“No. It wasn’t ” He gritted his teeth and looked at the wall.
“You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“I know it would be easier to do everything for Simon, but sometimes I have to let him figure out how to handle things on his own.”
Now he snapped his head around to look up at her. “Like getting beat up in the hallway?”
“Oh, so I should tell him to fight? Just what do you think would happen to a kid like Simon if he took a swing at someone?”
Gabriel took the last few steps until he was on equal ground, looking down at her. “Right now? He’d get his ass kicked.”
“Great.” She turned away, the sarcasm thick. “That’s totally the goal we should be shooting for.”
Gabriel caught her arm. “He’d figure out how to fight back.
They’d figure out he was willing to fight back. Then they’d leave him alone.”
“Is that what worked for you?”
“That’s what works for everyone, Layne.” He gave her a pretty clear up-and-down, hearing his voice turn cruel before he could stop it. “And I might be wrong, but I think you’ve learned that particular life lesson already.”
Her face went pale. She jerked her arm free and spun away from him.
Then she opened one of the hall doors, went through, and slammed it shut.
Shit.
God, he didn’t need this. He should grab his stuff from the kitchen and go.
But he stopped in front of the door. He put his hand against the white wood.
She saw him as a cheater. A jock thug who picked fights in the hallway.
Maybe that’s all there was to see.
He inhaled, to call her name, to apologize, to try to figure out how she’d managed to wedge herself into his thoughts until he couldn’t work her loose.
But she flung the door open, and he was left there with his hand in the air. Her eyes held the remnants of anger.
She glanced at his hand. “I’m sorry.”
She was sorry? He pulled his hand back.
She looked at the molding around the doorway, rubbing at an invisible spot with her finger. “I shouldn’t have come off like that. Sometimes you just you cut right to the quick, you know?”
“You too,” he said.
“I shouldn’t have slammed the door in your face.”
“I much prefer it to getting hit.” He looked up, past her, at the bedroom. Finally, a break to the white but this wasn’t much better. Pink carpeting, princess border along the ceiling, white walls, and a gold canopy bed.
“What,” he said, “no Barbie dream castle?”
Layne flushed. “Shut up.”
She moved to push past him and shut the door, but he slid into her room instead. She had a bookcase, white trimmed with pink, packed double and triple with paperbacks. No shocker there. It looked like she still had every book she’d ever read. Her bedspread wasn’t childish, though, just a simple pink, white, and yellow checked quilt. More books threatened to fall from a pile on the nightstand.
He’d been kidding about the Barbie dolls, but a row of model horses marched across the top of the bookcase, with a framed picture of a girl on a horse at the corner.