Spark

CHAPTER 23

Gabriel caught up to her in Heather’s front yard. Layne was stumbling, her hands at her face, her sobbing almost uncontrollable.

He caught her by the arms. Christ, his voice was still breaking. “Layne. Layne, please. Let me—”

She spun, her fists slamming into his chest. For her size, she hit with surprising force, driving her rage into him.

“How could you?” she yelled, her voice thick with tears. “How could you do this?”

“Please. I didn’t know—”

She hit him again. “How could you hate me so much—”

“I don’t hate you.” He caught her arms. “I didn’t know you were there. I would never—”

“Oh my god, please just let me go. Please.”

She was struggling against him, and it made him sick to think of her fighting Ryan Stacey. He let her go.

She staggered across the lawn. “I need to get out of here.”

“Let me take you. I can drive you home—”

“I can’t go home. Just go away. You did this—”

“Goddamn it, Layne.” He caught her again, looking down at her streaked face, her tangled hair. God, she was killing him, with every word, every step. “I did not do this. I would never do this. And I swear to Christ if you don’t let me drive you somewhere, I’m going to go back down there and break that guy’s neck.”

Heather’s front porch light exploded.

Layne jumped and gave a little cry. She was shaking, and Gabriel had no idea whether it was from what Ryan had done—or from what he was doing right now.

But at least she was looking at him, her eyes wide, searching his face.

“Come on,” he said.

She took a deep breath, then nodded.

Gabriel found the car down the road a ways. Layne had her belt buckled and her arms folded tightly across her chest before he even got in, and her eyes were focused out the window. It reminded him of the first night he’d driven her home, when she’d declared so vehemently I’m not Heather Castelline.

Obviously.

Gabriel started the engine and drove toward town. He didn’t have a clear destination in mind, but she’d said she couldn’t go home, and he sure as hell couldn’t take her to his.

At the first stop sign he glanced over. “Did he hurt you?”

Her eyes didn’t leave the window. “No.”

A thousand questions burned his lips, but she was so closed off. She might bolt from the car if he pushed.

He could kill Taylor. He should have told Chris to throw her in the pool.

The air felt sharp, sparking with tension. Gabriel reached out and flicked on the radio, keeping the volume low. One of those guitar ballads rolled through the car, something that felt like it should have been a slow song, but really wasn’t.

Finally, her arms loosened, just a little. “I’m such an idiot. I should have known.”

Her voice had lost the wild emotion and now carried that core of strength he knew lived inside her.

“It’s not your fault,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “Believe me, I’ve seen all the after-school specials. That girl who helped me—she kept telling me, too.”

“Becca. She’s my little brother’s girlfriend.”

Layne swiped at her eyes, looking more angry than tragic now. “Yeah, well, that guy can’t take all the blame. I was the moron who showed up.”

“What were you doing there, anyway?” he said. “I thought you hated Taylor and Heather and all those girls.”

“Oh, I do. Don’t worry.” She paused, biting at her lip. “They tricked me into going.”

“They tricked you? How?”

She looked out the window again. “It’s not important.”

Gabriel let the car drift to a stop at a red light on Ritchie Highway. He turned to look at her.

Layne very obviously did not want to look at him.

“You want a coffee?” he said.

She didn’t answer for a moment. “Sure.”

So he left her in the car in front of Starbucks, coming back with two steaming cups, a wad of napkins, and a few wet packs the barista had fished from behind the counter at his request.

Layne took them in surprise, ripping one open to wipe at her cheeks. “Thanks.”

He drove down to the end of Fort Smallwood Road, to where the pavement turned to crap and a sign announced a county park—though the county seemed to have forgotten about this one long ago. The parking lot wasn’t maintained, and the entrance, once gated, was always open. A shame, really, because the property sported a long stretch of beach, though this passageway to the Chesapeake Bay wasn’t anywhere you’d want to swim. Sometimes, during the day, there’d be kids on the old swing set, but there were newer ones in nicer parts of the county, so that was rare.

He and Nick came out here to set things on fire all the time.

Gabriel parked the SUV. As usual, the lot was deserted. “There are chairs in the back,” he said, “if you want to go sit by the water. Or we can open up the back and sit on the tailgate.”

She licked her lips, staring out the window. “Won’t we get in trouble for being here?”

“This whole peninsula is a public park, but no one comes down this way anymore.” Then he figured out her tone. “We don’t have to stay here,” he said. “But it’s quiet, and no one will bother us.”

Layne took a sip of her coffee, wrapping both hands around the cup like a little girl. “Okay.” She paused. “The tailgate.”

He killed the engine, but left the radio on, the speakers pouring music into the night. The only light came from the dome in the center of the car and the distant industrial plants across the water. Sitting on the tailgate left her face shadowed, almost a silhouette. Crickets and tree frogs sang in the distance, and if he listened carefully, he could pick up the water smacking the rocky breakers.

She perched on the edge of the tailgate, pulling her skirt against her thighs, though there wasn’t enough material to cover much at all.

It made him think of Ryan Stacey again, and Gabriel felt his grip tightening on the coffee cup. He gritted his teeth and looked out at the darkness. “I didn’t know it was you,” he said. “I was sitting like fifteen feet away, and I saw two people making out—”

“We were not making out.”

“But I could have stopped him—”

“You did. I let him kiss me.”

She let him—she let that guy—she—

Layne glanced over. “You stopped him before he could get much farther than that.” She picked at the lid of her coffee cup, her voice bitter. No, rueful. “I should have known better.”

Gabriel needed to get a handle on his thoughts before the car caught on fire. “What on earth made you go to that party?”

“It’s stupid.” She pushed a curled strand of hair back from her face. “My mother has always wanted me to be like those girls. She became friends with all their moms and begged me to spend time with their daughters. She used to buy me expensive clothes. Every other day, she’d come home from the mall with another bag from some hot new store. I never wore them. Some I threw in the charity bin behind the school. Some I shoved in the back of my closet. I hated them. I hated her.”

He remembered the tentative conversation in her bedroom. “You didn’t want to be perfect.”

“Sort of.” She hesitated. “No, I could never be perfect, and she knew it. I think that was the point. It was all this big cover-up. The clothes, the horses, it was all one big sham. Her perfect, imperfect daughter.”

Gabriel remembered Ryan’s little comment before he’d punched the shit out of him. She’s all deformed under there.

It made him think of that moment in the woods, when he would have kissed her. His hands on her ribs, and she’d pulled away.

Had he misread that entirely?

Layne turned and looked at him, her eyes piercing and sharp. “How much did you see? When he was . . . you know. How much did you see?”

Gabriel sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “It was dark,” he said truthfully. “Not much of anything.”

“Come on.” Her voice was hard.

Gabriel shifted to look at her. The light at her back made the red turtleneck almost glow. “Really. He didn’t get the shirt over your bra. Honestly, with the light, I bet Taylor couldn’t catch much of anything on her phone.”

“God, she is such a bitch.” Layne made a disgusted sound. “I can’t believe you slept with her.”

Gabriel almost dropped his cup. “What? Who the hell said I slept with her?”

“No one. But . . . in class . . .” She faltered. Even in the dim light, he could see Layne’s cheeks turn pink. “She said—”

“I have never slept with Taylor. Jesus, there’s a locker room joke that—” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

“That what?”

He took a quick sip of coffee. “You know that stupid saying in sex ed about how when you sleep with someone, you’re sleeping with everyone that person has had sex with?”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s just say I have no desire to sleep with the entire team.”

Layne didn’t look entirely convinced. “Today. In class. She mentioned last year.”

This girl was too smart for her own good. He sighed. “All right, look. I was at this one party, and I was sitting on a couch, and she came over and climbed in my lap. I didn’t exactly shove her away. But I did not sleep with her, and we barely spent ten minutes together. She’s on the cheer squad. I play a lot of sports. She flirts with any guy she sees, including half the faculty.”

Layne settled back onto the tailgate, staring out at the night again.

“Come on,” he said. “She just says those things to get a reaction.”

“It works.”

“I still don’t understand how she tricked you.”

“Maybe I’m just an idiot.”

“Oh, I know that’s not true,” he said. “Tell me. Did that loser just walk over and start assaulting you?”

“No.” Her voice was very small. “He was nice. I liked him. He didn’t even assault me. I told you: It didn’t start like that.”

Gabriel snorted. “Couldn’t you tell he was drunk off his ass?”

“No!” Sudden anger swung her around. “How am I supposed to know when someone is drunk?”

“Layne—”

“He didn’t smell like beer. He wasn’t slurring his words. Or do you mean, he had to be drunk off his ass to be into someone like—”

“Hey.” His voice was sharper than he intended, but it got her to shut up. God, she was crazy if she thought someone would have to be drunk to take a second glance at her. The way she was sitting had the skirt splayed across her lap, leaving a long expanse of spandexed leg stretching into the darkness. Anger flushed her cheeks, and curls of hair fell along one shoulder. Her eyes caught the starlight, making him want to—

“What?” she demanded.

Gabriel jerked his eyes away. He wanted to tell her everything he was thinking, how she looked striking right now, beautiful in the darkness. How he wished he’d known she would be at the party. How he would have been dragging Hunter out of the car instead of the other way around.

He brought his cup to his lips. “Nothing.”

She scowled out at the parking lot. “So is this like your place?”

“My place?”

“Where you bring girls.”

“Yes. I bring girls to this run-down parking lot all the time.” He gestured with his cup. “I have a sign-up sheet nailed to that tree. Now that you mention it”—he glanced at his watch—“we should probably wrap this up.”

Her eyes were intense, challenging, fixed on his. “Do you have a five-minute limit before you start getting mean?”

“I don’t know, Layne. Do you have a five-minute limit before you start getting defensive?”

She clamped her mouth shut and turned to face the darkness.

As usual, he didn’t know if he owed her an apology—or deserved one.

He picked at the lid of his cup. “Nicky and I come out here sometimes,” he said. “I’ve never brought a girl here.”

“Never?” Her voice was some combination of skeptical and hopeful.

“What do you think, that I’m some kind of thug player who’ll screw anything in a skirt?”

She didn’t answer, and that was answer enough.

“Wow,” he said. “I can’t believe you think I’d beat the shit out of Ryan Stacey just to drag you to the middle of nowhere so I could—”

“Hey.” Her eyes flashed up to his. “Now who’s defensive?”

“Touché.”

They sat in silence for a while, until the crickets were deafening, and Gabriel began to wonder if he should just offer to drive her home.

“It’s funny,” she said quietly. “You were the first person I talked to this morning, and you’ll probably be the last I talk to tonight.”

This morning. It felt like a lifetime ago. He wondered if she had any idea that Ryan Stacey had been trapping her little brother inside a locker after scrawling insults all over his chest.

I let him kiss me.

No. She couldn’t possibly know.

“Tell me your secrets,” she said.

He looked up. “My secrets?”

Layne drew her legs up to sit cross-legged on the tailgate, her hands in her lap. It put half her face in light, half in shadow, like a challenging angel trying to decide between good and evil. “You said yesterday that any time someone comes close to figuring you out, you pick a fight. You did it this morning in the woods, and you’re doing it now. If you’re not this thug player who can’t pass math, then what are you hiding?”

“What are you hiding?”

“I asked first.”

He looked out at the night again—but his heart was running a marathon in his chest. “You already know Nick was taking my tests for me.”

She cocked her head to the side and gave a little shrug. “That’s not even a secret. That’s like me saying, I have a deaf little brother.”

Gabriel shrugged. Truths were clawing at his lips, begging to escape. God, to tell someone.

No way. Like he could sit here, trapped on the tailgate, and spill everything. Gee, well, I can control fire. Oh, and those articles in the paper? They’re talking about me. And maybe I should mention that I’ve been thinking about your arms around me all day. Or how I’ve wanted to kiss you for days, but right now that would make me no better than Ryan Stacey . . .

Yeah, that would be great. He drew a choking breath and fought for words.

“How about,” she said, her voice careful, “I get a question, then you get a question.”

That made him smile. “Like truth or dare?”

She blushed and her eyes dropped. “I’ve never played that.”

“Come on, Layne, kids play that when they’re ten.”

“Not all kids.”

She could be so fierce one minute, yet so innocent the next, and it was seriously making him crazy. “All right, go. Truth.”

“I told you I don’t know how to play.”

Gabriel leaned in and whispered, “The name of the game might be a giveaway.”

Her eyes flicked up, sparking with defiance, and for a breathless moment he regretted not choosing dare.

“Truth,” she said. “Why did you start cheating in math?”

At least that slammed the brakes on his train of thought. “Because I stopped passing. In seventh grade.”

“When your parents died.” Her voice was tentative, but it wasn’t a question.

“Yeah. I’d never been an A student or anything, but after that . . . I didn’t even want to be at school, much less do any work.” He shrugged and leaned against the side of the tailgate to look at her. “I was in danger of being held back, and things were already so messed up. Nick started doing it for me, just to get us through the year.”

But Gabriel remembered that first week of eighth grade, when he’d decided he was done cheating, that he didn’t need his brother’s help. He’d struggled to figure out how to solve every problem. Losing three months to his family mess, then another three to summer hadn’t exactly set him up to start pre-algebra. But he’d been ready to put his brain to a task, to do something normal, something routine, when so much of his life wasn’t.

Then Nick had come into his room with an identical paper. “Here,” he’d said, and his voice had been almost proud. “I did your math.”

Gabriel glanced across at Layne, who was still waiting, still listening. “Nick wasn’t into sports or anything. He needed to be doing something, to be helping. To have a purpose. I didn’t want to take it away from him.” He snorted. “Christ, that sounds lame.”

“No,” she said. “No, I think I get it.”

“At first I would do the work and throw it away. But I hated lying to him, so I stopped. Then I hit high school and made varsity freshman year, and it was just one less class to worry about. Now I’m so far behind that I don’t think I’ll ever make up the difference.”

“I’ll help you,” she said.

“You can try.” He almost reached out to push the hair back from her face. “Your turn.”

She held his eyes. “Truth.”

“How did Taylor get you to that party, really?” He gave her a quick once-over. “Especially looking like that.”

She shifted to look out at the darkness. “I changed my mind. Dare.”

Gabriel slid his cell phone out of his pocket and held it out. “Okay. Here. I dare you to call your father and tell him you’re sitting in a dark parking lot with me.”

“Ooooh.” She glared up at him without any real malice. “I don’t think I like this game.”

He smiled. “Come on, pony up.”

She folded her arms across her stomach and sighed. Her voice came out very small, warring with the crickets and water. “Taylor told me that she’d talked to you and that you hoped to see me there. My friend Kara picked my clothes.”

Oh.

Suddenly he felt like he’d had a hand in this, though he hadn’t known anything about it. “Layne,” he said. “Taylor never talked to me. I swear—”

“I know! I figured it out, okay? That’s why I feel like such an idiot.”

Navigating this conversation made controlling fire seem easy. “But I would have—”

“Don’t. Please don’t.”

“Layne, let me—”

“Your turn!”

He drew back and sighed. “Truth.”

“How did your parents die?”

The words felt like a weapon, as if she were trying to hurt him for asking her something that obviously left her off balance. But his parents’ deaths were just another bolt of guilt that struck him on a daily basis.

“In a fire,” he said flatly. “They were arguing with the parents of some kids who used to hassle us. The house burned down. Not everyone got out.”

She stared at him for the longest moment. “Really?”

“Yeah, really. Why would I make that up?”

Her mouth worked like she wanted to say something, but the words couldn’t quite make it out. He knew that expression, and he couldn’t take one more ounce of pity. So he made his voice hard. “Your turn.”

She licked her lips. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Truth.”

He wanted to fire an arrow back, something to make her flinch, too. “Why did Ryan Stacey say you were deformed?”

Of course it did make her flinch, but it made him feel like an ass.

She didn’t look at him, but she answered. “Because I have scars all the way up the right side of my body.”

“Yeah? From what?”

“From a house fire,” she said. “My house burned down when I was five.”

Shit.

Now he was the one staring. “Layne,” he ground out. “Layne, I’m—”

“I really don’t like this game.” Her legs swung off the tailgate, and her feet crunched on the rough pavement.

“Stop,” he said. “Layne—”

“See, Gabriel?” she called over her shoulder. “I’m not perfect either, right?”

Then she was running, and the darkness swallowed her up.