Riot (6 page)

The way Cody looks at me only tells me that his dick belongs to me, and even then, only for the next few hours.

But he’s not the one I wish would look at me like that anyway.

When the guys exit the stage, I let Cody approach me, knowing he will.

“Did you like the show?” he asks in that smug way of his. His eyes are such a muted blue, it’s hard to tell if they’re even blue at all. His nose is too wide and his lips are too thin.

“Always,” I tell him with a come-hither smirk. “Do you have to do one more song?”

“Yeah, but then I’m all yours.”

Lucky me.

When the guys go back onstage, Rowan turns to me. “You’re not seriously planning to hook up with him tonight, are you?”

“With Cody?” I scoff. “Never in a million years.”

“Thank God.” She sighs. “You had me worried.” She studies me for a moment, and then her eyes narrow. “So what
are
you planning to do?”

“Besides get Joel to confess his undying love?” I laugh, but she doesn’t, so I roll my eyes and say, “Actually, that’s the plan. Get Joel to confess his undying love.”

“Why can’t you just go for a normal guy?” Rowan asks, and I bristle.

“You mean like you did?”

“That’s different.”

“How is it different?”

“Because I wasn’t
trying
to get Adam to fall for me.”

Leave it to Rowan to cut to the bone without even meaning to.

“Well I’m sorry not everyone is as perfect as you, Rowan,” I snap. “I’m sorry not everyone has rock stars falling at their feet.”

“That’s not what I meant . . .”

“Sure, whatever,” I say, brushing her off. I turn away to watch the band, sweeping over Joel before my eyes accidentally gravitate right to him.

“Dee . . .”

“I don’t want to fight with you,” I warn her.

“I don’t want to fight with you either . . .”

“Good. Then let it go.”

When the show ends for real, the guys head back into the crowd to take pictures with fans. In the swarm, I find Cody and whisper in his ear, “Let’s go to the bus.” When my lips finish brushing over the sensitive parts of his ear, I pull away, and the look in my eyes tells him everything he needs to know to drop everything he’s doing and sprint with me to the bus.

Chapter Seven

M
AKING OUT WITH
Cody isn’t very different from dancing with him. He knows what he’s doing, and even though the logical part of my brain remembers that he’s skeezy as hell, the serotonin-drowned part is wearing him like a life vest. His hands are everywhere, and my closed eyes reveal only darkness. The only differences between being here and being back inside Mayhem are that I’m beside him on a bench seat instead of in front of him on a club floor, and instead of music, my ears are filled with the sound of his labored breathing.

It’s quiet. Too quiet. I hate when it’s this quiet. There’s too much room to think.

“Hold on,” I say when Cody’s hand jams beneath my top and squeezes my breast. Kissing aside, I have no intentions of letting this go anywhere. Joel will arrive any minute now, which is why I insisted Cody and I stay on the lower level of the bus instead of going upstairs. I’m hoping that seeing me with Cody will push Joel over the edge. I’m hoping it will turn him all caveman-possessive and that he’ll throw me over his shoulder, take me upstairs, and claim me in a way that makes it impossible for him to let me go.

Cody doesn’t listen. Instead, he pushes my top up over my bra.

“Cody, stop,” I huff, trying to pull my top back down.

“Come on, don’t be a tease.” He drops his lips to my cleavage and runs his tongue between my breasts.

“CODY.” My fingers scramble for his hair, but there’s not enough to grab. “Seriously, stop!”

He grips my wrists and pins them at my sides as he slides over top of me, his tongue slithering up to my neck. “God, I’ve wanted to have you like this since the first time I saw you.”

His pelvis grinds against mine, shoving my body into the stiff gray leather, and blind panic steals the voice from my lips. Fear burns through my veins, making my attempts to wrench my wrists away from Cody’s iron fingers useless. Between his weight and my sweat-glazed skin sticking to the leather, it’s impossible to move. With tears searing my eyes and the breath stolen from my lungs, I’m drowning.

“Cody,” I finally manage to say, my voice just as desperate and frightened as I feel. I’m squirming and kicking and my wrists feel like they’re going to snap in half. “Please!”

He moans and rocks against me. “You’re so hot.”

A sob pushes out of my throat, and Cody releases one of my wrists to squeeze his arm between our bodies and touch me between my legs.

I hate myself for dressing like this. For wearing a skirt that allows him to touch me without effort. What was I thinking? I never think.

I latch on to his shoulder and try with all my might to push him off me, but his weight is impossible and he doesn’t move an inch.

“Cody, stop,” I plead, attempting to kick against the seat to squirm away from his rubbing hand. I turn my head to the side and start crying, words like
no
and
stop
being sobbed without any effect.

And then the door to the bus opens and Joel steps inside first, a girl under his arm and a stunned look on his face as he takes in the view of Cody on top of me. I think he must hate me, but then his eyes meet mine. They fill with rage that turns on Cody, and a second later, Cody’s body is flying off of me and landing on the floor.

I’m weightless as I find my feet and rush off the bus. Adam and Rowan are behind Joel and the girl he was with, and they saw everything. Shawn and Mike see only the view of me racing past them with my skirt bunched up, my hair a mess, and mascara streaming down my cheeks.

I nearly trip down the bus stairs, gulping in air and trying to quiet my sobbing. I pull my skirt as low as I can get it as I speed-walk toward my car. I don’t even have my keys, but I need to get away. I need to get far away.

“Dee!” Rowan’s hand lands on my shoulder, stopping me in the middle of the parking lot. “What happened in there?”

I want to tell her, but I know that if I attempt to speak, I’ll start crying again. I’ll break down right here in the parking lot and I won’t be able to pull myself together. I bite my lip between my teeth and shake my head, silently begging her not to ask.

When I reach my purple Civic, I drop to my knees and fumble to find the hide-a-key stashed under the carriage, the sharp asphalt in my knees proving that this isn’t just a bad dream. I still feel frantic, my fight-or-flight response demanding I get home as fast as humanly possible. My shaking hands open the box, remove the key, and let the box fall to the ground instead of trying to put it back where I found it. I’m desperately trying to fit the key in my car door when Rowan’s hand covers mine. She takes the key from me and wraps her arm around my shoulders, walking me to the passenger-side door and helping me climb inside. Once she slides into the driver’s seat beside me, she holds me in her gaze. I can tell she wants to hug me, wants me to tell her what happened so she can assure me everything will be okay. But that’s not what I need from her right now. I need her to take me home.

I stare down at my shaking hands resting on my lap until she finally starts the car. She drives me home and walks me to our apartment, which is good because I’m pretty sure I’d be terrified to walk anywhere alone right now. Inside, I don’t let her get a word out before I retreat to the bathroom. I turn on the shower and climb inside without taking my clothes off. I don’t want to be naked right now. I just want to cry without anyone hearing me.

And I do. As soon as the water hits my face, the tears start falling. I curl up in the corner, wrap my arms around my legs, and sob into my knees. I sob so hard that I have to throw up on my hands and knees in the drain, which only makes me cry even harder. I’m pathetic. God, I’m so fucking pathetic.

When Rowan opens the bathroom door, the water has gone cold but I’m still curled up in the corner of the shower. Fully clothed, she climbs in with me and wraps me tight in her arms. I tuck my head into her shoulder and let the last of my tears drip onto her already wet skin. She holds me tight while I pull myself together, and then she helps me from the shower and dries me off while I try to pretend I’m fine.

She pulls two T-shirts and two pairs of yoga pants from my dresser, and we both change into the pajamas and climb onto my bed. She settles behind me, running a brush through my wet hair and not saying anything. The silence in the room is thick, creeping down my throat and making me nauseous, so I say the only thing I can say. “I didn’t mean to snap on you at the concert.”

Rowan stops brushing and wraps her arms around my shoulders, pressing her cheek against the back of my head. “I want to kill him, Dee.” When I don’t respond, she adds, “He can’t get away with this. You have to press charges.”

I wrap my hands around her slender arm and shake my head.

“Why?”

“It’s not like he raped me,” I say, and that word makes me want to throw up all over again. My stomach rolls, and I close my eyes to keep from retching. He came close. He came too close.

“But he . . .” Rowan trails off.

He touched me. He hurt me. He forced himself on me, and if Joel had been just a few minutes later . . .

“He went too fucking far,” Rowan finishes. “He had no right, Dee. That was
assault
.”

“I kissed him first,” I say. I came on to him, and even on the bus, I enjoyed myself. Cody was a good kisser. I liked kissing him.

I close my eyes and blow a long breath from my nose when my stomach churns again.

Rowan turns my shoulders to stare at me, her brow furrowed. “That doesn’t matter . . . You know that, right?” When I don’t answer, she squeezes my shoulders and says, “Did you tell him no?”

Not at first. I should have said it sooner. “Yeah, but—”

“But nothing. If you said no, that’s the only thing you needed to fucking say.”

She doesn’t get it, but I don’t expect her to. Rowan never would have put herself in a position like that. She never would have lowered herself to making out with a guy like Cody. She never would have hooked up with that guy from work I went home with the other night. She never would have fucked nearly every guy on the football team in high school.

Because she’s not a slut. But I am.

When someone knocks on my front door, I panic and tell her not to answer. I don’t want to see anyone. I don’t want anyone to see
me
. When Joel and his arm candy and Rowan and Adam and, God,
everyone
saw me bawling my eyes out on the bus, I wasn’t sure if I was relieved they showed up or so humiliated I just wanted to die.

Rowan and I both wait for the person to go away, but instead, they knock again. “I’m just going to see who it is,” she says, and then she leaves my bedroom. I stay on the bed, out of view of the front door, and listen to her walk to the peephole. Then she opens the door.

“Is she okay?” Joel’s voice asks as soon as it opens. I pull my pillow onto my lap, wishing it was big enough to hide under.

“Yeah,” Rowan says. “I mean, she will be.”

“Where is she?” His voice echoes from the hallway outside my apartment door, and I pray Rowan doesn’t let him inside. I don’t want to know how he’ll look at me—With pity? With disgust? With anger? I don’t want to see any of it.

God, please just go away. I don’t want to see his face.

“She’s sleeping,” Rowan lies for me, and I bury my nose in the overstuffed pillow, wishing I could live inside it where no one would ever find me. “I’ll have her call you, okay?”

Adam’s voice asks, “Are you staying here tonight?”

“Yeah,” Rowan answers.

“Here’s her purse,” Joel says, almost too quietly for me to hear, and Rowan gasps.

“Oh my God, what happened to your hands?!”

“He shouldn’t have touched her,” he answers in a voice that gives me chills, dangerous and unapologetic.

I’m curious about his hands, but the door clicks closed. I pad to my cracked bedroom door, peeking out and seeing that Rowan has stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her. If I wasn’t so physically and emotionally exhausted, I might care enough to put my ear to the door and eavesdrop on the rest of their conversation. Instead, I climb into bed and pull the covers up to my neck, pretending that today was just a bad dream and that I didn’t invite Cody to put his hands all over me.

That I didn’t deserve what happened.

Chapter Eight

T
HE NEXT MO
RNING,
the sound of my own pained groaning wakes me from a restless sleep. Every muscle in my body aches like it’s been run over while I slept, and when I put pressure on my hands to lift myself off the bed, I inhale a sharp gasp and fall back against the mattress. Tears sting my eyes when I lift my wrists in front of my face and see the angry red and purple bruising marring my olive skin.

“Dee?” Rowan calls from the other side of my closed door. “Are you alright?”

Last night, she tried to crawl in next to me because she thought I needed the comfort, but what I really needed was to be alone. I told her I wanted to sleep by myself, and she reluctantly left my room to sleep in her own bed. I’m not sure which was worse about last night—having Cody put his hands all over me or breaking down in the shower afterward like some kind of helpless victim.

Rowan jiggles the knob. “Dee, are you okay?”

I clear the gravel from my throat. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

A long moment of silence passes, and I know she’s still lingering behind the door. “I’m going to make breakfast. You want anything?”

She’s in for a surprise when she opens the fridge and finds nothing but expired butter and a jar full of pickle juice. “No,” I answer, “I’m going back to bed.” I hesitate and then add, “You should go back to Adam’s. I might be out for a while.”

Rowan’s voice is sad and careful when she says, “Dee . . . can I come in for a minute?”

I attempt to run my fingers through my hair in a nervous gesture, but end up hissing through my teeth when lightning pain reminds me of the bruising. “I’m tired, Ro. I’ll call you, okay?”

I think I hear her sigh against the crack in my door; then she says with stubborn insistence, “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

I ignore her when she knocks on the door later to offer me lunch. I ignore her when she recruits Leti to try to talk me out of my room. I ignore her when she whines, threatens, and tries to bribe me with strawberry pancakes and chocolate ice cream. And I fall asleep ignoring the near constant texts and calls I receive from Joel.

The next morning, his voice is the one that wakes me.

“Dee, open up.” His pounding on my door causes me to bolt upright, putting all of my weight on my bruised-to-hell wrists.

“Fuck!” I cradle my arms in my lap and grit my teeth.

“I’m not playing games, Dee! Peach says you haven’t eaten anything. I brought you IHOP and you’re going to come out here and eat it.”

“Go away,” I growl. Joel is the last person in the world I want to see right now. Making a fucking fool of myself wasn’t what I wanted to do to win his attention.

“Are you seriously going to sit in there feeling sorry for yourself?”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s not the girl I know!”

“YOU DON’T KNOW ME.”

“Last chance,” he says.

“Or what?” I challenge.

I hear muffled voices and then Joel saying, “Fuck yes I’m going to break this door down. What’s she going to do, starve herself?” Speaking to me, he threatens, “One.”

I glare at my closed door, not falling for his bullshit.

“Two.”

“Get bent, Joel!”

“Three.”

A satisfied smile tugs at my lips when nothing happens, but then Joel bursts through my door in a flurry of limbs and splintered wood.

“What the hell!” I shriek, eyes wide as he falls to the floor yowling in pain. I launch off my bed and hover over all six-foot-one of him writhing on the floor. He’s cradling his shoulder in his hand and stringing curse words together in arrangements I’ve never heard before. His knuckles are wrapped in bandages and his face is a mask of pain.

“I fucking dislocated my shoulder, goddamn it!” he curses. Rowan sidles next to me and Leti next to her.

“Did you seriously dislocate your shoulder?” Rowan asks.

Leti shakes his head with pity. “I told you not to do it.”

“No,” Joel snaps, “I’m joking, Peach. I just like rolling around on the floor for no fucking reason!”

She kicks him in the shin, and I burst out laughing. I’m still pissed as hell at him, but I can’t help laughing when he’s lying on the floor, bandaged and bruised with a dislocated shoulder, and my best friend is kicking him while he’s down. He’s a hot mess.

“I’m glad you find this so funny,” he growls up at me.

“I didn’t ask you to come over here.”

“Or to break down the door,” Leti adds.

“OR to break down the door.”

Joel sits up and glares at me until he sees my wrists. “Shit . . . Dee . . .”

Rowan and Leti follow his gaze and inhale sharp breaths, and I throw my hands behind my back to hide them from view. “It’s not a big deal. Stop staring at me like that.”

“Is that why you wouldn’t come out?” Rowan asks. Since there’s a half bathroom attached to my room, I didn’t have to see her at all yesterday, despite her multiple attempts to lure me out. And this morning, I vaguely remember her trying to wake me up to go to school, but I’m pretty sure I told her that my professors could go eat dicks.

“I just didn’t feel like it. God.”

Rowan steps toward me like she wants to hug me, pauses, and finishes her assault by throwing her arms around my neck. Since my wrists are out of commission, I don’t attempt to push her away.

“I’m fine,” I insist, and Leti’s hand lands on my shoulder, his gaze full of pity that makes me roll my eyes.

“You know who’s not fine?” Joel asks. “The guy on the floor with the dislocated shoulder. Is anyone going to help me up and take me to the hospital?”

“Why would we do that when there’s IHOP waiting to be eaten?” I ask, and Rowan chuckles before releasing me and teaming with Leti to lift him up.

I
N THE WAITING
room of the hospital, I’m sitting between Joel and Rowan with Leti on Rowan’s other side. My legs are crossed and there’s a plate of pancakes on my lap that is very quickly turning into a plate of just syrup. I offered Rowan a bite, but she said the scent of antiseptic stole her appetite. It probably would have stolen mine too if my stomach didn’t feel like it was trying to eat itself.

“What happened to your hands?” I ask Joel, too curious to keep my thoughts to myself.

He glances at Rowan, and I catch her staring at the floor. She already knows, but whatever happened, she’s kept it from me.

“Cody’s face,” Joel answers, his tone loaded with latent aggression I’m finally beginning to feel.

“Did you make him sorry?” I ask, and Leti answers before anyone else has a chance to.

“He nearly killed him.” When I lean forward to search Leti’s expression, he adds, “I went out to show Mark the bus . . . Shawn and Mike had to carry Cody out. He looked like Rocky Balboa decided to use his face as a punching bag.”

“He wouldn’t stop talking,” Joel explains unapologetically.

I find myself gently unwrapping the bandages from his hands, and Joel watches me do it, not pulling away from me. I frown when I see the angry red scratches and taped stitches. “You didn’t have to do that . . .”

“Yeah, I did,” he says matter-of-factly.

I release my tender hold on his hands and withdraw my attention, not sure how to feel about what Joel did for me. I carve off more pancakes and push them into my mouth, trying to make sense of it. What could he possibly have to gain from getting involved?

A nurse comes to retrieve Joel with her eyes buried in a clipboard, but when they lift, the friendly smile falls from her face. With his mohawk, torn jeans, and battered knuckles, he’s a disheveled mess. He’s also the epitome of a bad boy, and I’m trying to ignore the fact that he’s hot as hell.

She clears her throat. “Joel Gibbon?”

Joel nods his head in my direction. “Take her first.”

I cough around a throatful of pancakes. The nurse eyes me until her gaze lands on my wrists, and an embarrassed flame ignites beneath my skin.

“I’m fine,” I growl at Joel under my breath.

“Yeah, whatever,” he says, standing up and waiting for me with agitated impatience. “Waiting on you, Deandra.”

I narrow my eyes and stand up, and Rowan and Leti are quick to follow my lead, with Joel taking up the rear. The four of us enter a curtained ER cubicle, where I’m prescribed pain medication for my bruised wrists and given a handful of domestic abuse pamphlets, and Joel is lectured about busting through doors with his shoulders and breaking faces with his fists. He’s taken for X-rays that determine his shoulder is just badly bruised, and then he’s prescribed his own pain medication, which we pick up on our way back to my apartment.

I ignore him as we climb the stairs of my apartment building and navigate the hallways to my front door. Once inside, I attempt to head straight to my room, but he’s right on my heels.

“Go away, Joel,” I order as I turn a glare on him.

“Not until you talk to me.”

Rowan clears her throat and begins backing toward the front door. “I’m going to go pick up some groceries.” She grabs Leti’s sleeve and drags him out with her, and I scowl at them even after the door closes between us.

With my arms crossed over my chest, I shoot Joel a look of impatience and wait for him to say whatever the hell he needs to say. But he just stares right back at me, engaging me in a silent standoff that I don’t stand a chance of winning.

“What do you want from me?” I snap.

His trained expression reveals nothing. “Why do you think I want something from you?”

Because that’s what boys do. They pretend to give a shit about you, but only because they want something. And then when they don’t get it, they try to take it anyway.

My fingertips are absent-mindedly nursing my wrists when Joel gently draws my hands toward him. His thumbs caress my pulse points while he studies my bruises, and he wears a look of such sincere sympathy that I almost choke up. “He shouldn’t have done this to you.”

I pull my hands away and try to slam the lid back on my emotions, resenting Joel for bringing them to the surface. I spent all yesterday nearing tears and choking them back down, and if he makes me break down now, all of that effort will have been for nothing. “I shouldn’t have led him on.”

It’s the truth, but Joel’s brows pull down in a picture of contempt that makes me look away from him. “Are you seriously standing there excusing what he did to you?”

I shrug my shoulders. I’m not sure what the hell I’m doing, but fighting and lying seems easier than telling the truth and crying.

“Dee,” Joel pleads, his slender fingers coming to rest on my shoulder, “you know nothing that happened was your fault, right? Cody is a piece of shit. The entire band voted him out. It was unanimous. It wasn’t even a fucking question.”

“You voted him out of the band?” I ask, dread churning in my stomach.

Joel nods, pushing my thick chocolate hair behind my shoulder.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” I hate that the band is now going to suffer because I was too stupid to know better than to play games I couldn’t win.

“Why? You’ll never have to see him again . . .”

God, he just doesn’t get it. “Maybe I
wanted
to see him again!” I shout, needing him to know how upset I am but not wanting to explain why. If I was pouring my heart out, I’d tell him how stupid I am, how crazy he made me, how many regrets I have. But instead, I add more regrets to the list by shouting things I don’t mean.

Joel drops his hand from my shoulder like I just slapped him in the face. “Are you serious right now?”

“Who knows!” I snap, throwing my hands in the air. “Maybe I would’ve fucked around with him the next time you were busy fucking one of those girls from the grocery store!” His face falls, and I point an angry finger at him. “You know what, I don’t need to explain myself to you. You never cared about me before, why the fuck are you pretending to now?”

“No one’s pretending!” he shouts back at me, making me flinch. “I
do
fucking care about you, Dee, or I wouldn’t be here! The only one pretending right now is you.”

My humorless chuckle cuts the space between us. “Okay, Joel. Since you apparently think you know me all of a sudden, what am I pretending?”

“You’re pretending to be okay.”

The truth of his words pierce my heart, and I throw my defenses up, praying they don’t let me down. “I’m
always
okay. I don’t need you to be my knight in shining fucking armor.”

“Good, because I’m not your Prince fucking Charming. I’m just a guy who fucking cares about you, and I’m going to keep caring about you whether you want me to or not.” He turns away from me and tosses a dismissive hand in the air before swinging open the door to my apartment and slamming it behind him.

I’m left standing stunned in my living room, trying to make sense of his words through the haze of frustration in my head. He cares about me? Since fucking
when
?

Furious, I sprint to the door and swing it open, emerging into the hall and yelling at the back of his spiky head. “Where the hell are you going?”

“What do you care?” he shouts back without bothering to slow down.

“JOEL!”

His shoulders tense before he whirls around and shouts back, “To get shit to fix your stupid door! Is that a problem?”

When he walks away from me again, I chase after him. A million questions are warring for priority on my tongue, but the one I shout at him is, “Why?! Why do you care all of a sudden, Joel? You never cared about me before!”

In a second, his body spins and pushes me against the wall. His eyes blaze the color of butane flame, and my chin tilts high to hold their heated gaze. His bandaged hands lift from my shoulders to cradle my cheeks, and then he says in a voice so serious it gives me chills, “Because I saw what he did to you and I almost fucking
killed
him
, Dee.”

The fire in his eyes steals the oxygen from my lungs as he searches my face for a fleeting moment. I want to kiss him. I want to rise on my toes and kiss him for doing everything I just yelled at him for, but before I can, his lips smash against mine.

My fingers claw over the thin fabric covering Joel’s hard shoulders, which flex under my touch when he wraps his uninjured arm behind my back and lifts me off my feet. Using that single arm, he carries me back to my apartment, and I cling to him the entire way. We tumble onto the couch, our need for each other desperate and consuming, a blur of kissing and touching that overwhelms me until I’m launching myself off his lap.