“Get out. Run off—tell Cyrus I’m being watched and you don’t know why. And before you try going all self-righteous on me, I heard. I heard you tell Cyrus you would sell me out the moment I trusted you with anything. So go. Tell him you think I’m betraying the club. Tell him whatever you want. He can grill me, the club can grill me and I won’t say a thing. Go, Chevy. Go on and finally make your choice to be their lapdog.”
I go to roll out of bed, but Chevy snags my wrist. “Stop making me choose between you and them.”
“How about you stop behaving like there are no choices to make? I walked away from you months ago because you aren’t capable of choosing. Guess what? I’m very capable of choosing. I know what I want out of life and it’s not the Terror and it’s not Snowflake. I’ve applied to twenty different colleges. What about you? Have you applied to any? Have you even thought about what you’re going to do after high school? After football season is over?”
His blank expression answers every question. “You’re talking in circles. None of this has anything to do with us or with what the hell is going on.”
“No, it has everything to do with you. You’re terrified to choose and because of that you’ll never be happy.”
“I can’t choose between the girl I love and my family. I get enough of that shit from my mother and I’m sick and tired of being in everyone’s tug-of-war.”
“You’re in the middle because you don’t make a choice. You know what? Go ahead, do nothing like always so once again I have to make the tough decisions when it comes to us. You want to be mad because you feel like I’m betraying you—fine, but remember, you planned on betraying me, too. Trust is a two-way street. Go, Chevy. We’re done and this time we’re done for good.”
He jerks as if I slapped him, and this time when I go to roll out of bed, he doesn’t stop me. I pull a shirt over my tank top because I need as many layers as possible to hide the blood pouring from my soul.
“Why can’t you see that Eli, that the club wants to protect you?”
“Why can’t you see they can’t?” My lower lip trembles and tears burn my eyes, but I walk closer to Chevy so he can hear my near-silent angry whisper. “Someone in the Terror is either working with the Riot or the Riot is that good that they could slip past everyone in the Terror to reach the room I slept in at Cyrus’s. Eli and Cyrus are not gods! They are flesh and blood and they cannot protect me or my family.”
Chevy stands there as if I shot him in the chest, staring at me like I’m going to cave and tell him I’m not drawing a line in drying concrete. “I want to help you.”
“Then stay, give me your word and I’ll let you in. I’ll tell you everything. I’ll curl up in that bed right now, let you hold me, dry my tears on your chest and you’ll know every single thought going on in my head. But you have to be with me on this. With me.”
“I promised Cyrus I would tell him if there were problems with you. I promised. Way before you overheard what you did in the kitchen. Before last night. You know I keep my word.”
“And you promised to love me!” I shout and then swallow to help with the closing of my throat. Returning to a whisper is difficult but needed. “You’re right. I’m asking you to choose, but I’m not asking you to choose between me and the club. Stay with the club, become a member tonight, I don’t care. But what I’m asking is for you to choose me this one time. I’m not safe. My family is not safe. And I have found a way to make us safe, but I cannot bring the club into this. They think they can help, but they can’t. They will only make things worse.
“For the first time, can you please see I need your help more? I deserve that. I am not my mother and I am not someone who can sit by and be second place time after time. I deserve someone who puts me first, at the very least when I ask for it, and if you can’t choose, then I choose to go this alone.”
Muscles twitch in Chevy’s face, and when he blinks several times, my chest aches as if someone took a knife and sliced me open.
“They won’t forgive me if I do this. They will find out because nothing in the dark stays a secret forever and that’s asking me to choose between them and you.”
“You’re right. If they find out, they won’t forgive. But I won’t forgive you either, so you have to decide which one means more to you.”
His head snaps up as I hit a nerve and I won’t take the words back.
“I thought loving people was supposed to be easy,” he says quietly. “But it’s the hardest thing I’ve done. I wish I knew how to love you right.”
“I’ve told you how to love me. You aren’t willing to love me how I need to be loved.”
We stand there, willing the other to relinquish control, but we’re too far on the other side of this war to make concessions. Like being on a carnival ride with no restraints, my heart bounces between being bruised and broken and all combinations in between.
“I still love you,” he says. Chevy picks up his boots, goes to the door, turns the knob and I swear to God this hurts worse than the first time we broke up. “That will never change.”
Chevy leaves the door open and each of his steps down the stairs is like a spike through my heart. When the front door closes, I sink to the floor, pick up Chevy’s bear that had fallen off the bed and squeeze it to my chest as if that could keep me from falling apart.
I won’t cry, I won’t cry, I won’t cry.
I don’t cry.
My eyes press shut and I rock as I hold the bear tight.
CHEVY
IT’S OCTOBER OF my senior year and I haven’t considered applying to college.
Sure, I’ve seen the signs in the hallways, even talked to football recruiters, have a dozen or so cards ferreted away somewhere in my room from men who would like me to consider playing for their team. Nobody big, smaller places, but still it’s interest, but I have yet to show any interest in return. I haven’t visited a place, gone to a website, even thought about a career beyond high school.