Heartbreak Read online

  He smiles, slow and sure. “Damn, beautiful. I could get addicted to you.”

  And I know it’s already too late for me. I’m already addicted to him. To his taste, to his touch. To the way he treats me. I don’t ever want him to stop, but he doesn’t keep kissing me. He certainly doesn’t lay me down on the white rocks and have sex with me.

  Instead he pulls back, letting the cool air rush between us.

  “What’s wrong?” I whisper.

  A shadow crosses his eyes, and I shiver. He tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  Chapter Three

  For the next three weeks we spend every afternoon together, talking and kissing.

  Kissing and no further.

  We kiss for hours, until we’re both breathless. Sometimes I rock my body over his, feeling how hard he is, riding his desire, but we never even undress.

  Part of me basks in our time together, grateful for the moments of bliss even if they will only end in devastation. Happiness is rare enough around here not to take it for granted when it shows up in a worn butter-soft leather jacket.

  The other part of me dreads how this will end. We have no control over our lives. He could be taken from me at any moment. I have survived years alone, but the thought of being without him now feels like acid on my skin, flaying me open.

  And I know Matthew is in the background, scheming, waiting for his chance.

  There is something else looming over my time with Blue like a storm cloud—the rumors about him and what Lucy had said. The way even the bullies give him a wide berth.

  If you touch her again, I’ll kill you.

  One afternoon I can’t ignore it anymore.

  I rest my chin on his chest, fingers playing in his hair. “Is it true?”

  “Is what true?”

  “What they say about you.” I don’t need to spell it out, but he’s making me. “That you killed a kid at your last school.”

  His eyes are dark. “People talk too much.”

  My heart lurches. “So it’s true.”

  He shrugs, which shifts his large body underneath mine. He’s cradling me, one hand on my back, the other on my ass. We’re nestled in the attic, hidden away. I feel completely safe—the exact opposite of how I should with what he’s just admitted.

  I’m scared too. I don’t know what he’s capable of or why. I don’t know what will set him off. For now he seems to like me. And for now, that’s enough.

  “Is your name really Blue?”

  He makes a face. “Really?”

  I like this lighter side of him, the one that isn’t so serious. The one who isn’t about death. The one who isn’t dangerous. “I just want to know something about you. Something real.”

  “Then tell me something real about you, Hannah. That’s my price.”

  “Okay.” I play with the bristles on his chin, distracting myself. “My mom killed herself.”

  Surprise registers in his eyes. “That’s heavy.”

  I look away. So much for keeping things light. “Yeah, well, it’s real. Now you tell me something.”

  “Eugene,” he mutters.

  My gaze snaps back to him. “What?”

  “My name is Eugene Blue.”

  I can’t help it—I laugh. It’s dangerous to laugh at a boy like this, one who’s killed, one who admits it without even looking guilty. But the corner of his lip turns up.

  “Can I call you that?” I tease him.

  He tries to look stern. “Not if you want me to answer.”

  It’s a little piece of him, his name, something only for me. I nuzzle his chest, and he lifts my chin. His eyes are serious. “I’m sorry about your mom.”

  I swallow hard. “Thanks.”

  He leans forward, and his lips touch mine. He doesn’t move them or push his tongue inside. We stay like that, lips against lips, breath mingling.

  When I pull back, he touches his forehead to mine.

  “Why did you do it?” I whisper.

  This time he doesn’t make me spell it out.

  “Because he called me Eugene,” he says with a straight face.

  It’s wrong, but I laugh. He is the only boy who makes me laugh. “For real though.”

  His expression gets hard. “It’s real simple. The people outside—the judge and the jury. They don’t know what it’s like. It’s kill or be killed, and fuck if I’m going to let anyone touch me.”

  My breath catches in my throat. I wish I had that kind of conviction.

  I wish I had that kind of strength.

  “Why aren’t you in jail?”

  He shrugs. “I’m a minor, and there were mitigating circumstances. That’s what they call it—mitigating circumstances.”

  “Oh,” I say, not really understanding.

  “They’d been kicking me around, and it was documented by the caseworker. So it got labeled self-defense. I just have to keep my nose clean until I’m eighteen. Then I can get out of this shithole town. And I’m never coming back.”

  I look down, drawing circles on the gray T-shirt he wears, feeling his steady heartbeat underneath. He wants to get out of this shithole. Of course he does. “Oh.”

  “Do you think I’ll hurt you?” he asks softly.

  “No.” I swallow past the knot in my throat.

  His smile sends a shiver down my spine. “Then you don’t really know me.”

  The truth is that I don’t know him that well. He asks a lot of questions about me—about my history and my foster homes, about my favorite movies and what kind of ice cream I like. Casablanca and mint chocolate chip.

  He doesn’t talk much about himself. All I know is that he’s been kind to me, protected me, even without taking what is due.

  “No,” I say, stronger now. “You’d never hurt me.”

  “I want to.”

  He’s just teasing me. Testing me. That’s what I tell myself. Or maybe he’s just punishing me for asking him directly about the rumors.

  “I don’t believe you,” I say. My voice sounds braver than I feel.

  “No?” He studies me lazily, from my arm slung over his chest down to my leg bent over his knee. “You have no idea what goes on in my head at night. The things I dream about doing to you.”

  My breath catches. “Like what?”

  His look seems to strip me bare—past clothes and nakedness, to the core of my being, where I’m both frightened and excited by his words. “Like bending you over and taking you from behind. Like tying you up so I could do anything I want to you.”

  That heavy beat is my blood rushing faster. He’s strong and violent—he doesn’t even hide that. And I’m tangled up, my limbs entwined with his, caught in a spider’s web. “What makes you think I would let you?”

  The corner of his mouth tilts up. His eyes look like they’re lit from the inside out, a knowing light he must have hidden from me all this time—along with his dark desires. His voice is barely a whisper. “What makes you think you could stop me?”

  Fear clenches my chest, and I scramble away, half expecting him to hold me there. He lets me go, though, and I scoot a few feet back. I’m afraid, but I know that if I really thought he’d hurt me, I’d be running. Instead I crouch on the dusty floorboards and hug my knees.

  “You’re just saying that to scare me,” I say, accusing.

  He sits up too, much more leisurely. “Maybe I am. Doesn’t mean I’m lying.”

  No, I have the uncomfortable feeling it’s not a lie. Except he hasn’t done those things to me. “Why haven’t you touched me?”

  His hot gaze sweeps over me. “I’ve touched you, beautiful.”

  “Not under my clothes. And you definitely haven’t—” Anxiety and something else rises in my throat. He hasn’t taken me from behind. He hasn’t taken me at all. “You haven’t tied me up or any perverted shit.”

  He smiles, ducks his head, looking almost shy and boyish at the word perverted. “Because you aren’t ready for that.”


  “What do you care?” I can’t help the bitterness that seeps into my voice. “I’m just some random girl at some random foster house. Any one of us could get moved tomorrow, and we’d never see each other again.”

  His expression grows solemn. “Is that what you’re worried about?”

  There’s a dollhouse up here, old and cracked from disuse. I run my finger across a faded white porch railing. “We’re like the dolls in this house. They move us around wherever they want, like we don’t matter.”

  “You’re right,” he says softly. “They don’t care about us. They don’t understand. But I care, beautiful. I care about you more than I should.”

  The words burrow inside me where I can keep them. No matter where I go after this, no matter how far away I am from him, I’ll always remember this. “Me too,” I whisper.

  He puts two fingers under my chin and tilts my face up to his. “And I’m waiting because I’d rather not have you at all than hurt you.”

  “I thought you wanted to hurt me.”

  “Only when you want it.”

  I have to laugh. “You’re crazy if you think I’d ever want that.”

  Sex is one thing. Tie ups are another.

  He just shrugs, easy with my denial. He wasn’t going to push me before this conversation, and he isn’t going to push me now. He isn’t going to demand sex now, isn’t going to demand any of that kinky shit now either. He’s content to talk to me, to kiss me, and something eases inside me at the knowledge.

  A beat passes, and I scoot closer to him. He wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close—he’s always touching me when I’m near. Careful touches. Heated touches. Possessive touches. This one feels achingly tender.

  From this spot in the cramped attic we can look through the grimy window and see the city stretch out—the high-rises with lights blinking off and on. They might be ants living in little glass squares.

  That’s just an illusion. The people downtown are rich and powerful.

  We’re the small and insignificant ones, liable to get crushed under their shoes if we’re not careful.

  “He wasn’t a kid.” Blue’s voice rings out in the dark, and it takes me half a second to realize what he’s talking about.

  The rumors. That you killed a kid at your last school.

  My hands clench into fists at my sides, but if he couldn’t scare me before, he won’t scare me now. And I realize that may be what he meant to do. To push me away before the truth came out. But I’m still here.

  “Who was it?” I ask, my voice trembling. I have enough courage to stick around but not enough to hide how scared this makes me. I’ve been around violence all my life, the kind that bruises, the kind that stings, but not the kind that kills.

  He’s quiet a long moment. “Same old story,” he finally says. “Dad liked to spend his night at the bottom of a bottle. And when he got home, he’d take it out on Mom.”

  They’d been kicking me around, and it was documented by the caseworker.

  It wasn’t some other kid he’d been talking about then. My heart skips a beat, sympathy almost a tangible force inside my chest. It’s a story I’ve heard before, but it’s not any less painful for being common around here. “I’m sorry.”

  He just nods as if accepting my sympathy—or maybe accepting the inevitability of what happened. “One day he went off the deep end. Started hitting her and wouldn’t stop. By then I was big enough to put up a fight, but she…” His voice breaks off. “She didn’t want me to. By the time I did, it was too late.”

  “God, I’m so sorry.”

  “He came after me next,” he continues softly, lost to the past now. “I don’t think he even knew what he was doing then. He was pissed drunk, and I saw my mother on the floor and lost it. I killed him that night.”

  All the words catch in my throat. It wasn’t your fault. He deserved it.

  I’m trapped by the cold look in Blue’s eyes. Even when he threatened to tie me up, he didn’t seem as ruthless as he does now.

  He faces me, and the core of ice in his eyes freezes me. “They called it self-defense,” he says, “but it wasn’t. I could have defended myself without killing him. I could have run away and he couldn’t have caught me. I wanted him to die.”

  “Of course you did,” I say softly.

  “I’m not sorry.” He sounds almost defiant—and younger than I’ve ever seen him. Not the confident bad boy, but the scared child forced to kill his father.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” I say, but I know it’s a lie. It matters more than anything.

  He laughs, a cold sound. And just like that, the veneer is back in place, smooth and strong. “If any of the kids in that house get into a fight, they don’t give a shit. It’s like pit bulls fighting in a cage. It’s almost the point.”

  I shift, uncomfortable with the analogy. It strikes me as a little too accurate.

  “But me?” he continues. “They don’t trust me. Not with the number of stab wounds I left on my father’s body. They had to let me go, because they couldn’t risk the scandal if it came out. That the decorated war hero was kicking around his family every night.”

  “God, Blue.”

  “If I get into a fight, they’ll wonder if I’m going to kill someone. More fucking scandal. The crazy thing is sometimes I want to kill someone. Like when Matthew was touching you.”

  I swallow hard. I can’t blame him for wanting Matthew hurt. But not dead. Maybe I should want him dead. Maybe that makes me weak, that I don’t. “You seem so…controlled.”

  He laughs. “I have to be. One fucking strike and I’m out. They aren’t going to let the self-defense thing happen again. The court-appointed lawyer made that clear. He thought he was doing me a favor, letting me know.”

  I swallow. “Even if you need to defend yourself?”

  “Even then.”

  Chapter Four

  One strike and I’m out.

  Blue’s words stick with me, a horrible merry-go-round of dread that follows me into my dreams. I have nightmares about a body bleeding from a hundred holes, still standing and going after a younger version of Blue. The attacker’s face is blurry, and when I try to focus, he turns into Matthew—and he’s not coming after Blue anymore. He’s coming after me.

  I sit up in bed, drenched in sweat. Moonlight streams through the twisted, cracked plastic blinds. The bed across the room is empty.

  Where’s Lucy?

  Sharing a room is probably the only reason Matthew has left me alone this long. Not that Lucy could really fight him off—or that she would do that for me. Matthew doesn’t know that. There’s strength in numbers. And now she’s gone.

  There’s a squeak that sounds like an echo. Is that what woke me up?

  I scramble back on the bed, pulling the sheet up to my chest. It doesn’t cover much. There’s no other blanket, no fitted sheet on the mattress. Just a threadbare piece of fabric covering me. “Lucy?”

  The door opens a crack, drawing a thick black line down the wall. I can’t see who’s beyond it. I don’t really want to see. I want this to be a dream—another nightmare that will end when the sun comes up.

  “Blue?” I whisper.

  A shadow enters the room—large enough, wide enough that I know it’s not Blue. My heart sinks. No no no.

  “Lucy left a few minutes ago,” comes a whispered voice. Matthew. “Some party or something.”

  “What are you doing here?” My bravado has left me, leaving me raw and shaking.

  “And your new boyfriend? He went with her.”

  My heart stops. No. Somehow that’s worse than whatever might happen in this room. I can endure whatever happens to my body. I can’t survive what Blue does to my heart.

  If he went to a party with Lucy, it will break me.

  He didn’t make you any promises.

  There’s no time to worry about him, because Matthew is advancing on me.

  My hand scratches at the side table and finds something small and sol
id and steel. Unfortunately it’s not sharp, so it won’t make much of a weapon. My fingers close around it anyway, clutching it like a lifeline. That’s always my instinct when I’m afraid—to steal, to take. To find comfort in someone else’s things, because Lord knows I don’t have anything of my own.

  Matthew’s lighter won’t save me now, though.

  He crosses the small room in a matter of seconds and then flips me over.

  “Don’t worry about that asshole,” Matthew says. “I’m here now.”

  I fight against his hold on my neck, flailing uselessly. It’s like some cruel parody of what Blue once wanted to do. Like bending you over and taking you from behind.

  What makes you think you could stop me?

  Except there was more to it than that. Only when you want it.

  I didn’t know what he meant, why I’d ever want that. But I knew there was something there, something different. With Blue it would have been different. Not like this.

  Survive, my mind whispers, and I know what I have to do.

  “Hold still.”

  The words are whispered into my ear, hot and faintly wet. I close my eyes. Tears squeeze down onto my cheeks. I’m bent over the bed, inhaling the dank scent of the bare mattress. There are stains I don’t want to contemplate.

  Some of them probably came from me.

  I can’t help but whimper. I clamp my mouth tight and taste blood.

  “Do you like that?” comes the breathless voice from behind me. “Does your boyfriend do it like that?”

  I shudder at the pain, holding myself still and closed. I only have to get through this. I only have to survive.

  “Hannah?” The voice comes from outside the room—familiar and beloved. No.

  He can’t come in here. He can’t see my like this. I try to call out, to tell him not to come inside, but only a croak comes out. I’m too broken to even speak, too lost.

  The door opens, and I only have seconds to glimpse the surprise in his eyes. And the rage.

  Then he’s flying across the room. There’s no more invasion in my body, no more hands holding me down. Only the smack of flesh on flesh, the grunt of animals locked in battle.