You said that you had a bad feeling. That he wasn't good enough. Why aren't you ever on my side when I need you to be?" I plead, plopping down in my rolling chair.

  Bren tsks like she's my overworked governess. "Because once in a rare while, I'm actually wrong. And because I know how miserable you are. I can hear it. It's breaking my heart."

  I smile at her tendency to hyperbolize when things get bad. In the background, the chime of the doorbell echoes into my room and my grandmother's voice calls my name.

  "Someone's here." My heart constricts and sings one steady, happy, hopeful song: Winch, Winch, Winch.

  Brenna squeals with delight. "I knew he'd come! Call me later!"

  I take a second to smooth my hair before I sprint down the hall and run at ankle-breaking speeds down the stairs to...

  No one.

  Gramma is holding an enormous bouquet in all buttery yellows and golds and creams.

  "Who in the world sent these, honey? Someone who knows flowers, that’s for sure. Are these from Eastmann's? They are absolutely gorgeous! Do you have a secret admirer, Evan? Is it Margurite Holinger's grandson? Did you hit it off after you two disappeared at the art show?"

  I'm listening to my grandmother's questions without really hearing them and looking at the stark writing on the thick vellum card she left on the side table for me: You were right. About everything. And I don't expect another chance. But you deserve an apology. These are the beginning. I love you.

  I force the sugared-up tween hopping from foot to foot in my secret heart to cut her happy dance short.

  I've heard Winchester Youngblood's promises before. And I know exactly why reading this one breaks my heart all over again.

  He actually believes he can keep his promise.

  Even if it's not possible.

  "They must be from Kieren," I lie. Gramma's head whips up and she studies me with slitted eyes, icy blue and deeply suspicious.

  "I know you're lying like a rug, sweetheart." She takes out a vase and begins a complicated, studious process of arranging each long-stemmed, fragrant bloom. "I don't like seeing that gorgeous face in a frown. Spill the beans."

  I pick up a piece of a deep green, broken leaf and twirl it between my fingers.

  "Was my mother always so weak?"

  It seems like I've changed the subject, but I'm only asking questions to support the Winchester Youngblood case that's gone to court in my head. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time knowing if I'm on the prosecution or the defense. Or maybe I'm the judge? Or jury?

  Or executioner?

  Gramma takes a deep, flower-sweet lungful of air and plumps the blossoms in the vase.

  "Yes." My grandmother is only rarely so direct. And never so brief.

  I wait for more, but when no more comes, I ask, "Did you think she'd be a terrible mother?"

  "She's not," she snaps, her silvery bob swinging around her chin as she jerks another flower with enough force to snap the stem.

  She puts the discarded tulip to the side, the creamy petals bright with a single stripe of orange in the center. I run my finger over the color, ashamed at speaking ill of my own mother, and understanding my grandmother's fierce loyalty.

  Family loyalty that turns a blind eye to all evils? It's part of my birthright and one reason it was easy to be with Winch despite his yo-yoing family obligations.

  "I apologize." I pluck the petals off the tulip, leaving the tall, exposed pistil naked in the center, and whack the side of the desk with the torn flower. "I know my mother tried to be better."

  Gramma's fingers still over the flowers in the vase.

  "I wish that was the truth." She braces her hands on the marble tabletop, her gold rings clicking the surface. "Your mama was a lovely girl. Lovely. But she wanted what she wanted. And she wanted things to be easy."

  My grandmother looks at me, her light eyes swirling with hurt I can't fully understand. "You can't have it both ways. If she was going to marry your daddy, it was going to be work. I told her that. And, the thing is, your mama wasn't cut out for work."

  Her sigh starts deep in her chest and inverts her shoulders. "I'm not passing judgment. Your granddaddy and I were prepared to set her up for a life of leisure and ease. We knew our child well and wanted her to be happy, have a happy life. She would have done well with a nice young man from a good family. One of our choosing. But...she was stubborn. And it just broke her world apart when things with your father didn’t work the way she anticipated."

  I've already had my wrist slapped for speaking against my mother, and I understand. My grandmother loves her fiercely, which is probably part of the reason my mother has always gotten away with such awful behavior; her own mother is always on hand to sweep her problems up, and her daughter has always known how to stand on her own two feet.

  "So, you think it's better to be with someone who makes sense? Not necessarily someone you love, but know is from a different world?"

  The coolness seeps out of her eyes and she goes back to work making the already gorgeous flowers into something harmonious, true art.

  "I think your mother should have married someone who made sense. I think your parents couldn't overcome all the difficulties true love seems to come booby-trapped with. But the two of us?" She winks at me. "Well, we're cut from a different cloth altogether."

  I inch closer, until the smell of fresh flowers mingles with the heady, rich scent of my grandmother's perfume. "Did you want to marry someone who didn't make sense?"

  "Good Lord, what kind of question is that?" Gramma exclaims, her mouth quirked in a half-smile. "Your fool of a granddaddy still doesn't make sense, and that should be obvious to a smart girl like you."

  She lifts her eyes from the petals, and they shine with a young dreaminess. "He was so far on the wrong side of the tracks, no one even warned us away from each other. A romance between me, the daughter of one of the oldest, richest families in Savannah, and Lee Early? Even the thought was a joke, and that's how he wooed me. No one from my life or his could wrap their head around the idea of the two of us together, so we went unnoticed practically under their noses."

  "But...I don't understand? Granddaddy is famous. The Early name is famous. Everyone knows him. Everyone is afraid of him!"

  My g
randfather is every inch a perfect Southern gentleman and respected businessman, and I remember back to the night of the party with Jace. All Winch had to do was say my grandfather's name, and Jace disappeared without a word of argument.

  "Well now they do, love." Gramma's smile is every shade of triumphant. "But it's fifty years since we met and started building our life together. The world is a different place now, and we're completely different people. Back then, I had a hard time convincing him he'd have any future other than the one he thought fate handed him. Now?" Her chuckle shakes the most delicate flowers. "Now that man would forget he was ever humble, young, gorgeous-as-all-get-out Lee Early, factory worker and part-time sharecropper with nothing but his charm and work ethic to get him where he needed to be. That's why I'm around. When he gets low, I retell the story of how he got where he is. And when he gets too full of himself, I remind him what a huge debt he owes his patient, brilliant wife for his success."

  The truth of my grandparents' story is so beautiful and romantic, it almost blots out the backbone-lacking tale of my parents' marital failure.

  "What did your family say? What did Granddaddy's family say?"

  For the first time, my grandmother's smile falters. She shakes her head and squares her shoulders, but I don't miss the glint of tears she does a really good job of hiding.

  "When you're young and strong-willed, you have to know that you'll wind up upsetting the people who love you. My parents were mad as hornets, of course, and his predicted the failure of our marriage and our future unhappiness every time we saw them until we came to our senses and stopped seeing them." She plucks stray leaves that don't meet her exacting bouquet standards. "But I loved your grandfather. Loved him with my whole heart, and we decided that the love we felt was going to have to be enough. Whoever couldn't accept it would have to move aside. I can't lie to you, love. It hurt. Sometimes I questioned if the hurt was worth it. But in my heart?" She puts one hand on her silk blouse, just above her heart. "I knew. I knew I made the right decision."