Hush

by Nancy Bush

  Her heart was pounding as if she’d run a marathon.

  What the hell was Faith doing with Danner?

  Juliet looked over at her and asked her, “What’s wrong?”

  When Coby didn’t answer Juliet threw a glance toward the living room, clearly wondering what had taken place. She headed to the other room while her sister Suzette gave her a quizzical look. “You look weird,” Suzette said.

  Coby wasn’t certain whether either Juliet or Suzette knew about her past relationship with Danner. She didn’t want to talk about it. She couldn’t, even if she had. She not only looked weird, she felt weird.

  “Are you serving more hors d’oeuvres?” she asked Suzette, glancing down at the array of food on the counter.

  “No, you are,” Suzette said, thrusting an antipasto tray into Coby’s arms. “I don’t know what the hell happened to Annette. She was in charge, but I guess she’s enjoying her party.”

  Coby turned to head toward the dining table but Juliet stood in the doorway, blocking her, her brown eyes knowing. “Danner Lockwood’s out there with Faith.”

  Suzette’s head snapped up. “Really? I thought she was dating that other guy that Annette talked about. Go find Annette and ask her.”

  “Hugh,” Coby said without expression.

  “Hugh Westfall,” Juliet said. “But I don’t see him out there. She ditch him for Danner?”

  Coby didn’t want to go there. She sidestepped Juliet and walked into the dining area, studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone in the room. She sensed that Danner and Faith were standing in front of the windows, gazing out toward the dark ocean, and she couldn’t stop herself from sliding them a glance. Annette was with them, making sure they each had a glass of wine, talking with them, smiling, being a great host.

  God. Damn. It.

  Coby wondered at her sister. Really. Really? She decided to bring Coby’s old boyfriend to this party, out of all the people she knew? The only guy Coby had ever really cared about?

  Really.

  “I need another glass of wine,” she told Suzette upon reentering the kitchen.

  “Should I make it a double?” Suzette asked, lifting two wine goblets up.

  Coby inwardly sighed. Clearly, they all knew about her past relationship with Danner. “Thanks, but I’ll just drink really fast and come back for a fill-up.”

  “If any of my sisters went out with my ex, I’d kill her,” Suzette said, pouring Coby another glass.

  “The night is young,” Coby murmured.

  One step inside the house—actually before his first step inside—Danner had felt a vise grip around his chest that was more emotional than physical. It was a warning sign. An alarm that let him know the precise moment he was making a big mistake. A kind of all-system alert that beat a rhythm inside his head: Get out, get out, get out!

  But it was too late. He was here. And Coby was here, though she’d disappeared from sight as quickly as she could. He could scarcely blame her. It had been years since their time together, and he hadn’t tried hard enough back then to keep things going. He’d let things come to an end. He’d been completely focused on his career in law enforcement and had let Coby Rendell slip away.

  He hadn’t really known how much she’d mattered until she was gone.

  So he’d come to this party to see her again. He’d allowed Faith to talk him into this trip, though it was definitely out of character. He and Faith weren’t even all that great of friends. She was just someone he ran into occasionally because she worked in the same downtown area of Portland and they frequented the same bistros and coffee shops. They were acquaintances, ex-schoolmates, though from different classes, and when they’d run across each other about a year earlier they’d become friends. He hadn’t known Faith when he was dating Coby. He knew of her, but she had made a point of not visiting her father and Annette and so there weren’t any family events where Danner was part of the scene. And Coby didn’t much hang out with her father or mother, either, for that matter, so while he and Coby were together Danner’s relationship with the Rendells was fairly peripheral.

  Meeting Faith, knowing who she was . . . it probably played a big part in why he’d let himself get to know her. Their occasional meeting could be construed as dates, he supposed, but for Danner, really, they were just a means to an end. A way for him to feel connected to Coby even though Faith rarely actually brought up her name.

  So when Faith had asked him to join her for her stepmother’s thirtieth birthday, her stepmother being one of the Ette sisters and an ex—best friend, he’d thought it over briefly and given her a resounding yes. Faith seemed to believe he was being a good guy, accepting her invitation as a means to help ease the tension that would undoubtedly arise from the situation. Well, yeah, there was a little of that. If he wanted to be kind to himself. But truthfully, his motivation was a lot more selfish. The birthday party was a means to see Coby again. Plain and simple.

  And any bullshit he might try to lay on himself wasn’t going to work. He knew why he was there. He wanted to see Coby again. He wanted to talk to her. Be with her. See if the old spark was still there.

  He could remember the first time she swept across his radar.

  He was newly graduated from Portland State in business but considering going into law enforcement. He’d been at the university to pick up some information and she’d walked into the administration building. He’d recognized her a little. Or maybe she just touched a chord somehow, but in any case, she sure as hell knew who he was.

  “Hi,” she said, intriguing him with the quick, quirky smile that was her trademark. It disarmed. It covered up the fact that she had a piercingly keen intellect. It drew his gaze like a magnet to pink lips a shade too wide that hinted at sensuality.

  “I know your brother, Jarrod,” she said, sticking out a hand of introduction. “We were classmates.”

  “I’m Danner,” he said, shaking her proffered hand.

  “I know. I’ve seen you around. Upperclassmen and all that. You know them, but they don’t know you.” She pulled her hand back and glanced at his brochures. “Law enforcement?”

  “Thinking about it. Are you enrolled here?”

  “Business,” she said with a nod.

  And that was the beginning of a friendship that spiraled quickly into something more and burned hot and fast and might have turned into something else if he hadn’t then joined the Portland Police Department and immersed himself in another world, both business-wise and socially, that left him no time for an interest in anything else. Did he regret letting Coby go? Yep. Did he wonder why he did it? All the time. Did he have an answer? Only a half-assed excuse that was wrapped up in his own parents’ misguided union because they’d married too young and then proceeded to make each other’s lives, and the lives of their two children, Danner and Jarrod, a living hell.

  Or maybe he’d been too young to get serious. Or maybe he’d just not realized what he had. Or maybe he’d just screwed up royally.

  To be fair to himself, there had been the Jarrod issue. Though his brother was already with Genevieve by the time Danner hooked up with Coby, there was clearly something that bothered Jarrod about Coby Rendell being Danner’s girl. Jarrod had a thing for her that had never been requited, and although Danner shouldn’t have cared and didn’t, really, it had definitely colored his relationship with his brother. Jarrod was cool and remote when he learned of the relationship and, like the Rendell family, he kept his distance from Coby and Danner.

  So Danner let Coby go.

  Years passed and, as his star rose career-wise, his romantic encounters took a nosedive, sliding along a downward trajectory that worsened with each passing year. He couldn’t maintain a relationship. There was no passion. He seemed to lack the ability to care. If a woman did manage to pique his interest within fifteen minutes, that interest started to wane, and if they managed to get past that decline and actually made it to the bedroom, sex sent him into a full crash and burn. Nothing was
satisfactory and he found himself racing to get away as quickly as possible, using any excuse he could think of. He wasn’t proud of it, but he didn’t know what to do to make things better. He lacked the skills, maybe; the initiative, certainly.

  And then he ran into Faith.

  She knew enough about his relationship with Coby to recognize Coby and Danner had shared something special, at least for a time. Faith was looking for a friend, not a lover, which suited Danner perfectly. She was still dating Hugh Westfall when they first started meeting, but the relationship was in free fall. After they broke up, Faith used Danner for a sympathetic ear. Hugh wasn’t anyone Danner knew, so Faith could malign him up one side and down the other and Danner just let her. Over coffee, or beer, or wine he heard about Hugh Westfall’s faults, ad nauseam. Faith’s blather was almost soothing to Danner; it allowed him to switch his brain off and just let it wash over him in a wave while he watched her and thought of Coby.

  Faith wanted to hear about Danner’s forays into the dating scene, but he didn’t have a lot of fodder for her. Any hookups he had were short and infrequent. He was all about work, morning, noon, and night. Boring? Yup. But there it was.

  When she’d invited him to her stepmother’s birthday party, he’d seen the opportunity for what it was, though he’d initially tried to lie to himself.

  “I can’t go alone to this party,” Faith had told him. “It’s hard enough dealing with my mom, and I can’t have my father grilling me about my love life, which is what he’ll do. I don’t want to talk about Hugh, but since he got with Annette it seems to be his only focus of conversation with me. Like he’s goddamn Cupid. Coby’s with Joe, so she’s safe, but I had to admit to him that Hugh and I aren’t together anymore and it’s become this huge problem!”

  Joe? Danner had thought with a tightening of his gut. He would have dearly loved to stop Faith right there, but he hadn’t been able to.

  She swept on, “God, it’s annoying. Dad married someone half his age, so he has no credibility at all in talking to me about relationships! I just don’t want to deal with it. And then there’s Mom. I swear she’s just acting out with Barry. She never really wanted the divorce and it’s been hell for her. Pure hell. And Dad . . . all these years with . . . with . . . my best friend. Ex-friend,” she amended. “Can you stand it? I can’t talk to Annette anymore. I can’t even look at her.”

  He’d nodded. He couldn’t get past that Coby was with someone named Joe, but his nod was enough to keep Faith going and eventually, both because he wanted her to shut up and because he wanted to see Coby, he said yes to her invitation.

  So here he was.

  And Coby was hiding out in the kitchen. From him, probably. He’d seen the look of shock on her face and the way she’d managed to be polite and welcoming to him and Faith, fairly adroitly, he had to admit, before hightailing it out of the room to safety.

  To hell with that. If she stayed in the kitchen much longer, he was just going to have to go find her.

  “Oh, go out and talk to him,” Suzette said. She took Coby’s empty glass and exchanged it for a full one.

  Coby looked down at her drink. “At this rate I’ll be drunk by eight and won’t have to.”

  “Don’t you want to?” Suzette asked.

  “Hell, no.”

  “You’re not with Joe anymore, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “I didn’t see him here, so I figured.”

  Juliet cruised back into the room and gazed at them both. “I don’t know what Annette expects us to do,” she complained. “Why didn’t she hire Nona Sofia’s to do the serving, too? It’s not our job to keep the hors d’oeuvres and drinks coming.”

  Suzette just shrugged and Juliet seemed to want to say more, but then shook her head and returned to the living room and the party.

  Coby pulled her thoughts from Danner with an effort, and that somehow reminded her of Lucas again. Lucas and Rhiannon. And Yvette? How did that fit in?

  She stared out the window at the steam rising from the hot tub. Her feelings for Danner were unresolved, and having him here made her feel anxious. Setting her glass down, she pressed her palms to her cheeks and shook off her feelings with an effort.

  “You okay?” Suzette asked, holding a tray.

  “Peachy.”

  Suzette left with a shrug, and for a moment Coby was alone in the kitchen. Lucas and Rhiannon. Had they been in love? Had they felt any part of what she’d felt with Danner? Or was it all blue smoke and mirrors?

  Rhiannon had hated Yvette with a passion, and from the time of the campout she made no secret about how she felt about Yvette and her pregnancy. That whole senior year Rhiannon’s eyes shot daggers at Yvette whenever they passed in the hall. Yet, in a strange way, Yvette’s pregnancy sheltered her from some of the worst of Rhiannon’s wrath, so it was after Yvette gave birth to Benedict, just before graduation, that Rhiannon actually attacked Yvette outside the gym. Yvette was talking to Kirk Grassi. Maybe she was even flirting a little; Coby wasn’t sure. But suddenly there was screaming and hair-pulling and name-calling and it took Vice Principal Donald Greer to separate them, for which he earned a clawing fingernail across his cheek that filled up with blood.

  The incident was handled internally by the school and Rhiannon and Yvette received separate counseling and agreed to keep their distance from each other. A few weeks later they all graduated, went their separate ways, and that’s the way it basically stayed until Rhiannon died.

  Coby heard she’d fallen to her death the Christmas before college graduation. Rhiannon was home for the holidays and had gone hiking with some friends, but she’d taken off ahead of them and slipped off a treacherous ridge. Everyone was shocked and it put a pall over their holiday plans. The memorial service was two days before New Year’s. Coby went alone but saw her high school classmates and most of the girls who’d been to the campout, though Yvette was a no-show. Her absence caused its own round of speculation. Coby suspected Yvette just hadn’t wanted to revisit her own bad behavior. Who would? She was a single mother now, making her way in the world, and probably figured that was hard enough. The rest of the girls didn’t want to talk to her anyway. Genevieve sniffed something about Yvette being a piece of work, and everyone else just kept her own counsel.

  Coby let her thoughts turn to the other girls who’d been at the campfire and how they’d fared since revealing their deepest, darkest secrets. Dana had apparently gotten her eating disorder under control; at least that’s what her last Christmas card suggested as she looked healthy, happy, and pregnant beside her husband and kids. Ellen had taken up with Theo for a while after the beach trip, through most of senior year actually. They broke up just before prom and Theo had ended up going to the dance with the girl from Gresham whose reputation had been so maligned by Vic Franzen and Kirk Grassi. The rumors about that girl’s pregnancy had turned out to be just rumors, apparently, because there was no more mention of it, and in the meantime Ellen and her family moved to California. If Annette was correct, Wynona was still dealing with some serious issues that very possibly hearkened back to the sexual abuse by her swim coach. McKenna was still single and performed her comedy all over the Northwest, and Genevieve’s dad died and she married Jarrod.

  That brought Coby’s thoughts back to Danner with a bang. And in that moment the doorbell rang again, and a moment later Coby heard Genevieve’s flinty voice and Jarrod’s deeper tones.

  She picked up her glass of wine again and braved walking into the dining room where Yvette was standing at the end of the table. Coby stopped short and watched as Genevieve and Annette both squealed like teenagers upon seeing each other. They’d become good friends over the years, which was weird, given how Gen had felt about Yvette and probably still did. But maybe she’d gotten past all that? Coby thought, sliding Yvette a sideways look. In some ways, Gen and Annette were very much alike: outspoken, leaders, bullheaded, overly confident. Maybe that transcended disliking—hating—your friend’s sister.r />
  Coby sensed, rather than saw, Danner and Faith approaching the newcomers, as she wouldn’t move her head to see them. But then Danner was shaking his brother’s hand and Faith was forced to greet Genevieve warmly, though she couldn’t seem to bring herself to thaw for Annette, as she wouldn’t deign to even look at her.

  Jarrod Lockwood had cut his hair in the intervening years. No more was it overly long, rock-star long. Now it was short, damn near a buzz cut, and as he said hello to his brother and Faith, his eyes searched the room, finally colliding with Coby.

  Jarrod Lockwood. Danner Lockwood’s younger brother. Genevieve Knapp Lockwood’s husband.

  Coby swallowed a gulp of wine as Jarrod and Genevieve headed into the room, big smiles of greeting on both of their faces.

  “God,” Yvette murmured. “The ‘It’ couple.”

  That was the first thing Coby could agree with her on though she’d be damned if she’d say so. Jarrod and Gen didn’t seem real. Too bright and cheery for words. They were the everlasting “It” couple. Genevieve’s blond hair was blunt cut at her chin and her body looked hard and lean, as if she worked out every spare moment. She’d thrust a large box into Annette’s hands when she’d entered, which made Coby feel guilty for not bringing a gift. She hadn’t even thought of it, which said something about their relationship.

  “It’s enough to make me lose my lunch,” Yvette said. She wasn’t drinking, had declined every round of drinks that passed by, though now she glanced at Coby’s glass as if rethinking that decision.

  As Gen and Jarrod bore down on them, Yvette asked, “You think your dad cheats on Annette like he cheated on your mother?”

  “I never said he cheated on my mother,” Coby said, surprised. Her lie had come back to haunt her all these years later!

  “That’s what it sounded like to me.”

  “I was just trying to come up with some big secret because I didn’t have one. It wasn’t even true.”

  “Yeah?” Yvette shrugged, skeptical and uncaring.