"Don't touch me." Bekah took a small step away from Dwayne, immediately feeling trapped between Star and him. She pulled her arms in around her and put on her best glare.
"Get outta here, Star," he said over her head. Bekah could feel the air shift behind her and then she could see Star walking way in front of her, gently blending in with the crowd and disappearing.
"I said don't touch me," she repeated when Dwayne outstretched a hand to grab her. She didn't make a move to run, though. Part of her wanted to hear what he had to say. The other part was screaming at her to punch him in the face for almost killing her brother and walk away. "Did you really think I would forgive you after that?"
"It wasn't my fault," he said. His voice was deep and he let the words flow slowly off of his tongue as if he was trying to give her time to accept them. "I follow the pack."
The way he said pack almost made her shiver. He made it sound like they were than some motorcycle gang, more animalistic.
"I don't believe you," she tried to make her tone of voice match Dwayne's but she knew it was nowhere near it. Her voice was trembling. She was trembling. Her heart wanted so desperately to believe him but her head was screaming at her to listen to sense. There was no way Dwayne hadn't known what was going on. Bekah guessed the "pack" had driven that route with their motorcycles many times over.
"You knew. You all knew! You knew exactly what was happening from the minute you saw my brother talking to that slut!"
"We wouldn't have let him get hurt," Dwayne interrupted her before she could say anything else. "We wouldn't have let him fall. It was just a test. We wanted to see how far he would go."
"Why? He has nothing to do with you. I already took care of it. I did what David should have done in the beginning. I told Star to stay away from my brother and I told my brother to stop pining after her."
"It's not about that. It's not about Star." Dwayne's voice had taken on a dangerous tone and before she knew what he was doing he had taken a step forward and grabbed her by the forearm. He pulled her closer to him until her face was almost smashed against his but still not quite touching.
"We wouldn't hurt you, Bekah. You already mean more to me, to us, than you know. But we have to make sure. We can't make a mistake."
She scrunched her nose in confusion as she stared up at him with wide eyes. "I don't understand what the hell you're saying. You're not making any sense." She tried to pull free of him but only ended up hurting her own arm.
"Come with me, Bekah," were his next words before he wrapped his arms around her and stilled her struggling. Her face was pushed into his neck as he held her and she didn't know if she should beat on his chest or relax into his hold.
"Come with me," he said again soothingly. "Be with us. We'll take of you. You belong with us."
Her brain stopped for just a second. For just a second his words felt so right, so true. It was almost as if his words had just made everything fall into place. She really wanted to go with him, to be with him and the other boys. But only for a second. Until the rational part of her brain kicked in.
"No," she whispered and as soon as the words were out of her mouth his arms feel from around her and she danced away in the other direction.
She was numb to it. What had just happened wasn't really registering. It wasn't registering that Dwayne had slightly admitted he wanted her around. It wasn't registering that he was so cryptic and that half of the things he had just said didn't make sense, at least not to her. And it definitely didn't register that Dwayne thought it was her destiny to be with him and the other three boys.
A few minutes after her run in with Dwayne and Star, she was pulling open a door that read Max's Video Store. She had actually remembered her mom saying she had gotten a job here. When she had finally looked up after running way from Dwayne, she saw the video store out of the corner of her eye and suddenly she got the overwhelming urge to be around her mother.
Maybe because what Dwayne had been saying was insinuating that Bekah didn't belong with her real family, but another one.
"Honey!" She heard as soon as she walked into the cool building. She followed her mother's voice to the front counter and gave her mother a small smile when she reached her. "You came to visit me," her mother continued with a large small.
It seemed like her mother was enjoying her new job just fine, Bekah decided.
"Do you like it?" Lucy asked excitedly when she saw Bekah looking around. Bekah nodded half heartedly. This Max didn't have a bad collection of movies. In fact, it was pretty good. She found herself wondering if her mother got an employee discount.
"Your brother was in earlier. He was all sullen and sulky. You know anything about that?" Her mother didn't seem to be so much worried as she was curious. She had moved to another end of the counter and was fiddling with a stack of movies.
"Some girl," Bekah answered as she wondered over to a shelf of horror movies. "Don't worry, I took care of it," she added.
"What do you mean?" Her mother asked, her hands stopping their movement over the movie cases.
"I told her to get lost. She has a boyfriend and she doesn't need to be entangling Michael in her web of lies," Bekah spat, more venomously than she had expected. "And I told him to get over it. He doesn't need the drama. He should be able to make better choices in girls than that."
"Michael isn't the one that needs to make better choices."
Bekah looked up at her mother in shock. It was amazing how fast her mother could turn on her. One minute she was happy to see her and the next she was basically telling her she was a child from hell.
"You're right mom," she found herself snapping back as always, "you're the one that needs to make better choices. I should be worried about you, not Michael."
She felt tears sting at her eyes but tried to push them back.
"When are you gonna let this go? It wasn't my fault! I'm not the reason he cheated on you. I had nothing to do with it. Why don't you start blaming the real person responsible? Him! Not me." Her voice went hoarse at the end and she took a deep breath to try and clear it. She wasn't sure what the expression on her mother's face meant. It looked like a mix between shocked, hurt, and pissed.
Bekah looked down quickly and then back up to stare at the people in the movie store. They were all staring at her and her mother. She felt her face go red and then for the second time that night she was running away from someone. She ran down the boardwalk, past the Ferris wheel and past the carousel. She ran past all the people, all the skin heads and the Surf Nazis, all the children waiting in line for the reads. She ran until she could barely hear the music from the latest concert.
And when she finally stopped he was there.
It was almost like he knew all along what was going to happen with her and her mother. It was like he could see the future and knew when he talked to her that she was going to need him later. Like he had wanted to keep her from going to that video store and seeing her mom and feeling like she did now.
He looked beautiful standing on the beach with the ocean water behind him. The water was glittering from the moon light and it danced off of his beautiful, long brown hair. His eyes held no emotion and his jaw was set and strong. He looked like a pillar of strength. And when she saw him in the distance like that and thought about everything he had said not even a half-an-hour earlier, she ran right towards him.
She forgot all about Michael and the incident on the cliff. She forgot about Star and how she was trying to ruin Michael. She could only think about being someplace she belonged and feeling loved and wanted.
It hurt when she ran into. He held strong and didn't move and she collided with his hard body. She latched onto him as soon as she could, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her head in the nape of his neck. She didn't want to let go. Ever.
"I'll go with you," she whispered to him. "Take me with you. Take me away."