Beyond Broken (The Bay Boys #3) (16 page)

Maddie bit her lip, feeling her face heat up.
 
“What if it wasn’t like that?
 
What if he told them that I basically threw myself at him?
 
Don’t guys brag about stuff like that?”

“Do you honestly think Caleb would brag about something like that to his friends?”

No, Maddie didn’t think he would.
 
She couldn’t picture him drinking with his buddies, laughing over his conquests…or almost-conquests.
 
It just didn’t seem like him.

A little relieved, Maddie shook her head.

“Good.
 
Now, we just need a plan for you to bag him.”

Maddie laughed, throwing a kernel of her popcorn at her.
 
“You’re crazy.
 
You make me sound like I’m going to kidnap him or something.”

“Basically.
 
You gotta be crazy to get the good ones.”

Was Caleb a ‘good one’ though?
 
Maddie would’ve answered yes in high school.
 
Hell, she probably would’ve answered yes last week.
 
But Maddie had seen a side of Caleb she wasn’t sure she liked.
 
He could be mean.
 
He could be nasty.
 
He would say whatever the hell he wanted if he felt threatened by her.
 
He’d lashed out too many times for Maddie to feel completely comfortable in his presence.

Then she remembered him tonight, shaking and crouched down in a dark corner.
 
He’d let her see him like that—although Maddie supposed she hadn’t given him much of a choice.
 
She wondered how long he’d been suffering from episodes like that.

Long enough to know how to calm himself down
, she thought sadly.

“It doesn’t matter,” Maddie finally said after a lengthy pause.
 
“Because when I go into the office tomorrow, Caleb will just try and push me away again.
 
He’ll say mean things to make me want to hate him.”

Kyra furrowed her brow.
 
“That’s fucked up.”

“I know,” Maddie said.
 
“But even if I haven’t known him long, I know what he’ll do.
 
And I’m just not sure that I want someone like him in my life, someone who feels the need to hurt me whenever he feels something for me.
 
That’s just a recipe for disaster.”

“So, you’re giving up?”

Maddie thought about it.
 
Then said, “He’s not in a good place right now.
 
He might never be.
 
So, unless he miraculously discovers that he wants to try something more with me and gets his life together, then yes, I have to give up.”

“Damn,” Kyra said, leaning back into the couch, staring at her wide-eyed.
 
“Who are you and what have you done with my best friend, Maddie?
 
You know, the one who’s been obsessed with Caleb since she first laid eyes on him?
 
Who scribbled ‘Mrs. Montgomery’ in all her notebooks?
 
Who made us eat lunch in the quad so she could see him at lunch?”

Maddie smiled sadly and lifted a shoulder in a lazy shrug, despite her embarrassed flush.
 
“I guess she grew up and realized that her prince charming wasn’t all that charming after all.”

Later that night, once Maddie’s last bottle of wine was emptied and they were both full of popcorn and hot chocolate, they laid on their backs on the living room floor.
 
The people who lived above Maddie sounded like they were doing an intensive cardio workout that included a lot of jumping jacks and high kicks.
 
Their rhythm was strangely calming.

“Remember in high school,” Kyra suddenly started with a wistful, nostalgic tone, “when Anne heard from a classmate that Caleb was going to some gig in San Francisco and she’d happened to mention it to you?”

Maddie’s groan turned into an embarrassed laugh.
 
“Yeah.”

“And none of us were old enough to drive yet so you made us all take BART in and we got lost near the Tenderloin?”

“Most terrifying night of my life,” Maddie muttered.
 
“Remember that homeless man who chased after us?”

Kyra laughed.
 
“And we hid behind the dumpsters near Westfield?”

Maddie smiled.
 
“That probably wasn’t the greatest of my ideas.
 
We couldn’t even find the gig.
 
But I was obsessed.
 
A high school crush is a dangerous thing.
 
Throw in raging hormones and it’s an absolute disaster.”

“But that’s just it, I always thought that it went beyond a crush for you,” Kyra said.

“What do you mean?”

Kyra nibbled on her lip.
 
“I had a crush on Caleb.
 
I got over it in like, two days.
 
Anne had a crush on Caleb.
 
She got over it when she met Bobby.
 
Almost every girl in our high school had a crush on Caleb Montgomery at some point.
 
It was practically a rite of passage back then.”

“Are you saying that I was the creepy girl in high school who never
stopped
having a crush on Caleb?” Maddie joked.
 
Sad, but it was partially true.

“No, I’m saying that what you felt for him went beyond what everyone else felt.”

Maddie shrugged, a little embarrassed.
 
“Like I said, raging teenage hormones.”

“No, not that.
 
It was like you alone could see something in him that no one else could.
 
He was special to you.
 
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
 
There’s no shame in admitting it.
 
It’s just a shame he turned out to be a complete asshole.”
 
Kyra turned her head slightly to look at her, a small smile on her lips.
 
“He’ll never know how wonderful you really are.
 
That’s his loss.”

“Stop, before you make me cry,” Maddie joked even though her throat had already started to burn at the words.

Maddie had never told Kyra or Anne about the day that Caleb sat with her in the courtyard after her father died.
 
She’d never told anyone actually; it was their little secret.
 
And while Caleb probably forgot about the moment the second he left once the bell rang that day, she’d carried that memory with her for
years
.
 
Maybe she had felt something deeper for him, but that was because he’d given her a reason to.

But she was 25-years-old now.
 
She wasn’t a teenager any more, harboring an unrequited crush.
 
Her adult self told her that Caleb Montgomery was heartbreak waiting to happen.
 
She’d be a fool to put herself in his path.

FIFTEEN

The next evening, Caleb was in the garage when he saw Maddie’s car pull into the lot.
 
Brian had already left—it was date night with his wife, something that continued to amuse Caleb years after he found out about their monthly outings—but Peter was still hanging around, sketching on a plastic chair, his face rapt with concentration.

Caleb had pushed himself to work tirelessly all day.
 
The first thing he’d done that morning was return the lawyer’s call and tell him that he wanted no part in the will reading whatsoever.
 
He didn’t want
anything
of his uncle’s ex-wife, absolutely nothing.
 
The unconcealed fury in his voice convinced the lawyer of that and the poor man had been hasty to end the call, saying that the money his aunt had left him—guilt money, as far as Caleb was concerned—would be donated.

And that was that.
 
The thought of his aunt dead filled Caleb with the purest relief and the greatest misery because it drudged up memories he wanted forgotten.
 
He hadn’t slept at all the night before, had tossed and turned on the floor of his office, and grappled with control over himself.
 
Thinking of Maddie, how right she’d felt against him, helped and seemed to keep him calm.
 
But those thoughts also brought up a whole new set of problems that he didn’t have the energy or time to deal with.

Caleb wiped his brow, pushing himself out from underneath the car he was working on.
 
He’d volunteered to take over Brian’s work for the night, but the truth was that he needed to.
 
He needed something to take his mind off the woman who was making her way towards them.
 
Dressed in a flowy skirt that hit right above her knees, sheer black tights, and a light pink sweater, Maddie looked every inch the innocent seductress Caleb knew her to be.

And those damn, fucking heels again…Jesus.

Her nails were painted a dark burgundy today, he noticed, when he watched her push a strand of hair out of her face.
 
He tried to ignore the way his body tightened with want and forced himself to look away.
 
Busying himself with cleaning off his tools at the work bench, he heard her greet Peter in a chipper tone.

“Hi, Maddie,” the shy teen responded.

“Are you going to show me more of your drawings today?” she asked, seeming to ignore the fact that Caleb was only a few feet away, which irritated him.

“Um…” was Peter’s only response.
 
Maddie was a cunning and determined little thing and soon, a somewhat baffled Peter found himself presenting his notebook to her.
 
Caleb remembered those big brown eyes of hers and the light smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and how fucking persuasive they could be.
 
It was almost amusing how easily Peter caved, especially when
Caleb
wasn’t the one on the receiving end.

And as he looked at her out of the corner of his eye, Caleb tried to forget the feel of her body against his own, the sweet smell of her skin as he ran his nose up her soft neck, the taste of her lips, the sound of her breath and her heartbeat hammering into his chest.

The wrench he’d been cleaning fumbled out of his grip and clattered on the concrete.
 
He took a steadying breath and he stooped down to retrieve it.
 
All it took to shut off those thoughts was thinking about what led up to that kiss…when Maddie saw him at his weakest.

In the background, Peter was making excuses for his work, saying, “That piece isn’t finished yet.
 
I haven’t got the bird quite right.
 
I don’t like that one.
 
I need to fix the hand there.”

Which was a shame, because Peter was talented, even if the kid didn’t think so himself.
 
Peter had been the artist of one of Caleb’s tattoos after all.
 
And he wouldn’t have gotten it inked onto his body unless he’d absolutely loved the design.

“Have you ever thought about pursuing this?” Maddie asked, engrossed in his drawings, turning page after page of the notebook.

Peter paused.
 
“What do you mean?”

“I mean like going to an art school.
 
Or entering your drawings into contests.
 
I can get you a list of contests in the Bay Area.
 
A friend of mine helps judge some of them and a lot are for teenagers like you.
 
I could show her your work, if you’d like, to see what she thinks.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Peter mumbled, the tips of his ears turning red.
 
“I don’t think I’d win anyway.”

“I think you’ve got a great shot!
 
I’ve taken my fair share of art and design courses in college and I can say that these are all very good.”

“I don’t know,” he replied, looking down at his feet.

Caleb knew that Peter wouldn’t ask for help.
 
The poor kid came from a bad family.
 
His dad was drunk most of the time and his mom had seen her fair share of drugs and was hardly ever at home.
 
Peter had told him once that he’d come home one day to find his mom and another man fucking on the couch, his dad passed out cold in the next room.
 
The teenager had been on the verge of tears, but Caleb knew that he wouldn’t let a single drop fall.

When Caleb’s uncle had hired Peter, it’d been technically illegal since Peter hadn’t been sixteen yet.
 
But John had given him cash under the table since things were so bad at home.
 
Now that Peter was sixteen it didn’t matter much anymore, but Caleb gave him overtime hours whenever he could find them.

Maddie sensed his hesitation because she closed his notebook and smiled.
 
“Well, you can think about it and I’ll bring you the list on Monday just in case you change your mind.
 
It doesn’t hurt to have options.”

Peter didn’t say anything, just took his sketches and sat back down in his chair.

Maddie eyed Caleb, taking in the grease stains and dirty hands.
 
Caleb resisted the urge to cringe under her gaze.

“Hi,” she said.
 
“How are you?”

“Aren’t we past the point of pleasantries, princess?” he asked, wiping his hands on an even dirtier rag.
 
He really needed to run them through the wash soon.
 
Caleb figured he’d better get this over with.
 
“I need to talk to you upstairs.”

Caleb was having a difficult time reading her expression, which was abnormal.
 
Maddie was like an open book, everything deliciously exposed for him to see.
 
Not now, however; her features were guarded and that bothered him.

She gave a curt nod.
 
“Okay.”