The Bully (Calamity Montana #4)(32)

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CHAPTER NINE





CAL





There was a flaw on the diary’s page in the lower right corner. Sunshine streamed through my SUV’s windshield as I sat parked in front of The Refinery. It made the ecru pages of Nellie’s journal appear flawless. But if I ran my finger across the paper, the texture in that corner was raised, like it had once been wet. Like it was where Nellie’s tear had fallen.

I wished I could say that it had been a misunderstanding. That I’d made a comment and it had been taken the wrong way. Or that I’d been trying to help, like the water incident. But there was no excuse.

This had just been me being a teenage prick.

Though, to be accurate, I hadn’t called her a virgin. I’d called her a prude. In the eyes of a fourteen-year-old girl, which was worse?

If not for the diary, that day would have been forgotten along with thousands of others. But this book had a way of sweeping me into the past with aggravating clarity. You’d think that a guy who’d spent his career being tackled and having his head slammed into the dirt—helmet or no—could at least be blessed with memory issues.

The day I’d called her a prude had been in the spring, close to the end of freshman year. I’d been on the football field, stretching with a few of the guys before the after-school weight training program.

The cheerleaders flocked, like they always did when there were two or more football players in a cluster. Even as a freshman, I got a lot of attention from the girls. I was good-looking. Ripped. Confident. The acne and awkwardness that plagued so many of the guys my age was never an issue. And as of the previous winter, thanks to Phoebe McAdams at a house party, I wasn’t a virgin.

While I was stretching, Nellie walked past the field, passing by the end zone beyond the chain-link fence that wrapped around the area. She walked with her head down, her eyes on the concrete sidewalk.

It was Phoebe who made the first snide comment. She called Nellie a brainiac. Then I called her a prude.

A single comment. She’s a prude.

Then our coach whistled and waved us into the locker room. Nellie disappeared around the corner of the bleachers, out of sight and forgotten.

The journal entry was from the next day.

And my comment was not so forgotten, after all.

I probably should have known better. Done better. Been better. Anyone with two eyes could have looked at Phoebe’s face and seen the envy as green as Nellie’s eyes. Of course she’d taken my comment and run with it.

Nellie had everything Phoebe’s money couldn’t buy. Intelligence. Wit. Beauty.

A beauty that radiated from her pure heart.

I closed the diary and reached behind my seat, placing it on the floor of the Land Rover. Pathetic as it was, that book had become my constant companion. Over the past five days, I’d read it again.

Nellie’s adolescent thoughts had consumed me. Retiring this young was clearly fucking with my head. I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t just leave the damn book alone. Just like I wasn’t sure what had come over me at Grays Peak last week. I sure as hell wasn’t sure why I’d wanted her to verbalize why she hated me.

Maybe I’d been trying to pick a fight. Or maybe I’d been hoping that if I asked her what she hated about me, she’d come up empty.

Of course she hated me. I had the evidence in a leather-bound book. So why couldn’t I just accept her hate and move on? Why couldn’t I stop thinking about her?

Why did I care about her opinion?

Christ, I was fucking losing it.

“I really need to stop reading that diary,” I mumbled.

A blonde came walking down the block. I grabbed my yoga mat from the passenger seat, climbed out of the car and slammed the door. The sound caught Nellie’s attention. Her footsteps stuttered on the sidewalk.

I smirked and walked to the door of The Refinery, lingering outside as she marched my direction. “Morning, Blondie. Your roots are showing. Time for a new bottle of peroxide.”

She cringed.

I stifled one of my own. Yeah, okay. I was a prick for constantly making fun of her hair. Especially considering I liked the color.

“Go away, Cal.”

I yanked the door to the fitness studio open before she could touch the handle. “After you.”

“What?” She looked me up and down, taking in the athletic shorts and sleeveless tee. “What are you doing?”

“Yoga.”

“No.” She clutched the mat rolled under her arm tighter. “This is my yoga class.”

“Mine too. I’m the newest member at The Refinery.”

Nellie closed her eyes, her hands balling into fists. “You do not do yoga.”

“Yes, I do. My trainer thought it would be good for my back. Turns out, he was right.”

“Can’t you afford a private instructor?”

“And not support Kerrigan’s business? What kind of friend would that make me?”

“The Cal Stark kind.”

The shitty kind. I gestured for her to go inside first. “Shall we?”

She stomped past me, flicking her ponytail so high and hard it whacked me in the face.

We each checked in at the reception counter and toed off our shoes, stowing them in a cubby along with our keys and phones. Then we entered the studio, me keeping pace with Nellie as she crossed the mats to the far end of the room.