Dare You To Keep Me: HawkRidge High II

by Akeroyd, Serena

  With a promise from us that we’d help out, Derick had left my place looking a little calmer than before, but still rattled as hell. Who could blame him when Sarah was intent on using him as her own personal gofer with more than mischief on her mind?

  “I don’t like this,” Max stated softly. “I don’t like it at all. Even if he’s being genuine, you can’t trust him. We have to get our hands on this phone first.”

  “He’s right,” I agreed. “Hell, he might decide to start blackmailing us too.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jessa inserted, her hand on my leg as she propped herself up against me. With my arm around her shoulders, we weren’t doing anything risqué, but fuck if it didn’t feel different because we were together in my house. Sure, Max was there, but that didn’t count when he was a friend, did it?

  And by friend, I meant he was in love with Jessa, so I figured that had to mean he’d never hurt her… hurting us meant hurting her.

  At least, I hoped so.

  I knew you couldn’t trust people. Just look at what Derick was going through. One of his boyfriends had evidently filmed them together, and Sarah was using that to coerce him, for Christ’s sake. But this, we were different. Jessa wouldn’t trust Max if he couldn’t be trusted, and I sensed that Max would have gotten the fuck out of dodge if he’d needed to.

  He was here because he wanted to be. He was here because this was where Jessa was, and where she was, so was that wonderfully intoxicating feeling of welcome and home.

  “Why don’t you?” I countered. “The guy’s a dick. I feel for him and his situation, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that he’s a knob.”

  She sighed. “I know.”

  “If you know, then why aren’t you concerned?”

  “Because he was genuinely distraught, and he’s having to live a lie. As it stands, he’s trying to stop things from derailing further, but I saw it on his face—he’ll come clean before he lets her carry on using him this way.”

  “I’d have thought causing more trouble was something he’d be down with,” Sam pointed out wryly, slouching back in his seat and sliding his arm over the table for balance.

  “Yeah, but there’s a difference between detention and jail,” Jessa replied, “and I think he’s just realizing that.”

  Max shook his head. “Hell of a difference, and if it’s taken him this long to figure it out, then we have to worry about the fact that he’s a moron too.”

  Sam snickered a little, but when Jessa glowered at Max and him, he stopped.

  She rubbed her temple. “When Mom called yesterday to tell me about my trust fund, she mentioned something else. The footage in the hall. There is none.”

  Max blanched. “I fucking knew it.”

  “Yeah. It was obviously erased, so we can’t use that to just blame all this on Derick. Which means, combined with Sarah’s next phase of trying to destroy me, our hands are tied. We need to help him find the phone.” She tapped her chin. “Let’s be grateful the Vestal Virgins always sleepover at each other’s homes when they host a party.”

  I blinked. “Who the fuck are the Vestal Virgins?”

  Jessa laughed. “The Sarahs.”

  “They’re about as unvirginal as you can get, Jessa,” Max retorted with a grin.

  “I know.” She snickered. “But the way they live as a unit is creepy. It’s like they can’t function on their own.”

  Sam cocked a brow. “Sarah Dunham apparently is. Unless… do you think the other Sarahs are involved in this craziness?”

  “I think Derick would have told us if they were. They’d be another threat to him, so he’d have surveilled them too.”

  “This really is starting to sound like an episode of 24,” I grumbled, cracking my knuckles. “I don’t like any of this.”

  “You think we do?” Jessa countered, squinting up at me. “But we’re doing it to save your butt, so…”

  “Shut the fuck up?” Max finished helpfully.

  She nodded. “Yeah. STFU, Drew.”

  Though I rolled my eyes, guilt filled me and I hugged her, murmuring, “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Just don’t do it again,” she mocked, but her smile was sweeter than before. Thank fuck.

  She curled her arm around my waist and hugged me back. I was heading into pussy territory here when I thought about how freaking wonderful that felt. To have her hug me and know she meant it as more than just a friend.

  It felt like I’d breached phase one of my all-time life goals. Phase two? Well, that involved Sam.

  Patience never had been one of my virtues, but in this, I knew I’d have to tread carefully. Not for fear of wrecking everything. I genuinely didn’t think I could do that. Jessa was, crazily enough, willing to shoulder thousands of dollars in debt and future treatments, as well as get involved in stealing someone’s property for me.

  I’d brought her to this.

  I knew it. Was ashamed of it. And yet, she wasn’t pulling away. Wasn’t trying to put a thousand miles between us.

  No, she was hugging me.

  Fucking hugging me.

  She was either crazy or I was just a lucky bastard in love.

  “Well, I guess that’s trumped our other conversations,” Jessa inserted dryly. “But, Drew, I want you to quit the store on Monday.”

  I tensed. “I can just lessen the hours I work.”

  “I don’t think you should.”

  “I think she’s right,” Sam injected softly. “You need to sleep more. You need some downtime. Your grades aren’t suffering yet, but they will and…” He sucked in a breath. “I don’t think we should go to Berkeley. I think we should stay somewhere in the Carolinas so Jessa can be closer to her family…”

  Jessa blinked. “We don’t have to do that.”

  “We do.” Sam’s tone was resolute. “I never thought about you when I was planning our future,” he rasped, shaking his head, his expression mournful. “I just thought about getting a thousand miles away from everyone we knew.”

  I glanced at Max who didn’t look at all surprised by the turn this chat had taken. But why would he? Something he and Sam had discussed the night before had triggered a conversation that had Jessa in tears last night, which told me Max knew. How much he knew was another matter entirely, but it seemed like Sam wasn’t even trying to hide anything from him, which was beyond unusual. Sam made a spy seem like an extrovert.

  “Heading a thousand miles away is for the best,” Jessa whispered. “What we want… Berkeley would be a lot more liberal-minded.”

  “Nowhere is going to totally accept us. We’ll always have to be careful, but that’s no reason to take you away from your family. You’re the only one of us who actually has a decent relationship with your parents, and I don’t want to deny you that, Jessa. In fact, it would kill me to think I was behind the destruction of something so—” He broke off, shaking his head as he did so. “To get into a good college around here, Drew, you’re going to need an epic GPA, as well as the team winning the State Championships… Think you can do that when you’re trying to include shifts at the supermarket here and there?”

  I could feel the tension brimming inside Jessa. She was pretty much throbbing with it, and I realized why—she wanted me to say no. Not just because she wanted me to quit, but because she also wanted to stay close to her family.

  And how could I say no to her when she was giving me more than I’d ever hoped to have?

  “No,” I told him simply. “I won’t be able to do that. Coach wanted me to quit anyway, but I was going to just try to work a few shifts here and there, you know? But you’re right. I’ll need to focus on studies and training.”

  It seemed like Jessa sagged in my arms with relief. “We’ll do it. Your grades are good enough for Duke, Drew. Sam, yours too. Especially if you get a football scholarship,” she mused eagerly, going from limp with relief to bubbling with excitement… I had to smile.

  Reaching down, I hid said smile by kissing the crown of
her head.

  “We’ll get there.”

  “But first, we need to make sure Sarah Dunham has nothing on you,” Max pointed out.

  Jessa cleared her throat. “True.” She gave him a look. “Max?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know you don’t want to go to college.”

  “I don’t,” he said with a snort.

  “But we could house share, you know, if you wanted to come wherever we go.” She cleared her throat. “I think I’d like that.”

  It was my turn for tension to fill me, and without meaning to, I found myself watching Sam. There was a resolution in his eyes, a knowing that set me on edge.

  Sam had been right last night.

  Whatever feelings Jessa had for Max, they weren’t simple friendship.

  Max, to his credit, appeared dumbfounded at her suggestion. “Jessa, I don’t think—”

  “I mean, we don’t know where we’d be attending,” she chimed in quickly, seeming to sense his rejection. “And of course, you wouldn’t have to, but it could be cool.” She shot him a bright smile that dazzled him enough to blink a few times while remaining speechless, so she changed the subject and said, “My mom will deal with the principal. Don’t worry about that. She’ll probably get the governors involved and there might be a drug sweep of school or something like that… I figure Sarah realized that was likely and that’s why she wanted to plant drugs on me again.” She shook her head. “And all this because she wants Sam? I mean, Sam, I love you, babe, but—”

  He snorted. “I think there’s an insult in there. Especially considering how awesome I am.”

  A laugh escaped her, one that was free from the nerves that had appeared when she made her suggestion to Max. “Yeah, you’re pretty fucking awesome, but still… not worth going to jail over.” She winked at him to lessen the insult, then with a squeeze of my waist, murmured, “Right, I need to go sort my meds out, plus I’m hungry again. I’m going to make some lunch after.”

  If anything, I wasn’t hungry, but shit, if Jessa was then I wasn’t about to discourage her from eating. Instead, I jumped down from the counter and got out of her way.

  Jessa was a woman on a mission… in more ways than just one.

  ❖

  Jessa

  “Mom, I’m okay, I promise,” I mumbled as I peered out of the windshield and onto the approaching lake.

  Crest Lake was the biggest in the area and only a few people had properties around here. Sarah Aspen’s parents were some of the lucky few, and over the past couple of years, they allowed her to have one party on the lake just before Fall fell. We stayed out there, bringing sleeping bags with us and building small bonfires as we partied away and accepted the onslaught of the next season.

  “You should have come home last night,” she chided, and that she was chiding me at all told me she was mad.

  I winced. “I know, but did you hear about Drew? He collapsed on the field, Mom. I had to stay with him.”

  “You stayed at his house?”

  I wasn’t unaware of the sudden chill in her words, but I shrugged it off and murmured, “Of course! We had to check in on him and make sure he was okay!”

  I could feel Max and Drew’s attention on me and was well aware that the number of lies I’d told today was starting to add up.

  For someone who considered herself an honest person, I was really starting to make a mockery of all that.

  Clenching my fingers around the phone, I stated, “He’s okay, Mom. But he’s going to quit working at the store. It’s too much for him.”

  “Of course it is. I’ve seen all you do and know he does as much if not more thanks to all that running about he does.” My lips twitched at that—Mom was not a lover of team sports. “Sam’s just as bad. All that running. It can’t be good for them.” Her tone turned musing. “Or their knees.”

  “Well, it’s going to get them into Duke so—”

  “Duke?” I’d kind of inserted that in there on purpose, and knew it had worked since she sounded excited now. “You want to go to your father’s college?”

  “Yeah. I was talking about it today with Sam, you know?”

  “You were?”

  Her level of excitement surged, and I was aware that I’d just distracted her away from the fact I’d spent the night at Drew’s house. Alone. With two guys.

  Yeah, from a parent’s POV, it didn’t get much worse, and considering I’d had a threesome? Yup, worse still.

  “I thought you wanted to go to California. I saw some stuff from Berkeley—”

  I rolled my eyes. “Were you in my room again?”

  “Just picking up after you!” she retorted, but her voice was guilty as hell.

  “Well, I was thinking about California, and I was even thinking about Paris. You know that! But I like the idea of staying close to home. Sam does as well. Drew too.”

  “And Max? I know he’s become a part of your little trio.”

  “Max doesn’t want to go to college.”

  “He doesn’t? Why not?”

  “Personal choice,” I said breezily. “Anyway…”

  Mom cleared her throat. “Yes. Anyway. You should have come home last night so we could discuss what happened at school, Jessa.”

  The chiding was back.

  Oops.

  “Nothing happened, Mom. You know those drugs aren’t mine. And they sure as hell weren’t Max’s.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be serious repercussions.”

  I shrugged. “We can deal with that. We’re innocent.”

  And we were.

  Well, apart from Drew, but she didn’t need to know that.

  “I know you are, darling, but I’m going to have to get the governors involved.”

  “I know.” And I did. “Do what you have to do, Mom. I swear to you those drugs weren’t mine.” I was well aware that my mother had a tendency to forge forward, full steam ahead, and that was what had taken her to Mr. Sommers’ office. Pure steam. But now, in the aftermath, she was probably questioning everything. That wasn’t to say she thought ill of me, just that the ramifications of the situation were starting to hit home.

  I didn’t doubt she had some plan to save me, but my health and wellbeing mattered to her more than anything else.

  Because she loved me.

  And though I’d always known how lucky I was, after seeing the indifference in Drew’s family today? I felt even luckier than usual.

  There was silence for a second, then she murmured, “Jessa, you know you can always talk to me about anything. If you have a problem, then we can get you into rehab.”

  My lips twitched. “I know, Mom. I know. But I swear, the only drugs I’m taking are the ones that are prescribed to me. I’m already rattling around like a pharmacy. The last thing I need is to add to my meds.”

  A relieved breath escaped her. “You’re sure?”

  “I promise,” I urged her to believe me, not to doubt or to have fear that I was lying. Because I wasn’t. I had no desire to add to the cocktail floating around my veins, and to be honest, I thought people who did take shit they didn’t need were stupid.

  And yeah, I included Drew in that collective.

  Just because I loved him to death didn’t mean I thought he walked on water. He was a guy. And guys were all capable of grand stupidity.

  I wasn’t that much of an elitist prick to think that money could solve every problem, even if, thus far in my life, I’d learned otherwise. There was only so much we could do to salvage Drew’s future, but I was willing to go along with Derick’s plan tonight because I knew Sarah had it out for me too. This wasn’t just Drew’s future now, it was mine, and with it, Sam’s and Max’s. Somehow, all four of us had heard the same death knell, which meant that phone, and all the information on it, needed to be in our possession and not the Bitch’s.

  My mother sighed, reminding me that I was on the phone with her. “If you’re sure—”

  “I’m positiv
e! Mom, seriously, we don’t need to have this conversation.”

  “Okay. Well, I assume you’re coming home tonight?”

  I heard the order that was couched in a request and decided to take my chances. “It’s the Crest Lake party tonight, Mom. Remember? We stay over at the lake?”

  I got the feeling she was gritting her teeth, but she did concede, “Yeah, I forgot. Promise me, Jessa, promise me that everything’s good with you.”

  Considering what I’d been accused of at school, it was no wonder she was having doubts, but she knew me. Didn’t she? I mean, jeez…

  And then I remembered we hadn’t known Drew was taking prescription meds, and my heart sunk.

  “Everything is absolutely good with me, Mom, and if it wasn’t, I’d tell you.”

  A relieved sigh came down the line. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow then. Have a good time at the party.”

  “I will. Love you. Give Dad a kiss from me.”

  “Will do. Love you, too. Say hi to the boys for me.”

  When she cut the call, Sam’s hand tightened on my knee. “Well, that took a lot of convincing.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “It did. More than I expected, to be honest.”

  “She loves you,” Max reasoned. “Wants the best for you.”

  “She does.”

  I was okay after the phone call, but I was definitely quiet as we pulled up at Sarah Aspen’s house. The lakefront property was traditional in style, to the point that it looked pretty ridiculous. It was faux Tudor with gabled roofs and a façade that was white with black wooden slats covering it here and there. It was also huge, probably twice the size of my house, and took up a massive chunk of the lakefront plot.

  As we pulled up on the road behind it, a road that was full of very expensive cars that shouldn’t really be owned by a bunch of seventeen and eighteen-year-olds, I climbed out of the car and took a deep breath.

  The air had a delicious tang to it, fresh and cool without being chilly. I wore a simple tank top and a pair of skinny jeans with flats. I wasn’t about to dress up for this shit show. I knew others would. The Sarahs would most definitely be slating me on their Instagram account, but in a weird way, that account made me rebel. Made me refuse to conform to their ridiculous ideals.