Fighting Fate (12 page)

When he went to return her gloves to her, she’d had on a pink cardigan, a gray plaid skirt and shiny gray shoes with a tiny heal and little strap. Her long hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail that swayed when she walked. He was quick to notice that wasn’t all that swayed. Despite how prissy she looked, she had an ass that left him wanting to reach out and grab it.

At first, he’d just had fun messing with her. The first time he’d stopped at her locker, it seemed as if she was embarrassed he was there. Her eyes had darted all over the place and she’d had a strange look on her face. The second time he stopped—just to piss her off—he realized maybe she wasn’t embarrassed. It seemedAndd. It s that maybe he’d read her wrong because he thought just maybe he made her nervous. And not necessarily in a bad way.

The way her cheeks always flooded with color amused him. He got a kick out of it so he made a habit of stopping to chat with her every few days. The color always predictably flooded across her creamy complexion.

It didn’t exactly look flattering. But it was kind of…cute.

He didn’t usually care for cute. And he didn’t usually waste time on a girl unless he knew for a fact that she was interested. That would’ve been too much work. Of all the girls at school, Sarah should have been on the list of girls not to bother with.

He wasn’t sure why Sarah was different. She just was. Not that he was interested in her. Not in the way he was interested in other girls.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that
, he thought.
Keep telling yourself that you just like to tease her.

He had been teasing about tutoring her. She finally called his bluff.

When she’d suggested going to Suzie’s he’d been hesitant. He’d never stepped foot into a bakery before. It just wasn’t the kind of place he usually spent his time. She said her house wasn’t an option because her younger sister would drive them both crazy. She’d brazenly suggested his house. He’d told her not a chance in hell.

So Suzie’s won out by default.

He hadn’t been expecting the endless supply of pastries and milk Suzie offered them.

He’d had doughnuts before, sure. The kind from gas stations, wrapped in cellophane filled with so many preservatives that the expiration date was forever away. Suzie’s doughnuts, cookies and bars were unlike anything he’d had before. He should’ve known what a huge difference in quality there would be between ‘gas station’ and ‘gourmet’. Now he was sure he’d never be able to choke down the cheap stuff again.

He and Sarah had stopped by the bakery nearly every night for a week. Her mom was always nice enough to him. He’d pick a booth—usually the big one in the back, looking out onto the street, if it was empty—and Sarah would fill a plate with all of her favorite things for him to try.

Considering he didn’t always have money for a decent lunch, he was sometimes starving by the time they got there. He knew he probably ate more than what was polite. Neither Sarah nor Suzanne seemed to mind. More than once, Sarah had sent extra pastries home with him.

While he was waiting for her to jot a few notes down, his gaze wandered across the street. He stifled a groan as he slouched down in his seat and turned away from the window.

His bizarre movement caught Sarah’s attention. She glanced over her shoulder and immediately spotted Darren. With a frown, she turned back to Cole. He reached for anothepand for ar chocolate croissant.

“Do you not want to be seen with me?” she asked. She looked out the window, across the street again. “Would he give you a hard time for being with someone like me?”

Someone like me
. The way she said it, it was almost as if she thought it were a bad thing. And hell yes, Darren would give him a hard time. But not in the way Sarah seemed to be thinking. He had no business being around a girl like her. He knew it and Darren knew it too. Darren had seen them together on a few occasions and had made endless lewd comments regarding her.

Cole knew Sarah was too good for him. And not just ‘too good’ as in a higher social class. She was too good, too sweet. Too damn innocent, he was sure.

It scared him that over the past week, during their study sessions, she had been looking at him in a way that a girl like her shouldn’t look at a guy like him. He was certain Sarah had never even gotten a tardy. Last year, due to a fight with Darren on school property, he’d almost gotten himself expelled. She was going places in her life. He’d always known he wouldn’t amount to anything.

His grades weren’t exactly impressive but they weren’t bad either. They’d probably be high enough to get him into a college though they definitely weren’t high enough to get him a scholarship. What a joke that would be. Him? With an academic scholarship? Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

And his parents? Every now and again, his mom couldn’t pull off paying the electric bill. More often than not, she couldn’t scrounge up lunch money for him. Paying for college just wasn’t going to happen. Not in this lifetime.

He was more likely to end up like Darren, dabbling in illegal activities until he inevitably made a career out of it. He’d always known that, so why now did it suddenly matter?

He and Sarah had absolutely nothing in common.

“Cole? What are you thinking about?” Sarah demanded.

“Nothing,” he muttered.

“Really?” she glanced around and then kept her voice low, probably so her mom wouldn’t hear, which he thought was kind of comical. “You look really pissed off. So you are definitely thinking about something. Is it Darren?”

That was only part of it. Darren had just disappeared into the pawn shop across the street. He had a cardboard box under his arm. Cole didn’t even want to know what was in that box. Probably stolen items. Or items won in a bet or a game of poker. More than once Darren had pawned items that Cole had spent good chunks of his paycheck on. Finally, Cole had just stopped buying things. He didn’t trust his brother as far as he could spit.

Last year, Cole had run an errand for Darren. He’d been pulled over for rolling through a stop sign—though he was
positive
he had actually stopped. Cole was convinced he’d been stopped because the cop thought he was his btimhe was rother. He couldn’t think of why else he’d had that disappointed look on his face. He was sure the cop had just wanted an excuse to give Darren a ticket. He’d considered himself lucky that he only got a warning. He’d considered himself even luckier when he’d gotten back to the trailer park and realized his moron of a brother had left two cases of beer and a half finished bottle of tequila in the trunk. He cringed when he thought of what would’ve happened if for some reason that cop had asked him to open the trunk.

“Darren’s nothing but a pain in my ass,” Cole said. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Gretchen’s a little—”

“Your sister,” Cole said, cutting her off, “can’t even compare to Darren. Your life is so damn perfect compared to mine. You have—”

“Excuse me!” she said, cutting him off this time. “I was going to say
my
sister is a pest but
your
brother scares the hell out of me.”

“Oh.”
Sometimes he scares the hell out of me too
, Cole thought.

“Are you two doing okay?” Suzanne asked. She seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. She had never checked up on them before, letting Sarah take care of whatever they needed. Cole realized that she must’ve sensed the tension.

“We’re fine,” Sarah said with a smile. Suzanne gave them a little nod before strolling away.

“You must take after your dad. You don’t look anything like your mom,” Cole said as he tried to move the conversation on to something he thought would be safer.

Without looking up from her notes she said, “Suzanne’s not my biological mom. Gretchen looks just like her, though.”

“You’re adopted?” he asked, not able to hide his surprise.

“Yes and no. My dad’s my dad. Suzanne adopted me a few years ago. My biological mom took off when I was two. She’s living in Arizona now.” As an afterthought she added on, “I think. That’s where she was the last time my grandma heard from her.”

“You don’t see her often?”

Sarah scoffed as her gaze zeroed in on Suzanne. She was behind the counter again, helping a customer. Quietly she said, “I don’t see her
ever
. Her choice, not mine.”

“Maybe you’re better off without her then,” he said. He was having a hard time wrapping his head around the idea that Sarah’s mom had abandoned her. He’d thought that kind of thing only happened to people like him. Not to people who lived in houses with manicured lawns and porch swings.

Sarah looked at him questioningly. Her brow was furrowed over his suggestion.

“My dad took off when I was younger too. Only sometimes he comes back. And I wish he wouldn’t. He never stays long. Just long enough to leech off Mom for a while, steal whatever he can get his hands on.” Now he was the one to look away. “Throw us around, shove Mom around…then take off. I’d be happier if I never saw him again.” He shrugged. “Sounds like everything worked out for you then. Suzanne adopted you. You must be one big, happy family.”

She scowled at him. “Why do you keep doing that? Why do you assume that my life is perfect?”

“So you’re not a happy family?” he asked, his tone edging on cynicism.

“When I was eight, Suzanne was pregnant,” she said quietly as she continued to keep a watchful eye on her mom. “She had complications from the start. Toward the end of her pregnancy, the placenta ruptured and she almost died. My little sister didn’t make it. Trust me, we were not a happy family for a very long time. She was never able to get pregnant again.”

Cole thought she was done but she wasn’t.

“After the baby’s funeral—it was small, for immediate family only—she fell into a really deep depression. She almost lost the business. She and Dad almost got divorced. It took years and my family tons of therapy,” she candidly admitted, “before things felt normal again.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” he muttered, feeling like an ass.

“It’s just, you should never assume you know what someone’s life is like. Never. Not even people you know because sometimes, people are good at hiding things.”

She sighed before elaborating even more.

“Suzanne and I didn’t always get along. My dad adopted Gretchen right away. For the longest time, I didn’t understand why Suzanne didn’t adopt me. I figured my dad must love Gretchen way more than Suzanne loved me. I know I was a horrible child sometimes. Instead of telling anyone what was bothering me, I just acted out. It was years before I finally understood she had a reason.”

“And what was that?” Cole asked. He knew he probably had no business asking, but now that she was talking, he was curious.

“She was waiting for my biological mom to come around.”

He was quiet for a moment as he thought that through. “But she did adopt you. So I take it that means she didn’t come around. When’s the last time you saw her?”

“When I was twelve.”

She didn’t look up at him when she said it. He got the feeling she didn’t want to talk about it. He wasn’t sure why but he was kind of fascinated that her life wasn’t all sugar and spice like he’d initially suspected.

Even though he knew he had no right to ask, he asked her anyway. “It didn’t go well?”

She put her pencil down and looked at him. Her expression said it all but she continued talking anyway. “She was leaving my grandma’s house. That was back when I was still young enough that I would imagine someday she’d realize how wrong she’d been to walk away. I went running up to her, yelling ‘Mom!’ I recognized her from pictures Grandma had.” Sarah shrugged. “She just looked at me and said, ‘I’m not your mother’ and walked away.”

Cole knew his dad was a piece of shit. But he’d never gone as far as to disown him. At least not to his face. What he did in his private life was anyone’s guess.

“The next morning Dad and Suzanne met with a lawyer. They had papers drawn up, requesting that Melinda relinquish her parental rights. The day Melinda received them, she signed them and sent them back.” She managed to keep her tone even but she kept her gaze averted. Her lips trembled ever-so-slightly.

He knew he wasn’t exactly Mr. Sensitivity but even he could see that the action had crushed her.

“What a bitch,” he muttered. He quickly glanced at Sarah, wondering if she was going to reprimand him.

She nodded and wryly added, “Yeah, what a bitch.”

They both glanced outside as Darren came out of the pawn shop. He was no longer carrying a box. Instead, he was flipping through bills, obviously counting them. Cole felt anger flare up in him at the sight. His brother hadn’t been to school in weeks. Darren had always seemed to consider school to be more optional than mandatory. Cole was pretty sure he wasn’t going to graduate. Not that he cared.

He realized Sarah was watching him as he scowled at his brother, making his way to his car.

“Tell me what happened last year. Why did you miss a week of school?”

So that was why she’d been so willing to talk. She wanted him to talk in return. For just a moment, he thought about telling her to mind her own damn business. In fact, that’s what he intended to say. Instead, when he opened his mouth, he was surprised when the truth tumbled out.

“I had a severe concussion.”

Her eyebrows shot up and a look of pure concern settled onto her features. “What happened?”

He shifted in his seat, wondering how to get around giving an explanation.

“Cole.”

Screw it
, he thought.
Let her know the truth. Maybe it’ll be enough to scare her away.

He threw on his best unaffected face. “I got hit with a baseball bat.”

“In the head?” she said quietly. “By
who
?”

“Darren. In his mind I deserved it. I stole a packhisstole a of his cigarettes. He chased after me. And caught me. I hadn’t realized he’d grabbed an old metal bat. The kids next door play sometimes and leave them laying around in the yard. I haven’t smoked since,” he admitted as he forced a lame laugh. “Decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.”