Beatty & The Beast

FIFTEEN: Where the Beauty and the Beast Plan for a Ball

As Keefe predicted, Benny Wolf Fang was out on bail the day following his attack. And, as Keefe predicted, before Benny could take one breath of freedom, the parents Wolf Fang sent him out of town. The common opinion was he would be in Marmontel for his banishment, since the Wolf Fangs owned a hotel there.

Wherever he was didn't matter. Villeneuve, for the moment, was free of Benny Wolf Fang. It should've been a joyful thing.

Gossip and rumors abounded and, just like Andie predicted, most of them were in favor of Keefe. His battered condition did much to garner sympathy.

Andie did not fare as well.

Though it was hard to know for sure where and how the story got twisted, Becca Wolf Fang was quite the peddler of the altered story, making her brother out to be some tormented and misunderstood victim who was only pushed to the limits thanks to Andie Logan's goading. She and her friends weaved dozens of theories and tales, spreading them all over the school. Thanks to Andie's less than stellar reputation already, the students had no problems believing Andie brought it all on herself and Keefe.

The townsfolk weren't much better. Though they didn't go so far as to think of Benny as a victim – that was stretching it, even for them – they believed Andie had a hand in shaking things up. Perhaps she had picked the fight or pushed Benny to go overboard, the townsfolk wouldn't put it past her (They had read those articles about her, they knew what a spoiled and hateful brat was). Even though she was battered and bruised just as much as Keefe, she did not receive the sympathy he did. This is what she got for acting the way she did.

Keefe was livid. If they only knew what she had done to fight off Benny, if they only knew what that creep had almost done to her... Keefe got hot in the temples just thinking about it.

It was Andie who had calmed him, Andie who had not responded to the whispers and accusations. She had no interest in telling her side, not only because she hardly wanted to share what happened to her, but she knew they wouldn't believe her anyway.

You can't assault a slut after all, right?

Their opinion of her was set in stone. There would be no changing minds now. A life in the limelight taught her that much. People believed what they wanted to believe.

It took a long argument between them for Keefe to accept this. As much as it drove him crazy, Andie was ready to let it go, and asked him, as her friend, to try and do the same. So, once he calmed down, they agreed that the rumors and gossip, no matter how prolific and obtrusive, would slide off of them like rain on a slanted roof. Here's to being the bigger person!

Then there was the mess with the spinning wheel. After the attack, Keefe had painstakingly gathered every splinter of turquoise and maroon-painted wood and stowed them in an old shoulder bag. When his kindly Norwegian neighbor opened the door to him and Andie the next day, he held the open bag out to her like a little remorseful boy, the apologies tumbling out of him. He looked even more pathetic staring down at her with his miserably battered face.

Keefe was certain nothing could ever right this wrong, unless Mrs. Dversdall happened to have more heirloom spinning wheels in her garage, some older and in better shape than the one Keefe broke.

Which she did.

Turns out Mrs. Dversdall's great-great-grandfather was a carpenter by trade and specialized in building spinning wheels, so the family actually had a rather overwhelming collection of them. They had so many that they had been consuming Mrs. Dversdall's garage since she had inherited them following her father's death some forty years ago.