ran away.

Yes, I admit I was a coward for running away when Archer had practically done a favor by revealing my feelings to Tyler, and instead of meeting his gaze head-on and waiting to see how he responded; I'd done the next worst thing by fleeing and spent the rest of the lunch break in a secluded space by a large tree outside the school building. My phone had about six missed calls; five of them from Tyler and one from Archer.

After that, I spent the rest of the day successfully avoiding both of them.

Boys would never keep their mouths shut, and since I was the odd one, a lone female in the group of two loud teenage boys, it was a given that I would always remain a target. It often turned out to be domestic bullying, my brother being the worst one, and Tyler was the silent, sweet-talking, the charming bully.

And I've had enough of those two ganging up on me.

During the last period, I went to my locker and deposited the books that I needed for tomorrow, and retrieved the ones I wanted to take home with me. When I shut the locker door, I was taken aback by an imposing figure leaning towards my locker, staring at me.

I placed a hand on my heart, "You psycho, are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

Tyler grasped my cheeks harshly between his forefinger and thumb, his expressions dark, "watch your mouth, missy!"

I was shocked by his behavior. Until now, Tyler had never manhandled me, much less touched me this way. The look in his eyes was scaring me.

He let go of my cheeks slowly but I could still feel the burning sensation of where his fingers were touching.

"Tyler...I'm...I'm..."

His serious expression dissipated into the sound of roaring laughter, "Do you know how scared you look right now?"

I sighed in relief. "You're never going to grow up, are you?"

He was still laughing, "I wish I had a mirror to show you your face."

"Ha.ha. Very funny." I mocked him.

He cocked a brow in mock humor, and wiggled them, "it's my serial killer face. I like to do it to scare people."

"And how many faces do you have?" I asked closing the locker and walking down the hallway.

"A lot of them." He answered falling in step beside me.

I had to arch my head up to look at him. The handsome giraffe.

"Which one of your faces are you showing me right now?"

"The closest one to me." He answered. "The face I show everyone."

"Everyone?" I asked, halting midway. "But Tyler, I thought I was special."

Yeah. I was flirting. We usually did that, flirt with each other that is; I would say something suggestive, something that opened one doorway to my feelings but I kept the door open only partly. There was a line neither of us was crossing. I hadn't told him outright that I liked him but gave him subtle hints, Tyler being Tyler acted oblivious most of the time but also occasionally passed innuendoes, the kind that I couldn't take seriously because he had a very annoying habit of teasing me.

We always teased each other, flirted even, but it had been discreet and after we'd turned sixteen, something had changed a little. While the jokes and flirting remained, it went a little out of our usual teasing zones. It had become something more.

"My sweet Victoria, of course, you're special that's why I show you my real face every now and then." He said giving me a wink.

"If you did I never noticed."

"Well, you haven't look harder."

"I don't want just one of your faces, Ty, I want to look at all of them," I said, my fingers curling and uncurling over the button of my blouse. "I want to know all of you."

"If you looked at them all, Victoria, I'm afraid you would run away from me."

"I wouldn't."

He grinned, "We'll see."

Was that a challenge?

"Where are you going now?" He asked as we stepped out of the school building and into the lawn.

"Home, where else?"

The sun was setting in bright colors of orange and yellow, the sky looked like a beautiful painting waiting to happen. Chatter was filled in the air, busses rolling out of the campus, car doors slamming shut, and the distant sound of the basketball court.

"I'm heading the same way so why don't you ditch the ride with Archer and come with me?" Tyler asked, but it wasn't really a question more like a command.

"And where will you take me?" I asked.

"I'm taking you home."

"It depends on whose home we're talking about. Yours or mine?"

He laughed, "I'll drive you to your home."

"Okay."

He opened the passenger side of his Blue Corvette for me to sit in and then walked around to the driver's side and slid behind the wheel. He pressed the ignition and the engine roared to life. When the car backed out of the parking lot, heads turned in our direction, a dozen of envious looks, and Tyler enjoyed every second of it. He liked being the center of attention. Sometimes he drove his father's Lamborghini to school and had to ward off a lot of kids later because everyone blocked the area to take pictures. He got so tired of the car getting so much attention that he swore off from driving it here. I'd been the lucky few to actually get a ride in it, and honestly, it was one of my best experiences.

I quickly texted Archer that Tyler was dropping me home in case he wasted time in the parking lot looking for me. I turned on the radio and the car was filled with a Green Day song. We started singing to Boulevard of Broken Dreams and then we were singing our favorite 80′s song, Never gonna give you up by Rick Astley.

Tyler knew the entire song lyrics so when he started to imitate the famous dance moves while driving, I completely lost it. He was so good at it that it was literally hilarious. When we stopped at a red light someone from the side lane whistled.

We're no strangers to love...

You know rules and so do I...

A full commitment's what I'm thinking of

You wouldn't get this from any other guy...

When he sang the lyrics with his gaze trailed on me, it just made me wonder if he was trying to give me some signal, but I had to quickly abandon that thought because it was possible that Tyler was being Tyler. After a few songs, I turned the radio on low volume since we couldn't hear anything over our own chatter.

All this time, Tyler hadn't mentioned what Archer had joked about in the cafeteria during lunch break so it was safe to assume that Tyler was going to ignore the subject altogether.

A new suspicion was starting to bug me.

What if he wasn't going to address it because he didn't want to hurt my feelings by saying no? If Tyler addressed the fact that I had a crush on him, then he knew he would have to answer with a yes or no, and by acting oblivious he was trying to save our friendship.

That was the only plausible explanation I could come up with. That's all I was to him.

A friend.

"Victoria?"

He waved his hand in front of my face, "hey shorty."

The car had stopped outside my driveway and I hadn't even noticed.

"You said something?"

"I asked what you were doing in the evening."

"Oh, uh...Noah is going to come over and we're going to start writing our English assignment today." I informed him.

The amused expression that he had going a while ago dissipated, now he stared at me impassively, "he is coming to your house?"

"Yeah."

Which other language was I supposed to translate this to him?

"And you guys are going to work in your bedroom?" He asked brusquely.

"Obviously."

"Great, because I'm sure Harper is pretty thrilled to come to the mansion and god knows what she wants to do apart from the assignment," Tyler said in a casual tone. "And maybe I'll even let her do it."

"What does that mean?!" My voice had gotten a notch up.

Tyler's blue eyes had turned a shade darker, "Exactly what I said."

"Are you jealous?" I asked.

"Jealous? What for? you want to invite Noah McCloy into your bed with an excuse of an assignment? Fine! I mean, why should that make me jealous? Sure, I'll get the same from Harper. I don't even need to try."

"God, Tyler, What is wrong with you?"

"Maybe you should ask yourself that question, Victoria, what is wrong with you? Because as far as I remember you've been giving me mixed fucking signals."

"Oh really? I don't think so! In fact you're the king of mixed signals. I've been nothing but honest with you." I heaved a sigh, having had enough of this blame game. "You know what? Do whatever you want. You want to fuck Harper, go right ahead but do not speak to me like that again!"

I started to open the door but the auto-lock clicked in. I tried to yank at the door handle but the door wouldn't open. He'd locked me in the car with him.

"Open the door!" I was losing my patience.

The door unlocked suddenly. I reached out to open it again, but the locks clicked back into place.

"Tyler!"

"She's not the one I want!" He muttered under his breath.

"Then who do you want?"

Tyler was gripping the wheel tightly, his knuckles were going white and his head was bent on the steering wheel, his body was trembling and he was breathing hard.

"Ty..." I reached out to touch him but he pulled his shaky hand out to stop me from speaking.

"Leave Victoria," He said in a threateningly low tone.

"What's happening to you?" I asked, concerned now.

"Leave before I do something that I'll regret." His breathing was still labored and he refused to look at me.

My anger towards him had dialluted into worry, "Come inside and drink some water."

"I SAID LEAVE GODDAMIT!" He screamed.

I sat back, shocked by his sudden outburst of rage. I heard the car unlock. Without waiting any longer, I picked up my bag and stepped out of the car. When I walked to the porch, the car screeched away and disappeared down the street. With the way he was driving, I was now concerned if he would make it back to his house safely even though the distance between our homes was very less.

That was one of Tyler's many faces that he liked to keep hidden, and I'd managed to unravel it.

At least one of them.

And I recalled what he'd said that time.

If you looked at them all, Victoria, I'm afraid you would run away from me.

That night I carried dinner to my bedroom upstairs. Noah was supposed to come home in two hours to work on the assignment.

I decided to text him.

My phone vibrated a minute later.

I rolled my eyes as I typed.

Someone needed to tell this guy I wasn't five.

The thought kept nudging at me; what if Harper went to Tyler's house? And what if he let her do whatever she wanted? After all, Harper wanted nothing more than to stake a claim on Tyler and the assignment seemed to be a very good opportunity for her to do that. The image of the two walking tomorrow hand in hand flashed through my mind, that image was followed by another where Tyler had Harper trapped against the locker, kissing her wildly the way I always imagined him kissing me.

I didn't realize how hard I was gripping the pen in my hand. The homework lay in front of me and I hadn't written a word because I wasn't able to put my mind to do it.

I should be concentrating on my school work, but here I was thinking about this boy.

This wasn't even my fault. How dare he say that I was calling Noah over to my bed with an excuse for school work? Tyler should be the one apologizing me, not the other way round. And yet it didn't stop making me guilty. A look of betrayal flashed in his eyes when I told him Noah was coming over.

Maybe Tyler really was jealous. The reason for jealousy could be that I was his best friend and I was supposed to hang-out with him and instead I was letting Noah come over. Over the years, what I had come to find out was that Tyler hated rejection; every type of it, but never had I experienced him losing his temper this way.

I pushed all and every thought of Tyler away to concentrate on my homework. I did about two pages before I picked up my cellphone again.

I had to know. If I didn't find out, my mind wasn't going to be at rest.

I scrolled through the list of numbers and dialed one.

It rang on the other end. The phone was answered on the third ring. "Hey, Vicky..."

"Hi, Maya. What's up?"

Tyler's sister was an Ace up my sleeves.

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