Defiance Falls

by Ali Dean

  I studied him and he let me. Actually, he looked worried. I’d never seen Cruz Donovan worried.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked him.

  He didn’t ask for clarification. “I’m waiting for you to ask me another question. And then I’m wondering what you’ll say when I can’t answer it.”

  I huffed out a sound, half sigh half chuckle.

  “I’m so confused.”

  “Look,” Cruz said, “it’s better you don’t know.”

  “Don’t know what? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I know.” Then he shifted from leaning forward with his elbows on his knees to leaning back on the log. He spread his legs open.

  “Come here.”

  I didn’t know anything, not really. Not about what was happening between us. Not about what was going on with his crew. Not what I wanted out of my life or who I wanted to be. But I did know that comfort from Cruz would help.

  So I went over to him and settled between his legs until we were both facing the fire. Part of me, a big part of me, wanted to straddle him and hold his disturbingly handsome face in my hands. Press my body into his. But overwhelmingly, it was his steady, strong, reassuring presence that pulled me to him now, perhaps even more than lust. He rested his chin on top of my head, and his hand rested flat on my belly. His thumb rubbed up and down, and his legs captured my own.

  We stayed sitting like that for a long time. A very long time. I tried to think about the volleyball game, how we’d been a good team, how Cruz looked moving in the sand. I focused on the feel of the salt water when I’d run into the ocean. My mind kept drifting to what it all meant, where the guys had gone, but I forced myself into the moment, refusing to analyze anything.

  My bathing suit dried, and Cruz slipped his hoodie on me, zipping it over my chest, his knuckles brushing my collarbone. I thought he would kiss me then, but instead, he settled me back against his chest, this time with one hand on my thigh, the other on my hip.

  Like all five of the guys, Cruz had a bit of reputation with the ladies. He wasn’t a slut. If any of them took that title, it was probably Bodhi. Or Spike. Cruz was too selective and intentional about his hookups to be slutty. But there had been a lot of them, and none of them had been girlfriends. The way Cruz was acting, it wasn’t friendship. It wasn’t going in the direction of a hookup. And I wasn’t his girlfriend. This should all freak me out, especially knowing our past. It didn’t. It exhilarated me. Calmed me from the anxious thoughts that often trickled in unbidden. I might have felt untethered at times, uncertain of my future or my life plan, but with Cruz, I could just be.

  Chapter Seven

  I rode through the next day in a blissful haze. Cruz had taken me home on his motorcycle sometime in the middle of the night. He’d walked me to my door, kissed me on the cheek, right under my eyelashes actually, and said good night. I had decided to just let things roll and not overthink it. Maybe I was still holding onto some heartbreak from years ago, but if I questioned all of this before anything had really happened, it’d never go anywhere. And I wanted it to go somewhere.

  Besides, while nothing had really happened physically, you know, in terms of rounding the bases or whatever, I knew that we were intertwined now in a way we hadn’t been two days ago.

  Bodhi and Emmett had group texted me to ask how the rest of my night was with Cruz. I knew they didn’t want a run-down on the details, just to know things were all good and I got home fine. So that’s what I told them.

  I was exhausted after two late nights in a row, and went to bed earlier that night. Dad still wasn’t home from his work trip. He’d planned to leave after dinner last night and had never been gone more than two nights in a row, so I left him a note I’d crashed early, and there was leftover lasagna from Rosita’s in the fridge.

  But when I woke Thursday morning, Dad still wasn’t home. He almost never texted me when he was on work trips.

  Dad could be very single-minded when he got in his computer world. I understood it. I was that way about soccer. This was the first time I could remember when I wasn’t half-consumed by my soccer training.

  After tryouts on Thursday, Louise asked if I’d scheduled my college visits yet.

  “Just UMass and Harvard. I want to do one other Ivy and one other big school like UMass with a top soccer program, but I can’t decide which ones.”

  She scrunched up her face like she always did when I spoke about my college choices. “Hazel, you’ve got a better shot at Ivy than anyone – not counting Cruz Donovan or the Malones. If I were you, I’d set my sites on Princeton, Yale or Harvard.”

  I knew how Louise felt about colleges. Her entire life purpose thus far was to get into the Ivy League. She wasn’t alone in that life approach either. Defiance Falls was funny like that. People around here believed those schools gave you a golden ticket in life. That you could do whatever you wanted, be whoever you wanted, overcome any obstacle. No matter how rude, annoying, weird, mean a person was, they got a nod of approval if their alma matter was in the Ivy League. At least around these parts.

  Maybe it had something to do with the Malones owning half the town. Every single person in that family had gone to Harvard for the past two hundred years. Nope, longer than that. Some of the Malones were involved in its founding, so since the 1600s, or whenever it was. And I wasn’t exaggerating. They only married Harvard people too. Odd? Yes.

  “Where are your visits?” I already knew. Of course I did. She’d talked my ear off about it all summer. I liked Louise. I did. But the fixation on college admission was getting tiresome, and in a way, this was only the beginning. We had months of applications and visits ahead.

  She rattled off the schools, which ones were getting day visits and which ones got overnights. She’d be missing a couple of our weekend games for the visits.

  “I heard the Malones showed up at a Lake party.” I’d only been half paying attention to her, but she must have been talking about Harvard before segueing to this.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Wait.” She stopped mid-stride on our way to the parking lot, remembering something. “Someone said you were there.”

  “Yeah, I stopped by.” For some reason, I didn’t want to talk about this with Louise. She was one of my friends, sure, but she was judgey about the party people. The party people comprised more than half the student population at our school, but she had grouped them all into the same category – underachievers who didn’t use their time efficiently. I knew she struggled with this judgment when it came to some of the top athletes, especially the ones who still made high honor roll every quarter, but she maintained her position. It wasn’t articulated as such, but I knew she looked at them with a bit of scorn. As if she knew something about life they didn’t understand yet. I wasn’t so sure about that. Could be the other way around. That’s what I wanted to find out, at least.

  “Huh. Yeah, well, I thought it was interesting. I guess Cruz Donovan and his guys almost fought them? You know there’s some kind of power war going on between Braven and the Malones, right?” Braven was the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, and it was owned by Cruz Donovan’s family. His mother had been Laura Braven, and she’d passed away six years ago.

  I’d heard rumors about strife between the Malones and the Bravens, but never paid much attention. My ears perked up now, though. Maybe because I’d seen the tension firsthand. Maybe because I knew now it trickled down to Cruz as well.

  “Yeah. What’s that all about, anyway?” I didn’t expect Louise to be caught up on most gossip, but she worshiped people with power and prestige, and both the Malones and Donovans fell into that category. There were exceptions to her judgments, I suppose.

  “I know that Seamus Malone, Jack Donovan and Laura Braven all went to Harvard and were in the same class year. People say that Seamus wanted Laura and she picked Jack instead.”

  “That’s what supposedly caused the entire Malone family to dislike the B
ravens and Donovans? I thought it was older than that, bigger.” I’d never heard anything about it being based on a scorned lover. Seamus was Sean and Neil Malone’s father.

  “Well, it did go back decades, centuries, and I don’t know about that. I’m guessing business competition or whatever caused the families to be rivals. I heard Seamus wanted to bring the Bravens and Malones together to put all that rivalry to rest. His interest in Laura was strategic, but she fell in love with Jack Donovan and didn’t care that his family didn’t have as much in the way of money and connections as the Malones. It’s not exactly like the Donovan name didn’t carry weight in its own right, but not on the same level as the Malones.”

  I didn’t really know the wealth and power hierarchy, didn’t understand the nuances of it. Everyone in Defiance Falls knew Braven was the biggest pharmaceutical company in the world, and that the Bravens had owned it and now Cruz was next in line. Nearly every family in Defiance Falls had someone in their family employed by Braven. Everyone also knew the Malones had a finger in everything that went down from Defiance Falls to Boston. Because of this, there were divided loyalties and sometimes disputes. That was the extent of what I knew. Perhaps it was more complicated, more personal.

  Louise summed it up by dismissing most of what she’d told me. “I’m thinking people just like to talk about the three most powerful families in New England and create soap opera lives for them. It doesn’t help they all look like actors on television either. But I doubt there’s much truth to it.”

  The thing was, everyone suspected the Malones were involved in nefarious activities. There’d been whispers about it all the way back to elementary school. But that’s all it was. Whispers. They had people in real estate, courthouses, law enforcement, hospitals, universities, and various business ventures big and small. There was just too much power, too much authority, too much when it came to that name. Who knew?

  Louise was still going on. “It’s going to be weird with all of them at Harvard next year. I know they’ll be on different teams and it’s a big campus, but Cruz and his guys are used to being at the top, and the Malones already have that spot at Harvard.”

  Right. Harvard had graduate programs too, with Malones of all ages scattered in different departments. Cruz would be a freshman, without his guys.

  “Wait. You think all five of them are going to Harvard?” This idea set my heart racing.

  We were still stopped, standing a few rows back from where we’d parked our cars. Louise frowned at me. “The Boyd twins are your cousins,” she stated, unnecessarily. “They don’t talk to you about this?”

  I shifted on my feet. Well, no. Our family didn’t sit around talking about college all day. Hell, my family didn’t talk about the future at all really. No one asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up or things like that, and I preferred it that way.

  I shrugged. “I figured Bodhi and Emmett would go to the same school. I didn’t think it would be Harvard.” I didn’t say that they wouldn’t get in. I mean, it’s unlikely that anyone other than me and Cruz Donovan would be accepted to Harvard from our high school. I wasn’t trying to be mean, it was just the way it was. Everyone knew Harvard had quotas for how many kids from certain high schools were accepted into each class, and they rarely deviated from that. In the past, it was almost never more than two or three from Defiance Falls High, and two or three from Mayflower Academy. The Malones took a good portion of those places from the Academy, since there seemed to be a relative in nearly every class year, but sometimes there were others too. The Academy only had about twenty percent the class size of Defiance Falls High, but they still got the same quota because, well, privilege, I guess.

  Anyway, the idea that all five boys would go to Harvard had never occurred to me. They were all excellent soccer players, and Peter Moody for one was highly intelligent. He could maybe take the third spot, but I didn’t know if he applied himself in classes or just nerded out on his own time. Spike and the twins did okay in school, but so did plenty of others. Being a great athlete and a decent student was not enough to get into Harvard.

  Louise was still looking at me. “I guess I figured they’d go to UMass Thatcher.” That was my other top choice. Really, I didn’t think I’d leave the Boston area. It was between Harvard and UMass Thatcher, which was just outside of Boston. I wanted to visit other colleges to help make the decision, but I saw no reason to go so far away from Dad, my grandparents, the Boyds. The look on Cruz’s face last night when he said goodnight flashed in my mind but I ignored it.

  “Hmm, maybe,” she said thoughtfully. “UMass is only a short drive from Harvard. But I’m not the only one who assumed Cruz would figure out a way to keep them at his side at Harvard.”

  I knew that group was tight, we all did. It was odd in a way. Aside from the Boyd twins, they weren’t blood-related. But the bond and loyalty between them was strong. Maybe even like a gang, but without violence or spilled blood or whatever happened to get into gangs. Well, there was violence, but as far as I knew, not of the gang-variety.

  Louise started walking toward her car. “Well, I’m not putting much stock in Harvard. My focus is on Brown or Penn. Their soccer teams aren’t as strong so I’ve got a better shot.”

  I knew her whole philosophy. At the Ivies, you didn’t get athletic scholarships. Instead, being good at a sport helped you gain admission, that’s it. Louise told me that each sport had a certain number of people they got to put on a list for admissions, and each person on that list got a number depending on how much the coach wanted them on the team. She told me I’d get the highest number, the most weight, so even if I got a few Bs in my advanced placement classes, I could get in. I didn’t get Bs, but anyway, the Harvard coach had told me she could more or less secure my spot given I had over a 4.0 GPA.

  Louise didn’t think she’d be on the list for Harvard, because it was currently the best Ivy for soccer. Which was another reason it was one of my top choices. The women’s team had made it to the national playoffs twice in the past five years, a huge feat for a school that didn’t give out athletic scholarships.

  I had a headache.

  “Oh, did you want to edit each other’s essays tonight? We could meet at my place.”

  I’d forgotten all about our tentative plans to do that. I hadn’t even started my essays.

  “I still need to write mine. I’ll text you if I finish?”

  She’d gotten to her car and tilted her head at me. “Wait, you mean you might write the whole thing today? Seriously?”

  I shrugged. “Or tomorrow.”

  She shook her head before ducking into her car. “Okay.”

  Dad still wasn’t back when I got home. After showering, making a sandwich, and banging out a couple of the essays for college applications, it was dinner time. And Dad still wasn’t home. I also hadn’t heard anything from my cousins or Cruz since early Wednesday morning, or Tuesday night, however you looked at. They’d already been doing warmups when we’d left the fields today and yesterday.

  I could text Louise, but I wasn’t in the mood. Instead, I walked into town, trying to decide what I wanted for dinner. Maybe it was a little weird we ate out every night except for Sundays, when we ate at my grandparents. But I’d known this for so long, I didn’t think much about it. Dad had given me a credit card at age twelve. It was for food mainly, but sometimes I did the hotel reservations for tournaments, soccer registration, the occasional clothing, stuff like that. Dad once asked me why there was a $200 charge at the liquor mart when I was fourteen and we discovered the twins had been behind that. They’d stolen the card and given it to a college kid to buy liquor for them. Otherwise, Dad trusted me.

  I passed Patriot Taphouse and decided on a burger and milkshake. I usually ordered takeout but it was a nice night and they had a rooftop patio. This way, I could be by myself, without being alone. When I got up there and discovered it was crowded, I debated whether to stay. There was a band setting up on the stage though, and one stoo
l left at the bar. I’d forgotten they had local bands on Thursdays.

  Sitting with my blueberry milkshake, I checked my phone for anything from Dad, or you know, anyone else, before sliding it back in my purse. Dad and I had a rule of sorts. No electronics at the dinner table. That was our time together. I usually kept the same rule even when I was alone, out of habit I guess. I tried to chill without letting my mind wander to my conversation with Louise, the situation with Cruz, or where the guys were going to be next year.

  “I heard they found him in the bathtub. Slit wrists.”

  I was facing sideways from the bar, looking out over the town. The words came from the guy on the stool beside me. I didn’t recognize his voice, but now, I was listening.

  “Flynn Malone? Shiiiiit,” another guy said. “Was it on the news? I didn’t hear anything.”

  “It’ll probably hit tonight. It happened yesterday. So yeah, it’s weird there’s this delay.”

  I wondered how the guy even knew about it. Spinning on the stool, I tried not to be too obvious as I eyed the two dudes sitting beside me. They were maybe early thirties, Dad’s age, and both were in scrubs. They must have come straight from shifts at Defiance Falls Hospital.

  “So, suicide?” the one with glasses asked.

  “Looked like it.”

  Wednesday morning, when I was riding my high from the night at the beach with Cruz, Flynn Malone was lying dead in a bloody bathtub. Flynn was the patriarch of the Malones. At least he had been throughout my lifetime. He was Sean and Branden’s grandfather, Seamus’s father. The same Seamus who Louise had been talking about earlier today.

  I shivered and a trickle of unease went down my spine, a flicker in my mind. The band started then, something jazzy, and I admired the lead singer. Her voice was fantastic. She was curvy, with long dark curls tumbling down her back. I couldn’t hum a tune so I was in awe of anyone with pipes. I also liked her outfit. It was this jumper thing that looked like it came straight out of the sixties, with five-inch wedges that might have come from the nineties. Somehow, she looked stylish, sexy, and cute all at once.