Breaking Him (Love is War #1)(14)

I didn’t look at her as I answered. “Everything went according to plan. I won, he lost. He shouldn’t bother me for a while.” My tone was curt. It was my leave me alone voice, and she knew to do just that. It was one of the reasons we could hang.

I was a loner by nature, and she was a nice, friendly, sociable girl that never seemed to have a bad day. When I’d first met her, that had annoyed the hell out of me. But over time, when I’d realized it wasn’t an act, that she was just somehow inherently good, the girl couldn’t help it if she tried, she’d started to grow on me. And over time, as I’d given her a shot, and found that she didn’t expect me to be like her, I’d become dangerously attached. More so than I usually allowed myself. It was her tolerance that got me, when I normally had no problem staying aloof.

If she saw a storm brewing in me, as it inevitably did, she had the sense to give me space. I’d never been a girls’ girl. I didn’t keep female friends for long, before Leona. She was the first girl-friend I’d ever had that did that, that took the time to understand me enough to just back off sometimes.

As though taking her cue, Demi and Farrah did the same. They didn’t know me or my situation with Dante like Leona did, but they knew enough.

My mood improved a bit as we started to work. Keeping busy was distracting enough that my mind began to clear from the fog of my dreams.

Still, I was looking over my shoulder constantly, some part of me sure that he’d show up again.

But he didn’t. To say I was glad to shut the doors on my flight without a Dante in my cabin the next day was a vast understatement.

I was so grateful that I didn’t have to deal with him again I was thanking God, my knees weak with relief at the respite.

It was done. I’d warded him off for the foreseeable future. It was enough.





CHAPTER





SEVEN





“Love isn’t something you find. Love is something that finds you.”

~Loretta Young





PAST


I was waiting outside the vice principal’s office again. For fighting. Again.

I’d actually been doing pretty well lately, so this was now a rare occurrence.

There had been some major changes in my life.

After that day when I found out Dante was fighting for me, we were near inseparable.

We just fit together, he and I. Not necessarily in a sweet or romantic way. We were both thick skinned and sharp tongued. A tad too jaded, a touch too sarcastic. Hotheaded and stubborn to an extreme.

Dante was just as prickly as I, just as jaded, more sarcastic, more hotheaded, but thankfully, not as stubborn.

Which meant that when we clashed, as we invariably did, I won more.

I needed more wins.

We both knew it, and he was kind enough to let me have it. It was one of many reasons why we fit so well together. Despite all of his flaws, his sullen moods, his tempers and rages, he showed me an enduring compassion that no one else ever had.

We were in our early teens. It was that age where the sexes had separated to a polarizing degree. Boys hung out with boys. Girls played with girls. Those were the rules. There was some general flirtatious banter, some note passing, and lots of brief, teasing interactions but other than that, there was a clear segregation of the sexes.

We didn’t care. We ignored that rule completely. We were each other’s only friends, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

We spent a good amount of time over at his gram’s house. Her huge mansion of a place was a five-minute walk up the hill from my grandma’s trailer, a walk I hadn’t known I was welcome to take before, but now, like magic, I was. She’d told me I could come over any time I wanted, and since my grandma was gone a lot, I took her up on the offer almost every day. And Dante, who lived on a huge property between, almost always met me on the way and went over with me.

Now I didn’t have to be alone so much. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

Things were so much better, in fact, that I wasn’t as angry anymore. Wasn’t fighting every kid over every insult they sent my way, and, miracle of miracles, there even seemed to be less insults these days.

No one was much intimidated by a little skinny girl like me, even a vicious one, but plenty of the kids had learned to be wary of Dante.

He fought like a demon, and word had spread that he’d pound anyone that messed with me.

It was wonderful.

But it was not absolute. Today was a case in point.

This time it’d been a boy I’d been fighting with. I’d decked the * right in the chin, and when he’d decked me back, I’d kicked him so hard in the balls that he’d fallen to the ground and cried like a baby.

The rest of our class had watched the whole thing with varying degrees of disgust, exasperation, and horror, but of course none of them had tried to step in or help.

I was used to all of it.

I’d always been the indisputable outcast. Other kids were very comfortable uniting against me.

Flu going around? Trashcan girl.

Lice outbreak? Trashcan girl.

Even though neither of those had been pinned on me for sure.

Lucy Hargrove, who had four brothers and two sisters and lived in a dump of a house no better than mine had started at least one of them.