The Bad Boy Bargain (Suttonville Sentinels #1)(62)

She patted Kyle’s arm. “I’m so sorry you have to live in such squalor.”

“I know.” He nodded solemnly. “But I make do.”

She slipped inside and went to the couch. He followed more slowly and didn’t sit until she patted the seat next to her. “Okay, I’m here. What did you want to tell me?”

His knee started bouncing. “It’s kind of hard to know where to start.”

“Maybe the beginning?”

He nodded and took a deep breath. “That would be seventh grade, but we’ve talked about most of that. It really started in eighth grade, the worst year of my life.”

“Eighth grade was hard for me, too,” she said. “But what was awful about yours?”

“Cameron Zimmerman.”

He said it with such bitterness that she leaned away, breath stolen from her lungs. Just how horrible was Cameron? “Worse than the stuff you’ve already told me?”

“More stupid middle school stuff,” Kyle mumbled. “Not important.”

God, guys were so buttoned-up sometimes. Especially this guy. “You can’t say he made your life hell, then tell me it’s not important.” She put her hand on his. “You said you were going to tell me everything.”

He closed his eyes a moment. “You didn’t go to Perkins for middle school, did you?”

“No, I went to Rosewood.”

“Well, if you’d gone to Perkins, you’d know. It’s blown over for most people, but not for me.”

His shoulders were hunched around his ears, and his expression had a tortured pinch to it. Faith reached out, slowly, and took his hand. “Whatever it is, I won’t be shocked.”

He laughed in an unfunny way. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

She shook her head. He obviously needed to talk about this. “I won’t.”

His body went slack, like he was either giving up or giving in. Faith held completely still, gripping his hand so he had a lifeline. Finally, he said, “Like I said, it started in seventh grade. Cameron played on a different Little League team, and my team killed them every time. Cameron was a second baseman then, before he settled on football. One game, I had to slide. I came in hot, and he missed the tag, so I was safe. For some reason, that set him off. One insult too many from our team, I guess.

“He started with petty stuff. His friends pestered me, pulled nasty pranks.” From the look on his face, Faith wondered just how nasty those pranks had been. “Made a fool of me in front of the girl I liked, taped my homework and tests all over the school like I told you, crap like that.”

“But that’s not all,” Faith said, sure of it. “They cratered you at one point, didn’t they?”

He nodded, looking away. “It was the week of baseball tryouts in eighth grade. Most of the guys at Perkins saw me as this shrimp—I was a lot shorter then—and someone to beat on. Cade and I were bullied all through middle school, not just by Cameron, but by everyone with a bone to pick. So by then, I was pretty worn down.”

She squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s over now. You need to understand what happened, though. They all knew I had an arm on me, even then. They’d seen me play in Little League. So when I went out for the Perkins team…”

His voice cracked, and he paused. Faith edged closer to him, sensing his pain. It was so close to the surface, her own heart ached, and she didn’t even know why he’d been hurt. “What happened?”

“For the first two days of camp, I smoked the guys trying out for outfielder. I outhit, outcaught, and outthrew every last one of them. Including Cameron. I made that jackass look like a fool. If you wonder why he only does football and track, I’m why.” Kyle’s face broke into a brittle smile. “King of the grass. That’s what the assistant coach called me. And it pissed the jocks off. This shrimp, this nothing, coming in and blowing them all away.”

He let out a deep breath. “Anyway, on the last day, the real tryout day, I went into the locker room to change. While I was in there, in my freaking underwear, Cameron and two of his buddies grabbed me. They taped my mouth shut and tied my hands behind my back. Then, before locking me in the broom closet, one pinned me against the wall while Cameron wrote ‘loser’ on my forehead with Sharpie.” He shook his head, cheeks red. “Not the way I wanted to find out that Sharpie comes off skin with rubbing alcohol. Anyway, they’d waited late enough that all the coaches were already outside. No one heard me kicking the door. One of Cameron’s friends came back to let me out after tryouts were over and almost everyone had gone.”

Kyle’s fist clenched around Faith’s hand, but she didn’t let go. She leaned against him. “What happened then?”

“They’d told the coach I changed my mind, saying that I’d said ‘this public school ball was for pansies’ and that I’d gone back to my select team.” He turned to look at her, and the hurt in his eyes made tears well up in hers. “They’d also taken all my clothes. All of them. There I was, crying like an ass, Sharpie on my forehead, and I had nothing to wear. I had to hide from the coaches and call my grandpa to come get me. He wanted to tell the coaches what happened, but I just…couldn’t. I was too embarrassed. How would the coaches like having a punching bag on the team, no matter how well he caught?”