The One You Can’t Forget

by Loren, Roni

  The monster had finally caught up, and it was out for blood.

  chapter

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Wes pulled into Rebecca’s driveway, the rock music station on low and Rebecca’s quiet breathing playing soundtrack. When they’d gotten into the car, she’d looked shell-shocked. Her skin was waxen, her eyes bloodshot, and her expression blank. She’d started to explain or apologize or something about the way her father had acted, but Wes had told her to rest. They could talk about everything later.

  She’d given him a grateful look and laid her head back against the seat, closing her eyes. Two stoplights later, she was sleeping.

  Wes turned off the engine and climbed out of the truck. When he opened her side, he gave her shoulder a gentle shake, but she didn’t open her eyes. She’d fallen into that deep sleep a body demanded when it’d been kept up for too long under intense stress. He didn’t want to jolt her out of sleep, so he took her keys from her purse and headed up to the house to unlock the door and thanked the universe that she hadn’t set her alarm. He let Knight out into the backyard so the dog could relieve himself and not disturb Rebecca with a happy welcome. Then, once Wes got back to the truck, he slipped his arms beneath her and carried her inside.

  She stirred a little at the movement and nestled her cheek into his shoulder, taking a deeper breath and releasing a small contented sigh as if she liked that spot against his body, as if it settled her. He knew she was sleeping and her reaction was an unconscious thing, but it kicked up a dust storm of yearning in him. He wanted her there against him. He didn’t want to give that up. He wished he could rewind time and go back to yesterday and have a do-over.

  Wes carried her to her bedroom, set her on the unmade bed, and slipped off her shoes. When he was pulling the sheet over her, her eyes fluttered open. “Wes?”

  “Yeah, lawyer girl,” he said quietly. “It’s me. I’m just getting you to bed. You need some rest.”

  “You’re always trying to get me in bed,” she said sleepily.

  He smiled, that little glimmer of the Rebecca he knew giving him some comfort that the last twenty-four hours hadn’t completely crushed her. “This time it’s only for rest.”

  She mumbled something else, but he couldn’t understand it. Within seconds, she was fast asleep again. Knight wandered in and, after giving Wes a sniff, jumped up on the bed with Rebecca like he’d always slept there. He curled up next to her and put his chin on her hip.

  “You gonna keep an eye on her, big guy?”

  Knight licked his chops and gave Wes a look that seemed to say, As if I’d do anything else. She’s my person. This is my new gig.

  Wes gave the dog a head scratch and gave Rebecca one last long look. Then he left the bedroom, closing the door a little behind him but leaving a crack in case Knight wanted to go back in his kennel. Wes knew the proper thing to do would be to leave, to lock the house and tuck her key under the mat or something, but then he imagined Rebecca waking up and all the shit she’d had to deal with in the last twenty-four hours descending upon her like a hurricane.

  He would rather be here in case she needed anything. Plus, he’d been up for over twenty-four hours and probably was not safe to drive. If she wanted him to leave, she could tell him that when she woke up. For now, he trudged over to her couch, grabbed a blanket off the back of it, and stretched out to grab some sleep.

  When his eyes opened, Wes thought he’d just been out for a few minutes, but the room was dark and the scent of vanilla was filling his nose. He blinked a few times to clear his head and then rolled over, finding Rebecca sitting in the nearby armchair, her hair damp and her body wrapped in a robe, a mug clasped in her hands. The whole room smelled like her freshly showered scent.

  He pushed himself up to a sit, trying to clear the cobwebs. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I’m sorry. I must’ve crashed hard. What time is it?”

  “Just past nine,” she said, her voice quiet. She set the mug of whatever she’d been drinking on the side table. “I’m sorry. I had to let Knight out. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “Just wanted to stare at me while I slept like a creepy kid in a horror movie?”

  Her lips twitched at the corner. “Yeah. I’m weird like that.”

  He ran a hand over his hair, trying to tame his bedhead. “I hope you don’t mind that I crashed here. I was worried I was too tired to drive.”

  She tucked her legs beneath her and grabbed another mug off the side table. She held fresh coffee out to him. “It’s decaf.”

  He took the mug from her and took a long sip. “Thanks.”

  “And I’m glad you stayed. Not just because you shouldn’t be on the road,” she said. “I still owe you a conversation. I was sitting here trying to think of how to go about that.”

  He warmed his hands on the mug. “Bec, you don’t owe me anything.”

  “That’s not true.” She reached down and grabbed the remote control from somewhere beneath her. She clicked the TV on but left it on mute. “What happened last night is all over the news already. I’m not going to have much time to figure this all out, but thank you for getting me out of the police station this morning. My dad… I was blindsided.”

  Wes pushed the blanket off and glanced at the news on the screen. Police officer shot by son, stable condition was the headline along the bottom of the screen. “Anyone would be. That was…insane. Your dad is intense.”

  “I’m sorry for all the things he said to you,” she said, her voice catching. “And I’m sorry about losing funding for the program.”

  He looked back at her.

  Tears shined in her eyes. “You’re going to lose a restaurant again. And the kids are going to lose—”

  He set his coffee down and got up, crossing the room in two strides and then crouching in front of her. “Hey, none of that, okay? I’ll survive. The kids will survive. It’s not over, just…delayed.”

  “But they were so excited,” she said miserably. “You were so excited.”

  “We were, but we can get there again. We at least know what our goal is now. We can fund-raise, find investors, whatever it takes. And I’m going to put my own money I’ve been saving into the project, too. I’d been planning that anyway. We’ll still get a food truck built. It will just take a little longer.”

  A pang of loss went through him at the thought of the project slipping through their fingers, but unlike the first time, that didn’t feel like the end of the world. The kids in his program were scrappy. He was scrappy. They would figure it out, and it would get done somehow. Even if it took years. He would make sure it happened.

  “I don’t want to mess things up for you,” Rebecca said, pain in her voice. “Please don’t let this derail you. You’ve come so far, and if…”

  He reached out and brushed her hair away from her face. “Hey, I’m solid.”

  “You were at a bar last night.”

  “I was,” he agreed. “I ordered a drink and didn’t take one sip. And, believe me, if I managed not to take a drink last night, I promise you I can handle this.”

  “But you were there,” she said as if that explained everything. “Why?”

  “Because going there was like muscle memory,” he said with a sigh. “I was upset and hurting. I’d lost something important to me, something I hadn’t even realized I wanted.” He looked at her. “I’d lost you right as I realized I was falling in love. I didn’t know if I could take that sober.”

  He hadn’t meant for the words to come out quite that honest, but once they passed his lips, he felt something release in his chest, a tightness easing. Regardless of how she felt about him, it felt good to get those words out.

  Her gaze jumped to his, a startled look there. “Wes…”

  “I’m okay, Bec,” he said gently. “I’m not saying that to make you feel guilty or expecting you to say something back to me. You told me what this thing between us was supposed to be up front.
I’m the one who changed the rules of the game on you. I’m just telling you that I’m not a man on the edge anymore. Last night was a test. I passed. I was hurting, but I didn’t want that drink. I was already walking out when the police called. So, you’re not going to mess things up for me. Break my heart, yeah, but I’ll deal. That’s part of life. I can trust myself to handle that now. You gave me that gift. You forced that face-off with temptation, and I won.”

  She stared at him and then shifted out of the chair and slid down to sit next to him on the floor. “Only you could spin me acting like a lunatic into me doing you a favor. What is wrong with you, Wesley Garrett?”

  “Many things, I’m sure.” He scooted over, giving her room, and forced himself not to put his arm around her. He looked over in the flickering light of the TV.

  Rebecca was staring at the screen with a tense expression, lips pressed into a line, hands clasping a throw pillow like a life raft. “I never wanted to hurt you. I… You have to know that this has been more than a fling for me, too. We both changed the rules. But I don’t even know why you’re still here after what you heard.”

  “Bec…”

  “My father will tell everyone. If I don’t give in to him, he’ll stick to his word. He doesn’t make idle threats.”

  Wes watched her carefully, treading lightly. “Tell them what exactly?”

  She pulled the pillow closer to her, her fingers working the piping around the edge. “That I’m a hypocrite and a liar. That I’m a horrible person.”

  He frowned. “Bec—”

  “Don’t.” Her eyes were red-rimmed, but no tears had fallen yet. She looked down at the pillow again. “Just let me get it out. You’ve heard enough. You might as well hear all of it.” She rolled her lips inward, her expression taking on a faraway quality. “In high school, I was…intense. Like I told you, all my focus was on getting the top grades and making my transcript for college look stellar. Achievement equaled love in my house, so I ended up craving it like an addict. I needed the A’s. I needed to be editor of the paper. I needed to be student council president. The last one was the hardest because I wasn’t naturally outgoing or beautiful, which made a popularity contest a challenge.”

  Wes wanted to refute the not-beautiful part but he kept his mouth shut, sensing he would spook her and keep her from telling him more.

  She ran her teeth over her lip and picked at a loose thread on the pillow. “All the pressure I put on myself took its toll. I started flipping out over minor things—a B on a test or getting a reporter position instead of editor on the paper. The little failures sent me into a pretty dangerous depression. An angry one. My dad finally noticed, and my doctor sent me to a therapy group for teens. I was willing to go but didn’t want anyone to know, so I attended one in the next town over.”

  Wes propped his elbow on the cushion of the chair, leaning his head on his hand, listening.

  “Trevor Lockwood was there,” she said, a hollowness in her voice.

  “Trevor, one of the shooters.”

  She glanced his way briefly and nodded. “Yeah. He’d threatened suicide a few months before. So he was in the group for depression, too. He was the only other kid from my high school, and I didn’t know much about him except that he’d transferred into Long Acre High sophomore year, had that stoner vibe, and took remedial classes. We ran in completely different crowds at school. But the therapy was kind of ridiculous. The head therapist talked to us like we were kindergartners, and she used all these woo-woo, new age techniques. So even though Trevor and I weren’t friends at school, we ended up talking a lot after group and bonding over how lame we thought the whole thing was.”

  A shiver of foreboding went through Wes. “You became friends.”

  Her gaze went back to the loose string. “It was a weird thing, that bond we developed. The friendship existed in an alternate universe, at least in my mind. A secret society kind of thing. At school, we didn’t acknowledge each other. It was like an unspoken agreement.”

  “Understandable. Therapy is private.”

  Her fingers dug into the pillow. “Then I messed it all up.”

  Wes could see the tension roll through her, stiffening her posture. “What do you mean?”

  Her throat worked as she swallowed. “One night after group, I’d had a really rough week and was feeling all this pressure. I got this urge to just…not be me for a little while. To feel what it was like to not give a damn. To be free of all of it.” She shook her head as if admonishing her former self. “So I asked Trevor if he wanted to go somewhere, do something, anything.

  “He said we could go out to the lake and get high, but I wasn’t going to do any kind of drug that would stay in my system. So he bought some liquor with a fake ID and shoplifted some snacks from a convenience store. Of course, I didn’t go in with him because I wasn’t willing to take the fall for it.” She blew out a breath. “Which makes me sound like a selfish bitch.”

  “Or a smart, law-abiding girl.”

  She frowned. “But I wasn’t that night. I was going to drink that liquor and eat that food. I just wanted someone else to take all the risk on my behalf. It wasn’t fair. But he did it without thinking twice, even though I knew he would be facing big consequences if he’d gotten in trouble again. He just…did it. Maybe I didn’t believe he would.”

  Wes’s unease grew. Once upon a time, he’d been a lot like Trevor. And he knew exactly why a kid would take that risk. A pretty girl who wanted to spend some time alone with you was a great motivator.

  “We drove out to the lake after that,” she said, her voice soft, lost in the memory. “We both got tipsy—not wasted, but enough that it felt illicit, which was what I’d been after. All the pressure had stirred this surge of rebellion in me, and it felt exciting and powerful to push back against it for a little while. To give everyone the middle finger. But then I took it too far.”

  Wes stayed quiet, letting her go at whatever pace she needed.

  She glanced over at him as if gauging his reaction but then looked away again. “I kissed him. Not because I was so into him, but because it felt dangerous and impulsive. My dad had drilled into me. Don’t drink. Don’t be alone with boys. Don’t put yourself in compromising positions. I’d always listened. But now there I was, alone at the lake, buzzed, with this edgy boy who I wasn’t supposed to be friends with, and I wanted to push back on all those rules. So I kissed him.”

  Wes ran a hand over the back of his head. “I’m guessing it was well received.”

  A despondent look crossed her face. “That was heady, too. That someone wanted me like that. I could feel how into it he was, how excited. That was new and thrilling to me. The wanting. The physical stuff. I’d been pining for my best guy friend for years by that point with no luck, so it felt good to be on the other end of all that desire.” She tucked her hair behind her ears in an almost little-girl way, like she was back in that teenager’s shoes. “But when it started to go further than I was ready for and began to feel a little too good, I put a halt to things. Stopped everything cold.” She sighed. “Part of me wishes I could say he was aggressive about it or pressured me to keep going, so I could tell you he was always a villain. But he didn’t. He was completely cool about it—stopped and apologized, made a joke about outdoor sex being a bad idea anyway. And he took me home.”

  Wes absorbed all of that, imagining the scene, the simple act of teenagers getting wrapped up in hormones and alcohol and new experiences. Almost everyone had a story like that. But this was no ordinary experience in a life. That boy Rebecca had kissed would become a mass murderer. How could a kid who’d been a gentleman with a girl take such a sharp turn? Had something happened in between? A bad year. A family trauma. “How long before the shooting did all this happen?”

  “Weeks,” she said softly.

  Wes’s stomach flipped over. “Weeks?”

  Her eyes glistened again. “After that night, I came back to my senses, realized how stupid I’d acted, how clo
se I’d gotten to doing something really reckless. Plus, I was embarrassed. I skipped the next few weeks of therapy group to avoid him. I continued to pretend I didn’t know him at school, though I’d noticed him trying to catch my eye a few times. I basically shut him out completely. But then one day after lunch, when I was passing out flyers for a student council event, he stopped me.” She swiped at her eyes. “He asked me to prom in front of a group of people, including Finn, my friend I had a crush on. People were looking at me, whispering. I panicked. Trevor was not someone I could be associated with at school.”

  Wes knew what was coming, but he stayed quiet, letting her get it out.

  “I said…” Tears fell down her face and her fingers squeezed the pillow. “I said, ‘Who are you again?’ and laughed.” Her voice snagged on the word. “I laughed at him, Wes. Humiliated him in front of all those people. And I saw the look on his face. I saw that glimmer of decency and hope die in his eyes, saw how it hardened over. I killed something in him in that moment.”

  Wes’s heart broke at the anguish in her voice. “Rebecca…”

  She shook her head, tears flowing freely now. “That’s why I can’t get up and do those speeches my dad always wants me to do. Why I can’t stop seeing Trevor everywhere. Why you should run away from me far and fast.” She looked at him. “Because I’m not a Long Acre survivor. I was an instigator. I was a linchpin. If I hadn’t…”

  Wes watched her crumble, her hurt ripping him in two. “Oh, baby. No, that’s not…”

  But she wasn’t listening. She’d begun to sob, her shoulders shaking, so he gathered her into his arms and hugged her, letting her cry against his shoulder. He rubbed her back and pressed his lips to the crown of her head and held her, his mind lost in a spin.

  Wes had his own experiences with guilt, but how the hell could any one person hold on to something this heavy for all this time and not completely lose it? Rebecca was carrying around the responsibility for so many people’s deaths, for a national tragedy.

  Most people wouldn’t have given it another thought if they’d done what she’d done. She’d acted like a snotty teenager in a weak moment. Who hadn’t? But of course Rebecca hadn’t forgiven her sixteen-year-old immaturity. She’d been raised to be perfect, to always do the right thing. Her father didn’t believe in second chances. She’d made one mistake and believed she’d lit the fuse to the bomb.