Exhaling, I forced myself to stop staring at her. Instead, I closed my eyes and let the fire warm my face while I gave in and relished in the prickle of nerves I felt across my skin every time she shifted.
A barking laugh cut into the peace, as offensive as it was vile.
My eyes flew open.
I didn’t know what he’d said, but I could only imagine it was disgusting as Troy mumbled something to the guy next to him as he wound his hand in the thick locks of the girl’s hair and yanked her back.
She cried out, then quickly suppressed the sound as she cringed and blinked, reaching back to rub the spot on her head. I watched her attempt to scoot forward, but Troy only tugged her back, laughed again as he placed his slimy mouth on her cheek.
She pinched her eyes shut.
“Troy…stop it…please,” she whisper-pled. Her shoulders fell, and she hugged her knees closer. I got the distinct feeling she was trying to hide again.
I’d never felt this way before, the frisson of protectiveness that swept like wildfire through my veins and dripped from my pores.
“What? Are you deaf and dumb?” I spat the words, unable to hold them back. Not sure I wanted to.
Troy jerked his head up, looked at me, his eyes narrowed as if he couldn’t believe I was talking to him.
“The girl asked you to stop.” It came out a sneer, rippled over the crowd, and coalesced as a silent, collective gasp as everyone turned their attention to me. Silence stretched on as I stared Troy down and Troy sized me up. I could feel the girl begging me with her eyes. Could almost hear her silently pleading with me to let it go. Could almost taste how much she thought she wasn’t worth it.
I refused to look away.
Clenching my jaw and fists, I struggled to control the shaking, to cover up my nerves that were all over the place that I really had no clue what to do with.
Troy glared at me with cold, light-brown eyes. A jeering smile suddenly split his face, a taunting laugh erupting from his throat. “You really wanna fuck with me, Marsch?”
I was on my feet before I knew they were below me, happy to fuck with Troy if that’s the way he wanted it, but Blake was between us before I could take two steps. Blake slammed his palm against my chest, holding me back while he angled his body to face Troy, who had jumped up and was standing three feet away.
Blake pointed at him. “Don’t even think about it, Troy. We don’t need any of your shit tonight.”
Troy leaned to the side, leering at me. “Come on, Marsch. What?” He jutted out his chin. “You still need your big brother to protect you?”
Raging against the restraint of Blake’s hand, I was desperate to feel Troy under my fist, to unleash the rage that had come out of nowhere, but Blake struggled against me. “Come on, Will, knock it off.”
I tripped over my feet as I floundered backward and landed hard on my back, the air knocked from my lungs.
“Why don’t you go back to California where you belong, you whiny little bitch?” Troy laughed and spit in my direction, the wad landing in the ash next to my face.
I roared and struggled to get back on my feet.
Blake caught me just as I stood, fisting his hands in my shirt. “He’s not worth it, Will.”
No, Troy wasn’t worth it, but she was.
I wrestled against Blake and tried to break free.
Blake tightened his hold and jostled me across the field, shoving me against the side of his truck. His voice was low and full of force as I came into contact with the smooth metal.
“Calm the fuck down, man.” When I thrashed against him, Blake slammed me back again. “I’m serious, Will. Cool it. Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
Troy was still throwing insults from near the fire, the girl at his side begging him to stop.
I made another attempt to break free when Troy yelled at her to shut up.
“Are you really just going to stand there and let him treat her like that?” I flailed a hand in their direction.
“It’s not any of our business.”
Narrowing my eyes at Blake, I shook my head in disgust. “How can you say that?”
Blake reached over to wrench open the passenger door, didn’t meet my eye. “Just get in the truck, Will.”
I looked back and forth between Troy and Blake, unable to believe my older brother, felt something rip open when Troy dragged the crying girl toward the truck they’d arrived in.
I cried out in pain and fury when I twisted and rammed my fist into the side of Blake’s truck, having nowhere else to inflict my anger.
This was complete bullshit.
Begrudgingly, I flopped into the cab of Blake’s truck, laid my head back on the headrest, and closed my stinging eyes. The door slammed shut beside me.
A couple of seconds later, Grace climbed in through the driver’s door, Blake right behind her. I didn’t open my eyes, just stared at the blackness behind my lids.
The twenty minute ride back into town was taken in silence, the only interruption when Blake whispered, “I love you so much, Grace,” into the darkness.
“I know,” she answered, so quiet I could barely hear her, though I could tell she was crying.
Grace squeezed my knee when we stopped in front of her house to drop her off. I couldn’t find it in myself to acknowledge her. I just continued to pretend I was asleep, to pretend as if this night had never happened.
For a few moments, the cab was silent and still when Blake and Grace exited the truck, the only sound my labored breaths filling the space. I tried to control them when the door cranked open and the cab rocked a bit as Blake plopped down onto his seat. The movement felt heavy with strain.
Blake emitted a loud sigh and shifted the truck into gear. I felt his hesitation, could almost see him opening and closing his mouth, before he finally spoke.
“I’m gonna ask her to marry me.” His words trumpeted with awe and a flood of devotion, peppered with a hint of apprehension and fear.
I cracked an eye open, unable to ignore my brother any longer. “Yeah?” My voice sounded rough, and I cleared my throat. “That’s…really good. I’m happy for you. Grace is a great girl.”
Blake smiled a bit and rubbed a hand over his face. “Listen…I’m sorry about earlier.” He ran his tongue across his bottom lip, shook his head before he cut his eye in my direction. It was dim in the cab, but I saw the sadness there. “Just don’t go getting yourself mixed up in that situation.”
I frowned, focused ahead on the headlights splaying light across the black pavement. “That wasn’t right, Blake, and you know it.”
“Hell no, it wasn’t right.”
I jerked to face him. “Then why did you stop me?”
Blake scoffed. “Because I didn’t want to stand there and watch my little brother get his ass torn to shreds…that or get into an all-out brawl with Troy and Kurt. Is that what you wanted?” He palmed and squeezed the steering wheel, his tone softening. “And because it won’t change anything, Will. That girl…she’s every kind of messed up. She doesn’t need you making things any worse for her.”
The constriction Blake’s assertion caused in my chest told me I was already in too deep.
“Who is she? She looked…familiar.” I tried to play it casual, tried to hide the desperation in my voice, to pretend as if she were any other girl who I would have stuck up for.
“Maggie Krieger.” Blake raised a brow as he delivered the blow.
Of course.
I dropped my face into my hands. I should have known. But really, she’d just been a little girl the last time I’d seen her, maybe ten years old at the most. She was young enough that through school we hadn’t run in the same circles, but that didn’t mean I was too old not to have heard the gossip that was prevalent in this town.
Blake pressed on, shrugged, though it didn’t seem in indifference. “Troy probably treats her ten times better than her daddy ever did. I’d bet good money she’ll get herself knocked up by the end of summe
r just to get out of that house.”
Blake parked in the drive, and I stumbled out and trudged inside and upstairs, muttering a halfhearted goodnight to Blake before I fell into bed. Curling around my pillow, I focused on ridding my mind of whatever insane, convoluted feelings I must have conjured up about her. I told myself again and again that I’d never even spoken with her, that I didn’t know her, and that I definitely didn’t want her.
Yet every time I closed my eyes, all I saw was that shy smile mixed with the intense fire that had roared in the depths of her eyes, and I knew beyond anything else, Maggie wanted more.
William ~ Present Day
I stared up at the ceiling from my childhood bed, watched the shadows from the tree outside my window spread out across it, my throat tight with the memories. Somehow Blake and I had both known we were at a crossroads that night, and life decisions were about to be made. Blake had been wise and loved a girl who’d loved him back. I lay thinking now how I should have just looked away like everyone else had done that night. I should have turned my cheek and my heart away from the hook I’d allowed her to sink deep into my soul. But I’d been a fool, had chased her when I’d known I could never really have her, when I knew it was both wrong and so incredibly right.
I closed my eyes, saw the face of Maggie’s little boy, thought of the dreams, questioned my sanity. I believed nothing in superstitions or fate or any of that other bullshit. But whether it meant something or meant nothing at all, it didn’t change the fact I was here and I had a son. One look and I’d known. The other thing I was certain of was that Maggie would deny any claim I made.
And I had no idea what to do about it.
God.
The bed creaked when I rolled to my side.
Confusion and emotions I didn’t know how to deal with plowed through my senses, left me weak and drained and unbearably restless.
I couldn’t just leave the child there, but I didn’t think I could take him away from his mother, either. I wouldn’t pretend to know the boy, but his bond with his mother had been clear. I also didn’t think I could ever openly expose what we’d done, hurt her that way.
Something inside wouldn’t allow me to believe she’d put her child in danger, but did I really know her at all? I never would have believed she could be capable of keeping something like this from me.
And then there was this little nagging voice that kept asserting my instincts might be wrong and the boy might not be mine. It whispered I’d just overreacted and made assumptions that should never be made. I mean, I’d been careful every time, but then I had to admit I’d been warned before nothing wasn’t one-hundred percent.
I groaned and flopped onto my other side.
The worst part of it all was that gnawing in the pit of my stomach. It was the same familiar ache I’d tried to bury and stamp out beneath years of work and faked satisfaction, a need that glowed bright, unearthed and exposed.
I loved Maggie now as much as I did the day she walked out of my life.
Chapter Eight
Maggie ~ Present Day
I sucked in a shuddering breath and tried to hold the fractured pieces together. Regret splintered through my heart and cut me in two.
How could I have been such a fool to have believed he wouldn’t be there? That one day, even if it weren’t today, he wouldn’t have eventually returned? But I had spent my entire life being a fool.
So many years had been spent fantasizing about him at night that I’d never imagined it’d be possible that he’d manifest in the day.
Sinking to my bedroom floor, I hugged my knees to my chest and hoped for the same numbness that fell over me when the fists came to pervade me now.
But William had always made me feel alive, and there was nothing I could do to shield myself from that light now.
I felt everything.
His anger, my shame, the love for him I’d kept stored up and buried so deep inside—a flicker of his before it had been chased away by his disgust. It all culminated in a searing, scorching burn.
I had known better, but my mom had been so insistent earlier this afternoon.
Every weekday after I dropped Jonathan off at kindergarten, I would slip in the back door of the ratty old house I’d grown up in, pushing aside the memories of that place. My mom needed me, and the echo of my father that lingered in its walls was not enough to keep me away. Usually I’d climb the stairs to find my mom curled up in bed. I would feed her, bathe her—love her—even though there was a huge part of me that hated my mother. It was the same part that hated myself.
Today, though, she had been downstairs where she was hunched over the kitchen counter. Her hair was dingy and straight, and almost an inch of gray roots had grown into the dull color I had washed into it three months before. With unsteady hands, she’d handed me the casserole she made and asked me to take it over to the Marsch’s. Her eyes were glassy as she told me to tell them how sorry she was for their loss.
“Lara’s always thought of us...taken care of us,” she’d said when I tried to refuse and offer up an excuse why it was a terrible idea for me to go over there.
I hadn’t been able to come up with one my mom found acceptable. I couldn’t exactly tell her the real reason, could I?
“I still can’t believe Lara is gone,” Mom had said with a disoriented sadness, shaking her head. The movement was exaggerated by the tremors that plagued her body. “And Glenda, losing her sister so young. Both of ‘em have never been anything but kind to us.”
I’d understood. For once, my mom was giving and not taking.
Reluctantly, I had accepted the dish, but I was unable to stop the acute anxiety that came with the thought of going over there. For years, I’d avoided the Marsches the best I could in a town this small. I try not to make eye contact with any of them when we crossed paths.
I’d been the reason they’d lost him. I knew all the rumors. I had heard the disparaging words about the notorious William Marsch who’d shunned his family once he’d graduated from college. The town talked about his mother’s heartbreak and Blake’s anger that he had somehow thought himself too good for them and too good for this town.
But I knew better. I knew what’d happened the night he left.
And I knew it was my fault.
He’d never come back in six years, and I hadn’t expected him to now, either. It was stupid, really, to think he wouldn’t come back for his aunt’s funeral.
I’d had to sit in my van for an hour to even build up the nerve. By then it was already time to pick up Jonathan from kindergarten. I’d buckled him in while I told him we just had to make a quick stop, my voice strained as I imagined walking through the Marsches’ door.
I’d kissed Jonathan on the forehead to give myself some courage and to gain that sense of being whole I felt whenever I was near my son. He was the one thing that kept me sane.
I’d just step in and come right back out, I’d told myself, give my mother’s condolences, as well as my own.
Then I’d run.
But when I helped Jonathan from the car and took his hand to cross the street, he whispered up to me that he had to go to the bathroom. He always held it until the last minute. Feeling a hint of panic, I squeezed his hand and asked him if he couldn’t hold it.
With a baby-faced grimace, he’d shaken his head and almost begged, “No, Mommy…I gotta go right now.”
Pointing to the house up ahead of us on the right, I said, “That’s where we’re going. I’m sure they have a bathroom you can use…but you have to hurry, okay?”
He nodded and ran ahead, taking the sidewalk and steps as fast as his little feet would carry him, and he had followed a couple inside.
It wasn’t until I was halfway up the walk that I noticed the expensive black car parked in the Marsches’ driveway, partially hidden from view by the huge truck parked behind it.
It had California plates.
My knees had gone weak.
There was nothing I could do
, nowhere I could run, and I’d had to face the ultimate consequence for all of my sins—looking at the hate on the face of the only man I’d ever loved and knowing that hate was directed at me.
He’d thought I was scared of him, I knew. That reflex to protect myself had come unbidden with the touch of an angry hand. But never for a minute would I believe William would strike me, even though part of me had wished he would instead of looking at me the way he did.
Then maybe the numbness would come and I wouldn’t have to feel this.
I hadn’t lied, though.
Jonathan shouldn’t be his.
Wiping my face with the back of my hand, I pulled myself together enough to stand. I swayed with dizziness with the sudden motion, but Jonathan would soon wake up from his afternoon nap, and I didn’t want him to find me like this.
I found my feet. My legs wobbled under me, and I fumbled out of my room and down the hall. The little house we lived in wasn’t much, but it was a hundred times better than what I’d grown up in, and I took good care of it because it was Jonathan’s home.
Late afternoon light seeped through the floral drapes on the living room window. The house was wrapped in shadows, cold and much too quiet. I crossed the room and flicked on the overhead lights in the kitchen. I blinked against the harsh light, and I was hit with another wave of nausea.
It seemed in the light too many things became clear. Every mistake I’d ever made. The fact that as much as I might like to, I could never take them back.
And unmistakable fear.
Above everything else, it was the most glaring. I had no idea what would happen now. Would William pack his things and go, disappearing into the night like he had before? Would he stay and seek me out, and if he did, what questions would he ask? And how would I ever answer when I didn’t know myself? Or would the anger that had clenched his hands into fists prevail, would he whisper accusations into the minds of his family and of this town. Would he try to take from me the only thing that mattered?
When We Collide Page 6