“Paige,” he said firmly. “I don’t give two shits about what Clay Forbes is feeling right now. And Gillian is a great friend, yes, but sometimes you have to put yourself first, Paige. You needed to get away and that’s what you did. You can’t start feeling guilty about needing time for yourself and taking it. You can’t live for everyone else all the time.”
His intense stare burned into my eyes, and I allowed his gaze to lock with mine. I took deep, heaving breaths to steady myself, grabbing both of his wrists with my hands.
“Okay,” I sighed finally. “Let’s go watch this movie. I’ll decide what to do about Rutherford tomorrow.”
Clay
I shuffled through campus with my hands shoved deep in my pockets and my hoodie pulled over my head. I may as well have been walking on a dead campus, because no one would share the walkway with me. They all veered off onto the grass when they saw who was coming toward them on the brick sidewalk.
I thought, while I walked, about how I used to stroll this campus hand-in-hand with Paige. I walked her to class, ate lunch with her at the food court, sat with her on the lawn. I went to school here for three full years before I even met Paige, but now that I’d had her…nothing was the same. The buildings were drabber, the air more cloying. I didn’t want to do any of this without her.
“Murderer,” a hiss came from behind me. I ignored it. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it, but it was the first time someone had said it basically to my face.
“How do you get to walk around out here while our best friend is…oh, that’s right, she’s dead?”
This time, I turned to see two senior girls standing on the sidewalk behind me. They weren’t afraid to share the space. They were pissed about the loss of their best friend. And like everyone else, they blamed me.
“I didn’t kill her,” I said dully.
“Sure you didn’t,” Bryn said nastily, her lip curling back over her teeth. Her platinum blond hair was piled high in curls on top of her head, and they shook as her body trembled. “None of us are stupid, Clay. You’re the only one who would have killed her.”
“Yeah,” Madison chimed in. She wasn’t as strong as Brynn, and she didn’t have the power to back up her words. She was blond, too, but her locks were straight and long, and the color was closer to honey than silver.
Her voice trembled as she spoke. “We know Paige didn’t have the balls to do it.”
My head snapped toward her, and she took an involuntary step backward.
“Don’t talk about Paige,” I said, my voice low and cold.
“Why?” Brynn spat. “If it weren’t for that little freshman bitch, Hannah would still be alive, wouldn’t she?”
I stepped toward her, just as a hand on the back of my hood jerked me back.
“Not worth it,” Rob whispered into my ear.
He turned me around and steered me in the opposite direction as Brynn and Madison.
“Did you hear what she said?” I asked Rob heatedly.
My voice was higher than it should have been. I didn’t want Paige’s name coming out of either of those girls’ mouths.
“Yeah,” Rob said grimly. He dropped his hand from my neck, walking beside me as we crossed the campus. “But everyone knows something went down between you, Paige, and Hannah, man. You can’t control what people say. And with the situation you’re in, you can’t go around terrifying innocent co-eds, either.”
“Brynn and Madison are not innocent!”
“I know,” Rob said. “But the police don’t.”
I glanced at him while we walked. He was right. He always was. I’d known Rob most of my childhood. We went to school together, we played soccer together. And he was always quiet, always reserved. He just understood the big picture more clearly than other guys did. He had a more mature grasp of how this life worked, while the rest of us blundered around trying to figure it all out. Me especially.
Another group of girls caught my attention as we neared the steps of the Student Center.
“Gillian!” I called.
She turned, and rolled her eyes when she saw that I was the one calling her. She walked over, along with Tima and her friend. Kelly.
“Have you heard anything?” I asked her.
“We just talked two days ago. And no, I haven’t. I would probably call you if I had.”
“Probably?”
Tima stepped up before Gillian could flare up. “You look rough, Clay. Have you been sleeping?”
I glared at her. “If you knew the person you loved most in the world was out there alone, thinking you’d done something to hurt them, would you be sleeping well, Tima?”
She frowned, and Rob slapped the back of my head.
“What the hell was that for?” I yelled.
“Don’t be rude,” he said, glancing at Tima and then glaring back at me. “She’s worried about your dumb ass. We all are.”
“I’m not,” Gillian snapped.
Kelly was silent up to this point, but she suddenly chimed in.
“I’m sure Paige is fine, you guys,” she said softly.
“She can’t be,” said Gillian, her voice just as quiet and tinged with heartache. “She’s hurt, and confused, and probably feeling pretty alone. She thinks Clay slept with another girl. I wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to open her heart again fully after the fire, but she did. For him.”
She glared at me again, her jade-green eyes accusing.
“Gill,” Tima said sharply. “He didn’t sleep with Hannah. You know that.”
“Yeah, but he got himself into that situation!”
She turned to me, her voice traveling up an octave. “You never should have gone over there that night, Clay!”
I stared at the pavement. “I know. I know it’s my fault Gill. I know I’m dirt under Paige’s feet. I just need to see her, so I can explain everything and start trying to make it up to her. She can’t have stopped loving me. She’s just in a dark place, and all alone.”
Kelly opened her mouth, but Rob spoke before she could. “You don’t know that she’s alone. I’m sure she’s with a friend or something. Someone helped her get out of here, remember?”
“Yeah,” I said thoughtfully. “Who could that be, though? I mean, we’re all still here, right?”
I suddenly glanced at Gill.
“Who does she still talk to from back home in Simpsonville?” I asked sharply.
She shrugged. “No one that I know of. She doesn’t have any family there. And she definitely doesn’t talk to anyone from high school.”
Students were walking by us, irritated as they had to press closer to our group than they wanted to in order to make it up or down the brick steps. We were standing directly in the middle of pedestrian traffic at the bottom.
I eyeballed some guys from the baseball team as they inched past, avoiding my gaze. Even the athletes were scared of me.
“No one?” Kelly asked insistently. “Not like an old boyfriend or anything?”
My eyes cut to Kelly’s face, seeing her for the first time. She didn’t know Paige as well as the rest of us, so I had naturally excluded her from our conversation. But now she made a valid point. Would Paige have been pissed enough at me to call an old flame? Did she even have one? I realized with guilt that I had no clue whether she did or not. I thought she might have mentioned a guy, one time, who she’d dated in high school before the fire happened. They’d broken up shortly after that, I thought. She hadn’t said they were still in touch, though.
Looking back at Gillian, I met her horrified gaze as she stared at me with wide eyes and both small hands covering her mouth. She looked like she’d seen a three-headed mutation.
“What?” I asked her, alarmed. “Gillian, what?”
“Holy shit,” she breathed. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.”
“Think of what?” Tima asked. “You’re scaring us, Gill.”
I grabbed Gillian’s shoulders and stared hard into her eyes, shaking her
a little.
“Gill! Do you know where Paige is?”
“No,” she whispered, eyes still wide and now blinking rapidly. “But I know who she’s with.”
Four
Paige
The morning after the movie, Monday morning, I awoke feeling changed. I laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out what it was that was nagging at me. I watched the light in the room brighten as the sun rose outside the window.
Then I clasped my hands over my chest and sat up straight in bed. I clutched at my t-shirt, bunching it under my fingers.
My heart.
It wasn’t beating in pure agony this morning. My first thought was of Clay, as it normally was. But thinking of him didn’t cause a mountain of bile to rise in my throat. It didn’t coat my skin with a thin film of sweat. I didn’t immediately picture him sleeping so peacefully beside Hannah in her bed.
Instead, I thought about what we’d gone through together as a couple since we’d met. I thought about how he made me feel when we were together. I missed him fiercely, and wondered what he was doing at the moment. I was still more than angry, still more than hurt and afraid at what seeing him again may do to me.
But I was able to follow through with that process without completely crumbling into a mute zombie, or a blubbering mess.
I was a little less broken today.
It was minute, but true all the same. My chest didn’t throb as painfully as it had the day before. I stared down at myself, trying to imagine what had caused such a metamorphosis.
I thought about Clay, tentatively picturing his chiseled face in my mind. He kept his brown hair cut short. I tried to imagine what it would look like if he’d let it grow long while I was gone.
I’d never given him a chance to speak about what I’d seen the night before I’d left.
The night Hannah had been killed.
I was too distraught about what happened when Hannah had called me. She’d called from Clay’s phone, taunting me about the fact that she had my boyfriend in her bed. I’d told he she was a liar, and she’d challenged me to come to her house myself and prove it.
So I had. She had Clay’s phone, but I knew there had to be an explanation. Because Clay and I had been through a lot together since we’d met. A lot of it had been drama with Hannah. Like the time she’d rigged a cupcake to explode at the soccer banquet and ripped my dress to shreds as I’d tried to escape. My naked body was exposed to everyone present as I fled the ballroom with my dress hanging in tatters around me.
Or the time she’d told my entire group of friends in a diner that I had set the fire that killed my family.
Clay had always defended me with Hannah, had always tried to make sure that I was safe from her. But in the end, it wasn’t nearly enough. She’d still gotten to me, in the worst way possible. She might as well have physically ripped my heart out. It felt the same when I’d walked into her house to find her naked in bed with Clay. He’d been sleeping at the time, and hadn’t even seen me enter the room. But I know he’d heard all about it the next morning.
So now I wondered what he would have said, how he would have explained it away. And the fact that I could think about him for this long without falling into a heap meant I was beginning to heal.
Again.
I bounded into the living room and landed on the couch, on top of a very asleep Beau.
“Hey!” he protested, swiping at the air.
But then he wrapped an arm around me and squeezed me to his side as he sat up with bleary eyes. “That’s kind of an awesome way to wake up, actually.”
I slugged him in the arm. “Pay attention! I’ve had a revelation.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“I have to go home.”
He leaned back on the couch and groaned. “Aw, Paige. I’ve actually dreaded the day you’d tell me that.”
I eyed him. “You have? Why?”
He deflected the question. “Why do you suddenly feel like you need to go back? Is this about the girl we saw at the theater last night?”
I hesitated, but decided to let him get away with the deflection “It is and it isn’t.” I just woke up feeling like I needed to face my life again this morning. I’m done hiding, Beau.”
He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Well, then, I guess I’m proud of you. You didn’t do anything wrong, so you don’t need to hide. If you’re’ going back, I support you completely.”
He stood up, stretching. His striped pajama pants hung low on his waist, and his perfectly aligned abdominal muscles flexed when he raised his arms over his head. “I guess I need to go get packed, then.”
“Packed?”
“Baby girl,” he said with a grin. “If you’re going back to Rutherford, then I’m going with you. Don’t think I feel like letting you walk away from me again.”
I chewed my bottom lip. “Beau, you don’t have to do that. I don’t want to disrupt your life here. You have a job—“
“Paige,” he interrupted. “You’ve made up your mind, right?”
“Right.”
“So have I,” he said. “If you’re going, I’m going. Luckily, Monday is my day off, so I can go with you and help you get settled. But Rutherford is only forty-five minutes away. I’m going with you. I’ll get a place, or I’ll drive over every day. I’m not leaving you again. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you walk back into Clay’s life again without a fight. I’m going.”
I sighed. There was no arguing with Beau when he was like this. He was similar to me that way. When he made his mind up, there was no point in trying to change it.
“Okay,” I said with a smile. Truthfully, I was grateful he was entering battle with me. I wasn’t sure how my friends and Clay were going to react to the fact that I’d taken off without a word. Beau would always have my back.
And the other truth was, I’d grown accustomed to having Beau in my life again this month. The fact that my heart was beginning to heal so quickly after being shattered so completely for the second time in my life was because of him.
“Let’s get packed.”
~**~
Beau’s truck pulled into Gillian’s apartment complex. My heart stuttered against my ribs. This morning, I’d been ready. I’d been ready to see my best friend again. I’d been ready to sleep in my own bed. I’d been ready to attend my classes, set foot on my beautiful, scenic college campus again.
And I’d been ready to face Clay.
But now, pulling into the parking lot, everything felt too real, too fast. My chest tightened, and I struggled to breath around the pressure squeezing my lungs.
A warm touch enveloped my fingers, and I looked down to see Beau’s hand covering mine.
“Breathe, girl. It’s going to be okay. One step at a time, right? Gill loves you and misses you like crazy, I’m sure. Let’s go in and hug your best friend.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, silently counting backward from ten.
“Okay. Let’s do this.”
Clay
I stomped my foot down on the gas pedal, wanting to get to Haygood as quickly as possible.
“So how do you know for sure this Beau guy lives in Haygood?” Drew asked, leaning forward from the backseat.
“Drew, what the hell are you eating back there?” Gillian asked in a voice made thin with disgust. “We didn’t even stop for food.”
“I found a candy bar under the seat,” Drew answered proudly.
“Oh, my God,” Gillian said, a choking sound gargling from her throat.
“What? It wasn’t opened.”
I glanced at Gill. “Focus.”
“Oh,” she said, tearing her eyes away from Drew. “Well, I talked to a girl we went to high school with. She said Beau moved to Haygood about six months ago for a job with the power company.”
“Did she give you his address?” I asked.
“No, she didn’t know it.”
I groaned in exasperation.
�
��So how are we supposed to find them?” Drew asked.
“We know where the power company is. Or, at least our GPS does. We should be able to find out something.”
I stomped harder on the gas.
My phone rang. I grabbed it out of the cup holder and answered.
“Hello?”
“Clay? Where are you?”
I cursed under my breath.
“What was that, Clay?” the smooth voice asked.
“I said, hey Mom,” I grumbled. “What’s up?”
“What’s up is that your father and I are standing on the doorstep at your apartment, and you are not here. Where are you?”
“Shit,” I cursed aloud this time.
“Clay Forbes!”
“Sorry, Mom,” I said tiredly. “I forgot you guys were coming. I…had some stuff to take care of today. Go to the hotel and I’ll see you guys tonight for dinner. Maybe. Okay?”
“Not okay, Clay Matthew. We have a lot to talk about. You’re in legal trouble, for God’s sake! We need to speak with your lawyer, and we need to—“
I heard my father interrupt her in the background.
“Good God, Maria, let the boy go. He’s busy. We’ll talk to him later.”
“But I—“
I clucked END, and placed the phone back in the cup holder.
“Your mom?” Drew asked sympathetically.
“Yeah, they’re at the apartment.”
“That’s right,” Drew mused. “I forgot they were coming today. What’s going on with your case?”
“We’re supposed to start talking about how we can find the real killer.”
Gillian stared at me. “That’s…creepy. You’re going to start looking for a murderer?”
“Well, yeah,” I answered. “Someone had to have killed Hannah. We know it wasn’t me. The police think it was, though, so they’re sure not looking.”
Gillian continued to look freaked out.
“Ugh.” She shuddered.
When we arrived in the tiny town of Haygood, Gillian used her cell phone to pull up a map that guided us to the power company headquarters. We all piled out of my car.
Settling Ashes: A New Adult/College Romance (The Ashes Series Book 2) Page 3