“I don’t hate you,” I said. “I didn’t want you to think ...”
“I know,” he said. He stood up, crossing the room.
I shifted on the bed, pulling the blanket back, giving him space.
He read my mind. He slipped between the sheets next to me. He rested on his side and opened his arms up.
This time I didn’t hesitated. I fell into him. I pressed my head to his chest. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to him. His nose touched down against my hair.
“Baby,” he called softly against my head.
“North,” I said. My hands found his chest and I clutched at him.
“Do you still like me?” he whispered.
“Yes. Do you still like me?”
“Yes.”
I breathed in his soft musk. “What happened?” I asked, breathing against his chest. “What happened to McCoy?”
“Don’t worry about him.”
“Am I in trouble?”
He shook his head against me. He pulled back, pushing me slightly until his eyes met mine. The hint of a grin teased the corner of his mouth. “Do you think I’d let you get into trouble? You’d have to take me down first.”
“But he thought I stole from the other girls. I was trying to fight him off. He threatened to call the police. And Mr. Blackbourne ...”
North uttered a guttural moan. He collected me again, pulling me against his strong chest. His broad arms encircled me, closing me in tightly. “Stop it. Baby, will you just once please trust me? Please?”
I couldn’t find the air to respond. I buried my face into his chest.
His fingers dug into my back, strong, as if trying to draw me closer into him when I couldn’t be pressed any further. “We don’t know who stole everything, but it isn’t you. We’ll figure it out later. And I won’t let him touch you. Not again. Not ever. I’ll kill him myself if I have to.”
I gasped.
“I mean it.” His nose nuzzled against my head. His breath caught up in my hair. “I saw it. I saw what he did to you.”
“How?”
“We were recording.”
“There’s cameras in the girl’s shower room?”
“There’s cameras everywhere. Especially in places that are almost abandoned. Your mother did that.” He sighed against my hair. “Your mother proved to us we couldn’t dismiss small spaces.”
The new information struck me. “Did you hear what he said? Was he wired, too?”
He paused. “Sort of.”
His hesitation drew a conclusion that had me pondering something I’d wondered about for a long time. “Am I wired?”
He grunted. “Yes.”
I drew back from him. His hands continued to hold on to me so I couldn’t get far but I managed to push against his chest so I could lean back and look at him. “Are you serious? Where? When ...”
He frowned softly at me through the darkness. “Since the first fight. The very first one.”
That long? I tried to recall it, my memory hesitant to bring up things in the past when so much had been going on now. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“They didn’t want to scare you off. You were still new to us. We didn’t want to see you hurt. And we didn’t understand what was happening at home.”
“So you weren’t going to ask me?” I clutched again at his chest. “You didn’t trust me to tell you?”
“You don’t trust us, Sang,” he said, drawing himself up. “You’re always dodging. You never tell us when you’re hurt or scared or angry. God damn it, Baby, you hesitated. I watched you. I saw the tape later. It started recording when he got close and was dealing with the other girls. Even when you were standing in that shower room alone today, you waited before you sent a message to anyone. Even when you did, it was a white flag. Uncomfortable. That’s bullshit.”
“I thought I wasn’t in trouble. They were trying to figure out who stole what and since I didn’t do it ...”
“You should have told us right from the start,” he said. His lifted his palms, pressing them to my cheeks. “I think I’m going to get Victor to change our apps on your phone to only green and red buttons. I don’t care if it’s an emergency or not. I want to know where you are and what’s going on.”
My heart thundered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would happen. I didn’t want to bother you guys if it was nothing.”
“Baby, listen to yourself.” His thumb brushed against the crest of my cheeks. His fierce eyes imploring. “When we were in that fight a couple of weeks ago, did you hesitate before you jumped in?”
I shook my head against his hands. “No.”
“Did you stop fighting, even when I told you not to?”
“No.”
“When it came down to it, when you felt our safety was at risk, you jumped in head first. Now, when you’re alone and there’s no one else at risk, you coil into yourself and worry about bothering me? It’s self-destructive.”
“I don’t mean to do that,” I said.
“What have I been telling you? Don’t wait. Call me for anything. Call any one of us. Why won’t you listen?”
I pulled myself away. It was too much to hear him pleading like this. Didn’t I send word when I was uncomfortable? How was I supposed to know that around the corner was Mr. McCoy? If that were the case, I would have pushed the red button, I was sure of it.
But wasn’t that why I do hesitate? I remembered Micah complaining about the Academy cavalry coming in for the rescue. There was a microphone in my phone, capable of recording everything. They didn’t tell me it was there. The cameras in my house were still up, and they had access to them. I, however, didn’t have access to the cameras in their homes.
They didn’t trust me, either. They didn’t trust me to make the right decisions. I really wasn’t one of them. I was the thing they tried to protect and unless I was within eyesight, they didn’t trust me alone. One of these days, I would cry wolf too many times when something simple I could have handled myself popped up and they would be angry.
I swallowed back my hurt pride. He wouldn’t understand. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “Next time, I’ll call.”
North frowned. “Why won’t you tell me?”
My lips parted. “What?”
“You’re angry and you aren’t yelling. Why won’t you yell at me?”
“I’m not angry,” I said, unsure of his meaning. I was sad and unsure, but was that anger? Did he want me angry at him?
He grunted, and shoved fingers through his hair. “I don’t understand you. Don’t you care about me at all?”
“What? Of course. But why would yelling ...”
“I can’t read your mind. Just tell me what you want.”
In the darkness, my fingers sought out his body again, tracing up along his forearm to his shoulders. I wanted to stop talking tonight. My mind wasn’t ready to process Mr. McCoy and what happened, and I didn’t have the strength in that moment to figure out what North really wanted from me. I wanted to sleep. I wanted him to not be angry with me anymore.
I wanted us back the way we were before, when he would cl
imb onto the roof to come to me in the night and have stars painted into the top of the attic space to comfort me when he wasn’t around and kissed my fingers in the closet.
He may not have been able to read my mind, but he did seem to understand me. He collected me again, drawing me down with him against the bed. He drew me in until my head was pressed to his chest. He hooked a leg around mine. His lips brushed against the top of my head.
In the quiet as I rested next to him, I bit my tears of frustration so I wouldn’t scare him.
Friends were complicated.
NEVER STANDING STILL
The only reason I showed up at school on Friday was Kota’s prodding. I was a zombie the entire day, and I was pretty sure I zoned out during all of my classes. The football game that week was an away game at a city a good distance from Charleston, so North and Silas had to leave midday on the bus to the rival school.
No McCoy. I wasn’t clear what happened to him and the guys kept quiet about it. Even Mr. Blackbourne told me not to worry about it.
I still worried, though. Not knowing was the worst. I would never admit it, but Derrick’s little quip about burying dead bodies came back to me. That and not knowing Mr. McCoy’s location had me thinking he was going to pop up around the corner at any moment. He knew where I lived. He was probably very angry with me. He’d come back for me.
I wanted to ask Kota if we could go to the football game, but as the afternoon wore on, I was almost passing out. When I got home that day, Kota and Nathan both insisted I sleep.
And I did. I slept through the afternoon and all night. I woke up with Kota next to me on the bed. Nathan was on the floor.
I checked the clock on the stereo, which glared five in the morning at me. I wasn’t tired any more though. I inched out of the bed, trying to get out without waking Kota. I tiptoed over to the attic, opening the door. From the small wardrobe, I pulled out a pair of jean shorts and a black tank top. It was Saturday. I was grateful. I had a weekend to recuperate and I was going to utilize every moment by not worrying about McCoy and school for now. I wanted to stay with the guys for every moment, the only way I really felt safe.