From the Damage 1 - Opposites Attract Read online

  “Right. The night of the school shooting. They had some questions about your involvement with the shooter.”

  Glaring at her, he stooped down into the car, but Daphne grabbed the door before he could slam it.

  “So I have to ask myself why this quiet, responsible kid is acting up during group. You want me to kick you out—to tell your probation officer you’re a lost cause so they can slap you with a fine and a record, and then you can get on with your life.

  Why? Because there’s something you don’t want to talk about.”

  “Don’t you realize what’s going on here?” Gage said, keeping his gaze on hers as he gave her a superior laugh. “You’re in over your head, Daphne. You can’t help me, or anybody else in there because you’re no different than any of us. You’re so caught up in what happened to you. The pain is written all over your face. What was it? Parents split up?” His eyes glowed with menace. “Somebody break your heart? Beat you up? Let you down?”

  The words and the hateful way he spoke cut into her like a knife. Her lips quivering to hold back her reaction, she let go of the car door.

  “I knew it,” he said triumphantly. “You’re just as screwed up as we are. The freaking blind leading the blind.”

  She latched onto the door as he tried to pull it shut again. “Don’t you see? That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I got close to your real issue, and you’re trying to piss me off so I’ll give up on you like everybody else has. It’s not going to work. You’d be surprised how well I can handle your abrasive attitude.” She took a deep breath, calming herself. “You’re not a lost cause, Gage...and you are worth my time.”

  She watched his jaw clench and watched him squeeze his eyes shut.

  “You witnessed something horrible. It’s perfectly normal to want to ignore it and wish it would go away, but—and you can trust me on this—it won’t just go away. At least not until you face it.”

  He revved his engine to a start with a roar that made her jump. “You have no idea what I have to face or what I witnessed.” He slammed the door shut and shoved the car into reverse so fast Daphne had to jump out of the way.

  She watched him fishtail out of the parking lot, and wondered if she’d ever see him again.

  ≈≈≈

  Kelly shut and locked the door behind her. She hooked her iPod up to its docking station and let her favorite sad song playlist fill the room. She walked over to a small throw rug in the center of her floor; she pulled the rug away and knelt down.

  From beneath a loose floor panel, she retrieved her hidden box of mementos. Sitting on her floor, leaned against her footboard, she opened the box and began to leaf through the contents.

  She kept old love letters from Alex in there, but she didn’t dare unfold the weathered pages to read the words he’d once used to sneak into her heart. Taking out a few pictures, she let the memories rush to her: Alex and Kelly at the prom, at a costume party dressed as Elizabeth and Will from Pirates of the Caribbean, pictures of her and Alex at homecoming, on a boardwalk, before a football game. They were just random pictures, moments of happiness frozen in time, and nothing more. She flipped the next picture, and tears slowly slipped down her cheeks as she gazed at it.

  “Kelly?”

  Alex’s voice startled her, and, stifling a scream, she whirled around in search of him and knocked over the shoebox at her feet. Spotting Alex with his head popped in her open window, she had half a mind to shove him out and watch him topple two stories onto the ground.

  “What are you doing here?” she hissed.

  “I’ve been calling you, and—”

  “I’ve been ignoring you, if you couldn’t tell.” Crossing her arms over her chest, she stood up as he climbed in her window.

  His gaze landed on the scattered contents of the box. He pointed and gave a small smile. “Are those pictures of us? I knew it! You still care about me.”

  “Of course I still care.” She plopped down onto her bed and looked down at the picture in her hand. “But you shattered my heart into a million tiny pieces. I don’t even know how to...” deal, she thought, cope, live.

  Reaching out, he slowly pulled the picture from her grasp and looked down at it, his face clouding over as he realized what the picture was. “Kelly, I—”

  “Don’t,” she said, but instead of sounding forceful, she whimpered. “Please.”

  “I just want to find some way to fix this.” He sat next to her, but she immediately stood up, unable to even be around him anymore. “We used to be best friends, Kel.

  When I broke up with you, I didn’t know that would change.”

  “Please,” she snapped. “When you broke up with me, you know as well as I do that it was to dodge a bullet. You knew I was going to be upset about what happened, and you just didn’t want to deal with it.”

  “It messed me up, too, Kelly,” he said, saying her name in a bossy tone he rarely used. “You act like you’re the only one hurting.”

  “Oooh, I’m so sorry,” she said with fake sympathy. “I’m sorry you’re hurting. I guess that can happen when you make a big mess out of your life.”

  “Kelly—”

  “I needed you,” she said, cutting him off and keeping her gaze steadily on his.

  “You walked away. So, Mr. Take Off When the Going Gets Tough, why don’t you just keep on freaking walking?”

  Shaking his head, he glanced down at the picture in his hand. “I had no idea it’d turn out this way.”

  “Well, it did.” She yanked her picture from his hand and tucked it against her chest. “So, please, Alex, if you ever cared about me at all, you’ll leave me alone and let me get over you.”

  ≈≈≈

  Kay stood on the sidewalk outside her house, balancing a pizza box on her hand.

  Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to go inside the house.

  Her father sat in his recliner, a bottle of liquor in one hand as the blue light from the television flickered across his face in the dark room.

  Kay took a cautious step into the living room. “Hey, Daddy. I brought a pizza.”

  “You were supposed ta be here at 14:00 hours,” was his gruff reply.

  Kay walked around to face her dad and placed the pizza down on the coffee table. “I know. I lost track of time while I was studying at the library.”

  “Studying?” He laughed at that, bringing the bottle to his lips as he gulped a swig of brown liquid.

  Kay braced herself, a shiver running down her spine at her dad’s hateful tone.

  “Dad, I’m only ten minutes late.”

  Trying to ignore the impending fight, Kay proceeded to the kitchen, where she poured two glasses of soda and grabbed some paper plates. She carried them back into the living room, handed her father a soda, and then placed a piece of pizza onto the plate.

  She was glad her back was turned when she heard him say, “The pharmacy called.”

  Slowly, she turned to face her father, fear seeping into every muscle in her body, stiffening her from head to toe.

  “They said your prescription’s been ready for over a week now, and you need to pick it up.”

  She cautiously walked toward him with the food and set it down on the dinner tray next to him. “Oh, that.”

  “What kind of prescription is it, Kay?”

  “It’s just some cough syrup, Dad,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’ve just had a cold lately.”

  As she started to move back, her dad reached out and grabbed her wrist, his gruff voice startling her. “Don’t lie to me, girl.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  He gripped her wrist tighter.

  “You’re hurting my arm. Please, just don’t do this tonight, okay? I have to go to school tomorrow!”

  Roger let her go with a sudden jerk that sent her toppling over into the bookshelf. Instantly, she was dizzy from hitting her head, and the room was spinning in circles as she tried to sit up.

  Her father still stoo
d by his recliner, but from the floor, he looked much taller than usual. “Why won’t you tell me the truth, Kay?”

  “I told you, Dad, it’s for cough syrup.”

  Shaking his head in a disappointed look that said he didn’t believe her, Roger walked over to her, each thick, heavy boot making a drunken clunk on the floor.

  Chapter Five—Magnetism

  Ryder picked up his phone, dialed the first half of Meagan’s number, and then hung up again. It was the third time he’d tried to call her, and he kept finding excuses to bail. “Why am I so nervous?” he muttered to himself. He couldn’t recall ever being so nervous around a girl before, and he wondered if it meant anything or if it was just because Meagan knew more about him than any of the other girls. Taking a deep breath, he picked up his phone, dialed her number, and finally let it ring.

  On the third ring, Meagan answered with a rough, hateful “What?”

  “Wow,” he said. “I hope you don’t have caller ID.”

  She gave a small gasp and then sighed. “Ryder. I’m sorry. These jerks have been prank calling me for over an hour.”

  “Ah. Lena and her gang?”

  “Who else?”

  Ryder felt sorry for her, and he wished those girls would just leave her alone.

  “Then it sounds like you need to step away from the phone and come take a drive with me.”

  She giggled a little. “Is that so?”

  “Yep,” he said, unable to hold back the grin she always caused. “Doctor’s orders.”

  “That sounds great. Thank you,” she said softly. “When?”

  “You tell me,” he said. “I can be there before ya know it.”

  ≈≈≈

  By the time Ryder picked Meagan up at her house, she was growing nervous. To say she was attracted to him would’ve been an understatement—more like crazy star-crushing, like the one she’d had on Justin Timberlake years ago, only she didn’t have any life-sized posters of Ryder...yet.

  Ryder picked her up, and they drove to Clearwater Lake. Since it was early evening, it wasn’t too difficult to find an area that wasn’t crowded, and they settled on top of Ryder’s hood to gaze out at the water.

  She noticed that Ryder looked a thousand miles away as he gazed out over the gently rippling current of the lake. “What are you thinking?” she probed.

  He smiled, peeking at her out of one eye. “You really want to know?”

  Meagan nodded as she pulled out her camera phone. She needed to get a picture of Ryder looking like this, all dark and thoughtful and mysterious.

  “I’m thinking about riding into that sunset with you.”

  At that second, Meagan snapped a picture, hoping to catch the whimsical look on his face forever. She let the atmosphere—the calm, serene lake, the steamy autumn air, and the iridescent glimmer of the sun off the water—absorb into her and slow her heart.

  Grazing her fingertips up and down his arm, she realized it was just the two of them.

  There was no pressure, no expectation. They could just be. “You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “I think you’re a big romantic.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “You know, you believe in things like hope and love and peace. You like to be the one to rescue the damsel in distress.” She smiled at that, resting her head against his shoulder. “Don’t get me wrong. You certainly act tough. But I think that’s just to keep people from seeing that, deep down, you’re sensitive—maybe even a little scared like the rest of us.”

  He was silent for a minute, and then after a steadying breath, he said, “I wasn’t always so sensitive.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Biting his lip, he shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “C’mon. You can tell me.” She placed her hand on her back to comfort him.

  “Trust me, I’ve heard it all.”

  “You think that, but you don’t know,” he said, turning to face her. “Being a foster kid is hard.”

  Meagan felt her breath catch in her throat. She’d had no idea Ryder was in foster care.

  “You can’t always depend on the foster parents to give you money. Some of the families gave me allowance, but most kept the monthly checks for themselves. So I found a new way to make some cash.” He patted the hood of his car. “It started out small, like stealing a watch to pay for booze, but it quickly escalated when I realized how good I was at the wheeling and dealing. I could’ve convinced a woman in Alaska to buy a bathing suit,” he said, but there was no hint of a proud smile. “Soon, I was stealing radios, TVs...I even hocked a car once and turned it all around quickly to make a nice wad of cash.”

  “So that’s how you bought this car? By selling stuff you stole?”

  He nodded, glancing away as if he was ashamed.

  “Do you still do it?” she asked cautiously. The last thing she wanted was to get in trouble with the law.

  “No,” he said softly. “That all changed.”

  “What made it change?”

  Taking a deep breath, he looked out at the water. “Somebody got hurt, and I realized I only cared about myself. Back then, I didn’t give a damn about the people who actually bought the stuff. All I cared about was the money I got from what I took from them, no matter how hard they worked for it. I’ve never been able to forgive myself for that.”

  “So you do good deeds now, like trying to keep the peace and making sure nobody else gets hurt?”

  Glancing over at her, he nodded. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

  “See?” She nudged his shoulder and then leaned her head against it. “You are a hopeless romantic.”

  ≈≈≈

  Gage had just put Lizzie down for bed when the phone rang. Closing the door quietly behind him, he answered the phone on the fourth ring, and then grumbled

  “Yeah” into the receiver.

  “Hi. It’s Kelly.” Her voice was soft and shaky. “I know you’re not into the whole, uh, therapy thing, but I was hoping we could talk...or something.”

  He paused a minute as conflicting emotions battled inside his head. On one hand, he didn’t have time to indulge in someone else’s problems or drama, as he had plenty of his own to deal with. On the other, he had to wonder why the preppy good girl was buying drugs in Westview and selling herself short. His curiosity about the girl with the broken fan belt got the best of him in the end. “Sure. What’s up?”

  “Can I come over or something? I wouldn’t even ask. It’s just that I...well, I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  Dammit! I knew I should’ve hung up on her when I had the chance. But he knew doing that now wouldn’t just be rude; it would be downright cruel. “You got a pen?” he said.

  “I’ll give you directions.”

  He did a quick scan of the apartment, then scooped up Lizzie’s toys and took them to her room. He shoved the plate and bottles from the counter into the sink, then took a rag to the countertops. The apartment he lived in was dingier than anything Kelly had been in, he was sure, but at least he kept it clean, even if it wasn’t up to preppy standards.

  When she knocked on the door, he glanced out just to make sure it was her, and then he let her in.

  She looked around the apartment as she sat down on the couch. “Where are your parents?”

  “This is my place.” He walked to the refrigerator. “My parents don’t live here.”

  “Oh. I bet that’s nice.”

  “Yep. You want a soda?”

  “Sure.”

  He grabbed two and then sat down in the recliner adjacent to the couch. “So what’s up?”

  “It’s just…” She took a drink of the soda and stared down at the floor. “I was shopping with my family, and we ran into my ex-boyfriend. And then my mom wanted to know why we broke up, and it turned into this huge fight.”

  “Why does she care why you broke up?” He tapped a hand against the arm of the chair absentmindedly. “Relationships end
. That’s life.”

  “They were crazy about him. They practically had the wedding planned, and now their hopes are crushed.” She laughed bitterly as her eyes narrowed into a glare.

  “They think it’s my fault—that I screwed up the relationship. They don’t even care about what he did to me.”

  He stared at her soda can as she rolled it between her hands. He couldn’t come with anything cleverer to say than to ask the obvious question. “What’d he do to you?”

  She glanced up at him and then dropped her gaze to the floor again. “He broke my heart.”

  Gage was aware of the many ways to break a person’s heart, and he wondered which one she’d fallen victim to. He opened his mouth to say something, but a soft cry from the other room stopped him.

  While Kelly’s eyes widened, Lizzie started crying louder.

  “Excuse me,” he mumbled. He darted into the room, scooped her up, and spoke to her in a soothing voice while he changed her diaper. Then, balancing her on his hip, he went to the kitchen and measured out the scoops of formula and the hot water from the faucet.

  On his way back to Lizzie’s room, he stole a glance at Kelly. She was turned around on the couch, staring at him with her mouth open. He didn’t bother to introduce them because Lizzie still needed her sleep, and he preferred that nobody knew about her.

  After tucking her in, he walked back into the living room. He took his seat in the chair and gulped from his soda can. “Sorry. You were saying?”

  She still stared at him as her mouth tried to form words. “You...you have a baby?

  As in, you’re a dad?”

  He nodded once. “Yes, but we were talking about you.”

  “Where’s the mother?”

  “Not around.”

  “So you’re a single father”

  He glared at her. “Yeah. So? You got a problem with that?”

  “No. It’s just…” She grabbed her purse from the floor and stood up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I should...I should just go.”

  He didn’t try to stop her, and she didn’t stop. When the door closed, he locked it behind her and turned back to the living room. Unable to hold back anymore, he slammed his foot into the recliner. He collapsed on the couch and held up his left hand to stare at the thin gold band around his finger.