Light Unshaken (Unveiled #2) (7 page)

chapter eleven

Unstable

I thought lying low for a week would help. Thought the distraction of classes might overshadow the images clawing into my thoughts every time I closed my eyes. But the second I pulled into the parking spot across from the center, the dark memories seeped into the car and held me against my seat.

Don’t cower.
I reached for the door handle. Another invasive flash tightened my muscles. The recurring nightmares I’d wrestled since it happened flooded in. I gripped the seat edge and rehearsed Jaycee’s sticky notes, but there was only one voice I wanted to hear. One person I needed. I grabbed my phone.

“Riley Preston, leave a message.” The high-pitched beep ricocheted off the car hood.

My jaw wouldn’t work.

The note he’d written stared at me from the dashboard with words it was far past time to make my own.
You’re braver than you think you are.

I hung up without leaving a message and straightened the single pearl along the necklace Dad gave me. I’d kept my promise to him. Found myself. A sense of calling. And my internship was tied to it all. I wouldn’t let those thugs who attacked me undermine that promise. Staying away from the center for a while sufficed as a compromise after Trey’d carped about my decision not to file a police report, but a week was long enough.

Breathing in, I lifted my chin and opened the door.
Alone or not, you can do this.

Trey peered up from a filing cabinet right as I stepped into the office. “Welcome back.”

“Thanks.” At my desk, I dropped my purse in my drawer and appraised the piles overtaking my workstation. “Did you survive without me?”

A. J. passed through the office on his way to the basketball court, a kid hanging from each arm. “Like you have to ask.”

Trey’s throaty laugh seconded A. J.’s response.

Grinning over the pair of them, I thumbed through my inbox. “Any word from my last grant request?” The flaps of a tri-folded letter lifted open from underneath a stack of bills. I scanned the first two sentences for the foreboding,
unfortunately,
but it wasn’t there. My heart jumped. “Trey, I can’t believe this. They’re interested.”

“Were.”

I looked up at him. “What?”

“They
were
interested. Even came by earlier in the week. I thought all was a go, but it seems an anonymous call convinced them otherwise.” He eased the classroom door closed.

Anonymous? My hand fell to my lap. “Those guys got to them, didn’t they? What’d they say?” And how in the world did they know who we were contacting?

Trey slumped on the corner of his desk with the same heaviness pressing me deeper into my chair. “That there’d been a rape on the premises.”

Heat climbed my face. “What?”

“And if the staff can’t assure their own safety, how can they provide a stabilizing environment for the kids?” He folded his arms. “It’s a compelling argument.”

Blood hammered in my ears. “It’s manipulation. And a lie.”

“Doesn’t matter. The damage is already done.”

I crumpled the letter into a ball. “I can’t believe I’ve been lying low for nothing. These guys have some balls. And does the foundation live in a bubble? Obviously there’s going to be danger and instability. That’s why we’re here. To help. Do they think you picked this neighborhood for the view?”

Trey crossed the room and set a calming hand on my tense shoulder.

My chest deflated into the back of the chair. “They didn’t even give us a chance to explain what really happened.”

“Which is why we probably wouldn’t have wanted to partner with them anyway.”

I studied his honest eyes. “Do you ever lose hope?”

He craned his neck as he chuckled. “Not if I can help it.” He squeezed my shoulder. “It’s all about keeping perspective.”

“I’ll be sure to try that.”

His laughter followed him into the classroom.

I didn’t care who those creeps thought they were. This wasn’t over. I lugged my notepad out from my drawer and keyed the last organization from my grant list into Google. The Success Foundation. Right here in Portland. Surely, they’d understand.

I said a quick prayer while the printer inked the page with my plea to invest in the center’s mission. Setting the envelope in the outgoing mailbox, I exhaled a prayer.
Please be the one.

After spending almost an hour clearing a path to the bottom of my desk, I stretched my chair’s tilt mechanism to the max. An echo of A. J.’s banter with the boys out back joined the laughter Trey was instigating in the other room. In the middle of the two, I took in the sounds that made this home for all of us. We were going to be okay. We had to be.

I stopped inside the doorway to the classroom on my way to file a stack of paperwork. The kids’ energy pushed the room’s borders the same way their precious smiles pushed the ones around my heart. Leaning into the jamb, I shook my head and grinned.
Perspective.

Laughs and hollers erupted from a group of boys at a middle table. A single face ushered into focus. The innocent smiles in the classroom clashed against the image of the sinister ones that had branded me with wordless taunts.

The papers in my hand hit the floor and sprawled across the tiles. In one paralyzing sweep, the fear I’d banished in the car ripped straight through the hope that my nightmares were over.

Heat flooded my cheeks with the memory of the attacker’s hot breath on my face. I cupped the base of my head. The imprint of the brick’s abrasive texture crawled over my skin as if it were happening all over again.

The room slanted. What was he doing here? Did they send him to make sure I kept my mouth shut? To find an inside way to finish what they started? Is that how they were finding out who our grant contacts were?

I clutched the trim to keep my balance. Something urged me not to stare, but I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t move.

Centered in a group of kids his age, the guy who left me in his friends’ hands that night laughed and joked as any normal high schooler would.

He shucked off an oversized black jacket and spun the flattened bill of a bright red ball cap to the side of his head. While one of his friends dropped a beat, he drummed a pair of pencils over a notebook. And I simply stared. Not at a hardened assailant. At a regular teenager.

He glanced up from the table. His chair dropped to all four legs. He looked away, his olive cheeks turning a shade darker than his hat. Yet even in such a short connection, he couldn’t hide the shame harbored inside eyes too young to carry it.

The pull of two irreconcilable images gripped my heart in a game of tug-of-war I didn’t want to play. I had to get out of there.

The door clipped my shoulder on my rush into the hallway. Bracing the water fountain with one hand, I dabbed cool water on my face with the other.
Breathe.
But the trauma from that night kept closing in—the anger, the fear. It backed me into the wall.
Brave?
My cell trembled in my hand. If I could just hear his voice, maybe I’d believe it.

“Riley Preston. Leave a message.”

Dang it.
I ended the call before it beeped and shoved my bangs out of my eyes, hating that he was so far away, so unreachable.

His ringtone jarred the silence. I flinched, swiped the screen. “Riley.”

Blaring music assaulted my eardrum. I lifted the phone away.

“Em?” he hollered. “I’m at a concert. Too loud in here. Can I call you later?”

An inward wince wrung all sound from my voice.

“Em? You all right?”

Was I? “I’m fine.” My heart followed my foot down the wall to the floor. “Everything’s fine.”

“Later, okay?” he yelled once more.

Always later. I hung up. The stress of everything going on weighed my phone to my side.

Someone approached from the opposite corner. I flinched again. The same alarm from seeing him in the classroom fueled the heat already spreading through my body.

He raised his palms. “It’s not what you think.” His accent lined up with the Puerto Rican flag tattooed on his left shoulder. He eased closer.

My pulse thundered.

I backed away, but he kept approaching. “T went too far. I’m not like . . . I just wanna—”

I turned to run and fumbled straight into A. J.

He steadied me by my wrists, moved me behind him, and pinned the kid against the wall with a forearm to his throat. “If you
ever
so much as
think
about touching her . . .”

The corners of the kid’s eyes sagged the same way they had the night I first saw him.

I grabbed A. J.’s heaving shoulders without understanding why. “Stop.”

A. J. slackened his hold, an undeniable warning still radiating in every movement.

The kid hunched over his knees until he regained his air supply. Straightening, he flicked a terse nod at A. J., like he respected his reaction or something.

Trey appeared at the other end of the hall. “Dee,” he yelled.

The kid looked between all three of us, then pounded through the side exit, head down.

“Dee?” Trey called after him again, but he didn’t slow.

A spray can fell out of his backpack onto the threshold. The door swung behind him and caught it in the jamb. Clashing metals clanked into each other. The
bang
shuddered down the hall with waves of a question that wouldn’t let me go. What was he doing here?

chapter twelve

Rewritten

I bolted straight up in bed. Dampened sheets fell to my lap. Another nightmare. Same as the last two nights after running into Dee in that hallway.

Vivid memories of the attack clung to the shadows in my room and stole the ease of falling asleep that I’d found in Riley’s arms all summer.

A month apart confirmed the days would move forward, with or without my heart. I’d learned that much last year. But now, even dreams lost the solace they used to provide.

My cell’s blue notification light blinked against the white ceiling. I tucked the phone under my pillow to block the glow. Not sure why I bothered. Jaycee had probably grown accustomed to seeing it as much as I had.

Most mornings greeted me the same way. My phone by my side, waiting to relay another of Riley’s apologetic messages for returning my call after I’d already gone to sleep.

I bundled my blankets and strained to find a hint of his faded scent left on them.

Jaycee reached across her nightstand and tapped her halogen lamp to life. “Don’t worry, you guys will figure it out.”

“Not if his schedule has anything to do with it.” How was he keeping up with these insane hours?

Jaycee slipped her feet out of the covers and untwisted an eye mask from her hair. “It’s just gonna take a little time. Long distance relationships are hard.”

People shouldn’t be able to wake up coherent enough to rattle off adages.

“Thanks for pointing that out.” I trudged to my dresser.

My phone buzzed. Jaycee pinched her lips together, probably biting back some loaded comment, and flitted out of the room to give me some privacy.

“You’ll never guess who I met with,” Riley said the second I answered. He waited, suspense mounting. “Tim McGraw! Can you believe it?”

Of course I could. “That’s awesome.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t take your call last night. Jess managed to get me an interview with Tim, and I only had a half hour to drain him of advice for an up and coming artist.”

Giddiness would’ve overpowered his voice if shards of exhaustion weren’t splintering through. “This is crazy, right? Sometimes, I’ll be at the studio and think, this can’t be real. This can’t really be happening.”

“It’s not crazy. You’re where you belong.” I slid into my desk chair and curled the corners of my textbook pages back and forth. If I could, I’d be there with him.

“Em?”

“Hmm?”

“I asked how work was going?”

I shifted in my seat. It killed me not to be able to talk to him about what happened. It was hard enough trying to keep it on the down low from people I barely knew. Hiding it from my best friend was pure torture. But I loved him too much. He needed to focus on his career, not me.

“We’re still in the red, but I’m hoping we have a potential grant lead.” As long as those creeps didn’t find a way to sabotage this one too.

“Well, if you and Trey have anything to do with it, it’ll work out.”

His words weaved a knot in my throat. If I failed these kids, I’d—

“Listen, I gotta run. Jess just pulled up. We have a breakfast date.”

My heel slipped off the seat. “A date?”

“With some bigwigs. Business stuff.”

Stuff that was bonding them. The knot swelled and expanded down my chest.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” Where was my voice? I clamped my hand over my knee to stop my foot from tapping a hole in the carpet. Useless. I pushed off the chair and paced instead. “It’s just . . . how closely do you and
Jess
work together exactly?”

In spite of my gritted teeth attempting to hold it back, the question and its implications sputtered out with all the pent-up emotions tangled around them.

“Emma.” Audible disappointment raked over the sound of my name. “Do you honestly think Jessica—or anyone else for that matter—could hold a candle next to you?”

A candle only burned for so long.

Someone slammed on a car horn in the background. He heaved a sigh. “I gotta go.”

And I had to stay.

Phone on my desk, I kept pacing. I trusted him. It wasn’t that. As hard as it was to be apart, he was where he needed to be. He deserved to pursue his dreams, deserved to thrive in them. But what if those dreams ended up distancing him from an old life he’s outgrowing?

If Trey’s marriage fell apart after decades, was it naive to think our relationship would make it through a separation this early on? It’d made sense to stay, but was my time at the center really making a difference anyway?

Pacing didn’t silence the unanswered questions. Grasping for distraction, I grabbed the lonely guitar stashed in the corner of the room and sat on my bed.

It used to bring me comfort. Now, it felt out of place no matter how I positioned it across my lap. Its ease, lost. My fingers screeched against the strings and dragged down the face of the wood. Maybe music wasn’t the best diversion either.

I resorted to the unemotional companion of studying instead. Only a half hour into prepping for a statistics exam, I shut my notes inside my textbook along with more reminders of how indifferent odds could be.

A soft patter on the window multiplied into a steady flow of raindrops tap-dancing down the pane. I stared at the reflection trapped in the glass. The same emptiness from last year bordered dangerously close to reclaiming a hold over my eyes. What was wrong with me?

The bedroom door creaked open. I jumped in my seat.

Jaycee pranced in. “Enough with the books. It’s Friday.” She peeked at her cell. “Okay, I guess you can study a little longer, but we’re going out tonight.” She shook her finger at me before I could spout off my scripted objection. “And no buts.”

At this point, I’d try anything. I clambered up from my chair. “Where are we going?”

In front of the mirror, she fluffed out her hair. “Nuts and Jolts.”

The place Riley and I first met. Fabulous.

She fanned through her closet. “A night out with your friends is exactly what you need.”

“An extra-large chai won’t hurt either.” Surely, those delectable Indian spices could pass for some sort of therapy.

She tied a glittery scarf over her plain jean jacket and turned with a brown ankle boot in either hand. “It’ll be fun.”

Fun.
I mulled over the word and waited for it to settle into a place of familiarity. As long as I was with my friends, I could have fun. Even at Nuts and Jolts, right?

As usual, Jaycee seemed to interpret the expression on my face. She crossed the room, wrapped her arms around me from behind, and sank her chin onto my shoulder. “No one expected this to be easy for either of you.”

The deep, compassionate eyes looking at me in the mirror didn’t hold a hint of chastisement. “Just don’t lose sight of the things you know to be true.”

I stared past her, temporarily transported to the front of the airport. “That’s what he told me the day he left. Made me promise to trust his love no matter what. I never thought that’d be a hard promise to keep.” I pulled a teal sweater over my head and tried to tame my hair and my voice. “What if he doesn’t come back, Jae?”

She rubbed my arm. “I know things have changed, but not the ones that matter.”

What if you’re wrong?