“You’re going to run out of clothes pretty soon,” she couldn’t resist teasing, even as she slid her arms into the sleeves. She turned back to face him, buttoning up the shirt over her tank top.
Will grinned down at her. “My master plan is to leave you with all of my clothes so that I never have to do laundry again. I’ll just hop across the window to get dressed every morning. It’s genius.”
She laughed out loud, turning away to slide out of her tank top under Will’s shirt. She turned back, her breath catching in her throat as she saw Will discard his t-shirt beside his shoes. She could see each muscle in his chest and his arms, each one taunt and defined. She had never known, under his layers of clothes, that Will had worked out.
But then, she guessed, it made sense for him to be in shape… He spent enough time outdoors.
Embarrassed that she was staring, she quickly averted her eyes, flushing. To keep her mind off of her thoughts, she all-but yanked off her jeans, throwing them next to her tank top.
And then, as she walked to the end of the dock, she suddenly thanked god she had worn cute underwear that day.
Even more mortified at her thoughts, she turned back to Will, who finished tossing the contents of his jeans onto his t-shirt and stood to face her. He grinned and approached her at the end of the dock.
“Ready?” he asked.
“No,” she admitted, laughing as she peered into the darkened water.
“That’s a pity.” She squealed as she was suddenly hoisted up into his arms. The next moment she was flying through the air, everything moving in slow-motion, and then she was plunged into darkness, surrounded by warmth.
She came up sputtering, Will already in front of her. He grinned and shook wet hair out of his eyes as she grabbed onto his shoulders to keep herself afloat. Apparently it wasn’t deep enough that he had to tread water like she did, because his legs were still. “You suck,” she told him, holding onto his shoulders with one arm as she wiped the water from her face.
He laughed. She let him go when her face was as dry as she could get it, and then he stepped back, until it was clearly too deep for him to stand. She followed, slowly, keeping her head above water.
“You’re not going to suddenly get a cramp and drown, are you?” she teased.
He smiled impishly at her. “Would you save me if I did?”
“Nope. I’d steal your car keys.”
He disappeared almost instantly under the water, and alarmed, she looked around, her heart beat picking up. “Will?” she asked. “Are there alligators or something in the wa—“
She broke off as a hand wrapped around her ankle, yanking her down into the darkness of the water. She tried to scream, but her mouth just filled with water. Panicked, she pushed off of the rocky, grainy lake bottom and went surging back to the top, quickly pushing her hair out of her face as she looked around furiously for Will, who to her fury was treading water just a foot or so away, grinning mischievously.
“You scared me half to death!” she cried, splashing water at him. “I could have drowned!”
“You weren’t going to drown,” he assured her confidently, wet hair curling in his twinkling eyes. He looked so pleased with himself that she felt some of her anger fade, but she continued to frown at him. He swam over to her and held her close, looking up at her as he lifted her slightly. “I wouldn’t have let you drown,” he promised. “You’re wearing my shirt.”
She splashed him and he laughed, tossing her out of his arms and into the water on her own. For a long time they swam around like children, until Annabelle’s body was exhausted from exertion and every bad thing from the night before seemed just like a distant, faded memory.
To her vast relief, Will kept blankets in the trunk of his car, and oddly enough, a duffel bag of clothes. As he pulled it out of the trunk and began rifling through it, she had to laugh.
“Do this often?” she teased.
Will looked up at her through pieces of wet hair. He offered a half-smile. “Remember that barn I showed you?”
She felt her heart skip. “Yeah.”
“Sometimes I stay there when I don’t feel like going home.” He emerged with a t-shirt and held it out to her. “Here.”
They changed on opposite sides of the car, Annabelle’s mind racing as she went over his words in his head. Will stayed in that drafty old barn? But why? Things at home couldn’t be that bad, could they?
They tossed their wet clothes into the back seat and climbed into the car, Will closing the top on the convertible and blasting the heat.
She forced herself to shove the thoughts from her mind, holding her hands over the vents to warm them up. By the time they were home, her hair was nearly dry, and she was so happy and full of cold energy that she thought she would burst. Will helped her scale the tree back up to her room, and once in, she grinned at him through the window.
He grinned back.
“I had fun tonight,” she said softly. “Thank you.”
He nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Such a simple word… Tomorrow. But hearing him say “tomorrow” instead of “later” made her heart skip with happiness and she nodded back, watching as he climbed into his own window.
As bad as tomorrow was going to be, as long as she had Will with her, she was pretty sure she would be able to get through it.
Chapter Fourteen
She had thought Saturday was the worst day of her life, but somehow Monday managed to surpass it. People she didn’t know kept coming up to her, offering congratulations on her win at Homecoming. Trevor stood with his arm around her shoulders, smiling proudly, oblivious to her discomfort as she accepted their words as graciously and sincerely as she could. She could feel the hostility rolling off of Claire a mile away, belying her own congratulatory words. The other girls in her group were being painfully nice, though she could see the resentment buried within their cold eyes. She looked around for Will and Ebony all day, even daring to venture out through the back doors, but it turned out to be a fruitless endeavor. They were nowhere to be found.
When school was over Trevor drove her home and offered to come in to work on homework together, but she turned him down, citing exhaustion. She ignored the disappointment on his face as he kissed her forehead and bid her goodbye, leaving her at the door. Once inside, she headed straight up to her room, pulling apart her curtains and opening her window, praying that Will would suddenly materialize and somehow make it all better. She even sat at her desk to do her homework, to make sure he could see her.
But she was left waiting. “Tomorrow” apparently did not mean the same thing to Will as it did to her.
After dinner she had to drag herself back up to her room, prepared to crawl into bed and hide under her covers until her mom or dad forced her to get up for school the next morning. With a heavy sigh, she opened her door, her lips parting in disbelief as Will stood from her bed. He grinned at her impishly, his dark eyes twinkling.
“Your window was open,” he teased. “Were you expecting someone?”
She felt a million emotions rush through her as she stared at him in the moonlight, too stunned to speak. She had spent all day looking for him, and he had been nowhere to be found. She had waited for him all night, and he hadn’t shown up. And now, just as she had given up and was prepared to curl up in bed and wait for the inevitable morning, he suddenly appeared?
And that was what he said to her?
No explanation of where he’d been all day. No inquiry about her day, even though he knew it would likely be horrible for her. Nothing. Just a joke.
She stepped into the room and shut the door behind her.
His smile had already fallen, but his face turned serious as he slowly stepped out from the opposite side of the bed. “Bad day?” he asked slowly.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she stated flatly, so coldly that Will stopped short in approaching her. She lifted her eyes to his dark, unreadable ones. “Where were you all day?”
He was silent for a moment, staring back at her. Then in short, concise words he answered, “We skipped school and went to Dylan’s.”
An emotion she didn’t even recognize ran through her as she processed his words. While she had been going through one of the worst days of her life—a day he knew would be difficult for her—he had been having fun at his friend’s house.
She couldn’t even find the strength to reply as her eyes fell to his chest, unable to look at him anymore. Will had abandoned her. Left her on her own to fight her way through the school of piranhas.
But, she realized slowly, she really had no right to be angry with him. Will had no obligation to be there for her.
She had been counting on him all this time—depending on him to be there for her—but she wasn’t Will’s responsibility. Will had his own life to live, and it didn’t revolve around picking her up when she fell. He had been there to support her as a friend, but that was it. She was the one who had made it out to be more. She was the one who had read too much into his kind words. Will wasn’t the one at fault. She was.
Somehow, the thought made her feel worse than she had felt all day.
“Dylan,” he began slowly, startling her, “has a pretty rough home life. His family doesn’t associate with the most reputable people. And when his parents disappeared right before an important deal, he needed to handle it. So he needed some people with him.”
The ache in her chest disappeared instantly, replaced with something much worse. She froze, terror chilling her bones as she lifted her head and stared up into his carefully guarded expression. Every other thought in her mind vanished as she tried to grasp the magnitude of what he had just said. She could only imagine what his cautiously selected words really meant, and everything she came up with frightened her more.
“Are you okay?” she choked out.
“I’m fine.”
She gaped at him in disbelief. “You’re not fine!” she exclaimed. “You could have been killed, Will!”
“That’s for me to worry about.”
She stared at him, stricken. His face was calm, eerily composed despite the magnitude of his words and the situation he’d been in that day. How could Will, who could laugh with twinkling eyes and such a charming smile, morph into this apathetic and emotionless stone who stood in front of her? How could he risk his life for… for what she could only assume was a drug deal? What about his friends, who would be devastated if he died? What about his family? What about her?
“You,” she whispered, shaking with unspent rage, “are unbelievably selfish.”
An incredulous look crossed over his features. “Selfish?” he repeated in disbelief. “Me?”
She didn’t miss the thinly veiled insult, but she was too angry to respond. “Get out of my room,” she ordered, gritting her teeth to keep from yelling. She strode toward him, yanking on his shoulder and shoving him to her window. “If you don’t want to care about yourself, I don’t want to care about you, either. Get out. Get out!”
Maybe he didn’t like being shoved. Maybe he didn’t like being told what to do. Maybe Will’s temper had finally snapped, too. But suddenly her hands were locked behind her and she was pressed up firmly against him, his face just inches from her.
“I’m going,” he assured her darkly, seething.
He released her almost roughly and stepped away, disappearing out of her window in a fluid motion. For a moment she stared at the empty spot he had just vacated, her heart pounding frantically against her chest. How had they gone from being together last night at the lake, laughing with one another, to this?
And then his words surrounded her, filling her ears, and she slammed her window shut and threw herself onto her bed.
***
At first, Annabelle was too angry to miss Will.
While she sat in the cafeteria, pretending to be interested in whoever Claire and Claudia were gossiping about, and when she drove home with Trevor, half-listening to him chatter excitedly about what the weekend plans were, she replayed her fight with Will in her head. Every time she did, she would remember the blank, empty look he had given her at the prospect of risking his life, and her anger would be refueled.
It wasn’t until about two weeks later, when she rounded a corner in the hallway on her way to third period and suddenly saw Will, that her heart started to ache.
And then his dark eyes met hers and she remembered his unfeeling, careless words, and felt her temper reignite. They glared at each other as they started toward each other in the crowded hallway, and with a snap of her head Annabelle faced forward, sticking her nose up in the air as her shoulder came within centimeters of his. Fury emanated from him as they wordlessly passed each other by.
At the door of her classroom she felt some of her anger die and she hesitated, gazing back down the hallway at his retreating figure. He really was mad at her. Maybe mad enough that he would never speak to her again.
Her shoulders slumped as she headed into the classroom, sliding into her seat in the third row. It wasn’t her fault they had gotten into an argument. It wasn’t like she had been deliberately prying into his life or trying to tell him what to do. She had just been looking out for him. He didn’t have to be so furious with her.
But then again, she had probably overreacted, too. Will, who had never spoken about himself, had finally opened up to her and she had immediately shot him down. She had insulted him. She had thrown him out of her room.
God. No wonder Will was angry at her.
But even so, he still had no reason to want to die. He had so many things to live for—including a future—and to throw it all away at such a young age for something so stupid… Just thinking about it made her angry all over again.
“Earth to Annabelle!”
She gasped, her head shooting up as she stared at Claire, whose face was mere inches from her own. “What?” she asked, shocked.
Claire’s face twisted into a scowl. “I was asking when we should meet at the fair on Saturday.”
At the… what? She looked at the expectant, plastic faces gazing at her around the packed table in the crowded mall food court and suddenly had the burning desire to tell Claire and the others that she wasn’t going because she’d rather be at home reading. She stood.
“Where are you going?” Claire demanded, stunned.
“I forgot to tip Carrie,” she lied. “I’ll be right back.” Without waiting for a response from the disbelieving faces that stared back at her, she hurried away, unable to face them any longer.
As she wandered aimlessly through the mall, a group of about six teens, wearing all black clothes covered in zippers and chains heading her way caught her eye and she hesitated, studying them. The group looked somehow familiar, but—
“Annabelle!” the girl at the front of the group suddenly exclaimed, her face lighting up in delight. Annabelle’s body went rigid with shock as the girl ran toward her, throwing her arms around her. She was dressed in a tight black mini skirt with chains threaded around the waist, fishnet stockings, combat boots, and a skintight sheer top with a leather band across the chest.
“Ebony?” she finally asked, holding the other girl mechanically.
Ebony pulled back as the others approached, a large grin on her face. “Sorry,” she apologized. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Bet we’re a sight, huh?”
Annabelle’s eyes almost instinctively found Will’s, standing at the back of the group that had joined them. Unlike the others, he was clad in his normal jeans, a dark blue plaid button-down hanging open over a dark blue t-shirt.
Slowly, she looked back at Ebony.
Ebony grinned impishly. “We had some... ah… business… we needed to take care of.” She struck a pose with her hands on her hips. “Makes us look tougher, huh?”
Annabelle felt herself pale as she grasped the true meaning of Ebony’s words. And then, using years of practice, she forced herself to smile and winked appreciatively. “Definitely tougher,” she a
greed. “I didn’t even recognize you.”
“I didn’t recognize you!” Ebony exclaimed, peering around her. “Where’s the pack?”
She pivoted automatically, in the direction of the food court. “In the food court,” she answered. She could almost see her friends gathered around the table, gossiping about her, and tried not to shudder as she turned back to face Ebony.
The dark haired girl’s eyes were slightly wider than normal. “You left them?” she asked, sounding like she was trying hard to hide her surprise.
Embarrassed and flustered, she lifted a hand in front of her. “I forgot to tip my hair sty…” she trailed off as she stared at the book store, turning to look behind her at the other end of the mall, where the hair salon was located.
There was a moment too long of silence. Annabelle flushed, her mind racing as she tried to come up with an excuse to cover up her lie. And then Ebony suddenly burst out laughing and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Well I never thought I’d see the day when one of the ‘in’ crowd got lost in the mall!” she teased lightly.
Annabelle gave a weak smile as the others started laughing as well, joking about how much time Annabelle’s friends spent at the mall. She felt uncomfortable in her own skin as she stood there; unsure about what to do with herself. She was incredibly aware of Will, still standing at the back of the group, deliberately not looking at her. And all she wanted to do was get away from him—him and his life-risking ways.
When the laughter had quieted slightly, Annabelle turned to Ebony. “I need to get going,” she told her, as apologetically as she could. “They’re going to come looking for me soon.”
“Release the hounds,” one of the guys joked.
“No problem,” Ebony assured her cheerfully. She suddenly turned to the back of the group, yanking Will forward, knocking two of the other boys apart in the process. They stumbled to stay upright, grumbling at Ebony. “Will, you’re dressed like a normal human being. Be a good boy and walk Annabelle to the salon so she doesn’t get lost again.”
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