The Safe Bet (The Game Changers #3)

by Shealy James

  I saw the dump at the end of the string of respectable businesses and a brand new two-seater convertible parked right out front. I found her sitting on the curb in front of her car smoking a cigarette with black streaks of mascara under her eyes. She was violently shaking and staring blankly at the space in front of her.

  I approached her as if she was a skittish kitten, or how I imagined I would approach one. Ivy never flinched, but she knew I was there. “Thanks for coming,” she said with a gravelly voice. Had she been screaming?

  “Always.”

  She scoffed at that. “Yeah.”

  “What’s going on, Ivy? You don’t smoke.”

  “No, cigarettes are disgusting.” Surely you see my confusion here, but I knew better than to point out the obvious.

  “Why don’t we go back to the apartment? We can eat ice cream and veg out. If you want to talk, I’ll listen. If not, we can watch some stupid movie with a happy ending.” I wanted to get back to the safety of the apartment as fast as I could. I was still waiting to hear from Brock, and I didn’t have time for one of Ivy’s tantrums that night.

  “Yeah,” she said, then stubbed out her cigarette. “Let’s go.”

  I started to head to my car when she stopped me. “Let’s take my car. I don’t want one of these jackasses screwing with it. It’s brand new.”

  It seemed odd that she cared about her car. Typically she hated the extravagant gestures from her parents, made in place of them actually being there. Every time she expressed her disappointment in her parents, they sent her a gift that cost more than our college tuition. I thought that might have been the reason she jumped down the rabbit hole this time, but it seemed I was mistaken. She also appeared to have sobered up a bit. Her speech was in no way impaired now, so I had no way of knowing just how bad off she was at this point in the night. She simply wanted to go home.

  “Sure. Okay.”

  “You’ll have to get the keys from Bartender Man. He won’t give them to me.” Yes, I thought that was both wise on his part and suspicious on her part, but I did what I was told. Bartender Man gave them to me without question and went about his business. It wasn’t until we were on the two-lane highway that led to our apartment that I discovered exactly what I had gotten myself into.

  The road was dark and just wet enough from the rain that had come down on and off all day. The road had a hill on my side and a drop on the other. Trees parted only enough to fit the highway in between them. They were the perfect conditions for an accident, which was why I sped up when Ivy said, “I think about dying more than I think about living. I wonder what it would be like not to consciously feel anymore.”

  “It wouldn’t be like anything,” I told her as my foot pressed a little harder on the pedal in an effort to make it home faster.

  “It would be freeing. That’s what it would be.” And then she stopped talking altogether. For a moment I thought she fell asleep, but her eyes were wide open. I searched my brain for something thoughtful to say, but I was never good in times of crisis.

  It was silent. The radio wasn’t even on, and the road felt like it was forever long. Like the light at the end of the tunnel, I saw the traffic light up ahead casting a green glow on the street. That intersection was the final turn to head back to the apartment. For some reason, I knew that light meant safety.

  I was so focused on the destination that I didn’t see her hand coming. We were less than a hundred feet from the intersection when Ivy leaned across the car and pulled the wheel, forcing the car to veer quickly off the road. Without thinking, my foot went for the break, but all too quickly we were off the embankment and flipping. One. Two. Three flips before the car slammed against the tree. I was buckled in tightly and trapped in the car. My window was against the wet ground, and I knew if I could find a way to unbuckle my seatbelt, I could climb through the non-existent windshield.

  My mind wasn’t working clearly, though. At no point while I struggled to free myself from the car did I notice that I was alone. Ivy was nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Now

  “Reagan? Jesus, Rea, you’re shaking. Reagan!” Brock’s voice came through the darkness. I couldn’t force my words out, though. The memories were always so vivid. Even after all this time, it was like I was still trapped in that car, realizing Ivy wasn’t there. The physical scars faded, but the emotional damage would simply not disappear.

  “Rea? Breathe, Reagan. Just breathe. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

  I opened my eyes to find Brock hovering over me. His face was so familiar, but there were differences as well. He didn’t have so much facial hair before. There were small lines from years of making the same facial expressions. His eyes were the same, though. The dark lashes that women would kill for almost touched his eyebrows when his eyes were wide, like they were right then.

  “Brock,” I whispered.

  He swiped his thumbs across my cheeks, and it was then that I realized my eyes were leaking. I couldn’t be crying because I wasn’t a crier. Only weak people cried, and weak was the one thing I absolutely could not be.

  I moved to sit up, causing us to bang our heads together. His hand flew to his nose while he groaned, and I cried out in pain. “Sorry!”

  “What are you doing?”

  I was crawling away, trying to get out of the mess of sheets that seemed to be caging me in. “I have to go. I need to go home.”

  “Oh, no you don’t.” He grabbed me from behind and pulled me back against his bare chest. “You aren’t going anywhere until you tell me what that was.” His words sounded harsh, but his tone was consoling. Brock cared about me, no doubt about that. However, my nightmares weren’t something I wanted to share. Not with anyone.

  “I can’t, Brock. I can’t talk about this.”

  “Reagan, you have to talk about that. You had a panic attack.”

  “I know.”

  “How often does that happen?”

  “Never…not anymore.”

  “So, why now?” Then he paused, and I felt it the second he realized. “It’s because of me, isn’t it?”

  “Please,” I begged, “I can’t do this.”

  “Reagan, I only want to help you. What can I do to fix this?”

  “You can’t. I can’t.

  “Why can’t you, Rea? What if you knew talking would help you?”

  “It won’t!”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I don’t trust you!”

  “Why not?”

  “I was there. You weren’t. I have to live with it. You don’t. Now let it go. Let me go.”

  He didn’t. If anything, he gripped me tighter. It was his silent way of telling me that he was seeing this through. He wasn’t going to let me go no matter how far I ran. After everything…after all this time, Brock was still fiercely loyal, but he was done letting me have my way. Now, he was in charge, and there was no more hiding for me.

  We remained like that for a long time. I was sure we both had other places to be, but he held me to him with the strength of a protector until I felt safe…until I had no other choice but say the words that I had never spoken out loud.

  “I killed Ivy.”

  Silence stretched for too long. The air conditioner came on and shut off again. Brock’s grip on me never waned.

  Finally, I added, “They determined it wasn’t my fault, but it was. That email meant nothing. I knew how dangerous she was. If I had gone with my gut, she would still be here. The judge might not have blamed me, but he should have. Her parents were right. Ivy’s death was all my fault.”

  Brock’s solid hold on me broke, and I thought he was going to let me go. Maybe I thought he was going to push me away. I wasn’t sure, but I knew the second his arms loosened from my body, my heart tore in half. It was exactly as I suspected. No one wanted to know the truth.

  But then his hands rested on my waist before lifting me and turning me around, as if I was no heavier than a child. My eyes
remained down until he held my chin between his thumb and pointer finger. The second our eyes met, he said, “You listen to me, Reagan, and you listen hard. That’s the biggest bunch of bullshit I’ve ever heard come out of anyone’s mouth. Ivy wasn’t in her right mind. She was using all kinds of drugs to find an escape. Do you think that was the first time she tried to off herself?”

  No, I knew it wasn’t.

  I shook my head. “You weren’t in the car with us, Brock. You don’t know.”

  “Do you know how many times Neal had to stop her from doing something stupid? She told him once that she didn’t want to die alone. Reagan, she tried to take you with her. None of that is on you. It was all planned. The new car. The dark road on the rainy night. She confessed everything to Neal long before it happened.”

  “You knew?”

  “He put it all in his deposition. Did your lawyer not tell you?”

  “You knew?”

  “I tried to tell you. I called you. I came by your mom’s house. She said you wouldn’t see anyone.”

  “Because of this,” I exploded.

  “Because of what?”

  “I was tired of the push and pull. I was tired of the girls. Then everything with Ivy happened, and no one told me anything. I knew in my gut that I couldn’t trust you. You should have told me how dangerous she was. I should have known.”

  “I didn’t know until her funeral,” he pleaded. “By then you weren’t talking to me, and I had no idea why.”

  My mind was reeling, trying to place everything in order, trying to make sense of it all. “I saw an email, but I don’t know. It didn’t say who the email was to. I wasn’t exactly in my right frame of mind by the time the Dunns filed charges against me. I’ve spent the last decade forgetting any of it occurred.”

  “Even me.”

  “Especially you.”

  “Why?” I could clearly hear the hurt in his voice, and another piece of me broke. Soon there would be nothing left.

  The words sat there on the tip of my tongue. If he pushed, they’d fall out, and I didn’t want to say why I pushed him away. I didn’t want to tell the truth.

  “Why, Rea?”

  I bit my lip to keep quiet as the frustration built inside of me. He was always like this. He always pushed too hard. I used to avoid him when I had something to say and didn’t want to say it, but new Brock wasn’t letting this go.

  “Tell me, Reagan.”

  “Because part of me blamed you for what happened.”

  “Me?” he asked incredulously.

  “Well, not you exactly, but me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You were a distraction. I didn’t trust you, and I certainly didn’t trust myself when it came to you.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “If I hadn’t been obsessing over you, I would have known better, paid better attention, seen the signs, reacted faster, but you were weighing on my mind because you were with Candace!” By the end of my rant, my voice was screeching at an all-time high decibel, and I was breathing heavily. Brock’s arms remained tight around me, and I could feel us both trying to calm ourselves.

  Finally, after a long moment, he broke the silence. “So, you left.”

  “So, I left,” I confirmed. “My mother was worried about me, so eventually she sent me to my father. She thought if she could fix that one thing, I would be able to feel again.”

  “Did you learn to feel again?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “I met my brother.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Day After The Accident

  “She’s dead, Reagan.” I didn’t look up from my mangled arm at the sound of that voice. It wasn’t the voice I was so desperate to hear, nor did it offer any comfort or relief. “Did you hear me? You killed her. You killed Ivy.”

  I still didn’t respond. Even knowing he was right, I couldn’t look up from the evidence of the accident that should hurt so badly. Strangely enough, my broken and bleeding arm felt distant. I stared at the drying blood as if it wasn’t my own, knowing that what Neal said was the truth. I killed Ivy. My friend was gone…no, not gone. Dead. My friend was dead. I killed my friend, my roommate. The words played over and over in my head as Neal continued to shout at me. I knew he wanted a reaction, but I couldn’t give him that. I killed her, and all I could do was stare at my mangled arm wondering where it all went wrong.

  “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” a nurse said, catching my attention. She was the one who had gone to gather the materials to clean and wrap my arm after the x-ray. She seemed nice.

  “Yeah, I’m going. I can’t look at this heartless bitch anyway.”

  “Sir!” My eyes shot up to the door at the change in the nurse’s tone. “That’s enough. Please leave.”

  He did. He marched right out the door while the nurse gave him a stern look that would make Stone Cold Steve Austin avoid messing with her.

  “Let’s get you all fixed up now,” she said to me in a far friendlier tone. I tried to smile, but I think a pained grimace was all I could muster.

  As she put the finishing touches on my plaster cast that I would be getting replaced after meeting with the surgeon, the detectives came into the room. I could tell right away who they were. If the suits and crooked ties didn’t give it away, the giant badges on their belts sure did.

  “Reagan Anders?” the taller one with the receding hairline asked.

  “Looks like you found her, Detective,” the nurse responded dryly.

  “Yes, no thanks to you.” This was from the shorter one. He had dark hair and pale skin, reminding me of a vampire, not of the Brad Pitt variety, though.

  The nurse angel shook her head. “You couldn’t give the girl a little bit to get herself together, could you?”

  “It’s been three hours since the incident. It’s time to talk,” tall detective said as he approached the chair beside the bed. “Miss Anders, had you been drinking or under the influence of anything tonight?”

  I shook my head no. My throat felt raw, and emotion was starting to bubble to the surface. I physically couldn’t get words out to answer him.

  “You sure you didn’t have a couple of drinks? Smoke a little dope?” Vampire Detective challenged.

  “I can answer that.” This was from the doctor who was entering the room, carrying a chart, followed by my mother.

  “Reagan!” she cried. “Dear heavens, are you all right? What happened?”

  “Ma’am, are you her mother?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “We need to gather information from your daughter. You can remain in here as long as you don’t interfere.” Then tall detective turned to the doctor and prompted him to continue.

  “Her labs show no foreign substances, that she’s not pregnant, and with no history of seizures and no vision problems, she appears to have been in her right mind.”

  “Of course she was,” my mom said, earning a glare from the vampire. “Oh, don’t you look at me like that. If this were your child sitting here, you’d be doing the same thing. Can’t you wait to speak with her once she’s not in the emergency room?”

  Tall Detective looked effectively chastised while Vampire Detective just looked…pale. “Yes, ma’am,” Tall Detective responded. He handed my mother his card with instructions to meet him at the station.

  My mother was a stickler for following the rules, so after I was squared away at the hospital and had my appointment set with a surgeon, she drove me to the police station. I still hadn’t spoken to anyone. I still couldn’t believe what happened. The scene played over and over in my mind. Ivy pulled the wheel and down the embankment we went. When was she thrown from the car? How did I end up with just a broken arm when she was…well, you know…she was dead?

  The interview lasted forever. We sat in what looked like a conference room, not in one of those scary interview rooms. They asked question after question, and
my responses were all similar. “I…” I would start, then stumble over my words before saying, “I can’t remember.”

  Because I couldn’t. Everything was all jumbled in my mind. I remember worrying about Brock, then leaving to pick up Ivy. Suddenly, everything after I reached the bar was a blur. I couldn’t remember what she said. I couldn’t remember how we ended up swerving off the road, and the harder I tried, the less clear it became.

  Finally the vampire detective, otherwise known as “bad cop,” slammed his fists down on the table. “Look, between the evidence at the scene, the message on your phone, and the report from the bartender who conveniently showed up in the hospital waiting room, we know this was no accident. We’re also fairly certain that Ms. Dunn orchestrated the whole incident, but you’re not giving us anything. How can we help you if you can’t remember what happened?”

  My eyes widened in shock. I never would have believed he was actually trying to help me, but it still didn’t matter. I couldn’t seem to remember what happened.

  The tall cop, previously thought of as “good cop,” slid my mother a business card. “Take her home to rest. Call us if she remembers anything. We’ll be in touch.” With that, both cops stood from their chairs, grabbed their papers, and left the room.

  “Come on, sweetheart,” my mom said gently as she wrapped a hand around my arm. “Let’s get some clean clothes and head home.”

  I simply nodded and followed her lead out to the front of the building, where Neal appeared. My mom saw he wanted to speak to me and left us to bring the car around.

  “They’re letting you go?” he asked. His voice was no longer laced with malice. He sounded more exhausted than anything. I knew the feeling well.

  “Yes,” I replied plainly.

  “No charges?”

  I shrugged because I wasn’t sure what was to come yet.