Chapter 16
Serena waited for Will to continue, even as she struggled to absorb everything he’d told her. For the most part, there had been very little fluctuation in his voice, which she felt was a deliberate measure on his part to avoid upsetting her. But there was a definite thread of tension when he spoke about finding her in the cave, and a more obvious hardness to his tone whenever he said Randy’s name.
“Tell me the rest,” she urged. “What happened after you took me to the hospital?”
They had been sitting side by side on the sofa, but now Will put his arm around her and drew her close. Serena nestled her head against his shoulder and was surprised to feel the rapid thump of his heart beneath her cheek. Coupled with the tension in his muscles, it was a clear indication of just how difficult it was for Will to talk about. Serena tilted her head back, giving as much comfort as she took with a kiss so heartbreakingly tender it brought tears to her eyes.
“It’s okay, you can tell me,” she said gently, settling her head back on his shoulder.
“You’re sure?”
Not really. “I’m sure,” her answer was firm.
His arms tightened around her before he plunged back into the story. “One of the nurses took me aside and explained why they shouldn’t treat you until your parents got there. Because you were a minor, they needed your parent’s consent before performing an examination to collect evidence. Without it, there was virtually no chance of prosecuting. So I gave her the phone number but asked if I could call them. It just didn’t seem right…having a stranger tell them. It was the hardest phone call I have ever had to make,” he said grimly.
“Thank you for doing that, Will. I’m sure they appreciated it even if they never told you so.”
“I know, but it’s not exactly something you express your gratitude for, is it? Your father didn’t say much…just that he and your mom were on their way. It was seeing their faces that tore me apart. I imagine it was the same for them when they saw me.”
Will was quiet for a moment but she didn’t say anything. There was so much sorrow in his voice, so much pain. That he could hurt like that for her, touched Serena deeply. How her parents could ever have believed the lies McKinley told about Will was beyond her. But she couldn’t blame them either. She was their child, after all, and it must be difficult for them to trust anyone with her safety, even Will.
“Rose showed up a few minutes after your parents arrived. I’ve got to hand it to her; the woman was a rock. Your mom was practically hysterical, but somehow Rose quieted her down so I could tell your dad what little I knew. I’m not sure why I didn’t tell him I suspected Porter, but I think maybe I knew what he would do. It wasn’t really my decision to make, but you needed both your parents and I just couldn’t let him do something that would only cause you more pain.”
“So you…,” Serena swallowed hard, fighting the enormous wave of emotion threatening to engulf her, “you went after him instead.”
“It was after your dad authorized the examination and was waiting for the police. I heard him tell your mother and Rose that if the person responsible for assaulting you was a minor, it would be considered statutory rape. A misdemeanor,” his voice was bitter. “If he was convicted, he could spend up to a year in prison, maybe less. What kind of justice is that? None. There was no justice for what he’d done.”
“They’d been drinking,” Serena said. “It would have been used as an excuse and gotten them even less time, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes. I was furious, out of control. I didn’t know about the other boys yet, but I knew Porter’s family had the money to buy his way out of it.”
“You were as helpless as I was, all of you.”
“Not all of us,” Will replied. “I was still a minor too. I figured if a year was all they could give Porter, I couldn’t possibly get more than that for beating him up. The problem was, the police were already on the way. I had to get out of there before they arrived and started questioning me, so I told your parents I was going to find your brothers and McKinley. They were too distraught to notice how angry I was, but I suspected Rose knew exactly what I was planning.”
“Did she say something to make you believe that?”
“No,” he admitted, “it was the way she looked at me. It seemed as if she was giving me her approval. I talked to her about it not too long ago and I was right, although Rose apologized and said she should have tried to stop me.”
“Do you think she could have? Talked you out of going after him, I mean.”
“Not a chance,” Will was adamant. “I don’t think anyone could have changed my mind at that point. I did go back to the party and found Anthony and Sawyer, but only told them you had been hurt and they needed to get to the hospital. I left it up to them to find McKinley.”
“And were they still there…the boys who attacked me?”
“I caught them trying to high tail it into the woods and chased after them. They split up, but I didn’t care about the others; I was only concerned about getting my hands on Randy. Either he was too drunk or too stupid to drop his flashlight, but it made it easy for me to follow him. You know what he said when I tackled him to the ground?” Will’s voice dropped an octave, each word punctuated with an iciness that betrayed how much it still ate at him. “It wasn’t my fault. That’s what the bastard said. It wasn’t my fault. I wanted to kill him. I almost did.”
Serena drew in a sharp breath. “You…you hurt him that bad?”
“I was consumed with this…rage, and once I started hammering on him, I couldn’t stop myself. Not that I really tried. Porter didn’t have a prayer. He was smaller than me, he was drunk, and he was too scared to fight back. I don’t know,” he said solemnly, “maybe I would have killed him if his buddies hadn’t come back and pulled me off of him. By then I had expended so much energy bashing Porter’s face in that I didn’t put up much of a struggle.”
Serena’s brows drew together. “If Randy didn’t tell you about the others, how did you find out?”
“One of them let it slip. Brian and Lee Morgan had a hold of each arm while Steven Bennett went to help Porter. When he saw how…messed up Porter was, he lost it. He was crying and babbling about how sorry he was, that none of them meant to hurt you. The Morgan brothers yelled at him to shut up but Steven spilled his guts. He said Porter instigated it and the rest of them…” Will stopped abruptly.
Serena recognized the shudder of revulsion that rippled through him because she felt her own body respond in exactly the same manner. She’d spent a lot of years shoveling dirt over any memories that tried to surface. And she had flatly refused to let anyone else dig them up because she didn’t think she was strong enough to face the ugliness without shattering into a million pieces. But now she knew better. Because she was still here, still whole, and she was starting to remember.
It was too soon to tell Will. At the moment, it was coming back to her in fragments and she wanted to keep it to herself for a while longer until she could sort it out. Right now it was more important to find out why Will seemed reluctant to finish his account of what happened in the woods.
She had a vague recollection of the Morgan brothers. Neither of them was as big as Will, and Steven Bennett had been taller than all of them but not nearly as muscular. She couldn’t imagine Will running from a fight, but he was out numbered, so she wouldn’t have blamed him if he had.
“Were you scared?” Serena ventured.
“Scared? No,” he let out a humorless laugh, “I wasn’t thinking straight enough to be scared. I was mad as hell when they pulled me off of Porter, but I didn’t have the strength to take on three guys at one time. Or at least that’s what I thought until Steven confessed they had all taken part in it. I’d never felt such intense hatred before, such unmitigated desire to hurt someone. I couldn’t control it…or maybe I didn’t want to. In my mind, they were even more responsible than Porter.”
“But…why?
“Because any one of
them could have stopped what was happening, but they didn’t. They were animals, all of them,” he said viciously. “I wanted to make them suffer, to inflict as much pain as possible. It didn’t matter what happened to me. All I cared about was making sure none of them walked away without bearing scars that would stay with them for the rest of their lives.”
Serena was astonished by his open hostility. “You really aren’t sorry for doing it, are you?”
“No,” he said without hesitation. “Does that bother you?”
“Not for the reasons you probably think. It was a foolish thing to do, going after them alone. You could have been seriously injured. It might have been you who walked away with…oh, my God,” Serena gasped. “The scar on your shoulder, it’s from the fight! Did one of them have a knife? Were you stabbed?” Her stomach lurched. “Were you wounded anywhere else?”
“Easy, sweetheart,” Will said softly. “I survived, and in much better shape than any of them.”
“I know. It’s just…I feel like it’s my fault.”
“Don’t you dare take the blame,” his voice lost its former gentleness. “You aren’t responsible for what they did or for my actions that night.”
“You’re wrong, Will. My parents didn’t want me to go. Mom flat out refused, and Dad said no at first. I never defied them. But that night I did. I told them I was tired of being treated like a baby and that it wasn’t fair McKinley got so much freedom to do what she wanted. She always put up such a fuss, it was easier to give in and avoid the drama.”
Recalling some of the horrible things she’d said made Serena cringe. “All my friends were going and I knew you would be there. Just once, I wanted to stop being Miss Mouse and step away from McKinley’s shadow so people would see me. Of course, that was something I could never say to my parents because I felt as invisible to them as I was to everyone else. So I…I accused them of loving her more than me. I could tell it broke Dad’s heart to think I believed that, but I didn’t back down. How selfish is that?”
“Being emotional and saying things you don’t mean to your parents didn’t make you selfish, honey. It made you a typical teenage girl.”
She loved him for trying, but it did nothing to dislodge the demon of guilt sitting on her shoulder. “So much violence and anger and pain, so many lives altered forever. All because I chose that particular night to be rebellious.”
“Self recriminations are a waste of time and energy, especially when they’re over something beyond your control.”
“I suppose so,” Serena said, stifling a yawn.
“You’re tired. Maybe we should call it a night.”
“There can’t be that much more to tell. Please finish.”
He spared her most of the gory details, although he did tell her it was Lee Morgan who sliced his shoulder open with a broken beer bottle. That was after Will had dropped Brian Morgan with a right hook and started in on Steven Bennett. Will heard the bottle shatter when Lee cracked it against a tree trunk and turned just as Lee lunged at him. It was fortunate Will had been wearing his letterman’s jacket or the jagged edges would have done much more damage. The ensuing fight resulted in a few other minor cuts and bruises for Will and a broken nose for Lee.
He left the four boys there to nurse their wounds and returned to the hospital to get his shoulder stitched up. Afterwards, he went back to the waiting room and found Rose and Serena’s brothers restlessly pacing back and forth while McKinley sat in a corner by herself, flipping through a magazine. He was sporting a black eye and his clothes were torn and bloody, but not one of them said a word about his appearance. Nor did her parents question him when they joined the others an hour later.
“Your dad let everyone know you were in a private room under sedation and told them to go home. He pulled your brothers aside for a few minutes then informed me the police were waiting to talk to me. He offered to call my parents and said he would stay with me until they arrived. I don’t know what he told them, but they seemed just as oblivious to my shabby appearance as the rest of them. The two officers that questioned me weren’t nearly as willing to overlook it though.”
“Surely they didn’t suspect you had anything to do with it,” Serena exclaimed.
“The way I looked, I imagine anyone would. They wanted me to go down to the police station and submit to DNA testing and a whole host of other evidence gathering tests. My parents were pretty upset, but your dad told the police he’d seen me right after I brought you in. He gave them a statement swearing there were no cuts and bruises or torn clothing before I left the hospital. When they asked how I acquired the injuries, I told them I was trying to persuade the boys responsible to go down to the station voluntarily.”
Serena shivered, appalled by the idea that Will had spent even one night in jail on her account. “They didn’t arrest you, did they?”
“No, but they might have if your dad hadn’t stepped in again. Apparently, he had sent Anthony and Sawyer down to the emergency room to keep an eye out for Porter and the others. Guess he figured if I looked like something the cat dragged in, they wouldn’t have fared any better. He was right. One of your brothers sent a text telling him all four boys had shown up.”
“Oh, Will! It must have been horrible for you; getting into a fight and then being treated like a suspect by the police.”
“It was worth it,” Will replied, his tone oddly calm. “Anyway, I think your dad sent Anthony and Sawyer to the emergency room because he was afraid they might go after Porter and finish what I started. You have to respect a man with that kind of fortitude.”
Puzzled, Serena asked, “Keeping my brothers out of trouble, you mean?”
“Partly. Think about it, Serena. What man wouldn’t be crushed knowing his baby girl had been brutalized and he wasn’t there to protect her? He wanted to kill them, but he had to consider what his actions would do to you and the rest of the family. They all depended on him to be this…pillar of strength. He couldn’t fail them, not when they needed him most. I can’t even imagine the kind of restraint he had to maintain when he found out Porter and the others were right there in the hospital.”
“You’re right,” she said unsteadily. “Daddy wouldn’t allow his family to be destroyed no matter what it cost him.”
“He did everything he could to make sure my life wasn’t destroyed too,” he told her.
“One of the police officers stayed with me and your dad while the other one went to question the boys. In the meantime, my own parents arrived and I had to explain what happened. When the officer returned, he…uh…gave a pretty detailed account of the damage I had inflicted. My mother was beside herself when he told us Porter’s parents wanted to have me hauled down to the police station and booked for attempted murder…”
The bottom dropped out of Serena’s stomach. “Murder! How could they even think of pressing charges against you when their own son had done much worse?”
“Because they refused to believe he had any part of it. Porter denied he’d been with you at all and the others backed him up. They were each other’s alibis. Whether they were careful not to be seen going in or coming out of the cave or whether it was just pure luck, none of the kids the police questioned later could swear those boys were with you in there.”
Serena sat up. “But you said Rick Porter told you that’s where Randy had taken me so he must have seen us go inside.”
“I’m sure he did,” Will pulled her back into his arms, “but he wasn’t about to incriminate his own brother.”
“So with me unable to testify, them denying everything, and no witnesses, there was no case.” Serena suppressed the urge to scream at the injustice of it all.
“No, despite the reasons you just listed,” Will replied slowly, “there would have been a strong case if I hadn’t blown it by going after them.”
“I don’t understand. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Tainting the evidence; I believe that’s what Porter’s attorney claimed.
He was very shrewd, the best money can buy,” Will said bitterly. “The boys didn’t deny they were in the cave earlier that night, so any trace evidence found on you could be challenged because you could have picked it up from the ground. And since condoms were used, there wasn’t enough DNA evidence to prove they had anything to do with the assault. But what would have damned them all were the samples of your hair, saliva, and blood collected from their clothing and bodies.”
Blind Faith Page 24