Cruel Boy Page 8

  A thing? I’m surprised. I’ve barely hung out with Sam. But maybe people are starting to catch on to the secret we share … even though no one except for me and her know the truth.

  Nate: Rumors.

  Layla: I don’t think so.

  Nate: I don’t care.

  Layla: What happened to you? You’re so mad at me all the time.

  Nate: I don’t want this anymore … I already told you.

  Layla: Oh, c’mon. Let’s talk about it.

  Nate: I’m done talking.

  Layla: So you don’t want me anymore?

  Nate: Get. Off. My. Back.

  I stop the conversation and block her outright. I’m done talking. Done trying to get through to her. She won’t believe my words, so she’ll have to believe my actions instead. Layla will never, ever understand me. I’ve come to realize that now.

  I stare at the laptop on my desk. Sam’s private laptop. Like a devil’s fruit, it tempts me, whispering to me to come and open it up and see what’s inside.

  Finally, I grab it and sit down on my bed. I blow out a long-drawn-out breath before opening it and finding it password protected. Of course she thought of that.

  I try several different ones. Her name, combinations with her birthdate, and even the name of her best friend and school. None of it works.

  I growl and throw the laptop aside.

  It’s useless. All of it.

  Even if I did manage to break in, what if I don’t find anything? What if she told the truth when she said they weren’t on there? I’d never be able to find out where she stored them. I need them, and she knows it.

  She knows what I’ve done … and she knows the goddamn truth.

  It’ll only be a matter of time until the world finds out too.

  * * *

  Sam

  I’ve tried not to think about Nate searching through my laptop, seeing every private conversation and thought I’ve ever had. It’s a long shot that he’ll get beyond the password screen, but if he does, my whole life is up for grabs. All in the hands of the school’s heartthrob jock … and the worst bully it’s ever known.

  He’s a bad guy, and he knows it. The fact that he doesn’t care hurts the most.

  I’m so damn angry, yet all I can do is take it out on this goddamn painting right now.

  I flick my brush up and down violently, painting a picture of a girl overshadowed by trees. The image is vivid in my head and replays again and again. A girl standing near her house, a small window into her world, the tiny house behind her in shambles.

  “Ooh … interesting.”

  I turn my head as Mo walks in, staring at my painting.

  “What is it?” she asks.

  “Just a mood,” I explain while patting my brush into the paint.

  “It reminds me of something,” she murmurs as she stands behind me and peeks over my shoulder while I paint. “Something you recently told me … about a girl whose house was robbed by a bully.”

  I narrow my eyes while I glance at her. “What a coincidence.”

  “Sam …” She sighs. “If you wanna talk about it, I’m here. You know that, right?”

  “Mmmhmm.” I know she is, but some things can only be expressed in paintings, not words.

  “It must’ve been so scary to come home to a ravaged room,” she says. “I would’ve been crying, for sure. And then I would have called the police.”

  Why do I get the feeling she’s trying to frisk me for details?

  “Why didn’t you?” she asks.

  “Because it wasn’t that important,” I say.

  “Sure is if you’re painting about it now,” she jests. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  I try to continue painting, but she’s buzzing around me like a bee, and it makes me wanna swat her with the brush.

  “What?” I mutter. “There’s nothing.”

  “Uh-huh,” she says, raising a brow. “You know I can tell when you’re lying.”

  “I’m not. I just don’t want to talk about it right now.” I sigh.

  She places a hand on my shoulder. “Was it someone you know?”

  I shiver. It’s as if she senses it in me and can read my thoughts.

  “No,” I lie. I can’t even look at her when I say it.

  “Do you know what they were looking for?”

  “I don’t know.” Another lie.

  I don’t know why I lie. I keep lying, and I have no reason for it. Everyone I know would go to the police immediately, knowing what I know. But I don’t. Like a painting, I feel as though I’m only seeing half a picture. A mood surrounding a memory. Every canvas or photo captures a single instance of time, but it doesn’t fully paint the picture.

  Maybe that’s why I’m so addicted to them; photographs, paintings, images flashing by. They’re mere moments in a string of events that none of us could ever fully understand.

  And I don’t want to be the one to decide. The one to pull that trigger.

  I don’t know right from wrong.

  I don’t know if what I saw was the full story.

  And even though I hate Nate, I don’t think I should … but he wants me to.

  Lately, he wants everyone to hate him, and I wanna know why.

  “You can tell me. I promise I won’t tell a soul if it’s that important to you,” she says. “If it was personal or something.”

  “No,” I say, trying to move on, but she keeps hammering me about it, and it’s getting on my nerves.

  “Why not?” she asks. “You can tell me anything.”

  “No, I can’t.” My intonation is so direct, like a volcano waiting to erupt, that she’s momentarily taken aback. I don’t blame her.

  “Not this,” I add, licking my lips trying to contain myself as I watch the trust she had in me degrade like a wisp in the wind.

  She mulls it over for a second. “But we’re best friends. You always tell me everything.”

  I don’t know what to say to her that won’t make this worse.

  She nods a few times. “I get it. Fine.” She looks down at her feet, and mutters, “I’m gonna go. See you later in class … or something.”

  Before I can even say I’m sorry, she’s already left the room.

  Goddammit. Why does it have to be this way?

  I wish I could tell her all the things I’ve seen, all the things I know, all the things that have happened to me, but doing that would mean involving her in something dangerous. And I don’t want her to become a target too.

  I contemplate putting away the paint and stopping for the moment, but what should I do? Run after her even though I can’t tell her the truth? No, I have to let this settle. Besides, I took up this art class by choice, and I should do my best to get a good grade. After all, I’m not great at all the other classes, and it’s basically the only thing I’m interested in.

  This painting deserves all my attention. It deserves to be finished, to tell a story, to exist. So I have to keep painting for the sake of it. Every swipe of the brush calms me.

  Still, I wish everything was normal again, and that I didn’t have to keep secrets from my best friends. Or anyone for that matter. If I hadn’t taken those pictures, none of this would even be happening.

  I fish my phone from my pocket and stare at the screen after unlocking it. The app that contains most of them is right in front of me, so I open it and look through them. The longer I stare at the pictures, the ickier I begin to feel, and a certain dread washes over me.

  That’s when I notice the set of eyes staring at me from out in the hallway.

  I quickly put my phone away and pick up my brush again to continue painting in the hopes that this person will just leave me alone … but that’s a futile thing to hope for with Nate Wilson, and he saw precisely what I was doing.

  Chapter 12

  Nate

  For minutes, I watched her. I watched how she brushed the canvas with concise, clearly placed strokes. How she meticulously worked on tiny details
, mixed colors, and planted them where she had them in her mind. The painting … it’s beautiful.

  And I watched her argue with her friend until she left … until Sam was all alone again, struggling to breathe.

  I know how it feels. But I don’t recognize the feelings I have right now.

  Even though I came to look for her for a different reason, I can’t help but be struck in awe at her painting skills. I’ve never seen someone create something so mesmerizing off the top of their head. And it reminds me of something … the window inside her home, the ravaged room behind it, and the girl cowering in front of the shadows.

  Is she painting me?

  I can’t help but wonder. Even though I’m not directly in the picture, the subliminal message isn’t hard to see for someone who was there in the scene when it happened.

  I am the creep who stalks her. The killer who chases her. The bully who makes her feel helpless. The guy who wants what he came for.

  But the girl standing in front of me right now is picture perfect, the way she paints beautiful, her pretty frame a sight to admire. I’m conflicted, and I can’t be conflicted. Not about this. I shouldn’t have feelings for her. None.

  My fucking heart can’t feel right now; it has to stay frozen, entangled by all the bad choices I made and stuck in permanent purgatory. Just like my soul. There’s no room for fucking emotions in there, and that makes this warmth I’m feeling when I watch her paint so infuriating.

  She pauses and stops painting for a moment to check her phone, and I watch her scroll through some peculiar photos. I step closer and closer, trying to peek along over her shoulder.

  Suddenly, she turns her head. The look on her face changes from innocent to shocked and then to pure disgust. I despise that look; that look that says I’m the worst she could ever meet.

  She quickly tucks the phone into her pocket.

  “Nice painting. Made it yourself?”

  “Fuck off,” she says.

  What a reply. I guess I deserve it after all the things I said and did. Of course she doesn’t believe any compliment I give her, despite it being the God’s honest truth.

  “You paint well …” I add.

  “For a what? A snooty bitch? A gullible little girl?” she adds, raising her brow.

  “Just good,” I add. “Better than I ever could.”

  Her lips part, but it takes her a few seconds to form a response. “What is this? A compliment? From Nate Wilson himself?”

  “What? I can’t give a compliment now?” I scoff.

  “You hate me, and I hate you,” she says, turning around to face me. “You’ve never given me a compliment. You’re always a jerk, and your intentions are always bad.”

  Ouch. That hurt. I mean, I know she thinks I’m that way, but I’m only that way because I have to be. But hearing it spoken out loud isn’t something I enjoy.

  She points the paintbrush at me. “And you only want one thing.”

  She’s right. There’s only one reason I am the way I am to her. To get her to give me what I want, I have to drive her to the point of surrender, and I’ll use any means necessary. Even if it’ll mess with both our heads and hearts.

  I try to pick up the painting, but the moment my fingers touch the canvas, she swats me away.

  “Don’t touch it,” she hisses.

  “Why not? I’d love to look at it up close. Hang it on my wall. Look at it every single day.” I put emphasis on each word and look her straight in the eyes while doing so. I want her to know I think about her and that what she knows about me consumes my every waking thought.

  I lean in and look her straight in the eyes. “Just like you look at my pictures.”

  “They’re not your pictures,” she hisses. “Give me back my laptop or get out.”

  I smile at her. I love her tenacity. “It’s not gonna be that easy, Sammie-Sam.”

  “So you admit you took it,” she says. “You’re a fucking burglar.”

  “I never said anything,” I muse, and I grind my teeth. “But give me your phone, and you might find out.”

  “Why? So you can try to hack into it too?” she retorts, laughing. “The pictures aren’t on there either. You’re wasting your goddamn time.”

  I don’t know why, but her laughter pulls something out of me I didn’t know existed. A rage unlike any other. And I lash out by jumping at her and trying to steal it from her pocket.

  “Fuck, get the fuck off me!” she yells, shoving me away. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  I take a step back and think.

  She’s right. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I can’t stop either. Someway, somehow, I have to get my hands on those pictures. Before she does something she’ll regret.

  She’s covering it with her hand now, so I grab her arm instead. A quick jab with the paintbrush follows, right on my face. I release her from my grip.

  “You fucking painted me,” I growl, rubbing my hand over my cheek right where the paint is.

  We’re both breathing heavily now. My brain is on overload, trying to choose between fight or flight. Continue to get her to do what I want or leave it for now.

  I don’t want to push her to the brink even though I thought I could do it.

  The minute she touched me with her brush, something changed in her eyes. A volatile spark … as though her tentative anger and hatred turned into rejection. And it stung as badly as a knife to the heart.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I mutter.

  Anything but that look.

  I grab a towel lying on a stool next to her and clean my face with it, but nothing will take off the shame marking me that’s reflected in her eyes. And it hurts.

  I rub my lips, contemplating another word, but none will explain the way I feel. Nothing I say can erase what I’ve done. No one but me knows the truth.

  So I clench my teeth, turn around, and throw the towel in a corner before rushing off.

  * * *

  Sam

  For a moment, I’m stunned with my feet practically glued to the floor. My brain tries to process what just happened but fails to describe what I feel. Nothing prepared me for Nate Wilson invading my space, studying me, and judging me and my work. I feel stripped, laid bare … and he said it was beautiful.

  You can’t trust his words. He tried to steal your phone.

  I close my eyes and shake my head. He liked the painting, even when he knew it was about him and all the ways he makes me feel small and insignificant. Every single step I take, he follows in my footsteps like a shadow I can’t escape. And it haunts me. He’s haunting my every waking thought.

  It’s the same way for him.

  No, I can’t think like that. I can’t think of him any other way than the bad guy. The high school jock. The insufferable bully. Because if I don’t, what would that make me?

  I close my eyes and blow out a breath. I can’t believe I’m thinking about this. That I’m involved in something that’s beyond my comprehension … my control.

  But it’s not in his hands either.

  Follow him.

  I don’t know why I listen to the little voice in my head, but I do. My feet begin to move before I realize it, and I pick up the cloth he threw into the corner on my way out. I hold it close, the paint still wet on the rag, just like the image printed onto my retina of a boy lashing out in pure agony. A boy desperate for someone to know his pain … the truth.

  I follow the path of his footsteps in several shades of blue paint down the hallway. He didn’t notice when he walked through the splashes I left on the floor, but I did.

  The trail leads me to the men’s toilet. I hesitate to go in. Girls aren’t allowed in here. If anyone else is in there, they’ll tell me off. And if anyone sees me going inside, it’s reputation suicide.

  Do it.

  Self-destruction pushes me to open the door; the need to know too powerful to ignore.

  Nate stands near the edge of the bathroom, facing the window. His hands are fi
rmly planted on the windowsill, fingers sprawled but crooked, as if he’s trying to crack his nails against the stone, and his head hangs forward. A picture I could paint in a heartbeat.

  “I know you’re there,” he says, his voice gravelly, painful. As though he’s wounded and ready to lash out.

  I should run and hide. Take my pride and stride out while I still own it. He could strip me bare of everything I am and throw me to the masses to be ridiculed. He’s Falcon Elite’s star athlete; a guy with a promise of a bright future. A person with so much baggage you don’t dare touch them.

  But I do.

  My hand has already reached for him and grazed his shoulder.

  He immediately turns around.

  I take a few steps back.

  “Are you stalking me now?” he growls, snorting. “Pathetic.”

  He breathes, walks, and talks like a monster. A man obsessed with one thing and one thing only. Me.

  “I’m not. You started it,” I reply, still stepping back until I’m backed into a corner of the toilets with no escape. He’s already blocked the door with his huge frame. The only way out is by passing him. Shit.

  He leans in and traps me between him and the wall. “Why did you follow me?”

  My heart beats in my throat, and I swallow away the lump in my throat.

  “I … wanted to know.”

  “What? How a guy like me can stoop to that level? Why I even try? If I’ll give up?” He looks into my eyes as though he’s searching for the truth, but I don’t have it for him.

  “Tell me,” he says.

  “Why you said you thought my painting was beautiful.” It sputters out of my mouth before I realize it.

  I don’t mean to be so forthcoming, but when he looks at me with those penetrating eyes, it just happens. And something about the way he clenches his jaw and then bites his lip undoes me.

  “Because it’s the truth,” he says with such a serious face that I find it hard not to believe him.

  He snorts. “But you’ll obviously think that’s a lie.”

  “No,” I respond.

  His eyes narrow. He brings one hand to his face and rubs his jaw. “Liar.”