Page 56 of Vile Boys

“Caleb?” my dad calls as I head for the front door. “Where are you going?”

“Away.”

Her mom looks at me like she’s seen a ghost.

“But we haven’t even finished dinner yet,” Dad says, frowning at me. “What happened?”

“Have fun,” I growl. “I’m out of here.”

And I slam the door shut behind me.

Crystal

I steadymyself against the wall as I step out of the tub, but I pause when I see the girl in the mirror. A pretty face … destroyed by a boy who wanted to teach her a lesson.

I fish my phone from the sink and tuck it into my pocket. I open the faucet and gurgle to spit out his taste, then grab my toothbrush and clean my teeth and tongue, but nothing I do can rid me of the stain that is Caleb.

My mother invaded his dad’s life, and now he’s invaded mine as a punishment.

But I never gave up, and I won’t.

I clean my face off with a paper towel and throw it away, then I brush through my hair with my fingers and get rid of any last blotches. But my face still looks like I got run over by a freight train.

And the girl underneath is far from the one I remember.

His little jewel… slowly cracking.

Two yearsago

“Dad,”I mutter, yawning as I open the door to his workshop. “What are you doing up so late?”

He cuts the last few stems of the roses and places them down on his workbench. “Oh, just finishing up this order. Did I wake you?”

I saunter into the shop and marvel at all the beautiful bouquets he’s made that weren’t here a day ago.

“You did all this tonight?”

He nods. “A fickle customer. They decided to change their order at the last minute, and I wasn’t prepared.”

I look at the clock in the corner. It’s already way past midnight. He should be sleeping too.

“Dad …” I sigh. “You need your sleep too.”

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry,” he replies.

Always the stubborn one. He can never say no to an order, no matter how hard it is to create or how many bushels of flowers it’ll take. Despite earning only so little on his craft …

I touch the red and white roses, which smell like perfume and feel as delicate as silk against my fingers. “If they’re so difficult, why not just cancel the order?”

He places down the knife he was cutting them with. “Oh no. There is no canceling. Not with this customer.” He swallows, almost as if he finds it hard to admit. He approaches me and grabs my face, placing a gentle peck on my forehead. “But you don’t need to worry about that. I’ll make it work. Just go to sleep.”

“I do worry about you, Dad,” I murmur. “These customers sound like they need to be told no.”

He shakes his head. “Impossible.”

“Then why did you take the job?” I ask, and I grab his hand. “We don’t need their money. We can do without. I can get a job too, and we can—”

“Oh, my pretty little jewel,” he interrupts, a gentle smile on his face. “So concerned about other’s well-being.” He grabs a rose off one of the bushes he created and plucks it, then tucks it into my hair. “I raised you right.”

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