My look tells him I can and that I don’t appreciate the question. I don’t say anything. We turn toward the door and I realize that my underwear is still at my ankles. I stop and just stand there, looking down at them. Drew turns to find out why I’ve stopped, his eyes following mine to my feet, and all of his muscles tense when he sees why I’m not coming. He stifles another curse as I bend over to pull them up because I can’t look at his face right now.
“Stay behind me, okay?” His words are strained and he sounds like he’s in pain. He takes my hand so tightly, I think he might crush it and pulls me behind him so I’m blocked from view. I catch Tierney Lowell watching in the hall before I turn away. I drag my hair down around my face and lean into Drew’s back like I’m wasted, just until we can get through everybody and out the door. And maybe wasted is exactly what I am.
My face is bleeding and swollen but I don’t even care. For the first time in forever, I make a choice not to shit all over my life and I can’t even like myself for it because I made it five minutes too late.
At least no one can tell me it was random.
“Are you okay?” Drew waits until we’ve gotten in his car and driven away from the house to ask. I’ve hated that question for years.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Your hand.” My eyes go to his split knuckles which are straining even more with his iron grip on the steering wheel.
“I don’t give a shit about my hand,” he bites out at me and I instinctively recoil because I’ve never heard him raise his voice. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” He pulls into the parking lot of a convenience store and parks the car. This whole situation is f**ked up and he says so at least three or four times.
“What happened?” He sounds like he doesn’t really want the answer.
“Just a stupid situation that got out of hand.”
“You think?” His tone is sharp.
“Are you pissed at me?” I ask.
“No, I’m pissed at me.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s my fault you were in that room in the first place. I finally bothered to look at my phone and got your text. I thought I’d find you sitting up there and waiting, not on the floor with Kevin Leonard on top of you.” He takes a breath and lets it out watching the lighted R on the store sign flicker in and out. “Josh is going to kill me.”
“Josh isn’t going to care.”
“You know that isn’t true, so don’t say it. I don’t have it in me to argue with you about it tonight.” There is so much weight in his voice that I feel it physically pressing on me.
“If you knew what I did to Josh, you would hate me, too. He won’t care and I won’t blame him for not caring.”
“You’re right. I don’t know what you did to Josh. I have no idea what went on there because neither of you will tell me. I do know that whatever it was will not be enough to stop him from giving a shit about someone hurting you.”
I flip down the visor and check the bruise on my face and the cut on my eye in the mirror. It’s really not so bad, but my cheek and my forehead are already starting to swell and I know it’ll all look worse tomorrow.
“His pants were still on.” He’s tracing the logo on the steering wheel now.
I nod, even though he’s not looking at me.
“So, he didn’t—”
“No,” I answer. I don’t want to talk about Kevin Leonard anymore. “Did anybody else see?” I ask.
“I don’t think so. Tierney did, but she was looking for us so—” he cuts himself off. “I don’t think anyone else was paying attention.”
We sit there, pretending to be mesmerized by the flashing lottery sign.
“I shouldn’t have left you.”
“You and Tierney?” I ask, ignoring the unspoken apology.
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head and turns the key in the ignition. “We need to get ice on your face.”
Drew doesn’t tell me where we’re going. He doesn’t ask where I want to go. He takes me where I need to go and maybe where he needs to go, too. He takes me to Josh’s house.
The garage is closed when we get there, but Drew and I both have a key to the house. He turns his in the lock and pushes the door back for me. I walk inside and Drew follows. When we step into the dark of the foyer, it takes us a minute to process what we’re hearing. And then I wish on a thousand pennies that we didn’t have that key.
CHAPTER 49
Josh
“What the hell, Drew? It’s two in the morning.” I look at his car in the driveway and it’s empty. At first, I suspected he was bringing Sunshine back here because she was drunk, but there’s no one in the car. “You already drop Nastya off?” I ask while he follows me into the family room. Calling her Nastya sounds wrong, but I don’t feel right saying Sunshine out loud anymore.
“She’s at home.”
“So what’s going on? Weren’t you supposed to be home an hour ago?” I still don’t get why he’s here.
“Sarah’s covering for me.” Drew looks away like he doesn’t want to tell me something and it pisses me off because I’m sure it has something to do with Nastya getting shit-faced again at one of the parties he’s always making her go to and I’m getting sick of it. When he turns back to me, though, I’m pretty sure I’m mistaken.
Everything I see in his face is wrong. The look he has now is so empty of everything I associate with Drew that it wakes me up all at once.
“Why? What happened?” He doesn’t answer and I have to ask him again. “What happened, Drew?” I demand.
“I don’t really know.” His eyes are red and he looks like shit.
“In a second, I’m getting in the car and driving over there if you don’t start giving me some answers that make sense.”
“None of it makes sense, Josh.” He shifts from defeated to pissed and when he glares at me, I think he’s talking about more than Sunshine.
“You sound like her with the cryptic bullshit. Is she okay?”
“She said she was. Her face is messed up, but she seems all right.”
“What happened to her face?” My words are slow and my voice comes out lower than I expect it to.
“Kevin Leonard.”
“Kevin Leonard?” I feel like smashing Drew’s face into the wall, at least until I can get to Kevin Leonard, and I don’t even know what happened yet. “What did he do to her?” The words are forced. I’m struggling to control my anger long enough to find out what this is about, but I don’t know how long I can do it.
“I don’t know. Hit her. I think he was taking her clothes off. She really didn’t tell me anything.” Drew runs his hand through his hair again and I notice that his knuckles are bleeding and there’s blood on his shirt.
“How did she end up with him in the first place? Weren’t you with her the whole time? Isn’t that why you talked her into going with you?”
Drew studies the torn knuckles on his right hand but doesn’t answer.
“Where the hell were you? You drag her to these parties, you get her drunk and then you leave her alone?” I make sure the accusation is clear.
His head whips up and everything about him goes on the defensive.
“She’s not helpless, Josh. In case you haven’t noticed, she kind of does whatever she wants. I didn’t drag her anywhere and I haven’t gotten her drunk since the first night. She gets drunk all on her own now.” He’s trying to justify it to himself but I can tell it isn’t working.
“She hates being alone at those things. She wouldn’t have walked away from you.”
“She didn’t.” Guilt. He did ditch her. “She texted me, but I didn’t hear it. She went upstairs where it was quiet so she could call you to get a ride. When I got up there, she was on the floor and he was on top of her.” He tells me her face was bruised and bleeding, and when he gets to the part about her underwear around her ankles, he can’t keep talking because he’s trying not to cry, and if I weren’t so disgusted with everyone in the world, I might actually be crying, too.
“You left her alone.” I want to kill him. I want to blame him so I don’t have to blame myself. I can’t even think about the phone call.
“Yes, Josh! That’s exactly what I did! I guilt-tripped her into coming with me and then I left her alone because I’m selfish and that’s what I do. You don’t think I know? Trust me, I know. I don’t need you to remind me that I’m a prick. I’ve been reminded all f**king night, by her face and the blood and—” he runs his hand back through his hair as his voice cracks again and I really hope he doesn’t lose his shit because I can’t see that. Not on top of everything else. Because, right now, I’m seeing her face and the blood, too, and I don’t want to lose mine, either. “Just trust me,” he says, “I know. Okay? I know.”
His back is leaning against my kitchen counter and I’m leaning against the wall across from him. Neither of us says anything for what seems like an hour even though it’s probably less than a minute.
“She didn’t tell you anything?”
“Not really.” He shakes his head wearily. “The f**ked up part is that she didn’t even seem surprised. It was like she just expected it.”
“Why didn’t you bring her here?” I ask.
“I did.” He levels his eyes at me and pauses to let this sink in, because in the shock of absorbing what happened to Sunshine, I’ve all but forgotten what I was doing while she was alone in a bedroom with Kevin Leonard. “Think real hard, Josh. We drove straight to your house about two hours ago. The garage was closed and the lights were off so I thought you were asleep and I used my key. We walked into the house and guess what we heard?”
“She came in with you.” It’s not a question. It’s a hand grenade.
“I thought seeing you was the only thing that would help her.” The bitter-laced sarcasm is dripping from his voice and I’m not sure which one of us he despises more at this moment.
“What did she say?” I ask, but it’s quiet because I really don’t want to know. All I’ve thought about since the day she walked out of here was the day she would walk back in. And tonight she did.
“Nothing. She hasn’t said a word to me since we walked into your house.”
“I need to see her.” I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to face that she knows what I did. I don’t want to face that I know what I did. But I need to see her. I need to see that she’s still here and still ok, even if she hates me. Her hurt might kill me but I can survive her hate.
“No.”
“No?”
“No.” It’s absolute.
“Who the f**k are you to say I can’t see her?”
“Who the f**k are you to say you can?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that she looked like hell when we walked into your house and she looked worse when we walked out.”
I feel sick. Not figuratively sick. Sick like I might throw up right now. My face must tell him something, because his tone loses a little of its edge. Or maybe he’s just tired of this whole shit night. “Josh, even if I did think it was okay, which I don’t, because right now I think you’re acting like me and I don’t like you very much. But even if I did say you could see her, it’s not up to me.”
“She won’t see me.”
“She won’t see you,” he confirms. He won’t offer me hope, and for the first time tonight, I feel grateful. “Are you ever going to tell me what happened between you two?” He hasn’t stopped asking.