Full Court Press (32 page)

“Please, Beck—”

“No. You shut the fuck up.”

She snapped her mouth shut and felt tears of shame welling in her eyes.

Beck suddenly turned so that his back was to her, his fingers curling into tight fists.

She touched his shoulder. “Don’t, Beck, please.”

He flung her hands off. “Don’t fucking touch me.” He stalked toward the door and she followed. He grabbed his keys then turned to jab a finger at her. “You stay right fucking there. You don’t move from that spot until Anderson gets here or so help me, I will...just don’t move.”

She didn’t move. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I just wanted to help you. I wanted to know why you were so upset.”

Beck ignored her and yanked the front door open before slamming it shut behind him, rattling the whole house. She could see him through the window as he got into his BMW and left the driveway so fast that the gravel shot from under his tires and cracked against the glass.

She dropped her face to her hands and tried to hold back the tears. She had messed up, big time, and it was all her fault. She had known it was wrong when she had been doing it but it hadn’t stopped her.

Less than a minute later, Anderson’s Charger pulled up to the house and she wiped at her tears viciously, knowing it wouldn’t do any good.

She hurried out of the house and slid into the Charger before Andy could get out, trying to hide the tears on her face.

Anderson knew right away that she was upset. “What’s going on? Beck looked pissed.”

She rubbed her palms into her eyes in attempt to stop the tears. She hated crying in front of people. “Can you just take me to my apartment, please?” she asked quietly, afraid that if she spoke any louder her voice would crack.

“Okay.” He pulled out of the driveway, then suddenly slammed on the brakes. “What the fuck is that?”

She looked up and saw that he was pointing to the inside of her lower thigh, where a bruise that looked suspiciously like a handprint had started to form.

Carmondy tugged her shorts down to cover it. “Nothing.”

“That is not nothing, Carmondy. Did Beck do that to you?”

“No.” Of course it was from Beck, but only because she had been fighting him in the throes of passion. It didn’t actually hurt.

“Carmondy...that is not cool...just tell me if it was him and I can—”

“I said no!” she burst out, louder than she had intended.

“I can’t just let this go, it’s not—”

“Anderson, please...can you just drop it? I really don’t feel like talking. I just want to get to my apartment, okay?”

“Would you tell me if he hurt you?”

“Do you really think that Beck would hurt a girl?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Well, there you go, end of story.”

“Carmondy...”

They had reached her apartment and Carmondy opened the car door to escape.

“Hey.” Anderson grabbed her wrist before she could get out.

She winced slightly as her wrist gave her a light twinge of pain.

Anderson yanked her wrist over to look at it more closely, and his face turned from annoyed to appalled. A bruise was also forming on her wrist, both of them, actually.

Carmondy bit her lip. She hadn’t even realized.

Anderson let her go slowly. “Carmondy, I am being dead serious here. Did he hurt you?”

“No,” she said firmly, without hesitation.

“You’re lying to me.”

“No, I’m not, he didn’t—”

“I’m your goddamn friend, Carmondy! Stop lying to me!”

She recoiled. That was the second time today she’d been yelled at. “Please, don’t yell at me, Anderson.” She tried to sound strong but it didn’t work.

He took a deep breath but it was clear that he was far from calm. “You shouldn’t lie to your friends, Carmondy. Now, I would stay, but I have to go do something for my mom. I’ll call you, okay? We’re not finished here.”

She nodded and slid out of the car. When she entered her apartment, the tears started flowing again, not because Beck hated her, but because of what she had done to make him hate her.

She took another shower. She could smell him all over her. She felt incredibly dirty but when she stepped in the shower, she realized that it wasn’t the kind of dirt that you could wash off your body.

Nevertheless, she stayed under the hot spray for a good 45 minutes, until her tears stopped. When she stepped out of the shower, she saw the redness of bruises starting to form. Of course, being an athlete, she always had bruises. Basketball was a physical sport after all, but she could distinguish the ones caused from Beck’s hands or her own struggles from the ones caused by bouncing around a basketball court.

The largest bruises were the ones on her hip and the back of her upper thigh, which was where Beck had held her when they’d had sex for the second time. She also had bruises forming on her legs and around her wrists from struggling against the handcuffs, along with other small areas on her hips and waist. Some were very obviously handprints. She prodded at them but they didn’t hurt. She hadn’t noticed that she was bruising but now that she looked in the mirror, she looked like a rape victim or something.

Carmondy was exhausted, almost lethargic. All she wanted to do was curl up on her bed and fall asleep for hours. That’s the kind of rest a normal girl would deserve, but Carmondy knew that the reason she was so tired was because she knew how wrong what she’d done was. She didn’t deserve rest right now.

She dressed in running shorts and a tank top and jogged out into the chilly afternoon. She left behind her iPod and water. Music would take her mind off what she should be thinking about and she could survive without water. If she got thirsty, she would just have to run all the way back for it.

She didn’t bother to try to keep track of distance or time, just ran until her body decided it was going to stop fighting and do everything it could to provide her muscles with the energy they needed. Once this kicked in, she ran harder. On the edge of town, she circled around and headed into an unknown district. There was no snow on the ground but the biting winter wind made it cold out, leaving her body confused as to whether it was overheated or freezing cold.

She ignored her body’s signs of protest. Her legs felt numb for a while, then they ached for an even longer period of time. Then her calf, shin, and quad muscles started sending shooting pain up toward her torso.

Still, she ignored that her feet felt like they were ripping in half each time she pushed off. She ignored the fact that her hips felt like they were lubricated with sandpaper and that her shoulders and neck could barely move from stiffness. Her muscles started to quiver with each stride and she recognized it as muscle fatigue. She hadn’t eaten anything since that morning and the gnawing stomach pain told her that she was starving.

Though it felt like she had been running for at least five hours, the sun told her it couldn’t have been more than two. She passed the downtown area with the fast food places, knowing that she should stop and get water, but didn’t.

Finally, her body started to quit. She held it off for a while but as she was jogging by the parking lot of a grocery store, she started to feel lightheaded. When the sidewalk started to swim in front of her, she had no choice but to drop down onto a bus stop bench.

It wasn’t until she stopped that she realized her asthma had kicked in. Automatically, panic set in as well, which only made it worse. She leaned on her knees and took in shallow breaths, waiting for it to pass.

It didn’t pass. She needed her inhaler, which she didn’t have. Tears of frustration pooled in her eyes, not just because she couldn’t breathe, but because of everything that had being going on. She didn’t know how long she sat there but a good time later she heard the sound of a vehicle pull up to the curb. She looked up and recognized Anderson’s Charger.

With shaking hands, she wiped at the tears on her cheeks. Why did Anderson have to be the one to find her? She would rather suffocate.

Anderson rounded his car. “Carmondy? Hey, are you okay?”

She put her face in her hands and tried not to sound like a gasping fish.

He touched her shoulder. “What’s going on? Can you breathe?”

She pushed his hand away. “Just...” The effort to speak only closed her airway more and she pressed a hand to her sternum, trying to breathe.

“Jesus Christ, are you all right?”

She nodded jerkily and suddenly he was gone, opening the door to his car and pulling something out of his glove box. He jogged back and held an inhaler out to her. She didn’t want to take it but her hands betrayed her. She watched her fingers grab the thing and bring it to her lips, letting the bitter spray flood her airway.

A couple of big breaths entered her lungs and she took another puff, a bigger one this time.

Once oxygen returned to her system, she became acutely aware of just how much pain she was in.

“Are you okay now?” Anderson stared at her with concern. “I’m glad Beck gave me an extra inhaler for you. He said he wanted a bunch of them around since you keep forgetting to take one with you.”

The mention of Beck made her feel worse. She buried her face in her hands.

“Come on,” Anderson said gently. “I’ll take you home.”

They made the short drive back to her apartment in silence and he followed her inside. Before she could stop herself, she walked to the couch and sank down on it. He sat down beside her, still looking concerned. She rested her face against his neck and curled her body up tightly. His arms came around her, one around her waist while the other hand rested on her hair.

He dropped his head to press his lips to her forehead. “Comfortable?”

She nodded and pulled her arms close to her chest, making her body as small as possible.

“Good.” His hands started to stroke her hair. “Now, did you want to talk about something? What the hell is going on with you?”

“Why are you no nice to me?” she mumbled against his skin.

“Because we’re friends, remember?” he said simply. “Now, tell me what’s wrong.”

“I did something bad.”

“What was this bad thing that you did?”

She sighed. “I went behind someone’s back to learn very private information. I knew he didn’t want me to know. He doesn’t want anyone to know. I purposely did it. I knew it was wrong when I was doing it, but I did it anyway.”

“Okay...I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume that this ‘he’ is Beck?”

“Yeah.”

He stroked her back and shoulders. “And his super private secret is his sister Lily, right?”

She nodded against his chest. “I went to the hospital with him. He left me in the waiting room, but I followed him and watched from a two-way mirror.”

“And he found out?” Anderson shook his head. “Is that why he hurt you?”

“He didn’t hurt me,” she protested.

He ran his thumb over the bruise on her wrist, obviously unconvinced, but to her relief, he didn’t pursue it any further. “I guess if you know that much, I might as well tell you all of it.”

Would you?” she asked softly. “I don’t want to hurt him. I just want to help him and I feel like if I just knew what was going on, I could do that.”

“When Beck and I were twelve, the Nicholsons got in a car accident. Their parents were fine, just minor stuff. Beck had a concussion but he was okay too, but Lily...she got the worst of it. Several broken bones and major head trauma. She suffers from some neurological damage, which makes her difficult to handle. She has seizures hard enough to break her bones, which are already weak. She never grew right after the accident. They say it has to do with damage to the area of the brain that controls the growth hormones. She’s also got severe mood swings that she can’t control. She’ll scream, cry, get violent, suicidal. The neurological damage caused several psychological problems too. Some things, random things, set her off, so they had to limit what she is introduced to. I think they put her on a strict schedule because her life has to be very orderly for her malfunctioning brain to be able to process it. Also, she’s got PTSD, from the accident, and she has anxiety attacks. She has a hard time grasping some concepts, like ethics, or love, or family. She doesn’t understand that Beck is her brother or that her parents are related to either of them, things like that. That’s stuff you’re supposed to learn during that age, but she couldn’t.”

“Why does he seem to deal with this all by himself? Why don’t his parents take care of it?”

“For a while after it happened, Beck tried to cope. I was his best friend so he talked to me about it, and I kept up to date on it. But about a year later, Beck’s parents decided to stop treating her at a local psychological care hospital, and instead shipped her off to the one up the mountain. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great place, really nice people, but their parents just did it to keep her out of their hair. Beck was so angry and hurt. He didn’t get to see his sister anymore, not until he got his license and could take himself up there. He loves his sister. He visited her every day when she was down here. But when they shipped her off...Beck saw his sister maybe five times over three years.”

“No wonder he’s so angry all the time,” she breathed.

“After his parents shipped her off, he realized how much he missed her, and how much he wasn’t going to be able to see her. He was so angry. He took it out on everyone: his parents, his friends, and even me. One day he just stopped talking to me about it. I tried to get him to talk about it, stop hating everyone, but you know how well that worked.” Anderson shrugged. “Beck’s parents...God, they don’t care. As long as he gets his diploma, they don’t care about him. I know that’s a terrible thing to say but...his parents have never gotten along and it didn’t help Beck’s situation. Those three years of barely seeing his sister changed him. I’ve never seen him back to his old self, ever.”

She sighed. “It’s not just that I found out his secret, it’s that he trusted me. He’s been trusting me in a way that...it sounds like he hasn’t trusted anyone in a long time. I mean, he asks me for help on things, he’s...nice sometimes, he helps me with basketball, and some other stuff...”