26. The Ride Back
TWENTY-SIX
The Ride Back
CALEB
“I want to go back to school,” Caleb said, groaning as he fluffed his pillows. He didn’t want to go back to school exactly—but he wanted to go back to Shannon, to find her and beg her to tell him her story. He should have asked to stay in jail so he could listen.
The pen would have to do in the meantime, but he ached to present it himself instead of sending Jags. With editing their papers, the timing worked out so beautifully he couldn’t wait. She told him one night between breathless kisses that she liked fancy pens, and he bought it the same day they were assigned to the writing group—just in case the world ever righted itself and he could make her breathless from his kisses again.
“You need to stay here for another week at least if you think you’re making a five-hour drive,” his mother said. “Even off the painkillers, you’re sore and tired, and I think you’ve lost weight since Christmas.”
“We have unlimited everything in the dorms and the athletic complex. I’ll eat whatever I can reach. ”
Even in the library.
“You don’t have anyone to take care of you,” Belinda said. “And the trainers will push you too hard. What do they know about this kind of recovery?”
“Mom, I have hundreds of people with a financial interest in my health, all ready to fluff my pillows. The program will take care of me just like they did with my ankle. As a matter of fact, I got a call from Adidas to see if I’d like to be the face of their new line of bedding for the injured reserve.”
Belinda poked her son’s forehead. “My baby never wanted to be babied. I know. Grumpus.”
Caleb’s voice softened. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, Mom. Especially the lemon ricotta chicken. I just need to get back.”
“I can’t believe your professors won’t let you finish the semester remotely—will they? There has to be some way to?—”
“I need to get back.”
Belinda nodded and sat at the foot of the bed. She wiggled his toes where they poked off the end of the mattress. “You need to see her, don’t you?”
Caleb stared at the ceiling. “Yeah. I do. I haven’t been able to talk to her since I left.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have her number, Mom.” Caleb closed his eyes and began to laugh. “After all this time, I still don’t have her number.”
“Is it a long story?”
“It’s a messy one, and I don’t know her half, so I don’t even know how it ends.”
Belinda nodded, then squeezed her youngest’s feet one more time. “I suppose she can tell me herself on summer vacation.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I have an idea, sweetie, and you might not love it, but I think the end will justify the means.”
“The only reason we are doing this is because those are my keys and this is my ride, so you cannot leave me on the side of the road if I say something wrong,” Caleb said.
Missy tossed her hair. “I only did that once.”
“One walk from the high school back home was enough.”
“I thought you did cardio.”
“It was February, and we had eight inches of snow on the ground,” he snapped.
“Maybe we should just not talk about that.”
“Or anything, unless you want to explain why you still won’t give me Shannon’s number.”
“Is that why you’re rushing back? To hunt her down?” She glanced at her phone and connected to Bluetooth, then selected a playlist. Caleb bit his tongue when she failed to signal while merging onto the southbound highway.
The arrangement between their mothers had been simple enough: Missy had flown home for the weekend to attend a wedding and was planning to fly back to Columbus. Belinda knew everyone’s comings and goings through her neighborhood sources, and made a call to Mrs. Van Pelt about Missy driving Caleb back as a favor. The breakup was years ago, and the mothers agreed that surely there were no hard feelings.
The end would justify the means, Caleb reminded himself. If his father had once been a god on earth, his mother was and remained the font of all wisdom, even when she tried to spoil her sons back into childhood.
“Your hair looks nice,” Missy said after half an hour of awkward silence. “A lot better now that it’s not a shaggy mess, like when you first grew it out.”
“Your opinion has been noted.” He ran his fingers through the loose waves that still tickled his cheeks when they brushed forward past the headband.
“It’s better than the stupid ponytail, anyway.”
“What was wrong with that?”
“Between that and your million plaid shirts, you looked like a farmer.”
Caleb opened his pain pills, searching for a haze to drown out her voice, and squinted into the side mirror. “What do I look like now?”
“Honestly? Pretty decent if you’d shave.” She eyed his forearms. “A few weeks out of the gym hasn’t hurt you too much.”
He stared out the window and quietly begged the narcotics for sleep.
Half an hour later, Missy tried again to start a conversation. “That was really nice, what you did for your dad.”
Caleb yawned. “I told him you sent well wishes for him, but not for me. He got a laugh out of that. Anyway, I’m sure you’d do the same for your folks.”
“Sure, but you and your dad?—”
“He’s still my dad. Luke would have done it if he matched, you know.”
“You’re kidding,” Missy said .
“He wanted to. If you knew half of what you think you know about my family, this wouldn’t be a surprise.”
She rolled her eyes. “Seriously, Caleb, can you blame a single person we went to school with for thinking he should have been the one helping Luke, not you and your brothers? The whole thing was fucked up. You did what you had to do when he bailed.”
He turned slowly, unsure he heard her correctly. “Is that what you told Shannon? That we did what we had to do?”
Missy’s flushed cheeks drained of color. “I’m sure I said something like that.”
“I’m sure you put it all in the context of brothers helping their brother when no one else would.”
“Of… well, of course I did.”
“You certainly would not have heard that I slept with her and told her I defended a random guy who assaulted his girlfriend. You wouldn’t have left out any details just because I never gave you what she got basically as soon as we connected, would you?”
“Wow,” she said, her voice dripping sarcasm. “Both of you and this connection talk. I’m sure it was destiny. Fate. She said you were never a stranger. It was adorable.”
“I bet that didn’t sit so well with you, did it?” he asked.
Missy clutched the steering wheel and refused to look at him. “Shannon is my cousin. We don’t always see eye-to-eye, but she is my family and I care about her. I don’t know what the hell went down with her and Hayden over Christmas, but when she showed up with blue hair and a new wardrobe and a bad attitude after that, I was worried. You didn’t know her before, okay? Can you imagine Isaac coming home one day all tatted up and pierced? It’s like that. ”
“Like when I grew out my hair and became a farmer? And I guess you’ll love Eli’s earrings.”
“His what ?” Missy shrieked.
“Eli has hoops in both sides,” Caleb said, tugging his earlobes. “He showed us the artwork for the tattoo he’s getting. Left biceps. It’s going to look sick.”
Missy wobbled. “Okay, Eli is the last of you guys I would?—”
“Isaac pierced his nipples. Kind of rough with the pads on, but he says with a little tape, it’s not bad.”
“This is not possible,” Missy whispered.
“I made up the part about Isaac. But it’s impossible not to tell Luke and Eli apart these days. My brothers and I are individuals with our own tastes. Maybe Shannon just likes blue and wants to try out a different look,” Caleb said.
“And maybe a stuck-up liar broke her heart,” Missy said. “So maybe I didn’t want to push her into your arms. So what? I don’t owe you an explanation for that.”
He yawned again as the pain medicine finally crept a slow, superficial relief across his lower back. “I suppose you don’t. She gave me a pretty good idea when we talked about it before I came home.”
“You talked about it?”
“What else were we going to do stuck in jail together?”
Missy jabbed her foot on the accelerator, then panicked and braked.
“Cruise control is on the left stalk,” Caleb said, pointing.
She glared. “What did you do?”
“What did we do? We kicked Hayden Hamilton’s ass, that’s what.”
Missy stared blankly at the road .
“So of course,” Caleb continued, reclining his seat, “we had some time to chat while we waited for them to book us and sort out paperwork. The usual stuff. She told me what you said about me, and we pieced together what you didn’t say about me.”
“Did you tell her?—”
He lowered his brows. “I told her when and why I broke up with you, with the barest minimum of information. I will not be accused of being dishonest with her to protect your pride, and I’ll direct her to you if she wants to know more.”
“Look, I’m sorry, but whatever I left out was because I was trying to protect her ,” Missy said. “She’s right off a nasty breakup and suddenly she’s got heart-eyes about a hookup at a party when she didn’t know your name? That’s not like either of you. I thought you’d both gone off the deep end.”
Caleb nodded and scratched several days’ worth of accumulated stubble on his jawline. He smiled. “Maybe we have. Maybe we… oh, no.”
He yanked his phone from his pocket and began typing.
“Caleb?”
“Jesus, I can’t believe I forgot to do this. I slept all the way out of town, and I didn’t know the name. I wrote that whole paper and I—shit, what name did she say?” He clutched his forehead. “Stupid meds. I should have looked right after I left. Why didn’t I look right after I left?”
Missy jabbed him with a finger. “Seriously, are you okay?”
He typed a name, then shook his head. Another, but not the results he was looking for.
Caleb yanked his hair in frustration and grimaced. “Brian? Brian-with-a-y?” He typed another name into the search bar. “Ryan. Andover, Massachusetts. There you are, bastard.”
“I’m so lost.”
“Drive straight for next two hundred miles. The nasty breakup just got nastier.” Sweat accumulated on his forehead as he clicked each link in the list Shannon scanned so often. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he whispered, hand at his throat.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Missy mocked in a high voice, ignoring her part in the miscommunications. “God, you two and all the crap you haven’t told each other. You could have been done with all this drama six weeks ago.”
Caleb ignored her. “That sick fuck, it’s no wonder… oh God, this is why he wanted to make her a liar. This is the bigger hit.”
He closed his eyes and slumped back in the seat, trying not to grind his teeth.
Missy took in his expression and swerved. “If you don’t tell me what’s going on right now, I’m calling your mother,” she announced. “You look ill. You are pale and sweating and you just had an organ removed, so explain yourself.”
“Did Shan tell you why she and Hayden broke up?” he asked.
“Not why specifically.” Missy narrowed her eyes. “She was really hurt and disappointed. He wasn’t who she thought he was. The usual stuff, I guess.”
He nodded and read from the search results. “These are from a few years ago. Ryan Hamilton arraigned for attempted vehicular manslaughter.” Missy covered her mouth. “Lawmaker’s son charged after ‘deliberate’ car accident.”
“Ryan?”
“She said he dropped his first name, but not legally, when he came to college. Look up ‘Hayden Hamilton’ and most of what you get are football stats or his dad, Bryan Hayden Hamilton, who’s got a seat in the State House.” Caleb shook his head and read on. “What a slick motherfucker he thinks he is. Everywhere in the news, he’s Ryan H. Hamilton. Seventeen-year-old Hamilton to be tried as an adult. And a month later, charges dismissed.”
Missy swallowed thickly. “Charges for manslaughter? From a car accident?”
He held up a finger and scrolled, then gulped back bile. “Missy, pull over.”
“Just tell me.”
“It’s my car. Pull it over.”
They rode in silence to the next exit ramp. Missy parked on the shoulder, then tried to meet his eyes. He wouldn’t look up from his phone.
“This makes it sound like he was trying to either kill or severely injure his pregnant girlfriend,” Caleb said. “Dragged the passenger side of his car along a couple of concrete pillars. She miscarried.”
Missy didn’t check for traffic coming off the ramp before she flung open the door and vomited into the gravel. When she climbed back in her seat, Caleb offered his water bottle and suggested they take a break.