To Hell and Back Read Free

anything my own father would say that I find myself wishing, just for a moment, that I was a Miller.  Sitting here feeling sorry for myself isn’t going to help me get off this floor and back to my house, so, with another clearing shake of my head, I start to get stand up.
    “Hang on, let me help.” 
    I know that voice.  I listened to it every Thursday night for three years.  I recorded it and all of its companions on our DVR and watched it every single week after Hank dozed off for the night. That is the voice of Maxwell Presley, hottest vampire at Stonewall. It’s the voice of Carson Malone.  OHMYGOD . It’s really him; it has to be. He has the face, the eyes, and now the voice.  Maybe I’m still unconscious.  What other reason would the object of all my teenage fantasies be doing here, witnessing my most epic of public embarrassments?
    “Let’s stand you up carefully. Does anything hurt?”
    Just my pride.  I slowly turn my face toward the man with the warm hands that are guiding me up off the floor. I’m staring straight into what are possibly the bluest eyes I have ever seen, and, adding to this mortifying event, I say the first thing that pops into my head.  “Are those contacts?”
    His light laugh feels like hot chocolate warming me up from the inside as he says “I think she’s okay.” The few bystanders that are still watching us, including Mr. Miller and Mrs. Dodd, murmur their relief and begin to disperse.  I find myself thinking I hope none of them took pictures of this.  I’m happy to have become a nobody at school, a ghost just waiting her turn to cross the stage and grab her diploma before moving on. I was never really picked on or anything, but pictures can be worth a million words, especially when a pale, shaky me is being helped off the floor by a super famous über-hunk like Carson.
    “No, they’re not contacts. I get that a lot, though. So, do you think you can walk out to the parking lot? I can give you a ride home. It’s not just me, so you don’t have to worry I’m a creep or anything. I mean, I have Lucy to drive me.  She’s my driver.  I can drive and everything, it’s just…  I don’t know why I’m rambling.  Something about you makes me kind of nervous.  I’m not normally like this.  You just seem so uncomfortable, which, of course you are.  You’re kind of the damsel in distress right now and that can’t be fun.  So I feel like being your hero.  Or your knight or something.”
    “I don’t need a hero or a knight.  I just need to go home.”  Wow, who would have thought Carson Malone would be such a mess?  As if someone like me could make him the slightest bit anxious.  I’m not sure what his deal is but it’s possible that my teenage fantasies have just been shattered.
    “Okay, well, I can help with that. Like I said, I have a driver outside and we would be more than happy to bring you home.”
    He’s starting to get it together; less rambling, more confidence. I’m not sure what brings a television star to Marshall, Pennsylvania – otherwise known as the middle of nowhere – but since he’s here and willing, and I could really use a ride home, I’ll go with it.  The last thing I need is to pass out again on the side of the road.  I need to get home where I can down some of this medicine and maybe a bowl of soup.  If I’m lucky I can probably nod off for another half an hour or so before Hank wakes up. That’s assuming I wasn’t unconscious more than a minute or two.  I don’t think I was; if I was out that long there would be an ambulance here by now.
    “Okay, sure. Thanks for the offer. I just live a couple of blocks down so it will only take a minute.”
    “Better than you ending up out cold on the side of the road, right?”
    “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
    “You don’t want to swing by the hospital to get checked out or anything first? It looks like you might have a little swelling on your face. Does it hurt