Chapter 17
As I’m getting ready for bed, loud music blares from the patio.
“What the hell?” I shove open the curtains to see who’s out there, but all I see is the pool with nobody in it.
Going outside, I follow the music to a speaker set up by the hot tub. Braden is in there, his arms splayed out, head up, eyes closed as the water bubbles around him.
“Braden!” I stand next to him, hands on my hips.
He lifts his head and slowly opens his eyes. “You’re still here?”
“Where would I go? I don’t have a car.”
“I meant here in La Jolla. I thought you would’ve ran back to New York by now.”
“Unfortunately, for both of us, I’m still here.” I point to the speaker. “You need to turn it down.”
“I don’t need to do anything. It’s my house.”
“It’s mine too as long as I’m living here.”
He leans his head back and closes his eyes.
“You’re not going to turn it down?”
He ignores me.
I pick up his phone and hold it above the water. “You turn it down or this goes in the hot tub.”
He opens one eye. “Put it down. Then get the hell out of here.”
“Okay, here it goes.” I drop it, and Braden lunges forward and catches it right before it goes in the water.
“Shit,” I mutter.
Who knew he had such fast reflexes? That was amazing.
“You really think I’d let you do it?” he says with a smirk.
“You really think I wouldn’t try?”
“You didn’t think I’d catch it.”
“That was just luck.”
“It was skill. I practice that shit for hours a day.”
“You practice catching your phone? Seems like a waste of time.”
“You have no fucking clue who you’re dealing with. The girls at Twisted Pine would give anything to be standing where you are right now.”
“They’re that desperate? That’s a shame.”
He stares at me. “Bitch.”
“Ass.”
He smiles slightly. “You don’t give a fuck what people think about you, do you?”
“Nope.” I fold my arms over my chest.
“I don’t either, but I can get away with it. You can’t. Act like this next week and you won’t last long at Twisted Pine.”
He’s right. What am I doing? I’m already ruining the plan. I’m supposed to be getting on Braden’s good side, not pissing him off, although I think part of him likes the real me.
I sit down next to him and put my feet in the water.
He looks at me. “What the hell you doing?”
“Hanging out.” I tip my head back and stare up at the dark sky.
“I want to be alone.”
“And I don’t.”
“Why?”
“Why don’t I want to be alone?” I blow out a breath, keeping my eyes on the sky. “Because I miss home. And being alone makes me miss it more.”
“Why do you miss home?”
“Because it’s all I know. It’s where I grew up. I miss my friends. I miss Axl.”
Braden swipes his phone, lowering the music. “Who’s Axl?”
“My boyfriend. We’ve dated for two years.”
“It won’t last. Not with you living here. Guys don’t do the long-distance thing, especially in high school.”
Not wanting to argue about it, I don’t respond.
“You still think about your mom?” he asks, tipping his head back, his eyes closed, arms extended, his hand almost touching my leg.
“I think about her all the time.” I look up at the sky. “Every day.”
“What was it like?”
“What?”
“When it happened. What was it like?”
This is the last thing I want to talk about, but opening up to Braden is the first step in making him trust me.
“It was like watching your world crumble right in front of you. I knew the moment she fell to the ground it was over. She wasn’t coming back.”
“How’d you know?”
“I just had this feeling. She didn’t respond when I tried to help. She was just lying there.” I take a breath, willing myself not to cry. “It was like her soul was already gone and her body just needed to catch up. By the time the ambulance got there, she was dead.”
We both get quiet, the music now faint in the background.
“I’ve never seen anyone die,” Braden says.
“I wouldn’t recommend it, especially if it’s someone you love.
” I pause. “People at the funeral told me I was lucky I was there. That I was lucky to have those last few moments with her. But they’re wrong.
It was horrible seeing her go. Being there as she took her last breaths?
It’s something I can’t unsee. It’ll haunt me the rest of my life. ”
We both get quiet again, and I consider I might’ve said too much.
Braden doesn’t seem like someone who’s comfortable talking about stuff like this.
Axl isn’t either. Whenever I tried talking about my mom’s death, he’d tell me not to.
He said I’d feel better if I didn’t, but I think that was truer for him than for me.
“Sometimes I feel like my mom is dead,” Braden says.
I look up and see he’s sunk deeper in the water, his chest covered, with only his head and arms exposed.
“Why?” I ask, surprised he brought up his mom.
He shrugs. “She feels dead to me.”
“Because you never see her?”
“I can see her whenever I want. I just don’t want to.”
“Did something happen? Did you get in a fight?”
“She doesn’t fight. Doesn’t even get mad. She just sits there, not saying anything.”
“I don’t understand.”
He sighs. “She’s fucked up. Like mentally.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.”
My mom never told me that, not that we ever talked about Brock’s first wife, but if she was mentally disturbed, I think my mom would’ve told me.
“She wasn’t always like that,” Braden says. “She used to be normal. Now she just sits in her house and stares at the ocean.”
“What happened to her?”
He doesn’t answer.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
His eyes open and meet up with mine. “She killed someone. A kid. Hit him with her car.”
I gasp. “Oh my God. When?”
“A few years ago. It was after she and my dad divorced.”
“How did it happen?”
“She was driving at night and didn’t see him. He was on his bike and she hit him when he was crossing the street.”
“So it was an accident.”
“Not really.” He looks away.
I wait for him to explain, but he doesn’t. He sinks back in the hot tub, tilting his head toward the sky.
“It wasn’t an accident?” I cautiously ask. When he doesn’t answer, I say, “You can’t tell me.”
He takes a moment before saying, “I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. She can’t be convicted. She got off.” He takes a breath. “She was in a hurry to get to a party and didn’t stop.”
“She didn’t stop and help the kid?”
“Not at first. She panicked and took off, then turned around, but when she got there, it was too late. He was dead. Probably died on impact. Even if she’d stopped right away, she couldn’t have saved him.”
“That’s really sad.”
“She was living with a guy when it happened. But instead of calling him, she called my dad.”
“Why?”
“Guess she trusted him more than the guy she was dating. Dad showed up at the scene and took care of it.”
“What do you mean he took care of it?”
“He brought in his team. Lawyers. Image consultants. PR guy.”
“For what? What’d they do?”
“Made sure my mom didn’t end up in prison. They told her what to say, what to do, how to act.”
“So she never told anyone the truth?”
“She told my dad. I don’t know what story she gave the police.
All I know is she got off without any charges, not even a fine.
But she’s never been the same. After it happened, she broke up with the guy she was with and just stayed in her room and didn’t go anywhere.
Now she sits in her bedroom and stares out the window all day. ”
“Where does she live?”
“In Malibu, in a place three times as big as this one. She has the maid come clean it but other than that, I don’t think anyone ever goes there.”
“You and Trystan never go?”
“We do, but not very often. We hate it there. She gets confused and calls us Brock, or Kevin, the dead kid’s name. Sometimes she’ll suddenly start screaming for no reason. Or she’ll throw stuff. She’s not our mom anymore. That’s why I say it feels like she’s dead.”
That explains why Trystan reacted the way he did when Brock told him he could live with his mom.
“Braden!” someone yells from the house. “You out here?”
Trystan appears, dressed in dark jeans and a white shirt, reeking of cologne.
Braden sits up. “What do you want?”
“Get your ass ready and let’s go.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I have practice at seven tomorrow and have to be at the gym at five.”
“You have to be at the gym that early?” I ask.
“Don’t have to. I want to.”
“He’s a gym rat,” Trystan says to me. “Works out more than anyone else on the team.”
“Which is why I’m the best,” Braden says. “So where you going?”
“We’re crashing a Warrior party.” Trystan smiles. “It’s gonna be awesome.”
“What the fuck’s wrong with you? You know those parties are off limits.”
“Not if we don’t do anything. We’ll drink their beer, make out with some girls, and leave.”
“Yeah, right,” Braden says. “Better not be anyone on the team going.”
Trystan shrugs. “There might be a few.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Kade and Barron talked about going.”
“Fuck!” Braden jumps out of the hot tub and grabs his towel.
“Relax,” Trystan says. “They probably won’t even show up.”
“They won’t if they want to be on the team.” He picks up his phone and storms to the house.
“What was that about?” I ask Trystan.
“The football team’s not supposed to show up at Warrior parties.”
“What’s a Warrior party?”
“The Legion Warriors,” he says like I should know. “The public school.”
“Is this a football party?”
“Almost all their parties are football parties, or at least the only ones worth going to.”
“And people from Twisted Pine go to these parties?”
“We’re not supposed to, but we do. We show up late when everyone’s too drunk to notice.”
“But the football team’s banned?”
“That’s our rule, not theirs. Last year fights broke out and one of our guys ended up with a broken arm and had to sit out the rest of the season. After that, Principal Edwards banned the team from going to Warrior parties but some of them still go.”
“Why’s Braden so worried about it?”
“Because he doesn’t want to lose one of his teammates because they did something stupid. This year’s team is the best the school’s ever had. They might even go to State.”