The bruises that Ledger gave him don’t look as angry but they’re still there, pockmarking his features. Again making him look more criminal in his suit than civil.
I notice an old scrape pulsing angrily, just by his jaw. “What happened here?”
“What?”
I raise my hand and touch it, his jaw, and it clenches. “Here. It looks like you scraped your old cut.”
Reed stares into my eyes for a second before replying gruffly, “I might’ve… scratched something.”
“Your stubble,” I conclude and he shrugs in acquiescence. “You need to be more careful, Reed. Your old cuts —”
“Any morning sickness?” he asks, cutting me off and stepping away from my touch, as if he’s done with the topic of his cuts.
As if he’s done letting me worry over him.
I lower my hand and fist my tingling fingers. “A little.”
His features tighten up. “Were you able to eat something?”
“Salad.”
He tells me what he thinks of it by exhaling sharply.
My morning sickness has gotten worse over the past few days and Reed hates it that I have to endure it during classes. My brothers hate it too and together, for an insane second, they thought that I should stop going to school altogether until it passes.
I put my foot down though. I put my foot down on some of their other plans too, but that’s neither here nor there.
Anyway I told them that if they wanted me to not quit school and get a job then I’m doing this the right way. Meaning I’m going to classes and I’m doing my homework and keeping my grades up.
They had to relent.
But I think it was mostly because Conrad is now the soccer coach and he knew he was going to be here to keep an eye on me after Reed dropped me off.
“Someone say something to you?” he asks then and I fidget with my skirt slightly.
Yes.
“No,” I lie to him.
He frowns. “You sure?”
Well, no.
Someone did say something to me. A group of someones. Girls from junior year I think. They didn’t so much say something to me as at me.
It was during lunch.
I was getting my salad and they pointed at my tray and giggled and they may have mimed throwing up. Or something like that.
To be fair, I had thrown up only an hour before. I had to rush out of class in order to do that and the news spread like wildfire. As I knew it would, about me getting sick, about me being the only girl living off campus.
About me being pregnant.
They all know now and they are all very scandalized. Again, as I knew they would be.
I knew that me being pregnant at eighteen would be a much bigger scandal than what happened with Salem. And it is. At least, I’m happy that some of the heat has been taken away from her. Because for a while there, they were all watching her.
They still do but now they watch me as well.
Our group has become the most rebellious of all.
We’re the St. Mary’s rebels.
In fact, my guidance counselor, who I always thought was my friend of sorts, requested that they switch me to a different counselor now that I’m pregnant.
I’m not going to lie. That did hurt, but it’s okay.
It’s not anything that I didn’t expect.
So I’ll live. But from the looks of it, he won’t.
“Yes, I’m sure,” I tell him. “Can —”
He looks over my shoulders. “Then what the fuck are they looking at?”
I know what he’s talking about.
Like me and my girls, there were others watching him as well. They’re still watching him and now me.
On his first day here, the whole school watched him pick me up after school. They stood outside the cinder block buildings, gathered in the courtyard and watched me walk up to him. Over the past week, a lot of people have lost interest but a lot of them haven’t.
So they watch him.
They watch me walk up to him and they watch as he takes me away in his Mustang.
By now they know who he is.
There are several rumors about him and me, and of course one of them is that we’re together. That he’s my boyfriend and I’m having his baby.
I am having his baby but he’s not my boyfriend.
He never wanted to be and he never will be.
“You,” I reply.
“What?”
“Girls always look at you, remember?”
“I don’t like it.”
Surprised, I laugh. “Are you serious? You loved it. And you always watched them back. And –”
“I didn’t.”
“What?”
“Watch them.”
“I…”
I forget what I was going to say because with the way he’s watching me, it looks like… he’s trying to say that he didn’t watch them.
He watched me instead and that’s absurd, isn’t it?
He moves his eyes away and goes back to glaring at the girls over my shoulder. “If they want to watch, I’m –"
“Just ignore them. I do.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” he growls.
“I swear it’s okay.”
He narrows his eyes for a second before taking a step toward the gate but I stop him.
Physically.
Well, maybe that gives the wrong impression. I can’t physically stop him from anything. He’s bigger than me, a lot bigger and stronger.
He’s like a towering mountain, a building, and I’m like a bag of feathers to him.
I can’t stop him, but I do.
I put a hand on his hard stomach and he comes to a halt, going all rigid.
He glances down at it, at my small, pale hand on his white shirt, before looking up at me. “Let me go.”
I have to take a moment before answering him. “No.”
He flexes his fingers on my backpack that he’s holding. “Take your hand off, Fae.”
And I swear to God, my heart spins so fast in my chest that I think it will break out. It will burst out of its cage made of bones like I burst out of mine, the cage of cinderblocks and black gates.
The one he sprung me out of.
The guy who’s so much stronger than me but somehow is letting me control him like this.
Letting me make him do things.
Like he could. Make me do things I mean. Back then.
Back when I was in love with him.
Swallowing, I say, “No. You’re not going in there.”
His jaw clenches. “I am.”
“No, you’re not. We’re leaving.”
“Fae.”
My own stomach clenches as I press a hand on his. “No. You’re not going to fight with anyone, Reed. I won’t let you. I told you that it’s okay. They’ll lose interest after a while. If they want to look at something, let them. I don’t care. But you’re not going in there and doing your thing.”