The Seven Devils (YA "New Adult" Romance) (18 page)

“What the fuck, man! Were you in my head?” Derrick shouted.

Neil walked closer to Derrick. I could smell the sweat on his skin. “I love Ellen,” Neil said. “And I protect the ones I love. Now tell me you’re going to leave Ellen alone,” Neil ordered.

Derrick nodded quickly. “I’m done. I’ll drop it.”

Neil scanned his thoughts. It was hard to understand because Derrick was terrified, but it became clear that he would say anything to get away. Behind all of that was the intent to find a way to get to me again.

Derrick slammed the door.

Instead of trying to be heard above Derrick’s screams, Neil sent the message telepathically. “If you ever even think about her again, I’ll castrate you.”

Finally I was back in my room, back in my own thoughts. I opened my eyes and saw I was still kneeling in front of Neil who had his head in his hands, sitting on my bed.

“What do you think of me now?” Neil asked, looking down at me.

I wiped my eyes, stood up, and straddled him there on the edge of the bed.

His eyes showed his surprise. “I think I love you, Neil,” I whispered in his ear.

“But, El,” Neil said holding me back so he could look me in the eyes. “You saw what I did tonight. The things I’m capable of doing.”

“I saw what Derrick wanted to do to me tonight, and I saw what you did to stop him. It was hard to watch, but you did it out of love. How can I be angry?” I asked.

Neil started to protest, but I kissed him softly on the lips. I kissed him again and again, then lightly tugged on his bottom lip with my teeth.

With a light groan Neil stopped holding back and kissed me deeply. His kisses moved from my mouth to my neck, so gentle, so loving. He whispered in my ear, “I’d do anything for you Ellen.”

I couldn’t help it; I was getting quite excited. “Do you still have a no sex rule?” I asked, my fingers twisting through his hair.

“Yes,” Neil said, with the hint of a smile. “But I will stay here with you if you’ll have me.”

I sighed. “I guess that will have to do for now,” I said.

Chapter 20

Hannah wasn’t at school that day, which made me nervous. Derrick did show up, but I never saw him. The whole school was abuzz with the story that he slammed his hand in the door of his car so hard that he broke nearly every bone. Everyone laughed about how drunk he must have been to do such a stupid thing.

Neil walked me home from school that afternoon and I was shocked to see my mom was there. She was just walking out the door and locking it behind her when we walked up.

“Where have you been?” I asked.

She jumped slightly when I spoke, and I wondered if she was trying to leave before I got home.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “I’m here all the time. Just busy with work and stuff.”

“And Chad?”

“Well, sure. He’s renovating his house and I’ve been lending a hand here and there,” she said.

“Well what about your family?”

“What about you? You’re adults. Do you need me here holding your hand while you do your homework?”

“No, but if there was at least food in the house, that would help!” I replied angrily.

She rolled her eyes and dug through her purse to find her wallet. She pulled out $60. “Make this last,” she told me and got into her car. “And be good!” she called as she pulled out of the driveway.

I looked at the three twenties in my hand and looked at Neil, who had wisely stayed out of the whole scene.

“It’s alright,” he said, wrapping an arm around me. “I’ll grab the car and I’ll take you to the store. I have some things to pick up too.”

He was quiet for a couple of moments and then said, “She had a bag of clothes in the car with her.”

I looked up at him. “Mom?”

He nodded. “She’s planning on spending a lot more time with Chad. She really likes him, and he’s a bit younger than her. She’s resenting the fact that she has you and your brother tying her down. She’s been fantasizing about running away with him.”

“Oh that’s so typical,” I said. “She had an affair with a man back in Akron and my dad caught her when she was trying to take money out of their account in order to start a new life somewhere. He made her stay, somehow. He can be persuasive like that.”

Neil hugged me. “You’re not alone anymore. I’m not going to let you spend every night by yourself.”

My heart lifted. I was so thankful to have Neil in my life.

***

I thought Neil would take me to the little grocery store in town, but instead we drove to Sidney, twenty miles away, to the Super Walmart. We picked up some groceries, but he also grabbed a bunch of mats, boxing gloves, and a punching bag.

“After what you did, I don’t think we need to worry about Derrick anymore,” I said. “Do I really need the self defense stuff?”

“I don’t know what to expect from him,” Neil said, packing the last bit into his car’s trunk. “And besides, it will be fun and I think you’ll really like it.”

“Alright,” I said skeptically. “I can’t really picture hitting things for fun.”

Neil chuckled. “Just you wait.”

It turns out, he was right.

We set everything up in the unfinished basement of my house. After some time just working on form with Neil, making sure that I wouldn’t do something stupid like sprain my wrist, I was ready to take on the punching bag.

“Alright,” Neil said from beside me as I faced down the punching bag. “I want you to pretend this bag is Derrick. He is standing right here in front of you. Really picture it.”

I concentrated on the bag for a moment and then with a deep breath, imagined Derrick there instead. I tried to see every detail from his perfectly tousled hair to his designer jeans.

“Just what I thought,” Neil said a moment later, taking my hand. “Ellen, that’s not what Derrick looks like.”

“What?!” I said, turning to him.

“Ellen… you picture him as a huge guy. He does have some weight on you, but he’s only an inch taller than you. Two inches at most.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “He always seems so big…”

“You’re letting your fear run away with you. Listen to what I say. He’s a seventeen-year-old kid. He works out, sure, but it’s all for show. He has never fought against anyone, except for you. And you damn near broke his nose for it. That big Minster vs. New Bremen fight he cooked up? He spent the whole time in the back while his friends fought around him. He is not as scary as you think he is, and you are not as weak as you believe yourself to be.”

I nodded and turned back to the punching bag. “Try this,” Neil said.

He somehow planted a vision of Derrick into my head. It seemed so real that I had to remind my racing heart that this was all just a trick of the mind. Where the punching bag had been a moment ago, there he stood. Shorter than I had pictured him before, muscles less defined, and with all the bruising on his face and the cast on his hand. I took a deep breath. “He’s just a kid,” I told myself. “I can do this.”

I tightened my fists, got into the sparring stance Neil had shown me, and took a jab at Derrick’s stomach. When his mouth opened in a moan and he bent over slightly from the blow I was so startled that I shouted and jumped back.

“I’m sorry, Ellen. I’m sorry. That was stupid. I didn’t mean to scare you,” Neil said, putting a hand on my back.

I turned to him and laughed, feeling ridiculous at being afraid of a mirage, a vision. “No, that felt real. That’s the way we should practice. I want to be prepared as possible.”

I confronted the punching bag again. Neil placed the vision of Derrick in front of me and I got right to it. I began with just jabs… right, right, left, right, over and over. “Derrick” was hurting. I was hurting him. I hit harder and harder, putting all of my weight behind each punch. I was loving it. Over and over I struck. Right, right, left, right.

My arms burned and my hands ached. I kept hitting. I wanted to see him die.

Suddenly “Derrick” disappeared and I was left punching the bag. Neil said my name and tried to put a hand on my back. Still I punched, even though my hands and arms were on fire. Derrick. I was going to kill him.

Finally Neil bear-hugged me from behind, pinning my arms to my sides. I tried shaking him off, but he was unmovable. “Ellen, stop,” Neil said.

My heart was going mad and I could feel the adrenaline coursing through my body. I felt so alive. So powerful. Neil let me go and I turned around to face him. “I hurt him,” I said excitedly. “Oh God, it felt so good.”

Neil smiled and I allowed him to remove my gloves. “I understand, believe me, but I don’t want you to get carried away. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

I bounced up and down on the balls of my feet. “I just want to go out there and find him. Right now. I want to really hit him. Really let him have it!”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Neil said, handing me some water. I sat on the floor and took a long drink. The cool cement floor beneath me was uncomfortable, but it was doing a great job at cooling me down.

Neil crouched before me. “We’re just getting started. First you needed to be comfortable striking out. Obviously you accomplished that one today,” he said with a smile, nudging my knee slightly. “Next I need to show you the basic self-defense moves that you can use if someone comes at you, or grabs you from behind, or knocks you to the ground.”

“But what about strength? Shouldn’t I be lifting weights or something?” I asked.

“You can if you’d like,” Neil said. “I can bring you to my parents’ house some nights and we can work out in their gym, but it’s not as important as getting down the technique.”

“I’d like to work out. I just want to be prepared no matter what.”

***

We fell into a blissful routine. School in the morning, homework and studying in the afternoon, dinner together at my house, and then working out in the evenings. He would leave me in the evening and return in the morning for me before school, but he assured me that he was never far if I needed anything.

Neil was keeping me busy enough that I didn’t have time to be lonely. I hadn’t seen my mother in two weeks, but she did leave an envelope with a few twenties for groceries in the mailbox one morning. Austin began sleeping in the house again once Lexie’s parents got back from vacation, but other than that he was just never around. My only communication with him was the occasion grunt when we passed each other in the hall on the way to the bathroom. Add to that the fact that Hannah was no longer speaking to me, and it was pretty clear. Neil was my everything. The most amazing news was that Derrick was being homeschooled for a while. His parents threw a fit and said that he couldn’t possibly take notes and do schoolwork with a broken right hand, so they took him out of school and gave him a private tutor. Music to my ears.

One night Neil and I were in his parents’ gym and I was working on getting out of a front pin. His parents were asleep in the far end of the house, but we still had to try to keep it down. I was down on my back on the mat and Neil had my arms pinned above my head. I tried bucking him off me as instructed, but he just wouldn’t budge. My frustration levels were peaking when suddenly I bucked as hard as I could and managed to throw Neil off balance.

“Ha!!!” I shouted a little louder than I should have and sat up. “I finally did it.”

Neil laughed and helped me up. “Hate to burst your bubble, Killer, but I was distracted for a moment. Josh is outside, yelling in my head to let him inside. He apparently forgot how much colder it is in Ohio than California and he’s freezing his ass off out there.”

While Neil went to the door to let him in, I took a quick drink and grabbed a blanket from the living room. I found the two of them in Neil’s father’s study. Neil flipped a switch and a large fire burst to life in the electric fireplace. Josh was brushing snow off his pants when he noticed me walk in.

“Oh, thank you love,” he said, giving me a quick peck on the cheek. He wrapped the blanket around himself and sat near the fireplace in a huge leather chair. “I have exciting news, but let me warm up a bit first. It’s bloody freezing out there. And you,” he said, pointing at Neil. “Don’t you spoil my surprise just because you of course already know.”

Neil grinned and held up his hands. “My lips are sealed.”

I took the desk chair and sat near Josh but further from the fire, still hot from my workout. I realized suddenly that Josh kissed me and it hadn’t bothered me. After my father and Derrick I had been so nervous around men, but there was clearly something about Josh that was different. He really put me at ease.

I looked at Neil, sitting in the matching leather chair across from Josh, and he smiled. “I love you Ellen,” he said telepathically. I grinned.

“Why didn’t you just appear inside the house? You didn’t have to stay out in the yard like that,” Neil said.

Josh suppressed a smile and cleared his throat. “Well I could tell that Ellen was here with you, and I didn’t want to interrupt whatever it was you were doing that has you both so flushed.”

My face burned and I looked at Neil, wishing that we had been doing what Josh was implying. The corners of Neil’s mouth twitched and he shifted in his seat a little.

“Neil is teaching me self-defense,” I said. “Nothing you couldn’t walk in on.”

Josh smiled. “Alright, so I would have been lucky this time. Anyways, I came here tonight because I have a surprise for you both. Well, since Neil knew the surprise the second I arrived, I guess it is more accurate to say I have a surprise for you,” he said, turning to face me.

I grinned and leaned forward. “What is it?”

“I’m performing Christmas Eve with the Philharmonic in New York City, and I want you two to be my guests!”