Until You (Fall Away Series)(21)

Her hair blew around her, and I could feel her eyes, locked in shadow, on me.

My mouth was dry, and the rush of breath and blood through my body felt so damn good.

Until she backed up and closed the doors.

No. I swallowed, not wanting her to go away.

Go on. Go pick a fight, I told myself, but I shook my head.

No. Just leave her alone. She hasn’t been thinking about me, and I needed to get over it.

I was crawling the walls inside my head, knowing for fact that I needed to grow up and let her be. Let her go to school without rumors and pranks hovering over her. Let her be happy. We were nearly adults now, and this petty shit had to end.

But…

I’d just felt more alive in the past ten seconds than I had in a year.

Seeing that face, knowing I’d wake up to her blaring music and seeing her leave the house to jog in the morning…

My phone buzzed with a text, and I walked over to check it.

It was from Tate’s dad.

Change of plans. Tate’s home. On her own until Christmas. Give her back the house key, and be nice. Or else.

I narrowed my eyes, rereading the text over and over again.

I don’t even think I breathed.

She was alone? Until Christmas?

I closed my eyes, and let out a laugh.

And all of a sudden I was as thrilled as hell to wake up tomorrow.





“Should I be afraid?” my mother asked as I walked back in from the garage carrying a small ax.

“Always,” I mumbled, passing her at the kitchen counter and heading up the stairs.

I’d decided to take matters into my own hands, instead of hiring someone, and chop off the smaller branches jutting into the house myself. The ax would do the job.

“Just don’t hurt yourself!” she shouted after me. “You were hard to make!” And I rolled my eyes at no one as I disappeared up the ladder leading into the attic.

She’d been halfway decent since getting sober. Once in a while she tried making jokes. Sometimes I laughed but not in front of her. There was still a lot of discomfort between us, a crack I had lost interest in repairing.

But we’d gotten into a routine. She kept herself level, and I did the same.

Crawling through the small window on our dark third floor, I maneuvered myself onto the tree and inched towards the trunk where the branches were thick enough to support my weight. I figured I’d sit on the inside and chop the extra growth off and then climb down to the ground when I was done. I needed to work top to bottom and eventually get to the branches at my window—the whole reason I’d started this job.

But as I raised the ax to start, I nearly dropped it.

“You think his treatment of me is foreplay?” I heard Tate’s aggravated shouting, and I halted.

What? Foreplay?

“Yes,” she continued, and I stopped what I was doing to listen, “it was foreplay when he told the whole school I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and everyone made farting noises as I walked down the hall freshman year.”

My eyes widened, and my pulse pounded in my neck. Was she talking about me?

“And yes.” She kept going, talking to someone I couldn’t see. “It was completely erotic the way he had the grocery store deliver a case of yeast infection cream to Math class sophomore year. But what really got me hot and ready to bend over for him was when he plastered brochures for genital wart treatments on my locker, which is completely outrageous for someone to have an STD without having sex!”

Oh, shit.

She was definitely talking about me.

Grabbing a branch above me, I pushed myself up onto my feet and climbed over to the other side, careful to stay out of the view of Tate’s open doors.

Another girl was talking, probably her friend K.C., and I caught something about fighting back.

I slid down another branch, starting to feel like a perv for snooping on their conversation. But hey, they were talking about me, and that made it my business.

“I’ve told you a hundred times, we were friends for years,” Tate spoke. “He went away for a few weeks the summer before freshman year, and when he came back, he was different. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

And my fists clenched.

K.C. didn’t need to know my shit. Tate had no right airing our business like that.

The familiar swirl of piss and vinegar churned in my gut, and I felt my body warm.

“We’re going to have an amazing year.” Tate’s voice was lower now and stronger than before. “I’m hoping Jared has forgotten all about me. If he has, then we can both peacefully ignore each other until graduation. If he hasn’t, then I’ll do what I think is best. I’ve got bigger things on my mind anyway. He and that asshat Madoc can poke and prod all they want. I’m done giving them my attention. They are not taking my senior year.”