Loyal Love

by Henry, Max

  Kurt’s approach is a sensible and straightforward type. Walk up to Lacey and say, “Hey. You hurt my fucking feelings yesterday afternoon. I’m head over heels for you, but unless you show you’re capable of treating me with the same respect, then we have no future.”

  Like that would go down well.

  Especially when it feels as though she’s already decided there is no “us”.

  I grumble as I tug my boots on, pissed off that there’s no easy way out of this. Girls are complicated, sure. But love is a whole other beast. Wrap the two together, and you’ve got one hell of a formidable force to reckon with.

  She has her reason for acting the way she has, I can respect that, but I guess I can also take a pinch of salt from my father’s rhetoric and tell her how I feel about her.

  What she does with that? Well. Who’d fucking know anymore?

  ***

  Black Betty shifts on her feet where Beau waits for me at the intersection of our paths to school. He sits with his head down, hat obscuring his face while one thumb rapidly darts across his phone screen.

  “Shit the bed?” I tease as I approach. “I’m normally waiting for you.”

  Beau’s shoulders jump; the only indication he heard me. Major sidles up beside Betty, and the two of us wait on the duo to be ready to continue.

  Beau taps the phone with finality and then tucks the phone in his shirt pocket. “Details about the weekend.” He nudges his heels into Betty’s side. “Ed’s trying to get answers about what Amber has planned, but Johnson won’t even steer the conversation close enough for him to manipulate it that way.”

  “Huh.” I let my hands rest on the horn of my saddle. “You guys like the insider spies now, or something?”

  Beau chuckles. “Guess so.”

  “That why you two got a lift to school with Johnson?” The ache of suspicion returns underneath my ribs.

  I hate being wary of my friends like this, but who the fuck can you trust anymore?

  Beau nods. “After the talk we all had at the stables, Ed and I figured it’s less suspicious if we carry on as usual, keeping communication lines open.”

  “You could have told me that,” I grumble.

  Major snorts in agreement.

  Beau’s heads turns as we ride side-by-side. “You think I’d drop you in the shit, or something?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It was there in your words, man.” He faces forward, jaw set hard, and eyes narrowed on the verge before us.

  Johnson’s truck crosses over the intersection ahead, quickly disappearing behind a windbreak. Speak of the devil.

  “Things are fucked up, bro,” I explain. “I didn’t mean to doubt you. I just don’t know where my head is at right now.”

  “Yeah. I know.” He pointlessly flicks the ends of the reins over the back of each hand in turn. “Sometimes I think it’d be better to go back to how ignorant we were at the start of the year.”

  “Ignorant?”

  “Yeah.” He shifts his gaze to mine. “About how much of a cow Amber is, how fucking messed up she has Johnson, how bitchy the girls were in their group, and how they mostly stayed away from us.”

  “You wish we were all still in denial,” I say with an amused huff.

  He shrugs. “Don’t you think it’s easier?”

  “Less conflict, sure. But we’re all deluding ourselves if we thought that would last.”

  “I guess.”

  I frown, studying his profile when he moves slightly ahead as we turn onto the main road. “What’s up?” He’s always broody, sure. But he’s never this negative about stuff.

  One hand propped on his thigh, he twists in the saddle to face me when I get up alongside again. “Don’t you think this weekend is going to be one catastrophic fuck-up?”

  “Goes without saying,” I mutter.

  “So why the fuck are we doing it? Going out to Dee’s when our whole group is self-destructing?”

  “Because it’s what we always do.” The answer sounds just as lame out loud as I figured it would. “Besides, I’d rather get this beef sorted before it drags on after final exams, bro. Lay it all out on the table, I reckon.”

  “Over your pacifist lifestyle change now, are you?” He makes the comment to tease, but the truth hits home harder than I want it to.

  I dropped my troublemaking ways when Mum got sick. I vowed that I wouldn’t give Dad hell after she was gone. I made a promise to a dying woman that I don’t intend to break.

  But even my sympathetic mother would understand why it is we need to let this fire reach its peak. There’s too much fuel waiting to burn for us to expect it so die out on its own. Unspoken feelings between friends, grudges over favours that we never wanted to do for each other, differences of opinion that need to be aired.

  The older we all get, the more we grow apart. I’d prefer we laid our grievances out for discussion and went our ways as mutual acquaintances than harboured ill-will toward each other our entire adult lives.

  “I didn’t say that to piss you off,” Beau mutters.

  I pull myself out of my head and force a smile. “Nah, man. I’m good.” A heavy sigh escapes my nose. “Thinking it through is all.”

  “Share the weight.” Beau stands in the stirrups and then repositions himself square in the saddle. “What you thinking?”

  “We’ve got the race to do, right?”

  He nods.

  “So, we turn up, do that, and that’s all. We’re not obligated to stay for any of the bullshit after. You could leave then if you wanted to.”

  “I could leave?” He narrows his eyes. “What about you?”

  I’ve got a bull-headed girl to watch over. “I think it’s best if at least one of us stick around to make sure nobody kills anyone else.”

  Beau frowns. “Dee’s parents are away for the weekend. Did you know that?”

  Fuck. “No. Why the fuck is she going through with it, then? The place will be trashed if there are no limits on the house.”

  “Exactly.” He nods toward the steady stream of traffic—road and foot—filtering into the school’s street. “Got to make you wonder why she’s doing it. What does Dee have to gain from this?”

  “Probably nothing,” I mutter. “Being best friends with Amber has fucked her brain. She’s more than likely just too stupid to realise what a massive mistake this is.”

  “Maybe.” His eyes narrow on something further down the road. “Looks like you got issues of your own, though, bro.”

  I lift my hat a fraction with the tip of my pointer finger to see what he smiles about. Damn it.

  Beau nudges Betty in the side, chuckling as he rides off toward Johnson’s parked truck. I continue toward the access road alone, a growl caught in my throat at the sight before me.

  Fucking Lacey.

  On the back of fucking Mandy’s bike.

  What the hell is she up to?

  LACEY

  “Oop,” Mandy says through a stiff jaw. “Here comes trouble.”

  I turn my head the same way as hers, leaning back a little, so we don’t smack helmets. Shoot. Tuck rides toward our group, Major in a lazy trot.

  I dismount her idling bike with a sigh. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “You want me to stick around and fend him off?” She jerks her chin toward the pissed-off cowboy headed my way. “I’m sure we could find a stick big enough. Right, Cate?”

  Cate giggles behind the chin guard of her helmet. “I think so.”

  I chuckle, fingers fumbling with the strap under my chin. “Thanks, but I can handle him.”

  “If you insist.” Mandy tips her head to one side, twisting the throttle on her bike a little. “Meet us at the shed after school if you want a lift home.”

  The girls ride away, leaving me to curse under my breath at the stubborn buckle that refuses to thread the vinyl strap without hitching. I finally manage to tug the two sides apart, removing the restriction from my head in time for Major’s hooves to come
to a rapid halt beside me.

  “You aren’t going to the party this weekend,” Tuck barks down at me, his brow firm.

  I shake my hair out, running the fingers of my free hand through the roots. “And good morning to you, too.”

  “Don’t give me shit after how you fucking left yesterday.”

  I physically reel at his venom. “Well excuse me for having issues to deal with outside of you.”

  His nostrils flare, and as much as it angers me to admit it, the brutal dominance radiating from him is sexy as hell. If this is how he used to be when he was a brawler, no wonder all the girls love him.

  “They wouldn’t be ‘outside of me’,” he scathes, throwing my words back at me, “if you would stop cutting me out.”

  “It has nothing to do with you,” I cry, already drained from our interaction. “Why do you insist on getting involved?”

  “Because I fucking care about you,” he hollers.

  A passing group of students slow in their roll, feet warily carrying them from the scene erupting beside them.

  My face flames, hand tightening on the edge of the helmet. “I don’t need help to fight my battles, Tuck.” It takes every ounce of restraint I have to keep my voice level. “All I wanted was support in my decisions.”

  He slides off Major in a rush, boots slapping the ground with such force that little clouds of dust erupt around the soles. “I make no apologies for being who I am.”

  “I wasn’t questioning who you are,” I argue.

  He steps closer, Major’s reins held behind him. “You want me to pander to your whims like some whipped fucking servant.” His breath hits my face in angry bursts. “I won’t do that. If you want some guy who’ll say ‘Yes, dear. Whatever you want, dear’ to every crazy idea you get in your head, then you’re looking in the wrong place.”

  “Point made,” I snap.

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  He won’t look away.

  I can’t.

  “It makes no fucking sense,” Tuck finally growls, pulling back. He shakes his head and then hastily mounts Major.

  “What doesn’t?” I squint a little as I stare toward the sky to see him. “What makes no sense?”

  He gives Major a firm kick, throwing the words at my feet before he rides away. “Why the fuck I love you so much.”

  ***

  “He said what?” Maggie whispers with such force her voice cracks.

  “Ssh,” I warn, beating the eggs into our latest creation: a blueberry and apple topped tea cake. “She’ll be over here to split us up.” I give our teacher the side-eye while she aides one of the other girls with the task of cracking the egg without any shell left behind.

  “Are you sure he said the L word?”

  “Um, yeah.” I roll my eyes, scraping down the sides of the bowl. “I choked on my next breath.”

  “Wow.” Maggie’s hands drop to the top of her station. “I mean, if he said it, he must mean it. But that’s kind of quick, isn’t it?” She twists, squinting at me.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  The way I felt about Tuck took me by surprise too, but when I’ve been kept on a damn pedestal my entire teenage life, then I figured the intensity must be born from starvation of any prior feelings like them.

  But love?

  I never considered he felt that way.

  I wait until Mrs Fox passes by and then lean forward to hiss at Maggie’s back. “What the hell do I do? Don’t leave me in this mess alone.”

  She shrugs, turning her head to whisper over her shoulder. “How do you feel about him?”

  Frustrated. Maddeningly obsessed. Needy, and desperate for independence all at once.

  “Everything. All at once,” I admit.

  Mags holds up a finger; head bent to read her recipe. She moves across to the fridge to retrieve the milk, muttering on her way back past. “Did you say anything back?”

  “I didn’t get a chance.”

  “Girls,” Mrs Fox calls. “Do you need assistance?”

  “No, thank you,” Maggie replies.

  “Minds on task, then,” she instructs.

  “Minds on task,” Maggie mimics under her breath. “Jees.”

  I scrape the base mixture into my greased tin, bowl held in the crook of my left arm. “I don’t need this right now. Not with everything else going on.”

  “Eh,” Mags disagrees. “To be honest, I think you’re giving yourself more grief by fighting it.” She turns and snatches the spatula out of my hand, pretending to help. “Why are you pushing him away?”

  After the showdown with Derek yesterday, I gave her a summary of how the meeting with Tuck went while she drove us back to my place. “Because I don’t need a hero. I can be my own damn hero.”

  “So?”

  I lift my eyes to hers.

  “Just because you’re a bomb-arse woman capable of taking care of herself doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy having a man who wants to do it too.”

  She has a point. “Except he won’t take no for an answer.”

  “Ahh.” She hands me the spatula back. “That’s your issue.” Her chin tilts up, eyes narrowed as she assesses me.

  “What?” I mumble.

  “You’re too damn proud.” With a waggle of her finger, she turns back to her creation, scraping her batter into the tin while adding, “You need to let that shit go. Ego will get you nowhere.”

  I’m not vain. Am I? Shoot. Maybe I am too self-absorbed for my own good?

  “Thanks for the pep talk,” I tease as we head for the tins of pie filling.

  Mags nudges me with her elbow. “Any time.” She snatches an apple tin, passing me a berry one, and turns back to her station. “Did you show your dad that contract thing?”

  “It’s an affidavit, and no, I didn’t.”

  “Why not?” She tears the peel-back lid off the first tin as I set mine down on the workbench.

  It takes me three attempts to figure out how to bend the tab back without breaking my nail. “I want to talk to Colt first.”

  “You’ve only got until the end of the week.”

  “Girls!” Mrs Fox calls again.

  We work in silence, spooning half the sugary fruit on top of our batter before swapping tins to share the rest.

  “Did you call him, then?” Maggie whispers as we handoff.

  “He didn’t answer.” I take her apples.

  Another solid minute passes while we add the other flavour to our creations, smoothing down the uneven lumps.

  Maggie reaches the oven first, sliding her cake onto the bottom rack. “Do they honestly think our futures hinge on knowing how to damn well bake afternoon tea for everyone?” she gripes.

  If only she knew. “Some social circles still deem it a sign of good wife material,” I answer drolly, slipping my tin onto the rack above hers.

  She sets the timer for half what’s required so we can swap their positions. “Fucking archaic, isn’t it?”

  “Depends what you want out of life, I suppose.” I stare at the backlit creations through the glass window, aware that not long ago, I would have happily made everyone tea cake if it meant I was a kept woman.

  “I need more than baking,” Maggie scoffs. “Although I suppose I wouldn’t complain if I had a wife who did it for me.” She nudges me in the arm. “You want to marry me?”

  I laugh at her jest and head back to my station to start cleaning up. “You’d be so lucky.”

  “If you keep fending Tuck off then a girl could start to think you might have a secret crush you need to share.” She gives me an exaggerated wink before erupting into loud peals of laughter.

  “Girls!” Mrs Fox all but hollers. “Focus.”

  COLT

  L: Why won’t you answer me?

  Because I know what she wants to talk about, and yeah, no. He wasn’t supposed to let her know, but I pulled Derek aside, knowing damn well that the risk was there.

  My bigger concern is if he decided to
share the details with Mum.

  “You can answer if you want.” Willow gestures to my phone with a finely pointed nail, guiding the straw of her berry crush to her plump lips with her other hand.

  “It’s nothing important.” I pocket Lacey for later, giving the strawberry-blonde before me my full attention.

  Her school uniform is so different from what the girls at Riverbourne Prep wear. The tailored crimson pinafore over a puffy short-sleeved blouse gives her an innocence that—knowing the things I do about her—her personality could never have afforded.

  “I dug around on the account last night and found the people you asked for.” She takes a dainty sip. So small it doesn’t make a noise. “I recorded each one, so it shows the original post video and then me navigating to their comment on it.”

  “Good girl.”

  She positively beams. Yet I know it’s not out of a need for me or what my praise does for her sexually. Not anymore. We played that game once, and she managed to kickstart a career out of it.

  Willow is one book you should never judge by its cover.

  “Can you airdrop the videos to me now?”

  She nods, letting the straw go. Her nails make clicks on the screen of her phone reminiscent of a tap-dancer’s show on the stage. Within seconds I have alert after alert sounding from my phone.

  Thank fuck for choosing the maximum storage when I upgraded last year.

  I turn the volume down and tap on the first one to check the viability of this. The replay is perfect. There isn’t a thing to show who it comes from other than they’re the administrator of the account.

  “Will it do?”

  I look up to find her leaning over the table; her chin propped on the back of one hand. Soft curls slip free of her shoulder, cascading into her face.

  I reach out and tuck them away.

  She smiles. “Thank you.”

  This girl is incredible, but not in a way that makes me want to keep her as my own. No. Her heart is made for something more worthwhile than fixing a wreck like me. I made peace with that the day we first hooked up. Still. It was a fun three months while it lasted.

  She’s a second sister to me now. Another beautiful creature I want to shield from the worst this world of ours has to offer. No. Offer isn’t the right word. Take. The worst this world has to take from her.