Miracle - Chapter 13: Chapter 13

Pete and I got so lost in conversation over breakfast, it turned into lunch.
And I was enjoying listening to him talk so much that I kept forgetting my secondary research mission. Pete might not have had Ezra's stunning good looks, but his green eyes, unexpected dimple and gentle Texan drawl were mesmerizing. He told me he had a gay uncle up in New Hampshire, and he'd gone up to stay with him and his husband several times. It was clear he respected them a lot, which helped explain why the thought of liking a guy didn't freak him out.
Maybe, even if Pete wasn't gay, he might be bi? The more we talked, the more he blinked at me with those kind, pretty eyes and adorable smile, and his knee bumped my non-injured one under the table, the less I cared whether it was because of the pheromones. He wasn't faking, that was all that mattered. I was on a date with a charming boy, whose warm sense of humor and genuineness surpassed almost anyone I'd ever met. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt this happy.
When Sara Jo delivered our burgers to the table for lunch, I responded to another text from my sister and then forced myself to look around. There were a half-dozen guys in here. One was an elderly gentleman, paying no attention to me or anyone else in the restaurant. He had an oxygen tube in his nose, leading down to a portable tank, so who knew if he could even take in the olfactory chemicals I was giving off. There were also two boys I recognized from school, Alex and Caleb. They were sniggering and eyeballing Pete and me, but they hadn't tried to come over here. I couldn't tell if they were interested in me, or just in the fact that Pete and I were together.
The other three men were middle aged adults. One was with his wife and a girl I recognized from school, so I guessed they were her parents. He looked over at me a few times, sometimes with a frown, but otherwise there wasn't much to make note of. Honestly, that reaction wasn't much different from the way men usually looked at me... my hair, in particular, but also just the fact that I was scrawny and short and generally offensive to their sense of what a guy should be.
The last two men were part of a larger group, with three women and a handful of kids. The older-looking one was far too busy wrangling a couple of toddlers to notice any of the other restaurant patrons. But the younger one, well, he made me uneasy. In his twenties, he had a bushy blond mustache and thick eyebrows. His attire consisted of khaki cargo shorts, a brown T-shirt with an armadillo on the front, and tan loafers. He had chosen a seat at their table that put me in his direct line of sight, over Pete's shoulder, and was staring at me every chance he got with a calculating, cold expression that made me nervous. At one point our eyes met, and he jerked his chin up. It was a greeting, but my instincts read it like a threat.
Pete caught me looking and twisted over his shoulder. "What is it?" When he saw the guy, he turned back to me. "That dude bothering you?"
"Not really," I answered, putting a fry in my mouth and trying to seem unconcerned. But as we finished up our meal I couldn't help keeping an eye on him. It was hard to concentrate on eating with him staring at me like that.
I think Pete noticed, because he wiped his mouth with a napkin, put two twenties on the table, and slid out of the booth. "How's about we move on?"
I nodded and followed him to the door. The mustached guy was still watching as we left, but I felt relieved as we got back out to Pete's truck. He opened the door for me, and as I took his hand to climb in, the sight of the smartwatch on the seat renewed my earlier annoyance with Ezra. I pushed it aside and buckled my seatbelt.
Pete got in behind the wheel. "Where to now?"
"I thought we could go to the arcade," I offered, and his face lit up.
"Okay. Cool." He turned the key in the ignition, smiling to himself. I wondered if he'd thought I might ask to go home.
I gave him directions, and in a few minutes we pulled up in front of the Old Towne Arcade, which was a strip mall type place that shared a building with Sparky's Bowl-o-Rama. During summer afternoons this area was overrun with kids. At night it was more the dating and happy hour crowd. There were already clusters of teenagers hanging out in the parking lot and near the exits, and if you watched carefully enough you'd see a puff of smoke drift up every now and then as they snuck cigarettes around their little groups.
Pete got me down out of the truck in much the same way he had at the diner. And this time, shielded by the open door, he held me up against him for a few breathless seconds more than he had to. We looked into each other's eyes, and his gaze drifted down to my mouth in a way that made my pulse skip. He was thinking about kissing me, I was certain of it. My skin flushed hot at the realization... no one had ever looked at me that way before. I was suddenly conscious of how dry my lips were, and drew the lower one under my teeth and tongue.
He let out a breath and stepped back, his cheeks reddening under a smattering of light freckles. "Well, uh, wanna head in?"
I nodded.
It was dark, flashy and noisy inside the arcade. Most of the game machines in here were relics from the seventies and eighties, still coin operated. Instead of quarters, you bought tokens from the front desk. I still had a bagful of them from the last time Maddy and I had come, so I took Pete on the rounds through my favorite games: Mario Brothers, Star Wars, Donkey Kong. We played skeeball, and I introduced him to Dance Dance Revolution. It didn't take him long to get the hang of it, and then he wanted to keep playing over and over, stamping on the arrows with his thumbs in his belt loops. It looked like he was doing the Boot Scoot Boogie to the tune of Sandstorm, and it was so freaking cute I couldn't stop laughing.
Eventually he spied the pool tables, and we headed there for a while. Turned out we were both pretty good at pool, so playing against each other was a lot of fun.
I sank a particularly complex shot and he hummed in admiration. When I turned around, I found myself nose to chest with the blond, mustached man from the diner. I was eye-level with the armadillo on his T-shirt. There was text next to it that said Texas Turkey.
"Nice shot, kid," he said. He was standing so close I had to tip my head back to look at him.
"Uh. Thanks." I sidestepped quickly and held out the pool cue. "You want a turn?"
His hand closed around mine on the stick, tightly. And his other hand came up to caress my cheek. "Sure do."
I tried to suppress the surge of alarm that welled up inside.
Pete came around the table as I disengaged my hand and face from the creepy guy's touch. "No problem, partner. We just finished up. Have a good game." He looped an arm around my shoulders and steered me off toward another part of the arcade. Blood was pounding in my ears.
"That happen often?" Pete asked.
Before I could answer, a hand clamped my upper arm and pulled me around. "Where you runnin' off to so quick?" Mustache Man demanded. There was a glaze to his eyes I found familiar. "Let's have a game, you 'n me."
"No thanks," I said, trying to wriggle out of his grip. "I'm here with my friend."
"Nothin' saying you can't make a new friend today."
"Hey," Pete interjected, taking hold of the guy's wrist. "He said he ain't interested."
The guy let go of me only to shove Pete squarely in the chest. "This has nothin' to do with you, asshole. Get lost."
Pete stumbled back a couple of steps, then charged between me and my would-be suitor, who was reaching for me again. "We gonna have a problem here, man?"
"We will if you don't back off."
"He's with me," Pete said. "You back off."
The guy responded by taking a swing at him. His fist thunked across Pete's face, knocking him sideways.
"Pete!" I shouted, moving toward him, but the man made another grab for me, wrapping an arm around me from behind. I took a page out of my sister's handbook and brought my elbow up into his gut. It loosened his hold enough that I was able to dodge away.
Pete's fist sailed past me into the guy's nose. There was a shuffle of yells as a couple guys in polos embroidered with the arcade's logo came running up. They restrained the guy from retaliating.
Phillip, the arcade manager, had come over too. He looked ready to grab Pete, but Pete held up a hand to show that he was done fighting. Instead, he dabbed a thumb at his nose, which had started to bleed.
"Pete," I said, looking up at him in worry. "Are you all right?"
"Dandy." He glared at the man who'd attacked us.
"What's going on here?" Phillip asked.
I pointed. "This guy showed up out of nowhere and won't leave us alone."
I probably should have kept my mouth shut, because now all three arcade workers were looking at me. I was mad and scared, breathing a bit fast, and could only watch in horror as they caught my scent. Their nostrils flared, pupils dilated. Pete took my hand.
"Come on, Connor, let's get out of here."
Out in the parking lot, the sun was going down. That meant it had to be close to eight. We'd been in there a lot longer than I'd realized. Pete was opening up the truck for me when the three arcade staff and Mustache Man all came out onto the sidewalk. They were staring at me like weirdos in a zombie film.
"Shit," I said, and Pete turned.
"You boys can't leave yet," one of the polo shirt guys said. "We gotta ask you some questions."
"Better come back inside with us, Connor," said Phillip. I knew who he was since Maddy and I came here together often. Usually he was a funny guy, full of jokes and energy. But now he had the same glassy, hungry gaze as the others. It gave me chills.
"I'm just gonna go home, guys," I said. "Sorry for the trouble."
"You can't leave," the other employee repeated.
"Like hell we can't," Pete answered. "We ain't done nothin' wrong. Get in, Connor."
I took his hand, but before I could step up there were a bunch of other hands yanking me down. I cried out a little, because the force jarred both my swollen leg and my injured rib at once. And I guess that put Pete into alpha-male mode, because he started swinging at everyone touching me. I slumped back against the truck, an arm wrapped protectively across my middle, as a full-on fight broke out. Mostly it was Pete and Mustache Guy going at it, with Phillip and his staff members alternately taking on both of them. I should have gone in there to help, but I was having a hard time breathing without pain.
This was bad. There were four of them against Pete by himself, and the only reason he wasn't getting mauled was because they were fighting each other just as much. People came running from across the parking lot and ended up joining the brawl. It was a mess of shouting and cursing, fists flying and bodies colliding, hitting the ground, scrambling up to start over. There was enough testosterone in the air to put chest hair on an earthworm.
Sirens, flashing blue and red lights, and crunching gravel added to the chaos. A flurry of uniformed cops showed up, and as they were pouring into the fray it occurred to me that I was far too worked up to have any hope of controlling it. All these guys were being spurred by the chemical signals my body was giving off, and once more of them figured that out, I would be in real trouble. With a great amount of agony in my chest, I climbed up into the seat of Pete's truck, slammed the door shut, and locked it. I rolled the window down just far enough to call out to him.
"Pete! Pete, get out of there!"
He finished socking some guy in front of him and ran for the driver's side. I watched another guy lunge for Pete's back, but he was grabbed from behind by a much bigger dude and tossed back into the heart of the fight. Pete wrenched the truck door open, jumped in next to me, and was turning the engine over at the same time as he was closing the door. He threw the headlights on, illuminating more people running out of the arcade to watch the excitement.
I rolled my window up tight as it would go as Mustache Man lunged for my door handle. Somebody pulled him back as the truck revved into reverse, sending a few shadows scattering as people moved out of the way. Then Pete wrenched the wheel, spun us around, and went tearing out of the parking lot.
I collapsed against the seat bench, gasping, before I realized my phone was ringing. It was Maddy.
"Connor, what the hell? You haven't answered me for the last thirty minutes. Where are you? You okay?"
"I'm all right, Maddy. I'm with Pete."
"Is he giving you trouble? I called the cops, they should get there soon."
"No, no, Pete's fine. Things got a little crazy at the arcade but he got us out of there. Well, and the cops helped too. So thanks."
"What the fuck happened?"
"I'll tell you at home, okay? I'm all right."
"Are you sure? Pete hasn't gone all rapey on you, has he?"
"No. He's taking care of me. It'll be fine, sis. We're headed your way." From the driver's seat, Pete nodded confirmation, and at the same time turned onto the county road that lead to my house. "We should be there in ten. Keep the porch light on, okay?"
I hung up the phone, still trying to catch my breath. "God, Pete, I'm so sorry."
"What you apologizin' for? It's the rest of those sons of bitches who lost their damn minds."
"Yeah, but..."
"I mean, you're cute as hell so I can't say I blame 'em. Justin never told me how popular you are. Next time we go out I'm bringin' my Colt."
"Next time?" I echoed, as he cast me a sheepish sideways grin. There was a bruise already darkening across his right cheekbone. I'd gotten him into a major dustup on the first date, and he still wanted a second one?
"Yeah, you know, if I haven't completely put you off today. I'm not usually the fightin' sort, I swear."
I bit my lip self-consciously. "Are you okay? That guy bloodied your nose."
"Eh, he ain't got nothin' on a pissed bull, and I tussle with those critters every day."
"Pete..." I didn't know what to say to that. Or how to warn him that if we kept seeing each other, he was likely to find himself in a lot more scrapes like this one.
He reached across the seat and took my hand, wrapping it firmly in his. Didn't say anything else, just held my hand for the rest of the drive home. We pulled up into the driveway and he shut the engine off. Maddy was waiting for us on the porch, and she came bounding down the steps.
"Connor! Oh my god, what the—" She stopped short when she caught sight of Pete, with his bruised cheek and the streak of dried blood under his nose. "Shit, what happened?"
He got his hat out of the truck and set it on his head, then walked around to my side to let me out. "We had us a bit of a time at the arcade," he said as she tailed him around the front of the truck, "but it turned out all right."
He helped me down, and Maddy surveyed me head to toe. Satisfied that she didn't see any new injuries, she crossed her arms and gave Pete a resentfully appreciative glare. "Well, at least you brought him back in one piece. Was it Tyler again? I swear to God, when I get my hands on that piece of crap—"
I shook my head. "Not Tyler this time. But, uh, you think you could get Pete something to drink? It's a long drive back to Amarillo."
She understood exactly why I was asking, that I wanted to talk to him in private before he took off. She gave me a sharp look, something along the lines of You sure it's safe? To which I raised my eyebrows, because if Pete was going to hurt me he definitely would have done it already.
"Yeah," she finally said, looking between us. "I'll just be a minute." She went back into the house, leaving me and Pete looking at each other in the beams of his headlights.
"So, um." Pete scuffed a boot in the gravel of our driveway, and pushed the brim of his hat up. "I really did have a great time with you today, Connor. Thanks."
"I didn't mean to be so much trouble," I said contritely. Now that I could see him from this angle, I noticed the gash over his left eye. "Oh, geez, they got you here too." Without thinking I reached up to touch his eyebrow, trying to see how bad it was.
His breath caught. His hand came up to cover mine, holding my fingers to his skin. I felt my heart starting to race. Even with his face kind of messed up, his eyes were totally breathtaking.
"Connor," he said, and swallowed like the words were making him nervous. "I've been wonderin'."
"Huh?"
"Would it be all right if... if I kissed you?"
I don't know what stupidity possessed me in that moment, but I answered in the most unromantic way possible. "I'm a boy, though."
And he didn't smile, or laugh it off. His eyes softened to a near glow, and he moved in closer. His head lowered over me so that our lips were almost touching. "I know." I felt his breath, warm against my mouth. "But I sure like you an awful lot. So can I?"
Was I going to say no to that? "O—okay."
I closed my eyes as he leaned down. I tipped my face up. And when his mouth made contact with mine, I decided the kiss from Tyler didn't count. This was what a first kiss was supposed to feel like, tingly and exciting. Pete's lips were a little dry, a tiny bit scratchy, but also not the least bit threatening, domineering or mocking. I let him lace our fingers together against the side of his face. He put his other arm around my back and hugged me carefully, without putting pressure on my sore chest.
Even in this, he was being thoughtful.
His mouth settled against mine little by little. Nothing fancy, but that was fine because the slow, steadily deepening meld of our lips was plenty thrilling. I sighed dreamily.
Then a flicker of something caught in my peripheral vision. Some kind of shadow, out in the front yard. Startled, I pulled back to frown over Pete's shoulder.
"What is it?" he asked.
I squinted into the darkness around the trunk of the big oak in the yard and shook my head. Everything was still now. "I don't know. You see anything out there?"
He turned, shading his eyes from the glare of the headlights. "I don't think so. But let's get you inside, just in case."
He walked me up the porch steps to the front door, and pressed something into my hand. "Here, don't forget this."
It was Ezra's smartwatch. I closed my fingers over it. Ezra had been wrong about Pete, for sure. But he hadn't been that far off about the rest of it. If Pete hadn't been with me today, who knew how things at the arcade might have turned out? I probably owed Ezra an apology.
"Thanks."
"Yeah, well." Pete rubbed the back of his neck. "Honestly I thought about keepin' it for a spell, just so I'd have an excuse to see you again. But I figure it might be important to you."
"It is," I answered. "But, um, you don't need an excuse, Pete. Just give me a call next time you're free."
"Yeah?" He broke into a smile. "I'll do that."
Maddy came back out onto the porch with a plastic water bottle, filled with iced tea. "Here you go, Mister Rodeo Man. Thanks for looking out for my brother today."
"It was my pleasure," he answered, taking the bottle from her and meeting my eyes. "Truly."
I felt my face get warm.
"Guess I'll be gettin' on, then. Have a good night, you two."
"Drive safe," I called as he got into his truck. We stood and waved as he backed out of the driveway, while Maddy pinched my upper arm in mischief.
"Someone's got a boyfriend," she said in a singsongy tone, and I elbowed her.
"Shut up. We've been on one date."
"And he's already smooching you in the driveway."
"You were spying on us?"
"Of course, that's my job. I'm your sister."
"I never do that to you!"
"I must love you more, huh?"
We were headed back into the house when someone spoke behind me.
"Connor."
I spun around. Ezra was standing at the base of our porch steps. His black hood was up, hands stuffed in his pockets, hunched over like he was trying not to take up too much space. As if anyone could miss the hooded giant skulking under the porch light.
My mouth dropped open. "What are you doing here?"