I had to put a stop to whatever waited for me on the other side of the door. Unfortunately, it looks like Kayden and my mom have other plans.
I feel the strong grip on my shoulder before I’m pulled back and even though it’s not a touch I recognize, it’s easy to see its Kayden. When I’m pulled back far enough, his hold on my shoulders never breaking, he comes around to face me and the grim expression on his face tells me everything that his words can’t.
“Caddy, I know you wanna run in and get him, but we gotta do it together.”
As right as he is, I still want no part of it. What does Kayden know anyway? He hasn’t spent real time with Dillon in months. He probably doesn’t even wanna help him out right now.
As my mom makes her way up to stand beside Kayden, nodding her head as she does, agreeing with what he said, I resign myself to the fact that I’m going to have to do this the way they want. As much as I want to rush in there, find him and drag him out even if he hates me, I know it’s not smart. I might not be going in blind, but being unable to hear anything going around me could spell disaster. As stubborn as I am, even I can’t deny that.
Taking my hand and leading me slowly toward the door, my mom right on our heels, Kayden wraps his hand around the handle and pulls on it slowly. It’s only when the door is cracked wide enough for me to see around it that I catch all the people sitting around on chairs, some jumping up out of them, their mouths wide open, probably yelling at what’s taking place directly in front of them.
Making our way inside, we let the door close easily behind us and take in what’s going on. It’s following everyone’s eyes to the center of the room that I see what all the fuss is about. Why people are jumping up, obscenities flying, at least the ones I can catch with as fast as everything is moving.
There’s a big guy, giant looking from where I’m standing and he’s on top of another guy, his arms moving up and down every few seconds as he hits the guy hard, one punch after another until the guy on the grounds face turns to the side.
My ability to see, how sharp my senses are because of not being able to hear, show me exactly who the person on the ground is the minute his head lops to the side. It’s Dillon and not only do his eyes look like they’re rolling back in his head, but there’s blood, a lot of it, on his eyes, his mouth and at the top of his head.
It’s seeing him like this, my breath catching in my throat, heart beating out of my chest that my lips part and I’m screaming. I feel the rumble in my throat, the force I’m using even though I can’t hear the sound. At first it’s just a scream, but the minute I try to move toward him, being pulled back by Kayden, it stops being a scream and it’s his name, over and over.
I need to get to him. I need to get this big giant guy off him and we need to get out of here. He shouldn’t be here like this. Looking at him now, how still his body is, I’m already scared I’ve gotten here too late and he’s already lost to me.
Kayden releases the hold he has on me, turning toward my mom and saying something I can’t quite make out before turning back and making his way forward. When he moves, even though I’m sure he’s not expecting it, I move with him, not willing to let him get within a foot of his old friend without me by his side.
Turning to me, his eyes blazing with an anger I never got to see during my time at school, he levels them on me and speaks slowly, making sure I catch every single word he says because he’s warning me.
“Go back with your mom, Caddy. I’m gonna get him out of there, but not if you’re with me. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
If he thinks for a second that I care about what could possibly happen to me, he’s lost his mind. I know what he’s trying to do and it’s sweet but there’s no way he’s doing this alone. I’m going to help him get Dillon out of there if it’s the last thing I do. I don’t care what happens to me.
I’m the reason he’s like this to begin with. It’s only fair that considering I caused it, I be the one to fix it. Dillon’s not the only one that struggles with their need to fix things. I do too and right now I need to help him so I can figure out after how I’m gonna fix the situation I put us in.
“No.” I sign and as expected, he turns his head toward my mom, not understanding what I’m saying. It’s in that split second when he turns that I make my way forward and before I know it, I’m hitting the big guy with as much force as I’ve got.
I know I’m not gonna be able to stop someone like him but I’m gonna try.
When the big guy turns around, his focus off the broken body on the ground in front of him, I start shoving at him again, this time balling my fists and hitting him. The smile that appears when I land my first hit makes me furious so I hit harder and faster, wanting nothing more than to wipe the smug look off his face.
It’s only when his hand comes out in front of him that I realize what’s about to happen and moving in an attempt to stay out of his grip, I trip over Dillon’s leg and where I expect to feel the ground below as I fall, all I feel is air. Looking up, I see that the guy’s got a grip on my jacket and he’s yanking me up.
Getting involved, just like Kayden said, was a bad move and now that I’ve done it, there’s no way out. I’m trapped and my attempt to get Dillon out safe is gonna fail, just like everything else has with us from the start.
His hold begins to loosen on me before he can make his next move and wondering why, I search around me. It’s when I make out the side of Kayden’s head behind the guy that I realize what’s happening. Kayden’s coming to the rescue, attempting to take the guy down so that I don’t end up the same way as his old friend.
Bending over from the impact of whatever it is Kayden did, the guy drops me and I hit the ground hard. Wanting to react to the pain but needing to check on Dillon more, I turn my head and what I see, it turns my stomach. His chest is moving up and down, but it’s weak. His eyes are shut tight, having been knocked out from the repeated blows to the head I watched him take and it takes everything in me not to scream again.
He’s not supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I was supposed to protect him from this so that he would never have to do it again. He’s doing this because I pushed him away.
Even though it hurts, I inch my body slowly over to where he’s passed out and bringing my lips to his cheek, I press them into it, kissing him, wanting him to at least know that he’s not going through this alone.
My body aching and my head pounding, I rest my body beside his, bringing my head down on his shoulder as close as I can be and finally allowing my body to rest. Kayden, I can see out of the corner of my eye is still going at the guy that did all of this and I can even make out another older man, attempting to pull him away. Unable to take any more of what I’ve seen and the way I’m feeling, I completely shut them out and focus on the feel of Dillon’s heart as it beats into my hand, becoming weaker with each passing second.
My last thought as my eyes close and I allow my body to succumb to the pain it’s in is simple.
Someone needs to stop this. Dillon, if he makes it out of here can’t be forced to go through this again. I can’t let him go through another second of this and it’s because of one simple fact.
I love him.
Dillon
When my eyes opened the first time, my last memory of Ricky over me wailing away on my face, I expected to see clouds, bright light and a whole lot of angel wings. Ha, who am I kidding, the only thing I expected was a whole lot of darkness and maybe even a face to face showdown with the devil himself.
It’s what I deserve.
The way things went down was nothing like that. I woke up in a hospital room, an IV line running straight up my arm, and a whole lot of pain running through every single part of my body. If this is what hell is, it seems fitting.
Even with my blurry vision, a byproduct of the beating my face took no doubt, I can see the room is empty. At least it looked empty until I shift my aching body in the bed and hear the grunt from
the other side of the room.
“Wondered when you were gonna wake the hell up.” The voice says and it’s only when he steps forward and throws his body down into the chair beside me that I see who it is.
Kayden.
My memories, they’re hazy after the last shot I took when Ricky slammed me down onto the ground, but I do remember seeing him for a split second before everything went dark. I remember thinking that Kayden being there was wrong, since he had no idea about any of it. Now that he’s here, I suppose I can get answers.
Well I could if I my damn throat wasn’t so dry. Even pulling my lips apart hurts.
“Looks like you’re the one that needs the paper and pen now, huh?” Kayden laughs and I feel like forcing myself up just so I can hit him. Thing is, he’s right. Talking right now is obviously not gonna happen so if I wanna get answers, I’m gonna need another way.
It’s not lost on me how everything seems to have turned around and I’m the one that’s mute. It makes all those names I called Isabelle, Eric and the countless others I’ve picked on over the years hurt even more than I already am physically. The way I was is physically turning my own stomach.
I’m such an asshole.
“Here,” Kayden says, putting the pad and pen on my chest. “I still think you’re a total douche, but right now you’re a pretty screwed up one. You need all the help you can get.”
The first thing I want to ask him the minute I lift up my hand and grab the pen, wanting to know why he was there to begin with, it fades away as an even more important one rises to the surface. There was someone else there with him and right now, she’s what I care about.
Cadence was with you. Where is she?
“She’s in a room down the hall. Apparently one look at you and she lost her fucking mind.” He says and my stomach turns over again. He can’t possibly mean what I think he means, right?
Lost her mind how? What happened to her? Why is she in a room down the hall?
Seeing my questions and somehow sensing my desperation, he places a hand on my shoulder and takes a deep breath.
“Slow down, man. Seeing you the way she did, she went after Ricky. I got involved, he dropped her, but she hit her back and legs pretty hard when she fell. They’re checking her out. It’s nothing too serious.”
Cadence, the girl that earlier in the night told me she didn’t want to be with me, got involved and was hurt trying to protect me. It’s exactly what I warned her about that day in the locker room. I did end up hurting her with everything I told her even if I wasn’t the one that literally did the hurting.
Shit.
This is all my fault.
You think you can get a wheelchair in here? I need you to take me to her.
“I’m not taking you anywhere, Dill. Your body is fucking destroyed. I get why you wanna do it, but man, seeing you like this, it’s not going to help her. Think about what you’re doing.”
He’s right. Of course he is. He knows about this better than anyone. He doesn’t realize it, but that story he threw around last fall when he was out for three days after the dance, I knew it was bullshit. He thought he was hiding stuff so well but I knew better. Dean has been knocking him around for years, even if he didn’t talk to me about it and it was because of him that Kayden was out.
It was pretty easy to put together when Dean ended up locked away and word spread all over town. Wexfield is nothing if not the hub for gossip and shit talking. The adults were even worse than the kids with it.
I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t want Isabelle seeing him after what happened so I know what he’s getting at about me showing up in front of her with the way I look. I don’t exactly know how bad it ended up being, but if the way he’s looking me over is any indication, it’s gotta be pretty damn gross.
How bad is it?
“Her or you?”
Me. You said that it wasn’t bad with her.
“You’ve got two black eyes, a slash through your right eyebrow that’s pretty damn deep. They gave you stitches for it. When we brought you in, your arm was dislocated, but it looks like they put it back together nicely since it doesn’t look like a limp noodle anymore. They’re gonna take you for x-rays on your back soon, there’s some concern about your spine. A few other things going on with your face, but I think that’s about it.”
I shouldn’t have been all that surprised with everything he told me but I am. I know I slammed down on the ground pretty hard when he dropped me but them being worried about spinal damage, that’s surprising.
“Now you see why I said you can’t go see her right now.” He says, catching the surprised look on my face with the list of injuries he’s given me.
Cadence. Tell me everything.
“Dill,” he says with a tight laugh. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on with the two of you, but if Isabelle ever did what Cadence did, I’d never let her out of my sight again. The girl went crazy. I warned her not to get involved and even though she saw what I said, she still took off at him. She wouldn’t stop hitting him even though the dude didn’t even flinch. She fell down, crawled to you and passed out on your shoulder.”
There’s a part of me that wants to feel proud that she did all of that for me, but the part of me that’s able to see how screwed up this entire situation is won’t let me. She never should have been there, let alone throwing herself in the middle of it. Cadence was never meant to see any of that.
She’s better than what I do.
What was she even doing there? How did she know?
His answer is immediate and this time, all traces of the smile he’d been wearing when he explained what Cadence did is gone and he’s all business.
“Ms. T figured it out. She asked Caddy what she knew about where you go to fight. What you do when shit goes down you don’t like and she called me for the rest. From the way the two of them were going at each other in the car, signing and stuff, I get the feeling that her mom wanted her to stay home and she wasn’t having any of it.”
That’s definitely Cadence. I expect nothing less from her. I don’t know her as well as I want to but the one thing that was clear right from the first day is that she’s stubborn and didn’t see things the way everyone else did. If her mom wanted her to stay home safe, no matter who it was about, she wouldn’t have done it.
Yeah she’s like that. Are you sure she’s okay?
“She’ll be bruised for a while, but that’s about it. She’s only being checked over right now. I’m pretty sure they’re gonna let her go soon and she’ll be home by the end of the night.”
I feel better knowing that nothing that happened tonight will stay with her physically, that she got lucky and Kayden had been there to stop anything worse from happening, but I can’t shake the feeling that if she hadn’t spoken to me that first day, none of this would be happening now. Her liking me, believing in me, almost got her killed.
Fighting this way for my dad, it might seem dramatic saying that she could have died, but it’s not. Every time I went into a fight, I went in knowing that one wrong shot, falling a certain way could end things forever. It’s half the reason I hated it so much. I didn’t fight because I was suicidal, I did it because it was better than the alternative. An alternative that Kayden lived with and knows a whole lot about.
If I didn’t fight, I would have been Bruce’s punching bag and in some way, these fights seemed like the lesser of two evils.
Please tell her mom I’m sorry. She never should’ve been there or been a part of any of this. I’ll stay away from her.
Kayden laughs under his breath and again I feel my blood pressure rising. I didn’t think any of what I just wrote is funny, in fact it’s as serious as I think I’ve ever been. I meant every word of it, just like I did earlier when I told her how I felt.
What’s so funny?
“Man, you know our history. Most of it is pretty bad. Sitting here like this with you, I never thought in a million years I’d be doing it, but what you
just said, it’s something else I never expected to see.”
Well that didn’t help. Now I’m even more lost than I was before he started talking.
You gonna explain that or just keep me in suspense?
“Doing the right thing. I never thought I’d see it. It’s also kind of hilarious seeing you in love too.”
Screw you.
“You’re actually gonna sit here all busted up and broken and deny it? Dillon, the reason we were such good friends for so long is because we’re exactly alike. You don’t wanna admit it because you’re this macho fucking asshole, just like I was, but you can’t deny this. You went into the fight because of what happened with her, she explained that much to me when we got here. You don’t willingly throw yourself into a fight like that unless you’ve been driven bat shit crazy over a girl.”
This where you tell me you know that because you went through it with Belle?
Instead of answering right away he nods and grins at me and for the first time in months, despite the pain it causes me the minute I attempt to do it, I smirk back at him. We are alike, no matter how much we try to run from or deny it and what he’s saying, it’s all true. If there’s someone out there that might just know me better than I do myself, it’s him.
“You know how many times I went at Dean over Belle? He called her shit and it just drove me to a point where all I wanted to see was him dead. I was that pissed off. I used to get into it with my brother over a lot of different things, but never over a girl. It’s how I know what’s going on with you, because you did the same damn thing. You wanted to have someone beat the feelings out of you because it’s easier not feeling at all.”
None of that matters now. After what happened tonight, it proves she’s better off without me. She probably wants nothing to do with me.
He laughs again but this time instead of pissing me off, it just makes me curious. He’s laughing like he knows something I don’t.
“We could barely get her off you when the paramedics showed up, Dill. Somehow I doubt that the girl wants nothing to do with you. I’m in here because it was the only way to keep her calm.”
Hear Me Now Page 23
