by Lexi Ryan
“I love you,” he says. “How can you sit there and act like that means nothing? I’ve been so patient for you. Waiting when you weren’t ready.”
“You’re going to make this about sex? Like that excuses you?”
“Not just sex. Arrow.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Don’t bring him into this.”
“But isn’t it? Hasn’t it always been? You think I don’t see the way you look at him?”
I hold out my hand and am shocked to see it so steady when my gut is churning. “Just give me the keys so I can drive us home.” We’re off the side of the road at the top of Deadman’s Curve. The sun is gone, and our headlights cast out into the darkness that seems to go forever.
I reach for the door handle, and he hits the locks. We used to joke about the child locks being activated in this car, but right now it’s not funny.
“I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me.” He reaches behind my seat and pulls out a bottle.
“What are you doing?”
He unscrews the cap and drinks. It smells like rubbing alcohol it’s so strong. “Just having a little fun on New Year’s Eve.”
“Let me drive, Brogan. Please. I don’t want to fight with you while you’re drunk.”
He shakes his head. “You have to make me believe we shouldn’t be together. If I let you go again, I don’t think I’ll ever get you back. Make me believe it, Mia!”
I set my jaw. If he wants a hit in the gut, I’ll give it to him. “I slept with Arrow. The night you and I were broken up.”
His lips curl into a snarl, and he takes another drink.
“I’m not trying to hurt you, Brogan.” What a lie. I want to hurt him. I don’t like being trapped in this car. I hate being made to feel like a hostage. This isn’t healthy, and he’s getting drunker by the minute. This isn’t the man I know.
He takes another swig. “I thought you were saving yourself for marriage, but you were only saving yourself for him.” He offers me the bottle, and I shake my head. “But it doesn’t matter. We love each other. We can get through this.”
“No. I don’t want to pretend that we’re this happy couple anymore. If that were true, you wouldn’t be sleeping with her.” I move as fast as I can, reaching across him to hit the button for the automatic locks and then reach for the door.
Before I can open it, he wraps a hand around my arm and squeezes too tight, making the skin throb beneath his fingers.
“You’re hurting me.”
“Don’t go.” He loosens his hold on my arm but doesn’t let me go. “Promise me you’ll stay here until we figure this out.”
I take a breath. He’s not acting like himself. I can’t reason with him. “Okay,” I say, “but we have to stay here. You’re too drunk to drive.”
He looks out the window and nurses the bottle.
I surreptitiously fish my phone from my purse and type a quick text to my brother.
Deadman’s Curve. Brogan’s red Jetta. Come get me. SOS.
Brogan swings around to look at me right as I tuck my phone away. I fold my arms and promise myself Nic is on his way. I’ll sit here and talk to Brogan, and soon enough Nic will be here and everything will be fine. Maybe if I can calm him down, Nic could drive Brogan home, too. He’s in no shape to drive himself and I can’t leave him here.
Everything is gonna be fine.
I whisper the sentence to myself on repeat, but I don’t believe it. It feels like everything is spinning out of control. Like tonight is the beginning of the end.
Arrow
Two a.m.
“Wake up.”
My eyes are gritty and my head aches like every member of the BHU drum line is in there pounding on me. I squeeze my eyes shut again, trying to block out the pain.
“Arrow. Wake up.”
Coach.
Where the fuck am I? I pry my eyes open again, and Coach stands over me, leaning into the car down and shaking my shoulder.
I scan my surroundings, and everything tilts sideways. Everything’s blurry, and I fight through the cobwebs in my brain, trying to remember what happened tonight. The fight with Brogan. Then Mia. There was a party at a house off-campus, and I told Mason I’d swing by before returning Coach’s car. Then Trish grabbed me. She promised she could make me forget Mia, and that sounded so damn good. After that . . . shots. Too many shots. And then . . .?
“Get out of the car and come inside.”
I blink at the steering wheel under my hands, and my stomach pitches. Why am I in the car? “How did I get here?”
“You drove.” He mutters a string of curses after that, curses that feel directed at me and that I probably deserve, and I follow him into the house, fear tapping at my conscience and doing its part to sober me incrementally.
I sink onto the couch, my head spinning as I wait for a lecture. I hear water running in the kitchen. The squeak of the pipes as he turns off the tap, and then he shoves a glass of water into my hand.
“Drink.”
Sitting up, I bring the glass to my lips and take a drink. My stomach rolls when the water hits it, and I put the glass down and close my eyes. I just want to sleep.
Coach shakes his head and presses the glass back into my hand. “Drink the damn water first.”
I drain the glass against the protests of my stomach, and I swear I’m in that horrible drunken limbo where I’m still not sober but the hangover has already started, that half-conscious land of nausea and sleep as Coach leads me up the stairs, down a hall, and to a bed. The world goes black.
* * *
Five a.m.
I wake with a start. I’m gonna hurl.
I roll over, trying to bury the pain in my head into the pillow, and realize I’m sharing a bed with Coach’s daughter. Trish. She must have come in here and climbed in beside me after I passed out.
She’s asleep and huddled under the covers. She draws up a knee, and her toes skim my calf.
More memories from last night flash through my mind—Trish laughing with me. Dancing. Licking tequila off her cleavage. The images are bright and loud against my headache, and I just want them to go away.
“Dad’s here.” Her whisper, hot and suggestive against my ear. “I promised him I’d be home for the ball drop, but I’ll be in my bed after that. I’d rather not be alone.”
I hear something and realize it was my phone that woke me. I pull it from my jeans and blink at the screen.
Mia Mendez.
Beside me, Trish mumbles something in her sleep. Mia’s calling me, and Trish is curled against my side.
I decline the call with a swipe of my finger and silence the phone before closing my eyes and letting sleep pull me under again.
* * *
Six a.m.
Trish clings to me in her sleep, her hand wrapped around my arm.
I hear people talking downstairs, then the sound of footsteps up the stairs and coming down the hall.
The bedroom door opens slowly, and Chris walks through, wincing when his eyes land on me. “I thought you might be here.” His eyes flick to Trish and back to me, and he shakes his head.
“How’d you know?”
“Pictures on Facebook of you two all over each other.”
Facebook. Which means everyone’s going to know I spent my night with Trish. Mia’s going to know.
I expect a lecture, or at the very least that look of disappointment Chris has mastered so well. He finds my shoes on the floor and tosses them onto my chest.
“Come on. We’ve gotta go.”
I sit up and wince when the movement sends pain jackhammering through my head. “Where?”
“To the hospital.” His eyes scan my face, and even hungover and miserable, I recognize the grief in his eyes. “There was an accident.”
My gut lurches. “Mia?”
“Brogan.” He swallows and shifts his eyes to the wall. “It’s not good.”
I hop out of bed and slide on my shoes. This doesn’t feel real and I’
m not sure it is, but I follow Chris wordlessly to the door.
Trish rolls over in bed. “Arrow? Where are you going?”
“He’ll call you,” Chris says. “Come on.”
My feet aren’t steady under me. My brain is a bunch of floating pieces in my skull. With every step down the stairs, I almost anticipate the floor falling out from under me. I’ll fall and then I’ll wake up.
Brogan. It’s not good.
We hit the base of the stairs, and I turn instinctively toward the TV. Coach is on the couch, staring at the screen, transfixed.
“One man dead and another critically injured this morning after a hit-and-run accident on Deadman’s Curve.”
I turn to Chris, and he nods. “Dead?” I ask.
“Mia’s brother didn’t make it,” he whispers. “Brogan . . . we don’t know about Brogan yet.”
Coach turns away from the TV and his eyes lock on mine like he’s trying to tell me something.
“Sorry about showing up at your door at this hour, sir,” Chris says, his Texas accent thicker this morning. It does that when he’s tired.
Coach inclines his chin. “Arrow will meet you outside, son. I need to talk to him for a minute.”
Chris cuts his eyes to me.
“I’ll only be a sec,” I promise.
He nods and closes the door behind him as he leaves.
“Police are investigating, trying to find the owner of the dark SUV responsible for the accident,” the woman on the TV says. “If you know anyone, please call the anonymous tip line listed on the bottom of your screen.”
Coach stands in front of me, and I get that out-of-body feeling again. Like nothing is happening as it should and everything is fragmented. “You got here before midnight, and you snuck into Trish’s room.”
I blink at him. “What?”
“If anyone asks. You got here before midnight and snuck into Trish’s room to be with her.”
“How did I get here?”
“You drove.”
“The police will arrive any minute. I hit a deer at the end of the drive this morning.” He shakes his head. “Stupid, really, but I was distracted because I saw your Mustang in the driveway and I knew you were with my daughter. Just went out for a drive to clear my head, and the stupid deer ran in front of me.”
“You’ve had too much to drink.”
“I have to find someone who can drive the Cherokee back to your dad’s.”
Trish grinning against my mouth. “And then you know where to find me.”
Trish pressing her lips to my cheek, lifting her phone, and snapping another picture.
The ground shifts under me. “Coach?”
“Tell me you understand.”
I shake my head. “What happened?”
“You’re a good kid.” His eyes fill with tears, and I’ve never seen him like this. Not when I took our team to the state championships. Not when his wife died. Never. This is a man who doesn’t cry. “Everyone makes mistakes, and I won’t let this one destroy your life. Let me fix it.”
Out front, I hear the pop of gravel spitting out from under tires.
“If I—” I try to swallow, but I can’t. There’s too much fear in my throat. Too much confusion and horror.
“No, Arrow. It’s done. It’s taken care of.”
Footfalls sound on the front porch, and then three sharp knocks at the door.
Coach swipes at his eyes. “It’s done. Go to the hospital. Brogan needs you.” He crosses to the door and pulls it open. “Thanks for coming out,” he tells the officer. “Just saw on the news what happened last night.”
The officer waves a hand. “Not much we can do about that.”
“You know what Mendez was like,” Coach says. “Makes you wonder if it wasn’t just a matter of time before one of his rivals took him out.”
“Just too bad Barrett had to be collateral damage.” The officer shakes his head somberly. “Where’s the deer?”
“Put her in the garage. Hope you don’t mind. She’s a beaut. Hate for her to go to waste.” With one final look at me over his shoulder, Coach leaves, taking the officer to the garage.
When I find my way to Chris’s car, my insides are trembling and I can’t make them stop. I’m so afraid the truth is written all over my face and Chris will know, but he’s in his own world.
I pull my phone from my pocket and see a dozen missed calls and texts. I punch the number for my voicemail and hold the phone to my ear.
She’s crying. “Arrow, it’s Mia. Something terrible happened. Brogan. My br-br-br— We’re at the hospital. So sorry. So, so sorry.”
“Oh, shit. Pull over.”
Chris yanks his car to the shoulder, and I barely get the door open before I heave the contents of my stomach onto the ice-glazed grass.
When we get to the hospital, half the team and dozens of our friends fill the waiting room, but my eyes instantly pick Mia out of the crowd of faces. Her white dress is stained with blood and her face is pale.
“How did I get here?”
“You drove.”
Her eyes lock on mine, and I want to cut myself open right there. Spill my guts onto the floor so I don’t have to live with this pain and horror and ache inside me. Her brother is dead. Brogan might die.
“Everyone makes mistakes, and I won’t let this one destroy your life.”
I look away, find a seat, drop my head, and try to pray that this nightmare will end.
Part IX: After
May, four months after the accident, the day after Brogan’s funeral
Arrow
My first thought when I wake up to a gun in my face is that the police have come and they’re here to finally arrest me for what I did.
My second thought is that I never locked the door or activated the alarm last night. I was on my way down to do it when I came into Mia’s room.
“Get the fuck away from my daughter.”
The gun shakes. It’s no more than an inch, maybe two, from my face, but I can’t bring myself to confirm that it’s Mia’s father on the other end. I can’t get my eyes off the barrel of the gun that is way too fucking close to Mia’s head.
Slowly, I release her, sit up in bed, and raise my hands, never taking my eyes from the barrel of the gun.
“Daddy?” Mia sits up beside me. “Daddy, put that down!”
“They told me—down at the bar—they told me my daughter was living with the Woodisons. They told me, and I told them they were fucking liars.”
“Daddy, put the gun down.”
“He took my daughter. He took my daughter from me and made her into a liar. You said you were living with Bailey.”
I stand, keeping my hands raised by my head, palms out. I have the distant thought that I’m glad we put on clothes before we fell asleep, minimal as they are. Mia’s in a T-shirt, and I’m in my boxer briefs. “Mr. Mendez, this is between you and me. Let’s go downstairs. We’ll make some coffee.”
His hand shakes harder, and the scent of whiskey is so potent it rolls off him. “I don’t want your fucking coffee. You can’t talk your way out of this.”
“Daddy!” Mia says.
He sniffs and clears his throat. “They told me my daughter was living with the Woodisons, and I told them they were liars.” He swings on her, the gun going with him.
She gasps to find it pointed at her head. “Go ahead,” she says, her voice hard now. “I know I’m no use to you anyway. But killing me won’t bring Nic back.”
“Don’t you dare speak my son’s name to me. You’re here, whoring yourself like your mother did.”
“Daddy—”
“They think they can take whatever they want just ’cause they have all the money, but you let them.”
Footsteps sound down the hall. Boom. Boom. Boom. “What the fuck are you doing in my house, Mendez?”
My dad’s home.
“You think you can come into my house wielding a gun like some kind of maniac?”
I hold my bre
ath. Dad steps forward and pulls the gun from the man’s hand as if it were nothing more than a toy.
“Get out,” Dad says. “Before I call the cops.”
“I hate you.” Mia’s father shakes and spits the words. His face blooms red. “I hate you so much.”
“I know you do,” Dad says. “But it doesn’t give the right to bring a gun into my house. If you’d like, we can have the authorities weigh in on that. But I think you’d rather they not know you were here this morning. I think, given your track record of drunk and disorderlies, you’d rather they not know you broke into my house and put a gun in my son’s face.”
“You seduced my wife and stole my daughter.”
Uriah clicks the safety on the gun and folds his arms. “You tell yourself whatever you need to, old man. But maybe your daughter’s just trying to keep your lights on, keep you fed. Maybe she’s here because somebody has to make money so that you—piece of shit—don’t wither away and die. Maybe she’s just trying to pay her way through school so she has a fighting chance at a life better than the one you’d have her lead.”
I didn’t give Dad enough credit. I figured he had no idea what her reality was, but he’s known all along. He’s never as clueless as he lets on.
“And I’m not speaking to you about Isabella,” Dad says, referring to Mia’s mother. “Get out of here, Mendez.”
“Gimme my gun back.”
My father laughs. “You think I’m an idiot? Now go.”
With one last look at Mia, and betrayal all over his face, her father turns and walks out the door, and we all hold our breath. We listen to his slow, heavy tread as he makes his way down the stairs.
Mia stares at my father. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She grabs a pair of jeans off the floor. “I’ll take him home. I’m so sorry,” she says as she rushes out the door.
I start to follow, and Dad grabs my arm. “House arrest, remember, son?”
“Mia!” I call, and I hate how trapped I feel. I should be with her while she talks to her father. I should talk to him myself. But what would I say? I’m love with your daughter, and by the way, I killed your son.