Daring Hearts: Fearless Fourteen Boxed Set

by Box Set

  First day and I’ve missed the joke.

  Maybe I am the joke.

  Wouldn’t be the first time.

  The thing was, I knew all about how a Civics teacher looked, because I kind of looked like one myself.

  Without the neutral colors.

  But with the glasses.

  “Here’s your textbook. We don’t have any seats left. You’ll have to sit at the table in the back. Right behind Ms. Hawkins.”

  There was only one girl near the back. She looked disenchanted with being here in general, choosing, instead, to scribble on a thick sketch pad.

  There was no chance of me looking away. It was her—in the flesh—instead of in my dreams.

  The first time seeing her—catching up to her—never failed to slap me dumbstruck.

  Her hair was in a knot at the top of her head. It was the color of hay, but underneath, right at the nape of her neck, it was a darker brown. Her neck was red as though she’d just blushed and her neck was the last to know.

  That was a new thing as well. She’d always been so headstrong—so vigilant about hiding her feelings. Except in Italy—she hadn’t held them back at all.

  I smirked at this new knowledge. This was the best part—getting to know my soulmate all over again.

  I sat at the table in the back and listened to a lecture on free enterprise, pleased as hell with myself for finding her just in time.

  After class was over, she turned around and allowed all the other people to pass while she stared at me. It made me completely uncomfortable and nervous, but I met her blue eyes second for second.

  Her eyes had always been blue.

  “Do I know you?” I finally asked her. Sometimes I had to gauge her—find out how much she knew.

  “What’s your name again? I have to know your name.”

  “I’m Saint James.”

  “Saint James. Saint James. Saint,” she repeated my name over and over each time adding a layer of sentiment to the tone of her voice.

  “Um, yeah, that’s my name.” Already I didn’t understand her. She was a little bit too nervous. A little bit jumpy. It was different for her. But then again, her personality had shifted the last few times, sometimes dramatically, sometimes in tiny specks.

  The good thing was—I knew the core of her. That had never changed. Personalities could change—souls could not.

  And her soul and mine were made from the same thing.

  I took a step toward her and she took one back.

  “What’s your name? It’s only fair.” Maybe a little humor would break her from the funk.

  “There’s nothing fair about my name.” Her response was barely a whisper and before I could protest, she camouflaged herself in the incoming students for the next class period.

  No one’s name was that bad.

  She was too beautiful to have a bad name.

  The rest of the day passed without seeing her again. I had every intention of cornering her and figuring her out.

  I only had three weeks.

  My last class of the day was art. I don’t know why in the hell they’d scheduled me for an art class along with three other A.P. courses. It seemed like a waste of time until I entered the classroom and saw her again.

  I’d learn to like art.

  Fasta

  It was ludicrous to think that I could get through the rest of the day without seeing him again. I wanted to slink through the back doors of the school and meander my way home through the trees that connected my backyard to the soccer field/track. Only a local would know the way.

  That’s one thing I’d learned about him simply listening to the gossip of the other girls. He’d moved here from some town in Ohio.

  He didn’t look like he was from Ohio.

  Not that I knew what Ohioans looked like.

  I contained the shudder that wracked through me as he entered the room, eyes trained on mine. I didn’t know if he knew anything. There was a chance he knew that I’d been drawing him since before I knew what hormones were and long after. Though the pictures before and after puberty were different animals completely.

  There was a chance he didn’t.

  I certainly wasn’t going to come out and tell him my life story.

  There was enough chatter in the hallways about my name without me adding to them.

  “Can I sit here?” I looked up from my drawing and spotted at least a dozen other places the boy could sit. My will and my heart fought against each other. I wanted him to sit next to me so I could dig the truth from him—if he contained the truth. What my brain feared sat in my stomach like a cement block was that he might not know anything. He may be just as clueless as me.

  Please let him have some answers.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I slammed my sketch book closed and got the less offensive one out of my bag. The one that didn’t contain pictures of him that I’d drawn like an obsessed beast.

  “You’re good at this stuff?”

  This stuff? He was naming the calling of my hands and my mind ‘this stuff’? Fate is a wench.

  “I’m okay at painting and oils. I’m more of a charcoal and pencil kind of girl. And under the full moon I draw with my own blood.”

  I had to test his listening skills.

  He huffed out an acknowledgement through his nose and then turned his attention toward Mr. Hammack, who was explaining to the less than ten other students that there was one more project due before the end of the semester.

  He had the most curious jaw. It wasn’t chiseled like I’d always drawn it. And his chin was squared off—I’d have to fix those from then on. You’d think after seeing a guy nearly every day in your mind, you’d think I would’ve gotten the chin correct.

  Saint had been dealt a blow with Mr. Hammack’s little announcement.

  “Do you think you can help me with this?”

  He waved his hand over my sketch pad—this, I assumed meant art.

  “I can’t teach you how to draw. If that’s what you mean.”

  That tempered him for a few seconds. “It could be an exchange. I could help you with something.”

  This started a rage within me—and I was plummeting down the spiral of the unknown. I wanted to offer my help, but obviously this whole thing was just the universe or God or whatever playing a cruel trick on me. I’d drawn that chin, his jaw that was cut just-so, the bevel of his eyes since I was three and what for—it was all in vain. He didn’t even know who he was to me and yet here I was being asked to help him.

  All my life I’d hoped he would show up and freakin’ help me!

  “I don’t need help with anything. Thanks. Amy is pretty good at drawing. I’m sure she’d be more than willing to give you a hand. If she can quit starting at you for five effing minutes.”

  He followed my glare in the direction of Amy Crantz who didn’t even cower at being caught. In fact, she crossed her legs in his direction beneath her way too short for school skirt. She might as well have blown him a kiss.

  “Is it that you don’t like Amy or is it just you don’t like her staring at me?”

  He was baiting me into admitting something that was truly impossible considering I’d just met him. Well, that and I’d drawn him six ways to Sunday all of my life since I could hold a pencil. He wouldn’t make me admit to jealously—yet.

  “Does it matter?”

  He smiled and the cleft in his chin seemed to smile along with him. I’d forgotten all about the cleft. It was a lot more defined in person. He continued to stare.

  “It matters. But no thank you. I’d rather just go on my own.”

  “Good for you.”

  I cringed inwardly at my curt attitude. He didn’t deserve it. I’m sure Saint James was indeed some kind of a saint and here I was pushing him away because he didn’t bow at my feet and call me the great artist or some crap.

  I didn’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. I wanted him to walk into my life and know what the hell my deal was.
/>
  And yeah, I really didn’t like Amy staring at him like he was the last donut and she was PMSing.

  I drew a picture of a girl dying in the water for the rest of the class. I always felt like I was drowning. I hid my face with my hand. It stopped me from looking at him.

  But mostly it prevented me from looking at him.

  All I wanted to do was look at him.

  The bell rang and Saint got up, paused, took three steps, paused and then kept walking until he was out of my sight, but the faint scent of him was still in my nose. I almost didn’t want to leave the classroom, restless about never being able to take back what I’d done.

  Saint

  The good thing about moving around so much is that you don’t have a lot to unpack. The bad thing about moving around a lot is that the floor is usually the best place to sit—or the only place to sit.

  Carrying around sofas and couches didn’t score high on my dad’s priority list.

  This apartment, more of a bachelor pad, above the town’s only bakery smelled like cake and was painted all white like one of their wedding cakes in the windows.

  “Are you all unpacked?” he asked leaning against a kitchen counter.

  “I stuffed all of my clothes into the closet if that’s what you mean.”

  “Smartass doesn’t suit you, son. We’ll have some furniture delivered soon.”

  I scoffed. “Furniture?”

  “Yeah, the landlord said she had furniture in storage. She’s having it pulled out and brought here. Her husband owns some kind of trucking business or something. Furniture will be nice for once, huh?”

  I could see in his eyes that he was desperate for me to be grateful. Not that I was usually some ungrateful pig, but there was something about this move that made me think he wanted this town to stick.

  Or us to stick with the town. Which was good since she was here. No matter how insolent she was about it.

  “It will be nice. I think I need some air. I’m going for a bike ride around town.”

  “Sounds good. I’m going to unpack the kitchen.”

  And by unpack the kitchen, he meant the grilling machine and the cereal bowls.

  After untying my bike from the back of the truck, I set out toward the school, since I knew the way back by heart. It would be just my luck to get lost on my first day here.

  The place was your typical small town. The barber pole swirled with red and white, the diner’s ‘R’ was missing from Randy’s Diner and so it read ‘andy’s Diner.’ There was also a library and a vacant plot of land between buildings filled with rectangular garden squares bursting with vegetables.

  I guessed it was this town’s version of urban gardening.

  After making a couple of rounds around the school, I saw a faint trail that made its way into the woods behind the track. I hadn’t seen it before, but now that I did, I didn’t know how I missed it the first time. It was the perfect width for a bike.

  After riding the trail, it ended at a Hansel and Gretel type cottage that sat in the wood alone except for the winding driveway that I assumed led to the main street. There were wind chimes hanging from every inch of the place along with some red mirror-looking things.

  Movement inside caught my eye.

  My lungs seized from the loss of breath. She was in the mostly glass-walled room, coiled like a snake, the way she did when she was truly concentrating on something. It was impossible to look away. She got more and more beautiful every time I looked at her.

  My quickened heartbeat told me that any second she could look up and I’d be caught.

  The knowledge grounded me even more.

  I needed her to look up. I needed our eyes to meet and for her to see me as not some boy who just showed up out of nowhere.

  I needed for her to see me as she once did.

  As she always did.

  She looked completely opposite of how she did at school. Instead of her sloppy hair, she now wore it down and free. It came down way past her waist as though she’d never had time to waste on cutting it. The sleeves of her shirt came down to her elbows but still seemed to be in the way of her drawing by the way she kept tugging at them. Her feet were crossed beneath a striped skirt.

  Without the guise of her sarcasm and defensive attitude, she was almost serene.

  She was beautiful anyway, but this way, it was a secret beauty, one that she never shared with anyone else-but me.

  Without warning, she looked up and I ducked into the trees without thinking, only to have my arm land in a thorny bush.

  I’d rather the thorns to her catching me-it would probably be less painful. But that was par for the course. Our first encounters had sometimes been sour depending on what life had thrown at her and what she’d become to protect herself.

  But this was the last, first time we’d ever have a first encounter—I could feel it in my soul.

  She would come to know who I was and what we were soon—but stalking wasn’t the way I wanted to get it done.

  * * *

  The next morning, my dad was gone way before I woke up. Even the coffee in the pot had been made and gone cold. He’d never had trouble getting a job and keeping it—if he’d just stay in one place.

  We didn’t have anything in the house to eat yet except one leftover piece of pizza. I scarfed it down and could’ve gone for six more slices.

  During the walk to school, I tried like hell to devise a plan to get Fasta to talk to me. There was so much more to her than I thought anyone at school cared to know. When I’d asked around about her, I’d gotten one of two schools of thought.

  She was an art geek.

  There had always been that side of her—the one that appreciated the arts. Once she even wrote poetry. That was in Rome.

  And the other school of thought—I wouldn’t even repeat.

  The only reason I didn’t punch the gossiper in question was because it was a girl.

  I still wanted to.

  As I walked the halls, I found myself searching for her, though I knew that most of her classes were on the first floor. For a girl who seemed to be so smart, she was in remedial classes—except Art. She was in advanced art.

  I’d never know why they put me in that class.

  My ears picked up her presence before I could actually see her. Her voice called to me without even saying my name. I’d even swear that I heard her in my dreams.

  “Can’t you just leave me alone?”

  There was no choice. Busting through the semi-circle of douchebags around her, I pressed her against the lockers with my back to her chest.

  “You heard her. Leave her alone.”

  “Ooooohhh…Fasta’s got another boyfriend. Watch out, new guy. Everyone’s had it fasta and fasta and fasta.”

  It wasn’t even a good joke.

  I fought the shudder of anger that rippled inside me. I didn’t get in trouble at school and if I did, I knew the consequences well. There was one thing my father didn’t tolerate and it was a troublemaker. Once I’d skipped school to go hang around the park for no good reason.

  I paid with a black eye and bruised ribs which lasted the entire spring break.

  Never in my lives had I had an abusive parent. This was a first. Then again, maybe it was a lesson I needed to learn.

  What that lesson was, I’d never know.

  “You heard me. Apologize to the lady before I make you. And trust me, you won’t enjoy it.”

  The idiot in question didn’t budge, so I resorted to a last minute tactic. I reached out, pinching the nerve that ran from his neck to his shoulder and held firm until the pain wilted him to his knees in front of her.

  “Apologize before you pass out. Quickly now.”

  “I’m—I’m sorry.”

  And then he was out. There were plenty of witnesses, but none that looked any more eager to visit the principal’s office than the rest.

  The bell rang above our heads and I didn’t really care if they scattered because of fear of being late, o
r surprise that Fasta had someone looking out for her.

  “There was no need for that. I can take care of myself.”

  She pushed me away and turned around, pretending to be unfazed by the previous bullying. I watched her slam books into her bag and through the mirror on the inside of her locker, wipe away a tear or two. She wasn’t fooling me in the least.

  “I’m sorry that happens to you. It won’t happen while I’m around. I can promise you that.”

  She turned around, her hair was braided over her shoulder that day, and sneered at me. I nearly laughed at the gesture. I was the one who’d defended her and there she was snarling at the wrong guy.

  I was the good guy, right?

  “I don’t believe in promises. Never have. Never will.”

  There it was—a piece of her soul. Some things never would change.

  “What about fate, do you believe in that?” I blurted the question and then frowned at myself. I didn’t know why I’d said that. If fate had a path for me, it was surely the most curved and twisted path of any being on Earth.

  I knew better. Fate had an exact plan for me. And as far as I could tell, it was perfect.

  “I’m going to be late. I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

  She walked away and I watched her, unabashed and bold. She was the strangest of creatures. At school she dressed as though she could give a crap about anything around her, but at home, when I’d seen her the day before, she was dressed like a princess on a pumpkin, drawing her life away.

  Such a mess this girl.

  I needed to know how big of a mess.

  I needed to know how much of a disaster she was.

  But mostly I needed to know who had ever had the gall to break a promise to her.

  Fasta

  Saint James was confused in the worst way.

  Clearly, he had some identity with his namesake and had decided to put it into practice.

  What he didn’t know was that it was just going to make everything worse for me.

  There was nothing anyone could do to prevent the bullying that happened almost daily, except handing me a diploma—that would end it all.