Her eyes widen to match her smile. Girls aren’t used to a Bash who flirts so openly. They are used to a Bash who’s madly in love with Quinn Bardot. The alcohol and cocaine that flows through my veins make me careless, uninhibited.
The room spins around me, so I let myself fall back into an easy chair. I’ve been to dozens of Frat parties before, but never on drugs. Never feeling as low as I do right now. I should’ve never let Raquel talk me into trying the stuff, but she promised it would take the edge off. It did, but now I’m gonna lose my spot on the team, As soon as those test results come back, I’m a dead man. A. Dead. Man.
“Here.”
I look up, somehow the cheerleader has made it back in record time.
“That wasn’t ten minutes,” I say as I take the beer from her hand. The cocaine has left a bad taste in the back of my throat, so I drink it greedily.
“It was fifteen minutes.” She holds her hand out again and hands me a pill.
Wow. Time seems to fly by.
“What’s that?” I raise an eyebrow while staring at the small white pill.
“It’ll make you feel good.”
I reach out, pick it up, and examine it. “Why do you think I need to feel good?”
“Because you aren’t like the rest of them. The smiling people.” She looks around at the people dancing, the ones who looks sublimely happy.
I don’t say anything. I refuse to acknowledge it.
“This is how you get through it all?” I pop the pill into my mouth and wash it down with the rest of my beer.
“I don’t get through it. I barely hold on.” She sits down next to me, and I recognize the expression on her face. A look of unhappiness, longing.
She may understand, but I don’t even know her name. I’ve seen her cheering on the sidelines at the games. If she is as unhappy as she claims, she does a good job of hiding it. Her fingers drum the side of her red silo cup.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Exactly.”
“Exactly? That’s your name?”
“No. I mean, we’ve been to dozens of games together. Same bus, same friends, we had a class together last semester. You’ve never cared to learn my name. I’m just some cheerleader.”
I study her. She isn’t beautiful, but she isn’t ugly either. Her build is average, not worth a second glance. Her pale face is covered by her dark hair.
“Sorry.”
“You’re not sorry, but that’s okay. Everyone is so caught up in their own lives. Too busy to care about everyone else.”
“If only they saw what we saw in each other.”
She nods at me. We sit in silence for a few minutes absorbing the moment, the clarity. The ease of not having to pretend.
“To selfishness,” she says. We raise our cups in a toast before drinking. I’m not sure if she means our selfishness or the selfishness of others, but whatever she means, I drink to it. At this point, I will drink to anything.
Chapter Five
Four Hours Earlier
The world is spinning. My legs feel like jelly, so I’m lying on the back porch staring up at the stars. The sky is so beautiful in Tennessee. I watch each star flicker on and off like a light bulb. One day, each one of those stars will burn out. One day, I will burn out. I’ll snap and I’ll bring Quinn down with me. My family with me.
I drunk dialed her earlier. Who knows what I said to her, but she sounded afraid. Of me or for me? I’ll never know. She’s coming to get me. I should be scared for her. I’m not in the greatest condition, but I don’t care. I need her to make it all better.
“Dude, what are you doing out here all alone?” I don’t have to look up to know that voice. It’s my teammate Thad.
“Fresh air, man. Just enjoying the view.”
Thad is a senior and on his way to becoming some big shot executive for his father in Nashville.
“Enjoyment. That’s something I haven’t done in a long time.” Thad swings his legs beside mine and leans back against the wooden porch.
“I find that hard to believe.” I snort and lift my hands behind my head. Thad can have any girl he wants. We aren’t close; I’m not close with many of my teammates. I let them get as close as needed to play properly, but not an inch closer.
“Today was my last first game.”
He doesn’t know it, but it will be my last first game as well.
“You can always try and go pro…”
He snorts. “My old man has expectations. He wants me to take over the family business, know what I mean?
“Yeah.”
Except my father wants, no needs, me to go pro. If that happens, my entire hometown will erect a statue in my honor, but it will be his honor not mine. They’ve practically done it already. My old high school has a whole wall dedicated to me. Expectations. They suck.
“I wish I could enjoy playing a game,” I tell him.
“Parents. We can’t ever please them. Always expecting too little or too much. When I’ve got kids of my own, I’ll let them do whatever the hell they please. How ‘bout you?”
I’ve tuned him out, focusing is hard right now. “What?”
“When you have kids?”
Kids. I’ve never thought about kids before. Quinn would make a beautiful mother. She’s so nurturing. She always takes care of me when I’m hung over. A daughter, with her mother’s brown hair and hazel eyes.
“Yes. My daughter is beautiful,” I mumble. Thad laughs, and I’m almost certain I didn’t answer his question.
“You got kids already?”
“Nah.” I shake my head. “If I ever do….my girlfriend is beautiful.”
“Yeah, that brunette I see you with sometimes. She’s pretty hot. How long you been together?”
I pretend to count the years even though I have it memorized. Three years, two months, two days, three hours and….I look at my watch… sixteen minutes.
“Almost three years, we’ve been friends for a lot longer.”
“High school sweethearts, huh? I should have known. Must be hard being so far apart.”
My eyes close. I’m getting sleepy. My life is falling apart without her by my side. It’s all her fault. I have to convince her to move here. I have to…
“I miss the crap outta her.”
Chapter Six
Two Hours Earlier
“Quinn…” I mumble. The girl in my arms stiffens and pulls back. She lifts her hand from my chest and sighs.
“You called her didn’t you?” she asks.
I open my eyes and instead of two hazel eyes looking up at me, two muddy brown eyes peer into mine. Eyes that are dead inside, searching for meanings that don’t exist. Those two eyes don’t comfort me like Quinn’s.
Raquel.
The girl my parents have chosen for me. She’d make a horrible mother.
Selfish, spoiled, and a snob.
Three S words.
S words.
They sounds odd coming out of my mouth. Ssssss. I’m hissing like a snake out loud, but I don’t care.
“Bash?”
“Ssssss….sut-up.” My entire mouth is too numb to form the words correctly. What am I doing here with Raquel?
“How you—what you want?” I walk away from her toward the tree. I’m weak. Not like Quinn. She would never cheat on me. I never wanted to cheat on her, but I’m weak. I’m a fool. I take my right fist and slam it into the tree bark. I can feel the pain radiate up through my knuckles and wrist, but I deserve it. I deserve it all. My fist makes impact with the tree again, harder this time.
Again.
Not hard enough.
Again.
I’m stupid. I’m a screw up. I rely on Quinn too much. Everyone is right, this isn’t love. I’m obsessed with her. I want her for my own greedy purposes.
“Bash, stop!” Raquel grabs my arm, but I throw her off of me. She hits the ground.
She’s crying. I’m hurting. If I died tomorrow, who would care? My dad would enjoy the sympatheti
c votes for his campaign. Quinn would enjoy not having to take care of me all the time. My friends, what friends? They don’t really know me. Tonight’s conversations are some of the rawest ones I’ve had in a long time.
Will this feeling of uselessness go away if I end it all tonight?
I don’t fit in here. I don’t fit in anywhere. Maybe if I’d been born into a different family. Maybe if I’d been born in a different country. One that didn’t include football. I rest my head against the bark which is now caked with my blood.
“Bash?”
My ears perk at her voice. So kind, gentle, yet timid.
“Quinn.” I’m afraid to turn around. She can’t see me like this. It’s embarrassing. She approaches me. I cower from her.
“Bash, let me take you home.”
I shake my head. “Just go home. I don’t deserve you.”
“I love you, Bash. I will never leave you behind. We are in this together.” Something is wrong. She’s just scared. She holds out one hand, but my knuckles are too bloodied to touch her perfect skin. I hide my hands behind my back. She always saves me. When I can’t control the mood swings. When I can’t control the pain, the anger. She is always beside me.
“I’m so sorry.” I lean down and put my head against her shoulder. She smells like latex and paint. It’s the most unromantic smell in the world, but I love it.
This is Quinn.
My Quinn.
“Never leave me, Quinn. Promise me. I’ll die without you.”
“Shhh….” She smooths down my blonde hair and kisses the top of my head.
“Let’s get you cleaned up and go back home. I don’t know what this place is doing to you, but you need to come back home, Bash.”
But where is home?
Chapter Seven
Two minutes earlier
“I don’t care. I can’t live without you Quinn!” I’m hitting the roof of her car, pounding the dashboard. Anything to release the frustration. Why is she doing this to us? Why is she doing this to me?
“I can’t do this anymore.” She’s crying. Crying and driving me home in the middle of the night. An almost two-hour drive. You don’t do that unless you love someone. She loves me. I know it.
“We can be happy.” I plead with her and grab her hand. Her warmth leaves my grasp.
“No, it’s over Bash. I saw the blonde haired girl. I saw the way she looked at me. Guilt in her eyes. You—have you—I can’t even say it…”
“No! No! No!” I hit the ceiling each time I scream. I can’t handle this pain. I can’t breathe. “Pull over. I can’t be in the car with you. I’m gonna hurt you.” I don’t want to hurt her. I’m spinning out of control, and she’ll be caught in the middle.
“You’re scaring me.” She takes one hand to wipe the tears from her face. I use the opportunity to grab the wheel and jerk it to the left.
“I said pull over!”
The Screams
Crunch into
Nothing.
The End.
Find out what happened to Quinn after Bash’s death in The Last Thing now available at Amazon here.
Bonus Materials
Caution: There are deleted scenes from The Last Thing. If you have not read the book, please stop reading until you have finished.
Deleted Scene #1
Author’s note: This was the scene written when Quinn was telling her secret. It was my betas that suggested the scene would be better from Chase’s POV. I didn’t want to give it up, so I included both scenes in the original book, but eventually decided take out Quinn’s point of view. This is the original, unedited scene, so it doesn’t match with Chase’s scene 100 percent. Enjoy!
The Secret
My body was covered in sweat, and it reminded me of the water from the dream so I use my hands to wipe it off. I rub at my skin as if it was an obsession. Chase rubbed my back and as much as I don’t want to, I looked over to gage his expression. He looked worried, scared even.
“Quinn, you were scaring me.”
I nodded and wrapped my hands around my legs tightly. He pushed my sweat soaked hair from my face before speaking.
“You were crying out for him, Quinn. Bash. Then you started making these noises. Like you were drowning. You were scaring me, and I couldn’t get you to wake up.”
This was embarrassing, and I could feel my face burning. After weeks of silence, the dreams had to return the one night I had let Chase stay the night. I buried my face into my legs. I needed a moment to calm down. I had always let myself die in the dreams, but this time I had wanted to live. I needed to live.
“Sometimes….I have these dreams,” I explained. I turned and looked over at him. His face was neutral. He wasn’t judging me, neither was he pushing me for information. This gave me the confidence to keep talking.
“I dream about the night Bash died. Over and over.” I can’t believe that I was talking about this, sharing this with him, but as I talk, it was as if the weight of the secret is lifting. I am finally able to breathe. Chase put his arms around me tightly and tucked my head underneath his chin.
“Shhh….” He soothes me with the sound of his voice.
“I don’t know what happened, Quinn, but you obviously aren’t over it. Have you thought about talking to someone?”
“I have. I’ve been talking with someone since it happened, but they can’t make the dreams go away. The guilt, the pain, the memory. It stays with me even when I push it away. I thought moving away would help, and it did, but only for a short time. Now I am only terrified that people will find out and look at me differently.”
“Why would people look at you differently?” He was confused and I didn’t blame him.
“Everyone did. They all blamed me. They didn’t want to blame Bash. To them, he was perfect. He could do no wrong.” I wiped a few stray tears from my cheek then wrapped my arms around Chase. He had made me feel safe, and after last night, when I awoke to him kissing my stomach, I had an epiphany. I needed Chase. I didn’t need to keep him at a distance, didn’t need to guard my heart with him. He wouldn’t leave me.
He squeezed me tighter and laid us both back on the bed. It was still dark outside, but I wasn’t tired anymore.
“I can’t make you tell me your secrets, but I when you are ready, I am here. I won’t leave you,” he whispered. His voice was a comfort to my soul and it relaxed me.
I wanted to tell him, but I didn’t know what his reaction would be. Would he think I was crazy? Or would he accept my past. As if he knew exactly what I was thinking, he spoke.
“My past isn’t perfect either. It’s full of too many girls and too much alcohol. I was cocky and selfish, but you changed me. You gave me a reason to care about someone other than myself. Whatever demons you are carrying let me help. For us, and for our family.”
I moved out of his reach and looked beyond my large window to the L.A city lights. I needed to trust him. I needed to let him in. So I began, “We were young and in love, Bash and I. I thought we had the perfect relationship, but I was blind.”
I spoke and let the floodgates open. Even if I wanted to stop now, I couldn’t. So I let the words flow from my mouth, and hoped that by letting him in, he would help heal my wounds.
“Bash had problems. Yet, we all ignored them. And by we, I mean the entire town. When he got caught drunk driving, the police let him off with a slap on the wrist. If they arrested him, he couldn’t play in the games. When he got mad and beat someone up, his parents paid off the other family. ‘Boys will be boys,’ they said. He was always messing up and I was always there to save him.” I looked over at Chase. I didn’t want him to think that Bash was a bad guy. He wasn’t. Bash was just troubled.
“He never hurt me though. He loved me. After he went off to college, things must have gotten worse. We lived hours apart, but we saw each other every month. I could feel him drifting away. I should have seen the signs, the depression, the drinking, but I didn’t. I knew he was stressed from the pressures
of school, football scouts, and his parents, but I thought things were okay...”
I closed my eyes as I spoke about that final night. Each moment was an impression in my memory that I had replayed over and over. What I could have done differently and what I had left out.
“Then one night, at the end of his sophomore year, he called me drunk. He was crying and he was saying all these things that didn’t make sense. He kept talking about killing himself and…and.. he was scaring me, so I got in the car and drove to his school. It took me over an hour to get there, but by the time I had made it to his apartment he was unrecognizable. I know now that he had been mixing pills with the alcohol. He had been trying to kill himself. Somehow I had convinced him to get in my car, and I drove home. I don’t remember much else after that, but I remember he grabbed the wheel. My car swerved off the road and we went flying from the bridge into the lake. I woke up as the car was filling up with water, and I vaguely remember trying to convince Bash to get out, but he just sat there. I remember my seatbelt was stuck and being so scared. I don’t remember much else. Did I give up and swim to the surface? Did I fight with him? I just don’t know. What little I remember resurfaced while in treatment. In the end, I survived, but Bash didn’t. After he died, everyone blamed me. They said I ran the car off the road. I murdered him. I don’t know. I don’t know why I couldn’t save him. I don’t even know if I tried. I was the only one there. I should have saved him.”
Chase pushed me back against the bed and rolled on top of me. He buried his face in the crook of my shoulder.
“Quinn, it wasn’t your fault. The guy obviously had issues.”
“I know that now, but it took two psychiatrists and an attempted suicide to pull me out of the funk. Bash’s parents tried to sue me. Our friends blamed me and stopped talking to me. Shit, they even did news stories on me. Reporters tried to figure out if I killed me boyfriend because I thought he was cheating on me. My parents got a divorce, lost everything they had to pay for my medical and lawyer bills. Everyone that cared about me was hurting. I began avoiding life. Then I moved out here, it was supposed to be a fresh start.”
Bash (Hollywood Timelines #2) Page 2
