Dez was already at the restaurant when I arrived.
He was sitting in a booth in a more private corner of the diner we'd agreed to meet at—the Valley's Galley. It was just at the edge of town and low-key enough that most of the patrons were older couples who went in and out of the diner quickly. Not such a popular spot for people our age, which was precisely why we'd chosen it. As far as I saw, only two other tables were occupied now—and both far away from where Dez sat, waiting for me.
As soon as I stepped through the door, Dez's eyes flashed to mine, and he straightened in his seat. I fought hard not to look too long at those eyes—the face that held them. Not when both seemed to strike me stupid every time I saw him.
He was wearing a simple white tee and jeans, his dark chestnut hair softly tousled and damp—probably from a shower after practice. As I approached the table, he remained silent, waiting for me to speak first. I glanced at the empty seat in the booth across from him. But before I sat down, I turned to him and said, "You're going to tell me everything I want to know?"
He nodded once, clearing his throat. "Yes."
I stared at him for a moment before tossing my jacket into my side of the booth, noting the way his shoulders seemed to sag in relief as I did.
"Let's start with Lewis then," I said as I took my seat, "I find it hard to believe that he didn't know anything considering you're both on the team."
"Not everyone knew about it." His voice was low, almost too quiet for me to hear above the clanging of plates and silverware from the kitchen, especially as he said, "I didn't either. At least, not until it was too late."
My body went rigid—though I tried not to let my shock at that news show. Everything he'd said up to this point implied that he'd known everything. But I didn't address his involvement, not yet.
"How is it that Lewis didn't know?"
"We'd just had dinner with our coaches and families to celebrate the start of the season. A few of the guys on the team decided to hang around for a bit after our parents and coaches left, and that's when Hannah called Lewis to tell him you were coming. I overheard their conversation—but so did the rest of the guys."
I willed myself not to cringe at the mention of those particular teammates, but that didn't stop the cold shiver that licked its way down my neck and shoulders. Dez didn't need to tell me who else had stayed behind and overheard. They'd made it clear enough themselves.
"Don't get me wrong," Dez continued, "Most of them aren't bad guys. But there's a handful of them who aren't too fond of me. When they saw my reaction to you coming, they decided to make a stunt out of it."
Reaction?
"What reaction?"
"Just—" He paused, seeming to choose his words carefully. "Not what they expected. I was surprised. I don't know, I guess they thought it meant more than it did."
I ignored the strange pang in my gut.
"Aren't you captain of the team? What would they have against you?"
"Just another reason for them to resent me more than they already do."
I waited for the explanation, but he didn't get to give one as the server came by at that moment to take our orders. Dez gestured for me to go first, and without really looking at the menu, I opted for a cheeseburger and fries. The server nodded before facing Dez. "And for you?"
Dez turned his head towards the server, but those gold-flecked eyes stayed on me as he spoke. "Just make it two."
"Alright, two cheeseburgers and fries. Is there anything else I can get for you two?"
"That'll be all." Again, Dez's eyes never strayed from mine, but whatever emotion was behind them, I couldn't tell. "Thank you."
The server nodded and walked off, taking that as his cue to go.
"So," I said once he was gone, "what exactly is the problem with the team?"
Dez smirked as he leaned back in his seat, the worn red leather wrinkling beneath his solid build. "You're going to think I sound like an ass for this."
"I already think you're an—"
"Don't finish that sentence." He arched a brow. A ghost of a smile played on his lips until I gestured for him to go on, causing that smile to fade completely.
He took a deep breath.
"Sometimes, when we have parties or go out, my teammates invite girls that they're interested in. And sometimes those girls come—but they don't always pay much attention to the guys who invited them." Dez pursed his lips as if it pained him to say whatever it was he was trying to say. He only glanced at me, urging me to piece it together.
But it only took one look at him to know.
"Because they're too busy paying attention to you," I said, and Dez nodded, as if he were truly ashamed of it. I didn't know whether to laugh at its ridiculousness or feel sorry for the fact that it was probably true—that a few of his teammates were bitter because Dez had stolen their spotlights, and that he didn't actually like the attention. It all seemed so silly and juvenile, and yet, a part of me couldn't help but sympathize with him.
"I don't do anything with the girls. I usually just try to ignore them when it happens. I would never do that to my team, but it still doesn't stop some of them from resenting me." He shrugged as he went on, "After my reaction to Hannah's call, they started going on about how they wanted to hook up with you at the bonfire. At first, I thought they were just trying to rile me up. Talking about you, your body—all the things they wanted to do to you like the repulsive pigs they are. They were making it sound like some sort of contest, fighting over who had the best chance. And I think part of the reason they were saying those things in front of me was to see if it bothered me."
"So your teammates, or a few of them as you say, thought that your reaction meant you had feelings for me—and then they thought they could get back at you by having sex with me?" What kind of senseless mentality was that?
For what seemed like a long while, Dez didn't speak. He picked up a spoon and began turning it over in his hands, his attention focused solely on the way the light bounced off the scratched metal. It was clear he was contemplating something, and I had to force myself not to fill the silence—but when he eventually set it back down, his eyes flicked to mine, and there was nothing but pure remorse in them as he said, "What happened at the bonfire was my fault."
"You had no control over their actions or decisions. That wasn't your fault." I was surprised to find the words coming from my mouth, but I didn't take them back, not when I meant them. I thought it would be enough to comfort him, but when he looked at me, there was still guilt gnawing through his every breath. "What aren't you telling me?"
He glanced through the windows on his left, looking at nothing in particular, while something like barely-contained rage became visible on his features. His jaw clenched so tightly I thought he might break his teeth. It was hard to guess where his thoughts were headed in that moment, where—or to who—his fury was directed.
"Dez?"
"I encouraged them to go for you."
My gut sank faster than I thought possible, my heart stopping dead in its tracks.
Dez leaned forward and reached for my hand. I let him take it, if only because right now his warmth was the one thing that kept my blood from freezing over completely. My gaze stayed on his hands wrapped around mine; I couldn't get myself to look him in the eye.
He'd told them.
He'd told them to go for me. Encouraged them—despite everything they had said about me. My body.
And they'd listened. Adam and Jonny and Evan and whoever the hell else it was that had tried to touch me.
Dez had been the one to . . .
My stomach twisted to the point of pain—I didn't even want to finish the thought.
He squeezed my hand, but I couldn't get myself to move. Snatch it out of his grip like I should have.
"What I wanted more than anything was to tell them to back off. I almost did. But then I thought that giving them that sort of reaction would have only made it worse. That they'd take their talk seriously and try to get you just to piss me off. And I thought . . . " He exhaled slowly through his nose, as if he were trying to calm his breathing. His heart. "I thought that acting like I didn't care would be enough to get them to shut the hell up and drop it. So to prove that you meant nothing to me, I told them to go for it. That I didn't give a shit. It would have been easy enough to convince them. People could see how much you hated me in class, anyway.
"When they still didn't give it a rest, I realized then that their words hadn't been entirely for show. That I was just their excuse. Because no matter what, I think they would have found some way or another to get to you. They would have found some excuse to try and make a move on you. By using me, they had something to fall back on when you rejected them, but it's all bullshit because even without me, they would have still wanted you." Dez squeezed my hand, urging me to look at him. When I didn't, he brought a hand up to my chin and lifted it gently. "Lyra, please look at me."
I did.
"I made a stupid, horrible decision, but you have to know—you have to believe me when I say I didn't know they would take it as far as they did. The most I thought they would do, if anything at all, was to try and flirt with you, maybe do something dumb to get your attention." The words seemed to burn his tongue, and his lips curled back as he growled, "I had no idea they'd turn it into a sick game. That they would . . ." He didn't finish his sentence. He didn't have to.
I swallowed thickly, trying to find my voice. For a too-long moment, I couldn't quite get myself to speak—but there was one thing, one question that kept playing in my mind. Thankfully Dez read it in my eyes so I didn't have to ask.
Why me?
"Because," he said, "in their eyes, you're the ultimate challenge. For them, game or not, you would have been the prize in itself. New, beautiful, smart, and—cold. You keep to yourself and your group of friends, but you never bother to glance in anyone else's direction. For one of them to say that they got you to talk to them for even ten minutes would have been an accomplishment, crazy as that sounds."
I shook my head in disbelief. I knew I'd done my best to keep a low profile at school, but I didn't realize I'd been that reclusive, that distant.
Dez remained quiet but kept his eyes on me, gauging my reaction.
I didn't give him one. "Where was Lewis throughout this conversation with your team?"
"He'd gone off somewhere after the guys got all rowdy because he wanted to hear Hannah's voice, and he couldn't with all those guys howling like idiots around us."
"But you never told him later on?"
"No. I didn't think there would be anything to tell. Neither of us knew about what those guys had planned to do. But I should have—I should have known."
I should have known. I should have told you why I didn't want you there. Those were his exact words in the hall earlier.
"You have no idea how fucking sorry I am. I'm sorry I encouraged them and that I didn't defend you. Everything turned out to be so ass-backwards. Everything I did was exactly the wrong thing to do. If I hadn't reacted the way I did when Hannah called, none of this would have happened in the first place. They would have never made that bet just to spite me." Shame darkened his features. "I panicked."
I nodded slowly, but there was so much—too much information to take in at once. So I just said, "If you didn't know about their bet, then why were you so adamant about me not going to bonfire? Why were you so pissed off when I came?"
"I guess a part of me still didn't trust them. But I also didn't trust my gut, and now look at what's happened." Dez's face hardened as he angled his head towards me. His voice was low—laced with resolve. "But if I had known, I would have told you, Lyra. I would have never left your side. I would have left with you, done anything to get you out of there.
"And I guess when it came to telling you why not to come . . . I had no idea what to say. What was I supposed to tell you? Don't come because my teammates are going to hit on you? Don't come because they're not nearly fucking good enough for you? Would that really have stopped you?" There was no hint of amusement in his laugh. "At school the next day, when I walked into Chemistry and saw you standing there, everything they said about you the night before came rushing back to me. I got angry."
I thought about the way he'd glared at me, how he looked ready to strangle me as he stood in front of Mr. Matthews' in class. But he hadn't been mad at me at all.
He was mad at his team.
"I didn't know how to face you. I freaked out so much I even asked Mr. Matthews for a different partner. And then I thought—maybe if I was cruel to you, maybe if I made you really, really hate me, you would be repelled by me enough not to come to the party. I already knew you didn't like me. I figured it wouldn't be hard to seal the deal. So I was rude to you and teased you and did everything I could to make you think I hated you just as much, but I hadn't expected any of it to come off as a challenge, to make you feel like you had to prove something by coming. I shouldn't have—I don't know why I . . ."
He let go of my hand to drag his own down his face as he leaned back in his seat. I told myself I didn't miss his warmth as I brought my own hands down to my lap.
"I went nuts when I saw you walk into the backyard—when I looked around and saw all the eyes that were already on you, when I saw the wheels turning in their heads on how to approach you. All I could hear in my head were the disgusting ways they'd talked about you. But then you were looking around that party, and you looked just like you did that day at Lupe's Cocina, when you ran off into the woods—like there was something terrifying waiting for you there."
I clenched my fists beneath the table.
Dez was more observant than I gave him credit for.
"I knew then that they were going to go through with it, try to take you home to prove that they could get you. So I decided to beat them to it, and I tried to get you to leave, one last time." His smile was sadder than I'd ever seen it. "I felt responsible. I know you aren't the kind of person that likes to be around others, at least from what I could tell, and now it was my fault that my asshole teammates were going to swarm you. And I knew how persistent they would be. How entitled they are when it comes to getting what they want and which ones wouldn't know how to take no for an answer. So all I could think at that moment was that I needed to get you out, even if it made you hate me."
I closed my eyes.
If I hadn't been so stubborn . . . if I hadn't been so dead set on pissing off Dez . . .
"I told myself that if you refused, I wouldn't try to get you to leave again," Dez said. I opened my eyes and found him looking right at me, a strange mixture of sincerity and hesitation in his gaze. "But I would stay with you for the rest of the night. Keep an eye out for you, just in case. I didn't care if my team saw me around you or not. They could think what they wanted—I just wanted to make sure you were okay and not have to deal with being harassed because of what I'd done. I was at a dead-end and realized that my pride was what got me there. When Hannah and Lewis came, I figured it was the best time for me to tell him everything, maybe get his help to keep the guys away from you—if that was what you wanted. I thought I could leave you with Hannah for a few minutes and that everything would be fine. All I needed were those few minutes to talk to Lewis, get his advice on what to do.
"He understood why I didn't tell him, but he told me that if I wanted to protect you from them, then I needed to tell you the truth, even if it made me look like some jealous freak. So we went looking for you and Hannah outside, but when we got there, you guys were gone. We went back inside, thinking maybe you'd both gone there to look for us, but it was so crowded and people kept jumping around from one room to another, it was hard to keep track of who was where. Finally, we turned a corner—and we saw Hannah standing there, without you, eavesdropping on some of the guys on our team. We heard everything at the same time she did, but when she saw us, the look on her face said enough. She thought we were in on it. Lewis tried to tell her that we weren't, but she didn't let him. She ran off into the crowd before he could, and I couldn't blame her.
"While he looked for her, I went looking for you. As much as I wanted to stay back and kick the shit out of those guys, I knew I needed to find you first. That was all that mattered. I was on the verge of shutting down that party and telling everyone to get the hell out. I didn't care if it wasn't my house, all I could think was that if I didn't find you in the next thirty seconds, I would have found a way to make everyone leave. I didn't know if I was too late. And I thought that if something happened to you . . . if one of those bastards actually laid their filthy hands on you—" A muscle tapped his jaw as he recalled the night.
"When I found you in the bathroom with Evan, I almost lost it. There were about a hundred different ways I could think of to hurt him, to break him in that moment, but I didn't want you to see how ugly I could get. I didn't want to scare you away, not when you already looked so terrified as he held you there. So I waited until he was sober the next day to deal with him."
I didn't know why I'd chosen that moment to look down at his hands folded across the table—but that was when I saw them.
The fresh, red and purple bruises along his knuckles.
That was why Evan wasn't at school today.
"You didn't . . . kill him, did you?"
Before Dez could answer, the server brought out our food. We thanked him before ignoring the plates completely, looking again at one another instead.
"Well?" I said once the server was gone.
Dez snorted. "I should have—but no. I am capable of many things, Lyra, but murder isn't one of them."
I relaxed back into my seat, feeling both relieved and satisfied at whatever Dez had chosen to do with Evan. I didn't feel bad for whatever state he was in now.
But for all that Dez had dealt with, and for all that he'd done . . .
"Why?" I pinched my brows, still unable to completely grasp it. "Why go through all that trouble for someone you barely know?"
This time Dez's smile was sincere—warmer, the dimple in his right cheek blooming.
"Last semester, I had lunch during fourth period," he said, and I remembered because that was my lunch period, too. He'd sat with his team, of course, on the complete opposite side of the cafeteria, so we'd never really crossed paths.
"Every day during that period," Dez said, his eyes softening a bit as he looked at me, "I saw the new girl buy two lunches every time she went in line."
I stopped breathing.
I didn't think anyone had noticed, let alone paid any attention . . .
"Every day," he continued, "I saw her take that extra tray of food and give it to a certain girl who sat alone, a girl who slowly started to have permanent dark circles underneath her eyes, who had recently stopped bringing lunches to school or buying anything to eat. I saw the new girl take that tray of food and just silently slide it on that girl's table before going to her own table of friends and eating as if she hadn't just done something incredible for someone else. And every day, even after the first few weeks when that other girl had thrown away all of the food she was given, the new girl continued to buy her lunches, until eventually . . . the other girl started to eat them."
Dez tilted his head slightly, looking up at me through a frame of thick lashes as he pressed his lips into a soft smile. "But what I saw, that the new girl didn't, was the color return to the other girl's face, the life return to her cheeks—whether it was from the food or the kind gesture. Of all the people who went to this school, who grew up in this town, it was the new girl who noticed who was silently withering—the new girl who decided to help. Even if it was just by buying that extra lunch. And I don't know if she ever knew it, but I think she saved that girl's life."
I swallowed back tears, remembering the way the girl, who I'd later come to know as Vanessa, had refused the first few times I'd given the lunches to her. She'd sat there and either stared at the food or didn't bother and had just thrown it away in front of me.
But I'd recognized the same crippling sadness in her eyes, the same hopelessness. Whatever she was going through, whatever it was that made her so deeply depressed that she couldn't eat . . .
I didn't stop buying the extra lunches, no matter how many she'd thrown away.
"I did it, Lyra, because you were kind," Dez said simply. "And because whatever cold mask you wore at school, whatever you did to keep people away from you or to try to keep them from noticing you—it still couldn't hide all the good there was in you, all the good that there is. You didn't deserve what my teammates did, and even if you hated me from the start, I couldn't let them ruin you that way."
I looked up at Dez, at all he'd laid bare for me today. I looked up at the boy who I'd spent so long wrongly judging, even when I hadn't known him. And for once, I didn't just see the handsome face, the strong body, the glorious amber eyes . . . I saw past it, to something that was far more beautiful.
And I didn't know what to say.
So I reached for his hands instead. Dez stiffened at the contact, but quickly relaxed under my grip as I said, "Thank you."
He opened his mouth to speak, but I went on, "Not just for trying to protect me, Dez, but for being so kind to me even after how horrible I've been to you. Even when I've insulted your character over and over again. Thank you for showing me that I was wrong—about you and about so many other things. And thank you . . . for Evan."
He shook his head. "Anyone would have done it."
"No," I said, not once taking my eyes off his. "They wouldn't have."