MADDIE
“Get the fuck out of here.” Alec seized Spencer by his shirt and threw him out the front door. “You’ll never get Maddie Weber again, you fucking asshole. Next time you come back and harass her, I’ll kick your fucking ass.”
“Is that right, Wolfe?” Spencer taunted. “Just like you kicked Oliver’s ass this morning?”
I clenched my jaw and grabbed Alec’s hand to pull him back into the house before Spencer could tease and taunt him anymore. This was exactly what Spencer did all the time, even when we were together. He would either spin things around or bully people relentlessly.
“Don’t listen to him, Alec,” I said. “He’s trying to make you angry.”
Alec growled lowly, jaw clenched hard and his heated gaze on Spencer. “I said to get the fuck out of here.”
“Alec, come on,” I pleaded.
If I didn’t settle him down now, then things would surely get out of hand. Spencer was too good at shit like this and even better than Alec at fighting. Sure, he had gotten beaten up by Oliver last year. But deep down, I knew that he had let Oliver kick his ass. Spencer knew how much Oliver meant to me and hadn’t wanted to fuck him up.
After stepping between Alec and Spencer, I swallowed hard and placed my hand on each of their chests, glancing toward Spencer. He might’ve still had a thing for me—even if that thing was wanting to control me again—but I had grown these past few weeks.
He wouldn’t run all over me again. If I didn’t stand up to him now, he would keep pushing me. But … maybe he would do that to me anyway.
“Leave,” I said, making sure that I left no sympathy or softness in my voice. “Now.”
Spencer tried to step closer to me, but I shoved him back.
“I mean it, Spencer. We’re over.”
A couple of moments passed, and his smirk turned into a full scowl. He showed me his pearly-white teeth that his daddy must’ve paid for and turned quickly on his heel, pulling himself away from me and storming down the sidewalk to his car parked down the street.
Once he drove off in a fury, I turned toward Alec and wrapped my arms around his shoulders, pulling him down into a tight hug. The whole weight of what had happened today at Redwood Academy laid on my shoulders, and I didn’t know how to handle it.
“Thank you for coming,” I whispered into the crook of his neck, tears piling in my eyes.
Alec tensed for a moment, his arms slowly coming around my waist. “You didn’t invite him over, right, Maddie?” he asked, voice actually sounding a bit … vulnerable.
I had never heard him sound so soft and scared.
Alec Wolfe never showed his soft side.
“No,” I said, shaking my head and pulling back to look him in the eyes. “I would never do that. I don’t even like him anymore. He hurt me so much in the past. You saw it firsthand, the hell that he put me through.”
Swallowing hard, Alec glanced down between us and nodded. “I know.”
I grasped his face to force him to look at me and frowned. “You don’t believe me.”
“I do, Maddie,” he said with a sigh. “I just … you might think I’m good with this relationship stuff, but I refuse to lose you. I’ve liked you for years now. I saw what he put you through, and I had seen the way you used to look at him, like he was your world.”
Gently stroking his face with my fingers, I stared into his eyes. “I don’t look at him like that, now do I?”
“No, but …” He paused for a long time and ran a hand through his hair. “Never mind.”
“What is it?”
“It’s stupid.”
“What is it, Alec? Tell me.”
“You don’t look at me like that,” he whispered, eyes becoming glossy. “Through all the girls at Redwood and all the years I’ve known you, I’ve only wanted you to look at me the way you used to look at him. I’ve dreamed of that for so fucking long.”
My eyes widened slightly, and I had the urge to slap that boy. He didn’t know that he had been the only one getting me through those years, the only guy who I’d kept hoping would make a move while I was with Spencer.
All those eyes I had made at Spencer meant nothing.
They were fake. They were what Spencer had forced me to do if I didn’t want to be screamed at and controlled as badly later on in the night. They weren’t real; they were never real. The only time I had felt something real was with …
Alec Wolfe.
“You might think that you want me to look at you the way I did with Spencer, but I don’t want our relationship to be anything like mine was with him,” I whispered, resting my forehead against the center of his chest. “I can’t allow that. I can’t be controlled like that again. You didn’t see what he did to me outside of school. I didn’t look at him like that then.”
Alec picked up my face. “He hurt you, worse than what he did at school.”
I balled my hands into tight fists, all those suppressed memories flooding through my head. Months ago, I had buried them and vowed to never reopen that part of my life, but today, at school and seeing Spencer again … it fucked with me.
Part of me wanted to believe that Spencer was the man behind the videos today, just to mess with me more, but I knew that it wasn’t him. I knew that it was whoever the hell had been sending me those text messages—probably that bitch Sandra.
And right now, I just wanted to forget it all, especially this pain.
“Yes,” I whispered. “But I can’t talk about it now. It brings back too many nightmares.” I grasped his hands, then my house keys, and walked out of the house toward Alec’s car. “Let’s go on a drive. I don’t want to be here when Oliver gets home either.”
If Oliver found out that Spencer had paid me a visit today too, he would pack me up himself and send me to another school where Spencer would never be able to find me. Or he would do something much, much worse.
After all, this was Redwood.