The Girl Who Fell(108)

“Huh, so it wasn’t because of me?” He winks.

“Not because of you.”

“You doing okay?” Gregg asks.

“Are you?”

“Me? I didn’t break up with Alec.”

“No, but I think I owe you a million apologies. For pulling away like I did. I just didn’t see it. I couldn’t see it, you know?” I feel that lump rise in my throat, the unwelcome reminder of how much emotion I invested in a boy. The wrong boy. “That’s not true. The truth is I didn’t want to see how my relationship with Alec was driving all this distance between you and me. I never wanted that. I hope you can forgive me.”

“Done.” He bends to shove at my shoulder. He bites back on all the other stuff he wants to say and I am grateful.

“Let me make it up to you?”

“No need,” Gregg says. “We’re cool.”

We walk to French class and I grab his forearm as we enter the room. “Sit with me.”

Gregg claims his old seat and Alec never arrives. It adds a layer of torment, trying to calculate when he’ll show.

Gregg nods toward Alec’s empty chair. “Guess he doesn’t want another shiner.”

I can’t think what Gregg would do to Alec if he knew the whole story.

But I don’t tell him. I’ll never tell him.

When class is over I shuffle off to English, my books already tucked under my arm in an effort to avoid my locker. My elbow forms a hard pointed angle and somewhere, somehow, Alec’s blow hits me again. So hard I have to steady myself against the lockers. My breathing turns shallow and I wonder how long it will take until I forget. If I’ll forget.

Someone asks me if I’m all right and I wave them off. I’ll be fine, I tell myself. Just fine. And I will be. I can’t doubt that.

I head to the bathroom and my phone rings. A number I don’t recognize. I squeeze out a tentative, “Hello?”

“This is Atlantic Veterinary. We’ve been notified by the credit card company that a Mr. Alec Lord contested the charges for Finn Doyle so we’ll need someone to come to the office with a check.”

Anger rises in me.

But, then . . . maybe this is a good thing.

Alec’s pulling away from me.

“I’ll be by tomorrow.” I flick off my phone. I’ll talk to Mom about the vet tonight. Right now nothing matters beyond Finn being home safe, and me arriving that way too.

I splash water on my face. I can finish this day.

I rejoin the crowded halls and head toward English until I stop short, my lungs firing.

Because Alec waits at the stairwell.

I turn sharply to avoid him but he races to me, hooks my waist. Pulls me beyond the crowd.

“I need to tell you how sorry I am.”

“You said that already.”

“But you didn’t hear me. It’s killing me not to be with you, Zephyr.” He ducks his head close to mine, whispers. “Yesterday was unbearable. I’d do anything to make you forgive me. Take me back, give me another chance.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. I know you want to.” His hand lowers onto the slip of my back. “Don’t give up on what we had. I love you.”

But I don’t see love. I see the moment when my fingers calculated the distance from the knife set. My heart quickens, reliving it. Again.

And I think I won’t survive months of this. Him skulking out of corners, tugging at my sanity. “If you come near me at school, I’ll get a restraining order.” I don’t know if orders of protection are granted to teenagers but the threat is enough to make his hand drop away.

“Zephyr, please.”

I leave him and his pleas in my wake, but I am still haunted by shadows.

In the library, I bury myself in the stacks until it’s dark, until I know Alec’s at practice. I call Lizzie when I’m in my car. “I’m heading home.”

“You want me to come over?”

I buckle in, turn on the defroster. “It’s been a long day.”

“Call me when you get there.”

“Promise.”

I pull out of the parking lot and the dark asks me to remember the abandoned building site with Alec, our forest bed. I wonder how long flashbacks of Alec will bubble up. The good memories hurt more than the welts. I’m assaulted by all the things I wanted. All the ways I messed up.

And I wonder how a heart can hold so much pain when it is a fist of an organ. Yet it throbs. It feels torn and shredded. It hangs dense in my chest, remembering its wounds.

I turn off the main road and the Ashland Drive pole has a cap of ice at the top, like the snow cones Dad would drizzle with maple syrup. I slow, the road frozen and rutted. My car bounces over the deep channels, spaghetting my spine.