Chapter 13
Rowan
The second Keaton shoved Westly Ridgway back, Ridgway charged at him, drunk and pissed off, and Keaton hit him before I could process what was happening.
His fist slammed into Ridgway’s mouth, and they crashed into the dresser by the wall, knocking over a lamp and scattering cups and bottles across the floor.
Glass from the light bulb shattered as Ridgway cursed so loud it carried into the hallway, and within seconds, footsteps pounded outside the door.
A couple of guys from the team crowded into the room. Somebody behind them tried to peek past their shoulders. Another voice cut through the noise with, “Get him.”
Then somebody else. “What the hell?”
“Are they fighting?”
I didn’t move.
I’d spent the past year sneaking around with Keaton, kissing him in my room, touching him in his car, talking about getting out of high school and figuring the rest out later, and the moment Ridgway caught us, I did the worst thing I could have possibly done.
I panicked, shoved Keaton away, and let the lie slip out of my mouth before I thought about what it would do to him.
Keaton dodged a punch, but the next one clipped his face and knocked him into the wall. He came right back and drove his shoulder into Ridgway’s chest hard enough to shove him onto the bed, both of them falling onto the mattress.
A few guys at the door reacted all at once.
“Shit.”
“Dammmmn.”
“Hell, yeah! Get that emo kid.”
Every part of me knew what I needed to do. Step in. Tell the truth. End it.
Instead, I didn’t. My hands stayed at my sides as Ridgway shoved Keaton off the bed and threw another punch. Keaton took it, then fired one back. Blood appeared on Ridgway’s mouth. He wiped it away and lunged at Keaton again.
Keaton was driven into the wall. His shoulder hit first, then the back of his head. His body jerked with the impact, and that should’ve been enough to snap me out of whatever the hell had locked up my body.
It wasn’t.
I just stood there and let Keaton take it.
He slammed his fist into Ridgway’s ribs and tried to push past him, probably to leave the room, but Ridgway snatched his hoodie and yanked him back.
“Where are you going?” Ridgway snapped. “You don’t get to come in here, pull some shit, then walk out.”
“I didn’t do anything to you,” Keaton shot back.
Ridgway pushed him again. Keaton stumbled, caught himself, then turned to me.
Not to Ridgway.
Not to the guys crowding the room, but to me.
Blood stained his lips. His breathing was rough, his mouth slightly open, and the disbelief on his face made me feel sick.
He was waiting for me to fix it.
But I didn’t.
Ridgway hit him again. Keaton’s head snapped back from the punch, finally prompting one of my teammates to act. He pushed through the guys in the doorway and grabbed Ridgway by the shoulders.
“Break it up,” Windsor barked. “This is getting out of hand.”
Another teammate came up behind him and tugged Ridgway around the waist, pulling him back when he tried to lunge again.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Hanover snapped. “Coach will bench you if he finds out.”
Keaton wiped at his mouth and stared at me. “Rowan.”
That was all he said.
Just my name.
That made it worse because he still believed there was a chance I’d be the guy he knew instead of the one standing there doing nothing while everyone in the room watched him take the fall.
Ridgway jerked forward again, struggling against the guys holding him. “That little freak tried to kiss Cross,” he yelled.
All eyes turned to me.
I could’ve said something. Maybe not enough to fix it, not enough to make any of this disappear, but enough to keep Keaton from standing there alone in it.
Except the beer in my system didn’t erase what I should’ve done. It just made me slower, made the room feel off, and made every second drag as I stood there and let the silence do damage I couldn’t take back.
“Cross?” Windsor prompted.
Ridgway jerked against the hands holding him. “I saw him. He was all over him.”
Keaton didn’t look at Ridgway.
He kept looking at me.
I could’ve told the truth. I could’ve stepped forward. I could’ve done anything except what I did, which was stand there and let the lie settle long enough to become its own answer.
“Say something,” Keaton pleaded.
When I didn’t, something changed in his face.
Hurt flashed across it first. Then it was gone.
He met my stare and understood I wasn’t going to fight for him.
I was going to let him stand there alone.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and held my stare for another second, as if making sure he’d seen me clearly.
Then he shook his head a little, snorted under his breath, and brushed past the guy in front of the door.
After a beat, I pushed past everyone and went after him.
Outside, people were scattered in the yard, drunk and laughing, and music bumping through the walls. The whole party kept going as if nothing had happened.
I spotted Keaton halfway down the street, walking toward his car. I stumbled off the porch. “Keaton!”
He didn’t look back.
By the time I reached the sidewalk, he was getting into his car. The door slammed shut, and a second later, he pulled away from the curb.
Then I stopped and watched his taillights disappear.
The beer in my system suddenly turned mean. My head felt too hot and too light, the ground shifted just enough to make me brace both hands on my knees as I bent over and tried not to fall.
“You good?” Windsor asked.
No, I wasn’t good.
“Yeah,” I lied, but I’d just stood there and let Keaton take the hit for something that was mine too, and now he was gone.
“What was that all about?” Windsor questioned.
“Nothing.”
I sat down on the curb in front of the house because my legs didn’t feel steady enough to trust. Music continued pounding inside. People kept pouring through the front door, laughing too loud, talking over each other, acting like the whole night hadn’t just split open.
I pulled out my phone and texted Keaton, the screen a little blurry:
I’m sorry
Then another:
Pls answr me
Then another:
I fuked up
And another:
Pls just talk to me
But there were no dots.
No reply.
So, I called.
Then called again.
Each time it went straight to voicemail.
I sat there staring at my phone, but he never responded or called me back.
After a while, the party started to thin out and Hanover stopped in front of me. “Need a ride home?”
“Yeah.”
He helped me up, and we got into his car. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Keaton silently begging, waiting for me to speak, and every time I opened them, he was still gone.
Keaton’s car was in his driveway, but his room was dark when my teammate dropped me off. I stood there, staring across the dark gap between my house and his, at the window I’d spent half my life watching.
The light never turned on.
A few minutes later, I climbed in through my own window because I couldn’t handle walking through the house and hearing my parents freak out that I was drunk.
By morning, I hated myself in a way I couldn’t put into words. I went next door before nine and knocked on the front door.
No answer.
I knocked again, louder this time, and a few seconds later, the curtain shifted in the front window. I couldn’t see who was behind it. The curtain fell back into place, and nobody opened the door.
I texted Keaton again:
Pls talk to me
Nothing.
That night, I knocked on his window just like he’d done at mine more times than I could count.
His room stayed dark.
On Monday at school, I saw him by the parking lot before first period. “Keaton,” I called out to him.
He heard me. I knew he had because his shoulders tightened, but he kept walking.
I hurried after him. “Keaton, wait!”
He reached the building, opened the door, and went inside without looking back. I stopped outside and watched it close behind him. At school, no one knew about us, and I couldn’t bring myself to chase him through that door.
At lunchtime, I crossed the quad while he was sitting with his friends near the library wall.
One of them saw me coming and looked more confused than anything.
Then Keaton turned, saw me, snatched his backpack, and stood up.
He didn’t say a word to them; he just walked away.
I followed him halfway across campus before finally stopping because people were staring, and for the first time, I truly understood how exposed he had felt at the party.
Not just cornered. Not just outnumbered.
Left there while everyone watched, and the one person who should’ve had his back did nothing.
I found him after school two days later at the pizza place he worked at.
He was behind the counter. For a second, I thought maybe this was it. Maybe he’d yell. Maybe he’d tell me to get lost. Maybe he’d finally say something I could answer. Instead, he turned around and disappeared into the back without a word.
A girl stepped up to the register. “You gonna order?”
I stared at the kitchen door. “No,” I answered.
She waited for me to leave.
I did.
After that, I tried everything I could think of: I texted, I called, I knocked on his front door.
I waited by his car after work. I went to the parking lot after school and saw him get into the Elantra, but the second he saw me, he locked the door and drove away. A week went by. Then two. Then a month.
By October, people stopped talking about the party because high school always found something new to turn into gossip. Ridgway never brought it up around me again, and I think part of him knew something didn’t add up. He watched me differently after that, but he didn’t push.
Keaton never gave me anything. Not anger. Not closure. Not even a go to hell. Just silence. That somehow hurt worse than getting screamed at ever could, and I knew I had no right to feel that way when I was the reason for it in the first place.
The party replayed in my head every night, whether I wanted it to or not.
The room. The doorway. Ridgway. The other guys in the hall.
The look on Keaton’s face each time he turned to me and saw nothing.
That was what stayed with me. Not the punches, not the blood, not even Ridgway running his mouth.
It was the fact that Keaton gave me every chance to tell the truth, and I stood there and let the lie bury him.
Because when it mattered, I chose myself.
Football season kept going. Everyone treated me like nothing had changed, and I went along with it.
I put on the jersey, took the hits, did what I was supposed to do, and none of it touched what was sitting in my chest. Sometimes I caught sight of Keaton after school when people started gathering for the game, but if he saw me, he never let it show.
He wasn’t there for me anyway. He had his own life, his own people, and after that night, I wasn’t part of any of it.
At home, I kept looking at his window without meaning to.
Every night.
Every damn night.
Sometimes the light was on and his shadow moved past the blinds. Sometimes the room stayed dark. Once, I saw him close the curtains the moment he saw me standing there. Still, I kept looking anyway.
By graduation, we hadn’t spoken for months.
Even so, I kept searching for him. I sought him out when we lined up in our gowns behind the gym.
I looked for him on the football field as families filled the bleachers.
After we crossed the stage and people started hugging and taking pictures, I tracked him down.
I found him near the edge of the crowd with his mom.
He was holding his diploma case at his side while she adjusted his cap and smiled up at him, trying to make him smile too.
I took a step toward him, but Dad caught my shoulder. “Picture first.”
Mom was crying, phone in hand, asking where she should stand so the light would hit right. I barely heard her. I kept peering over Dad’s shoulder for Keaton while they pulled me into pictures I didn’t care about. By the time they finished, he was gone.
The day I left for the Air Force, Dad loaded my bags into the trunk while I lingered in the driveway a bit longer than I needed to, hoping Keaton would give me something, but he never came out, so I got into the car.
As Dad backed out, I glanced toward the side of the house where our windows faced each other.
He was there.
He didn’t wave.
He didn’t move.
He just stood there and let me leave.
My throat burned as I kept my focus on him until the house disappeared behind us.