Dare You To Keep Me: HawkRidge High II

by Akeroyd, Serena

I blinked at the sight of him, only just registering that I’d met all of Jessa and Sam’s folks but never Chris. Saying that, they hadn’t met mine, either. Was that something I should correct? Probably, but it wasn’t like Carrie and my father actually meant anything to me.

  And of course, that instantly made me feel like a real bastard. Not about my dad, but for Carrie’s sake.

  “Jessa,” Chris greeted, breaking into my recriminating thoughts. “What do you have there?”

  “Groceries,” she chirped brightly.

  “Groceries?” Chris questioned, his brow furrowing as he took in all the bags we were carrying. “Who are you feeding? The five thousand?”

  Drew cleared his throat. “No. Just Max. He eats like a horse.”

  I grunted. “The compliments about my stomach just keep on coming today, don’t they?”

  When Drew laughed, I shot him a grin, then he murmured, “Haven’t seen you in a while, Dad,” and any levity disappeared in an instant.

  “I’m on my way out. I stopped by to see you. Make sure you’re okay. What went on last night?”

  Jessa cleared her throat. “He collapsed. Exhaustion.” So she was still sticking with the lie she’d sold his grandmother? Hmm.

  It wasn’t a bad one, honestly. I was just used to her being forthright. I didn’t like hearing her lie. Even if it was to save Drew’s ass.

  “Aren’t you getting enough sleep?” Chris queried as he stuck his hands in his pockets, and it pissed me off something fierce that he didn’t offer to grab the evidently overloaded bags from Jessa’s hands.

  Drew snorted. “If I say I’m not, will you come and tuck me into bed every night?”

  Chris grunted. “No need to talk back, Drew.”

  “Every need, Dad,” Drew retorted, his tone sarcastic. “Look, we need to get the food into the refrigerator, and you need to go to work and be with Sherry and never see me. That’s cool. I get it.” When he strode toward the door, he half shoved his father out of the way to get inside.

  Chris, evidently speechless by Drew’s reception, just hovered there. He was like an older version of Drew, just without the blue streaks in his hair and a few more lines crinkling the skin at the side of his eyes and mouth.

  “What’s going on, Sam?” Chris asked, and I had to question the man’s intelligence, because if he couldn’t figure out that he was neglecting his son, then there was truly no hope for him.

  “Nothing, Chris,” Sam replied with a tight smile. “He’s okay. Just needs to take it easy.”

  Jessa, dumping her bags on the paving stones beneath her, reached out and grabbed hold of Chris’s arm. Sam’s sudden tension told me he thought she was going to chew into him like she had Drew’s grandmother, but it seemed she’d decided to take a different tactic with Drew’s dad, because her voice was soft, cajoling as she murmured, “Chris, Drew is going to be cutting back at the store. If I can get him to quit, then he will. He has too much going on to be working the way he is.”

  Chris tensed. “He can’t do that—”

  “Yes, he can. We know about your mother, and I’m truly sorry to hear about her illness. I’ve already spoken with her and will be making arrangements to handle the cost of her treatment.”

  His brow puckered before he released a short laugh. “Jessa, you’re a kid. You still go to school, for God’s sake.”

  “I’m eighteen, Chris,” she corrected, and for the first time, her voice stiffened. “I’m old enough to access my trust fund and do whatever I want with it. At this given moment, I don’t want Drew to work himself to death when I can help out.”

  “Why would you do that?” Chris retorted, shaking his head in dismissal.

  “Because Drew is my best friend, and what affects him, affects me. It seems to me he fends for everyone else, just not himself.” Her smile was tight. “As I said, arrangements are underway.”

  They were?

  I cocked a brow, wondering at that untruth, and my opinion changed. No, I didn’t like to hear her lie, but I was almost amused at the number of white lies she was spewing today. Had I really thought, as Drew had once declared her, that she was Pollyanna?

  Well, she wasn’t.

  We were both wrong on that score.

  She was a thousand times better than Pollyanna.

  She’d fight for those she loved, for those she considered family. She’d do whatever she could to help those who mattered to her, and fuck, if I didn’t respect her even more for that.

  She was a lioness, queen of her pride, and I’d never been more turned on than I was at that moment.

  Chris gritted out, “I’ll speak to your parents—”

  She snorted. “Do. It’s my money, Chris. They can’t tell me how to spend it, and I’m certain they’d prefer for me to help your family than to waste it on a Gucci bag.” Her lips twisted. “They’re all the rage at school at the moment.”

  An alarm went off, making Chris jerk in surprise, and he patted his pocket, grabbed his cell, and stared down at the screen. “I need to go. Tell Drew—”

  “What?” Jessa queried, head tilted to the side as Chris hesitated.

  “Tell him I’ll call him later. We need to speak.”

  “Well, you’ll see him after your shift, won’t you?” she retorted, the bite to her tone evident.

  “I’ll be at Sherry’s. Tell him to wait on my call, yeah? Not to ignore it like he did my text last night.”

  She shrugged. “Sure.”

  He headed to the garage and it figured he was parked there, otherwise Drew would have known that his father was here.

  Within a minute, we were alone, his car a distant memory as he blasted his engine to speed out of the neighborhood.

  I mused, “Never seen his dad before.”

  “He doesn’t go to the school often,” Sam stated grimly.

  “Often is an understatement,” Jessa said dryly. “I think I can count on one hand how many times I’ve even met him, and I spend a lot of time at his house.” She cut Derick a look. “If anything that was just said gets spread around school, I’ll sue you.”

  Derick sniffed. “For what?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll find something to pin on you.”

  She bent down and grabbed the bags, and as Derick went to move past me, I murmured, “Hey.”

  “What?” he demanded, then jerked back and almost dropped the paper bags I shoved at him. He caught them, though, and mumbled, “I’m not your fucking donkey.”

  “No? You’re the only ass around here as far as I can see,” I retorted, smirking when Sam laughed as he headed toward the house.

  Derick grunted, but he shuffled his feet forward and headed into the house with me at his back.

  Whatever I’d expected when I’d thought about returning to Drew’s house this afternoon, it hadn’t been news that Derick was being blackmailed by Sarah Dunham, nor had it been a small confrontation between Jessa and Drew’s father.

  Still, seeing Jessa act that way made me realize just what kind of woman she was turning into. Chris had been dead wrong when he’d called Jessa a kid. I wasn’t just saying that either. I didn’t believe it, because while we were both teenagers, and all adolescents wanted to believe they were mature, Jessa really was.

  I didn’t know why.

  She hadn’t been raised in the school of hard knocks, but something about her, whether it was almost dying, an insane amount of wealth, and a background that only one percent of fucking America could ever comprehend, that somehow made her a woman to be reckoned with.

  A woman who wouldn’t sit back and let shit hit the fan.

  A woman who I wanted something fierce. Even more so than I had yesterday.

  After I shut the door behind me, I headed into the kitchen too. It was full, with four pretty big guys and Jessa, but she and Drew seemed to know what they were doing and Sam beckoned at me to sit down at the table, so I did. The pair of them quickly worked to put the groceries away, and all the while, like a junkie in search of his n
ext fix, Derick hovered near the back door, his hands jiggling and his body seeming to throb with tension.

  I eyed him, then shot Sam a look. There was a grimness to the set of his mouth that I didn’t understand, and when Derick burst out, “For fuck’s sake, this is important. More important than goddamn groceries,” Sam didn’t seem surprised that Derick had reached the end of his patience.

  Jessa snorted. “So says you. I don’t believe you, Derick. You’re a troublemaker. Always have been, and always will be. You can say what you will—”

  “No. Look. You have to listen to me—”

  “She doesn’t have to do shit,” Drew snapped. “You admitted on a text that you planted the drugs. We can take that to the principal on Monday morning.”

  “Of course you can,” Derick retorted. “I know that, and fuck, a part of me would understand if you did, but you’d be an idiot.”

  I scowled. “Why would he be?”

  “Because if you do that, if you expose me and if you expose Sarah’s BS, then you expose yourself as a customer, Drew.”

  The entire kitchen stilled at that because he was right, but also because, how the fuck had Derick known Drew bought meds from Sarah?

  “I watch her a lot,” he admitted, when none of us said a word. “I’ve seen the stunts you pull. Her putting drugs in a book… it’s hardly subtle, is it?”

  With narrowed eyes, Drew grated out, “I’m not being held over a barrel by the likes of you over this bullshit. We’ll go on Monday to see the principal, and—”

  Jessa grabbed his arm. “Wait a second, Drew.” She shot Derick a look. “I assume you’re here for a reason. You need our help for something?”

  He licked his lips. “Yeah. I do. If we work together, then we can keep shit under wraps and she’s the only one who’ll pay.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sam snapped, his hands turning into fists on top of the table.

  “I’m talking about getting our hands on her phone. She has two. It’s so cliché, but it’s like her black book. It contains all the stuff we need to eliminate her.”

  “You’ve been watching too many episodes of 24,” I commented gruffly. “You need to calm down too. Are you high?” I accused.

  “No, but I need that phone,” Derick rasped, and the terror in his eyes was so real that I felt my stomach start to churn.

  “Why? What’s going on, Derick?” Jessa asked, her voice softer than ever. “Why have you gone from dumping drugs in my locker to asking me for help?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not high,” he bit off, repeating the statement like he hadn’t heard a word Jessa had said, and as though that was the most important thing we needed to understand.

  “Okay, you’re not high,” I relented. “But tell us what’s going on or we’re not about to do dick.”

  He turned his back on us to stare out the window as he whispered, “I’m gay.”

  Drew cocked a brow. “You are?”

  “Yeah,” Derick admitted. “I am. I haven’t come out, and I won’t. My family… they wouldn’t understand.”

  I hadn’t been around Hawk Ridge long, but I knew the Petersens family from way back. His father was the money, some old railroad millionaire, but his mother was a hard line Liberal who hated gays and believed they could be reconverted into being straight with Jesus’ help—I’d seen her preaching to a crowd on a late-night chat show, for Pete’s sake.

  There was a bittersweet irony to the fact that the Senator had borne a gay son. Christ, I didn’t envy Derick. Especially if he didn’t pull away from his family and take his own route in life.

  From his terror, I got the feeling that wasn’t going to happen. And call me cynical, but I knew why.

  Money.

  In Hawk Ridge, it all led back to the green stuff.

  “What does she have on you?” I rasped, ignoring the looks the others sent me with a shrug.

  “A video.” His shoulders hunched as he bowed his head. “A fucking video. I didn’t—” He swallowed. “I trusted him. He was a…”

  Drew cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Derick.”

  A harsh laugh escaped the other guy. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “No. I am. Really,” was Drew’s earnest reply. “No one should be betrayed like that.”

  “I don’t know how Sarah got involved, if I’m honest. One minute my boyfriend was using it against me, getting money out of me, and then it was Sarah. These past eight months have been fucking hell.

  “Sarah stopped asking for just money this week though. She wanted me to plant the drugs in Jessa’s locker—”

  “Why?” I asked, curious about the other girl’s logic.

  “She hates Jessa. For the most pathetic reasons too. I swear, the bitch needs to embrace feminism.”

  “Sam,” Jessa murmured on a tired sigh. “She hates me because I have Sam.”

  “And she doesn’t have him,” Derick tacked on. “She’s trying to bring you down, get you expelled.”

  “But I’m a Rothskind,” Jessa said blandly, “and we don’t get expelled.”

  “I don’t think she realized that,” he admitted, spinning around to face us.

  “And what does she want now?” I asked. “She has to want something if her last plan didn’t work.”

  “More drugs,” he admitted. “She wants me to find a way to get them into Jessa’s locker, into her school bag. Enough where things will go beyond the faculty and the police are called in.”

  Jessa blanched at that, then asked, “Why are you here, Derick?”

  His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Because it’s never going to end. I could deal with the money. I have enough of an allowance to cover it, and it’s an expense I’d prefer not to have, but it’s nothing in the grand scheme of things.”

  Fuck, what world had I penetrated where teenage girls had access to enough money to pay someone’s medical bills and where bratty sons could afford to be blackmailed and considered it only an inconvenience?

  “What’s changed?”

  “When she asked me to do what I did on Friday, I really thought that was the end of it. Then she texted me again this morning. She wants me to sneak into the school so on Monday, she can do a big reveal.” He shook his head. “She’s fucking insane. Crazy.”

  I rubbed at my temple. “I know this sounds weird but… why does she need the money so bad? Blackmailing isn’t something you fall into by chance,” I pointed out, when the others shot me perplexed looks.

  Sam shrugged. “The Dunhams aren’t as wealthy as they used to be.”

  “They aren’t?” Christ, you’d never know from Sarah’s wardrobe. Although, if she was doubling down on her allowance with blackmailing, no wonder she had Gucci trainers for Phys-Ed.

  “No.” Jessa shook her head. “They were in coal, but there was a fire at their largest mine. The place exploded and killed a lot of innocent men. Ever since, the family has been on the rails.”

  My eyes widened at that. “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah. It was fucking devastating,” Drew rasped sadly. “Lot of good men lost their lives, and the fucking scum that are the Dunhams didn’t give a shit. Didn’t even apologize. Just hid behind the gates of their estate.”

  Derick chimed in, “She’s always been a bitch, but ever since then, she’s been even worse. That’s why I need her phone. Why we need it. Her whole life is on there.”

  “How do you know? Hell, maybe it’s on the cloud?” I retorted.

  But Derick was shaking his head. “No. I’ve only seen the damn thing a few times, and those were when I was sneaking around watching her. She was adding my payment to a spreadsheet on there, and…” He gulped. “She showed me the video on that phone. That’s how I know for sure.”

  “But it could still be on the cloud,” I stated firmly.

  “I doubt it. She’s using it as evidence to bribe me. If I went to the cops, it would hang her as much as it would me.”

  “All blackmailers have a failsafe,” Dre
w agreed. “I mean, shit, you see it on TV all the time.”

  “I don’t care. I really don’t. I have to try. One last push before I just break down, because I won’t be used this way. I just won’t.” He blew out a shaky breath then raised his hands to cover his face. “This is a living nightmare. A fucking nightmare, and it feels like it’s never going to end.”

  Jessa cleared her throat, and uneasily asked, “How do you think we can help?”

  “Sam can,” Derick whispered. “He could distract Sarah at the party tonight, while I get the cell phone.”

  Sam cleared his throat. “Sounds simple enough.”

  “What would you do with it then?” Jessa questioned, before biting her bottom lip.

  “Toss it into Crest fucking Lake where it belongs.” He blew out a gusty breath. “I need to be freed from this, man. I can’t deal with it. The guilt is real. I know you guys probably think I’m a dick. You were right when you called me a troublemaker, and I know I’m a shit starter, but I’m being fucking serious right now.

  “You can’t raze Sarah Dunham’s name without raining hell down on Drew.”

  “If we spoke out against her, you don’t know that she’d speak about her clients,” I pointed out warily.

  “She’d sing like a fucking canary,” Drew said with a whoop, as he leaped up onto the kitchen counter. “She’s not the kind to take things lying down. Backed into a corner, Sarah is the type of person who’ll come out fighting.”

  “So, what do we do?” Jessa asked on a whisper.

  “Steal her phone and take away the evidence,” Derick insisted.

  As I looked around the kitchen, I saw realization dawning on each of my new friends’ faces that, in the grand scheme of things, our hands were tied just as much as Derick’s were.

  Shit.

  7

  Drew

  “I’m sorry.”

  Two words, but they could never really express how terrible I felt.

  Jessa patted me on the arm. “It’s not your fault,” she excused, then qualified it with a, “Well, not entirely.”

  My lips almost twitched at that, and if things hadn’t been so fucked up, I’d have grinned at her. Instead, I was left dealing with the ramifications of my actions in the worst possible way.