Page 4 of Dear Future Husband (The Dearly Written #1)

Maybelle

Tuesday and its own horrors came and went.

Liam and I, thank God, had our turn with the family car, and we drove ourselves to and from school. But we weren’t spared from the corny games the teachers had lined out for us.

On a more positive note, Trey wasn’t in any of my classes. So, I got through the day without anymore—moments—with him, embarrassing or otherwise.

Now, the sun was descending behind the horizon with a trail of blazing colors following its retreat. Tonight was the graduation rehearsal. Instead of staying at the school until the rehearsal started, Liam and I ran home to grab a snack. Now, we were back in the car, rumbling down the road.

My window was down, allowing the balmy air to tangle with my hair and kiss my face as we rushed by.

My brother and I usually spent car rides in silence. I didn’t think we avoided conversations because we didn’t like talking to each other. We just—didn’t know how to talk to each other.

I think that skill evaded us a long time ago.

I also liked to believe Liam used the quiet moments between us to think. Everything and everyone in his life was loud and chaotic. It made me happy to think that maybe he found peace in the safe, still moments between us. Like I did.

As I watched the world carry on outside my window, I couldn’t help but discreetly study my twin from my peripheral.

Liam was beautiful, that much was for certain.

He was beautiful in the way a mountain could be considered magnificent.

He was solid. Vibrant with the colors of nature.

Epic with sharp cliffs and tall, jagged rocks, but the thing about mountains is they’re built over time.

They’re formed by the collision of tectonic plates.

The buckling and folding of earth and stone.

So was Liam.

Life had molded, shattered, and rebuilt the boy sitting in the seat next to me. So much so, in the last few years, I felt like I hardly knew him. Liam and I had been close when we were kids. He was my hero, my best friend, but after we hit our teenage years, we grew apart.

Despite that fact, I looked up to him, even envied him for the way he took on life in stride. I aspired to be like him. To be a force like him. To remain put together, a leader and friend the way he seemed to always find so easy.

I needed to tell him that one of these days, just how much I truly admired him.

“You good, May?” Liam asked, breaking the silence.

Blinking, I nodded.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, why?”

His full attention was on the road, except for the few spare glances he directed at me. “You’ve been staring at me.”

I ducked my head. “Sorry, didn’t mean to.”

Warily, he peered over at me again. “You sure there’s not something on your mind? ”

“Nope, I’m good,” I said. “Anything on your mind?” I redirected.

Without hesitation, he shook his head. “Nope, I’m good.”

And that was that.

When we parked, Liam didn’t speak to me before jumping out of the car and racing up to the building. While he fell in step with a couple of his friends, I followed too far behind, to hear their conversation.

It wasn’t long after I found my assigned spot for the rehearsal that I saw Liam and Trey walking up. They were in a fit of laughter over something—I bet—I didn't want to know.

Splitting ways, Liam took the seat next to mine. Instead of rushing for his designated spot, Trey stayed put. His hesitation to leave had me looking up to see that he stopped because he was watching me.

A little disbelieving of the moment, I glanced over my shoulder, sure he was eyeing someone or something behind me.

Nope, no one was returning his focus and when I turned back, Trey was smirking and then he was waving.

Slightly grinning, I returned his simple wave, and I almost died right there when his smile grew.

“Okay students, take your seats. Let’s get started,” our vice principal announced, which had Trey looking away and leaving to take his place.

The rehearsal was quick. Liam and I practiced crossing the stage with ease. As the last names were called, I leaned over to Liam and whispered, “I’m gonna go use the bathroom. Meet you in the hall?”

He nodded. “Sure.”

I escaped the auditorium into the quiet, open hall.

With everyone busy in the rehearsal, I had the girls’ restroom all to myself.

As I washed my hands, I barely noticed the squeaking hinges of the opening bathroom door.

Until I twisted from the sinks to find myself, alone, standing face to face with Clayton Thomas .

Anxiety tangled itself through my ribcage and pulled taut on the noose around my heart as I watched Clayton grin.

“Hey, Mason.”

I lurched for the door, but he was a wall, blocking my exit. “What’s the rush?”

Trapped, I backed away from Clayton until the sinks were at my back, pinning me to the spot. his smile was oily as he stepped up into my space. “I was scared you left before we got the chance to talk more. Our conversation yesterday was cut too short.”

Frozen to the spot, my body trembled as his smile widened with malicious delight.

Speak, Maybelle. Speak.

Instead, I bit down on my tongue. My mouth stopped listening to the begging of my brain. Clayton took another step toward me. His eyes darted to my feet. He snorted at the way they shuffled, trying to press farther into the immovable porcelain sink at my back.

“Come on, Mason. I won’t bite,” he said, holding a hand to me. He nearly closed the distance between us when he whispered, “At least, not hard.”

I was going to be sick. With an inch of distance between us, the reek of that chemical-heavy aftershave burned my sinuses.

That smell.

I hated that smell. It was so, so close to the same invading scent that haunted each one of my many waking nightmares. The same one that had been present during some of the worst moments of my life. It was a smell I knew I would never forget, no matter how much time passed.

Lost to the terrors that smell shoved me back into, I hardly noticed the sound of the bathroom door opening until Clayton shuttered back from me.

“Occupied,” he growled over his shoulder at the girl who peered at us through the cracked door. I recognized her immediately.

Hannah Lacy looked me right in my eyes. The eyes I knew were full of held back emotion, willing her, with all the unspoken pleas locked in my soul, for her to help me, but she didn’t speak. Hannah pushed her round glasses up the bridge of her nose and walked out, leaving me alone to face my demon.

Twisting back to me, ignoring the way I inhaled sharply when his fingers grazed my neck, Clayton nabbed my long, curly braid off my shoulder. He held the braid up, breathing in a deep, embellished whiff.

“You smell sweet,” he cooed, and I swallowed hard. Desperately trying to keep down the contents of my rolling stomach that threatened to crawl up and out of my throat. Dipping into my space closer, our noses nearly brushing, he smiled with all his teeth. “Makes me wonder how sweet you’d taste.”

A whimper squirmed past my tight-lipped mouth. I refused to breathe, to allow his smell, his breath, his arrogance to invade my senses any further. Hopefully, if I held it in long enough, I’d at least pass out.

How pathetic.

I was pathetic.

“Maybelle?”

For once in my life, I believed in divine intervention. Watching my brother barge into the bathroom with Hannah Lacy on his heels, was the most seraphic scene I’d ever experienced.

“What the hell is going on here?” Liam barked and Clayton physically shrank back from me. Except that smile of his was an ailment still holding strong to his face.

“Ah, here comes brother. Nothing is going on. Me and Mason were just chatting.”

Liam’s usually light blue eyes were dark as he stared Clayton down. Then he was on the boy. Liam grabbed Clayton by the collar, holding him against the wall. They were almost pressed nose to nose as Liam asked, “What are you doing in the girls’ bathroom with my sister?”

The tone of my brother’s voice was deep, vicious. A type of anger I’d only ever witnessed from him once before.

The abrupt action had a startled squeak squeezing out of Hannah from her spot in the bathroom corner.

“Did you touch her?” Liam accused and Clayton laughed in his face.

“Don’t be so dramatic. No, I didn’t touch her. I didn’t do anything, just ask her.”

Both boys turned to me then. I had to hold the sink behind me in order to keep upright.

“What happened, May? Did he touch you?” Liam asked.

I was centuries old cobblestone, trembling and breaking down with the quaking earth. I couldn’t make sound. I couldn’t cry out; all I could do was shake my head and pray for the moment to end.

“See,” Clayton snarked.

Liam didn’t look at him. His eyes remained on me, silently pleading with me to say what I needed to, but I couldn’t.

It shattered something deep in my heart to hear the long-irritated sigh leave Liam as he stepped away from Clayton. “Stay out of the girls’ bathroom, you creep.”

Clayton’s grin was full of triumph as he slid me one last wink. “See you tomorrow, Mason.” Then he slithered out.

Liam didn’t look at me, and I wanted to burst into tears. Rather, Liam twisted to Hannah, who was still cowering in the corner. “Thank you for coming to get me, Lacy.”

Hannah nodded, face a little flush as she stared up at my brother—awe-struck. But the reaction to my brother was brief as she turned her attention to me. “Are you alright, Maybelle?”

Honestly, I was a little surprised she asked, though that girl was technically the only friend I had. Flustered, I nodded and said in an airy voice, “Yes. Thank you.”

Smiling her farewell, Hannah pushed her glasses up her nose and exited the bathroom. Leaving me and Liam alone.

Still, Liam didn’t look at me as he turned for the door and said back over his shoulder to me, “Come on, May. Let’s go home.”