by Zoe Dawson
I closed my eyes and tried to keep back tears of guilt about the secrets that I still kept from him. When I had arrived back in Hope Parish, I hadn’t wanted to be here, but now I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to leave Booker. I sighed. School was too important to me to just walk away from it. But Booker belonged here in the bayou. I couldn’t expect him to give up his home, his family to be with me. But would he? Could that work?
But I didn’t want to dwell on that too much, because there was no telling how he’d react to what I needed to tell him. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I had to get this out in the open. I wasn’t perfect. No matter how hard I tried. I was flawed. So flawed. What would he do when he found out? Would he shut me out of his life, or would he be able to look past that idealized vision he had of me in his head? That perfect Aubree just didn’t exist.
I was almost never indecisive, but this weighed heavily on my mind. All my secrets were volatile, but I was almost afraid of how he would react when he learned what I’d kept from him.
I was in love with him. It was as truly, purely simple as that. I think I had been in love with him since that day I hid watching him from behind the bleachers. The guilt, thick and caustic, scoured me. I had been so weak then, so locked in my own mind, that I had made the wrong choice. That was hard to swallow, too.
Regret. It burned in the tears behind my eyes and in my throat.
I found his computer room, where he probably wrote his books. I slumped down onto the chair, and when I did, I jostled the computer. The screen woke up and flashed on. I leaned forward and started to read.
Galen wasn’t rising to Heaven or sliding into Hell. He was the angel who carried Heaven and Hell in his deep, blue eyes. Retribution a promise. It was in every curve of muscle, in every executed move. He was the avenging angel, shadowed darkness, prowling the edge of fiendish appetite, but not succumbing—not yet. He’d fallen so far, so deep he was changed by it. His faith in tatters until…Nell. He’d come here for her, and he wasn’t leaving without her.
He stood there, blood and gore covered the monster who hung broken and lifeless, his fist closed around what was left of the abomination’s thick neck, his fingers clawing deep through the skin to crunch bone and shred muscle. He threw the carcass from him, spattering blood across his chest and face.
The arch demon stood facing him, his thick, black, scaly arm wrapped around her tiny waist. She looked at Galen with forgiveness in her eyes. He wanted to wrap himself around her and take that forgiveness deep inside him. She was mercy. She was his one and only love. His broken and battered wings sounded like sandpaper when he moved, his chest heaving with the pain of knowing it was his miscalculation that had endangered Nell.
“Damien, let her go!”
Grinning with evil intent, he leapt from the rock into the pit. Nell’s scream crushed Galen’s heart. Anguish crushed his throat, and his cry sounded like a wounded animal in unspeakable pain.
He ran forward, knowing that his wings would not hold him, not caring. Somehow he would get to Nell. He catapulted himself into midair in a swan dive, the blast of the heat from the pit searing his lungs.
A leap of faith.
He tried to spread his wings, but they were useless, and he plummeted. Just then, a sliver of light hit him and the darkness on his skin fell away. A radiant silver light cascaded over him, revealing his golden hair, his smooth white skin, and the great, powerful wings that exploded out from where his useless wings had hung. They unfurled, slowing his descent, riding the air currents. With narrowed, determined eyes, he folded the wings across his back and arrowed down, disappearing into the writhing murk.
Into Hell.
To bring her back or die.
Those were his only options.
I stared at the blurred screen, trying to blink away my hot tears. I swallowed them back, not deserving the release. Goose bumps rose along my skin and I shivered. He’d used Damien’s name as his villainous demon. The writing was genius. But the emotions behind it? I knew where those came from. He had carried around that guilt since…
That day on Wild Magnolia Road.
I pressed a hand to my mouth and tensed against the turbulent emotions buffeting me. I had come back to Suttontowne against my will, but had wanted to return with my feet under me. But I’d gotten knocked flat because I was still harboring so many secrets. My stomach squirmed with the shame.
I struggled furiously to tamp down the feelings that had been torn loose by the images and feelings he’d written. My problems were rooted in a past I had refused to let go of, was maybe even incapable of releasing. I’d abandoned him. I, who knew how much abandonment hurt. Left him alone while I retreated into a corner and deliberately numbed my mind with work so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. And, Booker, he’d dealt with it in his own way. With bravery.
I bit my lip against the pain, squeezed my eyes shut against it. I pressed my hands over my face and sat there trembling, afraid that if I even breathed the dam would burst and I would dissolve into a quivering mass of weakness and guilt and pain.
It was no use. The tears I’d been holding back burst out of me in an anguished torrent. I had wronged him so many times! How could I have been so insensitive? So stupid? So selfish?
And he wasn’t the only one I had wronged. My Aunt Lottie. I had done the same thing to her. She had been trying to help me, but I couldn’t handle what had happened, couldn’t cope, so I had run, letting my past overshadow me.
I was such a freaking coward.
“Aubree.” His voice was so full of a concern which I didn’t deserve. He rushed into the room and pulled me into his arms.
I pressed against him, desperate for his heat and his comfort. It was as if all my compartments opened at once and everything I had stuffed into each one hurtled out into a terrible, jumbled mess that made me sick with the chaos.
Trembling with the effort to control my tears, I pressed my cheek to his chest, to the hard heat of him that warmed me all the way down to my soul. I concentrated on the sound of his heartbeat, the feel of the sleek muscles in the small of his back, the scent of his maleness.
And there was one secret that I couldn’t keep bottled up inside me one more minute.
#
“Oh, no, River Pearl! I lost my bracelet. It must have fallen down behind the bleachers. I can’t lose that. My aunt would be so disappointed!”
“All right. Run and get it and meet me in the parking lot. Verity still has to get something out of her locker anyway.”
“I’ll be right back. I know exactly where I was sitting.” I ran all the way back to the field. It was empty, of course. The football players had gone back to the locker room to change and go home, and the cheerleaders were either getting rides or driving themselves.
It was a bit eerie back here without the echo of cheers or the grunts of players and the sound of body contact, equipment clashing against equipment.
I ran up to the stands, then slipped down the side so that I could crouch and duck-walk underneath the bleachers. It was so icky down here, but I had no intention of leaving without my bracelet. It was so delicate, and she had found it at one of the flea markets she loved to drag me to.
I didn’t complain about the flea markets, though, because at least my aunt showed an interest in me; my mother never had. Sometimes I still secretly wished Aunt Lottie was my real mother, even though I felt sad that the thought of my mother didn’t bring anything with it except relief.
I searched frantically, pushing away debris and sticky stuff I didn’t even want to think about. Then I saw the delicate blue stones.
I grabbed it, euphoric that I hadn’t lost it.
“What do you want, Outlaw?”
I froze. That was Damien Langston’s voice. He was nothing but a nasty bully, and I didn’t understand how he and his twin brother Daniel could be so popular.
“For you to shut your filthy mouth about Aubree Walker.”
I stiffened, my heart pounding. Was t
hat Booker? All those Outlaws had that lethal look about them times three, but there was something about Booker’s voice that grabbed me. There was this pulse of heat that traveled through me, and my stomach felt funny whenever I looked at him. I couldn’t explain it.
He had been in a lot of my classes since I’d moved here. He’d tried talked to me, but I was always so busy going from class to class, doing my homework, striving for that A. The only people I really hung out with on a regular basis were River Pearl and Verity. We were best friends. Had done the pinky pact and everything.
“What? That I nailed her gorgeous ass? That I got there before you? ‘Oh, Damien, you’re so good. You make me so hot.’” He chanted in a falsetto voice.
I went still. My stomach churned and my face flamed. My whole body turned hot with anger. He was saying that about me at school? Oh, my god. I crept forward, trying to be quiet. I didn’t want them to know I was there, for obvious reasons.
I peeked through the gap between the seats and saw that it was Booker facing off with Damien. There was no mistaking his black shaggy hair, his lean, muscled build, broad shoulders even at sixteen, and those blue, blue eyes that seemed like they looked right through me.
“Shut the fuck up!” Anger rolled off him like steam.
“Or what?” Langston smirked.
Head down, Booker lunged, ramming a shoulder hard into Damien’s chest. The two of them landed on the hard concrete, Langston getting the worst of it. They grappled, and Booker landed a punch before Damien shoved him off and scrambled up and away.
“You fucker! You broke my nose!” There was fear in Damien’s eyes before he masked it with outrage and anger.
“Shut up about Aubree.”
Damien covered his face, blotting at it with his hand. “You sound like a boring recording. Just like you did in junior high, every time that sweet thang’s name came up in conversation or from any boy’s mouth. You hot for her yourself, Outlaw?”
Junior high? He’d been protecting my reputation since then?
“What I think about Aubree is none of your business. I will never discuss her with you,” he ground out, his tone one of deep disgust. “You are a liar and pig. Shut your mouth about her.”
“Where are your brothers?”
Booker’s fists clenched. “They’re not here, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t need their help to kick your ass.”
When Daniel Langston stepped out of the shadows, my heart jumped into my throat, and I covered my mouth. Do something, do something, I chanted mentally, but I could only watch, frozen in place, as Daniel came up behind Booker and grabbed his arms, pinning them back.
“Stupid move. I, on the other hand, never go anywhere without my backup. Right, Daniel?”
“Right.”
“That’s because you’re a coward, Damien!”
Damien punched Booker in the stomach and laughed when he bent over in pain. Booker rose, his face defiant, not giving one inch. My heart turned over. I cried silent tears as Damien kept hitting Booker in the stomach and the face until finally Daniel let him go.
He dropped down to the concrete and remained still, his face bloodied. Damien squatted down and said, “You’re trash, and not fit to even look at Aubree. She’d never be interested in the likes of you. You’ll never have her. Never. It’s nothing but a sad, sorry dream.”
They left him then, and I should have moved. Should have left or at the very least helped him, but again I crouched there, shock reverberating in my skull. Booker had a crush on me since grade school? Since I moved here? He’d been protecting my reputation all this time. Every nasty thing that had ever been said about the Outlaws crowded my mind. They had a bad reputation. They were wild. They were thieves. They had no shame. Not a decent bone in any of them.
All of those lies evaporated into nothing. I had proof that Booker wasn’t any of those things. He had honor and integrity. And much more courage than I did.
When he finally moved, I breathed a sigh of relief. He hauled himself into a sitting position and wiped at the blood on his face with the back of his sleeve.
His chest heaved and a soft sound of anguish escaped his swollen mouth. Then another. He bowed his head, his strong jaw so tight. He took a deep shuddering breath and raised his head, his eyes closed, tears streaming down his face.
“No,” he said so faintly I wasn’t sure I heard it, then a racking shudder went through him, and another. A sob broke free from deep in his chest, an agonized sound I had only ever heard come out of my own mouth. It was the sound of despair. I felt it all way down to the very center of me…and all I could do was hide.
#
His voice pulled me back from the memory. It still had the power to send heat through me. “Aubree. Talk to me.” He cupped my face and tilted my head up. He looked at the screen and frowned.
“Did this make you cry?”
I couldn’t say anything. My throat was clogged with tears, old memories and secrets. I was afraid of what would happen when I told, and afraid that if I didn’t, I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror again or allow myself to enjoy Booker’s company.
“Aubree? What’s wrong, sugar?”
I was so physically tired, emotionally exhausted, tired of feeling out of control. The denial of my own feelings built a pressure in my chest that grew and grew, like an inflating balloon. It crowded against my lungs, squeezed my heart, closed off my throat, pushed hard at the back of my eyes.
“I have to tell you something.”
Please don’t hate me.
“Okay.” He rocked me and murmured to me. I ached, feeling so raw inside.
I drew a shuddering breath. “Remember, you asked about the bleacher story, but I refused to tell you?”
“Yes. I didn’t press you. I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”
“I don’t know if I will ever be ready.”
“Tell me, sugar. It can’t be that bad.” His voice was so soft and tender.
“I lost my bracelet behind the bleachers. One my aunt gave me. I had to go back. It was the night before the last big game in the fall.”
He walked over and got me some tissues and I blotted at my eyes and blew my nose.
“The game with Fairmont?” His voice was hushed.
“Yes.”
He went pale. “You saw me. That day that I called Langston out?”
I nodded.
“You saw me get my ass kicked?”
He stepped back away from me, his hands going into his hair, his face stricken.
“I saw you stand up to them with honor and integrity. It was two against one, Booker, and I know. I know you could have had your brothers backing you up, but you didn’t.”
“You heard what Langston said.”
“Yes. I heard it all.”
He groaned. “But you left after the fight, right?” He reached out and clasped my upper arms, his eyes filled with a sick dread. “Tell me you left after the fight.”
“No.”
#
Booker
“Oh shit. No!” I stepped back, humiliation rushing through me with a vile kind of heat. I stared at her dumbfounded. All these years she’d known how I felt about her. All this time. “You saw me….”
“Cry?”
I closed my eyes. She was being polite. I hadn’t cried. I had lost my shit, sobbed like my world was ending, like that day when I’d finally realized my father didn’t want me and burned the piano. For a moment, I’d let Langston’s words in. Let them rip at my heart and I’d lost it. In physical and mental pain, I’d lost it.
Because there was never a way to get around it.
This girl always got to me, and always would.
“Why? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Lots of reasons. I was overcome, not just by your emotions, but by my own. And together they terrified me. I was headed to college with so many expectations, responsibilities, and obligations. I didn’t think I had time for you. I’m not proud to say it, b
ut social status played a part in it. My studies, too. My terrible need to be perfect. I was afraid the feelings you had for me were stronger than I could cope with. No one saw you but me. No one saw me at all.”
I thought that my heart was going to shatter, it hurt so badly. She hadn’t chosen me. She chose silence and her need to be the girl most likely to succeed. “I’m such a fool,” I whispered.
“No, Booker. I’m the one who’s a fool. I never said anything to anyone, not even River Pearl and Verity, but they knew something had happened there and it involved you. But I never forgot what you said to Damien Langston, and I trusted that night, on Wild Magnolia Road, that you wouldn’t just help, but that you would also keep my secret and take it to the grave.”
I backed up another step. The pain sliced through me. “It’s true. I would have done anything for you.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but I bolted. I went out the front door, into the pouring rain. Not sure which way to run. She called my name and I heard the anguish, but I couldn’t stop. The humiliation and pain twisting inside me were like something poisonous and alive that would devour me if I didn’t move.
I just took off without a shirt, without shoes. The rough road biting into the soles of my feet. I ran blindly until I tripped and I stayed there on my hands and knees. After a few moments, I sat back on my heels, bent my head and dragged my hand across my eyes, then inhaled raggedly. A horrible feeling started to unfold in me, a feeling that torpedoed my anger and left me emotionally suspended. Ugly pieces falling into place with numbing clarity, and I shook from head to toe.
Oh, fuck. Oh fuck, no. I thrust my hands into my hair, trying to process the awful realization. Aubree was just like my father. If it hadn’t been for the fact that her aunt was injured, she would never have come back home. I’d already bared my soul to her. She already had my heart and I’d given it up freely. The pedestal that I had placed her on cracked and crumbled. The Aubree I thought I knew, nothing but tattered and broken dreams. Raking my dripping hair back from my face, I tried to make my mind focus while shock drained the warmth from me.
