Beyond the Rules by Doranna Durgin Read Free Book Online Page B

had Leo here with them again—it seemed always to be Leo’s idea—and maybe this time they’d wear her down and get her pants off .
    So she didn’t fight them. She didn’t try to escape back out the door. Squirming, dropping her books and shucking the ragged sweatshirt on which they had such a secure hold, she darted forward. She landed on her twin bed and shoved off from her knees, sliding over the edge and onto the floor with the bed between her and the boys .
    At first they laughed; they mocked her for thinking she could hide under the bed.
    At first .
    Because although she did dive under the bed, she came back out again. And she had a bat .
    An old bat. A cracked bat salvaged from the school garbage bin. A bat heavily taped along the handle. But when Kimmer came out from under the bed she sprang to her feet and even in the darkness those boys could see the bat, see her ready stance, see her willingness to fight back with a vengeance .
    It bought her the time to escape out the window. That, too, was ready—unlocked, already cracked up past the sticky part so she could merely fling it open. Out onto the roof, over the dormer and down to the lowest corner, racing them—for they knew her escape route. She lobbed the bat to the ground and hung down, dropping off for a hard fall, rolling…reclaiming the bat and running with every ounce of speed she had. Into the woods, over to the barn. As long as she had enough of a head start, they wouldn’t follow .
    No doubt they were laughing anyway, bragging about the cruelties they’d managed while they’d had the chance—the soft feel of her breasts, the tug of her wild, unruly hair, thewarmth between her legs. No doubt they’d locked her bedroom window, thinking themselves victorious in that .
    But Kimmer was thirteen, and she’d learned her lessons well. She knew the rules. She had a metal shim tucked away behind the shutter, and she knew how to wield it silently and swiftly to get back inside.
    Kimmer Reed knew how to take care of herself.
     
    “Whoa!” Rio’s voice came from the bedroom darkness like a slap in the face. Kimmer jerked back from the sound and froze, battling the inner conflict of past and present, the overwhelming urge to strike out with the abrupt awareness that this was Rio .
    The lights blazed on overhead, revealing Rio stretched out to reach the switch, one arm and his head through a cable sweater, concern on his face.
    And Kimmer realized how very close she’d come to striking him, to hitting him hard. Her arm still hesitated halfway through the motion, the heel of her hand ready for the impact, her body already positioned to follow through with a low side kick that would have taken out his knee. Slowly, she straightened. “Oops.”
    “Yeah,” Rio said. “That would have been an oops all right. At least, from my point of view. You okay?”
    Kimmer cleared her throat and said, as lamely as it got, “You startled me.”
    Rio worked his arm through the sweater and tugged it down into place. No great mystery what he was doing; the evening had turned chilly, and the threat of rain hung in the air. He’d not bothered to turn on the lights; he’d left that sweater on the bed this morning and probably planned to be out of the room in a matter of seconds. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Doesn’t answer my question. You okay?”
    Kimmer looked away, surprised at the sting of tears. The contrast between the past and the present wasn’t something she could truly reconcile. It made the past that much worse and the present that much more unbelievable. And though she searched for the words to answer him, she couldn’t find any.
    He took a step closer, and she realized he was waiting for her to nod, or to gesture, or even just to tell him it was okay. She lifted her head a little—a defiant movement attached to the acknowledgment for which he waited—and when he stepped in close it was to cup his hands around her shoulders and kiss each eyebrow. With his