CHAPTER SEVEN #2
The tree house came into view, perched on the biggest tree out here. “The mother of the forest,” my dad had called it when we stumbled upon the giant oak the first time.
We’d spent an entire summer and fall toting wood out here, since two ravines cut this whole area off, and all our trails avoided hills.
“It’s interesting,” Hunter continued, “that someone cut your brake lines, and then Ben got in a wreck on his way to visit you at juvie not long after.”
My stomach bottomed out at the things Hunter casually theorized as we came to a halt beneath the structure.
He was walking a path that would gain him the wrong attention, and he didn’t just have a large body.
Hunter’s stubbornness rivaled that of an old man set in his ways, and it’d be impossible to nudge him off this dangerous line of thinking if he didn’t want to move.
Deep in thought, I studied the wooden structure ahead.
The years hadn’t been too hard on it, considering my dad had no experience prior to woodworking. He preferred sheet metal and a welder.
The outside looked solid. Some vines and small trees grew along the roof, but it still stood comfortably on a fork of branches. A quick tug showed the planks we hammered into the trunk to serve as a crude ladder to be serviceable.
“Lamb? Willa, enough.” A frown marred Ralph’s normally amused expression.
By contrast, Kolton gaped in horrified surprise at Hunter.
Apparently, the blond hadn’t made the connection between Ben’s accident and the vandalism on my Jeep.
Weeks of dread culminated within me as everything I’d feared played out in reality right before my eyes.
Kolton would realize I was the reason his best friend had died. He’d quit talking to me—or worse.
Ralph would grasp this connection as well, and he, too, would decide I was more trouble than I was worth.
He’d already been arrested because of me.
His parents definitely blamed me for having to collect their son from detainment in the middle of the night.
To them, I was trouble their son didn’t need, and I didn’t disagree with that.
And Hunter? Oh, he might hold out a while longer because he’d wrongly judged me once before.
Some guilt for that probably lingered, but when I wouldn’t be able to come clean regarding everything that had happened for fear of painting a target on their backs as bright as Ben’s…
well, then I’d be everything he’d suspected me of—a deceitful liar—and Hunter’s BS meter ran on a hair trigger.
I’d been avoiding this confrontation, ignoring texts, and dodging calls because I wanted to cling to this last semblance of happiness, my last connection to Ben, while I still could. If denial and procrastination came with a crown, I’d have the biggest one around.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked.
Kolton focused his ire on me. “How about any-fucking-thing? Did that fucking psycho target Ben? Is he dead now because of that?”
Because of you, my mind whispered, supplying his unspoken accusation.
“I don’t know. You guys probably read more about what happened than I did. I woke up weeks after the fact!”
Partially shaved, weak muscles, stitched, confused, and missing memories, while also unable to trust a few that’d returned.
Frankenstein’s monster couldn’t hold a candle to the severe shock I’d undergone when I first awoke from that dark, deep nothingness, only to be thrust straight back into chaos.
Ben dead, an “accident.” Months of rehab. Brain surgery.
Even now, those initial recollections echoed like a mass of unpleasant worms squirming through my mind.
“I’m sorry! There’s just…” My apology faltered as I looked into the distance, studying the sway of the surrounding trees.
“You know something.”
Hunter again. He looked like a bruiser, but his mind was as sharp as a tack.
I shrugged, because what else could I say? It felt like if I opened the lid, even just a little, all the pent-up pressure would force everything to spew out.
“Walk us through that day,” Ralph encouraged. “Ben was supposed to meet you, right? That didn’t change?”
I nodded, feeling a cool breeze shuddering through me. The woods stilled in a hush.
Ben’s warm voice reached far from my memories as he promised to return the next day during visiting hours.
He grinned. “You have to be alive to pretend to hate me.”
My throat clogged with grief. I sniffled, scrubbing my eyes with one hand as I glanced away. “He was supposed to come.”
My mind veered back to that day.
The sharp sting of grief and rejection, followed quickly by resignation…
I’d jumped to a snap judgment and accepted the fact that he’d ghosted me, even when he’d given no reasons during our time together to doubt him.
“Alright,” Ralph murmured then hummed a neutral, careful sound. “And somehow, he ended up wrecking. What about you?”
I blinked. “Me?”
Kolton folded his arms. “Yeah, you. What fucking happened to you?”
Oh. Right.
Wetting my lips, I recited the story, “I tripped—”
“The truth,” Hunter interjected. “No evasions, half answers, or lies. We’re not dumb enough to believe that Ben died, and at the same time, you somehow ended up in a coma.
Your parents and everyone else might buy whatever you told them, but we know about that guy after you. Have you still been getting calls?”
Again, Kolton didn’t seem like he’d connected those dots yet. Ralph had a better poker face, so it proved harder to read him.
“No.”
“Good. Have you told your parents about him?”
I hugged myself, beginning to feel like a broken record. “No.”
Ralph’s eyes widened. “You don’t plan to, do you? Willa…” He tilted his head, his dreadlocks catching the light. “Do you think you’re protecting them?” When I didn’t reply, he shook his head. “You do.”
Hunter stepped forward. The small distance that step ate up should not have made him seem exponentially larger, but it did. “Wait, not just your parents, right?” When I blinked at him, he clarified, “Who else do you think you’re protecting?”