Seth (Damage Control #3)

by Jo Raven

  “Since yesterday? You could barely walk.”

  Yeah. There’s that. “The leg I broke is the other one.”

  And what the fuck’s wrong with my mouth? It keeps spewing out things it shouldn’t.

  “The other one? Then why…?” Her face twists into a cute little frown. Her small nose wrinkles as she tries to figure out the riddle after a night without sleep. “How did you hurt it? Was it when you fell? Oh crap, it was, wasn’t it. I’m so sorry!”

  Fuck. “Dammit, no. That’s not on you.” I squeeze her hand. “It’s an old thing.”

  As old as I feel on days like this. Old like the world.

  “What happened?” The million dollar question, but before I can formulate a deflection, a white lie, her hand perches lightly on top of my bad knee, and even through my sweats and the knee brace, I can feel it.

  I can always feel her. I’m sure I’d feel her presence in a fucking crowd in a fucking zombie apocalypse.

  That’s how screwed I am when it comes to her. I’ve been aware of her ever since Cassie started bringing her along to Halo, the bar where we like to meet and shoot some pool in the evenings.

  Haven’t been there in a long while.

  And although she’s right here, holding my hand, she might as well be on the moon for the good it does me.

  I can’t have her.

  “Seth.” She pulls her hand and I let her go. Because that’s what I’m supposed to do. Let her go. “I hope you don’t think I’m too pushy. I… like you.” She blushes and my mouth goes dry. “You’re a nice guy.”

  But not the one she wants. This accepting your fate thing is so much harder when I’m close to her.

  “I was hoping we could be friends.” She’s looking at me, cautious and expectant and beautiful. She’s everything I want.

  I need to stop wanting her.

  It’s easier to stop breathing.

  “We can be friends,” I say, the words like bitter drops on my tongue.

  She smiles, then, and the bitterness fades. “Thank you. I don’t have many friends. I didn’t go to school near here, and the guys from dance school…” She scrunches up her nose again, and I love that. “Let’s just say they’re not interested in friendships.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s very competitive, you know?” She looks at me, expecting me to understand, so I nod. Her eyes are bright. “And exhausting and takes up all our time. We can’t afford to spend time on anything else, and—”

  The light in her eyes goes out.

  Fuck, that’s right. She’s not a part of that anymore. Her lips tremble before she presses them together hard, refusing to cry, and if I wasn’t gone for her already, I’d have fallen for her right now.

  She’s a fighter. I knew it.

  “Shall we try this once more?” I ask, and she gives me a blank stare. “This sleeping thing. I’m seriously beat, and you look like you could use some rest, too. What do you say?”

  Because we’re friends and all. Practically siblings, goddammit.

  But when she sighs and lies back down beside me, trusting, warm and real, I don’t fucking care.

  I mean, well played, fate. Well played. Okay, I give in. I’ll accept the pitiful scraps you throw my way.

  And I’ll be damn grateful.

  ***

  My knee is broken. The doctor explained it to me. Blunt-force injury. Broken ligaments. Broken meniscus. Broken everything.

  Like I am. Curled up on my bunk bed in prison, I feel the pain radiating upward, right into my soul. Still don’t know how long I’ll be locked up this time, but it’s looking bad. I’m seventeen now, and it seems the state has decided I’m old enough to be tried as an adult. The lawyers aren’t optimistic.

  No adult to take my side, support my case. Parents absent. My mother gone.

  She’s dead. If she were alive, she’d have come back for me, called me. Visited me. Right?

  Right?

  The guards step come down the hallway, and I shiver, curl up tighter. I’ll get out of here. I won’t be here forever. Shane. I hope Shane is okay, but I know he’s not. His Native blood is easier to see than mine. Plus he looks younger than me. I hear stories circulating among the prisoners, and I know he’s living a nightmare.

  Shane’s mine to protect. My only family. But there’s nothing I can do to help him.

  Nothing’s okay. I’m not safe. This isn’t safe. The guard is coming closer and closer, and I don’t know if I can survive another night in this place.

  Need to get out. Need to get up. Need to move. But I can’t. Can’t move. My knee burns. My heart hammers. A scream is building up in my throat.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck! Let me out. Let me—

  “Seth. Wake up.” Feather-light touches on my face, my hair. “It’s just a nightmare.”

  Nightmare?

  My eyes are blurry. I lift a hand to rub at them, and it’s shaking. My heartbeat is pounding in my skull, in my ears. It’s not the images that linger. It’s the feeling of helplessness, despair and terror—an acid taste in my mouth, a cold burn of fear that has my skin breaking into goosebumps.

  Not a nightmare. Memories.

  I’m not there. I’m not trapped. I didn’t stay in prison. The pain I feel is part of the memory. I can move. My knee isn’t broken anymore.

  I’m not broken.

  Repeating that to myself in case I forget, I cautiously twist onto my side on the bed and crack my eyes open. Light stabs through them, right to my brain, and I groan, throwing an arm over my face.

  The mattress shifts and someone—Manon—pads quietly around the bed to stand in front of me, a beautiful shadow against the gray light of dawn seeping through the blinds.

  “Want to talk about it?” she whispers and sits down on the bed beside me.

  “About what?”

  “Your dream. You kept saying you had to get out. And you were searching for someone.” She hesitates. “You seemed to be in pain.”

  Dammit, she seems as shaken as I feel. I scared her, that much is clear, and I wonder what I looked like, thrashing about on the bed, muttering things. Like a crazy person, I guess.

  Awesome.

  “You said it. Just a nightmare. It’s over now.” I sit up and straighten my bad leg, flexing it just to make sure I’m right—that the pain I remember in my knee is only a pale ghost of the agony I’d felt back then.

  Yeah. Bearable. Survivable.

  “But…” She puts a hand on my ankle, and I jerk instinctively away. Too soon.

  “Don’t, okay? Just don’t. I…”

  My voice goes out, and my lungs are too small for breathing. I pant in the sudden quiet.

  She pulls away, her face stricken. “Okay.”

  I’m still shaking like a leaf. Not free of the memory yet, like I thought. My body remembers, taking longer to believe it’s over. It reacts as if I’m still there, in that bunk bed, my life gone to hell, my body beaten and battered, every touch causing me pain.

  Even as I want to comfort her, repeat the lie, tell her I’m okay, I can’t. Not when I’m barely holding it together. I need a minute or two for the shudders to pass, for my heartbeat to slow.

  But by then she’s standing up, fiddling with the tiny buckle of her narrow belt. “I should be going,” she says quietly.

  I wince.

  “Need to get home and change, then talk to my studies advisor,” she goes on.

  Of course. She has other crap on her plate, better things to do than to be wiping vomit from my face and being shoved off when she tries to help me. She has a life. I’m only a temporary problem, an accident that belongs to the past.

  What the fuck? Stop pitying yourself, Seffers, for chrissakes.

  You knew all this before you jumped in. You knew this thing between you and her could never happen – even if she wanted you. Even if she didn’t have an almost boyfriend.

  You don’t belong in a relationship. You’re an ex-con. You have a rap sheet. You don’t deserve her and aren�
��t what she needs.

  I shake my head as she sits on the rickety chair by the door to put on her shoes. Slim ankles, fine hands, slender fingers tightening the old-fashioned straps. Low heels, a flash of silver, and then a curl of dark hair falling over her eyes.

  Beautiful.

  “Don’t look,” she whispers.

  “Why?” She’s right, I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop – looking, wanting her.

  “My feet. They’re ugly. Blistered and callused from the pointes I use.” She winces. “Used.”

  “You look fine to me,” I whisper.

  Her eyes flash to me, vulnerable and confused. Then she sighs and gets up, her expression closing off, going distant. “Asher texted me to say Rafe will be here soon.”

  “Okay.”

  Something feels off, but I don’t know what. Is she still upset?

  “Will you be all right?” she asks.

  Yeah, I will be. I need to say something, keep her here just a while longer so that I can gather my scattered wits and apologize.

  But she’s gone long before I can, before I draw enough air to speak, and by then it’s too fucking late.

  Story of my life.

  ***

  Rafe is all business when he arrives. He makes me get up and shower, and frowns when I limp on my way to the bathroom.

  “Fucking leg still bothering you? Damn, man, are you going to PT and doing the exercises I showed you? You should be better by now.”

  “I’m fine,” I snap, out of sorts since Manon left, a sourness in my mouth that has nothing to do with the concussion and more to do with her absence from my side. The fact I upset her. And the nightmare.

  I think back at it. Haven’t had so many of those this past year. Not until now. Christ, that call, the knowledge my mom is alive, rattled me real good.

  “Seth, dammit. Watch it.”

  His words register a second after pain shoots up my hip from having hit the handle of the open door.

  Ow, fuck. Just what I need.

  “Jesus, man.” Rafe guides me to the toilet, slams the seat closed and pushes me down on top. “What’s going on? Spit it out.”

  “Nothing’s fucking wrong.”

  “I said, spit it out,” Rafe leans over me, crowding me in with his large frame, “or I’ll call Zane, and you know how he gets. He’ll be here in five minutes to chew you out over the fact you didn’t tell us your leg still hurts. And then there’s the accident you didn’t think to mention, and the funk you’re walking around in.”

  Fuck me. “I’m telling you, I’m fine.”

  “Let me see.” And before I can protest and shove him away, he’s pushing up my sweat pants leg, baring my knee brace. His eyes widen. “A brace? When the hell did this happen? Last I knew the break was higher up—”

  I do shove him before he catches on, but yeah, you guessed it—too late again.

  “This isn’t the leg you broke,” he says and shoves me right back, so that my back hits the toilet tank, and I hiss out a breath. Now my bruises from the other night have bruises.

  Dammit. “Rafe—”

  “I said.” He pokes a finger into my chest, and his jaw clenches hard. “Start talking.”

  Fuck. “Old injury, okay? Flared up when I broke my leg and started using this leg more. Then the change in the weather didn’t help.”

  “Knee injury? What kind? And how old?”

  Of course Rafe would ask. He can figure this out. He knows. He’s the one training us every Tuesday night at the neighborhood gym. I used to go before I had the shit beaten out of me—twice—and finally ended up with my leg in a cast.

  I open my mouth to tell him the truth and to hell with it all, but the nightmare returns full force, sucking the air from my lungs, and ice washes down my back. A violent shudder rocks me, and Rafe grabs my shoulder.

  “Look at me, Seth. Hey, l said look at me.” He’s, like, an inch from my face, our noses almost touching. “What the fuck happened to you today?”

  “Got a call this morning,” I whisper. “From my mom’s lawyer.”

  Silence stretches between us. Long seconds pass.

  Then Rafe draws back. “Fuck. I thought she was dead.”

  Yeah. Me too. And worst of all? It was easier then.

  “Is she here? In Wisconsin?”

  “No. She’s… in Indiana. In jail.” My heart is hammering again, so hard I think I might break a rib.

  “Okay.” Rafe rubs a hand over his face, then rakes it through his hair. “It’ll be okay, buddy. Just take it easy.”

  I wish that were true.

  PART II

  Monday is quiet. Tuesday is made of sunlight. Wednesday kinda drags but is good. Thursday is peaceful. By Friday there’s an itch between my shoulder blades, an unease in my mind. Friday rolls by, bright and perfect.

  I should know better. Quiet is an omen of disaster. The quiet before the storm, and when it rains, it pours.

  Chapter Eight

  Manon

  It’s cold inside the dance academy. The heaters haven’t kicked in yet. A place where dancers exercise all day needs to be cool, or we’d all die of heatstroke.

  Not we. They.

  I hang my head and curl a little into myself on the hard chair outside the advisor’s office. It’s the cold, I tell myself. Not the fact I’m already an outsider in the place I’ve lived most of my days for a year now. I remember like it was yesterday, my joy when I found out I was accepted, my excitement as I packed my stuff and told my dad goodbye. When I attended my first class. Such a high.

  Can’t believe it’s ending. Feels like a nightmare.

  Which reminds me of Seth. His nightmare scared me so badly I shiver just by remembering. The way he fought with the covers, calling for someone, calling for help. Grimacing in pain. Desperate to escape from the grip of something terrible.

  And I couldn’t help him.

  I sigh and lean my head back against the wall. It was just a bad dream. He was okay when I left. Well enough to snap at me and tell me not to touch him.

  That stung. It hurt.

  It shouldn’t have. I don’t understand why my chest aches thinking about it. I wanted to be friends with him. Like I told him, I like him.

  I was hurt, but he’d just woken up from a nightmare. Maybe I should have stuck around a little longer, made sure he was okay. Maybe he didn’t mean to snap at me.

  Yeah, too late now. Besides, he’s a grown man. He can survive the aftermath of a nightmare without me holding his hand. Doesn’t need me to brush the sweat-soaked hair out of his face and bring him water. Doesn’t want me to, probably. Doesn’t need it. Or me.

  And I don’t need him. I guess I wanted to be friends to erase my guilt for hitting him with my car. That’s why I went over to his place and watched over him all night long. Just making sure I paid back my debt. So that I don’t owe him.

  As the door opens and my name is called, as I get up and smooth back my hair before making my way into the office, I tell myself that’s the truth and the end of this story. Seth will be fine. And so will I. Time to put this behind me—the accident, Seth, the way he was able to hurt me as much with his snappish tone as with his pain.

  Time to get my ducks in a row and make some decisions about my future.

  ***

  Continuing my training would be dangerous for me, the school director explains to me, holding up a medical report about my ankle. She gives it to me and waits until I read it through.

  “This isn’t only about the school’s reputation,” she tells me. “This is about your health, and your future. Another break and you’ll be out anyway, but with more problems. Dancing on pointe isn’t advisable anymore for you, Ms. Torres. You can check with your own doctor if you like, but it seems pretty clear another career path is the way to go.”

  I wander the school, my thoughts a jumble. This is it, then. Nothing to do, nothing to discuss.

  Wow.

  I manage to reach the advisor’s office on time for my appoi
ntment. He’s a gentle man, obviously trained for this thankless job—or maybe it’s only thankless in my case. Maybe on most days he guides young dancers through the steps of applications for theaters and dance competitions, not the “many options” they have outside of dancing.

  I can become a dance teacher for children, the advisor tells me. I could design ballet clothes and shoes, or become a dance photographer. Perhaps I could become an actress.

  No, I can’t. I don’t want to be an actress, or a photographer, or a teacher. If I can’t dance, can’t be the star in Swan Lake and the Sylphides, then I’d rather do something completely different.

  Nobody promised I’d become a prima ballerina anyway. Not everyone can cut it, and let’s face it, with the physical issues I have, I’d be the least likely person to make it.

  As I turn this over in my mind, a thought hits me: I want to help people. Take care of them. Heal their injuries. Support them. Like I did with Seth.

  And there I go again, thinking about Seth when I made up my mind to stop.

  The advisor tells me I could also teach yoga, but I stop him, forcing my mind to focus on the conversation.

  “I want to be a physical therapist,” I tell him, startled to hear the words coming out of my mouth.

  “Well, Ms. Torres, this is wonderful.” He beams at me, and I try not to cringe—because this isn’t a magical transformation where I finally find out this has been my calling all along.

  No, this is a retreat. A compromise.

  A failure.

  I listen as he explains how that works, that I need a bachelor’s first, because PT is a post-graduate degree. I’m looking at a couple of years of study at least, but it’s a good thing I’m starting young. I have all my life ahead of me.

  He makes it sound like I’m lucky I was kicked out of the school of my dreams. As if this is a fantastic turn of events I should be thankful for.

  I might be sick. Yes, the idea of treating people, helping them appeals to me. But it’s really sinking in, the fact I’m leaving this school, this dream behind, and it’s like a kick to the stomach.

  Hurriedly I take my leave and all but run out of the office, clutching the brochures he gave me to my chest and my purse to my side. I should put them in my bag before I throw them away in rage.