by Lexi Ryan
I shake my head. I don’t want to talk about Trish. “Remember when I told you I thought there was a chance Coach was the one driving the car, but Sebastian proved he wasn’t?”
“Yeah?”
“The police report for the accident said the deer was shot, and I thought it might have been a cover-up. So I decided someone needed to check under the car.”
“Oh, no,” she says.
“Yeah. There was blood under the car. Real blood.”
“Coach,” she says, as if she’s trying to wrap her mind around it.
“Not Coach,” I answer. “Coach’s Cherokee.”
She wraps her arms around herself and backs away, as if she’s not sure she wants to hear anymore.
“I told Arrow I thought it was Coach, and he told me . . . the night of the accident . . .”
She tenses her shoulders, shielding herself from the blow. “He’d borrowed Coach’s SUV. I never thought about it before, but I remember seeing him. He was helping to set up for the high school lock-in.” She meets my eyes and shakes her head.
All I can do is nod.
The color drains from her face all at once, and she spins around to the sink and throws up.
I’ve been so selfish—so caught up in my own grief that I never stopped to think about how hard the last few months have been on Bailey. I wasn’t the only one who lost someone I loved that night. Bailey lost Nic. I may not have approved of the way she loved him or the fact that she wanted to be with him, but she did. She’s been so quiet about her grief, so selfless in supporting me through mine because she knew I was dealing with losing my brother and Brogan all at once.
She turns on the tap and scoops handfuls of water into her mouth, then she just hangs her head over the sink. I wrap her in my arms from behind and rest my forehead on her back, letting her sobs move through me, and when she calms, I give the rest.
“He said he wanted to turn himself in but couldn’t because Coach covered it up, and he didn’t want him getting in trouble, too.”
Bailey sinks into the stool beside me and studies her wine. “God, it’s so obvious now, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
She shakes her head. “The drugs. The fights. He wasn’t himself after the accident, and we all thought it was grief, but he was ruining his life on purpose.”
“I told him I was going to the police. I told him I was turning him and Coach in. That’s where I thought I was going when I got in the car.”
“You can’t turn him in, Mia,” she says. “His life will be over.”
“I’m not going to.”
She closes her eyes, exhales slowly, then pops them open. “Mia, is he sure he was driving that night?”
“Yes. He doesn’t remember it, but Coach found him in the car and woke him up.”
She grabs her keys. “Come on.”
I put down my wine and follow her out the door. “Where are we going?”
“To get answers,” she says. “We don’t have the full story.”
Five minutes later, Bailey knocks on the door to Mason and Chris’s apartment, and I shake my head. “I don’t know if we should be doing this.”
“Yes, we should,” she says. “We need to find answers, and that’s why we’re here.”
“But maybe Sebastian was right. Maybe nothing good can come of digging up information from that night. If we don’t want people to look at Arrow and find out what happened, we shouldn’t ask too many questions.”
“We don’t know what happened,” she says. “Nobody does. Just be cool. It’s fine.”
Chris opens the door and sees Bailey. His eyes go wide. “Hey! Mason’s in the living room.” He seems surprised to see her here. He seems to have some opinions about Bailey’s relationship with Mason, and he’s not alone.
“Thanks,” she says. “But I’m not just here for him, ya know. You’re my friend, too.”
“Mmm,” Chris says, unconvinced. “Okay.”
We go to the living room and find Mason sitting at the TV with a PlayStation controller in his hands, some military game with lots of gunfire on the screen. He looks up and sees Bailey, does a double take, and then turns the TV off.
“Hey.” He puts the controller on the cluttered coffee table. “What’s going on?”
“Can’t I come and hang out with my friends?” she asks. “You guys show up at my place all the time. What’s the difference?”
Chris clears his throat. “No, we don’t.”
“Shut up,” Mason says to Chris. Then to Bailey, “It’s cool. You can come over anytime you want.”
“Mia got fired this morning,” Bailey says.
“Bailey!”
“What? It’s not like it’s a secret.”
I sigh. “My pride or something, okay?”
“Ouch,” Mason says. “Why’d the old man fire you?”
Bailey opens her mouth, but I shoot her a look and she closes it again. I don’t really need her talking smack about my dad to these guys.
“It’s complicated,” I say.
“Complicated?” Chris asks, “Or Gwen didn’t like you sleeping with Arrow?” Bailey and I both spin on him, and he holds up his hands, palms out. “I’m not judging! I just know she doesn’t like your relationship. It’s pretty much all over her face every time she sees you two together.”
“I’m not sleeping with Arrow,” I say. Then I grimace. “I mean, not anymore. Exactly.”
Bailey moves toward the kitchen. “It doesn’t matter. But speaking of people who are sleeping with Arrow—”
“Or not sleeping with him,” I say.
“Yeah, whatever.” She rolls her eyes. “What do you all know about him and Trish?”
“Oh, man,” Chris says, turning away from us and busying himself stacking dishes from the drying rack in the kitchen.
Mason shakes his head. “I don’t want to get into that. She’s a hot mess. A live grenade ready to blow.”
“A live grenade? You play too many video games,” Bailey says.
Mason lowers his voice and points his thumb toward the hallway. “And she’s sleeping in Chris’s room.”
Bailey and I both turn to stare at Chris.
“Not like that,” Chris says. “He’s right. She crashed here last night. Showed up at our door drunk—maybe high. I don’t know what she’s doing. She started going off about her dad, and we took her keys so she couldn’t drive home. I gave her my bed and slept on the couch.”
Bailey looks at me, then back to Chris. “What did she say about her dad?”
He slides a stack of plates into their spot in the cabinet and shuts the door. “Normal daddy-issue stuff. He’s a selfish asshole. He’s made her life hell.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. But I do know that the last thing I need is for Coach to catch his daughter at my house, high on God-knows-what. I’d have taken her home myself if she hadn’t threatened to slit her wrists if I did. Someone needed to keep an eye on her.”
“Do you guys remember her and Arrow being together on New Year’s Eve?” Bailey asks.
“Who could forget?” Mason mutters.
I have goosebumps and that uneasy tightening in my chest and stomach. I always feel like this when we talk about that night. It’s as if I’m standing on the side of the road again, the sleet slicing at my cheeks.
“Do you remember when they left together?” Bailey asks. “Who was driving?”
“They left together?” Mason asks. “I didn’t see them go.”
Chris frowns. “He could hardly stand up straight. Trish had Keegan help her get him into the car. It was crazy. Arrow never drinks like that. Or at least he didn’t before the accident.”
I draw in a ragged breath. She had Keegan help her get him into the car.
Someone knocks on the door, and Bailey and I look at each other.
“I’ll get it,” I say.
I pull open the door, and Sebastian pushes past me into the apartment. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. What did you
say to him?” he asks. He looks like shit. He’s always so composed, and today his eyes are bloodshot and his skin is sallow, like he hasn’t slept in a week. “What did you say to Coach?”
Bailey and I exchange a glance. We’re both still processing what Chris said, and I just want Sebastian to leave so we can talk about it more. Arrow wasn’t driving. It wasn’t his fault. But I need to know for sure before I go back to him, before I tell him he can stop hating himself for a night he can’t remember.
“Mia!” Sebastian growls. “What did you say?”
I pull my gaze away from Bailey and return it to Sebastian. “What are you talking about?”
“About his car. About the accident.”
Mason hops off the couch. “Coach was in an accident? Is he okay?”
“On New Year’s Eve,” Sebastian says, not sparing Mason a glance but continuing to skewer me with his gaze. “You said something to him. I told you to let it go.”
I shake my head. “No, I didn’t.”
Chris walks toward us. “New Year’s Eve?” He looks from me to Sebastian and back to me. “The dark SUV?”
“Are you sure, Mia? Because—” Sebastian drags his hands through his hair. “Fuck. You don’t understand what a good guy he was. He’s family to his players. Family. And he meant that and more to so many of us.”
“Coach didn’t have his SUV that night,” Chris says, and now he’s searching my face, too. All these people looking at me when I don’t have the damn answers.
“Talk, Mia!” Sebastian says.
Bailey steps forward, scowling at Sebastian with her arms folded across her chest. “Stop shouting at her.” He’s easily twice her size, but she’s coming at him like she’ll take a swing if she needs to.
“What’s going on?” Mason asks.
Sebastian sets his jaw and turns his gaze to the floor. “I have a friend at the station. Coach just turned himself in for the hit-and-run on Deadman’s Curve.”
Bailey and I draw a sharp breath at the same time.
Sebastian collapses onto the couch, elbows on his knees. “You were right,” he mutters. “I knew that damage didn’t look like it came from a doe, but I didn’t want to believe it. Goddammit, you were right.”
I spin when I hear a bedroom door open in the back hallway and Trish comes out, her T-shirt falling off her shoulder, her eyes bleary. “My dad turned himself in?”
Sebastian drags his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Trish.”
“That fucking asshole,” she mutters.
“Coach wasn’t driving his SUV that night,” Chris repeats.
“Arrow thinks he was,” Bailey says.
“Bailey!” I shake my head frantically, as if she could take the words back.
“That’s why he’s been such a mess,” she continues in a hurry. “Arrow can’t remember that night, but someone made him think he was driving.” She turns to Trish now and stares her down.
“Keegan had to help him into the car,” Chris says, and we all turn to Trish. “I watched him load Arrow into the passenger seat. You were driving.” His voice is deadly soft, and I’m not sure she can hear it.
As if all her bones dissolved, Trish crumbles to the floor. “I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do, and Daddy told me to go to my room. I shouldn’t have been driving.”
I draw back. She did it. There’s no more guessing or speculation. She did it. Arrow’s been torturing himself for months because she and her father made him believe he was guilty.
“Dad asked me if Arrow had been passed out the whole time,” she says, rubbing her arms. “When I said yes, that Arrow had been passed out since we left the party, Dad told me he’d take care of it. I didn’t realize how buzzed I was until I came over that hill. It was dark, and the sleet made it hard to see, and I shouldn’t have been driving.”
“You killed Brogan,” Mason says. He steps toward her, hands clenched at his sides, and Chris grabs him before he can go further. “Get out of my fucking apartment.”
Trish wraps her arms around her knees and rocks herself back and forth. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was scared, and I didn’t know what to do, and Dad said he’d take care of it. He told me to go to bed, and when I woke up the next morning, the cops had already been there to file the report on the deer, and he’d already made Arrow think he’d been driving.” She looks so pathetic, so utterly destroyed that I can’t hate her like I want to. Hate would be so much easier than this mess.
My head snaps up. “Sebastian, did you tell Arrow that Coach is at the station?”
“I went to his house first,” he says. “I was looking for you.”
Bailey stops pacing and looks at me. “Oh no.”
“Arrow knows Coach turned himself in.” I’m already grabbing for my phone and punching in Arrow’s cell number. “Voicemail,” I tell Bailey when Arrow’s message clicks on.
“What did Arrow say when you told him?” Bailey asks Sebastian.
He shakes his head. “He said he had to do something and he . . .” His frown deepens. “He got his keys and got in his car and left, but he’s on house arrest.”
Bailey rushes over to me and wraps me in her arms.
“Where would he have been going?” he asks.
I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again, like a child trying to wake from a bad dream. “The police station.”
Arrow
When I pull up to the police station, I’m trembling. I want to be this brave guy who isn’t scared to do what needs to be done. But even though I’m anxious to unload this weight from my shoulders, I’m terrified.
Coach is right. They’ll make an example of me. They’ll compare me to that affluenza kid, and my life will be over. My dream shattered on Deadman’s Curve.
But I’m ready to be free of this terrible secret, and the second Sebastian told me Coach had turned himself in, I knew it was time.
I don’t know what Coach is telling them. I don’t know if he’s throwing me under the bus or trying to take them blame himself—lie and say he was driving the car. But it doesn’t matter. If he’s turning himself in, it means I get to finally tell the truth without his fate weighing on my conscience.
I turn off my car and squeeze my eyes shut. I should have done this sooner. I should have insisted.
I swallow hard, pocket my keys, and climb out.
When I step into the station, the officer who arrested me for possession looks up from his desk.
“You’re supposed to be on house arrest,” he says.
Not far away, Coach stands with another officer, who’s pointing to the back hallway.
“I’m here to turn myself in,” I say.
“No, you’re not,” Coach says. “You can’t confess to a crime you didn’t commit.”
“Just because I don’t remember—”
The doors to the station burst open, and Mia and Bailey rush in.
“You weren’t driving!” Mia shouts.
Bailey nods frantically, and Trish steps through the doors and stands at my side. She’s a mess, her eyes red, her face wet with tears, her hands full of tissues.
“They’re telling the truth,” Trish says. Her voice shakes, but she stands firm.
“Don’t try to protect me,” I say.
Trish squeezes my arm. “You never drove that night, Arrow. You weren’t behind the wheel even once after you started drinking. You were passed out in the passenger seat.” She steps forward and wraps her arms around her waist. She meets the eyes of the officer standing by me. “I was the one driving.” She turns to me, her face falling. “I’m sorry I let you believe that it was your fault.”
“Trish.” I shake my head. “You didn’t—” I look to Coach, who’s avoiding my gaze. “I was in the driver’s seat. When you woke me up. When you found me in your yard . . .”
He lifts his eyes to mine, and I see the truth right there. “I moved you to the driver’s seat,” he says.
That doesn’t make any sense. If he was trying to protect
me, why would he put me there? None of this makes any sense. “You were trying to protect me. Right?”
Trish squeezes my arm again, hard. “He was trying to protect me, Arrow. I was driving, and he was trying to protect me.”
I’m frozen, but I feel as if I’m falling. Even when things were at their worst, when it felt like the whole fucking world was constructed to ruin me, my one constant was that at least there was Coach—someone who, right or wrong, loved me enough to take drastic actions to protect me.
Trish looks at the officer, takes a breath, and says, “I’m here to turn myself in for the hit-and-run accident that killed Nicholas Mendez and Brogan Barrett. My father covered it up and made Arrow think he did it, but I was the one driving the car.”
Mia
“I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now,” Bailey says, as we pull into our old trailer park. “Because personally, I feel like I’ve been sucked dry. What a fucking insane day.”
“No kidding.” I scroll through the dozens of group texts between Bailey, me, and the guys on the team. The responses to everything that went down today run the gamut from anger toward Arrow for months of silence, to pity for me, to some rather unpleasant suggestions as to what Coach’s punishment should be.
After the officers took Arrow, Trish, and Coach back for questioning, Mason and Chris showed up at the station to give their statements about seeing Trish drive the Cherokee, and Bailey and I were told to leave. I didn’t want to, but Bailey reminded me that my dad might like to know the truth about what happened that night.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she says as she parks the car. “And today just got a little more interesting.”
I pull my eyes away from my phone and follow her gaze to the front steps of Dad’s trailer. When I see her standing there, my heart squeezes so hard in my chest it brings tears to my eyes.
“Do you want to leave?” Bailey asks. “Because you’ve had a shit day, and you don’t need to deal with this right now. I can tear out of here and hide you at my apartment until she leaves.” She puts her hand on the gearshift, ready to pop the car into reverse.