Never Loved Read online

  I should be freezing beneath their frigid glare.

  So it’s weird that I’m kind of not.

  “He in trouble, this brother of yours?” he asks, and though I feel that old urge to lie for him, I somehow escape it.

  “His name’s Tommy. Tommy Becker.”

  “Uh-huh,” frigid glare says, as if the name means nothing.

  I see his eyes narrow just a little, however.

  “So if you know where he is…”

  “Let me guess: I tell you, and you go find him.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “And you don’t see any problem with it?”

  “Nope.”

  “He might be in the middle of a crack den, but you’re just gonna walk right up like you did here and knock on a door that probably isn’t there.”

  “Well, maybe I won’t just walk up,” I say, but even I can hear how foolish and weak and unprepared I sound. It’s not a surprise that he then does what he does, yet somehow I find myself a little flummoxed anyway—probably because he stands up. Anyone would be alarmed at seeing him stand up. He’s enormous sitting down, but on his feet he’s fricking huge. He looms over me like some stone monolith, swallowing everything in his shadow, and then to cap it off he says:

  “I tell you what, girl. How about you hop on, and I’ll take you to where he is.”

  Some of the guys around him laugh. Hell, he seems to be laughing a little, too. He even slaps the back of his bike like the punch line to this whole crazy joke—he knows I’m never going to climb up on that thing. Everyone knows I’m not going to climb up on that thing. I’m a soft little kid, in corduroy.

  Though for once in my life, I don’t want to be. I want to say yes, just to show him. Just to make up for all the times when I went back to my room and changed and changed and changed until my clothes were suitable, or stayed silent because silence was golden and talking back got you the basement. I don’t have to stay silent here, if I really don’t want to.

  But that only makes it more disappointing when my sad little mouth leaks out, “I can’t do that.”

  In fact, it’s so disappointing that he seems to catch some of it. He snorts, of course, as though he expected that answer all along. Yet beneath that snort I think I see something else, just sort of drifting around down there. A bitterness, I think, that carries through his otherwise amused and rather withering words.

  “Afraid of bikes, huh?”

  “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “And maybe afraid of me?”

  “I’d have to be insane to be anything else.”

  “Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”

  “Think it’s pretty obvious.”

  “Try me.”

  “Mostly it’s the size.”

  He makes a face like Yeah, that makes sense.

  But the shadow of that odd disappointment is still there.

  “What can I say? I’m a big guy.”

  “And maybe the tattoos.”

  “I sure got them.”

  “And the hair.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  He runs a hand over that thick black stripe right down the center, like some lady at a salon showing off her new hairdo. And it’s funny; it really is funny. It’s so funny that the assembled crowd laughs again to see him do it. This is probably the kind of show he does all the time, and I’m sure none of them ever question it.

  But I’m questioning it. I can still see that serious undercurrent beneath his jokey manner, and it makes me answer him in a more impassioned way than I intend. “No, no, it’s not that at all,” I say, though it’s only afterward that I realize how true that sentiment is.

  Yeah, he’s scary as fuck. Yeah, the thought of riding off with him on that bike almost freezes my blood. But if I’m honest with myself about liking that hair…I can’t exactly say no. I do like it. I like a lot of things about him, in a way I don’t fully understand. He should ping just about every aggressive-man fear I have, but every time I try to think of him that way, something else happens instead. I see the contrast between those black stripes and his pale blue eyes, and the way he waits for my answer in this actually interested manner, and how strange all of his clothes are and that flash of bitterness or weariness in him again, and then suddenly there it is:

  The word handsome.

  Dear God, I think he might be handsome, though I’m not going to stick around long enough to find out for sure.

  “I’ve got to go,” I blurt out, but I immediately regret it. I should have just turned and run really quickly—not given him warning. Now he’s got time to punish me as I ever so slowly start to walk away. Oh, look at the little college girl. She’s frightened, he’ll say, and then someone will throw a rock at me. All of them will throw rocks at me, until I’m a bruised and bloody pulp on the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper. Idiot Student Finds Angry Biker Handsome, I imagine, though I’ve no idea why I’m doing it.

  That doesn’t even make any sense. People don’t write reports about girls randomly noticing attractiveness. They write reports about girls being murdered, so really, that should be my headline. Idiot Student Has Arms and Legs Pulled Off by Handsome Biker, I try, but I can’t help noticing that the word handsome is still in there.

  God, I wish it wasn’t still in there.

  It’s hard enough as it is to walk to my car without glancing back. Putting the word handsome in there makes it nearly impossible. My eyes want me to double-check, and not just because I probably hallucinated how good-looking he is. They want me to check because I’m almost positive I can feel his gaze pressing into my back. I can feel it the way people in books say they can feel it, even though I usually snort and roll my eyes when I get to stuff like that. You can’t sense someone’s stare in real life. That’s just not the way it works.

  So how come I’m right?

  I dare to glance up once I’m inside the safety of my car, expecting to see him going about his business. Maybe he’ll be in the middle of some awful drug thing, I think. Maybe he’ll be making some kid pay for wanting to do something other than come right home after school. But he isn’t doing either of those things—not even close.

  Instead I see those frostbitten eyes still steadily on me, as everyone around him returns to their rowdy and brutal ballet.

  Chapter 2

  I wake to the sound of banging, though I can’t quite place it at first. My half-dreaming mind tells me it’s my brother jumping on the bed, and for one delirious moment I react to that and not the reality. I have an almost-eaten piece of pizza in my hand, and I hurl it in his direction.

  Before realizing that he isn’t here. The banging is coming from some other source—road work maybe, or a rowdy neighbor. My brother’s building is a complete and utter shithole—despite our hefty inheritance—so someone having an almighty fight at five a.m. isn’t out of the question. People have fights in the hallways all the time, which just makes me wonder what I’m doing here. At some point, I have to accept that Tommy isn’t my responsibility anymore. We’re no longer little kids locked in the basement together.

  He’s a dog, suddenly free of its collar, who now likes to go out and do all the things he was once denied, and if I keep trying to stop him from hurting himself, I’m going to end up being murdered. Maybe pretty soon. Maybe more than pretty soon. Maybe in thirty fricking seconds, because now that I’m conscious I can tell the banging isn’t coming from another apartment. It’s coming from the direction of Tommy’s flimsy door, and it’s much, much worse than I initially thought.

  I can actually see the wood vibrating every time someone hammers on it. The hinges are making this terrible squeaking sound, and in a second they’re going to give entirely. Just a little more effort and my murderer will easily punch his way in, and then what? I’ll have to defend myself from some drug dealer using half a slice of ham and pineapple. He’ll demand money I don’t have and want revenge for things I haven’t done, and I won’t even be able to explain because my mouth has
gone all dry and weird.

  My tongue is practically stapled to the roof of my mouth. Standing is completely out of the question, though I know I have to do it. If I want to make a run for it, I need my legs. I’ll never make it down the fire escape without them unless I somehow create an elevator out of a pizza box in the next couple of minutes—which seems very unlikely.

  I can barely come up with a sane plan, never mind a complicated one involving contraptions. I’m actually considering jumping out of a four-story window, so it’s probably a good thing that the banging abruptly stops. In fact, it stops so abruptly it almost seems as if they’re trying to make a point:

  Don’t fling yourself out of a window over imaginary danger.

  And they’re right, too. I don’t even know if the person outside is bad or good. Maybe they just really want to talk to Tommy. Perhaps they have pressing issues. Hell, maybe it’s Tommy himself, bleeding and half-naked and missing his keys. The very least I can do is check before I take any drastic action.

  Though once I have, I wish I hadn’t.

  It’s the big guy.

  Somehow, impossibly, it’s the big guy. I can’t even blink and look back and turn him into someone else. There’s absolutely no way to mistake that haircut, or those tattoos, or the eyes that suddenly burn through wood and glass. They’re real and they’re right there, and the second he looks my heart tries to suffocate me. It just jerks right up into my throat until all I can think is:

  He won’t have to strangle me with his bare hands.

  He’ll just look at me and I’ll choke to death on my own internal organs.

  “I know you’re in there, girl.”

  Or maybe he’ll simply speak and turn me to stone. It certainly feels as if this has happened, after that voice booms through the door. My body petrifies and melts all at the same time, and not just because of the sound of him. There are his words, too—good Lord, those words he said.

  He knows I’m in here. He knows the way maniacs know someone is hiding in a cupboard as they stalk around the house with a big knife. And if I don’t open up soon, he’s going to do the same kinds of terrible things that maniacs do. I can tell he is. That has to be the subtext of a statement like that, and even if it isn’t, there is another problem.

  He has something slung over his shoulders—something that I first mistook for a bag of some type, or maybe a pool cue. He’s certainly carrying it that way, at least. The thing is practically draped around his neck, and he’s hooked both arms around either end. I’ve seen countless guys do the same thing in bars, while waiting for their turn at the table.

  Only it isn’t a slight stick of wood in a dark covering.

  It is a person.

  It is Tommy.

  He has Tommy draped over his shoulders.

  “So you gonna let me in or what?”

  Is he serious? He sounds serious, but then again, serious is probably his default state. I can’t imagine anyone hitting whimsy with a voice like that, so maybe this is just his idea of a joke. He doesn’t really expect me to do it.

  Surely he doesn’t expect me to do it.

  “I ain’t standing out here all day.”

  Oh, God, he does expect me to do it. He thinks I’m going to just open the door and let him waltz inside with my dead brother in his arms. And then after he’s done with the waltzing, he probably imagines I’m going to lie down for my own brutal stabbing. Maybe he’ll even ask for my help when my leg bones prove too tough to saw through.

  Though I know I’m just being ridiculous now.

  And a second later, he confirms it.

  “Look, girl. It took me a deal of time to fish this moron out of the jam he was in. So if you could just let me dump him inside and get along with my business, I’d appreciate it.”

  I’m not sure what to do after he’s spoken—mainly because my murdering theory is now looking dubious, but also because the world just tilted on its axis a bit. Has he actually gone out and found my brother and brought him back for me? It seems as though he has, but I’ve got to do a bit of maneuvering in my head to make the idea fit. I have to set aside the part of my brain labeled things my father said were true and get at the part that is honestly just concerned with my own safety.

  And even after I’ve succeeded, I can’t stop myself from asking.

  “Is he…is he okay?”

  “What am I, his personal physician?”

  “I just want to know if he’s alive.”

  “Of course he’s alive. Fuck me, girl. You think I’d bring a dead body to your door?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what this is,” I say, but the truth is, I do know. It’s getting clearer by the second—not to mention more embarrassing. My face is kind of hot by the time he speaks again, and that heat intensifies after he has.

  “This is me, getting real tired in the general shoulder area.”

  I can imagine. My brother isn’t a small guy, and he’s been holding him like that for a long time now. He probably carried him up the stairs that way, even though I can barely make it with a bag of groceries in my arms. Once I got to the top step, I needed to have a bit of a lie down.

  But this guy…

  This guy is really, really strong.

  And really, really not what I had imagined in any way at all. I almost feel bad for all of those he’s going to kill me thoughts, but then…guys like him aren’t supposed to rescue people’s brothers. Or if they do feel like rescuing random brothers, they’re not supposed to do it for women like me. They’re supposed to do it for a best friend, or maybe a frail, waiflike girl called something dreamy and sexy at the same time.

  Saffron, I think.

  Guys like him do stuff for girls named Saffron.

  Not girls named Beatrix. Nobody does anything for girls named Beatrix—not even famous ones who’ve just finished writing about cheeky bunnies and naughty hedgehogs. It’s just not the way things are, and yet here he is with my rescued brother wrapped around his neck. It doesn’t seem real. It can’t be real. No one would buy this in a book.

  Only his withering attitude makes it remotely believable.

  “Oh, hey, don’t mind me. I’ll just die of exhaustion out here,” he says, yet even that doesn’t have the punch it should have. It reminds me of the way he spoke about his hair, all full of this humor that I hardly recognize and feel unaccountably thirsty for. I think of my dad saying Stop being a smart-arse over the slightest hint of any kind of sarcasm, and then I hear this guy, and something inside me kind of sizzles.

  I feel like laughing giddily, even though I should be frightened or mad.

  And when I answer, it’s with words I don’t expect.

  “If I let you in, you’re just going to hand him over and go, right?” I ask, but only silence follows. A long, long silence that makes me think he probably is about to stab me through the door—or at least it does until I check the peephole again.

  I can’t really maintain that illusion after I have. His expression just doesn’t go with stabbing. His whole demeanor doesn’t go with stabbing. Instead he looks sort of panicky, and maybe as if he’s trying to work his way out of the worst puzzle ever. There’s a crease between his brows a mile deep, and when he finally unearths the answer, he doesn’t seem satisfied with it.

  He looks as if he wants to kill his own words as they emerge.

  “I ain’t gonna hurt you. I wouldn’t ever hurt you,” he says, and suddenly the urge to open the door is so strong I can actually feel it jabbing me between the shoulder blades.

  And then he goes and adds this:

  “I could just take him to the hospital, if that would make you more comfortable.”

  He isn’t even being sarcastic, I can tell. His sarcasm is so odd and distinctive I could probably find it in the dark just by feeling with my feet, and this isn’t it. This is him offering to do twice as much stuff just so I don’t have to be afraid—a concept so startling and new to me that I move without my own permission. His kindness just
jolts me into it.

  “No. No, you don’t have to do that. Hang on, okay? I’m opening the door,” I say, as I wrestle with the chain. The thing is so rusted I can barely get it to budge, and even after I do, there are other problems. The door itself barely wants to move, either. The wood is incredibly warped, to the point where I have to put my foot on the frame, then yank—which proves to be a mistake. It gets the door open, true. But it also gives him a very weird second impression of me. I nearly pinwheel when it pops free and come extremely close to landing on my ass.

  In fact, I come so close he puts a hand out.

  He puts a hand out as though to stop me from falling. He rescued my brother, felt the need to promise no harm would come to me, made a face that forced my heart to drop three feet, and now here he is nearly breaking my fall. And if all of those things were not bizarre enough, then follows the strangest moment of tension I’ve ever experienced with another human being.

  He just looks at me. He looks and looks and looks as though he isn’t sure what he’s seeing. It’s as if I’ve somehow turned into something weird, like a ghost of myself. A long-lost ghost of someone he lost two hundred years ago, even though he’s clearly no more than thirty and obviously not from the nineteenth century.

  Unless the nineteenth century was a lot more punk rock than people thought. I don’t know—maybe Charles Dickens was secretly part of a penny-farthing gang and spent his spare time terrorizing most of Victorian London. Maybe racing stripes on your head were the in thing back then, and we just don’t know because the queen had them painted over in portraits with really terrible hair. Or maybe…maybe I’m just going insane.

  I must be, I must be.

  After all, I’m looking at him in the exact same way.