Louder Than Words (Fall For Me) Read online

We sit at the booth by the window, and I still can’t look at him. Haven’t been able to since he bought me all of the ice cream.

  I can feel his eyes on me though. Feel them frown and look concerned. (Yes, I can feel all of that.)

  “Don’t be embarrassed—it’s a good picture.” He says it matter-of-factly, with absolutely no teasing, and maybe (a hint) of sympathy.

  It’s the first time he’s mentioned it—the picture—and he doesn’t even bother to make a pretense about it. So, yeah, he knows I’ve seen it—that the whole school has seen it.

  I sink in my seat and mutter, “It was taken by a pervert.”

  He smirks. “It was taken by a girl.”

  I blink up at him, totally not getting how he could possibly come to that conclusion. I mean, come on. No way. Still, he’s Mason … and he knows things. So, I just choke on my milkshake and wait for him to go on with his theory, my jaw kind of hanging open.

  He watches my shocked reaction with his knowing smirk, then leans slightly towards me over the table, talking confidential-like as he enlightens me, his voice low, and reassuring, and totally confident, “It’s like the picture was sent out to embarrass you. But a guy—any guy—would know that it’s not a bad picture … totally the opposite, if you get what I mean.” He adds reassuringly, “You have NOTHING to be embarrassed about.”

  Heat rips through my body. I squeak out, “No?”

  His answer is a slow shake of his head. His eyes linger on mine. “No,’” he murmurs soothingly (yet incredibly firmly). “Nothing.”

  My pulse thumps.

  I can feel my face redden—deeper, deeper, deeper. Suddenly, I need to dunk my head in a bucket of ice water. I’m so embarrassed, but also feel strangely complimented and Mason’s stare isn’t exactly easy for my heart to stay calm about. I mean, hello. His gorgeous, swoon-inducing eyes seem to be saying I’ve seen you naked, and I liked it.

  I swallow.

  Okay, no one’s exactly seen me naked. No one. I have to keep reminding myself of that—over and over—or I will die of embarrassment. But still. Now everyone’s seen so much of me that when they look at me I can tell they’ve seen the picture—and they’ve fantasized way more than they actually saw.

  Mason’s eyes wash over me—different now—like fully taking in that I’m dying of mortification.

  He may or may not know what he’s doing to my heart—that he’s causing it all kinds of havoc and stress. In any case, he relents and takes a drink of his soda (since he didn’t buy himself ice cream—I mean, he’s not the one that has dirty pictures of him floating around school, now is he?). His eyes narrow. “So who was it?”

  He means who took the picture. He seems to want to crush the person to bits. (Which is nice, and way more comforting than his assurance that I have “nothing to be embarrassed about.”)

  I shake my head grimly. “I have no idea.” Then I add just as grimly, “You know more than me—I thought it was a guy.”

  He gives a soft laugh, like I’m an innocent lamb—and it’s cute. “It’s definitely not a guy. A guy would know the picture’s awesome,” he murmurs again, for the millionth time getting my chest all heaving. (Can he not just stop with that already??) His eyes take in my discombobulated reaction. With patience he says, “What I’m saying is, it’s from a girl. One that wants to embarrass you. Know anyone like that?”

  I shake my head. I seriously have no clue.

  “Okay, here’s what I know,” he says. “It wasn’t taken at our school. The lockers are a different color.”

  I blink, then realize he’s right. Holy smokes!!

  Heat rushes through me realizing he’s been paying a lot more attention to the picture than me. I just looked at it the one time—then tried to push the image out of my brain. But he’s obviously been studying it—thoroughly. Frankly that knowledge is embarrassing. To say the least.

  I slink back in my seat with a groan. His eyes flicker to me and a slight smirk quirks on his lips—like he can read my mind, and knows what I’m thinking. That he’s studied the picture intimately. And I’m humiliated. But he doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, he tries to get me to concentrate on the perpetrator. “So what girl would be with you at another school?—one where you showered and stuff?”

  I shrug. “The whole swim team—it’s like, twenty girls.”

  “Okay,” he leans in towards me (like that’s going to help me think [so not!!]) now I can smell his yummy, tempting Mason scent—that I’ve missed so much. Mmmm. Geez, shoot me. Get me out of my love-struck misery. Still, he draws closer, trying to get me to focus, yet doing the total opposite. His brow rises as I stare. “And which one of them is jealous of you?”

  I scowl. “No one’s jealous of me.” Then my eyes pop open wide. “Oh wait.”

  He grins, my light-bulb-moment reaction obviously amusing him. He puts a finger through my whipped cream. “Figured it out?”

  “Yeah.” A shiver runs through me. “It’s Sabrina.”

  She’s on the swim team with me—and she’s jealous of me. Not just about stupid Sean … but about everything. Cheering, swimming, guys. I shudder.

  “Geez,” I groan. I sure know how to make enemies—without even trying. People suck.

  Mason tilts his head, “This Sabrina—is that the chick from cheerleading?”

  I nod, pushing away my food. “Yep.”

  He smirks. “Don’t even worry about it. It’s taken care of.”

  My stomach rolls. “Mason you can’t beat up a girl.”

  He laughs. “That’s not what I do to girls.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Monday morning before school I stop Sabrina as she’s coming out of the locker room. I don’t bother playing games. Not my style. I just straight up call her out. “You sent that picture of me.”

  She scoffs. “What picture?”

  “You know what picture,” I tell her, wanting to bash her smug face in.

  “You mean that naked picture?” Her lips twist with a wicked smirk. “Why would I send out that?”

  Ohhh, does she really want to go there? I stare her in the eye, unblinking. “Because you’re a jealous witch.”

  She puts her hands on her hips. “Jealous of what?” she sneers.

  “Jealous of me.” The list seems pretty long at the moment, actually. But I just bring up what seemed to set her off—I mean, the “incident” that happened right before the picture was sent … to the whole school. I grit my teeth. “Jealous that Sean still has a thing for me.”

  She does a tight smile. So fake. “Sean?” she scoffs. “I’m so over that dweeb. I’m back together with Brendan … ”—she smiles so smug, and bats her eyelashes at me—“… didn’t you hear?”

  Brendan is captain of our football team. He and Sabrina had dated a while a few months back—but then they called it quits. Well, he did.

  I hadn’t heard they were back together. But I can believe it. He just broke up with his latest girlfriend. Sabrina could have caught him while he was vulnerable. After all, Sabrina is hot for poor Brendan—because he’s captain of the football team. That’s the only reason. She has this warped, pathetic need for “social status” at our school. Plus, of course, she needed some way to save face after her so-called boyfriend (Sean) wrote a steamy poem about another girl (me).

  “Look, I know you did it,” I tell her flatly. “You better stay away from me. And never try anything like that again.”

  “Or what?” she asks, which kind of lets me know she did it. Even if I hadn’t already known.

  “Or you’ll be sorry,” I tell her.

  She smirks and rolls her eyes. “Oh, I’m so scared.”

  My whole body stiffens with heated anger. “You better be,” I tell her.

  “Or what?” She sounds challenging again, and amused. Like I can’t knock her block off. Which I can. But I don’t need to.

  I lean in closer to her and raise my eyebrows. “Or maybe I’ll find Brendan is more my taste than I thought.”

&nb
sp; The smug expression falls off her face. Her lips part slightly, and she does this little gasping noise, practically turning purple. Because she knows I can have Brendan … if I want him.

  She swallows, then narrows her eyes into tiny slits, trying to act all indignant and I-can’t-believe-you’d-go-so-low. She huffs accusingly, “You’d use a guy like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Use a guy like what? Like you?” I practically pin her against the wall and she starts shaking. I swear. She so doesn’t like to be called out. At all. Sure, she’ll do the calling. As often as she can. But someone dare do it to her? She practically pees her pants.

  “Wha—what do you mean?” she squeaks out in a tiny, pathetic whimper.

  “I know you only like Brendan because he’s high on the school’s social chain. I know you need that after Sean made you look like a loser—him flirting with me—in front of the whole class—when he was supposed to be your boyfriend.”

  I straight up call her out, “You’re using Brendan.”

  “I am not!” she squeals. Then gulps, trying to look me in the eye. “I like him.”

  “Whatever.”

  I walk away, letting her sweat.

  CHAPTER 10

  First period during the school’s usual webcast (you know, when they do the Pledge of Allegiance and school announcements and stuff), there’s suddenly this disturbance in the broadcast.

  It gets interrupted with a taped video.

  I’d been looking over my vocabulary words and not really paying attention—at first. But suddenly I hear these kissing and moaning noises and I’m like What the—?

  Suddenly, I’m very interested in today’s announcements.

  I jerk my head up just in time to see Sabrina making out with a guy on our class’s webcast video screen. She’s very, extremely, totally into the kissing—moaning and purring and kissing the guy all hot and heavy. Totally panting. The class is going wild.

  The guy she’s kissing murmurs, “Maybe we should stop. You have a boyfriend—Brendan—right?”

  “Don’t stop,” she answers huskily, still kissing him, seeming to be in heaven, groaning and panting and purring.

  “What?” the guy asks. “What’d you say? You don’t want me to stop?”

  “Don’t stop,” she breathes out dreamily. “Don’t stop!”

  “Alright,” he laughs, going back to kissing her neck. “I won’t stop. I mean, since you’re begging and everything.”

  My heart pounding, I flick my gaze to Sabrina.

  She’s across the classroom watching the video with her mouth hanging open, looking horrified. Like she can’t believe what happened—or what’s happening now. That she’d actually been recorded making out with a boy. A boy that wasn’t Brendan—her “boyfriend.”

  Suddenly—finally—she jumps up from her seat. Like she’s finally snapped out of her traumatized trance. “Turn it off!” she screams. “Turn it off NOW!!”

  She stomps her feet and shrieks, then runs out of the classroom, crying hysterically.

  Seriously. She stomped her feet. And shrieked.

  Only a few minutes later I’m called down to the principal’s office on the school’s intercom. Well, me and Mason.

  Because Mason was the guy Sabrina was kissing.

  CHAPTER 11

  When I get to the office, Mason is already there.

  “Look, it wasn’t me,” he tells the principal. “I didn’t record it, I was in the video. How would I have shot it?—or set up the recording?—or whatever Sabrina’s trying to say I did? She came on to me. We went to her house. It was shot there—in her room.”

  He sounds totally convincing. Even to me. I mean, how could he have worked all that out?… Yet I know he did. Somehow.

  That knowledge does strange things to my insides and gets my heart beating all spastic and wild. I mean, as I’d watched the video, I’d been stunned. Totally shocked. And horrified. I mean, Mason had been making-out with Sabrina. Sabrina!! Totally hot and heavy. Seeing that had killed me. Truly. Everything inside me died. Yet at the same time, I’d been slightly grateful. Because I knew Mason was doing it for me. That knowledge has my world spinning. Even now.

  Mason shrugs, looking directly into our principal’s eyes. “Someone’s going after the cheerleaders,” he says. “First Summer, with that awesome shot that was sent to the whole school. Now Sabrina.”

  Sabrina glares at Mason, probably as much from him using the word “awesome” about the picture she had sent out (the one that was supposed to embarrass me and make me look bad—certainly not “awesome”)—she’s probably just as mad about that as she is that he’s obviously trying to pull off a humiliating scam directed at her. One that she’s probably going to have to take a hit on in order to not out herself about her evil scam on me.

  Sabrina huffs, then whines to the principal, “It’s not the same person.”

  “How do you know?” Mason raises his eyebrows challengingly. He leans in towards her. “What do you know about Summer’s picture? The one that was sent from a locker room—of a different school.” His dark eyes glint at Sabrina, full of challenge. Glisten with threat. There’s a dark edge to his voice, “What do you know about that?”

  “Nothing!” Sabrina snaps.

  “Well, I don’t know why I was called in here,” Mason says to Principal Gardner. “Summer tells me her picture must have been taken at the North swim meet—‘cause it’s North’s locker room. I was at Anger Management that weekend—nowhere near North High. I couldn’t have taken her picture.”

  Sabrina squirms. “Right, but the person who took her picture wasn’t the same person that took the video of me,” she says through gritted teeth.

  Mason smirks, then scrunches up his eyebrows in total over-dramatic mock-confusion. “How do you know that?”

  Sabrina reddens. She opens her mouth, then snaps it shut. Finally she stammers out, “I—I just don’t think it was the same person.”

  Mason shrugs. “Why not? It’s almost the exact same thing—embarrassing stuff being sent through the school. You seemed to think Summer should blow it off.” He raises his eyebrows, looking at Sabrina pointedly, “Looks like you should too.”

  The principal glances skeptically from Sabrina to Mason. “You say you were at Anger Management when the picture of Summer was taken?”

  Mason nods gravelly. “Yes sir—you’re the one that sent me.”

  Principal Gardner’s eyes cut to me. “You know it was taken at the North Game?”

  I nod. “Definitely.”

  He turns his gaze back to Sabrina. “It seems whoever is doing this is set out to embarrass the whole cheerleading squad—can you think who that might be?” His eyes skirt to Mason and me. “You two are free to go.”

  CHAPTER 12

  I stand outside of the principal’s office in the school hallway with Mason. We trail towards our lockers together. Well, towards his. Mine is in the opposite direction. I just want to thank him. Somehow. I mean, he certainly didn’t have to do that—slam snotty, smug Sabrina for me.

  “How’d you work that out?” I ask him, instead of actually able to get the words “thank you” to come out of my mouth. Sometimes—these days—it’s hard for me to say that to him. Well, that—or anything else.

  I go on, avoiding my pounding, mushy heart, “I mean, being able to videotape her room like that,” I give him a sideways glance, “—how’d you manage it?”

  He grins. “I didn’t.”

  I scrunch up my eyebrows at him.

  His eyes twinkle. “I swear—I didn’t lie to the principal.”

  His lips quirk to my silence and he juts his chin. “What, you don’t believe me?”

  He breathes out a soft laugh—music. “I made your friend Blake do it—the spying, teckie stuff. I made him put his hacking skills to good use for once—you know, made him help you for a change instead of causing you more grief.”

  Warm tingles skitter through my body.

  ‘Thank you.’ Just say t
hat, Summer! ‘Thank you so much.’

  Instead, what comes out of my mouth is, “Hmm. And then you just knew Sabrina would invite you to her house?”

  Another lazy grin creeps on his gorgeous lips. “Girls do that. Sometimes.”

  For a minute, it’s like he’s not going to go on—explain. Just leave it at that—girls are hopeless puddles over him. (Duh.) But then he gives me the courtesy of a little more info, “I knew she’d be at that chick, Jade’s party. So I went. And flashed her my smile.”

  “And then she came on to you?”

  He doesn’t answer. Because he doesn’t have to. He smiles. Girls melt. It’s all very wonderful—for him.

  Out of nowhere, I say, “I cried when you moved out.”

  “Good.”

  I swallow. “I’ve missed you.”

  His eyes narrow and stare. He leans against his locker. “You didn’t act like it.”

  “Well … it’s easier that way.”

  He nods, just watching me. Like it’s my move.

  … It’s always been my move.

  FOUR YEARS EARLIER …

  CHAPTER 13

  “Mom said you need to get my bike down from the rafters.”

  I was talking to my older brother, Trevor. He was normally at my dad’s house (he lived with my dad) but suddenly, since we now had a new “brother” (our new step-dad’s son) suddenly Trevor came around more. Now that there was someone to play basketball with. That’s what he was doing now. Playing basketball with our new stepbrother, Mason, out in our driveway.

  “Get it down yourself,” Trevor said about the bike.

  “I can’t reach it. And I’ll get all dirty.” I was dressed fancy for a birthday party—in a dress and everything. The party entailed going to a fancy restaurant for “brunch.” I was stoked since I love brunch. And getting dressed up. However, when I learned mom’s car was at the auto shop for repairs, and that I was going to have to ride my bike to the party I was no longer stoked. I mean, I was in a dress!