Wreckless

by Bria Quinlan

  “What do you mean?”

  “At first I thought you were just pissed at that jackass, but you haven't been thinking about him for most of the night, have you?”

  “It's hard to think when you keep pushing me into crazyland.”

  Jake slid toward me, hovering over me. “That's not it. You weren't running from him. You were running from all those damn rules you created. All the don't-notice-me and don't-get-in-trouble and don't-rock-the-boat rules.”

  I was looking past him at those pinpricks in the endless sky and trying not to hear what he was saying.

  “But darlin’…” He laid a hand on my stomach, pulling my attention back to him even as my gaze refused to leave the stars. “No one buys a dress like that if somewhere, in the very back of her mind, she doesn't want to wear it.”

  For some reason I thought he'd understand. I needed him to understand.

  “Rules keep people safe.”

  “Everyone gets a little heartache in their life. That's part of it all.”

  “No, I mean…safe.”

  I felt him stiffen beside me. His hand on my stomach fisting. “Did he…hit you?”

  I wrapped my hand around his fist and rolled on my side to face him. “No. No, really. He never hit me or anything. He's just an idiot.”

  Jake kept looking at me as if he could tell if I was lying.

  “No one's ever hurt me. I promise.”

  My heart turned over. He didn't want me, he didn't want to be involved with me, but he cared. It was nice to know that after tonight there'd be one person out there who cared. Who had my best interest at the bottom of all his teasing.

  I was so used to people avoiding the topic at all costs that I couldn't believe he'd ask straight out like that.

  Of course, the only reason he was asking was because he didn't know. As soon as he did, he'd be avoiding the subject, wrapping me in bubble wrap, and thinking of me as that Poor Larson Girl, too.

  “It's not a secret.” Nothing in my life was a secret. The only secrets were the ones being kept from me.

  “If it's not a secret…” He paused, thinking. Probably considering if he wanted to ask. If he wanted to know—to get involved. “If it’s not a secret, then you won't mind sharing.”

  His hand loosened in mine and I slid my fingers through his, knowing I'd have to have something to hold on to for the next few minutes.

  I tried to figure out where to start. I'd never had to talk about it before. The upside of a small town. Everyone knows your business…of course, that's the downside, too.

  I thought about putting it off. Jake being Jake probably wouldn’t have let me. He’d think he was asking about something small, something normal. And just like he had all night, he’d push.

  I felt the words slipping up my throat, pushing to get out and knew once I started, I’d say it all. For the first time, I’d say it all.

  “My sister Christy was three and a half years older than me. The extra half a year always seemed important to both of us. It made her just that much older. Christy was everything I'd ever wanted to be. She was beautiful and fun and smart and popular and kind. She was everything good.”

  So much good in one person.

  When I was little, I’d wanted to be just like her. To be honest, when I was thirteen, I had still wanted to be just like her. Even now, there were very few things about her that stood out as something I'd pass on.

  “Christy met this guy the summer after her junior year. Not someone from our town. He went to one of the state colleges and was working the summer at the Jaspers’ farm. Some vet internship or something.”

  I closed my eyes, blocking out the stars. I could see the guy leaning on the rail of our front porch, talking to my parents. Smiling at me.

  “He'd come to the house to pick her up and charmed us all. When they left, she was just so…golden.” I couldn't think of another word. Everything about her seemed to glow. Her light hair and her early summer tan and the smile and excitement.

  The fact that our mama and daddy were letting her go out with a college boy—even if he was only a freshman—had been such a big deal. The idea of someone new. I remembered her saying that. Telling me, “You'll understand one day. This town’s so small, you'll be dying for someone new.”

  I glanced at Jake and smiled. He was my someone new. Even if it was only for tonight.

  “When she came in that night, I heard my mom call her name like she always did. Christy? You know, just to make sure she was home safe and sound and before curfew. Only there was no answer.”

  I tried to scrub the picture from my mind. I'd been trying to get it out for years now, but it wasn't going anywhere.

  “Mama called her again, and when Christy didn't answer she got out of bed to see what was going on.” I could feel the tears on my cheeks. I hadn't cried over this in almost a year. Of course, I hadn't had to talk about it in even longer. “My mama, she starts screaming. Screaming for my dad, screaming Christy's name, just screaming. When I got to the front hall, Christy was lying on the floor.”

  Jake's arms came around me and pulled me into him. I let my head rest on his shoulder and focused on the way his body shook.

  “You can stop.”

  I wasn't sure if he was giving me permission or asking me not to keep going, but now that I'd started, I couldn't stop. It was like trying to throw a ball in the air and tell it to stay up there while you did something else.

  “He'd beaten every inch of her we could see. Her face was so swollen she couldn't open either eye. Later we found out he'd raped her twice, drove her home, dumped her on the front porch, and taken off. When the cops went to get him, he'd already made a run for it.”

  My breath was coming shallow pants like I'd been in a fight. Jake’s arms tightened around me and after a moment I realized I wasn’t the only one shaking.

  “We did everything. Therapy for the whole family to handle it and know what to do. My parents tried a trip to get us away. My parents tried unconditional love, tough love, space, crowding her. The bruises faded, but only on the outside.”

  I closed my eyes and pictured my beautiful sister glowing like I always remembered her.

  “Christy said she couldn't take people looking at her. She'd turned her mirror to face the wall. She just pulled into herself. Even as she got better...”

  Amazing how we always forget that better is a relative term.

  “Almost three months later, on a Friday after school, Christy told my parents she was spending the night at a friend's house. The next morning, when I got up, her favorite bag was sitting outside my door hooked over the edge of her boots. I'd always loved those boots. She'd told me she'd get me a pair when I was grown up. They were just part of her.”

  Jake swept a hand across my forehead, brushing my hair away from my face, all of his attention on me now.

  “I told my parents something was wrong. There was no way she'd just have given me her boots. I guess it was denial. But it took until eleven that morning for them to call her friend. She’d never been there.”

  I hadn’t realized how tightly I was gripping Jake’s hand until my fingers ached from it. I loosened them, but didn’t let go. I held on. Held on to him as my one steady thing as I kept going, getting it all out.

  “She'd driven down to the river. It was pills. They said she just fell asleep. As if...”

  They’d made it sound like her death was painless. As if she hadn't brought the house down around the entire family.

  “My parents fell apart. Their marriage fell apart, too, for a while. They became ridiculously overprotective. Not that it mattered. I was afraid to leave the house.”

  That's when safe had seemed like a good idea. I tried to suck in a breath.

  “I think you should take me home.”

  I was panicking. I'd had an anxiety attack only once before. It was the first day I went back to school after Christy's funeral. I got to the end of the drive to wait for the bus, turned back toward the house to see
both my parents standing guard there, and stopped breathing.

  When I'd come to, my dad was carrying me back up the drive and telling me we could go back tomorrow.

  I did, I lasted until halfway through first period before I started crying and couldn’t stop.

  That’s when they’d decided to homeschool me. Looking back, I think it was as much for them as it was for me. They always knew where I was. That I was safe.

  But now, I tried to suck in a breath and was surprised the sharp pain that came instead.

  “Bridget…” Jake sat up slowly, making sure to keep his distance. He raised both hands and pushed away from me. “You're one thousand percent safe with me. I swear. I swear you are.”

  I don't know if it calmed me down or freaked me out more to have him say it out loud.

  His back was against the far side of the truck bed as if he was trying to distance himself from me. His hands stayed out by his sides.

  “Bridget?”

  I knew Jake wasn't that guy. In his own faux reputation way, Jake was one of the most honorable people I knew.

  “Do you want me to take you home?” His voice was low, as if he didn’t want to startle me. But as he asked, I felt better. As if saying it out loud did help—or maybe just saying it out loud to him. “I’m going to take you home.”

  That’s the funny thing about having a past. No one ever asked about it, but everyone knew. And suddenly, what I thought had been relief of not having to relive all these years was annoyance that no one had been willing to relive it with me so I could get past it.

  Oh, in therapy they do. You pay a lot for them to listen. But there was something freeing about someone listening just because he could.

  This Jake was completely different. Not teasing or pushing or mocking. He genuinely looked worried I'd think he wasn't safe.

  Safe.

  Again with that word.

  It dawned on me that safe was another relative word. I was safe at home. But I was safe with my mama at the grocery story, too. Maybe I was safe here with Jake.

  I'd been safe with Tanner, but only physically.

  There were obviously different types of dangerous, too.

  Jake was the right type of dangerous…and the right type of safe.

  “I'm okay.”

  “Are you sure?” Now he was the one who sounded a little freaked out.

  “Yes. I believe you.” It dawned on me that my actions—if not my words—had accused him of some pretty bad stuff. “I'm sorry.”

  “For telling me?”

  I shook my head. “No. For panicking. For what that panicking insinuated. That…that’s not what I was panicking about.”

  Now he was shaking his head. “Don't worry about it. I can see where…”

  “Jake, I know who you are.”

  “No. You don't.”

  I knew he wasn't the bad boy everyone thought he was. I knew he wasn't the angel he wished he was. I knew he had ideas of where he fit and thought it was nowhere. I knew girls watched him move across a room like he was hunting them while they stalked him. I knew he kissed me like I was the only thing on Earth that mattered and then set me aside as if I was the last thing he'd want.

  “What?” I waited. It seemed like forever, but I just waited for him to answer the question as he got lost in whatever thought was stuck in his mind.

  “Bridget, don't trust me too much.”

  After being my safety net all night, telling me not trust him to at the end of the night? I smiled. Here he was, still trying to keep me safe.

  “I can see,” he continued, “where after something like that, someone might become a little obsessed with rules.”

  Is that what I was? Obsessed with rules?

  No. That couldn't be it. There wasn’t a reason for that.

  “Christy didn't break any rules.”

  “No?” He sat half-facing me his back still to the railing, still distanced. “She broke the biggest rule. She gave up. But I wasn't talking about that.”

  He rushed on when I wanted to defend my sister.

  “It wasn't her who broke the rules. It was the guy. And to make sure no one ever forces anything on you, you measure every boundary and stay an extra fifty paces in. You color in the lines. You dress more conservative than a nun. You've created rules where there aren't any.”

  I wanted to tell him he was wrong. That I hadn't gotten out of control with the rules. I just liked things nice and neat. There was nothing wrong with being cautious.

  “But, not everyone who is reckless gets hurt. And not everyone who plays by the rules doesn’t wreck. It’s a fine line between the two, and sometimes fate snatches a person to the other side just because.”

  But the more he talked, the more I couldn't back away from it.

  Safe was good…and rebelliousness might have been a bit too far.

  Maybe—just maybe—I was ready to find that elusive happy medium.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jake pointed out all the stars he knew, talking about the ranch and how the counselors had taught them how to navigate the land using them. He told me about Bob, his counselor, and the animals he worked with. He talked about the vet he volunteered with now that he was home.

  Part of me was jealous for every word, hoarding them. The other part of me knew he was filling the quiet with other memories. Memories that could have been horrible, but instead had become part of his plan.

  Both of us slowly relaxed, the past more behind me than it had ever been. The future…still darn vague.

  “What are you going to do next year?”

  He shifted, moving both hands behind his head again as if to keep them locked in place.

  “I'm applying to Colorado State for veterinarian medicine.”

  Wow. Colorado. That was…

  Nowhere near here.

  He told me about the school and the program and the fact that it was near the ranch he’d worked on so he could do volunteer work there. There were lots of intramural teams, so he could keep playing football if he wanted to.

  It sounded perfect for him. It sounded so far away.

  It was one more string he’d never let tie us together. No future. Not tomorrow and certainly not after he hauled his truck down to Colorado.

  “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. You’re a junior. You must have thought about where you’re going.”

  I never had. My parents hadn't asked, either. It was like we were all ignoring the fact that I was expected to leave home at some point. Out there—out in the world—I hadn’t known what I'd do with less control.

  Yesterday, the thought of leaving would have made me sick. That, just like that first day back to school, I'd get to that turning point and collapse.

  “I'm not sure I'll go anywhere.”

  Jake laughed. Like it was a joke, he just kind of chuckled.

  “Bridget, you were made to leave here. You've got bigger things to see and do.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You do? A girl who did all her catching up on high school in one night? I doubt you'll be able to stick in one place just wondering what else is out there.”

  Was that true? Had Jake given me a taste of something more—no pun intended—and now I'd have to push past the boundaries I'd drawn around myself?

  “What if I can't go?” I whispered, more afraid of that than anything else.

  “Then you'll just make some guy drive you. It worked tonight.”

  # # #

  One ear was cold. Just the left one.

  I'd turned into Jake in the night, snuggling into his warmth. One of his arms was tossed across my shoulder, and even through both our sleeping bags I could feel the long, lean strength of him surrounding me.

  His hand brushed my hair out of my eyes. “Sun's coming up.”

  I turned my head just enough to see the light across the horizon starting to spread and knew it wouldn't take long for the sun to catch up with the rising colors.


  I let my gaze fall to catch Jake's, hoping to see something there mirroring my desire to not go home—to just stay there the two of us.

  Instead, he sat and pushed the sleeping bag down before shimmying out of it and grabbing his shoes.

  Since there was obviously nothing left to say, I did the same. At the rear of the bed, he swung me down for the last time, his hands dropping away from my waist as if they’d barely been there, and snapped the tailgate shut.

  I headed around to the front of the truck and let myself in the cab. Settling against the cool glass of the passenger’s window, I watched the trees and creek disappear in the side mirror as we pulled away. Then he let us out the gate. Down the dirt lane. Out to the country road.

  Everything just a step farther away from Jake, me pointing the way whenever a turn was needed.

  We were coming up on my drive when he broke the silence.

  “You were safe all night.”

  I placed a hand on his arm to get his attention. “I know.”

  “No. I mean, all of it.” He grinned. “The trespassing…my brother's land. The party—I knew you didn’t want to go to one of yours, even though it would have served them right. All of it.”

  “The skinny dipping?” Because, really, how stupid did he think I was?

  “I really didn't look. And that's all I'm going to say about that.”

  I laughed. Seriously. He was horrible at being a bad boy. How could no one else see that?

  “I just...” He cleared his throat, eyes locked on the road. “I just wanted you to know that. It doesn't take away from you being daring. It just lets you know there are places and people you can always be daring with.”

  I let that sink in, let the idea of the whole night orchestrated just for me fill me up.

  He shut his lights off as we neared my drive, turned into the end of it, and threw the truck in park. The dull rose glow of the pre-risen light outlined the trees, fence, and house down my lane, stopping well before the house to not wake my parents.

  I hopped out of the cab, my shoes and sweater in the bag Missy had given me, and met Jake in front of the truck.

  “Thanks.”

  He grinned and hooked both thumbs in his back pockets. “It was my pleasure.”