Fall Guy (A Youngblood Book)

for me this morning. I bury my head in my clammy hands and resolve to stare at the tiles until I manage to convince them to open wide and ingest me whole.
A voice punctures through my self-pity and fear. A smooth, obnoxiously confident voice with the undercurrent of an accent I've never heard before and can't place.
"Are you nervous?"
The words are overly familiar, like he's backstage with me before a big recital or at my shaking, heart-broken side at that second when I’ve realized my mother disappeared on another bender.
I focus on the polished shine of his black boots and try not to admit that his voice is a sweet caress in my ears, despite my brain’s strong protests and warning bells.
"I'm fine. I just...needed a second. To sit." It may be the most idiotic thing I've ever uttered, but I refuse to back down from my resolve to sit on this floor.
For a second.
Like I said.
The boots shift slightly, and I realize he's leaned over to open the door of the courtroom. A woman thanks him in a high, nervous voice.
"You're welcome, ma'am."
My head whips up at the 'ma'am.'
Not that I haven't heard that word spilled like sticky sweet syrup from a thousand mouths of a thousand boys who've been born and bred to use it every day.
There’s something about this boy, the way that word slides off his tongue, buoyed with cautious respect and elegant pleasure.
Like he loves saying the word.
Like his lips weigh the worth of it.
I crane my neck, and he's looking down at me with half a twisted smile, his hand extended. I put my freshly manicured hand into his, rough with calluses, and he coaxes me to stand up with a gentle tug, so I'm suddenly nestled too close to the lean, towering height of him.
"Have you had long enough? To sit?" The questions are sweet, but his lips have a twisted curve that makes my heart double-beat to the tune of one word: wicked.
I smell him, and it's a smell that's not part of the deep, salty musks of this area. It's clean and fresh and sweet. Something foreign and intoxicating. It smells like clover, wet with a sheen of overnight dew.
"I've had long enough." I pull my hand from his, reluctantly, and press my palms down the front of my skirt. For an instant, the wrinkles smooth out, but the second I take my hands away, they spring back. I can't keep the tsk of my tongue locked in my mouth.
His laugh scatters a little too loud for this dim, serious court hallway.
"Hey." He says it informally, like we've known each other forever, and I move a step back to keep him out of my physical territory while the imprint of his big laugh twines through my neurons. "You can get away with them."
His eyes are blue, but not glacial frozen blue like mine. His are like sun-warmed blueberries, dark denim blue, well-deep and framed by overlong jet black lashes. He blinks slowly, and his lean, chiseled face is relaxed and calm despite its cut lines.
"Get away with what?" I keep my voice coolly unaffected.
His eyes train on me, he leans over, and his words weasel in my ears and prickle down my backbone.
"Wrinkles. Stains. Tears. You're too pretty to bother worrying about any of that. The first thing people notice is your face. Once they notice that, there's really no noticing anything else. Trust me on this one."
He tilts his head to the side, indicating that we should go into the courtroom, and I notice that his short, dark hair is newly cut, expertly done.
"That's the worst pick-up line I've ever heard," I tell him, but a tiny shiver of appreciation bolts through me before it disappears, like that magical fragment of a second when a snowflake lands on your tongue, perfect and whole before it melts into oblivion.
"I'm not trying to pick you up." His eyes are dancing, a jig, the robot, the macarena, and I work to keep my lips in a neat, straight line. "Judge Schwenzer is a stickler for being on time, and we're two minutes away from being late."
He swings the door open, and I do my best not to be too obvious in my admiration of the clean lines of his muscles through the thin cotton of his button-down. I notice some skin is etched with tattoos I can barely make out.
"After you, m'lady."
Then he smiles, my nerves unfurl in a long, smooth spin, and I walk into the hushed courtroom with tiny sparks of silvery light flickering on the outsides of my eyes. It's probably from nerves. It's probably because I didn't eat breakfast. It's absolutely not because this irritatingly over-familiar hustler is trying to pick me up in the hallway of a courthouse.
I clamp down hard and quick on my judgment. I'm here for trespassing and unintentional arson. He's probably here to argue a speeding ticket.
I murmur a 'thank you' and panic petrifies my legs and leaves me blocked in the doorway. He nudges me in, takes my hand as if I'm some new kid he's been assigned to lead around on the first day of school, and pulls me to a long wooden pew-like bench, where we sit.
I run my fingers over the red leather portfolio cover I’m holding onto for dear life. Other people have their court documents clutched in their fists or in cheap ten-cent folders, but I have fancy taste in my accessories.
Mystery Guy has nothing in his hands. Unlike the other people in the courtroom, he's not sitting ram-rod straight or fidgeting. He looks perfectly relaxed.
I bet it was a speeding ticket. He probably thinks just showing up will get him out of it.
I flip my cover open, glance over all the damning evidence pitted against me in black and white, then snap it shut again.
The judge enters the courtroom, and we jump to our feet as a solitary, slightly sheepish unit of criminals. Law breakers. Deviants. Sweat