Put Me Back Together(93)

He leaned over with his hands on his knees and I ran my hand over his hair, happy to be comforting someone else for a change. I had the feeling I would be getting a whole lot of sympathy in the coming weeks. Just the idea of it upped my pukey quotient by half.

“Is this a ‘first time flying in a plane’ thing, or a ‘meeting the parents’ thing?” I asked as Lucas stood up again. His face seemed to be returning to its natural colour, but even green he was still startlingly gorgeous. I tried not to hold it against him.


“Flying,” he answered. “Although, now that you mention it, I’m not feeling too good about the other thing, either.” He stared at the doors with a worried look on his face, which was pretty adorable.

“They’re going to love you,” I told him. “Or they’ll be so busy screaming at me they’ll barely notice you. Either way, I think you’re good.”

“If I can sit drinking a Diet Coke while travelling at eight hundred kilometers per hour, ten thousand meters above the ground—which I’d just like to point out again is against nature—you can do this.”

“I told you not to read the airline magazine.”

“I thought it was a good alternative to crying like a baby,” Lucas replied.

I sighed. Now I was the one staring at the doors. “I keep trying to think of the right way to tell them, like if I pick the right words everything will turn out okay. But there are no right words to explain this. Then I start trying to think of the best route back to the airport.” I gave him a sheepish look then averted my gaze. I knew I sounded like a coward.

“You’re scared,” Lucas said, looping his arms around my waist, “and flying makes me want to pee my pants. So let’s not try to pretend otherwise. Let’s just be scared together.”

I pressed my face into his chest and closed my eyes. “So if I burst into tears you’re saying you’ll cry along with me?”

“Uh, sure,” Lucas said uncertainly. Then he whispered in my ear, “But could we try to avoid that? I’m trying to make a good impression here.”

I grinned up at him and gave him a chaste kiss on the lips. I wanted more—when it came to Lucas I always wanted more—but getting caught making out on my parents’ front porch wasn’t the way I wanted to start this particular visit.

“Are my bandages okay?” I said, touching my cheeks with both hands. I hadn’t warned my family about the injuries to my face, and I knew they’d be getting a lot of attention. We’d tried to cut the gauze as small as possible that morning, but there was no hiding the fact that I would have scars. I also had some bruising around my nose and mouth in the places where Brandon had held my face. Basically, I looked like someone had tried to kill me, and given the conversation I was about to have I figured there was no point in trying to cover it up with makeup. Today was a day for the brutal truth.

Lucas fingered the medical tape on my cheek gingerly. “You look beautiful,” he said, but there was sadness in his voice.

It was going to take some time before Lucas stopped blaming himself for leaving me alone while he took his exam. We were all going to need some time to heal.

“Well, it’s now or never, I guess,” I said. He gave my hand a quick squeeze and I was about to ring the doorbell when I realized I had my keys and unlocked the door myself instead. “Remember,” I whispered quickly to Lucas, “my dad doesn’t know anything about sports and if my mother terrifies you, that’s normal.”

“Got it,” Lucas whispered back a second before the door separating the front hall from the house burst open and Emily threw herself into my arms.

“Oh my God!” she cried when she saw the bandages on my face. Then she burst into tears. Lucas and I exchanged a look. “I can’t believe this happened! Did he really try to kill you, like actually kill you? Anita said there were cops all over campus. Did he really try to chop off your head with an axe?” She screeched the last word.

As we walked toward the kitchen, my sister recounted several other stories she’d read about my run-in with Brandon. The journalists were already getting everything wrong, as usual. I was surprised they weren’t camped out on the front lawn, though Em did mention they’d been calling the house non-stop since the break of dawn. My father had unplugged the phones by breakfast time.

I took Em by the shoulders, looking her in the eye. I said, “There was no axe, no noose dangling from a tree, no array of knives to torture me with. My life is not a horror movie.” Actually, it kind of was, but this wasn’t the moment to bring it up.

“But he tried to cut your face in half?” Emily said, reaching up to touch my bandages but shying away at the last moment, he finger left hanging in the air.

“Tried and failed,” Lucas piped up, and Em spun around, startled. He gave her a winning smile.

“Oh, Lucas. You’re here,” she said then looked back at me. “You sure you want to bring him into the mix today?” she said in a typical Emily not-quite-a-whisper voice.

“I’m sure,” I said, threading my fingers with his. I felt reassured just having his tall body standing next to me.

Emily eyed our linked hands and our faces then gave me an unreadable look. Our conversation on the phone came back to me. It was a distant memory to me, since the whole life-in-danger episode had happened between then and now, but it occurred to me that it was the last time we’d spoken, and it had been just yesterday evening. I wondered when time would start to make sense again.