But as much as I’d thrived in high school, I’d eagerly waited for the moment I could put the small town of Pelican Bay in my rearview mirror forever. It wasn’t the town itself I’d had an issue with – it was more of what it had represented to me.
Of all the places my parents could have decided to live out their golden years, they’d picked a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. That by itself I could have dealt with, but Jeremiah and Julia Kent hadn’t been content to just to settle into obscurity. No, like all the other times in their lives, they’d needed to be the center of attention, even in a nothing town like Pelican Bay. And being the center of attention meant me and my older brother, Maddox, didn’t get to just blend in with our surroundings like we’d craved for so long. We didn’t get to be just regular high school students trying to navigate the chummy waters of adolescence. Life wasn’t allowed to be boring for a Kent.
“Dallas…”
Nolan’s voice had me looking over at him and I was surprised to see enough light streaming in through the window that I could see his face. It took me a moment to realize that at some point we’d entered town and were currently driving down Main street where there were enough street lamps to illuminate the cab of the truck every few seconds. I also realized that Nolan was touching me.
Fuck, how had I missed the fact that we’d reached town?
Because you were taking a walk down memory lane, idiot.
Memory lane – yeah, right. Nightmare alley was more like it. I pulled my arm free from Nolan’s touch. I was glad I was at least wearing long sleeves, since I already knew what kind of reaction his bare skin on mine would lead to. As it was, my belly was still churning with an unexplained sensation that I could only classify as butterflies.
“You missed the turn,” Nolan said. “I live over on Waterview.”
I knew exactly where he lived, though I didn’t want to dwell on how I knew where he lived. But, of course, that was exactly what happened as I took the very next right and made my way over a few blocks to get to his street. I tried to shrug off the memory, but it refused to be ignored…
“Okay, give it here,” Jimmy said with a laugh.
I glanced over at Jimmy Cornell as he took the bag from Doug Parsons who was sitting in the back seat. “Go right here,” Jimmy said to me.
“Where are we going?” I asked as I steered the Jeep onto a quiet road lined with the same boring little Cape Cod style houses that Pelican Bay seemed to pride itself on. No surprise that my parents had gone a whole other way and built a massive Victorian style home on a bluff by the water that had made the surrounding cottages look like shacks in comparison.
“You’ll see,” Jimmy said with an air of mischief in his voice. He flopped down in the seat and began rifling through the plastic bag.
“I thought we were going to the baseball field to hit a few,” I reminded him. Jimmy and Doug weren’t the most reliable of guys when it came to getting in some extra batting time outside of normal practice, but Doug had a couple of decent pitches in him that at least made putting up with their childish antics worthwhile. I didn’t recognize the neighborhood we were in and wondered if we were planning on picking up someone else to join us.
“Is this where Manny lives?” I asked, using Tim Mandrake’s well-known nickname.
“He’s over a couple of streets,” Jimmy said. “Open your sunroof. Hurry up, he’ll be rounding the corner any second now.”
“Who?” I asked as I did what he said.
But Jimmy ignored me and unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed onto his seat so he could stick his body out the sunroof. He braced one foot on the console between the front seats. “What the hell, Jimmy?” I asked. Doug was practically hanging out the back window.
“Now!” Jimmy yelled. My eyes were on the intersection we were just starting to enter, so I didn’t notice him right away.
And by the time I did, it was too late.
Too-small-for-his-age Nolan Grainger let out a few soft cries as he was pelted with one egg after another. His violin case went flying as he tried to cover his face, and his backpack hit the sidewalk. The book he’d had his nose buried in was immediately covered in sticky yellow yolks.
“Jimmy, what the fuck?” I shouted as I instinctively hit the brakes.
Which didn’t help the situation because it made it easier for Doug and Jimmy to hit Nolan with the last of the eggs.
Jimmy was laughing his ass off when he dropped down into the seat. “Go, go!” he yelled at me.
I didn’t go, of course, because I was too busy watching Nolan as he dropped his arms and tried to wipe at his face. Even from where I sat in the car, my window open, I could hear him crying.
“Fucking go, Dallas!” Doug yelled from the back seat. The car suddenly lurched forward, and I realized Jimmy had reached over to jam his foot down on top of my own on the gas pedal. I barely managed to swerve the steering wheel in time so the car didn’t go up onto the curb on the opposite side of the street.
“Get off!” I snapped at Jimmy as I shoved him hard. He and Doug collapsed into a fit of laughter as I got the car moving. My brain was screaming at me to turn around and make sure Nolan was okay, but coward that I was, I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
Because Dallas Kent couldn’t stick up for Nolan Grainger.
Not in his world.
Not in mine.
Not in any.
So, I numbly drove until I pulled the Jeep into a spot by the baseball field at school. As Jimmy and Doug climbed out of the car and high-fived each other, I sent Nolan Grainger a silent apology, and then I got out and followed my friends onto the baseball diamond. It was an apology I’d never have the guts to speak out loud.
“Turn here,” Nolan said softly. I did as he said, even as I stifled the urge to pull the car over so I could get out and throw up the meager dinner I’d eaten just before I’d left my house to go meet my anonymous hookup. “It’s the last one on the left.”
I pulled into the driveway, since I figured Nolan would probably go through the side door rather than the front one. A light over the garage came on, flooding the inside of the cab with light. I knew I should look over at Nolan and send him some kind of benign farewell message with a nod of my head or something, but I couldn’t do it.
Even if I could have spoken, what the hell was I supposed to say to him?
Sorry I was such a prick back then, but if it makes you feel better, I’m paying for it now.
“Um, thanks for the ride. I really appreciate it.”
Don’t fucking thank me, Nolan. Don’t ever fucking thank me for anything because I’m a cowardly piece of shit.
I nodded, but didn’t look at him. There was absolute silence for a moment before I heard him finally open the door. The second it closed I was putting the car in reverse and before I even put my car in drive to head back to the center, I did something I hadn’t done in a really long time.
I begged Fate and God and anyone else who would listen to make it so I never saw Nolan Grainger again.
Chapter Three
Nolan
“Nolan, it’s eight. Time to get up,” my mother announced from somewhere behind me. I was lying on my side facing the window. I’d actually been awake for several hours, but I didn’t tell her that. The only reason to tell her would have been if I’d thought she’d be curious about what had kept me up all night.
I also didn’t bother telling her I was a grown-ass man and could decide when I wanted to get up, since there was no point in staying in bed feeling sorry for myself anyway. Self-pity wouldn’t pay the bills. Nor would revisiting the past where Dallas Kent had been equal parts tormentor and secret fantasy.
I waited until I heard the door close and then climbed out of bed. I hurried through a shower and got dressed, then grabbed Dallas’s coat from where I’d draped it over the back of my desk chair the night before.
My father was, unsurprisingly, parked in front of the TV. Predictably, he didn’t acknowledge me when
I walked through the living room. There was a plate of half-eaten food sitting on the table next to his chair. “Are you finished?” I asked as I motioned to the plate.
He harrumphed at me, so I took that as an affirmative and took the plate with me into the kitchen. My mother was humming quietly to herself as she cleaned the countertops. “Eggs, dear?” she asked absently.
I didn’t bother reminding her for the umpteenth time that I wasn’t a breakfast person, preferring just a cup of coffee to get me going in the morning.
“No, thank you. I need to get going.”
“I need you to stay and watch your father this morning,” my mother said as she began rinsing out the sponge she’d been using to clean with.
“I can’t.”
“Nolan,” my mother groused, clucking her tongue. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask for you to spend some time with your father while I run my errands.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that babysitting my father was not the same thing as bonding with him. “Your car broke down last night on Highway 12. I need to arrange to have it towed.”
My mother turned, her expression pinched. “What did you do to the car?”
I sighed inwardly as I went to get a mug and filled it with coffee. “I didn’t do anything to it. It broke down last night. I told you that when I got home, remember?”
Her eyes narrowed and she shook her head in irritation. “No, you didn’t. You came in and went straight to your room. Didn’t even apologize for making me miss evening services.”
I welcomed the burn of the coffee as it singed my tongue. “I need to deal with your car, and then I need to drive over to Ashburn to see if anyone’s hiring.”
“Ashburn? That’s over an hour away. What am I supposed to do without my car for two hours?”
“I won’t be driving your car since it will likely be in the shop. I’m taking Dad’s car.”
My father’s car was a thirty-year-old hatchback sedan that had a manual transmission, which my mother had no clue how to drive. I had no idea why they’d kept the rattrap so long, since my parents usually shared the car that was only twenty years old, but I was glad for that fact today. What I wasn’t glad about was that I’d have to use what little room I had left on my singular credit card to pay for repairs to the Buick.
“So, what, I’m just supposed to sit here all day?”
I barely managed not to ask her if she wanted to switch places and she could get her ass out there to find a job.
“What happened to Dallas Kent?” I suddenly blurted as my eyes drifted to his coat, which I’d laid over the back of one of the kitchen chairs.
My mother made a low sound in her throat and shook her head. “Nothing he didn’t deserve,” she said. “Those poor parents of his,” she added, and then she was making the sign of the cross against her chest.
“What happened to them?” I asked.
“That boy killed them,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper as if we were in a crowd of people she didn’t want to overhear her gossiping.
After all, gossip was so uncouth.
“His parents are dead?” I asked in surprise.
My mother nodded and went to fetch her knitting bag from a side table. She returned and dropped down into a chair. Apparently, knitting and gossiping went hand in hand because she didn’t continue until her hands were moving the knitting needles in a practiced rhythm I didn’t quite get.
“His mama died instantly, but his daddy suffered for years.”
“How so?” I asked. “What happened?”
“It was the night of the Fourth of July picnic…after the fireworks. He was driving them home when he ran the car off the road. Folks say they saw him drinking.”
“Did he come home for the holiday or something?” I asked. Dallas Kent had been on the fast track to get out of Pelican Bay. He’d earned a full-ride scholarship in baseball to Vanderbilt University. I’d overheard the high school’s baseball coach telling my father once that baseball scholarships were insanely difficult to get to any school, so the fact that Dallas had gotten one, and a full-ride one at that, had been nothing short of a miracle.
Not that it had really mattered, since his parents had been loaded.
But I suspected it had been more about the prestige than anything else. Especially since everyone had known Dallas’s goal in life had been to make it to the Major Leagues.
My mother’s eyes lifted to meet mine briefly. “He never left, dear. It happened the summer after you all graduated.”
I swallowed hard. Dallas hadn’t gotten out? He’d been stuck here for ten long years? How was that even possible? And drinking? I couldn’t believe that, because Dallas had been the kind of guy whose sole focus in life had been baseball, and he’d been careful about taking care of himself.
But of course, I’d never really known him…just drooled over him from afar. It was reasonable to say I’d painted this perfect, but unrealistic, picture of him in my head.
“What happened?” I prodded, since my mother had fallen silent.
“Well, they found the car at the bottom of the ravine leading up to their house. All three of them had been thrown from it,” she said. “Poor Mrs. Kent didn’t make it out of that ravine,” she added.
“And his father?”
“A shame, what happened to him,” she said with a cluck of her tongue. “Spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Died two years later from a blood clot or something…Edith says it was probably a complication from the accident.”
My mother’s best friend had been a nurse before retiring, so I didn’t doubt she was full of opinions about the whole thing, especially since she was as bad of a gossip as my mother.
“And Dallas?” I asked.
“All the pain that boy caused and he was the only one to survive.”
I bristled at her words. “Just because he was driving didn’t mean he deserved to die,” I bit out.
“Now don’t go puttin’ words into my mouth,” she returned. “I’m just saying he should’ve known better. Those Kents were good people. Raised those boys right.”
I knew she was talking about Dallas and his older brother, Maddox.
“How did he lose his voice?”
My mother didn’t ask how I knew about Dallas’s condition. “Edith heard from a nurse friend that a piece of the car went through his throat. Nearly killed him. Doctors saved him, though. He was in the hospital for months. Didn’t even wake up until long after they’d buried his mama.” My mother shook her head. “His daddy begged the cops to go easy on him. Said Dallas was paying enough for what he done. The Good Lord will judge that boy,” she added.
“Did he go to jail?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Sheriff Tulley had a new deputy that summer. He forgot to ask the doctors to get proof that Dallas had been drinking. His daddy confirmed he was, but wouldn’t say how much. Edith figured he was trying to protect his boy.”
I wanted to point out that if that were true, he wouldn’t have told anyone his son had been drinking in the first place. But I wisely kept my mouth shut.
“Reverend Pickney says Dallas got what he deserved anyhow, so people didn’t put up much of a fuss.”
I straightened at that. “What does that even mean?”
She looked at me over her glasses and shrugged her shoulders, but didn’t respond.
“So, what? Dallas deserved to lose his voice and God knows what else? That it was God’s punishment for the accident?”
Another shrug of her shoulders.
God, no wonder I hated fucking Pelican Bay so much.
“What about his brother?”
I knew that Maddox Kent had been accepted to West Point four years before Dallas and I had graduated.
“He came home long enough to take care of his daddy while Dallas was in the hospital. He left again just as soon as that boy got out. Edith went over there once to check on Mr. Kent and heard Maddox yelling at Dallas – she says Maddox told
his brother he was the one who should’ve died, not their mama.”
Revulsion curled through me as I considered her words.
Even if the rumor that Dallas had been drinking was true, it didn’t mean he’d deserved the harsh treatment he’d gotten. Not from the town, and most certainly not from his brother.
“How did he end up running the wildlife center?” I asked.
My mother shook her head. “No idea. We thought he’d left town after his daddy died, but he just sold the house and bought the old McClaren farm and made it that” – she waved her fingers – “place.” She paused before saying, “Still managed to get his half of his mama and daddy’s money, I guess. Edith’s daughter works for a lawyer down in the Twin Cities…says Maddox sued his brother for all of the money but lost. Guess Dallas took his share and did whatever he wanted with it. He should’ve given it to charity or something.” Another shake of her head.
I stared at the woman across from me in disbelief. I knew she had a tendency to be cold with me, but her complete lack of compassion made something deep inside of me twist painfully. God, I really just needed to get her and my father back on their feet and get the hell out.
“I need to go,” I said as I climbed to my feet. My mother said something to me, but I didn’t even hear it as I grabbed Dallas’s jacket and my father’s car keys and left the house.
Chapter Four
Dallas
I was in the middle of repairing the outer fence for the bear habitat when Loki nudged my arm and then stepped back, his golden eyes watching me expectantly. I’d long ago learned what it was the wolf hybrid was saying to me, though he rarely made a sound, which I attributed to his wolf side rather than his dog side. Only on the rarest occasions did Loki growl or bark. The growling was always a bad sign, but the barking was actually a good thing because it meant he was feeling playful.
Locked in Silence_Pelican Bay [Book 1] Page 4
