Текст книги "Falling to Pieces"

Автор книги: Leddy Harper

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

“Morning, Bree,” Axel said as I took my seat in front of him. The sly expression on his face appeared dangerous, as if it harbored a secret. And then I felt my own form on my lips and realized what that secret was…our late-night chat on the phone.

It didn’t matter that we hadn’t done anything wrong. There really wasn’t much of a secret to keep. Sure, a teacher bought a phone for his student, and they had a conversation. But delving deeper into it—the reason he bought her the phone, what they talked about—proved they had nothing to be ashamed of. We had nothing to worry about, or anything to hide. But that didn’t stop us from exchanging quick, knowing glances before looking away.

There was something exciting about danger.

The enticing allure of it all.

It made people want to have secrets.

“Morning, Mr. Taylor.” I made sure to enunciate his name, if only to ruffle his feathers. And I knew I got to him when he produced a crooked grin that took over his face and his head shook side to side in silent laughter.

“Feeling better today?” he asked once his eyes met mine again, the initial reaction to seeing each other gone. “You seem better, more…spunky.”

“Tons better. Thank you. And I don’t know about being spunky, but I have had quite an odd morning. My mom was in the kitchen when I came downstairs for breakfast. She’s always gone by the time I wake up for school. So it was surprising to see her. I guess she was waiting for me. She asked how I was, felt my forehead, and then left. It was bizarre.”

He cocked his head to the side and narrowed his gaze at me. “Think she’s feeling bad about yesterday?”

“Maybe…but I don’t want to get my hopes up. I don’t—”

“Mr. Taylor…” Rebecca interrupted me as she trotted over to his desk and leaned her hip against the edge. She held her books to her chest, but traced some invisible line along the top of his desk with her manicured fingertip, very close to his resting arm. “I think I’m going to need some extra help for this test we have on Friday. I’m just not getting it, and I want to do good on it.”

Irritation burned within me as I watched her openly flirt with him, but it quickly vanished once Axel spoke. “Well. You want to do well on the test.” Then he glanced back at me with a raised eyebrow, as if seeking my approval. “And although I appreciate your desire to pass my class, I’ve given you all the information you need for the test. We will continue going over it today and tomorrow. If you for some reason don’t pass this one, I believe the library has a list of student tutors that can help you for future tests.”

“Oh…well, I was kinda hoping you offered afterschool lessons.”

I could tell he fought to keep his eyes off mine as he answered. “No. I’m sorry, but I don’t offer those. There are plenty of students in this school capable of giving help to you if that’s what you’re looking for.”

Rebecca huffed out a breath, making girls my age seem incompetent and immature, and then left her perch, flouncing to her seat. Her desk was close to mine, so I couldn’t make any comments to Axel without her overhearing. Instead, I decided to write it down and pass it to him.

Very proud of your English skills.

Without looking at him, I could hear his soft laughter and imagined him shaking his head as he often did when he found something funny. But I couldn’t chance seeing for myself. Our “secret” may have only been obvious to us, but the mere thought of someone else finding out, and then having to give it up, had me overly cautious around him.

I learned from the best.

The paper slid in front of me before he stood from his seat to take the podium. The music in the halls sounded, and everyone knew the bell would ring any second. Students rushed through the door and took their seats. And then class began.

As he taught from the front of the class, I took notes, neither of us catching each other’s eyes. It felt strange to purposely look down instead of at him. But I no longer needed to seek out his attention. I didn’t need to lock eyes with him or see him smile to gain reassurance. I knew I had him on my side. Our conversation the night before had left me settled. Prior to that talk, each time his eyes had met mine or he’d say something to me, confusion and insecurities bred doubt and panic within my mind. But not anymore. I no longer felt that way.

I’m sure it’s perfectly normal for a teenage girl to crush on her hot teacher. What’s not normal is when said hot teacher returns her attention, growing it into affection, and turning that into an affair. An illegal, very dangerous affair. Lives become ruined when those things happen. I would know all about that… I was a freshman when a teacher from my school had been caught with his pants down with an underage student. It’s all anyone talked about for a year. And then my mom helped prosecute him. So needless to say, ever since meeting Axel, worry over his job, his livelihood, my reputation, and everything in between, festered into paranoia. But I didn’t feel that way anymore. Our conversation the night before had given me great insight, and I knew where he stood, but more importantly, I knew where I stood.

Knowledge truly is a beautiful thing.

Everything seemed to settle down after that. My cold got better, my fears dimmed, and even my insecurities began to ease. My mom grew more distant, though. She never did apologize for anything, but that wasn’t something new. Her insults and aggressive lectures turned into dismissals and avoidance. She ignored me most of the time, and when she did talk, it was nothing more than asking me to pass the salt at dinner. I didn’t know what I was complaining about, since all I wanted was for the hostility to end. And it had. Only, in its place, I had gotten nothing. Absolutely nothing. I had to tell myself that silence was golden, and that this was better than words filled with resentment and loathing.

As for Axel, we somehow built a pretty solid friendship. I didn’t see him outside of school again after the day he had stopped by my house, but that didn’t mean we didn’t talk. We’d share a few words before class, leave notes for each other on occasion—never saying anything that could get either of us in trouble—and we exchanged text messages and phone calls. Nothing major, but it was enough to fill me with a confidence I’d never experienced before. I had a friend. For the first time in my life, I had someone to say “hi” to. I had someone there for me to confide in.

It wouldn’t surprise me to find out how many people take that for granted. It’s an easy thing to do. When you’re so used to having people in your life, people that call just to talk about their day or ask about yours, when you’ve never known what true isolation is like, it’s easy to forget how lucky you are. Me, on the other hand, I knew the other side of the coin. I understood all too well what it meant to be lonely, to harbor everything inside because there’s no one to listen to you. And that’s why having Axel as a friend provided me with a natural high. It had me soring with confidence. But it also made me understand what I stood to lose if anyone found out.

We couldn’t become careless, because if rumors started, we both knew we’d have to back off. He never said it, but I was smart enough to understand that although he needed to protect me, he still had to watch out for the ramifications of having a friendship with me. And then I’d be back at square one. I wasn’t ready for that, and felt I never would be. So I made sure to act normal around him, call him Mr. Taylor in class, and never say anything that could be taken out of context—in notes or texts.

But all my cautious acting and plotted words didn’t protect me from what happened two weeks later. It was a Saturday, the last day of January. My mom had some kind of work-related fundraiser to attend that evening, and I wanted to be out of her hair while she got ready. We’d managed to go three weeks without an argument, and I didn’t want to ruin the streak. So I headed out back with a book and decided to read in the quietness that nature provided.

My street formed a V with the one behind us. Trees separated the backs of the houses, growing thicker the farther away from the intersection you went. I lived only four houses away from the corner, so the tree line in my back yard wasn’t as wide as it was five houses down, but it gave me enough privacy to read without interruptions. While some people had a favorite recliner by a fireplace or a special corner in Starbucks where they liked to read, I had my forest. It allowed me to be alone without feeling lonely. Nature had a way of offering peaceful company without the judgment or uncomfortable silence.

Sitting on a bed of leaves with my back resting against a tree trunk, I pulled my jacket tight around my torso and thought of Axel. Over the last few weeks, he’d become everything I enjoyed about nature—comforting and calming. But much like the outdoors, nothing could be predicted. Weather wasn’t reliable—you never knew when a storm could come and tear apart everything you’ve built. No matter how often man attempts to predict Mother Nature, nothing is certain. Tectonic plates shift without warning, and the earth opens up, swallowing anything that comes within reach. Volcanoes erupt and release hot magma from deep within the earth, covering everything it reaches in molten lava. Tsunamis form and travel hundreds of miles before crashing into land, smothering all kinds of life upon contact with its tidal wave of destruction. No one can predict these things, no matter how hard they try.

But the worst damage comes from not being prepared. From being hit with disaster without an ounce of warning. From being deceived when the weatherman predicts sunshine and blue skies, completely ignoring the monsoon brewing outside your front door, just waiting to completely decimate you whole.

My proverbial natural disaster came in the form of a golden retriever while I read my book, minding my own business. I heard the clinking of the tags first, then the shuffles in the dried leaves that covered the ground. I glanced up from my book, wondering about the distraction ahead of me, when I found the most beautiful dog with long, blond hair and a wagging tail. I stood, stuffed my book into my jacket pocket, and then slowly approached the animal. I made sure to keep my movements soft and fluid, not wanting to frighten it, but it came right to me, panting around the heavy tongue that hung from the side of its mouth.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked aloud while petting the soft coat. I took a peek at its belly, checking the gender before taking a look at the tags around her neck. “You’re a good girl. Where’s your home?” Her tags held no information other than proof of her vaccines. I knew she belonged to someone who took good care of her because she certainly didn’t appear to lack food or shots.

She turned around, heading back where she had come from, and I followed, making sure she got home safely. Every few feet, she’d stop and glance behind her, checking to see if I still trailed her, and it put a smile on my face. I laughed at the thought of her playing matchmaker for her owner and me. That’d be something I would read about in a book, not something that’d happen in real life, but it gave me humor to imagine it, nonetheless.

We must’ve walked about six houses away from where we’d started, toward the far end of my street. The wooded area had grown wider with every step we took, and it became harder to see the houses on either side of the line of trees. But eventually, I followed the dog out of the neighborhood forest and into a well-manicured back yard on the street behind mine. Her pace slowed, showing how exhausted she must’ve been after her adventure.

I stroked her coat once more, and then waited for her to plop onto the open patio before turning to head back, but she stopped when someone spoke up. “Lassie? Where did you…?” I stilled at the edge of the yard, my feet teetering on the line of grass that disappeared beneath brown leaves. I didn’t move again until I heard my name. “Bree?”

With my heel dug in, I spun around, squinting my eyes in the sun to find the owner of the deep voice that had called my name. I shouldn’t have been surprised when I found him, since I’d heard him say my name dozens of times before, but that didn’t stop the swarm of Monarchs in my stomach when my eyes settled on his before wandering south to take in a body I’d only dreamed about.

“What are you doing here, Bree?” he asked while twisting his shirt in his hands. His expression appeared rigid, concerned as he studied me carefully through his long lashes. The crease in his brow deepened the longer I stood there, but I couldn’t find my voice.

His rough, worried tone accentuated his intense stance and penetrating gaze, and it sent my world spinning. I’d seen him plenty of times in dress shirts and slacks, and even once while he wore a sweater and jeans. But nothing could’ve prepared me for what he’d look like without a shirt on. All the time spent imagining what hid beneath those shirts in class didn’t do shit, because the hard planes of his pecs, the clear definition of his abs, and the deep lines that ran inward on either hip—the ones that formed a prominent V leading beneath the waistband of his jeans—made my mental picture of him seem more like Popeye before the can of spinach. Whereas, seeing him with my own two eyes, in the flesh, right in front of me, he was definitely the sailorman post-greens.

“Bree…” His voice broke the spell enough to catch my attention. “Is everything okay? Are you all right? What are you doing here?” he asked as he took guarded steps in my direction.

I shook my head, needing to dispel the images his half-naked body projected in my mind, and directed my sight to the grass below my feet. “I’m fine, Axel. I’m just taken off guard. I didn’t know you lived here.” I glanced back up, sensing how close he’d gotten. “I was in my back yard reading when—what I’m assuming is—your dog came over. I just wanted to make sure she got back home safely. I swear, I didn’t know this was your house.”

His shoulders dropped as he released a ragged breath. “You scared the shit out of me,” he said with a shaky laugh. “Lassie likes to wander around in the trees sometimes when I’m working in the yard. I thought I heard her come back, and then I saw you, and my mind… I guess I thought the worst and panicked a little.”

I tried to smile, hoping it would ease the heart-pounding tension that now seemed to encompass us both. “It’s okay. I’ve got to say, seeing you kind of freaked me out a little, too. I wasn’t expecting to run into you in my own back yard—well, your back yard. You know what I mean.” My words became jumbled as I tried to explain, my waning insecurity coming back tenfold.

We’d managed to be at ease around one another for two weeks, talk about almost anything, laugh at everything, and not once did either of us act as if we shared airspace with Dumbo. Yet, for some reason, standing together in the open, away from the protection of school with no witnesses, we acted more like perfect strangers instead of friends. Our eyes failed to hold the other’s, our smiles faltered, and our chuckles came out forced and uneasy. Our feet shuffled nervously in the grass, and neither of us seemed to know what to do with our hands. This was certainly new, and I didn’t know how to handle it.

“I told you I live close to you. Your house is on my way home from the school. I wasn’t lying about that. It wasn’t a made-up excuse to see you or anything.”

“Yeah, but living close to me could be a mile or so away…that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re right outside my back door. It doesn’t even insinuate you’re in walking distance from me. You knew this whole time that we live, what…five, six houses away from each other, yet you never told me?”

He appeared to be put off by my attitude because his line of sight danced around the trees behind me, never settling on my face. “Yes, but I don’t understand why you’re so upset about it.” Finally, he took a deep breath and scrutinized me with his intense stare, making me feel as though a heat wave had blasted through my body, despite the sixty-degree weather and cool breeze. “I didn’t want to make it seem like an invitation to stop by, because that would be completely inappropriate. I understand I came to your house when you were sick, but I’ve since realized how wrong that was. And I swore I wouldn’t do it again—unless it’s absolutely needed. Unless you’re in trouble and need me to come. Other than that, I have no business at your house, and you have no business at mine. What good would it do for me to tell you where I live? Why would I need to tell you that?”

Axel had always been really good about not making me feel rejected, even when rejecting me. He had a way of wording things to ease the blow, and I was fine with that. I understood our friendship, and I never expected anything beyond it. I’d always kept our conversations clean, free of anything remotely close to indecent topics. So his explanation sent a hard punch to my chest, knocking the wind out of me. It hurt, stung, and the pain rippled through me until it morphed into anger. The anger bubbled, boiling into rage, which left my face heated from the fire it ignited within me.

“Gee, I don’t know, Mr. Taylor.” I spread my arms wide, throwing every ounce of fury into my words and enunciating it with my body language. “Maybe so something like this wouldn’t happen? Had I known that over the river and through the woods, to Axel Taylor’s house I go…I wouldn’t have made the trip! But I’m glad I know how you really feel. This was a good thing—me stumbling over here like this. Because now I know that you see me as…what, Axel? A stalker? Some kid who’d randomly stop by your house and peek through the windows? Do you think of me as a peeping Tom? Or maybe you’re worried I’d come by when you’re not home and sneak inside to rifle through your underwear drawer and curl up in your bed. Fuck you.” I spun on my heel and took off toward the line of trees.

“Aubrey! Wait!” He must’ve only taken three steps before reaching me, grabbing my upper arm and pulling me into his hard body. In the process of halting my escape, he managed to turn me around so that when I fell into him, my face slammed against his bare chest. His warm, sweaty, bare chest.

I froze, unable to move or fight back. Somehow, my hands ended up on his sides, just above the waistband of his jeans. The fingers of one hand remained wrapped around my upper arm while the others cautiously caressed my back. I could hear the harsh, angry beats of his heart through his chest, thumping against my ear like heavy bass through a speaker. Or was that the sound of my own heartbeat deafening me?

“Bree…that’s not what I meant.”

He moved his hand from my upper back to the side of my face, threading his long fingers through the strands of hair next to my ear. He kept it there for a beat before using that hold to pull my head away, angling it until we were face to face. His eyes clouded over with an intense darkness, and even though I wanted to look away, I couldn’t. The usually bright-blue color came to life with a hypnotizing depth, holding me hostage and defenseless against it. I became instantly powerless to stop the hold his fierce stare had over me.

“You’re taking my words out of context. You know I don’t think those things about you. If I did, would I continue talking to you every night? No. If I thought, even for a second, that befriending you would be hazardous to my safety or dangerous to either of us, I would have never started this to begin with. I didn’t tell you where I live for several reasons, but none of them are even close to your assumptions.”

I skimmed my hands over his sides and up his front, pressing them flat to the center of his solid, hairless chest. His skin reminded me of a layer of silk over hard rock. This was definitely not a boy’s body. It belonged to a man.

That one move offered me some distance from him. It put a barrier between us. Even if my small hands were no match against his strength, it still gave me a tiny sense of security. In a span of two minutes, my only friend had managed to flip my entire world upside down, leaving me with the worst case of vertigo.

“But you said I have no business at your house…”

“Yes,” he said softly, punctuating his one word with a slow nod. “I said that because it’s true. It wasn’t meant to be mean.”

I swallowed and attempted to lower my gaze, needing to break eye contact, but he wouldn’t allow it, tipping my chin up with a finger. “You said you had several reasons. What are they? If that’s not what you meant, then tell me why.” My voice was quiet but strong, unwavering in my demand for answers.

He blinked a few times. Dark lashes that would make any woman jealous rested on his cheeks before reaching his eyebrows again. When he exhaled, his warm breath fluttered across my face, reminding me of a summer’s breeze. Then, once he seemed composed enough to continue, his eyes met mine again. This time, instead of fierce intensity, they grew troubled. He seemed sad, or possibly distraught. Guarded even. Panic filled me as I watched him struggle for words. Tingling fear that started in my toes, worked its way up my body until my hands shook against his chest and unshed tears stabbed the backs of my eyes.

“Bree…”

“Just get it over with, Axel,” I begged, my chest heaving with short pants, none deep enough to fill my lungs properly. My head began to spin, and the metallic taste on my tongue warned me of an impending blackout if my brain didn’t receive oxygen soon. “Stop beating around the bush and spit it out. You can’t possibly hurt me more than you already have, so stop trying to protect me and just fucking say it.”

“I’m not trying to protect you. I’m trying to protect myself.” His words came out rough and scratchy, yet filled with air. They sounded desperate, heavy with emotion that I couldn’t comprehend. “And maybe I’m also protecting you, but not the way you think.”

The lack of oxygen to my brain must’ve been worse than I originally thought, because in the blink of an eye, my hands had gone from his chest, where they kept him at a distance, to his face, cupping his unshaven cheeks and pulling him closer to me. So close that every breath he took put pressure on my breasts.

“Tell me,” I whispered desperately.

He lowered his forehead to mine and opened his mouth to speak.