THREATS

“SAY THE WORD, E. A few bloody knuckles won’t hurt me. Wouldn’t mind rearranging Stoner Boy’s face.” Mica was pounding his fist into his palm like an absolute barbarian.

“You have some nerve, Mica. Back off.” A board creaked under my foot as I stepped in front of Caleb. He scowled at me through the darkness of the bridge like I’d taken away his manhood by sticking up for him. Fabulous. One more reason for everyone to hate me.

“Is Cassidy your little bodyguard?” Mica taunted Caleb, reaching over my shoulder to shove him away from Ethan.

“Who’s the ‘little bodyguard’ again?” Caleb jeered with a smirk that looked nothing like his usual laid-back expression.

“Little?” Mica puffed his chest out, cockier than usual. “Are you having problems seeing? Do I need to shine up your eyes for you?” He clenched his right hand into a fist, extended it toward Caleb, then turned it sideways like he was aiming a gun.

“Enough with the threats!” I turned toward Ethan to plead with him, but my drunken feet slipped on a patch of ice and I stumbled into him instead.

Right when I thought I felt Ethan’s arms tighten around me, Mica drove his hands between us and pushed me backward. “Hands off my boy, bitch.”

I recoiled at his harsh tone. No one had ever called me a bitch before.

“Mica, stop.” Ethan put his hand on Mica’s shoulder.

“No way.” Mica looked at Ethan with wide eyes. “We can’t leave this unsettled.”

I sputtered out some weak defense that only seemed to hurt Ethan more.

His brown eyes turned cold when he said, “It’s pretty clear this is settled.” He started back toward Aimée’s house. I wanted to follow him, but my Mary Janes felt nailed to the boards beneath me.

Mica stopped him. “You’re going to let them get away with playin’ you like this?”

I stammered something else, but it was too late. Ethan’s stare cut through the shadows that possessed the covered bridge and bore into me. “It’s not worth it.” Before I could react, he was gone.

My heart evaporated from my chest. I no longer had a use for it. “It’s not worth it.” We are not worth it. My. World. Over.

Mica scowled at me, then jogged after Ethan.

I couldn’t breathe. My head felt light in the frantic, self-implosion kind of way. In my mind I shouted the perfect apology, one that made Ethan come back. I swallowed hard, but only got out, “Sorry,” after Ethan had disappeared into Aimée’s backyard.

“I’m sorry too, Cassidy.”

I whipped around to face Caleb. Hot anger flooded my veins. “I wasn’t talking to you. Why would I ever apologize to you?” I threw my hands up and let them fall on top of my head. “Everything is destroyed. I destroyed everything—how stupid could I be? Everyone is going to hate me when they find out.”

“Hey,” Caleb said sweetly, “I don’t hate you.”

“No?” I swiped at my tears. “Well, I plan on never having anything to do with you ever again. How about now? Hate me yet?”

Caleb’s voice hardened. “Don’t I get a say in that?”

“No.” I stomped away from him and turned toward the frozen river so he couldn’t see the tears burning my cheeks. Chunks of ice knocked against one another in the sparse patches of thaw with no place to go.

“That’s the way it always is with us, right, Cassidy? I put myself out there and you reel me in or toss me out whenever you feel like it.”

“Oh, shut up. This thing is over.”

“‘This thing’?” he asked, looking wounded.

Maybe it was all the schnapps I’d drunk, but his question was infuriating. I turned to face him. “Us.” I ticked a finger between him and me, almost yelling. “This is your fault.”

He stepped toward me. “I care about you and maybe that’s on me because you have a boyfriend, but at least I was honest with you. How many people have you been honest with in the past three weeks?”

I clenched my teeth, swallowing down the abhorrent truth: I’d become a very good liar since I spent that first afternoon in Caleb’s basement. “You took advantage of me.”

“No, I cared.” He reached for my hand in a gentle, concerned gesture that he had no right to make.

My voice came out as cold as the wind cutting through the cracks in the bridge walls. “You are the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my entire life.” I looked down at his hand on top of mine, wrenched free, and started toward the park side of the bridge. I would walk home in the freezing cold in my totally not-snow-proof Mary Janes. I didn’t care. I needed to get off that wretched bridge.

“Cassidy.”

The chill in my bare hands spread up my arms until they were so cold I could barely lift them to show how completely done with the situation I was. I got them up in an exasperated flail, but they didn’t drop back down. Instead they were gripped and I was hauled back into the shadows.