CHAPTER FOUR
"What?" Ingrid half shrieked.
"Who is that; I'd have remembered that!" and it made sense that Ingrid didn't recognize Matthew Dyllan Cavalier. He'd left the town four years ago when he graduated. Since then, the topic had been sort of hush-hush. Matthew was valedictorian. Capitan of the varsity basketball and football teams, head of the student council and an A student. He also taught little league girls baseball. In short, he was sort of perfect. The fatal flaw, as there always seemed to be with these types of guys; his temper.
I'd seen it once first hand. A lowly freshman, I'd been dazzled by the glitz and glamour of the cheerleaders. They'd not yet noticed my sarcasm and intelligence at that point. Or maybe I simply hadn't become surly yet. Whatever. Point was that I was in tight with the cheerleaders. That had gained me VIP access to a senior football party. I remembered the girls dressing me up- forgive me, down. To this day I don't think I've been in public with that much skin exposed since my birth. So there was drinking, and I'd been co-hursed into a few body shots, but I was, by no means, drunk. I wasn't even tipsy. However the fashion was to giggle high pitched, prance around and hang over the jocks, and I fell in line with my new vocation.
I'd been starting to get bored, my first disenchantment with popularity, when the glass patio doors had completely shattered. I still wondered about the amount of strength it took to literally throw a two hundred pound Football player through sliding glass doors. He even bounced twice on the other side. That was when I saw Matthew. His name suited his appearance as an avenging angel. His eyes, toffee colored, looked like they were lit from behind with the rage he carried. His hair, a mahogany mess, was tousled, but bore lighter streaks from the time he spent practicing in the sun.
Where Joey was pretty - terribly full, plush, deep pink lips, with soft lines and gentle sloping angles in his face and feathered, fluffy hair - his brother was not. Joey was leanly built with fine muscle for speed, his brother was not.
Matthew was not and would never be, pretty. His brow was full and dark and prominent, often casting those liquid caramel eyes into shadow. His jaw was square and hard. Mathew's features were powerful. His nose had a strong line and had one slight dent in it from where it had been set wrong. I remembered the break. It was when the boy he threw through the doors got up and landed a lucky shot.
His lips, by God, we freshmen -and all other females in high school at the time- could wax poetic about his lips. They were on the border of full. You couldn't call them full, but not thin either. And their shape made you want to trace every dip and line. He had a little scar on his top lip on the right. Not something you could see unless you looked for it. The small line was about as long as my pinky fingernail was wide. All it was, a slightly lighter shade of the dusky color of his lips and his tanned skin. His lips were also not the cherry pink Joey supported. No. They were only dusky. Barely pink. But so, painfully attractive.
This of course led to his dimpled chin. Where Joey had one small diamond stud in his left ear, Matthew had none.
Finally, there was the body. I'd never seen it without clothes, but I knew we all wished we had. His shoulders were so wide and thickly muscled, his manhandling a football player made sense. Most tall men slumped. It was common for guys over six feet to duck their heads and slump their shoulders to avoid attention, most were embarrassed to be outstanding. Matthew walked with his head up and his shoulders straight and back. Some accused him of arrogance. I thought it was simply a part of his character. He was a powerful man. His waist tapered to narrow hips, and then the jeans he wore, that were never tight but sat just right on his ass and clung almost perfectly to those thickly muscled thighs always emphasized his physique. I remembered the girls chasing after him in school. I never had. He was out of my league and I was sort of scared of him. The way his eyes could cut like glass and his voice, always a low, low, almost quiet rumble could command more attention than the loudest shriek.
His hair was never as fluffy or long as Joey's. Matthew always teetered on the brink of needing a haircut but not. His hair, we giggling freshmen had speculated, was just long enough to run your fingers through and grab when you kiss him, but short enough to still be sort of cleat cut. And that was what Matthew was; clean cut.... If you could ignore that molten undertone of danger, darkness and anger radiating off of his six foot three frame ever so lightly, ever so threateningly.
At any rate, Matthew jumped out of the car and walked to the hood, before leaning against it and folding his arms. I couldn't see his eyes behind the sunglasses he wore, and the wind moved the strands of his hair. Joey walked slower and slower, and I could see the sneer on his face from as far away as I was. Joey lived for the praise of Blue Grove, in which he was a god for being on the football team. Matthew had detested it, and I remembered how angry he got over how people were treated differently.
The whole town had worshipped Matthew. They'd wanted him to become Mayor. They'd wanted him to become a football star or a famous lawyer, or play Basketball professionally, or be the CEO of a multimillion dollar company, marry a supermodel or actress or popstar. But Matthew had fanned the flames, mind the pun, of how much the women of Blue Grove loved him and feed his fiery personality at the same time; he left town and became a fireman.
Matthew, four years later and leaned against his(?) Silverado was built even stronger. I could see those impressive biceps from where I sat, and the way his green shirt graced his wide, strong frame, his work-faded blue jeans sitting so appealingly, and ending over clunky black, steel toed safety boots.
"We should get that. Tie him up and take him home and use him for the good stuff." Ingrid said, matter-of-factly.
"You have a boyfriend."
"You don't." she sent me a wicked smile. I narrowed my eyes on her.
Joey had finally ended up in front of Matthew. I saw them talk. What I'd give to hear the conversation.
Joey looked pissed. He whipped himself sideways and began to march to the passenger side door. Matthew caught him on the bicep and jerked him back hard. Watching Matthew handle Joey, who was by no means small, like a rag doll, just made him hotter. Matthew pointed a finger in Joey's face, and I could almost hear the angry growl of his words reverberate though my chest. Joey ripped himself out of Matthews grip and shouted the words "I don't care!" in vaguely childish fashion, ripped open the door, threw his bag in and turned to get in. At that moment he caught my eyes. I could see the scowl. He got in the car and slammed the door. I looked back for Matthew, hoping to catch one more glimpse at the now older man who was even more rugged and sexy. Twenty two was hotter than eighteen on age scale alone. Matthew was glaring at Joey in what looked like confusion. He seemed to decide to follow his brother's field of vision. That was when he saw me.
I don't know what it was about feeling Matthews direct gaze that made my lungs clench and a small sip of adrenalin hit my blood stream.
He must have been questioning who the hell this dumb blonde was watching his conversation. I couldn't tell behind his sunglasses. For a moment though, his weight shifted and I foolishly thought, with my heart filling my throat, he was going to walk toward me.
Then he turned and got into the Silverado and left
Joey hadn't been at school on Friday. I suppose I kind of expected him to have slipped his prison barring. I also guessed I should feel bad. But an incredibly bitchy part of me just thought that it was all as a result of him not taking no for an answer. If he'd been respectful, I wouldn't have insulted him, he wouldn't have mutilated my locker and we'd have no qualms.
Though, something weird was going on.
When someone wasn't mutilating my locker, they were leaving me roses. The end of Thursday's school day had taken far too long; it dragged like a cheerleader's thought process. To be honest, I simply wanted to go home, ignore my homework, flop onto my bed and begin to snore, like any self respecting eighteen year old would.
So, when a cream rose with crimson tips fell out of my locker, the flower hitting my chest with the softest and lightest thud, I was more than confused.
Then I'd been hit with a memory.
I'd seen a rose like this before. It was freshman year. My fall-out with the cheerleaders had finally run its course. All because of one snarky comment I'd made about a girl who, technically, I should have worshipped considering my social ranking. Sadly, she was in the room - yes, it was one of those "She's right behind me, isn't she?"
God, how typical.
Suffice to say, Jordan Reich had crucified me in the best way a cheerleading captain could; I became the staple natural resource of the rumor industry over night.
I'd had a rough day. I'd suddenly lost all my friends and I'd felt so alone. My constant crying had lead to the loss of a contact lens, and so my utter humiliation was complete when I had to resort to my glasses. But at the end of the day, I'd opened my locker, still sniffling, and found a little cream rose with the lightest pink tips resting on top of my stack of books. I'd looked around, I remembered, and saw a face staring at me out of the doorframe of classroom. Joey was short when he was fourteen, and his hair had been much more oily, not to mention the slight gap tooth. In fact, thinking back now, Joey at 14 reminded me of Tom.
Joey ducked back into the classroom so fast, I thought I'd seen wrong, but the heavy blush I could feel told me I hadn't. It was in Sophomore year that Joey's growth spurt hit, and as I fell into obscurity, he rose to fame, and I forgot that he left me a rose in my locker.
But what the hell was this? What kind of guy put naked women on your locker in the morning, and the sweetest of roses in it afternoon? Was this the case of the abusive husband, all fists of fury and acid words, but then buying his wife a diamond necklace the next morning with whispered and sweet apologies?
The thought made my blood pressure spike for a moment, and my fingers clench tight around the stem. I should throw it in the nearest trash bin, dip it in gasoline and set it alight. And then some irrational thing told me not to, some part of me - probably the neglected femininity that had only gotten a rose once before, more than likely from the same sender. Some part of me wanted to believe the rose was meant for me. So I decided to ignore the fact that it was probably some twisted apology. The sender didn't matter.
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