Damian sat on the other side of the sofa and every nerve in my body was tuned into him. After his silent rescue at school the other day, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was quiet, but what he did that day…I wanted to know the boy behind the silence. The urge to slide across the distance between us and cuddle up next to him was strong. I wanted his arm around my shoulders, his body pressed to mine. I wanted to bury my face in his chest when I was really scared. Part of the reason for the need to be close to him was fear of the movie, but that was a very small part.
He stood and I had to bite my lip to keep from protesting. He had been coming around for a month, practically every day, and still he was so very quiet, often leaving without so much as a goodbye. I wasn’t ready for him to leave, just having him close made me ridiculously happy.
It was tempting to twist my head to see where he was going, but I managed to keep my eyes on the television and the woman who was not centered in the frame of the video camera she held. I felt him before he walked in front of me and in his hands was a blanket. Wordlessly he handed it to me and then he settled back on the sofa, but instead of being on the opposite side, he sat right next to me…his body touching mine. I looked up at him and those pale eyes studied me right before a little grin pulled at his mouth. He rested his arm on the back of the sofa, the invitation clear. I didn’t hesitate, shifting into his body to press right up against him. He smelled good, not cologne or aftershave, just his natural scent. He was over six feet and surprisingly muscled for a seventeen-year-old. I felt a bit light-headed being so close to him even wishing I could be closer. I wanted to run my hand over his stomach and around his side, wanted my cheek on his shoulder or buried in the crook of his neck. I wanted him to shift us, pulling me under him so he could kiss me…my first real kiss. Instead I curled into him, savored his quiet strength and wished the same wish I had since he came into my life…that I could call him mine.
I woke when my mother slammed open my bedroom door. I had been in the middle of a great dream featuring Thea. She felt so good pressed against me during that movie, which I hadn’t paid a damn bit of attention to because all I wanted was to pull her under me and kiss her. I wanted to do a hell of a lot more than kiss her, but I had to control that shit.
The last remnants of the dream faded as I became fully awake. I jumped from my bed because I didn’t want to give my mother the more advantageous position.
“Where have you been spending all of your time? There is shit that needs to be done around here.”
She didn’t work, had managed to work the system for a nice monthly payout. As far as I was concerned she could clean the fucking house, especially since it was all her shit littering it.
“Answer me you little fuck.”
There was no way I was telling her about the Aherns, although there had been a few times I almost confessed everything to Mr. Ahern. He was a cop, he could make her stop, but he was also Thea’s father and if he knew what my home life was like, he might not let me hang with Thea or Cam anymore.
“Do you have a girlfriend? Is that where you’re spending your time? You have responsibilities here, to me. I come first, not some cunt.” She tilted her head as a sneer curved her lips. “Who am I kidding? Your own mother can’t stand the sight of you, what am I worried about. You’re trash, anyone can see that.”
She slammed the door closed behind her. Not even the memory of the dream made the knot in my stomach fade or the doubt that wormed in to taunt me. She was my mother and she thought I was trash. It was hard not to believe that there was some truth in her words.
I dressed and grabbed my keys. My mother was on the sofa, passed out. I fisted my hands and had to force myself to walk past her. It would be so easy to stop her shit, so fucking easy. Instead I climbed into my car. The lights were off when I reached the gym, but I had a key. After a year of coming in almost daily, the owner trusted me with a key. I suspected he knew more about my home life than I’d shared. I parked in the back and headed inside, flipping on the light over the punching bags. Sometimes this was enough to calm the beast and sometimes it wasn’t.
After school I stepped outside and saw the circle that had formed, heard the cheering and yelling. Fights happened often at school. I was never a bystander, but for some reason I was drawn to this one. I pushed through the crowd to find Damian in the center of it all, beating the crap out of another kid. It wasn’t just that he was fighting at school, but the cold look in his eyes that made my breath catch. I had never seen him look as he did then. As I watched, his body tensed seconds before his head lifted, his fist froze, and those eyes locked on mine. For a moment, I entertained the notion that he knew I was there before he’d even seen me. He then dropped the kid, grabbed his backpack and walked off—the circle separating for him to pass. Sure I crushed on Damian, but we had also grown into friends and he needed one then. I had to run to catch up and even after I settled in next to him, I didn’t immediately speak because I wasn’t sure what to say. Asking why he was fighting wasn’t really my business, so instead I decided to try to take his mind from whatever had brought on that ugly scene.