I wanted to be angry, to hold on to that emotion. She coughed a few times, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and shuffled away from the puddle of vomit. I straightened up, standing over her, watching as her shoulders shuddered.Shewas crying?Shewas upset? Okay, the anger was back.
“Why didn’t you come to the car?”
That stopped me. My mouth had been half open, about to rip into her. Her voice was soft, sad.
“Why did you let it happen?”
“Let it happen?” I asked, bewildered. “What did you expect me to do, huh? I just watched the girl I was fucking in love with get in a car with another guy. And it was pretty fucking obvious what was going on in that damn car. Did you want me to walk over there and pull him off you, put you on my bike, and take you home?” I shouted. “Hug it out, make it better?”
She looked up at me. “You could have kicked his ass,” she mumbled. “You could have dragged me out of the car. It would have been better if you had,” she added the last part quietly.
Her brow was beaded with sweat, her eyes haunted. She gave me the most tremulous, heart breaking and saddest smile I’d ever seen on her beautiful face.
“Wave?” I crouched down in front of her, my gut clenched. “What is this? Why are you making out likeIdid something wrong?” I was surprised at the calmness in my voice.
By rights I should have been yelling that at her, but that niggling feeling that something was off was gnawing at me again.
Then she cried. She’d never been a loud crier. She’d always fought so damn hard not to let anyone look at her as being any weaker than the rest of us and when she had broken down, she did it quietly, with little fuss. Just like now. The tears streaked her face, and she closed her eyes. Her lashes clumping together and spiking with the moisture.
I dropped to my knees, and without conscious thought, I tentatively put my arm around her. She tensed, but as I rubbed soft slow circles over her back, she let all the tension go and leaned into me. I dropped onto my ass and pulled her into my side, at a loss here. Was I being a fool? Letting her make me believe she hadn’t done something wrong.
“That’s why you came back here that night,” she said after a few minutes, wiping at her eyes and pulling her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “Why you… because of what you saw. You wanted to hurt me back.”
Not my finest hour. I already knew that.
“God, what a mess,” she shook her head. “What a fucking mess.”
“You need to explain this to me, Waverley. I know what I saw that night and you’re admitting that it happened, so what is this? Talk to me.”
She took a few moments to compose herself. She shifted away too, so my arm dropped to my side, which was for the best considering.
I needed to distance myself from her because I did not know what she was about to tell me and how it was going to affect me. Then she shifted, so that she was opposite me, her legs crossed, and she heaved in a deep breath, centring herself or something.
“I went to prom alone,” she started. She looked at me for about five seconds, then tilted her head up to the sky and continued. “Andrew Reinhart was there with his date. She was a junior. I didn’t know her. You know he was a prick who had done nothing but bad mouth the club, so I didn’t want anything to do with him.” She paused.
“Look at me,” I said, my voice hard enough that she did. “Keep your eyes on me while you tell me.”
Waverley rubbed her lips together, blinked a couple of times, but kept her eyes on me.
“He kept talking to me, telling me he liked my dress, asking about college. I’d had a few drinks, and he must have realized I was upset you and Warren weren’t there. He played on it, being sympathetic and understanding.
“He was asking questions about the club. I told him to mind his own business. The club had nothing to do with him. He said he needed to talk privately about something. I wasn’t about to go wandering off with him. But then he said... He hadsomething.”
“What?” I asked, knowing deep inside what she was about to say was going to change everything.
“He saw you and Warren. He had evidence and said he was going to go to the cops.”
“What the fuck?” I snarled. “What kind of evidence?”
“Photographs,” she whispered. “They looked bad. You were handing something over to some guy who looked shady as fuck and taking money from him. Warren had a gun that was visible in the pictures. He said,” she blew out a breath. “He didn’t care about what would happen. He said he was going to go to the cops, and you would go to prison.”
“Son of a bitch,” I leaned forward and put my hands together, clasping them as if in prayer. That photo could have happened at any time. He was right. It would be incriminating, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Nothing would have come of it, even if he had gone to the cops.
“He never went to the cops,” I told her.
If he had, we would have heard about it, even if it were the Chief coming to tell us some pissant kid at the high school was trying to spread some shit, but he would shut it down before it could go anywhere. That hadn’t happened. My head snapped up, and I looked at Waverley.
“You should have come to us. We would have dealt with that asshole.” I rubbed a hand over my head as something clicked in my brain.
