Hear Me Now

by Melyssa Winchester

  If I can accept him for the way he is, then he needs to do the same for me or this, whatever it is going on with us, won’t go anywhere.

  “No.”

  “No?” he asks and my heart sinks with the surprise and hurt I see in his eyes. I can’t go back though. It doesn’t matter how I feel about him. If he can’t understand even the simplest thing about me, than he’s never going to be able to be with me in the way I want him to be.

  I was right before. We’re just not right for each other no matter how much I wish it were different. Reaching across and grabbing the paper that’s now loosely hanging in his hands, I start writing.

  No Dillon. I don’t want to be with you.

  “You’re lying. I see your words, but your face…” he says, his lips closing before he finishes his thought.

  I’m not lying.

  “Yes you are! You said you missed me! You said that things would only change if I let them. I don’t want them to change. It’s the whole reason I’m here. This isn’t a game to me anymore, Cadence. I want to start over. I want to be with you!”

  With as worked up as he is, his hands dangerously close to ripping what’s left of his hair from his head, my next words, I know what they’re gonna do. It doesn’t make them any less true. What he said to me just brings it all back around again.

  We’ve always been a game, Dillon. The game’s over. You lose.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Dillon

  This is much better. I don’t know why I was so against it. I’ve never felt more alive.

  Watching all the people making their way in through the barn doors, walking off to different corners of the room where my dad’s got a ton of metal chairs lined up, I shake off the remainder of the shit with Caddy from my mind and focus my attention on the beast standing in front of me.

  Stripping off my shirt and throwing it toward a group of girls that are huddled in the far corner of the back row, flashing them a grin as one of them catches it, I turn back just in time to see Frank step forward and nod his head at both of us. Stepping closer, more than ready to get the show on the road, I see my father standing a few feet behind my opponent for the night.

  I’ve known about this fight for a few days now. With me hiding out and bailing on the last one, driving as far out of Wexfield as the gas in my car would take me, Bruce set this one up as a way for me to pay him back. Where I figured I’d just take off out of town again, after everything that went down with Cadence a few hours ago, a fight sounded pretty damn good.

  Thinking about her can’t happen. I owe Bruce a fair fight. One where my head’s completely in it and I take this asshole down exactly the way he taught me years ago. Not thinking about her is impossible though so as I stand here, waiting for Ricky to make his way toward me, his mammoth size alone proving this is going to be as far from a fair fight as it gets, I let my mind go over it all again.

  “We’ve always been a game, Dillon.”

  Maybe in the beginning that’s exactly what we were because that’s how I looked at her, but from about the second day in, it stopped being about that. The way I felt when Amy threw her down proves that. I couldn’t handle that it was happening to her. I might have fought against the truth for a while after, but Kayden dropping the truth in my lap, it woke me up.

  Telling her I loved her the day she walked away from me, back then, I think I still might have been fighting against what I was feeling, but now, I’m positive. I don’t have the first clue what love feels like, I’ve avoided it for as long as I can remember, but if the way I was with her has anything to do with it, than I know I did love her.

  I still love her even if she doesn’t believe a word of it.

  She pissed me off calling us a game. It was that anger that drove me here now. It’s what is gonna drive me to win this fight. I’m gonna take this son of a bitch down or die trying because no matter what I do, I can’t get some stupid deaf girl to believe in me.

  Shit. I don’t mean that. She’s not stupid. She’s not even some girl. Cadence is the girl.

  When I asked her if she wanted to be with me, she wanted to say yes. I don’t give a shit what came out of her mouth after it, she wanted to say yes, but something stopped her. Maybe it was how I reacted to her going to prom with Eric, or it was when I took the paper away from her, forcing her to speak to me. Whatever it is, I know it’s my fault she said no.

  That’s another reason I’m fighting now. I fought myself in order to be with this girl that even I admit I don’t know the first thing about and I lost. Standing here now, I know I can’t lose. This is the kind of fight I was born to win.

  “You know what you gotta do now, don’t ya son?”

  Shaking off the chill I get hearing him speak, I nod my head. I do know what I have to do now. I’ve gotta wait for Frank to start this thing and do whatever’s necessary to bring this big guy to his knees.

  The same way that Cadence brought me to mine.

  “Good, because I got a lot of money riding on this fight and a loss is unacceptable.”

  God, I’ve never wanted to turn around and level him so much in my life. Even if he didn’t have money riding on this, a loss would still be unacceptable. He’s half the reason the slash over my eye was as deep as it was. He took what they did to me and made it worse. Bruce hates to lose.

  “Ya, I got it. Let’s just get this over with.”

  Putting my focus back where it belongs, I stare Ricky down. He’s at least 6’4 which isn’t a whole lot taller than me but enough that I’m gonna have to work harder to win this than if it was against one of the guys from the other day.

  “You ready?” Frank asks me and I nod. His eyes before he turns to ask the same of my opponent surprise me. He’s been in a ton of fights since I started doing this and never once has he looked at me like that. If I didn’t know any better I’d say he looked concerned.

  Hearing Ricky’s grunted reply, I turn, just in time to duck to the right avoiding the first punch and sensing what his next move is about to be, I dodge before his left hand can land the uppercut he so obviously wants to on my jaw. Reacting I bring my left arm up with an uppercut of my own, landing it square in his stomach as he’s reeling from his missed attempts.

  Watching as he stumbles backwards, I run at him, throwing the full weight of my body into his until I’ve tacked him to the ground. Once Ricky falls, his back hitting the floor with a crack so loud it reminds me of the day Cadence fell in the hall, I jump up and stomp on him with my legs, one after the other until his body is still.

  Leaning down until my knees are level with the ground, I start pummeling him, not letting up for a second, landing shot after shot on his face, the rage inside of me now at an all-time high. It’s not Ricky’s face I see anymore. First I see Kayden and what I should have done to him that day in the parking lot and again at the dance, and then it quickly turns to Eric, my anger at Cadence accepting his prom invitation, the jealousy so strong I feel like my heads gonna explode.

  His face is bleeding now, I can feel the wetness on my hands but I don’t stop, knowing that nothing is gonna please Bruce more than for him to see me decimate Ricky, leaving him within an inch of his life.

  That’s what no one gets. I could have easily taken down my best friend months ago, but I deserved to be hit so I let it happen. It’s exactly why I love beating on the weak babies at school too. They deserve to be beat on as much as I did and maybe even do now.

  I want them to hate me as much as I hate myself.

  Backing away, catching my breath, it gives Ricky enough time to get his bearings and before I know it, he’s shoving his arms into me, making me stumble until I lose balance and fall to the floor across from him. In the time it takes me to blink, he’s hovering over me and this time, he’s the one leveling me with his fists, putting my arms up to block coming two seconds too late and it’s the final punch that does me in.

  The minute I feel it connect with my jaw, my head snaps to the side and my body comp
letely goes limp. The shooting pain rising to the surface and making me want to scream from the sheer agony of it. In a weak attempt to keep him off me, I raise my hand up to swing, but it falls flat as it barely rubs his shoulder.

  The room around me is spinning now and I know it’s not going to be long before I pass out, essentially pissing Bruce off even more and losing him a shit ton of money. Forcing my eyes to stay open as Ricky prepares to level me with his final blow, I dodge out of the way at the last second and crawling across the floor, attempting to find anything I can lift myself up with, that’s when I hear it.

  First the scream and then my name from a familiar voice, a voice that I would think would be the last person to show up to one of these things. Since I never told him about any of it, what he’s doing here at all makes no sense.

  I feel myself being grabbed from behind before I can look up or even respond to the sounds I’m hearing and it’s not long before I’m being swung through the air and slammed hard and fast down on to the floor below, the hay doing nothing to soften the blow. I feel my legs go numb and even though I can still hear the voices around me, one stronger than all the others, it starts fading as my eyes start clouding over with dark spots.

  The last thing I hear before I completely pass out is the most beautiful music in the world. The sound of my name being said by the only person in the entire world I ever want to hear it from.

  Cadence.

  Cadence

  When Dillon left after I pretty much ripped his heart out, my mom came home. I’m not sure if it’s because I didn’t wipe away the tears that she noticed something was wrong or if it’s because the minute she came in the door I bolted for my room, but whatever the case, she caught on and prevented me from hiding away.

  After signing it all out to her in excruciating detail, so much so that by the end my hands physically hurt from the constant movement, she stood up and went to the front door after telling me to hold on. I watched as she opened her briefcase, slipped out a legal sized notepad and a couple of pens before turning and making her way back to the sofa.

  When he left here, how did he appear to you?

  How do you think? He was upset. He thinks I don’t want to be with him.

  That is what you told him, Caddy.

  I sigh before focusing my mind on the paper, trying again to make her understand everything I’d just spent the last thirty minutes signing to her.

  I know what I told him, Mom. You weren’t here. The way he told me to speak to him instead of writing and the way he reacted when he heard Eric asked me to Prom, it was too much. I can’t be with someone who doesn’t understand what it’s like to be me. No matter how I feel about them.

  When I hand her the pad and she makes no motion to write back to everything I’ve said, I take a chance and look at her. It’s only when she meets my eyes that I see why she’s not writing. She’s disappointed in me.

  “Oh, Caddy.” She sighs, her eyes falling to the pad and my words and then coming up to meet mine again. “He doesn’t understand you because you aren’t giving him the chance to.”

  Do you ever think that we’re just not compatible? I sign to her before stopping completely and thinking out what I need to say next. You’re the one that told me he was bad news remember?

  “I know what I said and I also know when to admit I’m wrong. I’ve been teaching a group of kids and for years I’ve preached to them how wrong it is to judge a book by its cover. How can I expect my students or even my own daughter to listen to my advice when I don’t even take it myself?”

  Unsure of what to say in response to her admission, I lower my head to my hands and just stare at them resting on my leg. She had a change of heart and a lot of that had to do with me, she didn’t have to come out and say it. I’m the one that went at her so hard about Dillon in the beginning and now it’s like the roles are reversed.

  After a few minutes of neither one of us making a move, I reach out to the pad and pull it into my lap. I don’t know how much good it’ll do, but maybe with as much information as she has, not only about me and the kids she teaches but the stuff she’s learned about Dillon in the short time he’s been present in our lives, maybe she can tell me what I’m supposed to do now.

  How am I supposed to feel, Mom? How am I supposed to react to him? I don’t want to change him but the way he is, it’s hard to handle. I get that he might be upset that I said yes to Eric, but we weren’t together when he asked me. I said yes because I want to do right by Eric and if Dillon really wanted to get to know the real me the way he claims to, he should understand that and want me to go through with it too.

  Her response is immediate the minute her eyes scan the page.

  Dillon can’t let you go through with this because he’s in love with you, Cadence. I know you don’t have a lot of experience with that outside of the way I feel about you, but one look in the boy’s eyes and you can’t deny it. A boy or even a man in love is not going to handle his girlfriend being with another guy in any way that’s smart or right.

  Dillon’s in love with me? I know what he said to me before I came back to school, but I just figured he said it to try and get me to stay. It’s not like he went out of his way to tell me earlier or give me a clue that he felt it.

  My mom’s right. I have no idea what being in love is even like. No one’s ever cared enough to want to try with me and the feelings been mutual. At least it was until Dillon.

  Caddy, what does Dillon do when he’s upset? You’ve heard me speak about him more than enough times over the last year and now you’ve interacted with him yourself. When he gets upset or gets thrown into a situation that doesn’t turn out the way he expects, what does he do?

  He hurts people.

  In other words, he fights.

  I nod my head and that’s when I figure it out. What she was asking me first, how he reacted to everything that happened between us, she was making a point, one I didn’t catch.

  Dillon’s default setting when he’s mad is to find someone to take it out on. He will bully anyone he believes to be weak at school or worse, he’ll go looking for it elsewhere when he doesn’t have the school option. Knowing what I do about his father and what the man puts him through, everything makes perfect sense now.

  “You think he left here and went to fight don’t you?”

  She nods slowly, but before I can say anything more, her lips move first.

  “I most definitely do and knowing Bruce Murphy, I wouldn’t put it past him to help his son out if he got a call asking for it.”

  Would Dillon really call his dad and ask him to set up a fight? Would what happened with us really push him to that point? I saw him that day in the locker room when he told me his secret, what he’s been holding onto since he was twelve. He doesn’t like it, doesn’t want to be a part of it and was so afraid to get close to me because he didn’t want to drag me into it. I can’t believe that the way he was that day would change with what happened tonight.

  It’s obvious from the look on my mom’s face though that she doesn’t think the same way. She can definitely see it and it’s that look, the fear I see in her eyes as she stands from the sofa and makes her way into the kitchen that drives me forward.

  Following her into the kitchen, she motions to the phone. “Did Dillon ever tell you where these fights were held?”

  “A farm.” I say and armed with my answer she picks up the phone and starts dialing.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Kayden. If there’s anyone that would know where this farm is, it’d be him.”

  Sliding into a seat at the table, I wait and watch as she starts speaking. She’s moving so quickly that right now I know it’s impossible to keep up, but with the way her mouth curves up and down the entire time she’s on the phone, there’s no doubt that whatever she’s heard it’s bad.

  “What did you find out?” I ask nervously, not sure I want to know with the way she’s reacting.

  “Jim Brown befor
e he died had a farm. It’s on the outskirts of Wexfield, which is why I didn’t know about it. Kayden says it’s been abandoned for years but if there was a place in town that people would use for underground fighting, it would be there.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Kayden is on his way over. He’s going to come with me and we’re going to the farm to check it out.”

  “I’m coming with you.” If she thinks she’s gonna keep me away from this, especially since I’m the reason for him doing it at all, she’s mistaken.

  “Caddy, you have no idea what you’ll be walking into if this is what I think it is.”

  You don’t need to protect me from this. Dillon told me how bad it is. He also told that he hates doing it. I know it’s not going to be pretty. I sign to her, not trusting my voice anymore to get the words out.

  So many different scenarios are running through my head right now that it’s hard to keep up, but the one thing I’m able to focus on is my need to be there with them. If Dillon is there, no matter what shape he’s in or even if he doesn’t want to see me, there’s nowhere else I need to be.

  Mom’s right. I never gave him the chance to get to know me.

  I just hope by the time I get to him, it’s not too late to start.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Cadence

  The minute I step out of the car when Kayden pulls up in front of the barn, I’m met with an overwhelming smell of manure, which with how abandoned the place looks, doesn’t add up to me. Putting my fingers to my nose, attempting to block out the smell, I start moving toward the barn door, not wanting to waste any time finding out what I’m going to see on the other side.

  There are cars parked around the side of the building which means my mom was right making the call earlier. When I told her that Dillon fought in a barn, I knew deep down this is where he would be, but I’d been holding out hope for a better result. If she hadn’t jumped on it and we ignored it then god only knows what would be happening now.