by Lexi Ryan
“No. Go on. I need to think anyway.”
“Promise me you won’t do anything rash,” he says, and when I just look at him, he adds, “At least not until after we have a chance to talk this out together. I lost your mom.” His voice grows thick and weakens until he has to swallow to finish. “I can’t lose you, too.”
I nod. “Then we have to find a way to make this right.”
Dad’s silent on the drive back to his trailer. He took a cab to the Woodisons’—thank God for that moment of good judgment. Since I met Arrow, I feared the day my father would learn how I felt for him. I let that fear dictate my choices, and now that it’s happened in one of the most mortifying scenarios imaginable, I’m ashamed I let it rule me for so long. But more than that, I’m ashamed I’ve passively accepted my father’s addiction.
Parking the car in the gravel in front of his trailer, I cut the engine and take a long, slow breath. “I’m not my mother,” I tell him.
He lifts his chin. There are tears on his cheeks. “You’re just like her.”
Kids play in the empty lot across the street, laughing and chasing each other with water guns. It could be a picture from my childhood. “I work for the Woodisons, true, and I’ve fallen for Arrow, but I’m not her. I didn’t cheat on my husband or leave my family behind. I took a good job with a wealthy family so I could pay for my school and take care of you.”
“You let him ruin you.”
He still won’t look at me, and I swallow back the hurt. “If you think my only value was in my virginity, then I guess you’re right.” I take another deep breath and watch the kids play, their bare feet flying through the thick green grass. “I’m really smart, Daddy. I know you know that, but you never would admit that it mattered. And I sing. I’m good at it, and it makes me feel alive. I’m a lot more than an unmarried girl who gave up her virginity to a sweet boy who made her feel special.”
“I know that.” His voice is low and quiet. “Why do you think I wanted more for you than to be their servant?”
I press my palm to my chest and squeeze my eyes shut. “There’s no shame in working your way to a better life. I’m proud of the work I do. I don’t want to do it forever, but that’s exactly why I’m working so hard. So I can have better down the road.”
When he finally turns to look at me, another tear slides down his cheek and slices through my heart. “I’m so sorry.” He scrunches up his nose and draws a breath in through his teeth. “I panicked. I never should have gotten my gun. Don’t hate me. You’re my Mia. I can’t lose you, too.”
My eyes burn and the world goes blurry for the heartbeat before the tears start rolling. My dad’s a lazy, misogynistic drunk, but that doesn’t change the fact that I love him, and I’ve needed to know that he loves me too.
“This can’t go on.” I reach over the console, take his hand, and squeeze it. Tears thicken my throat. How is it we can know something for years, but it only seems real when we finally say it out loud? “You’ve got a problem with alcohol, and we need to get you some help.”
“I’m fine,” he says. His lower lip trembles, and he looks so much older than his fifty years.
“No you’re not, Daddy. You haven’t been fine since Mom left. And it’s time to do something about that. It’s time to sober up.”
He holds my gaze and shakes his head. “I already tried AA. Nic had me going before he . . .” He squeezes his eyes shut and exhales slowly. “It didn’t work.”
“Let’s get you to bed,” I say, because I don’t want to argue. Not today. I promise myself I’ll try again tomorrow, but this morning my heart aches too much to carry on like this.
I get him in the house and tuck him in, then I search for liquor bottles—under the bed, behind the toilet, under the sink—and dump everything I find. I clean the kitchen and tidy the living room and kiss my sleeping father on the forehead before I leave.
When I go out front, I see Sebastian’s car at his grandmother’s trailer and decide to tell him that Dad’s promised to stop drinking.
The screen creaks and rattles as I knock.
“Come on in,” Sebastian calls.
I step into the trailer and smile at the scent of chocolate chip cookies. The trailer is almost identical to Dad’s, though this one’s been better maintained, and where Dad’s feels small and cramped, this one feels warm and cozy. This one reminds me of how Dad’s was before Mom left—always a blanket on the back of the couch and the smell of cookies in the air.
Sebastian sits at the kitchen table with a manila folder in front of him. The folder is open to a thick stack of papers, but he’s holding a single page and staring at it like he’s trying to interpret hieroglyphs.
“What is that?”
Sebastian’s head snaps up. “Mia. I didn’t know it was you.”
I step forward, and he drops the paper on top of the pile and closes the folder.
“Nothing.” He steadies his gaze on the wall behind me.
“Is it about the accident? Are those the police reports you said you’d get me?”
“I didn’t know you’d be here. I wanted to look through them first.” He grimaces.
“Let me see it. Let me see the one you were looking at when I walked in.”
“Mia.”
“You found something, didn’t you? You figured it out.”
Standing, he unzips his backpack and slides the folder inside. “Let this go, okay? Nothing good is going to come of digging any further than you have.” He pushes through the screen door, and I follow him onto the front porch.
“It’s Coach. Emmitt Wright hit Brogan and Nic.”
“Shh.” He does a quick look around us to make sure no one heard me but we’re alone. “Stop talking. Right now. Just stop this while you’re ahead.”
“He did it.” I know it’s true, because I can see it in Sebastian’s eyes—that horror, that need to protect someone who’s protected him. I imagine I’d see the same thing in Arrow’s eyes in this situation. He’d feel trapped by the truth. He’d be torn between his innate sense of justice and the man who’s been all but a surrogate father to him. He’d be a mess, and—“Oh my God. It was Coach, and Arrow knows.”
“Coach hit a deer.” Sebastian stands and throws his backpack over his shoulder. “His car was damaged because a doe jumped out in front of his car on New Year’s Day morning. He even filed a report. Let this go.”
“You’d already tested the blood, hadn’t you?” He was too sure, too confident when he took me to the shop. “You knew something was off about the accident long before I started raising questions, and you’d already tested the blood.”
He shakes his head and turns away from me, heading toward his car. “Let it go.”
“I’m not going to stop, Sebastian,” I say, my feet crunching in the gravel as I follow him. “I’m not going to let this go. I can’t have the whole world believing my brother was responsible for what happened that night. Keep it to yourself if you must, but I’ll find out eventually anyway.”
“Fine.” He yanks his backpack open and pulls the folder out of it. “Take it, Mia, but I don’t want anything to do with this. Do you understand?” He climbs into his car and pulls away.
I take the file to my car and sit in the driver’s seat before opening it. The accident report for Emmitt Smith is on top. When I first scan it, I don’t see anything that would upset Sebastian, but then the words jump out at me. The officer noted the deer had been shot prior to the collision.
Why would Sebastian be so upset to see the deer was shot before Coach hit it? Maybe it was injured and that was why it ran into the road.
Or maybe the deer was a cover-up.
I drive to the BHU football facility and park in the side lot next to Coach’s Cherokee. I stare at it for a long time.
If the deer was a cover-up, he wouldn’t have scrubbed the underside of the car or put deer blood there. Even if he took it through a car wash, there’s a good chance trace evidence would remain.
I know what I need to do.
I’m totally naked when Mia rushes into my room. I’m just out of the shower and my skin is still damp, my hair still wet.
She throws the door shut behind her and wraps her arms around my neck, presses her body against mine. She rises onto her toes to kiss me and threads her hands into my hair.
“Mia,” I say against her mouth. “What are you doing?”
She reaches a hand between our bodies, unbuttons her jeans, and pushes them from her hips along with her panties. “Arrow.” My hand is fisted at my side and she takes it, opens my palm, and guides it down her body, over her stomach and between her legs.
I don’t know what’s gotten into her. This is nothing like last night. This is frantic. This is the greedy kind of lust that isn’t ever about sex at all. She’s looking for escape, and I give it to her.
I cup my hand between her legs and drag my open mouth down the side of her neck. She arches into me, the cotton of her tank brushing against my chest.
“Arrow, please.” She lifts a leg and wraps it around my hips, trying to pull me closer. She’s still half clothed, and she rubs herself against my cock.
“Mia, slow down.”
“It’s over,” she says, lifting her eyes to meet mine. “I know who did it.”
At those words, all the blood in my body goes cold, and at the same time, I want to pull her closer. I want to put my mouth over hers so she can’t say it out loud, to silence her and protect our last seconds together.
I step away.
“Arrow.” There’s so much sadness in her eyes. “I need to say goodbye.”
“What do you mean?”
“Make love to me one more time. I have to do something, and I . . . Please. Just let’s take right now. This moment. Because when I . . . I have to do what’s right, and you might never forgive me.”
Those words are a fist to my heart. “I could forgive you anything, Mia.”
“One more time. Please.”
“No.” I take another step back. “Talk to me first.”
She squeezes her eyes shut. “I have to turn him in. I’m sure it was him and I have to . . .”
What’s she talking about? What does she think she knows? “Who?”
“Coach.”
One word that says she knows more than she should. “Mia—”
“Coach was on Deadman’s Curve on New Year’s Eve. Coach hit Nic and Brogan.”
I should have told her the truth before. I should never have waited. But no choice seems right when each means someone gets hurt. Or worse. “Mia—”
“I have to turn him in. There’s still blood under the car. Not deer blood. Human blood, Arrow. I climbed under there myself and took a sample to the lab at BHU. I got the call this morning. Coach told the police he hit a deer, but it’s not deer blood. He did it, and I have to turn him in.”
I shake my head, my mind running too fast and in too many directions. “You don’t.”
“Everybody’s been talking. You’ve heard them. They’ve been running their mouths about my brother for months. They think this was Nic’s fault.”
Where do I start? “Slow down.”
“I knew how you’d feel.” She folds her arms and draws in a ragged breath. “That’s why I wanted to say goodbye. I owe it to my brother. He’d cleaned up, and they all ran their mouths like he hadn’t. I owe it to him and everything he did for my family. I need to tell the police who was responsible for what happened that night.”
I want to pull her into my arms and hold her one last time. Because she was right when she burst in here. Everything changes after this. I could kiss her, hold her close, and taste her lips one last time before she hates me. I don’t let myself. “It wasn’t Coach.”
“I’m sorry, Arrow. I know how important he is to you. But we’re talking about my brother, and I just . . .” She starts pacing, her arms wrapped tight around herself.
I have to grip the bed to keep myself from wrapping her up in my arms, to keep from begging her to forget whatever it is she knows. It had to come out, I realize that now, but I wish it didn’t have to happen like this. “It wasn’t Coach,” I repeat.
“I wish he hadn’t covered it up. It was dark, and they were fighting in the road like freaking idiots. I have to do this for my brother. Everyone thinks he was involved in drugs again, but he wasn’t. He was clean. I have to turn him in.”
“Mia . . .”
She stops pacing and stares at me like I’m not hearing her. “I’m telling you there was blood under that car that doesn’t belong to a deer. It’s human blood. I had the lab at BHU test it.” She puts her hands in mine, and I have to pull away, otherwise I might bring them to my mouth, kiss her fingers one by one, trail kisses up her arms and along her jaw.
“I don’t want to let you go,” I whisper. “Every time you’re almost mine, I have to let you go.”
She frowns at me, and I know I’m not making sense. “I’m not asking for your permission, but I’m hoping you can understand why I have to do this.”
Her shirt’s damp from when she was pressed against me, and she takes my hands again, squeezes my fingertips in her palms, so desperate for the permission she says she doesn’t need.
“Coach wasn’t driving the car,” I say. “I know he wasn’t the one driving that car.”
“How would you know that? You were drunk with Trish. The pictures were all over Facebook. How would you even know . . .” Her flushed cheeks turn pale, and every ounce of blood that drains from her face makes me feel smaller, more powerless. “Arrow?”
“I wanted to tell you.” Everything feels like an excuse now, and I don’t know how I can explain the claustrophobic hell that is being trapped from doing the right thing. Regret has gotten me nowhere, but if I could wipe my existence from Mia’s life to save her the pain I see on her face right now, I wouldn’t hesitate.
She drops my hands and backs away. One step. Two. She tilts her head first to one side and then the other, and narrows her eyes. It’s as if she’s suddenly realized I’m not the man she thought I was. Instead I’ve been standing in front of her all this time and she’s trying to comprehend how she never noticed that I’m a monster.
“I wanted to tell you, but I knew you’d want to go to the police.” More excuses. There’s no good way to say this. There’s no way to soften its ugliness. “I knew how you felt about your brother’s reputation. Coach was just trying to help me. He didn’t want one horrible mistake to ruin my life, and I couldn’t ruin his by confessing.”
“How . . . It was Coach’s car. You were . . .”
I sink to the side of my bed and hang my head. Worse than regret is looking back and still not seeing the right path. Everything after waking up parked in Coach’s lawn felt so out of my control, and everything that mattered before I can’t remember. “I’m so sorry. You can hate me. Please hate me. I hate myself.”
She shakes her head and takes another step away from me. “You told me to let him go. You told me. How could you? For that I could hate you, Arrow.”
It’s a knife twisted in my gut, and all I can do is hand her another. “He wasn’t Brogan anymore. He was trapped in that body, and you know he wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“I don’t . . .” She meets my eyes and shakes her head as if she still can’t quite bring me into focus. “Arrow?”
“I wanted to turn myself in.” I shouldn’t explain. I shouldn’t try to excuse it. But this is Mia, and no one else matters. This is Mia, and I need her to understand. “I want to do it. Every. Fucking. Day. But I couldn’t. Not without hurting Coach. He covered it up trying to protect me, and turning myself in would have ruined him.”
“They’re dead, Arrow.” Her voice is shrill, nails on the chalkboard of my heart. “This isn’t someone’s football career or someone’s chance at a scholarship. Two men are dead because of . . .” She lifts her eyes to mine.
I take the knife she’s poised and shove it the rest of the way in. “Because of me.
They’re dead because of me.”
She crumples to the floor. “No. You’re wrong. You’re protecting him. This cannot be the truth.”
Nausea wraps me in its sweaty fists. I want to go to her, but I can’t. I’m everything that’s making her hurt right now. “Mia, every day I’ve woken up knowing I ended my best friend’s life, that I killed the brother of the woman I love, and I couldn’t even come clean about it. That’s my hell. That’s my punishment for taking those keys and driving when I had no business behind a wheel.”
“You kept driving.” She swipes at her wet cheeks as if she’s angry with her tears. “I watched that car. It hit them and it skidded to a stop, and then it just kept driving. How could you do that?”
I never knew I could. “I don’t know.” God, it hurts. Showing her the worst of me. Watching her tremble on my bedroom floor and knowing I’m to blame.
I spent the whole spring semester sabotaging my own future, trying any way I could to make someone punish me for something, anything. Seeing Mia like this is the unnecessary reminder that I deserve so much worse than I got. “I don’t remember anything. The worst fucking thing I’ve ever done, and I have no memory of it at all. I was drinking. I was with Trish. I was pissed at Brogan and pissed at you.” I shake my head. Months later, the fragments from that night still form nothing but the fractured edges of a thousand-piece puzzle. “Everything happened so fast, and I don’t even remember . . .”
She shakes her head, and I know I’m talking too fast, giving her too much to process. She looks at me. “You made love to me, Arrow.”
I swallow. “I know.”
“You were inside me with this disgusting secret.”
“Yeah. I’m a piece of shit, Mia.” I hang my head. I’m not strong enough to keep facing the hatred in her eyes. “I’m a piece of shit.”
She grabs her pants off the ground, stands, and steps into them, yanking them up her legs. Shaking hands on the buttons, she turns to the door. “I have to go.”
