Path of Destruction (20 page)

“Whatever,” she offered up. “I’ll go to the stupid dance.” Nothing like a night of wishing she had someone to dance with to drive home the fact that she wasn’t a survivor at all.

A
s the social committee unloaded the trailers that had all of the prom decorations inside—in all their vomit-colored glory—Cami couldn’t stop herself from staring at Brantley. The way his thigh muscles strained against his jeans as he squatted down to pick up a box before hoisting it up into his very defined arms sent a flutter through her stomach. She drew her lip between her teeth, enjoying the fact that she was still able to at least feel something. She’d take the hormone-fueled lust over emptiness any day.

“Keep staring at me like that and we ain’t ever going to get this hotel ballroom decorated,” Brantley said as he made his way by her, stopping briefly to flash her a wicked grin. “I’m about two seconds away from going to get us a room.”

“Stop,” she whispered. She smacked his arm, before turning to see if anyone was in earshot. The last thing she needed was anyone catching on to her little game with Brantley.

“Don’t worry, darlin’. No one’s around.” His grin faded as he continued walking past her with the box in tow.

She regretted telling him to stop. The last thing she wanted to do was make him feel bad. He was one of the only people in that entire school who was nice to her all the time. Not to mention, she’d seen that same look on Kyle’s face the night of their trip to the yogurt shop.

“I didn’t mean—” she said as she caught up next to him. “Would you wait?”

“No. It’s fine. I get it.”

“No, you don’t.” She waited for him to put the box on one of the tables and grabbed his arm, turning him to look at her. “I’m not ashamed of you or what’s going on between us if that’s what you think.”

“No? ‘Cause from where I’m standing, it seems like you don’t really want to be seen talking to me. Outside of the utility closet that is.”

His snide remark had her seeing red. Of course he would think that she was vapid and shallow, but it wasn’t like he was going out of his way to announce to the Hope’s Grove population that she was his make-out buddy.

“How dare you,” she snapped. “You don’t know what I want or think. You never
ask.
” The week’s worth of tears she’d been storing up since her last good cry were looming. “I don’t see you running off to tell your little blond buddy that we’re hooking up either,” she added, trying to strike a nerve. If he wanted to throw around pissy comments, she would accommodate. It had been a while since she’d played the bitch card. Surely, she still knew how.

“Because you’ve told Prescott, right?” he asked, lacing his words with sarcasm. The look on his face that he’d one-upped her caused a tear to break loose and roll down her cheek.

Nope. No bitch card left.
She watched his eyes fall from victorious to concerned in a matter of seconds.

“I... It’s not...” She tried to form a sentence, but the threat of crying stifled her attempt.

“Easy, girl. Let’s not cause a scene.” He tugged her out of the ballroom and over to a quiet hallway before pulling her into his arms. “I’m sorry I just acted like that. It’s just been a shitty week.”

Cami rested her head against his chest, letting his slow and steady breathing calm her.

“The only reason I’m not announcing to the world that we like to hook up in closets is because it’s none of their damn business,” she admitted. “I’m not ashamed of you. I’m ashamed of me. Why in the world would you want anyone to know about what you’re doing with the pathetic has-been.”

“Would you stop?” He tipped her chin up with one hand as he brushed a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “You are far from pathetic, Cameron Nickelson.”

“The last thing you want is to be dragged into my fucked-up world.” She didn’t give him a chance to respond. “And there’s really nothing to announce, is there?” she asked. “It’s not like we’re a couple or anything, right?”

“Right,” he agreed a little faster than Cami had anticipated. “What exactly are we?”

“I don’t know...friends?” she asked with a sheepish grinning, hoping he agreed.

Of course we are friends,
she told herself, trying not to let herself get lost in the thought of how much she enjoyed the feel of his hands and mouth on her. The way he seemed to know exactly how to move his fingertips across her skin and allow her to not so much as think a single thought. How in the short span of their time in that closet, she was free from every single thing that seemed to be dragging her down—her parents, the idiots at school, the memory of Kyle. But she refused to let herself confuse lust for love. What she’d had with Kyle was love. What she had with Brantley was not. It couldn’t be.

“I can’t thank you enough for helping me with my...” she trailed off. “Issues. I’m pretty sure that, if you wouldn’t have found me in that closet, I might have had a heart attack the first time those sirens went off.”

“Anytime.”

“I’d probably still be down there rotting. All alone,” she added. “It’s not like anyone would have come looking for me.”

“Now you’re just being dramatic,” he told her with certainty. “There is no way that people wouldn’t have noticed you were missing, Cameron.”

She shrugged, unsure if she believed him. The only time anyone ever looked for her was if they wanted something and as of late she wasn’t in the giving mood. So they all left her alone. All of them except him. The second Tuesday of every month the school district had deemed “Disaster Preparedness Day,” firing off the sirens at promptly ten o’clock. At nine fifty-five, between second and third period, Cami and Coop would find their way to the utility closet—each taking different routes. Hers through the east wing where the Summit Bluffs students had lockers and his through the west wing of Hope’s Grove transfers. By the time the sirens were blaring, they were already lip-locked in an act of urgency. She knew why she did it—to distract herself. To get lost in his touch for the next ten minutes. But where his motivation stemmed from, she had no idea.

“Why do you meet me every month?” In their nine months of encounters, she’d yet to ask him why he kept showing up.

“Because you need me,” he answered matter-of-factly.

Her heart fluttered at the sincerity in his words. On his face. The sudden realization that it might be more than just lust sucker-punched the air from lungs, but it was quickly followed by guilt. Like she was pushing aside Kyle and replacing him with someone else. She couldn’t do that. The boy she loved was gone and she deserved to be alone because she’d waited too long to tell him that she loved him. Not to mention the fact that the boy standing in front of her was Kyle Mason’s best friend—brother, according to Coop—and he had no idea that she was Kyle’s mystery girl from the summer.

“Can’t very well just leave you down there to rot, now can I?” Coop took her hands in his for a brief second before releasing them. “We better get back in there before someone starts a rumor that we’re sneaking off to hook up,” he said with a wink that seemed to ground her thoughts from running away with her.

“Yep.” She nodded.

They were friends. That’s all they could ever be.

“D
o you know how many girls get pregnant on prom night?”

Ella Jane’s mom’s reflection frowned at her from over her shoulder. “How many, Ella Jane?”

“I don’t know the
exact
number. A lot. It was rhetorical. I don’t think I should go. I don’t even want to go. You’re basically forcing me to go to a dance historically known for drugs, date rape, and unplanned pregnancy.”

“Do you plan to have unprotected sex or abuse any illegal substances at prom?”

Now it was EJ’s turn to frown as her mom stuck a pin slightly too close to the skin on her hip. “No, ma’am,” she mumbled. She was still hungover from drinking too much with Jarrod Kent at a party the night before.

“Then you should be fine. Here. Turn around.”

Their eyes met and Ella Jane knew what her mother saw there. Frustration. Anger. Plenty of residual sadness. Kyle had gone to prom with Mindy Christensen. Their picture was still up on the mantel. He didn’t even really like her that much and she was just a cheerleader hooking up with a football player just because. EJ hadn’t even seen her at his funeral. Though she was kind of out of it on pain meds, but still. If she came, she didn’t bother to speak to any one of the family members.

Ella Jane didn’t have a date—not that she cared. But knowing there wouldn’t be a picture of her and her date to go up on the mantel next to Kyle’s made her strangely sad. She could read her mother’s eyes, too. Pity and heartache. She knew it was painful for her mom to look at her and she understood why. Because now that he was gone she could see it. That she was basically the female version of him with smaller features. No wonder Cooper never wanted anything more than her friendship.

“If Lynlee was here, the two of you would be going together. Have you spoken to her?”

“Her dad’s job is moving them to New York. She’s kind of bummed about leaving the beach but said she was ready for a new crop of boys anyways.”

Her mom bit her lip and her brow wrinkled. “Maybe it’s a good thing she’s not here. If you don’t want to go tonight, then don’t. But you look beautiful. Look.” She turned her back around so that Ella Jane could see the way the short strapless champagne-colored dress flattered her figure. She guessed it did, but couldn’t have really cared less. It was her mom’s dress from her senior prom. It had a sequined bodice and taffeta skirt that had to be shortened a bit because her mom was taller than she was. Millie Mason had wanted to put a sash around the middle and curl Ella Jane’s hair, but EJ had reminded her mom that this wasn’t the kindergarten princess pageant. It was the junior-senior prom and she was going alone.

“I’m going,” Ella Jane said, knowing she probably wouldn’t actually dance but that the smile on her mom’s face was worth the torture.

“Good.” Her eyes brightened a shade before EJ slipped on her boots. “Darling. Really? The boots?”

“Yes, Mom. Really. The dress I compromised on. But heels are not happening. Probably not ever.”

“A mother can dream,” her mother told her with a wink. “Do I get to take a picture at least?”

“Of your loser loner daughter going to prom by herself? Well of course. Who doesn’t want to capture this moment?”

Ella Jane could think of a few Bluffs girls who were going to be thrilled to see her alone.

“You know…if you’d just stop being so stubborn and call Coop—”

“No, Mom. Just…no. He didn’t ask me and I’m not calling him on prom night and begging him to take someone he sees as a little sister. Drop it already.”

There had been a brief discussion of prom between the two of them a few weeks ago.

“How’s your social committee sentence?” she’d teased him one night as they sat side by side on the river dock. Their old fishing poles were cast out into the water without so much a nibble in the past two hours.

The majority of the time the two of them sat in silence—neither one wanting or needing to talk about all the shit that was going on in their lives. They both missed Kyle, so they didn’t need to talk about it anymore—or at least that was what Ella Jane told herself. The last few months she’d noticed a difference in their relationship. It seemed that, lately, any conversation they had turned into an argument about the same old nonsense or one of them just shutting down completely. And, yeah, he was there for her, but she wondered if he was really
there.

When it was clear that the fish weren’t biting, they’d decided to head in. She watched him gather up the gear and contemplate his answer to her seemingly simple question.

“It’s not so bad.” Coop shrugged.

“No?” She was surprised. She knew how much Coop hated the uppity crowd at Summit Bluffs.

“I mainly just build and move stuff.” He closed up the tackle box and stood up. “Some of them aren’t so bad,” he added.

She wondered if he was talking about Cameron. It burned her a little that Coop liked her. She didn’t know much about their interactions other than the day in the hallway when he had taken Cami’s side over hers. Ella Jane had to bite her tongue not to tell him what she knew. If he wanted to be friends with the Princess of Summit Bluffs during his time as a social committee member, so be it. Nothing would ever come of it. Just like nothing would ever come of Ella Jane’s relationship with Hayden. They were all cut from different cloths.

Cami and Hayden were cashmere and Coop and EJ were burlap.

It wouldn’t be long until school was out and they could get back to their regularly scheduled small-town lives far from the halls of Summit Bluffs High School. Except she was a junior and would have to face that godforsaken place alone for one more year. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what that would be like.

“Well, I bet you’re glad your time is almost up. Don’t you just have to help with prom and then you’re finished?”

“Yeah,” he said as if the thought hadn’t yet dawned on him. “I guess I am.”

Ella Jane couldn’t be sure, but he almost looked disappointed that he wouldn’t be the social committee’s workhorse anymore.