At First Sight: A Timber Wolves Companion (9 page)

“Earth to Scout,” Jase said, pulling my attention away from Alex’s table.

“Who are you looking at?” Talley glanced over and smiled. “Ah-ha. The new guy. I should have known.”

It occurred to me that it might have been a good idea to have mentioned Alex before that moment.

“What new guy?” Jase looked towards Alex and his face went blank. I was reminded of the time he came home to find that our little sister had decided to make his Star Wars figures “pretty” by coloring on them with a red Sharpie. He had looked at them with this exact same expressionless stare before launching into the biggest temper tantrum ever. Angel had cried for hours.

“His name is Alex Cole, and he just moved here from Montana.” Talley said. “He is smart, attractive, funny, and madly in love with your sister.”

“What?” Two voices came out in unison -- mine incredulous and Jase’s furious.

Talley flinched slightly, but refused to be dissuaded. “C’mon, Scout. You said he was staring at you in Calc, and he was definitely flirting with you in Shakespeare. You could almost see the electricity in the air between you two.”

What the Hades was she talking about? I love Talley. Really, I do. But there are times when Talley’s world and the real world are two completely different places.

Jase’s lips were pressed so tightly together you could barely see them. “Stay away from him. I don’t even want you talking to him. Do you understand?”

“Did you seriously just try to tell me what to do?”

Jase narrowed his eyes. “You do realize who he is, right? You remember what the other one said?”

“I remember.” Like that was the sort of thing that just slipped your mind. “But Alex doesn’t seem so...
intense
. I think he’s fairly innocuous.”

“I don’t care what he is. I promised I’d keep you safe. I can’t do that if you’re hanging out with one of them.”

I could have argued the issue, pointing out that I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself, but I didn’t. It wasn’t like I actually wanted to hang out with the new guy. “No problem. Really, I can’t stand the guy. I would be perfectly happy if I never spoke to him again.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way.” Jase got up, shooting another glance in Alex’s direction. “I’ll see you at the car after school,” he said, grabbing half of my turkey sandwich.

“What was that all about?” Talley asked, watching Jase as he made his way out of the cafeteria.

“I’m not a hundred percent sure,” I admitted. “It has something to do with Alex’s psycho brother. I think Jase is involved in something bad. I tried to ask him about it, but he just shrugged me off.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll just wait it out. Jase will eventually tell me what’s up.”

“I was talking about staying away from Alex.”

“I honestly don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

Talley looked over at the table where Alex was now chatting away with Ashley. They were most likely going over baby names. I cringed at the mental image of little Ashleys.

“That may be a bit harder than you think.”

“Don’t be crazy; it’ll be a piece of cake.”

And it was a piece of cake. I managed to avoid any and all contact with Alex Cole for two whole hours.

***

“There you are, Scout,” Mrs. Sole greeted me at the door of my print media class. “Editorial staff is at the table in the corner.”

I walked back to the table where Joi Fitzgerald and Meg Jamison waited for me. I took a deep, steadying breath as I sat in the only available seat, next to Alex.

Crap.

“We just keep running into each other,” he said as I began to consider becoming a sports writer.

“Yes, it seems karma is intent on us spending some time together. Obviously, I did something horrid in my previous life.”

“Or maybe you’re my reward for being so good.” You would think that grey eyes would be dull and lifeless, but his seemed to glow.

I decided my best response would be silence. Unfortunately, he did not take this as a hint to end the conversation.

“So, I was going to sit by you at lunch, but your boyfriend beat me to it.”

“Who? My what?” The boyfriend statement threw me. “Do you mean Jase?”

Joi, who had been listening intently to our conversation, looked even more shocked than Talley had earlier. “You and Jase have lunch together? But I thought that there had been a royal decree that the Donovan Twins weren’t allowed within 500 feet of each other on school grounds since the Ms. Tubbs incident.”

Good grief. So you make one teacher have a mental breakdown in elementary school. Was it really that big of a deal?

“Twins?”

“Jase is my brother.”

“No, he’s not,” Alex said with absolute conviction.

I was about to tell Alex exactly what I thought about him and his presumptuous arrogance when Joi decided to be helpful.

“Oh, we just call them twins. Jase’s mom married Scout’s dad when they were babies. They don’t look anything alike, and Jase is technically a couple of months older, but they act like twins.”

“Five weeks to the day,” I corrected automatically.

“That’s quite the distinction, Scout, ” Meg said. After watching an episode of
Law and Order
in the fifth grade, Meg Jamison decided she wanted nothing more in life than to be a lawyer. She had been speaking like one ever since. I tried imagining her using “hottie” or “yummy newbie” to describe Alex, but my imagination wasn’t that good.

“Do you have any siblings, Alex?” she asked, steering the conversation away from Jase, who she loathed with a passion since a brief stint as his flavor-of-the-month last year.

I eventually came to know that Alex’s brother was named Liam, and he served as Alex’s legal guardian. (“He’s two years, ten months, and four days older,” Alex told me with a wink.) They moved from Libby, Montana, a town about 75 miles from the Canadian border, to Kentucky the first week in July.

There was no mention of Liam’s habit of terrifying random strangers for fun.

It quickly became apparent that Alex was one of those naturally outgoing people that could coax even the most aloof individuals into a group discussion. Thanks to him, the entire class was debating the best zombie survival tactics when school was dismissed for the day. I was so intent on making sure he understood the advantages of owning a blimp I never considered how Jase would react to seeing the two of us strolling through the parking lot together. It was, without question, one of my more remarkable errors.

Chapter 3

My senior year was off to a spectacular start. I had Beelzebub as a Calculus teacher, half of my classes came with first day homework, and the new guy had managed to completely disrupt my peaceful, structured world. I was so distracted by the time I got home, I didn’t notice the boy sleeping in my bed until I almost sat on him.

Charlie Hagan isn’t handsome in the classic sense - his features are a little too sharp and his lips a little too full - but he was unmistakably attractive. It’s not so much his physical appearance as his personality. Although, his athletic body, piercing green eyes, and curly hair with natural high-lights aren’t to be ignored.

I wanted to go lie down next to him. I wanted to feel his arms wrapped around me and discover what his lips taste like. I wanted to tell him I had been secretly in love with him since I was two years old. So, I did the only thing I could do. I hit him in the head with Guido, my sock monkey.

“Ow, Scout.” He yawned and stretched out, causing the bottom of his T-shirt to ride up and reveal a sliver of bare stomach.

I seriously considered passing out.

“Charlie, what are you doing in my bed?”

“Jase’s room smells funky and Angel’s room is too pink. Your bed, on the other hand, is just right.”

Well, if he felt that way about it...

No, Scout. Bad. Think of something else.

“Shouldn’t you be home packing?”

Charlie was Jase’s best friend and paternal cousin. He lived with the rest of the Hagan clan near the Army Base, but spent as much time at our house as possible. On Friday, he was going to break my heart by moving three hundred miles away.

“Pack, shmack. I’ll do it later. I wanted to see how your first day of school went.”

I plopped down on the bed. Although my heart accelerated slightly at being so close to Charlie, I knew that he thought nothing of it. To him I was just like a sister. Or, at least, a cousin.

“School sucks. I’m dropping out and becoming a truck stop waitress. I think I’ll change my name to Flo and get a really bad perm. Flo the truck stop waitress with a bad perm doesn’t need high school. She lives off the knowledge of life.”

Charlie reached over and put a consoling arm around my shoulders. I had trouble hearing his words over my pounding heart. “Was it Goat Girl? Do you need me to kick her ass for you? I mean, I don’t normally like the idea of hitting girls, but I’ll make an exception.”

Goat Girl was what Charlie and I called Ashley Johnson. It was because when you actually took the time to look at her face, she really did look like a goat with her little mouth, long face, and oddly placed eyes.

“No,” I grumbled. “She’s not the problem. Although, having two classes plus lunch with her doesn’t add up to happy, happy fun.”

“Then what is the problem?”

Before I could answer, my bedroom door swung open and in marched the very definition of a little girl: pink skirt, pink top, pink sandals, and a pink bow keeping her bouncy, blond curls pulled back from her little, round face.

“Found him!” Angel yelled at the top of her lungs. “He’s in bed with Scout!”

My parents adore my six year old sister, positive that she is the most perfect child to have ever been born. Jase and I mostly just manage not to kill her.

“Why are you in bed together?” Angel asked, shooting Charlie and me a disapproving look.

“Because it’s the most comfortable place in the room to sit,” I explained, refusing to feel guilty.

“Why is his arm around you?”

“Because my first day of school sucked.”

“You shouldn’t say ‘sucked’. It’s a bad word.”

“I’m seventeen. I will say ‘sucked’ if I want to.”

“I’m gonna tell Mom.”

“Go ahead. See if I care.” These little talks with my sister always brought out the best in me. We could have gone on for hours, but Jase came into the room with a plate of Oreos and a glass of milk.

“Good work, Munchkin,” he said, handing the snack over to Angel. “Here’s your reward. Now, why don’t you go eat it in your room?”

She looked like she was going to protest, but saw something on Jase’s face that made her comply. Maybe it was the dried blood.

“What happened to you?” Charlie asked, surveying the damage. Jase’s face was starting to swell around his nose, and the area around his eyes was turning purple.

“Wasn’t paying attention in gym. A football hit me in the face.”

“That’s pretty good. Excellent delivery. Your parents are sure to buy it. Now, tell me what really happened.”

“Scout’s new boyfriend punched me.”

All of the zen-like calm Charlie’s presence had created immediately vanished. “He’s not my boyfriend, and you swung first.”

It was the ultimate in high school drama. When Alex and I got outside, I had tried to shrug him off.

“Well, Jase is parked over by the gym, so I’ll see you later.”

It was stupid of me to think he would let me off that easy. The boy couldn’t seem to take a hint.

“That’s where I’m parked too,” he had said with his ever-present smile before walking with me towards Jase, who was leaned against our little Mazda, engaging in some slightly embarrassing PDA with Nikki Anderson. We were still about three cars away when Jase pulled back from Nikki.

“What are you doing here?” Jase asked Alex as rudely as possible.

“Well, I was walking to my car.” Alex motioned towards an old red Toyota in the next row.

“I meant here at this school, in this town.”

In retrospect, Alex must have been purposefully trying to provoke Jase. Maybe he was more like his brother than I thought.

“We thought it would be a nice place to settle down.” One corner of Alex’s mouth pulled up as his eyes locked with mine. “I had no idea it would be this nice.”

The next series of events went so quickly I can’t be exactly sure what happened. Jase took a swing at Alex, but it didn’t connect. I don’t know if Alex managed to duck out of the way, or if Jase’s aim was just really off. I do know he meant business because it really hurt when my shoulder accidentally got in the way and I fell to the ground.

The next thing I knew, Tyler Burkeen and Seth Roberts were holding Alex’s arms, and Jase’s nose was dripping blood.

“Stay the hell away from my sister,” Jase spat out, red droplets flying from his lips.

Alex ignored him to look down to where I was frozen on the ground. “Scout, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Sure, I was going to have a bruise on my shoulder, and there were a few scrapes on my palms, but I could hardly complain with Jase spouting blood.

“Don’t talk to her!” Jase looked ready to get even. I found myself worrying about Alex. Obviously, he could throw a good punch when he wanted to, but Jase was strong. And surrounded by friends. And seriously pissed off.

“Go home, Alex,” I said, picking myself up off the ground.

“Scout--”

I was curious as to what sort of explanation he could have given for the fisticuffs, but I refused to let him finish that thought. “Please, just go home. You’ve done enough.” I pulled some tissues out of my purse and attempted to wipe some of the blood from Jase’s face.

After one final look in my direction, he walked away. Jase and I rode home in complete silence.

“That was incredibly stupid,” Charlie said, bringing my thoughts back to the present. “Do you have any idea what could have happened? What could still happen?”

The room was still and silent as an unspoken exchange occurred between them. Despite my feelings about my brother’s behavior, I automatically defended him.

“It’s no big deal. There were no teachers around, and no one is going to rat out Mr. Basketball himself. There’s no way this will affect his position on the team or scholarships. It’s all good.”