Take Me On(40)

“No,” I answer for Mom. “I wasn’t a match.” A failure since birth.

“It didn’t matter.” Mom touches the picture again. “Colleen was too sick by then and died shortly after West was born.”

My legacy in this house was formed a few days after my first breath: I failed at my sole purpose of life and my birth will forever be associated with Colleen’s death. Mom went on to become pregnant with Ethan and Rachel shortly after because I wasn’t enough to make her happy. All Mom desired was a girl, a replacement for the child she lost.

“Well then.” Mom shuts the album and forces a fake smile. “What are your plans?”

“Quiet night,” I answer. “I thought I’d show Haley my room. Maybe watch some movies.” Have her break my heart into pieces because I’ve lied about who I am.

Mom narrows her eyes as she stands. “I want the door unlocked and I expect you to behave like a gentleman.”

I laugh. If she knew what I’ve been doing behind locked doors at other people’s houses, she would have given me this modified sex talk years ago. Mom pokes me in the stomach as she passes. “I mean it.” Then leans in and kisses me on my cheek. “Happy birthday, West.”

“Thanks.”

Mom softly pads out into the foyer and up the stairs. She won’t sleep in her bedroom tonight. Instead, she’ll go into the mausoleum that once was Colleen’s room.

The patter of different feet draws me back to the kitchen and cool fingers against my wrist connects me with Haley. “Why didn’t you tell me it’s your birthday?”

“I’m not a birthday fan. Sucks to be reminded once a year you weren’t wanted.”

Haley tilts her head. “She wanted you.”

“To save Colleen.” I was brought into this world to save somebody else. “I’ve done this for eighteen years now. I know what she sees when she looks at me.”

Haley nudges the floor with her foot. “Are you going to show me your room?”

I scratch my jaw, trying not to put too much hope into her statement. “You sure?”

She nods. Not giving her a chance to change her mind, I link our fingers together and, for the second time tonight, walk her up the stairs. At the landing, I pause and notice light shining from the cracks of Colleen’s door. Across the hall, Rachel’s door remains shut. Thank God Rachel didn’t die. Mom wouldn’t have survived an additional loss.

I lead Haley away from Mom and in the direction of my bedroom. Once inside, I flip the light on and, out of respect for my mother, keep the closed door unlocked.

With her thumbs hitched in her pocket, Haley surveys the room: king-size bed, flat-screen television, gaming systems, a stereo, and, with another flick of a switch, Haley finds the full bathroom.

“Wow.” Her voice echoes from within. “You’ve got a Jacuzzi tub.” Her head pokes around the door. “Do you actually use it?”

“No. When Ethan, Rachel and I were little we used to pour bubble bath into it, then turn it on so the bubbles would overflow onto the floor.” I smile at the memory of Rachel laughing.

She exits the bathroom. “Your mother must have hated you as children.”

“At least we were clean.”

The joke earns me a giggle, but the happiness fades as she straightens a picture of me, Ethan and Rachel on my mirror—Rachel’s in the middle and Ethan and I have our arms locked around her. “You lied to me about your age.”

She means I lied to her about me. “I was close to eighteen. I figured it didn’t matter.”

Haley raises her eyebrows, either in agreement or disagreement, I don’t know. Regardless, she keeps her comments to herself. While it often drives me crazy that she lives in her own head, there are times I appreciate her silence.

“Why were you kicked out?” Haley’s slow to face me, and when she does there’s a hardness to her. She’s playing judge and jury and she has a right to.

“My oldest brother, Gavin, has a gambling problem. He became indebted to some bad people, so I stole money from Rachel to help pay the debt. Turns out Rachel had her own problems and needed the money. To make up for it, she and her boyfriend drag raced to raise the funds I took. Long story short, Rachel’s now in the hospital and my father, rightfully, blames me.”

“He kicked you out because you tried to help your older brother?”

“He kicked me out because I don’t trust him and he doesn’t trust me...” Say it. “And because I’m a disgrace. Look, I smoke pot. I drink. I party every weekend. I’ve been suspended more times than I’ve had first days of school and I fight more often than I laugh. And as for girls...” I’d rather rip off my own skin than admit to her the reality of those sins.

She massages her temples and I wish I could crawl into her mind.

“Who are you? None of this—” and she motions around the room “—fits what I know.”

“Maybe because what you’ve seen isn’t the real me.”

“I’ve seen you. I know I have but...all of this...” Haley sags against my dresser and brings her hands to her face. “You’re a Young.”

Every bad decision I’ve made catches up to me and it will push away the one person I’ve learned to love. How can someone like her want to be with someone like me?

“I’m not just any Young. I’m West Young. I’m the unnamed delinquent son you read about in the papers.”





Chapter 47




Haley

I fought in a competition where I was overmatched. The girl had more experience than me, more wins than me, was just more than me. After the first round, my mind was a mixture of confusion, chaos and despair. She knocked me from one end of the ring to another, all but picking me up and using me as a mop for the floor. Right now, I don’t feel much different.

My hand slips to my stomach as it churns. What makes this sickening isn’t that I’m training West; it’s because I’ve fallen for West. Blindly. Deeply. Hard. All the ways I’d sworn I’d never fall again. And I fell for the fighter. When will I ever learn?

“I can’t train you if you drink or smoke pot.” We’ll continue the training if he intends to proceed with the fight. “It’s not acceptable for an athlete. Plus I don’t like it.”

“I haven’t touched either one since Rachel’s accident.” He holds out his hands. “I’m plain-day sober and plan on staying that way.”

“We should have stuck with simple,” I whisper. I glance around the room. Flat-screen television. Stereo that costs more than two months’ deposit at the cheapest apartment complex in our school district. Everything that life could offer him right here at his fingertips.

“This isn’t news—that my family has money,” he mumbles.

“Yeah, well, being a Young is!” I snap. “You never thought that was important to tell?”

“I never hid the last name, either.”

“You lied! Even if you didn’t say the words, you lied!”

“You’re right, okay?” he shouts, then calms downs. “I lied. I liked that you didn’t see me as a Young. For the first time, someone judged me for me, for who I was alone and not who my parents were and what their money could do for them. Being with you...it was like being offered a second chance and I’m sorry if I fucked it up.”

For the first time since West broke down and showed me the truth behind the iron curtain, I look at him. Really look at him. West casts his gaze away, tucks his chin near his throat, then crosses his arms over his chest. Leaning against the door of his room, he’s closed off, shut down...his guard is up. West is expecting a beating.

It’s his birthday. I sweep my bangs out of my sight and straighten. It’s his birthday and not a soul here tried to celebrate it with him. Even his mother spent more time talking to me than she did him. West hovered, watching us, but never engaged.

My heart trips over itself—West never engaged.

A few weeks ago, his father kicked him out while his sister fought for her life in ICU. What does that say about his family? Even better, what does it say about West and his relationship with his father that West didn’t want to come back to live here? I scrub my fingers over my face. I’m doing what West says everybody does to him: I’m judging him. I’m judging him based on a last name, based on an assumption of money. I’m just judging.

Think, Haley. West Young. My West Young. The guy who fought for me when Conner and his friend tried to jump me. The guy who took on a fight to help save my family. The guy who held me while I mourned my own losses. That’s West Young. The man I’m falling for.

I don’t know who his family sees, but I see who West really is.

“They don’t know you, do they?” I move toward him as the confusion and chaos fades.

West glances up, startled. “Who?”

“Everyone.”

A grim smile pulls on his mouth. “They know me. They know me very well.”

“I don’t think they do.” I touch his biceps. I’ve trained with West for over a month. He was fit before but he’s leaner now, sculpted and shaped. West has made me laugh, he’s held me at my lowest and he’s stood by me when no one else has. Matt had words—plenty of useless words. West is all action.