Fears To Face

∞ Chapter 58 ∞

Kayley

Assuring my mom that she had to leave Sam alone for a whole evening while he had told my parents he was gay merely a few days ago hadn't been easy, but I dared to say I had been quite successful. The very few times she had checked on him, she hadn't noticed anything was off, other than his depression of course, but she knew about that. I'd sneaked off to his room every 2 hours to check up on him because of the concussion, but he was okay.

School was so not on my mind right now, but since I had promised the principal I would get my grades right, I had to go. So here I was, just survived my first class, stuffing books in my locker, that honestly was way too small to put all my stuff in anyway. Irritated, I sighed. Just a few more weeks, I told myself.

This morning, just before I'd left the house, Sam had stumbled down the stairs, groaning. "Jeez, all my muscles are so sour it's like I did a body builder routine yesterday. It's insane." He'd worn a long sleeved shirt, covering his whole body. His nose and jaw were getting purple.

I had exhaled dejectedly. "How bad is it?" I asked, motioning to the rest of his body.

He'd grimaced. "You don't want to know. I'm just glad those painkillers are still partly working, I can tell you that much. And I'm hungry, since I lived on yesterday's breakfast for a whole day."

Slamming my locker shut, I was back in reality. His reaction hadn't helped me to happily hop into my car and leave him alone at all.

Suddenly the door of the building slammed into the wall way harder than normally. When I looked up, I saw Reece thundering into the building. He came to sudden stop beside me, looking... restless and concerned. "Reece, what are you doing here?" I asked surprized, taking him in. He wore a black blazer with gold buttons and gold thread stitching with extra fabric buttoned on the shoulders and front on top of a dark grey shirt.

"Where's Sam? How bad is it?" His voice was worked up, urging.

Sam was here? Oh, of course he was. He had to fill in the application for college. "You know what happened?" He nodded. Then I remembered that Sam said he would call him. Reece looked around, anxiously searching. "Reece, what's going on?"

He looked at me, concern in his eyes. "I don't like this. Sam just called me, but I was too late and – "

He was about to say more when a group of guys came around the corner of the hallway. They were laughing, harshly pushing someone around in a circle made by a couple of students while they were calling names. "Piece of shit!"

"Faggot!"

"Gaymo!"

Oh god. No, no, no.

Sam.

That realization hit Reece at the same time it did with me. He barged over with tensed shoulders. "ENOUGH!" he boomed. Sam had been smashed into a row of lockers and sunk down to the ground. The expression on Reece's face turned vicious; it scared the hell out of me. If I hadn't known him so well, I would have been terrified of him. I almost expected his eyes to be spitting with orange. Of course, they were still green. Nevertheless, he was a completely different person. He threw one of the guys who had bullied Sam against the wall while he was yelling at him.

While Reece wasn't incredibly tall, the look on his face together with his infuriated and growling voice made him tower over all the others. All the guys backed away from him with raised hands and looked afraid as he growled at them. Sam looked numb, still sitting on the floor.

Gwyn appeared next to me. "Who is that? He's scary."

I couldn't get my eyes from the scene before me. "You know Gwyn, actually he is really nice. I have never seen him like this. I guess you just really shouldn't get on his bad side." I got Gwyn's opinion, though. It might be partly due to his clothes in combination with the setting, but he looked dangerous, sinister even.