Trouble from the Start by Rachel Hawthorne

Author:Rachel Hawthorne
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-02-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

FLETCHER

How do you explain to someone whose dad is one of the good guys that your dad isn’t?

I was eight the first time my dad took his fists to me. He was drunk. It only happened when he was drunk. He could go months without drinking and then one night something would set him off and he’d hit the bottle—and after a few he’d decide he needed to hit me as well.

I hated him. And I loved him. It made me feel weak that I loved him. But I didn’t want to think about all that so I concentrated instead on Avery: the gentle way she touched the damp washcloth to my busted lip, the way she smelled of fried seafood. The strands of her blond hair that had worked themselves loose from her ponytail and framed her face. The white T-shirt that hugged her like a second skin. Her shorts, her bare legs, so incredibly long, her bare feet, the tiniest toes I’d ever seen.

I noticed all that out of the corner of my eye, because I didn’t want her to know I was paying attention to her so I kept my gaze straight ahead, focused on the TV as though the most interesting thing in the world wasn’t her but a tornado whipping sharks around.

“When did he first hit you?” she asked.

“I’m not going to talk about it.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“You don’t need to tend to me.”

“I want to.” She took a tube out of her little box, squeezed some clear gel onto the tip of her little finger, and dabbed it at the corner of my mouth, then above my eye, and finally on the bridge of my nose. After wiping her hand on the washcloth, she removed a bandage from the box, tore off the wrapper—

I snatched her wrist. “You are not putting Spider-Man on me.”

She smiled and the force of it shot straight to my gut.

“Come on,” she said. “It makes ouchies go away.”

“You really should leave,” I told her, before I did something we were both going to regret.

“I’m not going, not until you talk to me. You can’t keep all this in.”

“Talking is not what I want to do, and if you don’t go—”

“You don’t scare me, Fletcher. And you can trust me.”

“That’s the problem. You can’t trust me.”

I slid my hand around the back of her head and brought her in for a kiss. I ignored the pain from my busted lip. I wanted to frighten her away. I wanted her to realize I wasn’t good for her. I wanted her to know that I was dangerous, that I didn’t care about her, that I only cared about me.

Instead, she crawled onto my lap, straddled my legs, took my head in both her hands, and kissed me back.

And I was a goner.

She tasted so good, like key lime pie. She combed her fingers through my hair, stroked her hands over my shoulders. I thought nothing in my life had ever felt so good.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.