Opposites Attract (On-Hold) - Chloe Knox (novels for students txt) 📗

like you anymore, and so I don’t want to work past this. I’m breaking up with you.”
“No! No! You can’t just break up with me!” Josh yelled as he gripped my arm, yanking me towards him.
“Ow, Josh! Stop! You’re hurting me!” I yapped as a quick soaring ach shot up my arm.
“You can’t just break up with me.”
“If you have to go to Rebecca, obviously I’m not giving you what you want so just go! Go be with her!”
“I don’t want her!”
“Well I don’t want you!” I slapped his arm, making him let me go.
“Ashley please! Just give me another chance! Let me take you to the dance—“
“I can’t, I’m going with someone else.” I quickly said before he was even given a chance to finish his sentence. He froze and glared in skepticism, “Who?”
“Um…Uh…”
“Me.” Zane suddenly said from behind me as he put his arms around my shoulders, “You got a problem with that?”
Not knowing what to say or how to react, and not wanting to talk to Josh any longer, I just kept my mouth shut.
“Uh, nope! Not at all!”
Zane nodded and without another word and before I knew it was pushing me toward his motorcycle.
“Um, I can’t ride that thing.” I said so scared that I’d make him crash or something. I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to be responsible for someone else’s death.
Zane laughed, “Well you’re going to have to. You promised me a rain check.”
“No, I didn’t. You said it, and drove off before I could answer.”
Zane rolled his eyes and sighed as he stretched his leg over the bodice to straddle the huge scary black bike, “Ashley James Sinclair, get on the goddamn bike, before I tie you to the back.” He said, eyes dark and calm, but his lips smiling showing he was just teasing.
“You can’t do that! That’s impossible!”
“Not if you’re chopped up into pieces!”
I gasped in amusement, “Well you sure are a charmer.”
“I try,” Zane said with a shrug as he held up the black helmet, “Now get on the bike. You can trust me.”
Looking around, scared that at any moment my father or mother would come driving up to the high school—which was very unlikely—I sighed and took the helmet. I pulled my long locks of strawberry blonde hair to the side over my right shoulder, and was easily able to slide my head into the safe encasement of the hard black helmet, “Okay, now what?” I asked as I took a step closer to the bike, but still a little too scared to actually get on.
“Sit on the seat behind me, make sure you don’t move your feet from the foot petals or you’ll burn yourself. Hold on tight and—“
“What about turning? Don’t I have to do something?”
Zane chuckled, even when he saw how scared I was he didn’t seem worried at all, “All you have to do his hold on tight. Leave everything to me.”
Heart pounding, mind racing, body shaking, I ignored my conscience.
Slowly I swung my leg over the bodice of the motorcycle, and slid onto the leather seat behind Zane. Without hesitation I wrapped my arms around Zane’s stomach holding me close to him—mostly because I was afraid of falling off, but partially because I just wanted to touch the guy. He was warm, and strong, and I found him easy to hold onto as I lifted my feet to the pedals. Zane then, without warning, lifted the kick stand and jump started the engine, driving quickly and smoothly out of the parking lot and into town, but I was still scared. I innately gripped him tighter to me, and squeezed my inner thighs against the sides of him, and he looked over his shoulder at me.
“You alright?” he screamed over the loud roar of his motorcycle’s engine, and I yelped.
“Zane! Don’t look at me! Keep your eyes on the road!”
I couldn’t hear it, but I felt him laugh. His body shook under my grasp, and his body began radiating heat. The slight warmth I could feel from under his leather jacket, spread throughout my body as I pressed my face into his back, trying to block the harsh winds that were blowing fiercely as if trying to shove me off of the moving vehicle. My hair was whipping back and forth like crazy, stinging the uncovered parts of my face and blocking my vision.
And then suddenly I felt the front tire of the motorcycle begin to lift further and further off the ground.
“Aaahhh! Zane! Stop it!” I yelled, as I wrapped my arms tighter around him. He only continued to laugh, letting the front tire fall back to the ground.
My heart was racing, to the point where my chest was throbbing. My breaths came out as harsh gasps, because the wind kept taking my breath away…literally! I felt so limp and weak…but free. The wind did make it hard to breathe, and it did make me cold, but the feel of it running through my hair made adrenaline course through my body…it was weird, how I felt so scared yet in awe, at the same time.


Chapter Eleven

“So this is where you live?” I asked when Zane finally parked the motorcycle on a patch of dried mud and grass outside a trailer. Hundreds of other similar white trailers with almost identical dried up lawns were spread all around in line formations.
Zane took in a hesitant breath, “Yeah, this is where I live.”
I nodded, a little surprised and feeling a little awkward, “Oh…cool. It’s nice.”
Zane forced a laugh at my little white lie, “Well it’s certainly no mansion. Sorry but I can’t serve you any caviar either.”
I wrinkled my nose in disgust, “I hate caviar…I did like that jerky stuff, though.”
Zane smiled as he unlocked the door to what was his home, “Yeah, we’ve got plenty of that.”
Zane held open the screen door and allowed me entry to his home, which honestly I’ll admit; I had expected to be dirty and disorderly. But it wasn’t. Despite the size, the place was actually very nice. There was a TV, nice furniture with a few knitted blankets draped over the back, one single recliner only a few feet away from the TV. There was no dining room table, but I could see a few wooden eating trays folded and shoved into a corner between the couch and love seat. The walls were a soft green and the furniture was a beautiful shade of brown that made the overall place just feel…like home.
Zane walked over to a cabinet in the small kitchen and after a few quick seconds pulled out a plastic bag overly full of awkwardly shaped pieces of beef jerky. With a wink he tossed me the bag. I easily caught it, and immediately opened it, the spicy yet sweet aroma the exact moment I opened the bag filled my nose making me giggle. I quickly pulled out a strip, and bit down hard. It took some strength, but after a quick tug, I was able to chew and swallow the dried meat, “You want some?” I asked, my voice slightly muffled from the food in my mouth.
Zane chuckled, “Nah. In a few minutes my little brother will be home from school, so I’ll just take him to his friend’s house, and then I’ll take you home, kay?”
“Sounds good to me,” I mumbled, shoving yet another piece of jerky into my mouth, “Well, while we’re waiting…can I see your room?” I asked, but I didn’t wait for an answer. I just strode by him and into a small hall that had one door on the left side of the hall, and one on the right.
“No! Wait! Ashley!”
“What? Is it dirty?” I asked as I opened the room to the left, to reveal a small bathroom…only one room to go! I turned and grabbed the door knob.
“It’s a black hole.”
That made me laugh, “I’m sure it’s not that bad.”
Quickly, I turned the knob and slid into his room, despite Zane’s please and attempts at closing the door before I was inside…but the moment I entered his room, my smile disappeared.
The place wasn’t a black hole, infact—with the exception of the occasional piece of clothing—the place was very tidy. But that’s not what surprised her…what surprised her was…well, everything!
On the walls, covering a desk in the far corner of the room, taped to a canvas next to the desk, pretty much everywhere but the floors and his bed were drawings; exquisite, detailed, authentic, vivid, meaningful drawings.
“I thought you hated drawing,” I mumbled aloud as I stepped further into his room to admire his work.
“No…I hate drawing class.” Zane said, following behind me into his room.
I nodded, to show him I was listening, but in reality I wasn’t. All my attention was on his many drawings. They were just as beautiful from a distance as they were from close-up, but there was a lot more meaning to them the closer I looked…all of them were deep and full of overwhelming emotion, that I could even feel my eyes stinging with tears.
One drawing was a close-up of an eye, a male’s eyes—I could tell because of the long lashes—believe it or not, guys have longer lashes then girls…sucks, I know—but what really got my attention was in the glassy reflection of the iris of the man’s eye, was a face….a decomposing one. Have of the face was covered in drooping rotten flesh, and the other half revealed the face’s skull, white and clean. It resembled “Death” or as many people called it “The Grim Reaper”.
I looked over my shoulder to Zane, expecting an explanation, but he didn’t speak. He wasn’t even watching me. He was breathing heavily and glancing over all his drawings, so I turned back to his work as well…
The next drawing I examined was mostly scribbles and shades of black surrounding a young man’s face, as if to symbolize he was falling into a dark abyss. A single black tear was trickling down the man’s cheek, and dark damp tendrils of hair were hanging in his face. The man’s eyes were just like everything else, dark and intense, shivers went up my spine when for a moment I tricked myself into actually believing the man was glaring at me.
The drawing next to that was of the same man, only his face was tilted toward the sky, and his hands were bald into fists. His agape mouth, narrowed eyes, and the small vein in his neck, where small details that made my heart literally ache. Black liquid was dripping from the man’s fists, although know cuts or wounds were visible, and it was obvious the man was screaming…but for what? Pain? Regret? Mercy? It all depended on how you perceived it.
I walked away from the drawings taped to his wall and