Breakable (32 page)

Jacqueline.

I turned, but she was gone. The bedcovers were a sea of sheets, blankets and pillows that had weathered a storm. A very good storm. And then she’d told me what she’d done. Pain drilled through the centre of my chest and I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my fingers against it. I would not go there again.

Do you want me to go?

My eyes flashed open. Oh, God. I’d said yes.

I stood, found my T-shirt inside out on the floor. Righting it and jerking it over my head, I reached for socks and my boots and shoved my feet into them. Grabbed my jacket from the back of a kitchen chair and my keys from the counter.

I could fix this. I
would
fix this.

I shrugged into the jacket and headed out the door and down the stairs. Getting into her dorm wouldn’t be as easy this time – there were so few people around. Almost everyone had vacated campus as soon as finals were over. I would call her when I got there. I’d have to talk her into letting me into the building. Apologize. Beg if I had to. On my knees.

I hoped to God she answered. I would camp in the back of her truck if she didn’t.

I was about to swing a leg over my bike when I heard footsteps, pounding up the driveway. Jacqueline, running to me – but she didn’t see me. She was staring at the bottom of the steps to my apartment. Her name in my mouth, I moved to intercept her – and then she went down, and I saw Buck, his fist round her hair. Oh,
fuck
no.

He landed on top of her, but she shoved on to her side, unbalancing him. As she scrambled away from him, he followed.

I grabbed him just as he reached for her, pitched him, and installed myself between them. I glanced at Jacqueline and saw blood coating her chest. A huge, dark circle of it, like a gunshot wound, blooming, fatal.
Fuck no fuck no fuck no
– but she was scuttling backwards on her hands, and her eyes were wide. If she’d been shot or stabbed there, she wouldn’t be moving.

When he stood, I saw that his face was bloody under his nose.
She had made him bleed
.

I would make him bleed more.

My eyes had almost adjusted to the dark, but the Hellers had motion-detecting floodlights, and our movements activated one of them. It popped on – a dim little spotlight for our fight scene.

Buck’s dark eyes were focused and unswerving, no alcohol marring his coordination. He tried to circle round, as if I was going to let him anywhere near her ever again. I moved with him, facing him, aware of Jacqueline and her exact location. I felt her behind me as if she was part of my body. Flesh of my flesh. Blood of my blood.

‘I’m gonna bust that lip wide open, emo boy,’ he said. ‘I’m not fucked up this time. I’m stone-cold sober, and I’m gonna kick your ass before I fuck your little whore nine ways from Sunday – again.’

Weak words from a weak man. He didn’t know he was already dead. ‘You’re mistaken,
Buck
.’

I removed my jacket and shoved my sleeves up, and he took the first swing. I blocked it. He repeated the movement – because this asshole didn’t learn – and I blocked it again. Rushing me, he tried one of his predictable wrestling moves.

Jab to the kidney. Open-handed slap to the ear.

He reeled, pointing at Jacqueline. ‘Bitch. Think you’re too good for me – but you’re nothing but a
whore
.’

I held my temper by a hair. He wanted it to snap, because people forget what they’re doing when they allow their temper free rein. They make the stupid, critical mistakes that I didn’t intend to make. My temper would remain caged until I had him down and disorientated.

When he tried to grab me again, I snatched and twisted his arm, aiming to dislocate his shoulder. He turned into it, so I didn’t quite wrench it out of joint, but I landed my first satisfying, face-crunching fist to his jaw. As soon as his head swivelled back round, he got another to the mouth. He blinked, staring, seeking an exposed spot. Wasn’t gonna happen.

Enraged, he roared loud enough to wake the whole neighbourhood and barrelled into me. As we fell, he got a couple of good punches in before I pivoted, took hold of him, and used his own forward motion to land him on his head. Amazing how many guys are too fucking ham-fisted to see that coming.

I didn’t waste time admiring my handiwork. While he shook his head, trying to see straight after landing on top of his skull, I tackled him – sadly, into the grass, not on the
concrete – and hit him. I thought of the terror in Jacqueline’s eyes. Her hair caught in his fist. My name –
Landon –
the last word my mother spoke.

Snap.

I hit him again. One time after another. And I wasn’t going to stop.

Something pulled me up and off. No.
NO
. I fought to free myself and was one second from doing so when words broke through: ‘
Stop
. She’s safe. She’s safe, son.’

Charles
. I stopped resisting, and he loosened the tight band of his arms but kept them round me, propping me up as I began to shake. Buck wasn’t moving.

I turned to find Jacqueline, but I knew right where she was. Charles let me go and I staggered towards her, fell to my knees beside her, my entire body shuddering. Her eyes were still wide, her beautiful face bruising, blood speckling her chin and cheeks.

I cupped a palm under her rapidly discolouring jaw. She flinched, and I jerked my hand away. She was afraid of me. Of what had just happened –
again
. I had failed to keep her safe.

Then she came up on her knees. ‘Please touch me. I need you to touch me.’

I reached out and gathered her carefully, sitting back and pulling her on to my lap, within the circle of my arms. Her shirt was stuck to her chest. ‘His blood?’ I verified. ‘From his nose?’

She leaned into my chest and nodded, looking down at herself in revulsion.

She was a warrior, covered in the blood of her enemy. I wanted to beat my chest in pride, and so should she. ‘Good girl. God, you’re so fucking amazing.’

She pulled at the shirt, panicked. ‘I want it off.
I want it off
.’

‘Yes. Soon,’ I promised, touching her face, avoiding the bruised spot.

I begged her forgiveness for sending her away, my heart still thrashing under her ear. I could barely hear myself speak. If she never absolved me, I couldn’t blame her.

‘I’m sorry for looking her up,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know –’

‘Shh, baby … not now. Just let me hold you.’ She shivered. My jacket lay nearby in the grass. I wrapped her in it and held her closer, letting my body settle.

The police had come, and an ambulance. They loaded Buck into the back on a stretcher, which meant he wasn’t dead. Charles called us to give a statement to the officer he’d been speaking with, and I rose slowly, drawing Jacqueline to her feet. We were both unsteady, holding on to each other.

Cindy, Carlie and Caleb huddled by the corner of the house in coats and blankets over pyjamas. Neighbours were standing in their yards or staring from windows containing lit Christmas trees. Cheerful holiday lights flashed along with squad car and ambulance lights.

Charles told the police about Jacqueline’s restraining order against Buck, and called me her boyfriend without a single hesitation. Backing up everything he’d said, including the boyfriend remark, Jacqueline leaned her back to my
chest, held my arms in place round her midriff, and gave her account – how Buck had shoved her into the truck and shut the door behind them. How she used the moves she’d learned in the self-defence class to escape the truck.

My arms tightened round her, and I felt sick. I couldn’t listen to the details. I wanted to pull Buck off that stretcher and finish the job.

When the police and EMTs left, we were surrounded by the Hellers. They offered first-aid supplies, cups of tea, food – but I assured them I had all those things, and I would take good care of her. Charles and Cindy hugged me unabashedly, enveloping Jacqueline as well, maybe because I wasn’t letting her get further than inches away from me.

When we opened the apartment door, Francis exited, pausing on the landing. ‘Thanks,’ I murmured, patting him once before he wandered down the steps and back to his nightly prowl.

In the bathroom, I inspected Jacqueline’s face, stared into her eyes, and asked if he’d hit her. I could hardly get the words out. She shook her head and said he’d just grabbed her really hard.

‘The spot where I head-butted him hurts more.’ Her fingers skimmed across her forehead.

‘I’m so proud of you. I want you to tell me about it, when you can … and when I can stand to hear it. I’m still too angry right now.’ I’d been right there when she’d given her account, but couldn’t handle listening to the details. His hands on her body. The pain he’d inflicted.

I undressed her carefully, gently, a different kind of slow
than hours prior. Her shirt and bra and my shirt all went into the trash, and I lifted her into the warm shower. She was perfectly capable of doing these things herself, but she seemed to understand that I needed to do them for her. I soaped and kissed every bruise and abraded spot, hating that she’d been hurt. I braced my arms on the tiles and closed my eyes when she did the same for me.

The muscles of her arms were sore, so I wrapped her in a bath sheet and set her on the side of the tub. As I dried her hair, combing tangles away with my fingers and soaking the water from each strand with a towel, she told me the last time anyone dried her hair for her was when she’d broken her arm in sixth grade, falling out of a tree. She smiled and I laughed – two things wonderfully incongruent with this night.

‘I think there was a boy and a dare involved,’ she said.

Lucky boy.

But not as lucky as me.

I squatted in front of her and asked her to stay with me, at least for tonight. She touched my face, gazing into my eyes. Hers were worried, and full of compassion. She knew what had happened to my mother, but I needed to confess what she didn’t know. I couldn’t keep her under false pretences any longer. I needed her to know everything.

‘The last thing my father said to me, before he left, was, “You’re the man of the house while I’m gone. Take care of your mother.” ’ I swallowed, or tried to. My throat ached, striving to hold back tears that weren’t going to stay dammed. I felt them rising as hers spilled over and ran down her face. ‘I didn’t protect her. I couldn’t save her.’

She pulled me close and held me, and I lost it, my face buried against her heart.

Minutes later, she said, ‘I’ll stay tonight. Will you do something for me, too?’

I took a deep breath, unable to deny her anything. ‘Yes. Whatever you need.’

‘Go with me to Harrison’s concert tomorrow night? He’s my favourite eighth-grader, and I promised him I’d go.’

I agreed to her request, too fatigued to wonder what she was up to – because I knew her well enough now to look into those eyes and see when she was up to something. I didn’t care. I would do whatever she asked of me.

It had been a long time since I’d been inside a middle-school auditorium.

The orchestra kids were all roughly Caleb’s size, although he would have been at the small end of the scale. The boys were humorously insufferable, swaggering around in their black tuxedos, leaning over auditorium seats to flirt with the girls – all in floor-length, matching purple dresses.

‘Miss Wallace!’ A blond, tuxedoed kid called out from within the group, waving eagerly until he noticed
me
. His dark eyes went wide. Jacqueline returned his wave, but he looked destroyed to see the love of his life sitting next to a guy. I couldn’t very well blame him.

‘I take it this is one of the ones crushing on you,’ I said, biting my lip, keeping my expression even. If Jacqueline liked this kid, I didn’t want to demean him by laughing at
his mopey response to the reality that
Miss Wallace
was taken. Had been taken. Would be taken again in a few hours, if I had anything to say about it.

‘What? They
all
crush on me. I’m a hot college girl, remember?’ She laughed.

I angled a bit closer and told her just how hot she was, and I asked her to stay with me again tonight.

‘I was afraid you weren’t going to ask,’ she said. Silly girl.

Harrison was a brave kid, giving my girl a dozen roses after the concert. He was self-conscious as hell, blushing to match the flowers as he thrust them at her, but I admired his gallantry in the face of that fear.

Thanking him, she lifted the bouquet to her face and inhaled blissfully. She told him that he’d made her proud tonight and he stood straighter, swelling up like a puffer fish.

Beaming, he said, ‘It’s all ’cause of you, though,’ which made her smile.

‘You did the work, and put in the practice.’

I’d made similar statements to grateful students who thought they only passed econ because of me.

‘You sounded great, man. I wish I could play an instrument,’ I added.

The kid’s eyes sized me up, and I fought the juvenile impulse to tell him he didn’t really want a piece of this. ‘Thanks,’ he said, giving me an inquisitive look. ‘Did that hurt? On your lip?’

I shrugged. ‘Not too much. I said a few choice four-letter words, though.’

‘Cool,’ he grinned.

Jacqueline knew how to pick favourites.

So did I.

We packed her truck with everything she was taking home for winter break and she turned in her dorm key. She was spending her last night in town with me.

‘I don’t want to go home. But if I don’t go, they’ll drive down to get me.’ Wearing one of my T-shirts, she stood brushing her teeth at my bathroom sink. She rinsed her mouth and watched me in the mirror. ‘What happened yesterday was the last straw for Mom. She wasn’t this upset when I fell out of the
tree
.’

My arms slipped round her. ‘I’ll be here, waiting for you. I promise. Come back early, if you want, and stay here with me until the dorms open. But go, give her a chance.’

She looked straight at me in the mirror, tearing up, knowing the card I was playing, no matter how furtively. ‘And you’ll give your father a chance, too?’