by Haley Jenner
She didn’t even let me say goodbye.
6
BROOKS
I text her again, frowning at my cell screen and the last five messages that have been left unanswered. A feeling I don’t recognize settles in my stomach, sitting heavy with concern. Henley never ignores my calls or messages. Never.
The shrill ring of the school bell startles me, and I feel an uncharacteristic burst of rage at the sound.
Everything is off.
I hit call again, but it doesn’t even ring. Her voicemail greets me almost immediately, telling me not to leave a message.
“Henley, where are you? You told me to meet you here at eight. It’s nearly fucking nine.”
Twisting on my foot, I move into the school building, moving with purpose toward her locker.
“Addy!” I call out, jogging past Henley’s lonely locker toward her. “Have you seen Henley?”
“You’re asking me?”
She makes it obvious enough that she’s never quite forgiven me for stealing her best friend. Snide remarks, favors that she constantly collects on, a constant reminder that I owe her. Understandable, I’d be pissed if anyone tried to move in on my time with Henley.
“She’s late.”
“That’s weird,” she agrees.
Henley makes it her mission to leave her house as early as humanly possible. An act of self-preservation against the war zone of her home. She’s admitted more than once that sitting on her own in the relatively deserted school is preferable.
“Have you called her?”
I stare at Addy blankly. “Of course, I fucking called her. It goes straight to voicemail.”
“Check her class, Brooks.” She sighs in irritation. “She’ll be around. Maybe she’s sick?”
Irritated at her lack of help or concern, I growl in frustration as I move toward our first class.
The glaringly empty seat mocks me as I enter, and I glance at the teacher once before leaving immediately.
“Mr. Riley,” the old woman calls after me, but I charge through the hallway, ignoring the echo of my name down the empty space.
“Has Henley Wright called in sick today?” I ask by way of greeting when I step into the main office.
“Manners would get you further, Mr. Riley,” the school secretary reprimands.
“Sorry,” I say, sounding anything but. “We’re working on a report together today, and she hasn’t called to tell me I’ll have to pick up the slack.”
She eyes me over her glasses. It’s not hard to pick up that I’m lying through my ass. Henley and I have been inseparable from the first week I moved here. We’re a set, and everyone knows it.
I wait her out, unblinking, and she eventually sighs.
“No,” she answers testily. “She hasn’t called in sick. But her mother did send through an email early this morning informing the school that Henley would be taking a leave of absence.”
“What?” I breathe. “Show me the email.”
“Get back to class, Mr. Riley. I gave you the courtesy of giving you that information. I’m sure Henley will call you herself.”
“I’m not feeling well.” My lie is hardly convincing, an obvious statement made in panic. “Mark me absent.”
Without giving her the opportunity to respond, I leave her office, my phone already attached to my ear as I call my mom to come and get me.
“Brooks, you need to calm down.”
“How can I calm down?” I punch the dashboard of my mother’s SUV in anger. “Leave of absence? What does that even mean?” I beseech.
“Henley will explain—”
“Henley’s not answering her phone!” I yell, cutting off her empty excuses.
I know I’m taking my frustration out on my mother, a sin I’ll pay for later with a confiscated phone and grounding, but it'll be worth it.
To find Henley. . . it’ll be worth it.
“Take me to her house,” I demand. “Please,” I add as an afterthought when she raises her eyebrow in my direction.
“Brooks.” She sighs.
“I’m worried, okay?” I’m glad she can’t hear the pounding of my heart.
Henley told me something like this would happen. We sat on our rock only days ago, and she told me all of this would end badly. She saw this coming, and I didn’t believe her.
“Okay.” She gives in without further argument.
“Thank you,” I offer quietly, too afraid to speak as a lump in my throat forms.
Her house looks like it always does as Mom maneuvers down the extensive driveway. Sterile. Monstrous in size. Ominous in the way it lacks any form of warmth.
“Stay here,” I tell her.
I try her bedroom window first, knocking when it won’t open at my insistence. Hands cupped over my eyes, I squint through the sheer curtains, praying I’ll see her. Nothing looks out of the ordinary. Everything is in its place, but no Henley.
Stalking toward the front door, I bang on it over and over again. Each knock more forceful than the one before it.
“What do you want?” Derrick Wright snaps as he pulls open the door.
“Henley. Where is she?” I move to push into the house, but he stops me with a hand to my chest.
“She’s not here.”
My fists clench of their own accord. I’m shaking, but with anger or panic, I don’t even know anymore. All I know is that this asshole is standing between Henley and me, and that’s unacceptable.
“Where is she?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Where is she?” I scream in his face so loud my throat feels ready to tear on the inside. Spit hits his face, but he doesn’t move to wipe it off. He just continues to stand there, watching me blankly.
“Brooks,” my mom chides, moving from the car to stand behind me. “Mr. Wright. My son is worried. He just wants to know if Henley is okay.”
“I don’t know where she is,” he finally speaks, his voice a hollow void. “I don’t know where Jacinta took her.”
With that, the door closes in our faces.
I bang again.
“Brooks.” Mom pulls me back. “Let’s go, honey.”
“What does he mean he doesn’t know where Jacinta took her?” My eyes water unexpectedly. “Why isn’t he looking for her?”
Pulling me to her chest, Mom hugs me. “I’m sure he is.”
I wipe my face against her shirt, depositing my tears to the material. I can’t recall the last time I cried.
“Don’t be sad, babyface. We’ll find her.”
“I’m not sad,” I stutter. “I’m frustrated and angry and worried and. . . and—”
“And you don’t know what to do with it all,” she says what I can’t seem to vocalize.
“You’re allowed to feel all those things. Jacinta loves her daughter, Brooks. Wherever she is, we know she’s safe.”
I let that settle inside me, but I don’t quite believe it. Jacinta thinks she loves her daughter. But causing Derrick pain would be of a higher priority, as it’s always been, Henley’s welfare be damned.
7
HENLEY
“Please, Mom,” I cry.
“Stop being so emotional, Henley.”
I shift forward on my seat. “You haven’t told me anything. Where are we going? You cannot just uproot me in the middle of my school year. Where is Dad? Does he know?”
She ignores me, her thumb flicking across the screen of her phone.
I turn to face her completely, bending my leg to rest it on the back seat of the Town Car. “You’re kidnapping me.”
She pauses then, lifting her head to laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous, sweetheart. I love you. You don’t want to be in that house as much as I don’t.”
“With both of you. If you’d separate, I’d be happy to stay with you on and off.”
“I will not lose out on seeing my only child grow up by shipping you back and forth. Your place is with me, with your mother.”
My throat tightens in panic. “I
want to go home.”
“Your home is with me.”
“I need to call Brooks.”
Straightening her spine, she refuses to look at me. “I left your cell at home. It was attached to Derrick’s account.”
Clenching my teeth together, I fight the shake in my jaw. “I know his number by heart. Give me your phone.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” she confirms.
“Give me your phone!” I scream.
Her hand whips out to grab my arm. “Control your temper, Henley. Do not speak to me like that.”
“He’ll be worried,” I whisper, thrown off by her uncharacteristic show of anger toward me.
“And he’ll survive. You can email him when we arrive.”
“Where? Arrive where?”
She waits a beat, straightening her skirt. “London.”
I cough. “London?”
“Yes, I have an old friend there who will help us get established and settled.”
“Dad would not have agreed to this.”
“He doesn’t have to, Henley.”
I stare at her profile, confusion knotting at my brows. “I’m pretty sure that’s how it works, Mother. You need his approval to uproot me like this.”
I watch the line of her throat swallow, her legs crossing only to uncross and settle flat against the floor once again.
“I won’t bore you with the details, but I can assure you,” she speaks, staring out the window, “everything happening right now is one-hundred-percent legal.”
“What did you do?” I accuse.
She clears her throat in discomfort.
“He’s my dad—”
“He stepped up to the role as we needed him to,” she snaps.
I stare at her reflection in the window, her face still turned purposely away from me.
“I didn’t want you to find out like this,” she murmurs eventually.
“Find out what?” I demand, uncertainty settling in my stomach.
Pushing her shoulders back in a faux show of confidence, she turns toward me, but she won’t meet my eyes. She rests them over my shoulder, too afraid to meet my stare head-on.
“Derrick isn’t exactly your father.”
My chin tips back. “What are you talking about?” I scoff at the ridiculousness of her accusation.
“Biologically, he has no link to you.”
I stare at her blankly, my eyes refusing to blink.
“I had an affair.” She brushes imaginary lint from her skirt once again. “Many affairs. We both did. I’m not proud of it, but it is what it is.”
I watch her, dumbfounded. “That’s not true.” My argument is weak, my doubt peeking through my words.
My whole life is crumbling apart around me, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
“It is. I’ve lived the façade for long enough. It was time to leave. You should know by now that Derrick is dangerous. I’ve taken out an order of protection for us both.”
I scratch my head, confusion settling in my bones.
“That’s crap. He’s never hit you. Never threatened your safety. You hit him. You threaten him.”
She says nothing. She doesn’t have to.
“You’re evil.” I swallow the acid in my throat, my panic sliding down like poison, killing my hope that this nightmare will come to an end second-by-second.
“I am a mother who loves my child,” she spits. “A woman who would do anything to protect and love that child.”
She’s crazy. It’s the only reasonable explanation.
“That’s not love,” I tell her quietly. “As always, you’re thinking about yourself. Not me. You don’t actually give a flying fuck about what’s right for me, about what’s good for me.”
“Watch your tone.”
“I’ll scream kidnap at the airport,” I tell her, the vehemence in my tone enough to cause a frown line to appear on her forehead. “I’ll tell anyone who will listen that you’ve taken me against my will.”
She sighs, feigning nonchalance. “So dramatic. You’re a minor, Henley. You have no choice.”
I hate that she’s right.
“I’ll just call Dad when I get there. I’ll jump on a bus, a plane, anything.”
“You’d choose him over me?”
I wish I had the balls to slap her in the way she looks like I’ve done. My palm twitches with the incessant need to feel her flesh and cause her physical pain.
I almost don’t answer. She’ll never get it, but I can’t help myself. “I’d choose me.”
“Selfish.”
“I learned it from the best.”
She rolls her eyes. “That man has no right to you. You’re my child, and the recent paternity test confirms that.”
“What?” I don’t know this woman. This vile, vindictive, unstable woman. “I don’t believe you. You despised him. You would never have stayed if you didn’t have to.”
She ignores me. “Should you cause a scene, I’ll make certain your little boyfriend becomes a distant memory. I’ll sever all contact.”
“He’s my best friend, not my boyfriend, and you wouldn’t.”
“Watch me try, daughter. I need this. We need this,” she corrects.
“Careful, Jacinta,” I mock. “Your real motive is showing.”
Tucking her phone into her handbag, she looks me up and down.
“If you’re stupid enough to think that boy only wants to be your friend, maybe I should force you to cut contact. Of course, he wants in your pants. Are you stupid? I’m lucky I pulled you away when I did. You’d likely end up pregnant at sixteen with the two of you hanging off one another like you do.”
I ignore her. She couldn’t possibly understand. She couldn’t possibly fathom the importance of a friendship like the one I have with Brooks. She’s destined to be alone forever and content in her own misery.
My mind works a million miles an hour. I need to get out of this car—away from her and her wicked plan.
Dad will come and get me. She’s lying. It’s a poor attempt at asserting power. Her protective order or whatever the hell it is won’t work. It can’t. I’ll be home before I know it. Back in Lake Geneva. A break. That’s all this is. A small break from reality.
“Can I please just call Brooks?”
She doesn’t even have the courtesy to answer me. Her focus remains on the window, staring at nothing as we move farther and farther away from home.
8
BROOKS
Brooks.
She up and fucking moved me. No warning. No nothing. She waited until Dad had left for work and threw us into a Town Car.
We're in London. Almost four thousand miles away. I may as well be on another planet. It feels that way. I wanted to travel the world, but not like this.
My whole world is falling apart, Brooks. She says Dad isn’t my dad. She said she had a bunch of affairs, and she doesn’t know who my dad is. It has to be a lie, right? Derrick is my dad. He has to be.
She’s placed an order of protection against him, Brooks. Can you believe that? Her telling the world he’s the dangerous one. I’ve managed to call him, but his hands are tied. If he breaches the protection order, he’s screwed. He’s working to fix it, legally, but I don’t know how much longer it will take. Or if it will even work.
He told me she was telling the truth, Brooks. He says he’s not my dad.
Why? How?
I can’t believe this is my life. She left my phone at home. Otherwise, I would’ve called or texted you. I’m working to get Dad (Derrick) to send me one. She’s basically keeping me hostage. I’ll find a way to call you. I promise. I miss you. What will I do without you? I’m all alone. Make sure our names stayed carved into our rock.
I love you. I’ll call you soon.
I promise I’m okay.
Henley x
I stare at the email, spots dancing in my vision, my mouth dry. I feel panicked and relieved all at once. I can hear her voice
in her words, but as close as that makes me feel to her, she somehow seems farther away.
Four thousand miles, to be exact.
I can’t reach her. I can’t speak to her.
Her email is dated a week ago. Seven fucking days she’s been waiting for me to contact her. I’ve all but abandoned her at a time when she needs me the most.
I need to hear her voice, to hear that she's okay and that her typed-out words aren’t the very empty promises I despise.
Her mother is fucking crazy, and Derrick wasn’t man enough to tell me the whole story.
He’s a part of the reason this happened. He and Jacinta were so poisonous that something this fucked up was going to happen eventually. They claim they love their daughter, but she becomes the collateral damage in a war they’ve wagered between themselves. They just don’t care to see it.
“You okay, sweetheart?”
I turn toward my mother.
“I finally heard from Henley.”
“You did?” She rushes forward, staring at my computer.
Her eyes scan over the screen, swallowing Henley’s words eagerly.
Hand to her chest, she blinks in sadness. “That poor child. What is Jacinta thinking?”
It's a rhetorical question, but I can’t help but answer. “She’s a bitch. Mom, we need to do something.”
“Honey,” she placates, resting her hand on my shoulder. “I wish I could. But all the power resides with Jacinta. Even Derrick’s hands are tied. She’s her mother, and Henley’s a minor.”
I shrug her off in irritation. “That’s bullshit. They’re using her as ammunition against one another. Except the only one who feels the hit is Henley.”
“I know you’re worried,” she implores, “but it will work out. I promise.”
“I hate promises,” I grumble. “They mean shit. You can’t vow that this will work out, so why bother?”
“I’m just trying to remain positive, Brooks.”
“I’d prefer you remain real.”
Despite the somber mood, a knowing grin spreads across her face, a glint of pride in her eye reserved for parents and their children.
