Page 93 of Protect Me
“Right,” I drawled. “Uh oh. When I stepped into the school gymnasium, there she was. Wrapped in Tysin Montgomery’s arms as they danced.”
Kate blinked, eyes slightly tapered, as if she sorted through distant memories. “You confronted them, right?”
I nodded. She must remember the fallout at home.
It hadn’t been pretty.
“Yeah, I did. Like a testosterone-driven idiot. Emma laughed at me, so did Tysin. In fact, the whole school laughed at me. I found out it had been a joke all along. They’d been spreading nasty rumors that weren’t true, playing me. Her friends were in on it. The whole thing: a ruse.”
Fire leapt into Kate’s eyes. A gratifying, righteous anger that made me want to laugh. Set against the backdrop of Emma’s easy cruelty, the two couldn’t be more different. One, an avenging angel. The other a fallen star.
“Your parents got involved, right?” Kate asked haltingly, riding the edge of a memory. With my own chopsticks, I separated another piece of the sushi roll and nodded. Each word sent the pain farther away, like blowing out all the smoke to leave clean air again.
“Yes. The principal, Emma’s parents, it was a huge fiasco. School was a nightmare for weeks. Kids making fun of me, outright ignoring me. I lost all my other friends except the Merry Idiots, all my presence in the world. Maybe it sounds a little stupid now,” I said dismissively, “but at the time I was devastated.”
Her eyes widened. “Then what happened?”
“Grady took matters into his own hands.”
“Grady?”
“Yeah. He used those big hands of his and took on the worst of the guys that kept spreading rumors. They tried to rough me up a few times after school, but Hernandez tackled them. Bastian had my back in the halls, so they were only scuffles. For a while, though, I couldn’t walk anywhere alone.”
“Were the other boys jealous or something?”
He shrugged. “They claimed they were protecting her from me. The rumors she spread ballooned as they were tossed around. Some kids tried to say I’d hit her once, which absolutelywasn’ttrue.”
“Wow.”
“My boys had my back.”
A tilt of her lips revealed real warmth. “Oh, the Merry Idiots,” she murmured. “The four of you were quite the crew.”
I flashed a quick smile, chewing through another bite. “After Emma’s betrayal?” I shrugged. “I just . . . it all changed.”
“Dating, you mean?”
“Life.”
“Is that when you became . . . ahh . . .”
Heat flooded her cheeks. I lifted my brow in teasing interest. “Please,” I murmured, “do finish that statement.”
A twinkling overtook her embarrassment. “Loose Vik with Flying Lips?”
The old nickname sent me into a spasm of amusement, and then a stab of regret. How stupid it sounded now.
“Yes,” I drawled. “I flipped the metaphorical bird to women, so to speak. Part of the reason we became the Merry Idiots, known for the C-tape, was probably an attempt for me to recover some footing. Stable ground. A . . . name for myself that had nothing to do with Emma and her games.”
“I remember.”
She said it so softly, I almost didn’t hear.
With a quiet breath, I exclaimed, “Damn, it all seems so stupid now.” A hesitant, embarrassed smile came next. “At the time, though, it was . . . so hard.”
“Retrospect is easy.”
I shrugged. “Yes, but here’s the really dumb part: I haven’t forgotten Emma.”
