Take Me On

A wicked grin spreads across her face. “I could tell you, but there would be absolutely no fun in doing that.” And she walks up the stairs.

Haley

Every breath tastes of dust, spilled gasoline and oil. Layers of grime coat the cold concrete floor of the garage and my cheek has become numb against it. How long has it been since Matt abandoned me? Seconds, hours, days? At first I assumed he left to get help—to find sanity in the insane, but no...he left. He just left.

“Haley!” The voice is far away, yet a nagging inside me says it’s near.

Blood soaks my hands. It’s Matt’s blood—I think. Maybe mine. I don’t know. We argued. That’s all we do anymore...argue. It’s what we’re good at, but now it seems wrong. He hit me. I hit him back. And somehow neither of us stopped.

“She’s cold,” Jax says. “And look at her eyes. I think she’s in shock.”

It’s an effort to turn my head toward Jax. His whitish-blond hair is spiked into a Mohawk. His shirt goes up and over his head and he lays it on my arms and chest, but not my hands. No, he wouldn’t let it touch my hands. The blood would ruin his white T-shirt.

“Haley!” Jax poises his hands near me, not touching, just there...moving as if he doesn’t know what to fix first or worried that if he did make contact he’d become diseased, cursed like me. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.” I don’t recognize my voice. I’m different now. Changed.

I’m up like I’ve done a sit-up and my older brother, Kaden, supports my weight with his chest. He lifts my wrists. “Are you bleeding?”

I shake my head. “No.” I don’t think so.

The room spins and so do I. Kaden drops my hands to grip my shoulders. “Easy, Haley. Is she hurt?”

I tilt my head and thoughtfully look at Jax. Am I? Matt slapped my face. It’s how the fight started. Is there a permanent bruise there? My own personal scarlet letter branding me as defeated?

Jax’s eyes dart everywhere. “She looks okay, but she ain’t acting right. Her knuckles are bruised. She’s definitely been in a fight.”

“There was blood.” That seems important to tell. “Matt and I have been together for a year.” Because that also feels important. One month after the end of my sophomore year, Matt and I began. Now, it’s the end of my junior year and Matt and I are over.

I nod. Yes, we’re over. There’s no coming back from this.

“Yes,” I repeat. “There was blood.”

“Who did you make bleed?” asks Jax. “Matt?”

Matt and I argued and he was mad, so mad. He slapped me, punched my stomach, then went for the head, and I intercepted him. I was a few hits in when he took advantage of my dropped guard and I absorbed the blow behind the ear. I collapsed to the floor and then he left. “I hit him.”

I stopped his initial attack and I made him bleed.

“Matt did this to you?” Kaden’s voice is pitched low yet hard, a promise of violence.

I shiver at the unsaid warning. They can’t go after Matt. They can’t. I’ve already created too much destruction.

“I saw her leave the party with him,” Kaden continues.

Jax launches off the floor. “He’s fucking dead.”

“You can’t.” Ignoring the pressure of Kaden’s hands, I press my feet hard against the concrete while swatting at my brother. He lets me go and Jax grabs my arm when I sway.

Jax leans into me as he holds me up. “What the fuck happened?”

My eyes flash open and Jax’s shouted words echo in my head.

I’ve never been so relieved to see the roofing nails sticking through my uncle’s roof. I suck in a breath to calm the rush of blood pounding my temples. I used to have this nightmare frequently after things ended between me and Matt this past summer and it figures I’d have it again after what happened last night. Especially since it was his younger brother who jumped me.

What sucks is it’s not just a nightmare. It’s the past reliving itself in my dreams.

I sit up and shiver against the cold air of the attic. No, it’s not the cold air flowing from the cracked window causing the chill. It’s the fact that life has become complicated. I gather my long hair at the base of my neck. Complicated. When is life going to be easy?

This past summer, I lied to Jax and Kaden. I told them that Matt and I got into a verbal argument and broke up and that after Matt left, someone I didn’t see attacked me from behind. My family hates me now because of what I’ve done, but I’m lying to protect them. I’ve walked away from everything to protect them.

If I’d told Jax and Kaden the truth about what happened with Matt, they would have gone after him and then Matt and his friends would have retaliated. All of it on the streets. All of it in pure hatred. The fighting would never end.

And last night...I might have destroyed everything I’ve built in order to protect Jax and Kaden. I broke a rule. I got involved. I hit Matt’s little brother and Matt will want payback.

Even though I miss Jax and Kaden, I made the right decision. I blow out a long breath. It is. It’s the right decision and I’ve lived with this lie for too long to let Matt’s brother ruin it.

My eyes fall to my shoes on the floor and I silently curse. If my uncle finds out that I wore shoes in the house, he’ll throw a fit.

Snatching them up, I tiptoe down the wooden stairs in my socks. Twice the material snags on an exposed nail. At the bottom, I relish the fact that I descended without a loud groan betraying my existence.

I pause, then strain to hear the light breathing of the nine other people sleeping in the house. Straight in front of me is the bathroom. To the right of the bathroom, my uncle’s loud snores can be heard past the shut wooden door, and in the room to the left of the bathroom, my sister strangles her American Girl doll as she rolls over on the floor in her sleep. With her eyes still closed, my mother reaches down and touches Maggie’s head full of tight brown curls.

I take an immediate right and carefully maneuver over Jax, whose bed has become the carpet of the living room. Kaden’s long arms and legs fall off the couch. Even before we moved here, the living room was Jax’s home. My parents displaced his younger brothers by taking over their room. The Dictator banished them to sleep in the unfinished basement. I offered to let them have the attic. Jax threatened to kick the crap out of them if they accepted.

In painfully slow movements, I leave my shoes near the front door. I’m assuming Jax and Kaden’s lie accounted for my missing shoes, but just in case...

The light glowing at the back of the house catches me off guard and I weave through blankets, pillows, T-shirts, socks, arms and legs to gain access to the lime-green kitchen that’s large enough for a stove, fridge, sink and a few cabinets. What doesn’t fit is the large oval table that seats ten people. It consumes the entire kitchen, and, even with the mismatched wooden seats and folding metal chairs pushed in, it’s difficult to walk around.

I’m hesitant as I poke my head in, then I smile.

Dad: dishwater-blond hair, tall like Kaden. He sits at the end of the table, reading the paper while jotting something into a notebook. The joy bubbling inside me is like running downstairs on Christmas morning. I can’t remember the last time I spent time with him alone.

“Hi.” I lean against the doorframe, nervous to enter. Sticking with what Jax originally assumed, I told my parents that I was late for curfew, ran home and Dad’s medicine rolled out of the bag without my realizing it. Regardless of how it happened, I lost his medication. Am I welcome anymore?

His eyes shine as he lifts his head. “Haley—what are you doing up?”

“Just up.” We speak barely above a whisper. It’s rare when this house is quiet; rarer are the moments when anyone can find peace. “How about you?”

The dark circles under his eyes indicate he’s battling insomnia again. Mom said his mind races with everything that’s happened, trying to figure out where it went wrong or scrambling to discover a way to fix it. “Same as you. Just up.”

“What are you doing?” I ask.

Dad motions at the paper. “Job hunting.”

I nod, not sure what to say. Talking to Dad used to be easy. Very easy.

Back when he was younger, he used to train with my grandfather. It’s how Mom and Dad met. It’s all very romantic and love-storyish, and I adore every second of the gooey-eyed tale. He was a kickboxer, like me, and swept Mom, the trainer’s daughter, off her feet.