Forever Now (Forever - Book 1) by Elise Sax Page A

eating lunch every day with Dahlia?” A cheerleader demanded. “She doesn’t want to sit with you, you know.”
    My breath hitched, and I choked back a tear. Could that be true? Dahlia really didn’t want to sit with me? Is that what she told her cheerleader friends?
    “I think freak girl is going to cry,” Ralph said, obviously overjoyed.
    “You’re getting all your freak girl germs on Dahlia,” the cheerleader continued. “You’re bringing her down. You get me?”
    She punctuated her question with a shove. Two hands right to my chest. She was stronger than she looked, and I flew back a couple feet. The third football player got behind me and pushed me back in the other direction.
    “Please…” I began, which made them laugh and seemed to spur the cheerleader into shoving me again.
    It occurred to me that I might die there, beaten to death by the school’s popular kids just as I had a glimmer of hope of making it to Paris. How typical.
    Ralph spit in my face, and the cheerleader shoved me again, this time much harder, and I fell to the ground with the wind knocked out of me. I looked up into their faces and read the determination there. I started to really cry. Big tears streamed down my face. It wasn’t so much the pain of being pushed down or the fear of being hurt that got me sobbing. It was the humiliation—a lifetime of humiliation culminating in this moment—that broke me. And I knew something else:
    They weren’t done.
    They weren’t close to done.
    There was a loud popping noise, like a gun going off. I checked my body to see if I had been shot, but I was okay. The others turned around in the direction of the noise.
    A tiny car with more dents than not came chugging into the parking lot. It had two doors and a crushed hood. It sounded like a wind-up toy when it moved. Clack. Clack. Clack. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been put together with three paper clips and a rubber band.
    It clacked right up to us, stopping just behind the Challenger. That’s when I recognized the driver, and my heart skipped a beat.
    And I died a little.
    Died in a good way.
    He either turned off the car, or it stopped running on its own. Either way the engine choked and sputtered until it was quiet. The driver’s window slowly opened with a tortured squeal. He stuck his arm out and found the door handle, opening it from the outside with a creak. The door sort of dropped a couple inches when it was fully open, and I half-expected it to fall off altogether.
    Cruz hopped out of the car. He was tall and built, handsome as ever in jeans and a t-shirt. He was also pleased as punch, his mouth stretched in an ear-to-ear smile that could stop traffic and rev girls’ hearts for miles.
    “Tess, look what I got!” he shouted with pride.
    The popular kids turned toward me, and their faces said it all: shock, surprise. Why was the most beautiful, perfect boy on the planet talking to the invisible girl?
    Cruz’s face said it all, too, when he realized I was on the ground, surrounded by football players, my hair and clothes disheveled, and my cheeks most likely stained with tears. I had never seen his face like that: fighting mad.
    Capable of murder.
     

 

Chapter 9
     
    “It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.”
    --Emily Dickinson
     
    Cruz stared right at me, his eyes never wavering, as he made a beeline toward me. He elbowed the others out of his way until he reached me. He bent down, took my hands, and pulled me up.
    “All you all right?” he asked, holding my hands with his face inches from mine. He spoke softly and clearly, his voice coming from deep in his chest and sounding ominously like a growl.
    “Yes,” I said and started to cry again. It was either the relief of seeing Cruz there or realizing what almost happened that made my emotions bubble up and spill over.
    Cruz wiped the tears from under my eyes with his thumbs and held my head in his hands. He pulled me forward and he leaned down until