Chapter Twenty-Seven
TWENTY-SEVEN
Hailey
I can do this. I can do this. I can protect my best friend.
Just like you did in Carlsbad.
I clamp my eyes closed, trying to erase the worst night of my life, then I open them with a deeper inhale and determination. I can do this because the inverse is being witness to something more horrifying.
I won’t let anyone hurt her.
“I’m right here,” I whisper to Phoebe, gently placing her limp arms on her abdomen but with more urgency than she can see or feel.
She’s passed out, but she looks less lifeless as I carefully adjust her, combing soft blue strands of hair out of her face. A face that I’ve seen elicit catcalls and wolf whistles, a face that’s had poised men tripping in shined leather oxfords, a face that stuns, that incites desire and greed.
My silent tears fall and wet her cheeks.
“Shit,” I curse and thumb away the droplets.
I’ve never once envied the beauty of my best friend. All the attention she drew as we grew older, I sighed in relief when she’d taken it off me.
She never really basked in the gawking. She never liked it. She just loved being able to shift a spotlight off me, knowing I hated the burn.
Phoebe has always protected me, and at each opportunity, I come up short at protecting her.
Tonight has to be better. I brush off sand from her phone, and I see Nova is still on the line. Quickly, I put it to my ear. “We’re at the beach,” I say in case he didn’t hear Phoebe before. “She’s unconscious.”
“Fuck!” His curse booms so loud I have to draw the phone away from my ear.
In a quiet, shaky breath, I say, “I can’t lift her. I can’t carry her. I’m not strong enough.”
“We’re coming to you.” Nova’s voice is like jet fuel, able to explode everything around him. “Just stay there.”
I don’t have a choice.
I don’t know what’s worse—having no choice at all or having too many terrible ones to pick from.
My head whips side to side as I canvass our isolated surroundings. Dune grass dances in the salty nighttime breeze, and relaxed waves roll over the darkened, coarse sand. Pretty, I’d considered just moments ago.
Unfortunate, I think now.
It’s too lonely. Too sheltered from the mansion party. I can only see so far down the shoreline.
The air tastes more humid. Sticky against my heavy tongue. My ears prick at the tiniest noises. The flapping fabric of a lopsided umbrella. The whoosh of the water kissing the sand. The faraway thumping bass from the poolside DJ.
Drunken cackling. Drunken laughter. Is that originating up at the mansion or down below where we are?
Jumbled chatter grows louder. More distinct. I freeze as several figures descend the wooden stairs that lead to the beach. Then they drop onto the sand. Deep husk gravels their voices.
I squint harder. Male figures. Four of them?
As they trek farther into the orangish moonlight, I know for certain. Four men.
My pulse shoots out of my chest. “They’re coming over here,” I whisper to Nova. He really needs to call the others. He’s now the only one who knows we’re on the beach.
“Who are?”
I’m afraid to talk.
Scenario one: They don’t see us. They mind their own business. We mind ours. But does staying silent outweigh giving Nova information? Especially if they see us anyway.
“Hailey,” Nova forces out. “Who?”
I fight the urge to hang up on him. He’s too loud. Nova is always too loud, yet he can be the most silent of us all.
Making a fast decision, I whisper, “Men. They’re drunk.” As they near, the broad-armed one falls into his lanky friend with hearty laughter.
They could be good men. There’s a scenario where they sincerely, empathetically care that my friend has been drugged, and they wait in aid while I call my brother for help.
That percentage lowers due to their alcohol consumption, due to the entitled types that frequent these parties, and due to the fact that this is a group, which could be negatively influenced by peer pressure.
“Is there a weapon around you?” Nova asks. “Anything metal?”
“No,” I whisper, “and fighting them isn’t a solution, Nova. They’re huge. I think one is wearing a Caufield jersey.” Football players. College students.
Wow, we really did not luck out tonight. There are still several positive scenarios, but trying to crack a linebacker over the head with an eight-foot umbrella or wrestle him to the ground isn’t a realistic option.
Nova is thinking like a man.
And unfortunately, in this scenario, I’m a woman, and my options for success are drastically limited.
As they near, their glazed, heavy-lidded eyes come into focus, their hands occupied with bottles of Don Julio, and I’m painfully still, even as the broadest one squints into the dark.
“I-I have to hang up,” I murmur.
“No—”
“You need to call the others. Tell them where we are.” My voice trembles. “They’re going to hear me.”
“Can you hide?”
“I’ll find a solution.” I end his call, and I want to silence the phone but not at the risk of moving.
I wish Phoebe wasn’t wearing white. She glows like the arresting moon that dangles over the ocean.
I’d rather they fixate on the magnificence of nature and not the breathtaking beauty of her.
And I regret ever dyeing my hair a blinding platinum shade.
I should’ve worn my black baseball cap tonight.
I should’ve lain down next to her. I should’ve shielded her completely from view.
The option slips out of my hands—it’s too late.
“Hey!” the broader jock shouts. “Who’s out there?!” He points directly at me.
I chew on the inside of my cheek. My heart pounds harsher and heavier.
“Is that a chick?” he asks his friends. “You see that?”
“Man, I bet it’s that whore Genevive. Fifty bucks she’s touching herself.”
“Oh God, I hope it’s Priscilla. I’d face-fuck her until she pukes.”
They laugh, then argue over the repulsiveness of vomit on a dick.
“Who art thou goes there?!” one shouts in a boozy slur. “Julia Kelsey?!”
“Virgin,” one singsongs. “I’ll pop your cherry, baby!”
“Fuck, I think there’s two of them.”
“I’d fuck them both.”
These are not good men.
“Watch them be goddamn Craig and Bert.”
“In that case, you can have them, Timmy.”
“Fuck off.”
Their footsteps carry more intrigue, their strides lengthier.
I glance backward at Phoebe as she lies like Sleeping Beauty in a dainty white cotton dress awaiting to be saved or be ruined.
She’s femininity twisted around haunting vulnerability.
Her pink-painted toes are speckled with sand.
Dozens of scenarios zip rapidly through my head with outcomes that steal my breath, that choke me, but I land on the ones that keep her safe.
“I’ll be back,” I whisper to my best friend. “I promise. I won’t do anything that you wouldn’t.”
It would scare her.
It honestly scares me.
Springing quickly off the edge of the chair, I sprint toward the four men. “Hey!” I shout. “Hey.” I roll to a stop, and instinct nearly causes me to recoil. The pungent tequila stench alone knocks me backward.
Their mops of perfectly coiffed brown hair scream, Rich! One sports a flashy A. Lange & Sohne leather-banded watch, another a navy-blue Brioni polo and khaki shorts. Two have on forest-green Caufield Sea Serpent jerseys and hungry glints in their eyes.
I’ll be twenty-five in July. If they attend Caufield for undergrad, then I presume I’m older than all four of them. It’s wild how I don’t feel older.
Not as their gazes roam crudely over me. I do my best to smile and not scowl. “Nice night, huh? How about we go thataway?” I make silly, inoffensive finger guns toward the mansion.
They laugh.
“Whoa, whoa,” the broadest one says, his jersey clung too tight around his muscled biceps. I watch as he rests an arm on his friend’s shoulder and leers toward me. “You’re Grey Thornhall’s sister, right?”
“Isn’t she friends with Phoebe Smith?”
“Man, she is so hot,” the preppy one says about Phoebe.
“Oh shit.” One stares past me. “Is that her?” They’re pointing to Phoebe’s unconscious body on the lounge chair.
I step closer. “Let’s not go over there,” I say. “Seriously. You could just…leave us alone? We’re pretty beat.” I play it nice. It’s one of the weakest scenarios, but I’m not against exhausting most of them.
“Aw, did she have too much to drink?” the broadest one laughs.
I layer on the nastiest glare. “Seriously.”
“Seriously what?” He moves to go check on Phoebe, the predatory look in his eye enough to rattle me. I block him with my body and two outstretched palms.
“You’re not going over there,” I warn.
“Or what?” He laughs. They all laugh like I’m a weak little twig they can just toss into the ocean and let drift out to sea.
My stomach caves in on itself. What would Phoebe do? I twirl a piece of hair that escaped my braid, cock my hip, and bite the corner of my mouth with dusty seduction. Flirty, I am not, but I try. “What if I want you all to myself?”
I seize their attention enough. I doubt my minimal sex appeal entices them. They’re wasted. I bet they’d fuck a cardboard box right now, but if they weren’t drunk, we might not be in this situation at all.
“Yeah?” The broader one tips his eyes from my lips to my chest.
“Man, she’s the easy one,” the preppy guy whispers to the barrel-chested jock. Maybe my reputation as a slut is the real godsend.
“What would you do for us?” the barrel-chested one asks. He likely weighs 250.
“Follow me and find out.” I walk backward toward the stairs, drawing them away from Phoebe step by step. This is the last scenario where I get out of this without dropping to my knees.
They’re five feet from the twisting wooden staircase when they abruptly stop. My stomach plummets with my pulse.
“I’m not going up there, Callahan,” the prep says to the broadest one. “It’s too fucking loud.”
“Yeah, my ears are still ringing.”
Callahan up-nods me. “Come back here.”
“It’s better if—”
“Nah, come here. Don’t be a bitch.”