Unraveling You (Unraveling You #1)(9)
Author: Jessica Sorensen

“Next time, it’s going to be my fist, asshole,” she says to him then reels around to me. “Are you okay?” She lowers my hands from my nose, wincing at the sight. “We need to get you to the nurse.”

“What did you do to him?” My voice sounds all nasally.

“I threw the basketball at his face.” She winks at me. “I told you I got your back, dude.”

I’m not sure how to respond. No one has ever had my back. Not even my brother and sister, but that wasn’t their fault. None of us could take care of ourselves at the time, let alone each other. It feels nice. More than nice. Nice is something new to me. Different. For a moment, I feel different.

And for a fleeting, life-changing moment, I’m kind of glad I didn’t take those pills this morning.

Chapter 3

Lyric

“So what happened?” is the first thing Ayden says when I approach his locker after school.

“Not much. I got detention for a few days, but the principal loves me and always goes easy on me.” I slide my backpack on. “What about you?”

He shrugs as he retrieves his bag out of his locker and unzips it. “Nothing, really. I went to the nurse. She put some ice on my nose then sent me on my way.”

I squint at his nose. “It looks really gnarly.”

He touches the brim of it and winces. “It feels really gnarly.” He removes a few textbooks out of his locker, stuffing them in his bag. “How much trouble do you think we’re going to be in when we get home?”

“You know, I’ve been putting a lot of thought into that,” I say as he slams his locker. “And I’ve come up with a plan.”

“A plan?” he questions as he secures his backpack onto his back. “What kind of plan?”

“Well, the best bet is to play Uncle Ethan right from the start, because he gets really uncomfortable over almost everything.” I link arms with him as we start down the busy hall. I’ve been touching him a lot today, and while I can tell it bothers him, I’m not going to stop until he asks me to. I like touching him. It feels like he’s mine, which makes me feel special. “If we can have him convinced that it was an accident right from the start, then we should be good to go when we get home.”

“It kind of was an accident,” he points out as we exit the doors and enter the deliciously warm sunlight.

“Yeah, but I kind of have a habit of doing stuff like this,” I explain as we cross the freshly mowed grass toward the loading area in front of the school. “You’ll get off the hook easily, but I might have to do some time.”

His arm flexes beneath my touch. “I’m not going to let you get into trouble over this—over me. I’ll make sure of that.”

“Aw, so you’re the hero type.” I playfully bump my shoulder into his. “Never would have guessed that about you.”

He comes so close to smiling. Just a little more joking, and I know I can make it happen.

I open my mouth to crack another joke, but snap my jaw shut when I spot the Gregory’s gigantic sedan parked amongst the other line of cars. “Crap.”

“What?” Ayden tracks my gaze to the driver’s seat where Aunt Lila is sitting. And in the passenger seat is my mother. “Okay, so now what do we do?”

I overdramatically bobble my head back. “Now, we go face the music.”

Aunt Lila is so grateful for my stepping in for Ayden that she actually starts to tear up. She seems heartbroken that someone would want to hurt him. She keeps saying to him, “You’ve already been through so much. This isn’t fair.” I can tell Ayden gets really uncomfortable with the waterworks. Thankfully, my mom intervenes and calms Lila down. Then, she turns around in her seat and lays my punishment on me.

The punishment is the stupidest thing ever, though. One week of cleaning my room and one week of hanging out with Ayden after school. Plus, I have to help out at the shelter on Thanksgiving. Like that’s a punishment. I have to clean my room anyway and the shelter thing is a tradition.

After we get home, I end up in Ayden’s room, sprawled on the bed with the door agape. Lila keeps coming in to check on us, as if she half expects to catch us naked and fondling each other. Fat chance that’ll happen. Even though Ayden is ridiculously adorable in a self-tortured artist, gothic, I’m-internally-tortured sort of way, I’m saving myself for someone who will capture my wild soul and tame it. I know I sound like a sap, but I blame it on my parents’ undying love story. Even after twenty years of marriage, they’re still ridiculously in love, so the bar for my own love story is set pretty high.

“Are you sure you two don’t want a snack?” Lila sticks her head into the room for the umpteenth time.

Ayden nods as he situates against the headboard, working on his English assignment. “I’m sure.”

She looks at me and I shrug. “I ate a buttload of cookies before I came up here.”

“Okay,” she says disappointedly then leaves us to get back to our homework.

The soft tune of “Cardiac Arrest” by Bad Suns flows from the stereo as Ayden continues to jot answers down, but. I’m more fixated on him than my assignment.

“So, did the gauges hurt when you got them?” I ask as I doodle thorny vines all over my math paper.

When he glances up from his paper, strands of his black hair hang in his grey eyes. “I don’t know. Probably about as bad as your ear piercings.”

I touch the rose earrings in my ears then kneel up on the mattress. “What about tattoos?”

“What about them?”

“Do you have any?”

“I’m only sixteen.”

“Yeah, so.” I arch my back as I stretch. “I bet you do, don’t you?” When he wavers, I immediately perk up. “Where are they?”

“There’s no they.” He sets down the pencil in the spine of the book and flexes his fingers like he has a cramp. “Just one.”

“Can I see it?” I eagerly move over to sit down beside him.

His expression plummets. “I don’t think …” He trails off when my mouth sinks. “Fine, I’ll show you, but only if you promise not to ask questions.”

I draw an X over my chest with my finger. “I promise.”

A nervous exhale escapes his lips as he reaches for the hem of his black T-shirt. Excitement bubbles inside me as he lifts it up and shows me his stomach then his side. Black ink stains his flesh in swirls and patterns that form a jagged circle. The tattoo doesn’t look professional by any means. In fact, it looks as though someone branded him with an iron rod then dumped ink into the wound.