Then, from behind me: “Don’t be a bitch, babe.” That voice. I froze. I knew that voice. No . . . don’t let it be.

“Brady’s got a cousin?” Nash asked as he stood up and held my books out to me.

I was afraid to turn around and look. Maybe I was mistaken. The guy making out with the girl beside me could not be the guy who kissed me Friday night. The guy who kissed me had been nice to his mother. Could a nice guy like that kiss another girl when he already had a girlfriend? Wasn’t he a good guy deep down? I had convinced myself of that all weekend while I replayed our kiss over and over.

I tried to look unaffected as I took my books from Nash and tucked them against my chest.

“Yeah, he does. Surprise, surprise.” That voice again. It was him. Oh God . . . it was so him.

I dropped my gaze to my books. I didn’t want to look at anyone. I knew my cheeks were pink. I just wanted to be alone and get over this surprise in private.

My mystery guy continued, “She’s something to look at, but Brady’s made her completely off-limits. So, Ray is right. Let it go. I did.”

But he hadn’t stayed away. Did he know Brady had made me off-limits when he kissed me? Was that why he was acting now like he didn’t know me at all? What a jerk! I’d let him kiss me. What had I been thinking? I wasn’t normally weak just because a guy had a pretty face. My father had a pretty face too, and not once had my mother been able to trust him. I was smarter than this. That was a mistake I wouldn’t make again.

“What’s that supposed to mean, ‘I did’?” Raleigh raised her voice. And shoved off the guy. I moved out of her way.

“She’s something to look at. Like I said,” he repeated.

He was being cruel to her on purpose and using me to do it. I hated cruelty and callous behavior. Anger simmered inside me. It was times like this, I wanted to speak. No, I wanted to yell! But I wouldn’t.

My face was hot from embarrassment, fury, and disappointment. I wished Brady had waited on me. I didn’t know which way I needed to go, and pulling out my school map in the middle of all this seemed impossible. I was trembling. I glanced down the hall both ways, trying to decide the best escape route.

“She’s mute!” the girl yelled, then let out an angry growl. “I don’t know why I put up with you. I could have anyone. Anyone, West. Do you realize that?”

West. His name was West. A girl needed to know the name of her first kiss, yet I wish I didn’t. I wanted to wash him and that night from my memory completely.

“You couldn’t have me. I don’t do crazy,” Nash replied, and I glanced up at him. He winked, and there was an easy friendliness in his eyes. Nothing like what I had seen in West’s. Why couldn’t he have been my first kiss?

West chuckled at Nash’s reply.

“I wouldn’t want you,” she spit. “My daddy only lets me date white guys.”

I tensed up. Had she really just said that? Nash wasn’t all white, but he wasn’t all black, either. He was a beautiful color.

“Awww, that’s a shame,” Nash replied, obviously amused. “Guess your daddy’s still sore that his white girlfriend married a black man. It’s been years, Raleigh. He really should move on. My momma sure has.”

Okay, wow. Small towns were really, really small.

Nash looked back at me. “You need help finding your first class?” he asked.

But Raleigh wasn’t about to let it die. “Are you going to allow him talk to me that way?” she asked West.

“You started it. He’s just finishing it,” West replied.

“I am done, West!” she shouted, then stormed off.

All I wanted was to get to my classroom. I reached for the map I’d stuck in my pocket and unfolded it to figure out where I was supposed to be. Forget my trembling hands. I wanted away from this immediately. Away from West.

“What class you got first?” Nash asked me.

“She doesn’t talk. Raleigh wasn’t shitting you,” West said from behind me.

I really didn’t want to look up at either of them, but I couldn’t help myself. I glanced back at West; I had to be sure. The voice was the same, but I wanted to see his face. Deep down, I was still holding on to a small slim hope that the boy who’d kissed me was better than this one standing behind me.

Unfortunately, in the light he was even more perfect than in the dark. I jerked my head back down to my map before he caught me looking at him. I hated him. I hated anyone who treated others as if their feelings didn’t matter.

“You born that way?” Nash asked me, and I wished he’d give up. I didn’t know what to do with him. He was very nice, but I wasn’t going to talk to him.

West moved and suddenly he was standing in front of me, looking completely bored. The fact that his girlfriend had just broken up with him and ran off didn’t seem to rank on his importance scale. It took a cold person to react that way.

I glanced at him and found his dark blue gaze on me. Long eyelashes framed his eyes. They weren’t as startling as Nash’s eyes—I was sure no one could have eyes as pretty as Nash’s—but there was more there I had missed Friday night. Pain, fear, detachment. Again, the same thing I saw in my own eyes every time I looked in the mirror.

“Fuck, she’s prettier up close,” West said as he tilted his head to the side and studied me. “Makes me not care that she can’t talk.”

He was looking at me as if he hadn’t held my face in his large hands Friday night. My stomach churned in a sick knot. I knew demented and cruel. I’d lived it. I’d witnessed it. And I feared it. If it weren’t for the pain and fear in his eyes, I’d have slapped him. But I just wanted away from him. He wasn’t a good person. Something had warped him. While I had chosen not to speak to deal with my pain, he had chosen to deal with his by hurting others.

“She’s mute, dickhead. Not deaf,” Nash snarled.

A crooked grin that didn’t meet his eyes touched West’s lips. Did his friends not see this? Did they not know he was hiding pain that haunted him and made him this horrible person?

“Don’t mind me, sugar. I’m an asshole,” he said, as if he were apologizing. But apologizing for what? Kissing me? Cheating on his girlfriend? Being an all-around heartless jerk with every word that came out of his mouth?

Those who were damaged weren’t fixable. I knew that all too well. Anyone who tried to fix him would fail. But people weren’t born cruel. Life made them that way. At least that was what one of my counselors told me when she tried to talk to me about my father.

I made a blatant shift away from West and held my head high. The hard glare I shot him was more than any words could say. Thankfully, he got the message, and he turned and walked away.

I watched him go, wondering if there was someone who knew why he was acting out this way. Someone who knew the truth behind his cruel spirit. His girlfriend didn’t, or she wouldn’t have broken up with him like that. He held himself with a confidence that turned heads, and I guess no one noticed anything deeper.

Much as I knew he was bad news and wanted to hate him, I’d heard him talking to his mother. Heard him tell her he loved her. Heard the pain in his voice.

“Don’t go there,” Nash warned from beside me. “West ain’t good, sweetheart. He’s one of my best friends, but he’s poison for girls like you. He don’t care about anyone as much as he cares about West.”

Nash didn’t have to worry. I wasn’t going anywhere near West. We had been close enough once, and he didn’t even seem to remember. Our kiss wasn’t something he thought about all weekend like I had.

Still, West needed to be saved. Someone had to get close to him, to reach him. No one had been able to save my father, and horror had followed in his path of destruction. West was in desperate need of help. That much I knew. I also knew I wasn’t that person for him. I had my own demons to survive.

I Love You, Momma

CHAPTER 4

WEST

“Where’s Brady?” Nash asked as he sat down at our table in the cafeteria.

“Ain’t seen him. Probably with that good-looking cousin of his,” I replied, trying to act as if I hadn’t had her in my arms while her kiss shocked the hell out of me. Damn, that kiss had been sweet. I’d laid in bed that night thinking about how she’d felt. Her hands on my chest and her body leaning into me. For that one moment, I’d been able to forget. I hadn’t thought about my life and what I was facing anytime I went home.

But then she’d made a small whimper, and it had snapped me out of my delirium. The girl couldn’t speak, and I was pressing her against a tree and taking what I needed. God, I was a monster. She didn’t deserve that.

I’d needed to get away from her, so I let her go and I’d walked off. I hadn’t even been able to look at her when I broke away. One glimpse at those lips swollen from our kiss, and I’d have been right back at it. She wasn’t just beautiful, she felt good too.

Not to mention that if Brady found out I’d kissed his cousin, we’d end up beating the shit out of each other. I deserved it, sure. She was too sweet for me.

“She really can’t talk. I was in second period with her,” said Asa Griffith, the other running back on the team. He’d been playing ball with us since elementary school. “I figure, if a girl looks like that and can’t bitch, then she just might be perfect.”