by Sharon Sala
“Oh, Mack! That’s fantastic! Why were you nervous to tell me?”
“Because it means two years away from you,” he said.
“It’ll be okay, Mack. You’ll graduate from UCLA, probably get drafted into the NFL, which is something you’ve always wanted. And two years down the road, if you still want me, I’ll be here.”
“Want you? Are you crazy?” Mack muttered.
That was when he’d laid her down in the grass and, in the bright light of day, stripped them both naked and slid between her legs.
Mack paused only once to look down at the girl beneath him—at the spill of her long dark hair, her Angelina Jolie lips and the green fire in her eyes—and then he started moving.
Haley sighed as he filled her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him deeper without taking her gaze from his face. He knew she liked to watch his changing expressions as they made love, though what she saw in his square face, straight nose and wide-set blue eyes, he didn’t know. Once, she had called him beautiful. His pleasure had been an instant turn-on for them both—just like the passion he could see on her face now.
The sun was warm on their bodies, even though they were shaded by the sweep of willow branches brushing the ground. Birds were chirping in nearby trees, as if spreading the word of their union. A turtle slid off a rock and into the water only yards away, but neither one of them heard or cared. Right now, it was all about the moment and the feeling, the rhythm of making love.
Moments turned into a minute, and then another, and another, when all of a sudden he sensed Haley’s focus begin to shift and he knew she was about to lose control. That was all it took.
Suddenly he stiffened, then groaned.
Haley gasped, then closed her eyes as his thrusts became harder and faster, and arched upward to meet him as a gut-deep moan slipped out from between her lips.
It was all Mack had been waiting for. With one last heroic thrust, he came…showering his seed into her womb in a powerful and continuous burst, then collapsing on top of her, a sweating, quivering mass of muscle. He couldn’t have moved at that moment if he’d tried.
“Haley, Haley…I love you, so much. So much. How am I going to live without this…without you…for the next two years?” Then he began to rain kisses all over her face.
It was then he heard the catch in her breath and knew she was crying.
“Haley, baby…please don’t cry,” he whispered.
Haley laughed, though he thought it didn’t sound entirely convincing.
“I’m not crying,” she said. “I’m just trying to breathe.”
“Oh. Sorry,” he said, and rolled so that his weight was no longer on top of her.
Haley hid her face against his chest and—
Suddenly a horn honked. Mack jumped, his daydreaming brought to an abrupt end. When he realized the Shores were no longer in sight, he got out of his car and started inside. Within seconds, people were stopping him and congratulating him on his news.
“Hey, hey, hey…look who’s here! It’s Mack! Heard your news, son. We’re wishing you all the best in L.A. Don’t let all those pretty movie starlets turn your head now, you hear?”
Mack grinned. Milt and Patty House owned the local newspaper, and Mack’s first job had been delivering papers for them.
“I’ll sure try,” Mack said, nodded to Mrs. House and kept on walking.
All the way into the gym, it was more of the same. Everyone wanted to congratulate the hometown boy who was making good, and he kept smiling and walking until he got inside, then paused long enough to locate where the Shore family was seated. He circled the end of the bleachers, then took a seat above them. That way, when Haley spotted him, and looked up and waved, her parents would think she was waving at them.
He didn’t like the deception, but like Haley, he had lived his whole life under the cloud of their parents’ feud. And he wasn’t giving her up for anyone. The next two years were going to be hell; he was scared to death that once she got to college, she would find someone new and that would be that. She’d voiced the fear that he might do the same, and he’d laughed. He didn’t have the words to explain how crazy that concept was to him. All he knew how to do was love her.
Stewart Shore hid in the shadows and watched. He wasn’t quite six feet tall and blond, while Mack was tall and dark. He hated Mack Brolin—partly because he’d been raised that way, and partly because Mack was everything he wished he could be, including a hotshot athlete.
Stewart had been a good athlete, but not outstanding. He’d been a good student, but not valedictorian, like Mack. This fall, when he went back to college, he would be going back to the one in Bowling Green, not off to the other side of the country. And the fact that his own sister chose to defy their parents’ wishes by sneaking around with Mack only added to his indignation. He’d heard the gossip. He knew Haley was planning to meet Mack after the ceremony tonight. If his parents knew about it, they would have a fit.
Haley entered the gym as if she were walking on air. She saw her mother’s face only seconds after she saw Mack and realized he’d chosen to sit in direct alignment with them so she could wave, which she did. Amazingly, her mother actually smiled and waved back.
And then the seniors were seated and the ceremony began. Haley thought it was somehow very anticlimactic. Thirteen years had just been condensed to a prayer, a song and two five-minute speeches. When they began calling out names, she felt as if the room had become a vacuum. Sound faded, until everything was a faint echo and the loudest things she could hear as she walked across the stage to get her diploma were the whisper of her own breath and the thunder of her heartbeat in her ears.
Then it was over, and flashbulbs were going off everywhere. Just in case, she kept a permanent smile on her face. Suddenly the air was full of red caps and tassels, and she was jumping up and down and laughing. Charley Samuels grabbed her around the waist and hugged her hard.
“We did it, Haley. We did it!” he cried, and then danced off through the crowd, laughing all the way.
Haley’s glance went straight to the bleachers. Her mom and dad were already standing and looking for a way to get out. She wouldn’t let herself care that everyone else was meeting up with their parents for pictures. She didn’t need a picture to remind her of how little they cared. That was already branded into her soul.
As for her, she was off to Retta’s house. Retta’s parents were throwing a graduation party, and Haley had a twelve-o’clock curfew. She intended to say hi to everyone, then ditch the party and spend every spare moment she had tonight with Mack.
They were on their way out to the bluff. It was where everyone went to make out, and Haley wanted Mack’s arms around her so bad that she ached. He drove with the windows down and the radio blasting. Her hair was whipping around her face and eyes like crazy, which for some reason made everything funny.
She was laughing at something Mack said when they suddenly realized there was a car coming up behind them, and coming fast.
“What the hell?” Mack muttered, as he glanced up into the rearview mirror.
Haley frowned as she turned to look. Even though she couldn’t see anything but headlights, all of a sudden she knew.
“That’s Stewart!” she cried, and grabbed Mack’s arm. “I swear to God, that’s Stewart.”
“Damn,” Mack said. “Couldn’t we have this one last night without drama?”
“Maybe he’ll go around,” Haley said.
No sooner had the words come out of her mouth than Stewart began flicking his lights from dim to bright and back again, signaling for them to pull over.
Haley grabbed her cell phone and dialed Stewart’s phone. He answered on the second ring.
“What the hell are you doing?” she screamed. “You’re going to cause a wreck!”
“Tell that bastard to stop the car. Mom sent me after you, and I’m not going home without you.”
“I’m not going home with you, and I don’t care wh
at Mom wants,” Haley said, and hung up.
Mack frowned. “If you want to go home, I’ll take you.”
Before she could answer, Stewart rammed Mack’s bumper.
“Son of a bitch!” Mack yelled, and fought to keep the car on the road. “He’s crazy. He’s going to get us all killed.”
Mack started to slow down when Stewart hit them again.
Haley felt their car starting to skid, and then suddenly Stewart broadsided them. The shocked look on his face told her that he hadn’t meant to do it, but when their car suddenly went sideways, he couldn’t stop.
The sound was like an explosion, and then they were rolling and rolling and everything went black.
It was the hissing sound and the smell of burning rubber that woke Haley. Her head was hurting. She was upside-down, and couldn’t remember where she was or how she’d gotten there. Then she heard a groan, turned her head to the left and saw Mack. Blood was dripping from his head and his arm and his leg, and she remembered.
Stewart! He’d hit them.
“Mack. Mack. You’ve got to wake up!” she cried, then realized his leg was pinned beneath the steering wheel and a mass of crumpled metal.
“Mack!” she screamed again, but he still didn’t answer.
Her hands were shaking as she reached for the seat belt, and as she released herself, she dropped down with a thump, hitting her head and shoulder against the roof. After maneuvering herself around inside the confines of the crumpled car, she tried to release Mack’s seat belt, but it wouldn’t budge. He wasn’t moving, and he wasn’t answering her, and she was starting to panic. His leg was still caught, and the hiss of steam and smoke was getting worse.
The phone. She needed to find her phone to call for help. She’d dropped it back into her purse. But where was her purse?
“God, oh, God, oh, God, help me,” Haley whispered, but it was nowhere in sight. It was then that she thought of her brother again. He’d hit them! He’d caused the wreck. Surely he wouldn’t have driven away and left them. He would help.
She crawled out through a broken window and then dragged herself up to a standing position. Within seconds everything started spinning, and she dropped back to her knees, then rocked back on her heels and started screaming.
“Help! Help! Somebody help!”
But the night was silent and the road was dark, and there was no one coming to the rescue. Once more she pulled herself upright, and this time she steadied herself against a wheel until the world stopped spinning. When she finally walked out from behind the wreck, the first thing she saw was Stewart’s car, smashed headfirst into a tree on the other side of the road.
“No, God, no,” she moaned, and started running, stumbling, trying to get to her brother.
The windows of his car were all broken, and the passenger’s side door had popped open. Haley crawled into the front seat and then fell onto her knees beside her brother. Blood was bubbling from the corner of his mouth, and coming out of his nose and ears.
“Stewart? Stewart! Can you hear me? Why in God’s name did you do this?” she asked.
But like Mack, Stewart wasn’t talking. In a panic, she backed out of the car, and as she did, she felt something beneath the palm of her hand. Stewart’s cell!
“Thank God,” she said, and hit 9-1-1.
“Stars Crossing Police Department. How may I help you?”
“God…oh, God…I need help. We had a wreck. My brother and my boyfriend crashed their cars. They’re hurt bad.”
Suddenly the dispatcher was all business.
“Who is this?” she asked.
“Haley Shore. My brother, Stewart, and my boyfriend, Mack Brolin…they’re both trapped in their cars. I can’t get them out, and they’re both bleeding. We’re about two miles west of town on North Hollow Road.”
“Stay on the line with me, Haley,” the dispatcher said. “I’m going to send ambulances and the police. Don’t hang up while I do that, okay?”
“Okay,” Haley said, and then started to cry as she ran back across the road to Mack.
A few seconds later, the dispatcher was back on the line.
“Are you hurt, Haley?”
“I don’t know…. I don’t think so. I got out of the car on my own, and I’m walking.”
“I want you to sit down,” the dispatcher said. “You could have internal injuries. Just sit still and stay on the line with me. Help is on the way.”
Haley sank to the ground right beside Mack’s door, reached in the window and wrapped her hand around his wrist, then drew her knees up and lowered her head to keep from passing out.
“I’m here, Mack, I’m here,” she mumbled. “Stay with me. Help is coming.”
She was starting to crash from the adrenaline surge that had gotten her out of the wreck and across the road, and she could feel herself coming undone. Her voice began to shake, and when she started to talk, it came out in sobs.
“Haley…talk to me,” the dispatcher said.
“You need to call my mom and dad,” Haley said. “And Tom and Chloe Brolin. You need to tell them Mack and Stewart are hurt.”
“We will, honey. Just sit tight. You’ll hear the sirens any minute now. Can you hear them yet?”
In the distance, Haley could just make out the thin, high-pitched wail.
“Yes. I can hear them,” she said.
“You’re doing fine, Haley. You’re doing fine. Help is on the way.”
Chapter 2
W hen word of the wreck began spreading through Stars Crossing, it abruptly brought post-graduation parties to an end. The emergency room quickly became packed with Haley’s classmates, who had come to be with her.
Judd and Lena Shore arrived within minutes of Tom and Chloe Brolin and their daughters, and the two couples sat on opposite sides of the waiting room, glaring at one another in stoic silence. Neither couple had spoken to Haley or bothered to ask after her welfare. The fact that she was mobile and alert was enough for them, even her own parents. They didn’t seem to care that she was pale and shaking and covered in blood, or that she had three stitches in her hairline, bruises rising on the side of her face and kept breaking into sobs every time another friend called her name.
Her best friend, Retta, a short, perky blonde, was sitting with her, running interference every time someone asked too many questions for which Haley had no answers.
An outpouring of blood donations had come in from friends and families alike, but the boys’ conditions were as yet unknown.
It wasn’t until Jack Bullard, the chief of police, arrived to speak to Haley that Judd and Lena got up from where they were sitting and moved toward her.
“Hey, Haley…how you doin’, honey?” Chief Bullard asked.
She shrugged, her chin quivering too much to answer.
“I know this is a rough time for you, but do you think you can talk to me for a bit?”
She nodded
Bullard smiled, and then sat down in the seat beside her.
“I need to ask you some questions about the accident.”
“Okay,” Haley said, and swiped her hands across her face, wiping away tears and smoothing back the tangles of her hair.
Bullard waited until she seemed to settle, then said, “I need you to tell me, in your own words, what happened.”
Suddenly Lena Shore pushed forward and started screaming. The rage in her voice was impossible to mistake.
“I’ll tell you what happened!” she shrieked. “My slut of a daughter was sneaking around with a damned Brolin. If it wasn’t for her, none of this would have happened.”
The minute the Brolins heard their name being slurred, they were up in the chief’s face and shouting back at Lena.
“There’s nothing wrong with our son,” Tom said. “Your daughter is the one who kept chasing after him.”
Haley shuddered and covered her face with her hands. This nightmare just kept getting worse and worse.
Chief Bullard stood abruptly and put one hand on
Tom Brolin’s chest and the other on Judd Shore’s before they came to blows.
“Shut up!” he yelled. “Both of you. I’m talking to Haley, and unless you were in one of those cars, I want you all to be quiet.”
Judd cursed.
Tom puffed out his chest.
And in the middle of the melee, Haley slowly stood. Something inside of her had finally come unwound. After all these years, she’d had enough. Suddenly the room went quiet as all eyes turned to her. Her words were angry, her own rage evident as her hands curled into fists as she spoke.
“Just for the record, Mother, not once during the two years Mack and I have been seeing each other did I ever sneak anywhere. Just because you people have issues with one another, that didn’t mean we did. I love Mack, and he loves me. I don’t know what’s wrong between you and the Brolins, and frankly, I don’t care. You people have wasted eighteen years of my life acting like children. You can hate one another…and you can all hate me…if that’s what’s going to make you happy. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care about anything but knowing Stewart and Mack are okay. After that, you can all go to hell!”
Her mother’s face had gone from pale to purple, her father’s to a dark, angry red. The Brolins wouldn’t look at her, and her classmates seemed to be in shock.
At that point, Haley turned around to face Chief Bullard.
“Mack and I were driving north out of town in his car. We were just listening to music and talking when lights appeared out of nowhere in the rearview mirror. All we knew was someone was coming up behind us too fast. When I thought I recognized Stewart’s car, I called him on my cell phone to be sure. When he answered, he began screaming at us to stop, that Mom had sent him to get me. I told him Mom didn’t run my life, and that we weren’t stopping, and for him to go home.”
Lena gasped, and before anyone could stop her, she lashed out and slapped Haley’s face so hard her lip split.
Chief Bullard grabbed Lena, but it was too late. “Ma’am, if you do that again, I will arrest you for assault.”
“She’s my daughter. I can—”
Haley pushed herself into Lena’s face. Her voice was soft, but her tone was hard and clipped.