He’d tattooed himself for me?
I couldn’t meet his eyes, but the black characters forever marking the side of his body popped into my head. Darker, bolder.
“Even when you didn’t know who I was, even when I was hidden in the dark, you saw me. I know I saw you too. Look inside yourself and tell me I’m not the one for you.”
He was, from beginning to end, forever and always.
Flip was my everything, but he should have had everything—been everything.
I took that from him.
All these years I’d been worried about my heart. I took all of these precautions and steps to make sure I’d never get hurt, but never once prepared for the eventuality that I might hurt the one I love.
I’d already hurt Flip so much. I’d taken away his skateboarding. I’d taken his family, taken his life. To avoid hurting him further, maybe I would have to hurt him just a little more.
In this moment I was a coward, but I wouldn’t be selfish.
I swallowed and lifted my head, meeting his eyes. “You’re not the one.”
Twenty-Seven
Tailslide: Sliding with the tail end of a board.
FLIP
Sometime ago
Flip is 23, Tweetie is 18
“I love her.”
Silence.
Couldn’t say I didn’t expect that. It was only minutes after I’d kissed Tweetie. Given into temptation. Finally acknowledged the want, the need, the feeling lurking in my gut. I couldn’t go back to before, to being her shadow.
She was the one.
“I’m coming clean,” I continued. “I never wanted you to take the fall anyway.” King scoffed, which ripped a new thread of fire in my gut. I swallowed it down. I had one goal in telling them this: avoid a goddamn fistfight.
It had stopped raining and snowing, but the sky was uneasy, the clouds dark and hesitating.
“What?” I asked, keeping my voice level. “You don’t believe me?”
King folded his arms. “It’s just convenient.”
More silence, this time from me.
I looked beyond him, where light glowed in Tweetie’s bedroom. In a few minutes her shadow would pass by. She liked to stare out the window, at what I wasn’t sure. I didn’t really give a damn. It let me see her face.
“She doesn’t need you.”
“Maybe it’s the opposite,” I said, turning to King. “And maybe that’s why you’re looking at me like I pissed in your beer.” What I said must have struck a nerve, because he looked about to swing at me. Daniel and Romeo shot me looks, telling me not to push it.
So of course I did.
I narrowed my eyes on King. “Are you into her?”
He dropped his arms. “She’s barely eighteen. And I’ve basically been her father.”
“So you know how wrong it is.” A pause passed. “Coward.”
“The fuck did you say?” King growled.
“I said you’re a fucking coward. You won’t tell the one you want you love her, so you’re going after my girl.” There was a tense, barely there moment. Long enough for Romeo to whistle. Just long enough for me to know what I’d done was reckless and stupid—my motto.
King cracked his neck and swung at me.
Daniel and Romeo ripped us from one another, the only thing keeping us from tearing each other’s heads off.
My hand was broken, but I didn’t care. I’d done a good number on his face.
“King?” Tweetie came out. “What’s going on?” She peered into the darkness. For once I didn’t want to scurry back into the shadows. I wanted to stay. Let her see me.
“Let it go,” Daniel said as if sensing my thoughts. "None of us is good for her. Not you. Not King. This wasn’t how it was supposed to play out!” His voice rose, and he took a breath. “No one was supposed to start fucking her,” he hissed low, the vein in his neck pulsing.
“Daniel?” Tweetie’s voice lilted in caution, hearing his raised voice.
I fell back.
So did King.
“Everything’s fine, little girl,” Daniel called back before going after her. He shepherded her inside. She looked over her shoulder, into the shadows where we lay, unconvinced. King gave me one final, scorching look, then went to join them.
“That was a low blow,” Romeo said, taking the joint from behind his ear. Lit it. Offered it to me. I watched Tweetie through the glass doors. With King.
I exhaled.
Yeah, it was.
“He went to see her tonight,” Romeo said, exhaling smoke. “Went to see the girl you say he’s too much of a coward to love.”
I stared at Romeo, processing the information.
King had gone back to Heaven’s Court? To Pip? How the fuck did I not know that? I silently asked Romeo how it went, and he shook his head, indicating the answer was not well.
Well, now I felt like even more shit.
Both of us stared at the three-story Victorian.
“She’s happy. Coming forward isn’t going to do anything but tear open old wounds. Don’t be selfish.” He stared at me, blue eyes glowing in the night. Selfish. Coward. All things I’d branded myself with over the years for letting my friend take the fall.
Now if I were to finally take ownership, I’d be the same.
And if fucking Romeo was telling me this… I dragged a hand down my face.
I offered him his joint back and he made a motion as if to say no. “Go get your hand looked at—but, mate, I think you know it’s time you stop coming by. Until you get yourself under control.”
TWEETIE
King tore open the backdoor minutes after Daniel, leaving it open and bleeding light into a black night. Briefly I looked over his shoulder, wondering what happened. Less than an hour ago I’d had my first real kiss, but butterflies in my stomach now battled with the fear in my chest.
King’s sharp cheekbone was split, his full lips cut, and he walked by me like he wasn’t going to explain. Why was King always bloody?
I grabbed his arm, my earlier fight with him fading. I had an impossible time staying mad at King anyway. I imagined this is what it was like having a sibling. You fought tooth and nail, and then just as quickly you loved again.
“What happened to your face?” I asked. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t move. I stood on my tiptoes, ran my palm from his forehead to his chin, inspecting the blood. I was just about to take my hand away, when his own rose, locking it in place.
I paused.
“King?” I hesitated, heart stuck in my throat, as his stony gray eyes ignited. He never looked at me like that. I was always an impassive annoyance. King was often covered in blood and hot tempered, but never at me. Now his eyes settled on me like hot coals.
“Big brother—” Then his lips were on mine.
I kept my eyes open, bright and wide in shock. I couldn’t even register the way his lips felt, my brain too loud in What is happening?
King was a good kisser. Demanding and possessive, but gentle and devoted. But King didn’t make my belly flip. My lips were still hot from Nate, my thighs still ached from him. Who’d kissed me like he was meant to kiss me. Whose touch seared me, branded me, tattooed me with intent.
I shoved King off. I stared at the floor, breathing heavily, trying to unscramble my thoughts. Instinct told me to wipe the kiss off.
Finally I said the only thing I could say. “What the fuck?”
There was a wildness in his eyes I didn’t recognize. A demand I couldn’t understand much less answer. Pain had warped him, tightened his jaw. King was gone somewhere I couldn’t follow.
I saw the way Patchwork Girls looked at him. How people on the street looked at him. Objectively he was attractive. No, more than that. He was downright gorgeous.
Lips red like the devil. Jaw sharper than his stony gray eyes. Tall, with tattoos spiraling across his golden skin. Somehow both massive and lean, with muscles that could cut glass. He had a lethally sexy look.
But he was King.
Big brother King.
Tears welled in my eyes.
“Forget it,” he said. “Let’s forget it happened.” And then he left, headed into the kitchen. I glanced up the stairs. Imagining my cut-out posters of Flip. The stars glowing on my ceiling. Maybe I should forget it. Dive under my covers. Read a book.
Just another day.
I bounded after King. Romeo and Daniel were already in the kitchen, sitting at the bar. Absently I noted the kitchen door was open, and they looked like they were having some kind of serious conversation themselves.
“I can’t forget,” I said.
More tears undulated against my lids.
Tears at King.
Tears at betrayal. At the roots of our love being twisted and tangled.
“Forget what?” Romeo piped up from his seat at the bar.
King stared at me. “Let’s watch TV.”
“You can’t distract me, King. Not this time.” Both Daniel and Romeo sat forward, gauging this was something serious. Not a fight over who ate the last of the cereal, or why there was always so much hair in the drain.
“I’ll make your favorite.” He went to the pantry. “Peanut butter and bananas.” He rummaged through the cupboards.
I’d never had sex. I tried not to count that guy in the car, because he really only dragged his tongue across my neck and shoved my hand against his pants.
I thought that was King being overprotective because he loved me like a father—now I wasn’t sure. Something was terribly off with him tonight, but did that make it okay?
Maybe I should have blamed him.
I was forever indebted to him, but we’d come to the end of our road.
“I don’t think I should live here anymore.” Tears dripped down my face, hot and steamy.
King paused. Romeo and Daniel leapt from their seats, synchronous What the fuck is going on falling from their lips. But it was King I was watching.
The stillness.
Like the final leaf frozen in autumn, waiting for wind to tell him to fall, or stay. His grip on the sink white. Bright white. Looking at it like it was the freaking Sistine Chapel. The silence was killing me. King was never one to talk about his emotions. I only knew something was bothering him by the length of silence. The longest we went was four minutes when I told him about the boy who broke my heart.
The next day the boy had a black eye.
A minute passed.
Two.
Five minutes and my heart was going to suffocate me.
“King…talk to me.” He let go of the sink. Turned to me. Nothing. No emotion. Not like I expected it, but seeing it was another thing.
“Is someone going to tell us what the fuck is going on?” For a bona fide rebel, Daniel rarely cursed. If I looked at them, I’d fall apart. Maybe I was overreacting. I owed them my life. But neither did I want to be The Only Girl at Patchwork forever.
A glorified nun in a house of sin.
King nodded to himself, like he’d just come to some agreement in his mind.
“Tweetie’s ready to leave the nest.”
He reached into his pocket.
Shoved the crane at me.
FLIP
It was dark and raining outside, but I saw her. Sitting beneath the underpass like the very beginning. I kept thinking if I left her alone life would have been better. For both of us.
Never agreed to teach her.
Never made King take her in.
Never followed her like a shadow.
And yet.
I shrugged out of my coat, ignoring the twinge in my wrist, placing it over her shoulders. She straightened her back, startled, and looked up. The rain was a thick, heavy curtain of glass beads, blurring both of our faces.
Maybe this would be the moment I acknowledged her, and she me.
We’d been stumbling drunk on one timeline for years, always a few steps behind or ahead one another. I wanted to sit next to her, finally in the same place. I eyed the duffle at her feet. Curiosity raged in my gut.
I didn’t know why every time I tried to talk to Tweetie I clammed up like some fucking school kid. I was famous. I’d had girls offer their virginity to me on poster board.
“Weather…” I said. Weather?
She shot me a look, stared out at the rain.
Minutes passed, the rain a soft hum. I dove my good hand into my jeans, watching her instead of the rain.
“I met someone,” she said. For a moment I thought maybe I imagined it, but then she continued. “I blew up my entire world for him.”
She held out a paper crane.
My paper crane.
What did that mean? She tilted her neck, locking eyes with me. They were a soft, dusty blue in the dark night. Then she took my jacket off and dropped it to the ground, looking to the street.
“You shouldn’t help people you don’t know.” She looked back at the rain.
I didn’t pick it up.
I went straight to Patchwork.
Kicked open the door.
They all stood up then deflated when they saw me.
“Expecting someone else?” I asked.
Daniel rubbed the back of his neck. “So you heard?”
“Saw,” I said, eyes locked on King. His jaw twitched. “I wonder what the hell could’ve prompted her to leave.”
“It’s over now. It’s done.” King said. “She’s not coming back.” I stared at King, ready to rip his throat out. Something happened between them. He stared back, unwilling to cede any ground.
“Not really an explanation.”
“This has been coming for a while,” Daniel said, trying to mediate.
“She’s not going to make you forget about Pip,” I pressed. “Someday you’re going to have to confront her.” Whatever the hell happened tonight, it was like everything else with King: motivated by Pip. And like everything else with King, he’d pretend otherwise.
“You think I don’t fucking know that?” King yelled.
Silence followed his explosion. I ground my jaw, folded my arms.
“This was never gonna be permanent anyway, yeah?” Romeo said. “Perhaps it’s for the best. She can move on. For good.”
“As long as she’s not at Patchwork, we’re out of her life,” Daniel proposed. “Agreed?”
I knew it was for the best. The look on Tweetie’s face still echoed in my gut and anyway, was I really going to pursue her? How could we have a future with such a bloody beginning?
King and I stared at one another a long time, both thinking the same thing.
Can I trust this motherfucker to stay away?
“Agreed?” Romeo prompted.
“Agreed,” we gritted.
Twenty-Eight
Backside: A trick with the skater's back to the obstacle.
TWEETIE
Tweetie is 18, Flip is 23
A name, a kiss, and a mutual love for skateboarding. That was all I had to go on as I searched for Nate. My search kept me occupied. If I thought about Nate, I didn’t think about the three god-sized holes in my heart.
“Have you seen anyone named Nate around?” A line of skaters sat on a concrete wall smoking, boards propped against their feet. One of them threw flannel-clad arms behind his head, eyes pinning me.
“Shit, baby, I’ll be Nate.”
“Yeah, fuck, I’ll be whoever you want me to be,” his friend said. The entire wall of skaters laughed. I rolled my eyes and kept walking as they whistled to my back. That’s usually how it went.
I didn’t know why I kept trying.
There weren’t a lot of parks left in my state to search, for some reason they were all closing down. So I went where all the skaters went. Where I was pretty sure he would be, anyway.
The street.
As I bounced from one terrible couch to the next, I missed Patchwork even more. I didn’t have a lot of money, only whatever was left from Dad’s insurance, but I had to do this for myself. I’d never been on my own, not really, and the more I was, the more I
learned. The worse the couch, the more my memories unraveled.
There were a lot of addicts in Heaven Falls, and like most of my new roommates, my parents were among them. It took me some time to realize because my memories of them were hazy and sugarcoated with childhood.
But that’s what they were.
After realizing it, anger really took root—not at my parents, but at Heaven Falls. Instead of dealing with the problem and calling a spade a spade, saying addiction exists, we have stupid lore like Devil’s Hill is haunted. Now both my parents are dead, and my big brother lives with a guilt that he caused it.
King never should’ve gone to jail in the first place. I was certain my father was driving high. The more I learn, though, the more I’m certain King and the Rebel Gods are keeping an entire world of explanations from me.
“Have you seen a guy named Nate?” I asked the next wall of skaters, thumbing the origami crane in my pocket.
“Bitch,” one said. “You sound desperate, let me help.” He leaned forward and pushed hair out of my face. I took one look at his unscuffed shoes and the way he held a similarly unmarred board.
I smacked his hand away. “Bitch, you’re a poser. I wish I could help.” His friends let out a collective ooooh and he scoffed and walked away.
Note: did not get on his board.
A guy behind them with long blond dreads jumped up on the rail, grinding all the way down, landing just at my feet. “Why you lookin’ so hard for this guy?”
I shrugged. “My business.”
He blinked, then nodded. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Thanks.” Feeling slightly better, I took in our town square. Grinding on hand rails, hopping over flower-filled medians, jumping cars. The spired clock tower in the center of it all.
“So, we can skate here?” I asked. I’d never really skated outside of parks, only the one time with Nate. It was a totally different vibe than the parks. Reckless and wild.
“Yeah.”
“And it’s legal?”
He laughed like what I said was the funniest thing in the world. “Sure sweetheart. It’s legal.” He took a puff of weed. “We’re on the straight and fuckin’ narrow around here—”
Skater Boy (Patchwork House Book 1) Page 25
