For This Life Only (19 page)

“Yeah, I noticed,” I said softly, the blood thundering in my head already.

Thera shifted in her seat to face me, and this time, she leaned over and brushed her mouth over mine, warm and soft.

I touched my tongue to her lips, and they parted, welcoming me. She tasted of cinnamon gum, and I wanted more.

She wrapped her hands around the back of my neck to pull me closer. I sucked her lower lip into my mouth, running my tongue over the edge of it, and she made a soft sound that electrified me and made me want to pull her over the console into my lap.

The rap on her window made us both jump and jump apart, and my first thought was that the waitress had gotten annoyed with us taking so long to order or someone had complained about us kissing.

But when I looked out the window behind Thera, it wasn't a shivering waitress in a red-and-yellow uniform shirt, but a familiar figure in a green-and-white letterman's jacket. He was leaning with his hands braced on the roof of Thera's car, his face looming at the edge of the window frame.

“Caleb,” I said in disbelief. His nose was a little puffy from the blow I'd landed at lunch.

Thera stiffened and threw a glance over her shoulder.

“What's going on? What are you doing here?” I asked, loud enough for my words to carry through the glass.

Thera reached reluctantly for the window buttons.

“No, don't,” I said to her. I didn't want him to have any more access to her than he already had.

“Let's go. Come on.” Even with the barrier between us, his harsh tone came through loud and clear. He rapped loudly on the window again, for no reason at all, beyond seeing Thera jolt.

“I'll be right back,” I said to Thera grimly, reaching behind me for the door handle. I didn't want to take my eyes off him.

“This isn't a good idea. We can leave,” Thera said. “Go somewhere else.” She sounded both tired and alarmed.

“No, we were here first.” This was my place, not his. Which brought another disturbing question to mind.

I got out of the car and slammed the door shut. “What the hell? Did you follow us?” I asked Caleb. I couldn't imagine the odds of him just happening to end up here. I should have known he'd be pissed about what happened at lunch. “What is wrong with you?”

He came around the back end of the car to get in my face. “You're choosing that over us?” he demanded,
flinging a hand in Thera's general direction.

Some of it was about Thera, but I bet it was also partly that I'd embarrassed him at lunch. Caleb could dish shit, but he couldn't take it.

My temper flared, and I struggled to keep a handle on it. “I'm not on the team anymore, and she has nothing to do with you or them. Just forget it, okay?”

He gave a derisive laugh. “Dude, she's got your dick so twisted in a knot you can't see straight.”

“Shut up,” I snapped.

“She's a tease, everyone knows that. And you're a fucking idiot if you fall for it. She just wants the attention to—”

I lashed out, sending my fist flying toward his face. Unfortunately, it was my left, which meant the punch didn't carry nearly the impact it would have before the accident and surgeries.

Caleb stumbled back for a second, surprised; then his face turned a deep shade of red, the veins in his forehead popping to prominence. “Oh, you are a punk-ass bitch.”

It spiraled quickly from there. He lunged forward and took me to the ground, and the adrenaline sang in my veins, so hitting the hard concrete of the parking pad didn't even hurt.

But I felt his knuckles connect with my nose and the lightning zap of pain that made my head spin and the corresponding gush of hot blood.

That pissed me off. I shoved up, and we went over in the other direction, me on top of him, landing punches wherever I could.

That cycle repeated a couple more times, each of us taking the advantage of leverage and trying to use it to pound the crap out of the other.

Someone screamed, and glass crashed. A tray, most likely. A tiny, distant part of my brain mourned the loss of all that food and root beer.

“911! Call 911!” someone shouted.

“Stop! Get in the car now,” Thera said, yanking backward on the collar of my coat until I stumbled to my feet.

“You're her little bitch now?” Caleb asked, rolling to a sitting position before spitting blood. His teeth were pink with it.

I lunged toward him, my heartbeat pounding like a drum in my ears.

But Thera stepped between us.

“Not unless you want to be in the back of a squad car,” she hissed at me, her hand flat on my chest.

It took me a second to process what she meant. Then, in the distance, I heard the growing wail of sirens.

Fighting in a public place. That would definitely get back to my dad if the cops caught us and made it official.

I nodded at Thera and she lowered her hand. We started toward her car.

“That's right, run like a little pussy,” Caleb shouted after me.

I tensed.

“Let's go.” Thera opened the passenger-side door and pushed me toward the opening.

I flipped Caleb the finger—see if he thought it was so funny this time—and got in.

And when I shut the door, in the side-view mirror I saw Matt and Corey, our right fielder, scrambling out of Caleb's car to pull him off the ground.

Good. I hadn't been as outmatched as I'd felt. I smiled, and pain, emerging from the blanket of adrenaline, ricocheted between all the hot spots on my face.

My gaze shifted to my own reflection in the mirror.

Blood dripped steadily out of my swollen nose; I could taste it, coppery and sour in my mouth, now that I was paying attention. My right eye was puffy and bruised-looking already, and there was a gash beneath my left that was adding to the blood flow.

“Shit.” I looked like a Halloween mask. And the ache in my previously injured left arm and leg was sharpening with every second that passed. I had really pushed myself too far this time.

“Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought too,” Thera said as she pulled away from Dog 'N' Suds.

“I can't go home like this,” I said, feeling a surge of panic. “Sarah will freak. She's got this obsession with death and dying. If I show up—”

“First, let's get the bleeding stopped,” Thera said, not even flinching as the police cars sped past us in the opposite direction. “I think you left about half of your blood in the parking lot. There should be napkins in the glove box.”

I opened it and grabbed a handful of them, leaving bloody fingerprints all over everything. “Sorry,” I muttered.

“And there might be some gauze left in the first-aid kit. I didn't have a chance to replace the Band-Aids yet.”

I bent forward to look for the kit, trying to keep the blood from dripping all over her car, and tentatively applied the napkins to my nose. It had been so long since I'd been punched in the face, I'd forgotten how much it hurt. My eyes were watering from the pain, which upgraded to agony the second I touched my face.

“You know, it would be nice if we could go somewhere once without someone needing medical attention,” Thera said as I fumbled for the gauze inside the kit.

“Twice is a pattern?” I asked, my voice muffled.

“It seems like more than a coincidence,” she said. “You didn't need to do that, you know. I'm used to Caleb and a lot worse. I can handle it.”

“You shouldn't have to.” I pushed the gauze into my nose. Not a great look, but it would help.

“Defending my honor, were you?” she asked in an acid tone that told me there was definitely a wrong answer to that question.

“No, shutting him up was all about him. He's an asshole.” The car took a pothole, jostling my hand against my nose. “Ow, damn it,” I said through my teeth. “And I used to be more like him than I'd like to remember.”

“But what good does it do? He's going to have that much more to prove the next time he sees either one of us,” Thera pointed out.

“He'll think twice about it first, that's the good it does,” I snapped.

“Too bad you bought that good with your face. I think that cut under your eye might need stitches.”

I shook my head and regretted it immediately when the pain roared to new heights. “No, no way. If we go to the ER, they'll call my parents. If we just butterfly it, I can tell them I slipped in the hall or—”

“I don't have any butterfly bandages, Jace,” she said.

“I think I saw a CVS on the way here. . . .”

She gave a disbelieving laugh. “That's not going to fix this.” Her hand moved in a gesture that encompassed the mess that was presumably me.

I looked down at myself, at the blood and dirt in smears
all over my coat and jeans. My shirt, under my open coat, was worse in terms of blood splatter.

“Shit,” I muttered again.

Thera sighed. “I have an idea.” She did not sound happy about it. “We have butterfly bandages at my house, I think. And one of those stain stick things. We could go there, get you cleaned up.”

It was a solid plan, one that solved the problem, but from her tone, you'd think she'd suggested turning ourselves in at the police station and getting first aid from them.

“You don't have to worry,” I said. “I won't say anything about what you told me earlier. About your mom, I mean.” That was the only reason I could think of for her uncertainty. I'd been to her house before, after all.

Her mouth settled into a thin, tight line as she changed lanes. “I know.
You'll
be fine.”

THERA PARKED IN THE
credit union lot behind her house. Pulling into her driveway wasn't an option, with Riverwoods' original building directly across the street. Any number of people might see me as they went in or out on church business, and in my current condition—gauze up my nose, bloodstains everywhere, and a fast-food napkin plastered against the cut under my eye—I was definitely eye-catching.

The back of Thera's house looked a little worse than the front. The paint was peeling, and a couple of the windows were fogged from broken seals. A sad-looking chain-link fence, rusted and sagging, encircled the microscopic backyard, and the grass was thin and patchy. Dead vines and leaves clung to the fence, and random bits of litter, most of them ATM receipts from the credit union, were
entangled at the base. The only thing that looked new was the prominent yellow-and-black sign stabbed into the frozen ground between the end of her yard and the start of the credit union parking lot.

The headline—NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING—screamed in all caps, but the details beneath were in such small letters that I could barely make out a date and time set for next month.

And the sign apparently didn't only
look
new. When Thera saw it, she slowed, her shoulders hunched as she took it in.

“What's that about?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “More city council bullshit.” She took off then, toward a side door, at a faster clip than I could manage.

Thera stopped on a set of sagging wooden steps by the side door to wait for me to catch up. “My mom is probably with a phone client, and I don't want to disturb her,” she said as I approached. “So we're going straight upstairs to the bathroom.”

Her eyes wouldn't meet mine, her gaze flicking from my face to some unknown point over my shoulder.

“Okay,” I said. She didn't want me to meet her mother for some reason. I was almost sure of it now.

Thera opened the door and stepped up onto the worn black-and-white linoleum floor of their kitchen. I followed.

She moved swiftly past a closed wooden swinging door and then veered left through an open doorway, which turned out to be the hallway I'd been in the other night.

With an urgent look, Thera waved at me to hurry up as she rounded the newel post and started up the stairs.

“Thera?” The soft female voice came through the closed pocket doors behind me.

Thera froze, one foot on the second step, dismay written all over her face.

But she tried to rally. “Yeah, it's me,” she said, in a voice that sounded almost normal, as she gave me a panicked look and held her finger to her lips. “I'm back.”

A long pause followed. “With who?”

Thera's head dropped, her shoulders curving forward in defeat.

What was going on here?

“With Jace Palmer,” she said finally, reluctance rounding and slowing her words, like they were a hard candy she didn't want to spit out.

“I'm finished for the day,” her mother called. “You should both come in.”

“We're kind of in the middle of something, Mom.”

“I would like to meet him.” Mary's voice was light, but the demand beneath it was steel, unmissable and unbendable. “And I'm sure he would like to meet me. Wouldn't you, Mr. Palmer?”

I jolted at being addressed directly and at the assurance in her tone. She was right, though I hadn't really thought about it until that second.

Thera rolled her eyes. “That impresses you?” she asked in a whisper, leaning over the railing to speak to me.

“She knew I was here,” I argued.

“No, she knew
someone
was here,” Thera said. “Because she heard footsteps.”

“But she knew I wanted to meet her.”

Thera gave me a tired look. “Everyone always wants to meet her.”

Then she drew in a deep breath, as if accepting a terrible fate that could no longer be fought, and descended the stairs to stand with me in the foyer.

“I like you,” she said, her gaze searching my face, as if seeking reassurance or answers I didn't have.

“I like you too,” I said, confused. It was a strange moment for an out-of-the-blue confession of something I already knew.

“But if you hurt her, Palmer, no matter what she says, I'll make sure you hurt too. Got it?” She edged past me, heading toward the closed pocket doors.