by Lexi Ryan
His jaw works, but I know he won’t say any more because I’ve asked him not to.
I don’t have that much here. I don’t have much in general. I’ve never been the kind of person who was big on things, with a few exceptions.
I gather my belongings, fold my clothes, pack my suitcase, and slide my textbooks into my backpack. The last thing I get is my dancing fairies painting from the bottom drawer of the desk. I still remember the night he gave it to me. I was so touched by his thoughtfulness, and something else, too. My skin prickled, and it felt like all those little fairies were dancing up and down my arms, connecting me to Arrow with thousands of invisible currents. It wasn’t just that he remembered my story; it was that he understood how important it was to me.
“You still have that?” Arrow asks.
I skim my fingers over the painting’s textured surface, and those same chills come back. Will I ever meet anyone I feel as deeply tied to as him? “Of course. It makes me think about my mom. About the good times.” I lift my eyes to his and see all the questions there. I don’t know where we are. I don’t know how I’m supposed to go forward—how I’m supposed to live or breathe knowing that the man I love killed my brother and the man I . . . loved. “It makes me think of you, Arrow. It was the sweetest gift I’ve ever been given.”
“I don’t want you to go,” he says softly. His eyes are so sad, and I draw in a sharp breath because I’ve somehow forgotten. Living here, working here, I got to see Arrow all the time. It was so easy to forget that he was on house arrest. But if I don’t have an excuse to be here, when will I see him? Nights sleeping in his arms will be a thing of the past. Talking to him in the darkness an old luxury.
I force a smile. “It’s for the best. I’ll be okay.”
“Mia—”
“I’ll be okay. Bailey will take me back, at least temporarily, and I’ll find another job. It’s not like I’ll be living on the streets.” Avoiding his gaze, I zip up my suitcase and do one last look around the bedroom to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything. I feel Arrow’s gaze on me with every move I make. “I think that’s everything.”
“I’ll help you load up your car.”
I lift the suitcase into the trunk and close it. Mia’s hands are tucked into the pockets of her jean shorts and her eyes are cast down to the ground. Yesterday’s rain is gone, and the sun brings out the light brown highlights in her hair.
“You can do better than this job, Mia.” I can tell from the look on her face that her employment status is the least of her problems. That today, any worries of whether or not she’ll be able to transfer to BHU are buried beneath bigger worries.
I understand what that’s like. When something that once mattered seems inconsequential in the face of the nightmare you’ve woken to.
“I’ll make sure Dad gives you good references,” I say. It’s so lame. If I could, I’d weave together a big, bright future for her and hand it over wrapped in a bow. She’s been stuck in the quicksand of my mistake for too long. “There are a couple of board members who might be interested in a good nanny.”
“Arrow,” she says softly, and I want to pull her into my arms so badly it hurts.
“I won’t tell anyone your secret,” she says.
I suck in a breath and hold it to trap my rage. It’s not her job to free me from this burden, but I hoped she would. But mostly I want to rage because I know now she carries it too, and I don’t want that for her. “Don’t do that for me. Don’t hold it for me.”
She tilts her face toward the sun. “I’m not doing it for you.”
I shake my head. “I’d forgive you anything. I’d understand if you felt like you needed to—”
“Arrow, it’s done. I know you’d have gone forward and done the right thing if Coach hadn’t cornered you into keeping the secret. And I’m sorry for the ugly things I said yesterday. You didn’t deserve that. You’ve suffered enough. I forgive you,” she whispers, and those words hurt more than I’m prepared for.
I look away, shocked by the dull force of it. “Don’t do that. I don’t deserve that.”
She puts her hands on my face, her palms along my jaw, her fingertips in my hair, and turns me to look at her. “I forgive you, and I hope you’ll do whatever it is you need to do to forgive yourself. Do it for Brogan.”
“Fuck, Mia . . .”
The sun shines in her eyes. In a different life, maybe we’d be enjoying this beautiful day together—holding hands and sitting on the dock and watching the light reflect off the water. Then I’d pull her into me and kiss her, smell the sunshine in her hair as she whispered my name against my neck.
That’s not the fate we were given, and as she looks up at me, I realize I’ve had that image of us together from the day we met. I’ve never been willing to let it go. Not when me being a Woodison stood between us; not when Brogan stood between us. Not even when I sat in the hospital, willing my memory of New Year’s Eve to come back, or when Brogan was in surgery fighting for his life.
How different would our lives be today if I’d been able to let it go? If I hadn’t shown up at her door and told her I was in love with her? Would Brogan still be alive?
Part of my mind has always believed Mia was mine and has held on to the hope that we could make it work. Someday. Somehow. All of this could have been avoided if I hadn’t so stubbornly held on to that belief.
“That day that we met,” I say. “I think about it a lot. About how we seemed to click, but then you wanted nothing to do with me.”
“It seemed like such a big deal then.” She gives a sad smile. “I thought it was a terrible day to have met this sweet, amazing guy and find out he was a Woodison.” She exhales slowly and wraps her arms around her waist. “What I wouldn’t give to go back there and have that be the biggest problem in my life.”
I turn away because I can’t look at her and say what I need to say. “If I could go back, I never would have taken that first walk with you.”
She laughs a little uncomfortably. “What happened to wishing you’d kissed me?”
I stare at the ground and shake my head. “If I’d let you go, if I’d let you be with him without the questions of whether or not he made you happy, without being the one to catch you when he hurt you, without showing up at your door to tell you I was in love with you . . . everything would be different. Everything.” I lift my head and force myself to meet her eyes. “You kept trying to tell me we couldn’t be together, and I didn’t want to see it.”
“What are you doing?” Her voice wobbles on the question like a novice on a tightrope.
“You could never be with him completely because I stood in the way. And you’ve never been able to move on since because of me.” I shove my hands into my pockets so I don’t grab her and hold her tight. “I’m letting you go. I’m telling you I don’t want you to carry my regret and my mistakes around in your heart. I need you to figure out how to live your life without me in it.”
“Don’t do this, Arrow.”
“I thought it was my job to help you lead your life, to help you wake up. But it was another excuse to be selfish. Another way I could avoid letting you go.”
“You’re my friend,” she says, a little desperately. “There’s no reason we can’t always be friends.”
“Except there is. You’ll always look at me and remember what I’ve done. We’ll never be together without the past wedged between us. You deserve better than that.” I take a step forward, toward her upturned face, closer to her parted lips. I don’t know how to shut off the magnetic pull between us, but I make myself stop and take two steps back, two steps away from temptation. “You have too much beauty to hide from the world. I can’t stand here and tell you that I hope you fall in love with Sebastian, and that I hope he’s the one who can make you happy. I’m not that good of a guy to say those things. But if I don’t think about the specifics and I step back a little, all I want is for you to be happy. All I want is for someone to fill in the empty places in y
our heart the way you did mine from the beginning.”
“Arrow?” She drags in a choppy breath, and I look up to see tears welling in her eyes. “You’re breaking up with me when all I want is to be your friend.”
“If I don’t, I may as well have killed you that night, too. I’ve brought you nothing but pain.”
“Arrow . . .” She opens her mouth and closes it again, and I realize I’m holding my breath, hoping she says she loves me too much to let me go.
That’s not why I’m standing out here. That’s not why I’m doing this. But I wait, half of my heart praying she’ll let me set her free and the other half waiting for the miracle.
“Is this goodbye?” she asks.
“I want you to live, Mia. I want you to sing. Don’t come here anymore. I’ll only keep you in the past. I’ll only weigh you down.”
She swallows hard and swipes tears from her cheeks with the palm of her hand. Then, without arguing or agreeing, she climbs into her car, and I step onto the porch and watch her drive away.
I drive straight to Bailey’s apartment. She opens the door seconds after I knock and pulls me into her arms.
“You having a hard time, sweetie?” she asks.
Mason’s sitting on the couch, his jean-clad legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankle. His chest is bare, and he’s leafing through a magazine. When he looks up and sees me, he puts down the magazine. He grabs his shirt from where it was draped across the back of the couch and pulls it over his head. “I’ll give you two some privacy.” He steps into his shoes and cocks his head at Bailey. “Call me?”
She gives him a noncommittal smile and opens the door wider.
“Right.” He grimaces and heads out without another word.
“What was that?” I ask. “I thought you two weren’t sleeping together anymore.”
“We weren’t,” she says, pulling me into the apartment and closing the door. She shrugs. “Funerals make me sad. I needed something in my life that wasn’t sad, and Mason in my bed is very much not sad.”
I’d love to indulge in a heart-to-heart about her love life. I’d love to give her a little lecture about how Mason’s a really nice guy who deserves more from her.
I stare at her, and she rolls her eyes. “It’s just sex, Mia.”
I’m selfish today, so I don’t push it.
She grabs two glasses from the cabinet and sets them on the counter in front of me. She uncorks a bottle of red wine and fills them both nearly to the brim. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, lifting her glass. “Or do you want to just hang out and have me pretend I’m not dying to know what’s going on between you and Arrow?”
“What do you mean?”
“Mia, Mason told me about last night. About finding you in the graveyard and you asking them to take you to Arrow. Which is some really sad-ass shit, by the way, and if Mase hadn’t all but stolen my keys, I would have come over to be with you.” She sighs. “And even if he hadn’t told me, it’s all over your face every time you look at Arrow. He came home, and you started to . . . I don’t know, care again. Before, you’d been looking at the world through glazed eyes, and Arrow snapped you out of it.”
“I’m in love with him.”
She wraps her arms around me and nods into my shoulder. “I know that, sweetie.”
“I thought I might be able to move on if I knew who was responsible for the accident. I thought that would help me get there.”
She nods again. “I know that, too.”
I open my mouth then close it again. If I’m scared to tell my best friend—a girl I trust more than anyone—the truth about what happened that night, how did I think I could go to the police? “The truth is supposed to set us free, and in my mind that meant maybe Arrow and I would have a chance. I was wrong.”
She pulls back and nudges my glass toward me. “Drink.”
With my eyes on her, I obey. It’s wine the way Bailey likes it best: sweet and cheap.
“Tell me what’s up with Arrow. Is he screwing around with Trish? Mason told me she’d been over there a lot. She’s a hot mess. I think she might be a cutter. Did you see those marks on her arms when she was at the pool?”
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.”
