“It’s just up ahead a little ways.”
Will couldn’t hold it in any longer and blurted out, “Is Serena with your brothers?”
“She’s coming with a group of her track friends, but they were going to grab a bite to eat first so she won’t be here for at least an hour.”
Disappointed, but not wanting to alert McKinley to that fact, he clamped his mouth shut to keep from asking any more questions about Serena. Even so, McKinley must have picked up on it because she stopped so fast, he nearly ran her over. She whirled around, looking thoroughly irritated as she angled her flashlight up towards his face.
“Don’t tell me you’re interest in that little plain Jane,” she said with a mocking laugh. “Good Lord, Will, she won’t even be fifteen for two more days. And even if she was old enough to date, she is so pitifully dull you would slip into a coma before the evening was over.”
“Serena is not dull,” his reply was heated. “She’s just a little shy, but it’s no wonder when she has a sister who demands all the attention for herself.”
Will expected her temper to flare, but it didn’t. He figured something must have snapped in that delusional brain of hers though, because she started babbling about how shameful he was for trying to make her jealous of Serena. It threw him for a loop when she accused him of doing it on purpose just so McKinley would admit she wanted him for herself.
“What?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Have you lost your…”
“It’s ridiculous to even think I would be jealous of Serena, but I’m flattered that you made the effort.” McKinley slipped her arms around his neck, pressing herself so close a breath of air couldn’t get between them. “I would throw Rick over for you in a New York minute,” she purred. “We could slip away right now and find a nice, quiet place where we could get to know one another a little more…intimately.”
Good God, what had he gotten himself into? “McKinley, I don’t think…”
The only excuse he could offer for not pulling away when McKinley deflected his objection by kissing him was that he was a teenage male. As such, it wasn’t always easy to control his hormones even when he wasn’t particularly attracted to the female he was with at the moment. His body responded of its own accord to the eagerness of her mouth and provocative gyration of her hips, but it still wasn’t enough to tempt him into taking it any further.
McKinley’s kisses were seductive, Will couldn’t deny that. But it was Serena he really wanted to be with. So why was he kissing McKinley when he knew Serena would never have anything to do with him if she found out? Serena probably knew as well as he did that the football team had scored more victories with her sister this season than they had on the field.
And what about Rick Porter? He and Will had been friends since grade school, but this was something that not even the best of buddies could overlook. Kissing someone else’s girl was bad enough, but it was doubly contemptible to betray a friend. It was a sobering thought; one which finally brought him to his senses. Will jerked his head back and was attempting to extract himself from her clinging arms when the crackling of dead twigs alerted him that someone was about to stumble across them.
For a moment, Will couldn’t believe his rotten luck when Rick emerged from between some trees, along with a few other couples. After all, what were the chances of him coming to this particular spot in the woods at precisely the same time Will was kissing his girlfriend? As he grappled for something to say, he felt McKinley’s hair brush against his chin when she turned her head and knew she’d seen Rick too. So why was she still hanging all over him? One glance at McKinley’s face and he knew the answer; because she arranged to meet Rick here. How could he have been so stupid?
Rick was livid, and he had every right to be. “What the hell is going on here?”
McKinley made a small sound of protest when Will griped her arms and pried her off of him, but seemed content enough to cozy up to Rick a few seconds later. He had an overwhelming urge to applaud her performance; not only was McKinley a guiltless liar, she was quite the accomplished actress as well. Laughing as if she found the whole situation amusing, she told Rick it was ridiculous to be jealous. Will was like family, she insisted, and had only been giving her a brotherly kiss. Rick didn’t buy a word of it, though he was smart enough not point the blame at McKinley.
“Come on, Rick,” McKinley was all wide-eyed innocence, “it was one harmless little kiss. Honestly, it didn’t mean a thing, did it, Will?”
“No, it didn’t,” he said, and meant it. “It was a mistake…”
“You got that right, Duncan,” Rick growled. “What the hell is your problem anyway?
You don’t have enough girls panting after you so you have to go after mine?”
“Hardly,” Will replied dryly. “Look, I’m not interested in McKinley so let’s just chalk this up to really poor judgment on my part and call it square, okay?”
McKinley let out an indignant squeal. “Stop talking about me as if I’m not here. And don’t tell me you weren’t interested. You seemed pretty damn interested when your tongue was halfway down my throat and your hands were all over my ass.”
The evening, which had been on a downhill spiral from the moment he arrived, went from bad to worse when Rick turned to McKinley and demanded to know why she’d let Will do that to her. The conniving little bitch had the audacity to claim she was so shocked by his behavior, it didn’t even occur to her to push him away. Admittedly, he could have put a halt to the kiss as soon as it happened, so he wasn’t completely blameless. But the temper he’d been so careful to contain finally came to a boiling point when McKinley insinuated he had forced himself on her.
“Oh, for God’s sake, stop acting like the innocent victim,” he snapped. “The minute I mentioned Serena’s name, you were all over me.”
McKinley skewered him with a venomous glare but it was Rick who got the first word in.
“Serena? What does she…ah, I get it now,” he said with a derisive smile. “Little sister is off limits so you go after McKinley.”
“That will be the day,” McKinley sneered. “Serena couldn’t compete with me in her wildest dreams.”
“She must have something Duncan wants,” Rick shot back. “Obviously he prefers the shy, virginal type or his eyes would be on you all the time instead of your sister.”
Will snorted in disgust. “You are so far off the mark it’s not even worth arguing about.”
A malicious smirk tipped one corner of Rick’s mouth. “If that’s true, then it shouldn’t bother you to know I saw Serena slip into one of the make-out caves with my brother. Tough luck, Duncan. Looks like someone else will be giving your girlfriend a bit of hands on instructions in making out tonight.”
Will stomped off, ignoring Rick’s mocking laughter. He was angry with himself for not suspecting McKinley was up to something when she lured him into the woods, and he was embarrassed that Rick and his buddies had caught them kissing. He wasn’t exactly thrilled to discover Rick noticed how he watched Serena either because it undoubtedly meant all their friends knew too, including Anthony and Sawyer. Even worse than the embarrassment was the fierce streak of jealousy that shot through him when Rick mentioned seeing Serena with his kid brother, Randy.
He tried to shrug it off. Hadn’t he already come to the conclusion that she was too young to consider dating? And so what if she was making out with a boy her own age, there was nothing wrong with that. Except all the logical reasons as to why it shouldn’t bother him or why he had no right to be jealous seemed to wither when he imagined Serena with someone else. He’d always felt there was an unspoken agreement between them; a secret attraction she was too shy to act upon and he was too honorable to pursue until she was older. Now Will realized it was all in his mind. It made him feel foolish, which in turn stoked his simmering anger.
Obviously he’d been wrong about Serena. She was probably more like McKinley than he thought. She had to be, otherwise why would she duck into
one of those caves and make out with Randy Porter when she barely knew him? Will was fuming by the time he emerged from the woods. As he headed towards the bonfire, there was only one thing on his mind; finding the first available female to cuddle up with so he could drive the image of Serena kissing Randy out of his mind.
He zeroed in on one of the cheerleaders he knew had a crush on him and spent the next hour with his arm draped around Jennie Barkley’s shoulders while she giggled and flirted outrageously. But no matter how hard he tried to focus on the pretty girl beside him, Will’s thoughts kept circling back around to Serena. He finally gave up the charade and left Jennie standing there looking as if she wanted to claw his heart out for abandoning her in front of her friends.
His search for Serena proved fruitless, which did nothing to salve the uneasiness that was beginning to fray his nerves. Her friends from the track team said they hadn’t seen her all night so someone else had have brought her. It couldn’t have been Randy Porter, he reasoned, because Randy was among the other sophomore boys that had been worshiping McKinley just before she conned him into going in the woods with her. Besides, he could see Randy and several of his friends milling around the bonfire and there weren’t any girls with them.
Will continued to scan the crowd, but for some reason that eluded him, his gaze kept migrating back to Randy. If Rick’s kid brother really had been with Serena earlier, then where was she now? His imagination invoked all kinds of horrible scenarios; Randy making a pass at her while Serena tried to ward of his advances and then escaping from the cave in tears…or being left behind to try and find her way back out again. That one gnawed at his gut as he studied Randy and the three other boys he was with.
They were huddled together and seemed to be having a pretty heavy discussion, which he found extremely odd considering everyone else at the party was laughing and whooping it up. And he could tell from their grim expressions and the way they kept casting furtive glances over their shoulders that something was making them edgy.
Will’s eyes moved past them, up a small incline where a well worn path led to one of the caves. Was Serena in there? His stomach knotted. Was that why they kept looking back at it? Had they left her all alone in the dark and were worried because she hadn’t found her way out yet?
He borrowed a flashlight and headed across the clearing, his temper barely in check as he passed Randy Porter and noted the guilty look that stole across his face. Will could almost feel Serena’s fear as he made his way up the hill and into the mouth of the cave, but the fear became even more tangible after calling her name several times with no reply.
The air inside the cave was stagnant and the darkness seemed denser than it had been in the woods, making it impossible for the beam of the flashlight to penetrate more than a few feet in front of him. The tension in his neck and shoulders began to subside the deeper he went because he knew none of the caves stretched more than a few hundred feet. Even if Serena had gotten turned around, eventually she would have reached the back wall of the cave and started back.
Will was so relieved he had been wrong, he almost laughed out loud. Convinced that his suspicion of Randy was a result of his concern for Serena and an over active imagination, he’d just about made up his mind to turn back when something on the outer edges of the light caught his attention. He inched closer, raw fear sucking the air from his lungs when his eyes finally made sense of what he was seeing.
“Serena?” His voice sounded hollow, mimicking the empty feeling deep in his chest as he leaned over her, desperately searching for some sign of life.
Will’s gut wrenched at the sight of her lying there, so still, so…devoid of life. Like a mannequin that had fallen onto its back, he thought dully. Will dropped to his knees, the salt sting of tears blurring his vision for a moment when the flashlight illuminated the deathly pallor of her face. He reached out and gently brushed the tangled strands of hair from her face, his heart silently breaking when he felt how cold her skin was. She was dead. Oh God, his beautiful Serena was dead! Pain ripped through him; jagged shards of grief and guilt that shredded him to the bone.
Lowering his cheek to hers, Will whispered in her ear. “I’m so sorry. Forgive me, Serena. I should have looked for you sooner…I should have…” he choked on his words, drowning in the merciless waves of anguish that crashed into him from all sides.
Will was devastated. He knew he should do something; go for help, get the police…something, but it was impossible to think past the unbearable pain. That’s when he felt it; just the faintest of warmth sifting across his cheek. Hope surged through him when he realized it was Serena’s shallow breathing that he’d felt. He lifted his head just as Serena blinked, the ache inside his chest more acute than ever when she didn’t speak or acknowledge his presence in any way.
Until that moment, he’d naturally assumed the dark smears on her thighs was dirt and that her disheveled appearance was a result of bumping and scrapping against the cave walls as she fumbled for a way out of the darkness. Based on that assumption, he concluded she must have fallen and hit her head on a rock. Except…Serena was catatonic and there weren’t any rocks big enough to cause a head wound that traumatizing. So what did that leave? A broken bone? Spinal injury? Shock?
Anxious to get her out of there but worried that moving her without knowing the extent of her injuries could cause permanent damage, Will made the decision to do a quick check first. Bringing the flashlight closer to Serena’s face, he noticed several small bruises on either side of her jaws. Acid churned in his stomach when he panned the light around the floor of the cave before turning the beam on her legs.
He prayed that he was wrong, prayed Serena hadn’t been brutally violated, but the torn remains of her panties a few yards away forced Will to face the ugly truth. What he’d initially thought was dirt on her upper thighs was actually dried blood, and he could see now that her dress had been ripped up the center, the tattered ends lapped over each other to cover her partial nudity. Will’s throat constricted. What would have happened if he hadn’t come looking for her? And what should he do now that he had found her?
Will had seen enough true crime shows to understand that touching Serena or anything else could destroy crucial evidence. Which meant he should leave her just as she was and go call the police. Logically, he knew Serena wasn’t even aware he was there, but he couldn’t just leave her here. His mind made up, Will quickly shrugged off his jacket and covered her with it, an anguished cry tearing from his throat before he could rein in his emotions.
If he lived to be a hundred, Will would never forget the sight of Serena lying there like a corpse, robbed of her innocence, her chance at a normal life. The image was burned in his mind forever, but that wasn’t the only thing searing itself into his brain. He knew who was responsible for committing this abominable act of violence, just as he knew the punishment would never be harsh enough to fit the crime.
Maybe Randy would be tried as adult, but he highly doubted it. And maybe he would spend time behind bars, but Will doubted that too. Randy would never know the fear and the pain that Serena had suffered. There would be no real consequences for his actions, no devastating effects on his life, no nightmares to contend with. The idea that Randy would get away with it festered inside him like an infected wound, fueling a rage that seemed as alien to him as the helplessness he felt when he leaned down and gently picked Serena up.
He held her close to his body, sharing his warmth and praying he wasn’t too late. Will pressed his cheek to hers for a moment, unashamed of the tears that spilled from his eyes and dampened her skin. He’d never felt such overwhelming sorrow before. Or such uncontrollable rage. He wondered how it was possible to retain any clarity of thought while his insides were being shredded to ribbons by a kaleidoscope of turbulent emotions. Yet he did it somehow.
As he carried her through the cave, Will promised Serena he would take care of her and that she was safe now. He continued to talk, offering what comfort he coul
d, all the while devising a plan to administer a little justice of his own before the authorities got involved. He wanted to kill the bastard for what he’d done, but he would see to it that Serena got the medical attention she needed first. Then he would find Randy and extract revenge with his fists.
He couldn’t undo what happened to Serena, but he could make Randy pay for it. And the way he was feeling right now…Randy Porter had better pray to God the cops got to him before Will did.
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