~Rhys~
I watched Emma collapse and I froze. The guys were freaking out like a bunch of idiots. What the hell was I supposed to do when someone spontaneously passed out? I had only meant to mess with her, to get her off my case once and for all. I didn’t think . . .
Shit.
“It wasn’t me, I swear it!” one of the nimrods shouted out. “We weren’t gonna do anything, really!”
I cursed under my breath, rapidly, not having a single clue what to do.
“What in the hell is going on here?”
I winced at Rico’s loud voice coming from the open apartment door. He was staring at the scene with wide, unbelieving eyes. He found me and they laced with disappointment.
“All of you get the fuck out of here!” he shouted, and the group fell over themselves trying to flee. I stayed, knowing he didn’t mean me. Knowing he wanted me to stay and most likely chew my ass out, give me another lecture on how wayward I had become.
Silence. Nothing but the punctuated gasps coming from Emma’s huddled form. Rico’s eyes were blazing. I knew he was pissed off. Whenever he was at the end of his rope with anger he got quiet.
“Who is that?” he asked in dangerous calmness, nodding toward Emma.
“Emmalyn Hall,” I replied quietly.
“The partner you supposedly hate so much?”
“That’s the one.”
“Hm.” He slammed his apartment door closed. “What is she doing here?”
“She followed me from school. Wanted to know my life.”
“So you took her here? When you knew the boys would be over?”
“Yep.”
“You’re an asshole, Rhys, you know that?”
I was beginning to.
Rico crept toward Emma’s shuddering form on the floor. He knelt by her, exuding a gentleness and placidity I had seen only once, when I had first met him. It had been raining and I was hiding in the crappy playground across the street, just generally hating the world and my father and everything. He’d taken me in and helped me out, gave me a place to stay, and taken me back home in the morning when I was calmed down. What really hurt was the fact that my father hadn’t even been worried. He hadn’t called the police or anything. He’d shaken his head at me, whipped me once as punishment, and gone back to his corporate wonderland.
“Hey, you’re okay,” Rico soothed, trying to extricate her from the tight ball she was curled into. I stood by feeling incredibly useless, the worst feeling of guilt nagging through me. Emma whimpered and Rico pulled back his hand. It was coated with crimson. “Shit,” he swore. “Rhys, go get the first aid kit.”
Finally being put to use, I spun on my heel and hurried into the kitchen. I swung open the cabinet and retrieved the white box, rushing back into the living room. Rico had managed to get Emma on the couch, sprawled out. Her face was white as a sheet and I could see the sticky red substance globbed in her hair. I swallowed hard. Rico tended to her for the next ten minutes or so, without words. I grabbed a seat in the chair across from him.
When he finished he sat back, swiping his arm across his forehead. Emma was still unconscious, but all the blood was gone. “You’re lucky it wasn’t a worse cut, that she doesn’t need stitches,” he spoke up. “A lot of people would have your ass if that was the case.”
I nodded. “What happened to her?”
“Looks like a minor panic attack,” he muttered, shaking his head. “What the hell did you do to her, Rhys?”
“Nothing, I thought,” I trailed off. “I was just trying to get her off my back. She’s so freakin’ persistent, I just . . .”
“Why don’t you try being human for a change?” Rico cut me off harshly, clearly still irate. “Why don’t you sit back and realize that Emma is giving you something nobody has since me?”
I didn’t have it in me for another fight. Any fire had burnt out after Emma randomly collapsed. “And what is that?” I muttered.
“A chance!” he exclaimed. “She’s giving you a fucking chance and all you’re doing is screwing it up and being too afraid of losing your reputation and your stupid status to acknowledge that.”
I sat back, lips pressed tightly together.
“You think anybody else would have followed you here? I don’t know anything about this girl but I already have a shitload of respect for her, you know why? Because I know firsthand how intolerable and hard-headed you can be. Hell, some days I just wanna throw you out the window myself. But I don’t. And neither did she.”
I had no response to that.
“Nothing to say, huh? Figured as much. Look at her Rhys.”
I didn’t move. My fists were curled on my thighs.
“Look at her, Rhys. Look at her damn face.”
I did so, something in his voice propelling me to. I scanned my gaze over her pale face, her colorless lips, hair fanning out around her.
“What you see lying here, unconscious because of you, is your last chance. Obviously anything I say goes in one ear and out the other. But maybe this girl has enough defiance and fight in her to hammer it into you.”
I kept my eyes on Emma, gripping the arms of the chair. I had a horrible flash-forward, an onslaught of visions that all ended with the same outcome. Me and nothing. Nothing to my name, nothing to be proud of, nothing to live for.
How the hell did this happen to me?
“I’m going to take your silence as the fact that you’ve thought this over and realize what an ass you’ve really been.”
I said nothing.
“Take her home, Rhys. You want some advice? Cooperate. Do it for me, if nothing else. You said it’s a semester, right? That’s not so bad. Put forth a little effort and maybe you’ll get something out of it.”
His words were gentler, not so much laced with scorn. I stood up and stalked with mechanical movements over to Emma. Rico helped put her in my arms. I was surprised by how light she was, how weightless she felt.
“Take my car,” Rico offered, nodding to the keys on the foyer table. “We can’t have you walking all the way home with her.”
I nodded, in something of a daze. I felt weird. That was the only way I could explain it. Just weird. Her brown locks fell over my arm, brushing my skin, and it was the softest thing I had ever felt in my life.
She smelled like scented soap.
I carried her out of Rico’s apartment, millions of things weighing on my mind. There was always something burdening my head, I realized, and it would be nice if once in a while the only thing occupying the space between my ears was me.
I set her in the passenger seat of Rico’s beat-up car and walked around the hood, sliding into the driver’s side. I sat for a moment after gunning the engine, feeling it hum beneath my palms on the steering wheel. I couldn’t help but look at Emma. Alone, with nobody to see me and without a world to fool, I just looked at her. And I saw a person. A new girl with tresses of chocolate brown hair. With the smallest hands I’d ever seen and perfectly manicured nails. With a small nose and high cheekbones, long lashes that brushed her cheeks, and heart-shaped lips. I had always had an acute sense of detail and heightened observational awareness—it came with painting so much—and staring at Emma with her eyes closed and her head tilted to the side, revealing a long and slender neck, I wished I’d had my easel and paint with me. It was literally the perfect picture.
I shook my head, rubbing my hands roughly over my face. What the hell was I thinking? That was crossing some line I’d marked long ago.
After finally peeling out of Rico’s apartment lot I sped down the road. Unknowingly I had acquired the direction to her house to memory, after only walking it once. The fact disturbed and confused me. And, as usual with things that disturbed or confused me, I chose not to think about it.
I pulled up to the odd log cabin structure and felt dread and anxiety increase with every step I took to the front door with Emma in my arms. Who would I meet on the other side? Would they be furious? I snorted. Of course they would. She had a fucking gash in her head.
I rang the doorbell, feeling Emma stir slightly but not come to.
“One minute!” a feminine voice called form the other side. I sighed in relief. They didn’t sound too lethal.
The door was yanked open and a smiling woman with jet black hair and grey eyes answered the door. Physical traits aside, something in the way she held herself reminded me of Emma. Her eyes trailed down to the aforementioned girl in my arms and panic laced their depths.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “What happened to my baby? What did she do?”
She beckoned me inside, and I thought it strange that her first thought was that Emma had harmed herself. Most parents would be wary of the boy carrying her, but it was not so.
Was I missing something?
The house was surprisingly homey, and smelled great. I followed the petite woman into a spacious living room and set Emma down on a couch with what looked like a hand-knit afghan slung over it. Why that mattered I had no idea. But I found I was feeling a little edgy and when I was edgy I made the most useless realizations.
“Oh, my baby girl,” she whispered, sounding at a loss. Much like I felt. She caressed her fingers along her daughter’s colorless face. She sighed, eyes trailing up to me. They were startlingly grey, just like Emma’s. “Are you Rhys?”
I nodded. “I am.”
She made some sort of sound in the back of her throat. “She told me about you. I don’t think you’re that bad, having brought her here.”
It was a weird feeling, hearing from someone else what another person thought of you. It wasn’t the greatest sensation in the world and I would freely admit I didn’t like it.
“What did she do?”
“Um,” I began, stopping myself. I couldn’t very well tell her I had asininely been the cause of her current state of unresponsiveness. “We were walking from school and she tripped. She hit her head on the way down.”
The candid relief that entered her eyes was overwhelming. She believed it, but that didn’t mean I was any less troubled. What had she expected? Why was she so glad to hear that her daughter had knocked herself unconscious out of an accidental mishap?
“She’s your last chance, Rhys.”
What kind of girl did Mr. Matthews pair me up with?
“You can call me Jemma, by the way,” the woman stated, holding out her hand. I shook it. “I can’t thank you enough for bringing her hear, Rhys.”
I gulped. She really shouldn’t have been thanking me at all. “Sure.”
“Oh, don’t be shy. I’m so glad I—” she trailed off when Emma stirred, moaning aloud. Her eyelashes fluttered and she wiggled her fingers. Jemma crouched by her side at the couch, brushing hair out of her face. “Emmalyn?” she whispered. “Honey, how are you feeling?”
I couldn’t explain the numb feeling that swept through me, instantaneously, when I saw the painful wince on her face. “My head hurts,” she mumbled.
“That’s because you fell, clumsy,” Jemma mused. “I thought you got more coordination genes than that from your father.”
“I fell?” she questioned, brows dipping in confusion. “No, I—” her words stopped when she caught sight of me standing off to the side. Contempt filled her grey depths and I hated that I deserved every ounce of it. I expected the truth to come out then, the fact that I was the cause of this.
But she surprised me yet again.
“Right, I fell. Yeah. Clumsy me.”
My mouth fell open, eyes wide. She tore her eyes away from me and settled back into the couch. “What is Rhys doing here?”
“He brought you here, honey. You’re lucky to have a friend like him.”
“Right. Friend.” Anybody could tell the word was used with vindictiveness and mock.
“I should go,” I mumbled, already headed toward the door. I could have wished her better health, could have at least said goodbye to her mother, but I didn’t. I just went straight on out and into Rico’s car. I sat there for a second.
One second too many.
“Goddammit!” I shouted, ramming my fist as hard as possible into the steering wheel.
The curse seemed to sum everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours up pretty cleanly.