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His head snapped up as I approached, his sharp gaze honing in on me, blue eyes heated and wary, but I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t.
“I need to talk to you,” I announced when I reached him, shaking from head to toe as the weight of what felt like a thousand pairs of eyes landed on my body.
I expected two things to happen in this moment: either Johnny would send me packing or he would agree to go somewhere quiet to speak with me.
When Johnny tipped his chin up and uttered the word, “Leave,” I realized I had been right about scenario number one.
My adrenaline and bravery abandoned me in a rush and my shoulders sagged.
Nodding, I turned to leave, feeling thoroughly deflated, only to have a warm hand wrap around my wrist and pull me back to his side.
“Not you,” Johnny whispered in my ear, settling me in front of him. “Them.” His blue-eyed gaze darted to the two older boys watching us with curious expressions, and in a tone that left no room for discussion, he said, “Go.”
I watched in semi-awed amazement as the two lads he’d been talking to, along with the seven or so students loitering in the corridor, simply turned around and left.
“Whoa,” I breathed when we were alone in the hallway. “You really do have some serious pull at school.” I turned around to face him and once again had to crane my head back to see his face. “That was kind of epic.”
Johnny rewarded me with a boyish smirk that quickly morphed into a frown as he looked at my face.
“What happened?” he demanded, glaring down at me. “Who the fuck made you cry?”
“What?” I breathed, shaking my head. “I’m not crying.”
“Your eyes are red and swollen,” he deadpanned. “You’ve been crying.” His eyes moved to my cheek. “The fuck happened to your face?”
“What?”
“Your face,” he bit out. “Your cheek is red.”
“I’m fine,” I choked out, taking a safe step back from his overly observant eyes.
It was only then that I noticed he was still holding my wrist.
Johnny obviously noticed it, too, because he quickly dropped my hand and took a step back himself, then ran a hand through his mussed-up hair. “What happened to your face?”
My father beat me with a newspaper…
“Uh, don’t worry about that,” I muttered, wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand to erase any residual evidence of tears.
“Give me a name,” Johnny growled, dropping his hands to his hips. “And I’ll take care of it.”
“What—no! I’m grand,” I quickly replied. “I have allergies.”
“Me too. To assholes and bullshit,” Johnny snarled. “Now, tell me who made you cry and I’ll fix it.”
For a split second, I debated naming my father just to see if Johnny would follow through on his word and take care of him.
He looked like he could.
He was certainly big enough.
Shaking my head to clear my ridiculous thoughts, I looked up at him and said, “I need to tell you something.”
“Yeah, you do,” he shot back. “A name.”
“What? No, just stop for a sec.” Shaking my head, I held a hand up. “I have something important to say and you’re distracting me.”
