A Piece of Heaven (Allendale Four 1)

“I’ll call the school and make an appointment with your counselor. Lighten your load.” Mom smiled at me. She was always a fixer.

“Chem. With Mr. Baker, that’s the class I’d like to be removed from.”

Lines crossed her forehead. “Chemistry? That’s always been one of your best subjects.”

“Mom…”

“Right, sweetie. I understand.” A shadow crossed the window in the door and my mom glanced up. “Oh, you have a visitor. A few, actually. Jackson is here and that other boy that drove you to the party that night. You didn’t tell me you’d made other new friends.”

New friends. The word tasted bitter on my tongue.

“They’re just some boys from school—Jackson’s friends, really. It’s not a big deal.”

She gave me a weird look. “They’ve been out there since the ambulance got here. Prowling around out there like cats in a cage. I think you mean more to them than you realize.”

I looked at the ceiling, willing the tears not to fall.

“Tell them I’m fine.”

“Heaven…you know it’s okay to let people in.”

No. It wasn’t. It hurt too much.

“Tell them to go. I’m fine. They don’t need to worry about me.”

My mother, who was notorious for not always being around, who is flighty at times and a little clueless, knows me better than anyone. I waited while she chewed on her bottom lip, a sure sign she was worried. She started to walk but turned back around, placing her hands on her hips. “We’ve been through this before, Heaven. Isolating yourself isn’t the way to handle your anxiety. It makes it worse, making you lonely and depressed. Those boys out there? They care for you. I can see it on their faces, in the very fact they’ve asked me a million times for an update on your health. You can push them away if you want, but I’m not doing it for you.”

She squeezed my hand and walked out the door, leaving me alone with my thoughts. It wasn’t three minutes later that I heard a scuffle outside the door and a brief argument that ended with the door swinging open, slamming into the wall. As much as I believed what I said to my mom, all of it fell apart when I saw Oliver standing in the doorway, eyes red with distress. He charged into the room, followed by Jackson and Hayden, all three surrounding me like an emotional blanket.

“Don’t do that again,” Oliver said, over and over, gripping my hand in his. He kissed my knuckles, my hand, my palm. “I almost lost my shit when I got the call. Absolutely terrified me.”

A gentle hand ran down my cheek and I looked up to find Jackson staring at me. He had a black eye and his knuckles were raw and split.

“What happened to you?”

“I fell face first into someone’s fist.” He pressed his fingers to my lips. “I went outside to deal with Anderson and when I came back you’d passed out. I called the ambulance and rode over with you. You scared me so bad.”

“I don’t remember the ambulance at all.” I searched my foggy memory. “You were there?”

“The whole time.”

Hayden squeezed past Jackson and bent over, kissing me on the forehead. The look in his eye said he had more to say but not now. Later. In private.

Even with their size and presence, Anderson’s absence was a massive, unspoken elephant in the room.

I exhaled. “Where is he.”

“In the lobby.”

I looked at Jackson. “Did you talk to him?”

He glanced at his knuckles. “Or something.”

I sat up. “You beat him up?”

He pointed to his bruised eye. “Who did you think gave me this?”

I dropped my head into my hands. “God, everything is such a mess. It’s too hard. All of us. Way too fucking hard.”