“You heard me. Your driving privileges are suspended.”
Rage rose in him. Tide coming in. “That car’s a piece of crap, anyway.” He took pleasure in the slight flinch he detected beside his father’s grimly set mouth. Dad had bought the heap of junk before Trevor had even shown up. He’d been proud that he already had a car for his son.
Trevor dug in his jeans pocket, pulled out the keys and tossed them toward his father. He wasn’t real sorry when they landed on Dad’s lasagna.
Without a word, his father picked them up, took the car key off the ring and handed it back to Trevor. “You might want to wash that,” he commented, in the hard voice that didn’t sound like the dad Trevor knew and had thought he loved. Then he calmly wiped his fingers on his napkin and started to eat.
Trevor stared at his meal.
“The cell phone is next,” Dad remarked, as if he was commenting on something that happened at work that morning. “One more call from the school. You understand?”
“I’m not hungry.” Trevor pushed back from the table.
“Understand?”
“Yes! I understand! Are you happy?” He hated the tremor in his voice. The little boy in awe of his daddy. The wriggling, squirming need to piss on the floor because daddy was mad at him.
“Happy?” For a moment their eyes met, the same espresso color. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”
“May I be excused?” Trevor asked with mocking courtesy.
“Certainly,” his father said. “Check the refrigerator in the morning. Since you’ll be home, anyway, I’ll post a list of chores for you to do.”
Trevor didn’t say a word. He left the dining room and went upstairs. He’d already perfected the art of leaving the house via his bedroom window and swinging down from the arbor that covered the back patio. He and Cait were meeting at ten. Fortunately, he could walk anyplace in this nowhere town.
Tonight he’d get in her pants. She was dragging her feet. She hadn’t done it before, she said. She wasn’t sure she was ready. Furious, he turned on his music loud enough to shake the walls.
Well, screw that. Screw her. He was ready. Past ready. Desperate. He needed something, and she was it.
CHAPTER TWO
MOLLY DIDN’T DARE go so far as forbidding Cait to see Trevor. That was about the dumbest thing any parent could do, she had always believed. But oh, how she wanted to.
He did not appear chastened when he reappeared in school the following Monday. The black eye had already faded to mustard and lavender. All it succeeded in doing was making him look tougher. He seemed not to have shaved that morning, as if making a statement with the dark stubble. Molly noticed, as she noticed most things in her school. That was one of the mornings she greeted students arriving from the parking lot. His eyes met hers briefly, and she had to work to keep herself from taking a step back. The disquieting thing, she realized, was that there was no spark of rage. Instead, if she hadn’t imagined it, he’d smirked. As if he knew something she didn’t.
A mother’s panic struck her. Cait. That son of a bitch. If he was planning to get to her through her daughter, she’d… Her stomach clenched. Do what? She couldn’t even prevent whatever it was he had in mind, not without locking Caitlyn in her room for the foreseeable future. Sending her off to boarding school. And that was assuming she wasn’t already too late.
I’ll keep the channels of communication open, she told herself, tamping down the fear. Cait and she had always talked, often and easily. Her daughter’s recent behavior was an anomaly. She’d get over it.
But that same panic had Molly wondering, When?
She had spoken at length to Aaron and his mother—his father was apparently too busy to take time to discuss his son’s behavior with school officials. The mother talked about pressing charges. Aaron’s eyes got shifty and he insisted that was ridiculous, he could take care of himself. Molly pushed; he got shiftier. It would appear Cait was right; something had been going on that he didn’t want his mother or anyone else to know about. He was not the complete innocent he had initially seemed.
“My daughter has mentioned you,” Molly made a point of saying, and Aaron looked alarmed.
“Cait?”
“Yes.” Molly had studied him unblinkingly. “Did you know she and Trevor are friends?”