Until Friday Night (The Field Party #1)(7)

“You born that way?” Nash asked me, and I wished he’d give up. I didn’t know what to do with him. He was very nice, but I wasn’t going to talk to him.

West moved and suddenly he was standing in front of me, looking completely bored. The fact that his girlfriend had just broken up with him and ran off didn’t seem to rank on his importance scale. It took a cold person to react that way.

I glanced at him and found his dark blue gaze on me. Long eyelashes framed his eyes. They weren’t as startling as Nash’s eyes—I was sure no one could have eyes as pretty as Nash’s—but there was more there I had missed Friday night. Pain, fear, detachment. Again, the same thing I saw in my own eyes every time I looked in the mirror.

“Fuck, she’s prettier up close,” West said as he tilted his head to the side and studied me. “Makes me not care that she can’t talk.”

He was looking at me as if he hadn’t held my face in his large hands Friday night. My stomach churned in a sick knot. I knew demented and cruel. I’d lived it. I’d witnessed it. And I feared it. If it weren’t for the pain and fear in his eyes, I’d have slapped him. But I just wanted away from him. He wasn’t a good person. Something had warped him. While I had chosen not to speak to deal with my pain, he had chosen to deal with his by hurting others.

“She’s mute, dickhead. Not deaf,” Nash snarled.

A crooked grin that didn’t meet his eyes touched West’s lips. Did his friends not see this? Did they not know he was hiding pain that haunted him and made him this horrible person?

“Don’t mind me, sugar. I’m an *,” he said, as if he were apologizing. But apologizing for what? Kissing me? Cheating on his girlfriend? Being an all-around heartless jerk with every word that came out of his mouth?

Those who were damaged weren’t fixable. I knew that all too well. Anyone who tried to fix him would fail. But people weren’t born cruel. Life made them that way. At least that was what one of my counselors told me when she tried to talk to me about my father.

I made a blatant shift away from West and held my head high. The hard glare I shot him was more than any words could say. Thankfully, he got the message, and he turned and walked away.

I watched him go, wondering if there was someone who knew why he was acting out this way. Someone who knew the truth behind his cruel spirit. His girlfriend didn’t, or she wouldn’t have broken up with him like that. He held himself with a confidence that turned heads, and I guess no one noticed anything deeper.

Much as I knew he was bad news and wanted to hate him, I’d heard him talking to his mother. Heard him tell her he loved her. Heard the pain in his voice.

“Don’t go there,” Nash warned from beside me. “West ain’t good, sweetheart. He’s one of my best friends, but he’s poison for girls like you. He don’t care about anyone as much as he cares about West.”

Nash didn’t have to worry. I wasn’t going anywhere near West. We had been close enough once, and he didn’t even seem to remember. Our kiss wasn’t something he thought about all weekend like I had.

Still, West needed to be saved. Someone had to get close to him, to reach him. No one had been able to save my father, and horror had followed in his path of destruction. West was in desperate need of help. That much I knew. I also knew I wasn’t that person for him. I had my own demons to survive.

I Love You, Momma

CHAPTER 4

WEST

“Where’s Brady?” Nash asked as he sat down at our table in the cafeteria.

“Ain’t seen him. Probably with that good-looking cousin of his,” I replied, trying to act as if I hadn’t had her in my arms while her kiss shocked the hell out of me. Damn, that kiss had been sweet. I’d laid in bed that night thinking about how she’d felt. Her hands on my chest and her body leaning into me. For that one moment, I’d been able to forget. I hadn’t thought about my life and what I was facing anytime I went home.

But then she’d made a small whimper, and it had snapped me out of my delirium. The girl couldn’t speak, and I was pressing her against a tree and taking what I needed. God, I was a monster. She didn’t deserve that.

I’d needed to get away from her, so I let her go and I’d walked off. I hadn’t even been able to look at her when I broke away. One glimpse at those lips swollen from our kiss, and I’d have been right back at it. She wasn’t just beautiful, she felt good too.

Not to mention that if Brady found out I’d kissed his cousin, we’d end up beating the shit out of each other. I deserved it, sure. She was too sweet for me.

“She really can’t talk. I was in second period with her,” said Asa Griffith, the other running back on the team. He’d been playing ball with us since elementary school. “I figure, if a girl looks like that and can’t bitch, then she just might be perfect.”

Nash, who was sitting down at the table, jumped in. “Don’t be an ass. She’s Brady’s cousin.” He sounded pissed. I’d seen the way he was looking at her this morning in the hall. He’d been taken with her real damn fast. And if I was honest with myself, I didn’t like that.

“I’m being serious. She’s gorgeous and can’t talk. Does it get better than that?” Asa asked.

I wasn’t going to say anything. As frustrating as Raleigh could be, I didn’t wish a life of being mute on anyone. I knew Asa was joking, but it was too cold. He wasn’t thinking about what he was saying.