Cowboy Villain Damsel Duel Read online

  My mystery girl’s eyes are welling up again. And damn it, her lip is quivering. The firm slap of paper hits my chest from a hand over my shoulder. I clutch it in my palm and crumple it, stuffing it in my pocket along with the cash I’m really glad Principal Lee didn’t find.

  “Saturday detention. I think maybe this is your first offense for being in a ladies room.” Principal Lee laughs at his own joke, and my mystery girl’s mouth turns down. I liked it better when I was the guy who made her laugh, not the one who repulsed her. I already passed on the cigar smoke remark; I can’t let two smart-ass opportunities slip by—it would be so unlike me.

  “Third, sir.” Mystery girl’s frown halts. I hold her stare, and curl up the right side of my lips. Her eyes widen, and I know she wants to stop me. I like that she wants to save me from making this worse, and that means this little moment we’re sharing is significant enough that she’s willing to.

  “What was that?” His cigar breath swirls at my neck. I wink at her warm amber eyes.

  “This is actually my third offense. For the bathroom thing, I mean.” His hand jerks my sweatshirt to the side and he steps up so we’re nearly nose to nose. “You just didn’t catch me the first two times.”

  I’m no longer looking at her so I can’t tell for sure, but I think she just laughed. I heard her breath, and I imagined the slight shake in her chest and shoulders. I bet she’s covering her mouth. I might not impress her, but damn, can I make her tears stop.

  “Well, then,” Principal Lee begins. His pissed-off icy stare holds mine while he writes on his little pad in the tight space between us. The scribbles are short and sweet, as is the ripping sound that follows once . . . twice. His palm flattens to my chest again with two more slips of paper. “Let’s correct that, shall we? I pretty much own your Saturdays in October.”

  He snaps his fingers, hoping to make me flinch, I’m sure. It takes a lot more than that to startle me. I’ve become immune to a lot of things. He jerks his thumb to the right, ushering me out. Before I leave, I glance to the cute girl I now get to see on Saturday, and her eyes flit up under dark lashes to show me the smile she’s hiding behind her fist. I give her one for real and do my damnedest not to look toward my locker as I get thrown off campus by a man in khakis and black leather Clarks. He thinks he’s showing me a lesson, but really, he just saved me from three brutal Saturdays at home alone with my stepfather. Suddenly, my pocket doesn’t feel so light.

  4

  Cowboy

  I know my mom wanted a girl. I’ve never asked, but I’m pretty sure I was supposed to have a baby sister. This house—it’s the biggest clue. We’ve lived here since I was four. The room directly across the hall from me is painted the lightest shade of pink, and it’s filled with these little details that are subtly infant-like. Soft things, like the narrow border of white daisies that my mom said she hand painted near the ceiling and around the window. It’s the only room in the entire house with curtains. They’re owls, cartoonish ones in different colors. They appear to be dreaming.

  It’s my mom’s room, her study-slash-craft room. She mostly goes in there to read. I think maybe, though, that room was originally meant for something else. When she’s sitting in there, my mom is always very much dreaming, just like the owls.

  She’s in there now. She also goes in there to hide when my dad recaps games with me. I can barely see the back of her head in the rocking chair just beyond his enormous frame blocking my pathway out of my room.

  “I’m going to be late.” I glance up while tugging on the heel of my sneaker. He’s not listening to me. He talks right through my words.

  “You were a little slow to the left last night. You felt it, right? I know you felt it. Ha, probably got a bruise right about here.” Dad chops at the side of his ribs. He’s right; I do have a bruise there. I took three separate shoulder shots right under my pads into the softest part of my body. I don’t bother confirming. Instead, I drag my backpack out from under my bed and reach in for my wireless headphones.

  “Coach says a Big Eight is coming in to talk this week. Be sure you get the talking points from him after films today. This could be the big push, CB. This is what we’ve been waiting for.” He calls me CB for Cowboy. I have no idea why they bothered to name me at all. I nod when I make eye contact, mostly so he won’t repeat himself. He’s almost pleasant this morning—critical, as always, but I had a good game. The insults will be minimal.

  “I’m gonna be late,” I say, closing the space between us and forcing my way past him and through my doorway. He steps slightly to the side, but grabs my bicep before I can make my getaway.

  “Hey, don’t worry about that trig grade.” My eyes dart to his for a blink. He winks, so I flash a short smile, all the while my stomach sinking. “Coach said he’ll talk to that teacher. He said you’ll pull through with a C, and your other grades are good enough that none of that will be an issue. I mean, trig. Why do they bother teaching that shit?”

  There’s a familiar hint of hostility in his tone. My father was never very gifted in the classroom. He’s in sales now. His charm helped him climb to a decent position with his microchip company. He likes to talk shit about the engineers who invent the things he sells.

  I nod to him once, agreeing to cheat—to accept the dirty offer and give up on learning. My eyes graze the back of my mom’s head again as I turn to leave. She’s tilted her chin up and to the left. I pause there for a breath, adjusting the straps of my bag on my shoulder, kinda hoping that just once she tells my old man to stop dictating every single thing in my life. I know those words are on the tip of her tongue; they’ve been there since I could comprehend language, and they were probably there before that. Her body shifts as her hand drags a page I doubt she even read across her lap, the slow scrape of the edge along her jeans like a hush to the screaming plea in my head.

  Ever so silent.

  I anticipate my dad’s lumbering steps behind me all the way to my car in the driveway. He’s mentioned twice how Sugar was the one at fault for that missed conversion at the end of the half. “Make sure you speak up. Tell him he’s got to read that faster, quit looking over his left and expect it on his right. He makes you look bad when he does that, and you can’t afford that. My name will only get you so far. You make sure you say something, alright?”

  “Alright,” I echo. I’m not throwing my best friend under the bus. I threw a pass—one of twenty-eight—and it didn’t get caught. Whatever.

  The clunk of the Nissan’s door is so damn satisfying. It cuts off my dad mid-sentence. He finishes whatever it is he has to say, but I don’t have to hear it. My God, this silence is everything. I look forward to Saturday mornings, at least this part—the two-mile drive alone in my car. I don’t even bother to turn music on. The quiet is a luxury. I have always had the gift of turning my father’s voice off in my head. Without his physical presence, I can pretty much get rid of him entirely.

  My only complaint is that we live too close to the field and school. I wish we lived on the edge of town, maybe in one of those houses with a big piece of land. There’s this guy on our team, Angel, who lives on this mini farm with pigs and shit. Yeah, actual shit, too, but the guy has space and room to just breathe. We could have had one of those. Mom wanted one for a while, but this five-bedroom brick McMansion is more suited to the image my dad is obsessed with. His two best friends still live in the area. He likes being the place the boys come for poker and the game. He likes to puff his chest. His buddies couldn’t give two shits about pigs.

  My spot is open when I pull in the lot. There are some perks to the reputation, I guess. Even though the rest of the team is already here, they’ll wait for me. I spend an extra thirty seconds alone in the car, just breathing. No uniform, no dress clothes—Saturdays are for my gray sweatpants and the long-sleeved North Dakota college tee with a hole above my belly button. My dad hates this shirt, mostly because the tiny school that sent it is in the middle of nowhere with freezing cold tempe
ratures dominating the forecasts. It sounds glorious.

  Leland Nash said—and I quote—the spit-small North Dakota school was a waste of space and an insult to his eyeballs. Not that we visited. We clicked on a few pictures online so he could show me what a joke it was. I kept the shirt, though, and wear it every Saturday. I’ve clicked a lot more pictures of the place, too. I could give a campus tour, but that’s another thing on the long list of stuff I’ll never be able to do.

  My pocket buzzes, so I pull my phone out while I rush from my car and shoot my friend a quick reply text when he asks if I’m coming.

  Is not coming even an option? Be right there.

  I look up from my phone and when we collide, I practically obliterate the tiny body wrapped in a tangle of hair and carrying the earth’s heaviest backpack. She’s on her ass at the curb, a rip in the knee of her black leggings and a growing bright-red leak of blood filling in the bare skin. My pulse jets up, and the beast inside makes a sudden appearance.

  “What the fuck?” I know I was the one staring at my phone. I didn’t see our class president, but she didn’t see me either. This isn’t all my fault. She’s usually shouting her presence to the world, or surrounded by her over-achieving minions on the student council. It’s a Saturday, for fuck’s sake. Why is she even here?

  Her chin lifts and she blows out hard to clear the snarling hair from her face. Her glare is more than defensive, it’s pissed. There’s blood on her elbow too. She hasn’t noticed that yet, but the quick dash of my gaze from one wound to the other clues her in.

  “Ugh!” She rubs her thumb over the scrape, smearing the blood along her arm.

  This is all my fault.

  I pinch the bridge of my nose and bring myself down from the adrenaline rush, drawing in a deep breath then holding out my hand to help her up. Unsurprisingly, she refuses my gesture.

  “I got it,” she says, her words short and snarky.

  I deserve them.

  I bend to gather her things. A pile of papers spread across the sidewalk when her bag unzipped mid-fall. I recognize the trig book instantly, but the papers are all the same in different handwriting.

  “You a tutor or something?” I push the loose sheets into a pile that she quickly takes charge of and organizes, closing them under the cover of the book then sliding it all inside her pack.

  She breathes out an annoyed laugh as she pulls her bag straps over her arms and pulls at the material near the wound on her knee. “Jesus,” she mutters. I can’t tell if it’s directed at me or the bloody mess on her leg. It’s already starting to dry. She’s being a little dramatic.

  “I can wash that out for you, or bandage it or whatever, in the training room.” I point over my shoulder and figure this is a decent reason to be late. Later.

  This time her laugh is pointed and blatant. It comes with a dramatic pulse to her chest and shoulders.

  “You are such a narcissist.” She turns away with an eyeroll.

  “I don’t even know what that means. Hey . . .” I step around her and cut off her path. She merely veers right and spins back into her lane. She’d be a decent running back with that move.

  “Come on. That’s not fair. I’m sorry . . . Look!” I move a little faster this time and stand in her way but a few steps ahead, walking backward with every step she makes toward the library doors. I bet she’s studying. She’s probably retaking her SAT or some shit like that. I hold out my hand before we reach the library steps, and she stops hard, her arms crossed over her chest.

  I can make the dimple do whatever I want. That fucker has magical powers. I wait until her eyes lift to mine before I flash the smile, and the moment I do, her eyes dim with this sexy bit of skepticism. My hand lingers in the space between us. She could shove this in my face so hard right now, and as the seconds pass, I really think she might. Eventually, though, the dimple wins, and she takes my hand with a firm grip of her own.

  “Huh,” I let out.

  “Yeah. Huh,” she says, squeezing just a bit harder and shaking once before letting go. “Apology accepted, Cowboy.”

  She moves around me and heads toward the walkway toward the center of campus where the library is. She’s going to find tables filled with losers doing time for getting caught smoking blunts or vaping in the bathroom. She’ll want to use the study room in there; detention looks full today, judging from the parking lot. I know those aren’t all players’ cars.

  “Hey, so you didn’t answer. Do you tutor?”

  She turns and looks at me sideways, her face wrinkled on one side like she’s confused. I point to her bag.

  “The trig papers, and the book. I know you’re like way past that shit. But do you tutor?” I’ll eat my words and attitude and shower her with the dimple-smile for days if she says she’s in fact a tutor and willing to take me on. Hell, I’ll pretend to be her boyfriend if that’s what it takes. I want to earn my C, to know I can. If I can do that, then maybe there are other things I can do.

  “Narcissism is the act of being so obsessed with yourself that you don’t even notice the world and people who exist around you,” she says.

  I shake my head at her answer. Maybe it’s not worth pretending to be her boyfriend.

  “I’m the tutor in your class, you jackass. Just see me Monday in fifth hour.”

  Eyeroll trumps dimple.

  5

  Villain

  I used to smoke out here before I went in. That was back when I was a freshman, when I thought smoking made me badass.

  A defiant little shit, I think is what Principal Lee called me.

  I don’t smoke anymore. Nicotine is fucking expensive.

  I’m itching for a cigarette today, though. It’s weird; I’m nervous or something. I don’t know what to do with my hands. I keep pacing around the entrance, kicking at the edge of the grass where it’s full of dew. The door’s unlocked but it’s not 8 a.m. yet. I kinda thought she would be here early, mystery girl. She seems the type who’s early to things. I know she’s smart and shit. She still has ten minutes.

  I blow hot breath into my cold hands before vigorously rubbing them together. I smell like a smoker. I even showered this morning and aired out my sweatshirt and jeans. Everything in my life smells rotten, though. Paul brought that into our house and it’s permeated every inch of it. Of me.

  I tuck my chin into my shoulder and breathe in the scent, convincing myself it isn’t that strong. That’s exactly what she sees when she rounds the corner. Hands stuffed deep into my front pockets and nose drawing in my odor, I freeze several feet from the door. I’m too far to dart inside as if I were just now walking up. It’s obvious I was standing out here waiting. It’s also obvious I was smelling myself.

  “Awesome.” I breathe out the word and close my eyes while my pulse kicks me from the inside. Dumbass—that’s what my heart tells me with that punch.

  “It can be a really tough room. I thought maybe you’d like to walk in with someone you know.” She doesn’t really know me. I caught her crying in the bathroom. That’s our big bonding experience. I sound like a smitten junior high boy.

  “I mean, or whatever.” I roll my shoulders and glance away. I don’t know why I thought this would make anything better. Now I’m a dick.

  “That was nice of you. Thanks.”

  I smile at her kindness while my face is turned the other way. She called me nice.

  I shrug even though my inner demons are high-fiving over the job well done. I motion toward the door with my chin, my hands now nervous fists in my pocket. She audibly sucks in air to my left.

  “It’s really not that bad. Honestly.” I lean forward and cock one brow, giving her a sideways glance. I bring my voice to a whisper. “I kinda like the peace and quiet.”

  She blinks and pops out a short laugh. I smile at the sound, but not too big. Her eyes are still full of nerves. If I had any balls at all, I would reach toward her and take her hand, walk her through this.

  “I brought my homework.” She t
ugs at the strap of her backpack. My eyes move from her heavy bag to her face, which is desperate for approval that she is doing this right. She’ll be the only one in here with homework. Hell, she’ll probably be the only one awake.

  I’ll be awake.

  “Perfect.” I give her the most genuine smile of my life, and her shoulders relax just a tick.

  I make the first move toward the double doors, pulling open the one on the right and holding my arm out to guide her inside. She noticeably giggles; my demons high five again. I notice a small rip at her knee with fresh blood.

  “You okay?” I gesture to her leg.

  She glances down with a grimace and shrugs, tugging at the material until the hole is gone and her scrape is covered.

  “I’ll be fine.” She’s putting on a brave face now that we’re in this place.

  The room is fuller than a typical Saturday. School has been in session long enough for a bunch of us to get caught doing dumb shit. I recognize almost everyone, including Jackson, the kid I skate with sometimes when I’m bored. This is my crowd.

  I hook my thumbs in my jean pockets and breathe out, surveying the open tables, which are few. I tilt my head toward the far back corner to the left, and she draws in her lips for a super tight smile that only lasts a fraction of a second. She nods, so I lead us through the maze of tables and chairs, most already filled with snoozing losers, many of them stinking of smoke and weed worse than I do. I wonder if she notices.

  I let her take the seat in the corner and I keep my back to everyone else, sitting across from her. I hate it, not seeing what’s behind me. But for some reason it’s important to see only her, and give her the security of having her back to the wall, of course.

  Of course.

  She wastes no time unzipping her bag at her side and pulling out an already open notebook with a list of things that wraps around to the next page. She pulls out two mechanical pencils next, then an iPad. I’m about to warn her, but Ms. Lynn swoops in and does her thing before I have a chance.