The Risk

by Elle Kennedy

  “Jeez,” Brooks pipes up. “You dumped the guy and sent him spiraling into a pit of drugs and despair? Savage.”

  She bites her lip again.

  “Brooks,” I chide. To her, I try to offer reassurance. “I’m sure his spiral wasn’t your fault.”

  “No, it was. Or at least partially my fault. The breakup destroyed him. He was already prone to drinking and drugs, but after we broke up, he took it to the next level. Drinking every night, skipping school to go smoke joints with Ricky Harmon and a few guys who graduated the year before and were doing nothing with their lives. And then one weekend he fucked off to this EDM festival and got so high he forgot to show up for a crucial game. The missed practices were bad enough, but when he didn’t suit up for that game, his coach kicked him off the team.”

  Speaking of coaches. “Did your dad know you were seeing Eric?”

  “Yeah. It was a whole big mess.” She drops her head in her hands and lets out a weary groan. “Eric and I started dating when I was fifteen. Dad was okay with it at first, mostly because he had no choice but to be okay with it. He knew he couldn’t stop me from seeing Eric. I was too stubborn.”

  “Was?” I crack.

  She ignores the jab. “Anyway, after he missed that game, it was the beginning of the end for him. Chicago found out he was kicked off the team. And Eric hadn’t signed a contract yet. They were still in the negotiation phase.”

  I nod in understanding. A lot of guys don’t realize that just because a team drafts you it doesn’t mean you’re immediately on that team. It simply means that franchise has exclusive rights to you for a year, during which you’re negotiating your contract.

  “They didn’t want to sign him anymore,” she says sadly. “Word got around that he was a party boy, and then nobody else wanted to sign him, either. So he started partying even harder and running with a new crowd, and now here we are.”

  Here we are. Ten thirty at night, driving to another state, searching for Brenna’s ex-boyfriend who may or may not have smoked meth tonight.

  Awesome.

  From the corner of my eye I notice Brenna wringing her hands together. I hate seeing this badass girl so shaken. And although I’m still not comfortable with this situation, I reach across the center console and grip her hand.

  She glances over gratefully. “Thank you for helping me.”

  “No problem,” I murmur, then pray that I’m telling the truth and there isn’t going to be a problem.

  Thanks to the bad weather and late hour, the roads are blessedly empty, and we make it to the Nashua area faster than anticipated. As I get off the highway, Brenna calls Eric again.

  “Hey, it’s me. GPS says we’re two minutes from Forest Lane. We’re going to turn onto it, but you need to give me a landmark or something we can use to find you.”

  “This is Forest Lane,” I tell her, making the turn. Luckily the entire area has power, so the streetlamps are in working order.

  “I’m seeing row houses,” she says into the phone. “Are you sitting on a curb? Sidewalk?” She curses. “In the bushes? Jesus Christ, Eric.”

  I suddenly feel incredibly sorry for her. The disgust she’s trying to keep out of her tone is twisting her beautiful features, and I can’t imagine how shitty that would be, feeling so repelled by someone you were once intimate with.

  “A garden with what?” she asks. “A huge spinny thing? A metal spinny thing…Eric, I don’t know what—”

  “There,” Weston says, his face glued to the window. “On the right. I think he’s talking about the mini-windmill in that garden over there.”

  I pull up at the curb. Brenna swings the door open before I’ve even come to a complete stop. “Wait,” I say sharply, but she’s already gone.

  Shit.

  I jump out of the car. Brenna is making a beeline for a tall hedge that separates two front yards. I catch up to her just as she drops to her knees.

  Peering over her shoulder, I spot a hunched-over figure hugging his knees. The T-shirt he’s wearing is soaked through and plastered to his chest. Chin-length hair, dark strands either wet or greasy, frame a gaunt face. When the guy gazes up at us, his pupils are so dilated it looks like he doesn’t have any irises. Just two black circles glowing in his eyes.

  He starts talking the moment he recognizes Brenna. “You’re here, oh thank God, you’re here,” he babbles. “I knew you would come, I knew you would, because we were together and you were there for me and I was good to you, right? I was good to you?”

  “Yeah.” She’s utterly emotionless. “You were great. Come on, Eric, up you go.” She tries to help him to his feet, but he doesn’t budge.

  I step forward.

  Eric’s eyes widen in fear. “Who’s this?” he demands. “Did you call the cops on me, Bren? I thought—”

  “I didn’t call the cops,” she assures him. “This is my friend, okay? He drove because I don’t have a car, and he’s agreed to take you home. Now let us help you up.”

  I think he’s about to comply, but then his gaze focuses on someone behind me. Brooks’s timing couldn’t be worse.

  “Who’s that!” Eric shouts in a panic. His eyes, with those enormous pupils, dart wildly between me and Brooks. “They’re here to take me away, aren’t they? I’m not going to that fucking rehab, Brenna! I don’t need it!”

  “The only place we’re taking you is home,” she says calmly, but the sheer frustration clouding her face reveals that calm is the last thing she’s feeling.

  “Promise!”

  “I promise.” She leans in to move a hunk of wet hair off his forehead. Her fingers are shaking as she does it. I no longer feel any jealousy toward this guy. Only pity. “We’re going to take you home, okay? But you need to let my friends help you up, because I can’t do it by myself.”

  Without a word, I extend a hand toward Brenna’s ex.

  After a moment of hesitation, he accepts it.

  I haul him to his feet. Once he’s vertical, I discover he’s around my height, six-two, or maybe a bit taller. I suspect he used to be a lot bulkier. Now he’s skinny. Not twig-skinny, but certainly not built like the hockey player he once was.

  Brooks is startled as he examines Eric. He flicks a look in my direction, and I see the same pity I’m feeling reflected back at me. My teammate shrugs out of his windbreaker and steps closer to drape it over Eric’s shoulders.

  “Here, man, you need to warm up,” Brooks murmurs, and the three of us guide the shivering guy toward the car.

  “Westlynn is a ten-minute drive from here,” Brenna tells me when we reach the Mercedes.

  This time Brooks gets in the passenger side, and Brenna sits in the backseat with Eric, who spends the entire car ride incessantly thanking us for coming to pick him up. From what I can glean, he went to visit his friend three days ago.

  Three days ago.

  The revelation makes me think of all those shows and documentaries about drug users. Crystal meth, in particular, is a nasty drug to be addicted to, because apparently the high doesn’t last long at all. Which leads users to take more and more, going on binges in order to maintain the high. And that’s what Eric Royce had been doing, bingeing for seventy-two hours straight. But now he’s crashing. He left his friend’s house to walk home, became completely disoriented, and wound up in a stranger’s bushes.

  This was a number one draft pick.

  I can’t even wrap my head around that. One minute someone is on top of the world. The next, they’re hitting rock bottom. It’s terrifying how fast and how far people can fall.

  “I knew you’d come,” Eric is mumbling. “And now you’re here, and maybe you can give me fifty bucks and—”

  My eyebrows shoot up.

  “Well, that took a turn,” Brooks mutters to me.

  “No.” Her sharp tone invites no argument. “I’m not giving you money. I drove almost an hour to—no, not just me. I dragged my friends out in the rain to come find you, to help you, and now you’re hitting me u
p for money? So you can buy more drugs, which are the reason you’re in this situation to begin with? What is wrong with you?”

  He starts to whine. “After everything we’ve been through—”

  “Exactly!” she thunders, and both Brooks and I flinch at her vehemence. “After everything we’ve been through, I don’t owe you a thing. I don’t owe you a goddamn thing, Eric.”

  “But I still love you,” he whispers.

  “Hoo boy,” Weston says under his breath.

  I swallow a sigh. I’ve never met a more pathetic person, and I force myself to remember that this man clearly has addiction issues. But from the sounds of it, he’s the one refusing to go to rehab. Refusing to save himself.

  Either way, I’m more than a little relieved when we arrive at his house. “Let me talk to his mom before we take him in,” Brenna says. “I need to warn Louisa.”

  She hops out and hurries toward the two-story home. It has a white wraparound porch, big bay windows, and a welcoming red door. It’s hard to picture a meth addict living there.

  I wait for Brenna to reach the porch, then twist around in my seat to address Eric. “Listen, I don’t know what your history with Brenna is,” I say in a low voice. “But this is the last time you’re going to be calling her.”

  Confusion fills his eyes. “But I have to call her. She’s my friend and—”

  “She’s not your friend, pal.” My jaw goes so tight I can barely get a word out. “You just risked her life, made her drive in a storm to rescue you from some bender, and then thanked her by asking for drug money. You are not her friend.”

  I think a sliver of guilt manages to penetrate the high, because his lips start trembling. “She’s my friend,” he says again, but it doesn’t hold as much conviction as before.

  Brenna returns to the car, accompanied by a dark-haired woman in a flannel robe and rain boots. She looks like she was dragged out of bed.

  The woman throws open the back door. “Eric, honey, come here. Get in the house.”

  He manages to slide out of the backseat on his own. Once he staggers to his feet, his mother latches on to his arm. “Come on, honey, let’s go inside.” She glances toward the driver’s seat. “Thank you so much for bringing him home.”

  As she guides him away, a dismayed Brenna peers at Brooks’s open window. “Your coat,” she reminds him.

  “Let him keep it. I’ll buy another.” A response that reveals just how badly he wants to disentangle himself from this entire situation.

  I don’t blame him.

  When Brenna is buckled up in the backseat, I twist around and prompt, “Hastings?”

  She slowly shakes her head, and I’m startled when I glimpse unshed tears clinging to her long eyelashes. “Can I spend the night at your place?”

  27

  Brenna

  “I’m so embarrassed.” I flop down in the center of Jake’s bed, wearing one of his T-shirts, a pair of his thick socks, and nothing else. My cheeks are still burning from the humiliation of scouring the streets of New Hampshire for my druggie ex-boyfriend—and dragging two other people along for the ride.

  Jake closes the door. “You don’t need to be embarrassed. We all have our shit.”

  “Really? So you have a meth-addicted ex-girlfriend lurking in the shadows who might require rescuing at any moment? Sweet! We have so much in common!”

  His lips quirk up. “Fine. Maybe my shit isn’t quite as exciting as yours.” He runs a hand through his hair, which is still damp from the shower.

  We both showered—separately—the second we got back to Jake’s apartment. After being out in the cold April rain with Eric and then driving home in wet clothes, we desperately needed warming up. A part of me is still floored that Jake and Brooks did this for me tonight. It’s definitely going above and beyond.

  I can’t get Eric’s face out of my mind. His enlarged pupils, the rapid-fire jabbering. It’s horrifying to know that he smoked meth for three days straight, got lost in a quiet residential neighborhood, and passed out in the bushes. Afraid. Alone. Thank God his mother continues to pay for his cell phone so that he has the means to communicate and call for help.

  I just wish he hadn’t called me.

  “I can’t believe that’s the same Eric Royce who almost played for Chicago,” Jake says, and there’s a flash of pity in his eyes.

  “I know.”

  He joins me on the bed. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to deal with him.” I have to amend that. “Not to this extent, though. Usually he wants money. Last year I made the mistake of giving him some, so now he thinks it’s okay to keep asking.”

  “You dated for how long?”

  “About a year and a half.”

  “And you broke up with him.”

  I nod.

  “Why?”

  “Because it was too much.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “It got too intense, and we weren’t good for each other anymore. Plus, my dad hated him by that point.”

  “Doesn’t your dad hate everyone?”

  “Pretty much.” I smile faintly. “But he especially hates Eric.”

  “I’m not sure I fault him for that.”

  “Me neither, but you weren’t there. We went through some stuff and it hit Eric hard. He was immature and didn’t know how to properly deal with his emotions. He made a lot of mistakes.” I shrug. “Dad doesn’t allow for mistakes.”

  My voice cracks and I hope Jake doesn’t notice. Because that’s the problem—there’s no such thing as forgiveness with my father. He hasn’t forgiven me for my relationship with Eric and all the trouble it caused. I don’t think he ever will.

  Once again I feel my cheeks heat up. “See, I told you that you didn’t want to get involved with me. I’m way too fucked up.”

  “You’re not fucked up,” Jake says. “If anything, you seem to have your shit together, a good head on your shoulders. Especially compared to your ex.”

  “Well, one of us needed to be the grownup in that equation.” Bitterness coats my tongue. I gulp it down. “I was carrying the entire relationship by the end of it. Eric fell apart and couldn’t be there for me when I needed him and yet I was expected to be there for him, always. It was exhausting.”

  “I can imagine.”

  I rub my weary eyes. My relationship with Eric taught me so many tough lessons, the most important one being that you can’t rely on anyone but yourself. He wasn’t equipped to handle my emotions, and I don’t know if that’s exclusive to Eric, or boyfriends in general. What I do know is that I’ll never be so careless with my heart again.

  “If he ever calls again, I don’t want you to pick up,” Jake says roughly.

  “Really. So if he’s lying in some ditch and needs my help, I should just let him die?”

  “Maybe.”

  I stare at him in shock.

  “I don’t mean to be callous, but sometimes people need to hit rock bottom in order for things to change. You can’t always rescue them,” Jake says somberly. “They need to crawl out of that hole and rescue themselves.”

  “I suppose so.” I sigh. “But you don’t have to worry about this happening again. My days of rescuing Eric are over.”

  “Good.” He crawls to the head of the bed and lifts the corner of the comforter. “Come here. It’s been a long day. Let’s get some sleep.”

  “Our first sleepover, Jakey. Isn’t this exciting.” My sarcasm lacks its usual bite. He’s right. I’m tired. And I just want to erase the memory of Eric Royce from my head. I was as devastated as Eric was when everything fell apart. I almost died for that guy. But enough is enough. He’s a ghost from my past, and it’s time to forget about him.

  I slide under the covers and snuggle up next to Jake. He’s lying on his back, and my head is on his bare chest. He smells fresh and clean from the shower, and his skin is so warm. I feel his heart thumping beneath my ear. Steady, soothing beats.

  I can’t believe he di
d this for me tonight. I could’ve gone to find Eric on my own, but Jake wouldn’t let me. He had my back, and the thought causes my throat to close up a bit, because I can’t remember the last time someone was truly there for me.

  “Can I ask you something?” he murmurs in the darkness.

  “Of course.”

  “Can I kiss you or are you too tired for that?”

  “God no, please kiss me.”

  He rolls on his side, one arm stretched out with his cheek pressed against it. He inches closer until our lips are touching, and then we kiss, and a wave of pure emotion spills over me.

  I’m not sure if it’s the adrenaline wearing off, or if I’m feeling overly needy given tonight’s events. But the emotional connection we made tonight is merging with the deep physical ache I feel for him whenever we’re together. I don’t know how long we lie there making out, but soon kissing is not enough. My breasts feel heavy and my core is throbbing. I push him onto his back again and climb on top of him, grinding against him in a desperate attempt to ease the ache.

  He squeezes my ass and groans against my mouth, and suddenly his thick erection pokes out of his boxers.

  “Oh, hello there,” I greet it.

  Jake grins up at me. “Sorry, that was unintentional, I swear.”

  Unintentional or not, it’s a welcome sight. I stroke the hot, hard length of him, shivering when I remember how it felt filling my mouth, the wave of satisfaction that hit me when I brought him to climax. I want to feel that satisfaction again.

  No. I want more than that.

  “I want you inside me,” I tell him.

  “Yeah?” he says thickly.

  “Yeah.” I take a slow breath. Now that I’ve made the decision, my pulse kicks into high gear, thudding in my ears. Sex isn’t something I give freely. “Do you have condoms?”

  “Top drawer.”

  I lazily stroke him before reaching for the nightstand. I grab the box of condoms from the drawer, pull out a strip, and rip one off. Before I can open it, Jake sits up and removes my shirt, his big hands cupping my breasts. Then I’m the one on my back, crushed by his muscular body, completely at his mercy.