by Lexi Ryan
“A live grenade? You play too many video games,” Bailey says.
Mason lowers his voice and points his thumb toward the hallway. “And she’s sleeping in Chris’s room.”
Bailey and I both turn to stare at Chris.
“Not like that,” Chris says. “He’s right. She crashed here last night. Showed up at our door drunk—maybe high. I don’t know what she’s doing. She started going off about her dad, and we took her keys so she couldn’t drive home. I gave her my bed and slept on the couch.”
Bailey looks at me, then back to Chris. “What did she say about her dad?”
He slides a stack of plates into their spot in the cabinet and shuts the door. “Normal daddy-issue stuff. He’s a selfish asshole. He’s made her life hell.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. But I do know that the last thing I need is for Coach to catch his daughter at my house, high on God-knows-what. I’d have taken her home myself if she hadn’t threatened to slit her wrists if I did. Someone needed to keep an eye on her.”
“Do you guys remember her and Arrow being together on New Year’s Eve?” Bailey asks.
“Who could forget?” Mason mutters.
I have goosebumps and that uneasy tightening in my chest and stomach. I always feel like this when we talk about that night. It’s as if I’m standing on the side of the road again, the sleet slicing at my cheeks.
“Do you remember when they left together?” Bailey asks. “Who was driving?”
“They left together?” Mason asks. “I didn’t see them go.”
Chris frowns. “He could hardly stand up straight. Trish had Keegan help her get him into the car. It was crazy. Arrow never drinks like that. Or at least he didn’t before the accident.”
I draw in a ragged breath. She had Keegan help her get him into the car.
Someone knocks on the door, and Bailey and I look at each other.
“I’ll get it,” I say.
I pull open the door, and Sebastian pushes past me into the apartment. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. What did you say to him?” he asks. He looks like shit. He’s always so composed, and today his eyes are bloodshot and his skin is sallow, like he hasn’t slept in a week. “What did you say to Coach?”
Bailey and I exchange a glance. We’re both still processing what Chris said, and I just want Sebastian to leave so we can talk about it more. Arrow wasn’t driving. It wasn’t his fault. But I need to know for sure before I go back to him, before I tell him he can stop hating himself for a night he can’t remember.
“Mia!” Sebastian growls. “What did you say?”
I pull my gaze away from Bailey and return it to Sebastian. “What are you talking about?”
“About his car. About the accident.”
Mason hops off the couch. “Coach was in an accident? Is he okay?”
“On New Year’s Eve,” Sebastian says, not sparing Mason a glance but continuing to skewer me with his gaze. “You said something to him. I told you to let it go.”
I shake my head. “No, I didn’t.”
Chris walks toward us. “New Year’s Eve?” He looks from me to Sebastian and back to me. “The dark SUV?”
“Are you sure, Mia? Because—” Sebastian drags his hands through his hair. “Fuck. You don’t understand what a good guy he was. He’s family to his players. Family. And he meant that and more to so many of us.”
“Coach didn’t have his SUV that night,” Chris says, and now he’s searching my face, too. All these people looking at me when I don’t have the damn answers.
“Talk, Mia!” Sebastian says.
Bailey steps forward, scowling at Sebastian with her arms folded across her chest. “Stop shouting at her.” He’s easily twice her size, but she’s coming at him like she’ll take a swing if she needs to.
“What’s going on?” Mason asks.
Sebastian sets his jaw and turns his gaze to the floor. “I have a friend at the station. Coach just turned himself in for the hit-and-run on Deadman’s Curve.”
Bailey and I draw a sharp breath at the same time.
Sebastian collapses onto the couch, elbows on his knees. “You were right,” he mutters. “I knew that damage didn’t look like it came from a doe, but I didn’t want to believe it. Goddammit, you were right.”
I spin when I hear a bedroom door open in the back hallway and Trish comes out, her T-shirt falling off her shoulder, her eyes bleary. “My dad turned himself in?”
Sebastian drags his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Trish.”
“That fucking asshole,” she mutters.
“Coach wasn’t driving his SUV that night,” Chris repeats.
“Arrow thinks he was,” Bailey says.
“Bailey!” I shake my head frantically, as if she could take the words back.
“That’s why he’s been such a mess,” she continues in a hurry. “Arrow can’t remember that night, but someone made him think he was driving.” She turns to Trish now and stares her down.
“Keegan had to help him into the car,” Chris says, and we all turn to Trish. “I watched him load Arrow into the passenger seat. You were driving.” His voice is deadly soft, and I’m not sure she can hear it.
As if all her bones dissolved, Trish crumbles to the floor. “I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do, and Daddy told me to go to my room. I shouldn’t have been driving.”
I draw back. She did it. There’s no more guessing or speculation. She did it. Arrow’s been torturing himself for months because she and her father made him believe he was guilty.
“Dad asked me if Arrow had been passed out the whole time,” she says, rubbing her arms. “When I said yes, that Arrow had been passed out since we left the party, Dad told me he’d take care of it. I didn’t realize how buzzed I was until I came over that hill. It was dark, and the sleet made it hard to see, and I shouldn’t have been driving.”
“You killed Brogan,” Mason says. He steps toward her, hands clenched at his sides, and Chris grabs him before he can go further. “Get out of my fucking apartment.”
Trish wraps her arms around her knees and rocks herself back and forth. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was scared, and I didn’t know what to do, and Dad said he’d take care of it. He told me to go to bed, and when I woke up the next morning, the cops had already been there to file the report on the deer, and he’d already made Arrow think he’d been driving.” She looks so pathetic, so utterly destroyed that I can’t hate her like I want to. Hate would be so much easier than this mess.
My head snaps up. “Sebastian, did you tell Arrow that Coach is at the station?”
“I went to his house first,” he says. “I was looking for you.”
Bailey stops pacing and looks at me. “Oh no.”
“Arrow knows Coach turned himself in.” I’m already grabbing for my phone and punching in Arrow’s cell number. “Voicemail,” I tell Bailey when Arrow’s message clicks on.
“What did Arrow say when you told him?” Bailey asks Sebastian.
He shakes his head. “He said he had to do something and he . . .” His frown deepens. “He got his keys and got in his car and left, but he’s on house arrest.”
Bailey rushes over to me and wraps me in her arms.
“Where would he have been going?” he asks.
I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again, like a child trying to wake from a bad dream. “The police station.”
When I pull up to the police station, I’m trembling. I want to be this brave guy who isn’t scared to do what needs to be done. But even though I’m anxious to unload this weight from my shoulders, I’m terrified.
Coach is right. They’ll make an example of me. They’ll compare me to that affluenza kid, and my life will be over. My dream shattered on Deadman’s Curve.
But I’m ready to be free of this terrible secret, and the second Sebastian told me Coach had turned himself in, I knew it was time.
I don’t know what Coach is telling them. I don’t know if he�
�s throwing me under the bus or trying to take the blame himself—lie and say he was driving the car. But it doesn’t matter. If he’s turning himself in, it means I get to finally tell the truth without his fate weighing on my conscience.
I turn off my car and squeeze my eyes shut. I should have done this sooner. I should have insisted.
I swallow hard, pocket my keys, and climb out.
When I step into the station, the officer who arrested me for possession looks up from his desk.
“You’re supposed to be on house arrest,” he says.
Not far away, Coach stands with another officer, who’s pointing to the back hallway.
“I’m here to turn myself in,” I say.
“No, you’re not,” Coach says. “You can’t confess to a crime you didn’t commit.”
“Just because I don’t remember—”
The doors to the station burst open, and Mia and Bailey rush in.
“You weren’t driving!” Mia shouts.
Bailey nods frantically, and Trish steps through the doors and stands at my side. She’s a mess, her eyes red, her face wet with tears, her hands full of tissues.
“They’re telling the truth,” Trish says. Her voice shakes, but she stands firm.
“Don’t try to protect me,” I say.
Trish squeezes my arm. “You never drove that night, Arrow. You weren’t behind the wheel even once after you started drinking. You were passed out in the passenger seat.” She steps forward and wraps her arms around her waist. She meets the eyes of the officer standing by me. “I was the one driving.” She turns to me, her face falling. “I’m sorry I let you believe that it was your fault.”
“Trish.” I shake my head. “You didn’t—” I look to Coach, who’s avoiding my gaze. “I was in the driver’s seat. When you woke me up. When you found me in your yard . . .”
He lifts his eyes to mine, and I see the truth right there. “I moved you to the driver’s seat,” he says.
That doesn’t make any sense. If he was trying to protect me, why would he put me there? None of this makes any sense. “You were trying to protect me. Right?”
Trish squeezes my arm again, hard. “He was trying to protect me, Arrow. I was driving, and he was trying to protect me.”
I’m frozen, but I feel as if I’m falling. Even when things were at their worst, when it felt like the whole fucking world was constructed to ruin me, my one constant was that at least there was Coach—someone who, right or wrong, loved me enough to take drastic actions to protect me.
Trish looks at the officer, takes a breath, and says, “I’m here to turn myself in for the hit-and-run accident that killed Nicholas Mendez and Brogan Barrett. My father covered it up and made Arrow think he did it, but I was the one driving the car.”
“I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now,” Bailey says, as we pull into our old trailer park. “Because personally, I feel like I’ve been sucked dry. What a fucking insane day.”
“No kidding.” I scroll through the dozens of group texts between Bailey, me, and the guys on the team. The responses to everything that went down today run the gamut from anger toward Arrow for months of silence, to pity for me, to some rather unpleasant suggestions as to what Coach’s punishment should be.
After the officers took Arrow, Trish, and Coach back for questioning, Mason and Chris showed up at the station to give their statements about seeing Trish drive the Cherokee, and Bailey and I were told to leave. I didn’t want to, but Bailey reminded me that my dad might like to know the truth about what happened that night.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she says as she parks the car. “And today just got a little more interesting.”
I pull my eyes away from my phone and follow her gaze to the front steps of Dad’s trailer. When I see her standing there, my heart squeezes so hard in my chest it brings tears to my eyes.
“Do you want to leave?” Bailey asks. “Because you’ve had a shit day, and you don’t need to deal with this right now. I can tear out of here and hide you at my apartment until she leaves.” She puts her hand on the gearshift, ready to pop the car into reverse.
Mom’s eyes meet mine, and she gives a soft smile. Her hair is swept off her shoulders and tied at the back of her neck. Standing there in her yellow tank top and frayed jeans, it’s as if she never left.
To this day, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, and despite all the anger and resentment I’ve directed her way in the last six years, there’s no one I’d rather see right now.
“It’s fine,” I tell Bailey. “I’ll talk to her.”
Bailey frowns, grumbles something under her breath about masochism, and reaches across me to open my door. “I’ll be at Mom’s trailer if you need me, okay?”
I nod. “Love you, Bail.”
“Love you, Mee,” she whispers.
I close the car door and head for my mother.
Mom tucks her hands in her pockets as I walk forward. “Hi, Princess Mia,” she says. She comes down the steps and worries her bottom lip between her teeth just like I know I do when I’m nervous.
I don’t reply in any way but to wrap my arms around her and hug her tight. Because sometimes a girl needs her mom. “I missed you.”
I know it’s a silly thing to say when she was here in January for Nic’s funeral. It’s probably a little weird that in all the times I’ve seen or talked with her since she left when I was fifteen, this is the first time I’ve said it. Maybe it’s not a fair thing to say when she tried to convince me to come back to Arizona with her and I refused, but after what I’ve been through in the months since the accident, I just need her to know.
“I miss you every day,” she says, stroking my hair. “Your father tells me you’re going to BHU next fall. He said you’re the smartest girl in town.”
I chuckle against her shoulder. That’s my father. Everything in hyperbole. I pull back so I can look at her. “Why are you here?”
“Your father called me.” Her smile falls away. “He told me he has a drinking problem, and he wanted a loan to check himself into an in-patient rehabilitation program. He said he wanted to do it for you.”
“I could have given him the money,” I say, looking over her shoulder to the dark and quiet trailer. Is he already gone?
“It was the least I could do, Mia.” She swallows hard. “How long has he been like this? I suspected when I saw him at Nic’s funeral, but we were all a mess and I . . .” She shakes her head. “Why didn’t you tell me he was drinking? I would have come home.”
“Nic and I thought we could handle it.” It didn’t seem like a secret at the time, just something she didn’t need to know. Or maybe part of me felt like I was punishing her by not sharing the details of our lives and keeping her in the dark about the hardest parts. I didn’t want to need her after she left us so easily, and neither did Nic. “You didn’t want to be here, so we didn’t tell you anything that would make you feel like you needed to come back.”
Her face crumples like tissue paper. “Baby . . .” She closes her eyes and composes herself.
I wait until she opens her eyes before I speak again. “I know about your affair with Uriah Woodison.”
She folds her arms, and I recognize the defensive stance. I’m just like her. “I didn’t want you to know.” She drops her gaze to the ground and digs the toe of her white sneaker in the dirt.
“I needed you.” I’m surprised to hear myself admit it and more surprised to hear my voice crack on the admission. It’s been years, and I made it. I survived my teen years without my mom to wipe away my tears and hold my hand. It shouldn’t matter anymore. But it does. “Why did you leave?”
She lifts her head and studies me. “I wanted you to be better than I was. Uriah, he wanted me to stay in town. He said he’d take care of us if I left your father, but he was still a married man, and you know what people would say.” She drops her arms from around her waist and turns her palms up in a shrug. “I was ashamed and thought t
he best penance was to leave. You wouldn’t have to be the daughter of the whore. You were always so smart. I didn’t want my mistakes to follow you.”
They did. Even when she was gone, they were here, haunting me. They were the reason I didn’t give Arrow a chance that first day we met. They were the reason I got back together with Brogan when it should have been over. The reason I couldn’t admit to myself that I loved Arrow. But I don’t tell her any of that, because I know it will hurt her, and sometimes love means keeping secrets.
I guess I’m a lot like her after all.
“Dad?” I ask, nodding toward the trailer.
“I checked him into the clinic this morning. He said he wanted to be sober and gainfully employed next time he saw you. I told him you would be proud of him.”
I stare at her—at the eyes so like the ones I see every time I look in the mirror, at the freckles she tells me are from her German grandmother—and I feel another piece of my safety net lock into place beneath me. After months of walking this tightrope of my life vulnerable and blindfolded, it’s a relief. “Thank you for taking care of that.”
She smiles and points to the trailer. “I made some cookies. Would you like to come in and have a couple? I’d love to talk more.” She shifts and wrings her hands in front of her. “I’d really, really like to know about your life. More than you tell me in a ten-minute phone call.”
My heart squeezes and I take a step forward, knowing it’ll be okay if I fall. “Cookies sound great.”
It’s hours later before they release me from the little room at the back of the station. There were questions and more questions. There were lectures and guilt trips. The police asked me about what I remember from that night so many times that I’ll probably be reciting it in my sleep.
They made Mia and Bailey go home. I’m told that at one point, Chris and Mason showed up to give statements of their own about that night, but they were gone before I finished.
Dad came with his lawyer, and they got filled in on everything. The look on his face when he realized I hadn’t been driving, that I wasn’t about to face years in prison . . . it was good for me to see. He has trouble talking through his feelings, but his expression in that moment told me everything I need to know.