Fire In Her Eyes (11 page)

Walking into my room, I’m shocked to see her lying in my bed. She asks me why I wasn’t here. Has there ever been a more loaded question? I wanted to be here for her, but I just couldn’t handle what Dylan said to me. I can’t get over the fact this is all my fault. If I had stayed away from her, she wouldn’t be going through anything at the moment.

I tell her I had things on my mind, which is true, but I feel so guilty for what happened I just couldn’t be here with her. She tells me her mind is pretty blank and I cringe in the darkness. I’ve got to stop feeling sorry for myself. Harley needs me to be sane a
nd level-headed. Not this fucked
up mess I have become over the past two days.

Thunder sounds and lightning flashes, and of course Harley whimpers. I wouldn’t be surprised if the girl was afraid of her own shadow at this point. Now I feel even guiltier. I guess all I can do now is help her through this and when the summer is over we go our separate ways. No need to stay in her life if I’m the reason she keeps getting hurt.

“Spencer, will you hold me? You haven’t touched me since...before,” comes her soft voice. It sounds almost broken and it pulls on my heart strings. God, this is almost more than I can bear.

“Yeah, baby girl.” I’m not really sure how to go about this; maybe just slow and easy. I know she knows I’m going to touch her, but I still see my mom’s face when I touched her after. You can’t get rid of that kind of thing. It lives with you forever.

I walk from the doorway slowly and climb onto the bed as gently as I can. She is curled into a ball on the other side. I can just make out her eyes and they are wide and scared. My heart clenches. “Maybe I shouldn’t,” I say, staying stock still. “No, please. I need you to. I ju
st want to feel normal for five
minutes.” I can’t see the tears, but I hear them in her voice. There goes my damn h
eart again.

I lay down slowly till I’m a hair’s breadth away from touching her. I hear her breathing get faster. I almost back out, but if this is what she wants, then I have to go through with it. I slip my hand through her long red locks, past her neck, until I reach her shoulder, which I wrap my arm around. I feel the flinch and I feel like I’m going to fucking cry. It shouldn’t be like this between us. I will hate that fucker until my last breath for what he did to us.

I pull her body until it’s curled around my side. This is where she should always be. She is safe and protected here. For as long as I am around her, I won’t let anything happen again. I know I said I would let her go at the end of the summer or whenever she is better, and I will. I just can’t help this over-protective streak I have for her now.

It’s not long before I hear her soft steady breaths. I love that she trusted me enough to help her sleep.
Not that I deserve that trust.

Chapter 14

Harley

I see him hovering over me. It’s dark, but I can still tell that it’s Dylan. He’s looking down at me with death in his eyes. I know this time that he’s going to end me. He’s not going to let me get away. I feel him shift and know that any second that knife is going to be sinking into my flesh.

My eyes pop open and I see the sun peeking in through the windows. I’m confused about where I am. This isn’t my room. I feel whatever is on top of me move, and I let out a blood-curdling scream. He’s in my house now, there are people here. He won’t get away with it this time. I hear a thump on the floor, and I jump up and race out of the room. I trip over a baseball in the floor and fall to the ground. Dylan grabs my ankle and I scream again. I start kicking my other leg out and nail him in the shoulder.

I’m forcing myself not to look back at him in fear that I will become frozen. He lets my ankle go and I race to the door, throwing it open. My dad is running down the hallway with his 9 mm. “What’s wrong, Harley?”

I’m out of breath so I point into the room. He nods and slowly walks into it with the gun raised. He takes one look in there and lowers his gun. “What happened, Spencer?”

Spencer? Oh, shit. It all comes racing back to me after that. I fell asleep with Spencer last night because I was scared. What a way to repay him for being there for me. I don’t think I will ever stop messing up. “Why don’t we ask Harley? I need some ice for my shoulder.” I hear him let out a grunt and my dad’s face cringes. “She kicked me hard enough to dislocate my shoulder.” He sounds grim.

My dad turns to me and says, “What had you so scared that you dislocated Spencer’s shoulder?”

I feel myself get mad, and I’m talking
MAD
. It comes out of nowhere and almost knocks me over with its intensity. “What had me so scared? Are you fucking serious right now? I got raped, Dad! I’m scared of my own goddamn shadow!” I’m screaming at him. I know shouldn’t be, it’s not his fault. I just can’t help it.

“I know that, honey. I just don’t see what you have to be so scared of. No one in this house would ever hurt you, least of all Spencer.” He walks into the room and seconds later he and Spencer walk out. They head past me and I catch Spencer’s eyes. I flinch inside to see the pain there. What have I done?

I lean up against the wall and slide down to the floor. I hug my knees. Before I even lay my head on them, I’m crying. They are silent tears, but they still rack my body. It’s all too much for me. I can’t deal with what happened to me. I can’t deal with all the looks of pity I keep getting. I don’t want their pity.

I hear someone walk into the hallway and look up at my dad. There is that anger again, with it, I see the pity. I open my mouth before I even think about it. Oh, how I wish I could take it back. “Don’t worry, Dad, I’m not going to off myself like Mom did.”

The color drains out of his face. I feel even more like a piece of shit on someone’s shoe. “Your mom was a very selfish woman, Harley. She killed herself because she went and got pregnant by another man. He didn’t want her and all of her ready-made kids. She knew that I wouldn’t stay with her after I found out. It was too much for her.” I feel my blood freeze in my veins. He had never told me before why she had done it. I knew that she left him a note, which the police found in the car. “You are stronger than that. You wouldn’t do that to the people who love you. So don’t ever compare yourself to your mother again!” With that said, he stormed off down the hallway.

I stand up slowly. I have all these feelings running around me. Emotions I don’t want to feel. I just want them to go away. So I do the onl
y thing I can think of. I run.

*****

I go to the only place they wouldn’t expect me to go: my mother’s grave. I look at it in a whole new light. How can you just abandon three kids like that? Well, four, really. I still love her. I mean, she
is
my mother, but I have lost all respect that I ever had for her. I had always thought she was mentally ill or something, not that she was extremely selfish.

I’m sitting against her head stone with my head buried in my knees when the smell of smoke reaches me. I quickly look up into dark green eyes. I let out a gasp because he was not at all who I was expecting. Mason is leaning up against my car, which is parked about ten feet away. I have never really just looked at him before. I actually feel a little jealous of Lucy. His brown hair is short on the sides and back but on top he wears it in a faux hawk. I have to say, he pulls the look off well. He has a little stubble growth on his jaw, and his face is wearing that serious mask that he is known for. He has gauges in both of his ears and a beautiful tattoo of a rose peeking out from under his shirt sleeve. He is wearing a graphic tee shirt and low rise jeans.

God, why have I never noticed how hot he is?

“Didn’t expect to see me, did you?” He asks. He voice is beautiful, deep, dark and enchanting. “No,” I whisper. Strangely, I am way more surprised than afraid. I don’t know why he is here, but I don’t feel threatened by him.

“Lucy called. Said they couldn’t find you for hours. I don’t like Lucy to be upset. So, if you could let someone know where you are, then I will kindly get out of your hair.” Okay, hot or not. He’s a fucking dick.

“If I tell them, then they will come here. I don’t want any of them right now. They look at me with pity. They smother me. I just can’t take it right now,” I whisper again. I don’t know why I’m telling him this. It kind of just slipped out. When he doesn’t say anything, I think he left. When I look up, he is still there, staring at me intentl
y. “I’ll tell them you’re okay.
You stay up here as long as you need. I got your back.” Somehow that sounds like a promise. I expect him to leave then, but he walks over to me and sits down.

I look over at him and am shocked when I notice
t
he small smile gracing his full lips. He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear and I don’t even flinch. His touch feel
s nice, but he’s not my angel.

Spencer

My shoulder hurts like a mother fucker. I keep going over and over in my mind what I could have done to scare her so bad. I was sleeping and before I know it I’m on the floor. Again. I could hear her scream and try to run out of the room. I grabbed for her ankle on impulse and when she fell to the ground, I about had a heart attack. Then her foot came flying at me and I felt and heard my shoulder pop.

I popped my shoulder back into place, just to lessen the pain. When Richard led me out of the room, the fear in Harley’s eyes was just too much to stand. I guess I’m sleeping alone from now on.

“So, what exactly happened?” Richard asks me from over by the sink. I lift my head up off the table and look at him. “We were asleep, and the next thing I know, I’m on the damn floor and she’s trying to run out the door screaming. I didn’t mean to trip her to the ground, but I was worried she was going to hurt herself or something.”

He looks thoughtful for a moment before saying anything to that. “She probably had a nightmare about what happened, woke up and felt you touching her, and thought it was still real. She’s going to
be
off for a while, but I think she will pull through it. She’s too strong not to.” He shakes his head and rubs his hands up and down his face. “It kills me to see her this way. I wasn’t expecting the anger. She made me spit out why her mom killed herself. I wasn’t ever going to tell her. No child deserves to hear that kind of thing.”

“Well, how would you react? She had her body violated and her trust stolen from her. It’s a fucking wonder she isn’t more fucked up then she is.” I rotate my shoulder around before the muscles get stiff and won’t move at all.

“I know. It’s just so frustrating. I thought she was safe here. We have lived here her entire life.” He slams his fists down on the counter, making me jump, along with several dishes. “I mean, that little prick had been under our noses for years. I would never have thought he would do something like this.”

“Yeah, well, how do you think I feel? He had been one of my best friends most of my life. I didn’t see it in him either.” The guilt eats holes in me. Why couldn’t I have seen it?
 
I could have stopped this whole situation.

Mom walks into the room, looking sad. “Harley, okay?”
 
She asks softy.

“She may be messed up now, Mom, but she won’t be that way forever. We will get her through this.” I know we will. We have to. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if Ha
rley never got her fire back.

*****

She has been gone for hours. I’m starting to realize what she went through yesterday while I was gone. I shouldn’t have left, but it was either that or sit around here freaking the fuck out. I never have done well with feeling like that.

Lucy, Carter, Paige, Dean, and Liam are sitting around the living room with me. We are waiting for Mason to call Lucy back. I always knew there was something about that guy. When we called Lucy to see if she knew where Harley was, she said she’d get Mason and his boys to find her. Apparently the rumors are true. Mason is the leader of a gang. I didn’t think he had it in him. He’s not big or anything. Nor does he look the least bit threatening.

When Lucy’s cell phone rings, I jump up out of my chair. “Hey,” she says. “Umm...okay?” Pause. “So you’re not going to tell me?” Long pause. “Fine.” Short pause. “I’m not mad. You do what you need to do. Excuse me if we are her family. She doesn’t even know you.” With that, she hangs up without saying goodbye.

She takes a deep breath before looking up at me. She looks madder than hell. What the hell? “Mason says that he found her. He also said that she doesn’t want to see any of us right now.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Oh, and that he is going to s
t
ay with her.”