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“I need to talk to someone,” I sniff. I can’t remember the last time I was in Darren’s dorm. It feels like forever ago since we were dating. Time has passed, things have changed, but right now he is the only person I know who is entirely neutral to the situation I have found myself in. He is the only person I can talk to about this, because although Darren is too clingy and too protective, there was a time when he knew how to comfort me. He always listened, he always offered advice, and he does give tight, reassuring hugs. He doesn’t know the Hunters. Holden isn’t his friend. And he keeps saying he still wants to be there for me, so here’s his chance to prove it.
“Come in,” he says quickly, stepping back and ushering me inside. As I walk into the small, cramped dorm room, his brown eyes remain fixed on me. He looks concerned, and when he closes the door again behind us and locks it, he follows me across the cluttered floor. I’m relieved that his roommate isn’t here, and I sit down on the edge of his unmade bed and anxiously fumble with my hands. “Is this about Jaden Hunter?”
I look up at Darren. “What?”
“It was him, right? He was the guy you still had feelings for?” he asks quietly, lowering himself down onto the bed next me. He stares back at me, intensely. The dimple in his left cheek doesn’t show when he isn’t smiling, and I used to hate when it wasn’t on display.
I heave a slow sigh and shoot Darren an awkward, apologetic glance. I guess he figured it out over the weekend when he saw me and Jaden together at Walgreens. I suppose it was obvious. “Yeah. He’s the one,” I murmur. There is no point in denying it now.
Darren nods once and then tilts his head down, looking up at me from beneath his eyelashes. “So is this about him?” he asks carefully, his voice gentle and caring. “You know I don’t like seeing you cry, Kenz. Just say the word and I’ll beat his ass.”
“No, Darren,” I say, placing my hand over the top of his enclosed fist. Slowly, he flexes his hand beneath mine, and I glance around the room. The pressure of my headache keeps on building, so I move my hand from Darren’s and press my fingers to my temple instead, gently trying to massage the pain away. “Do you remember what happened to Jaden’s parents?” I ask him, my eyes fixed on an empty beer bottle that’s been dumped on the floor. I stare at it in an effort to keep myself steady, because the ground is beginning to sway beneath me again. “That crash last summer?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Darren nod. “What about it?”
A small hiccup escapes. I think I have cried the entire drive to Fort Collins, and now there are no tears left. All I can do is sniff and try to swallow the painful lump in my throat. I can’t keep Holden’s revelation to myself. I need advice, and Darren is the only person who can give it to me right now. Taking a deep breath, I force my eyes away from the beer bottle and back up to look at Darren. “It didn’t happen the way the police said it happened,” I tell him, and as soon as I say it out loud, my stomach twists. How did all of this happen? Why Holden?
Darren is silent while he takes a moment to consider what I’m telling him. He cocks his head to one side, ready to listen carefully. “What do you mean?”
Holden doesn’t want me to tell anyone, but I just have to. And at least it’s only Darren I’m telling, not Jaden. Yet. Running my hands back through my hair and heaving an agonized sigh, I attempt to piece together everything that Holden has told me. In my head, the facts are all over the place, so I spend a minute trying to realign them again. The longer I take, the more confused Darren becomes. “Jaden’s parents didn’t swerve to avoid an animal,” I finally say, my voice weak and nothing more than a croaked whisper. “They swerved to avoid Holden.”
“What?” Darren physically recoils from me for a moment. “Was Holden on the road?”
“He fell asleep and he must have forced them off the road or something,” I splutter, my words fast. Right now, I am helpless. There is nothing I can do to change what happened that night, no matter how much I wish I could. If Holden hadn’t been on that road then Bradley and Kate Hunter would still . . . No. I can’t bring myself to imagine it. I can’t think that way, not unless I want to end up enraged at Holden. The last thing he needs right now is for me to be angry at him. Shaking away the thought of it, I fix my attention back on Darren, throwing my head forward and burying my face into my hands. “He’s kept this a secret for over a year! He only just told me! Now what am I supposed to do?”
“Let me get this straight,” Darren says, and he places his hand on my shoulder. The mattress creaks as he scoots closer to me until his leg is against mine. “Your best friend caused the car crash that killed your new boyfriend’s parents?”
“Yes . . . And the worst part is that Jaden doesn’t know.”
“That’s fucked up,” Darren says. He doesn’t even so much as flinch at the thought of Jaden being my boyfriend, even though he isn’t officially. Instead, he only frowns and tightens his grip on my shoulder. After the lengths he has been going to lately to win me back, I thought he would have been more annoyed, but he doesn’t seem to be. In a way, I am thankful. Now isn’t the time to argue about our failed relationship. “Is that why you’re crying?” he asks. “Because he doesn’t know?”
“Because I’m going to have to be the one to tell him.” Dread fills me and there’s a pang in my chest that constricts my breathing. How am I going to tell Jaden and Dani? How am I supposed to say it? I thought telling Jaden about Mom and Grace would be the hardest thing I ever did, but apparently not. Now I have to tell the boy I’m falling for that my best friend may have been the reason his parents are no longer alive. The nausea returns again. My knees feel week, my head is spinning. “It feels like the Hunters have finally gotten over it, are finally moving on, are finally happy again,” I murmur. “And now I have to crush them all over again.”
Darren begins to massage my shoulder now in what I can only assume is an attempt to comfort me, though it’s far from soothing. “Shouldn’t Holden be the one to tell them?”
“Yes, but he won’t,” I answer. I look to the ceiling and run my hands through my hair, exasperated. Goddamn Holden. “And I can’t keep this a secret, so it’s going to have to be me who breaks the news. I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“You don’t have to tell them, Kenz,” Darren says. Scratching at the back of his neck, he uses my shoulder for support as he pushes himself up. He walks across the cluttered floor and swipes a near-empty bottle of water off his desk, then watches me closely over the rim as he takes a long swig. “If you tell Jaden, aren’t you hurting both him and Holden? Like you said, the Hunters have moved on.” He tosses the empty bottle toward the overflowing trash can, but it misses and lands on the floor with a bounce. “Why bring it up again?”
“Are you serious?” I blink at Darren several times while I try to gauge if he’s kidding or not, and when I realize he is being serious, I shake my head at him in horror. “Imagine if Jaden found out I had kept this from him! He would never forgive me.”
“If you weren’t with him, then you wouldn’t feel obliged to tell him,” Darren mutters under his breath. He turns his back to me and fishes around inside his dresser drawer until he pulls out a pair of black sweats. I watch in silence as he slips them on, then he heaves a deep sigh and sits back down on the bed next to me. The light hits the crook in his nose, drawing my attention to it. I used to find a lot of things about Darren attractive, like that damn dimple in his left cheek that is slowly beginning to appear as the corners of his lips curve into a small, gentle smile. His soft brown eyes meet mine and a silence forms around us. We are sitting so close together that it is easy for him to lift his hand and press the pad of his thumb to my chin. He tilts my head only slightly, forcing my gaze to meet his. “You know, Kenz,” he murmurs quietly, leaning in toward my face, “you wouldn’t be in this situation at all if you were still with me.”
“Darren!” Instinctively, I smack his hand away and retreat from him. A new sense of fury washes over me and my cheek
s burn hot with sudden rage. I am already emotional enough as it is. How dare Darren make this about us? “This isn’t the damn time for this!”
There’s a flash of hurt in Darren’s eyes at my abrupt rejection, but he seems to quickly get over it, because it turns to anger as he rises to his feet. “Fine,” he retorts. He strides across the small dorm, unlocking the door and swinging it wide open. He spins around and fixes me with a firm, challenging look. “Leave, Kenz.”
“Fine!” I yell. Breathing heavily, I stand up and enclose my fist around Mom’s car keys so tightly that it’ll leave an imprint in my skin. I shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have expected Darren to help. My palms feel sweaty as I reach the door, barging past him into the hallway. I turn around one last time, and despite my swollen eyes, the swirls of mascara on my cheeks and my dry, chapped lips, I am brave enough to look Darren straight in the eye. “For the record,” I tell him, “your advice sucked.”
“Then don’t come looking for it again,” he states monotonously. Without letting another second pass, he steps back and slams the door shut, leaving me standing in the cold hallway by myself.
30
“Am I missing something here?” Will asks the next morning as he pulls into the school parking lot. As he navigates the lot, avoiding the freshmen who are jaywalking all over the place, he glances sideways at me and then over his shoulder at Holden in the back seat. There is suspicion in his eyes. “What is up with you guys?”
“I’m just tired,” I mumble, staring aimlessly out of the Jeep’s windshield through the shaded lenses of my sunglasses. It’s a dull, cloudy day and there is a darkness lingering over Windsor that probably has as much to do with my mood as it does with the clouds, but I refuse to take the sunglasses off.
“Yeah, me too,” Holden says quietly from the back seat. I cast a look over the back of the passenger seat at him, but his face is angled toward the window, his jaw tight. He has been quiet during the short drive to school, and so have I.
In fact, I didn’t even want to go to school today. I wanted to avoid Holden and I wanted to avoid Jaden and I wanted to avoid Dani. Skipping school and staying home, wrapped up in bed with a handful of snacks on the pillow next to me would have been much better use of my time than this. I even feigned sickness when I woke up, dramatizing a fever by drinking glasses of hot water before feebly crawling downstairs to the kitchen. I think that maybe, for a single split second, my parents were fooled. But then Dad only laughed and headed off to work. Mom shook her head and stole the chance—for the hundredth time—to ask me what happened last night. That was enough to send me running back upstairs, pulling on clothes as fast as I could and stuffing my backpack with everything I would require to get through the day, like the sunglasses I refuse to remove so that I don’t have to make eye contact with Holden.
“Are you sure?” Will asks, his tone skeptical as he pulls into an empty parking spot. He puts the Jeep in park, kills the engine, and then swivels around in his seat. There is silence in the vehicle, but I can hear the muffled voices of a group of sophomores who walk past. Will rests his elbow over the edge of his seat, staring into the back seat at Holden with a frown. “Is this about the Jaden thing? Because I thought you guys were over that.”
In the tiny mirror of the pulled-down sun visor, I watch Holden snap his head around to fix Will with a sharp glare. After his confession last night, it is clear he does not appreciate Will’s innocent question. Will doesn’t know that there is a lot more to Holden’s discomfort around the Hunters than we first thought, and I hate not being able to talk about it with him. For Holden’s sake, I am keeping quiet this morning.
“No,” Holden spits firmly. It’s not very convincing, but it’s aggressive enough to stop Will from asking anything more. Grabbing his textbook from the floor, Holden reaches for the car door and shoves it open. He has to duck as he slides out of the Jeep, and then he turns around and leans back in to tell us, “I’m skipping practice today, so wait up for me.” Without waiting for a reply from either of us, he slams the door shut and strides off across the parking lot, disappearing into the flow of other students. The three of us usually walk to our first classes together, so if it wasn’t obvious already that there is something wrong, then it sure as hell is now.
Will cranes his neck to watch Holden until he’s out of sight, and then he looks to me for an explanation. “God, what the fuck is his problem lately?” He shakes his head in bewilderment. Will rarely curses, so it seems he is losing his patience.
“I don’t know,” I lie with a shrug. I push my sunglasses farther up the bridge of my nose to disguise the fact that I’m hiding something, then quickly scoop up my bag from the floor and climb out of the Jeep. I can’t do this every day. I can’t look at Holden every morning before school without thinking about him driving along that road last August. I can’t lie to Will every day. I can’t hide the truth from Jaden and Dani every day. I will only end up feeling as guilty as Holden does, and that guilt would be enough to consume me.
“Are you sure you don’t know?” Will asks, meeting me in front of the hood of the Jeep. With the swift flick of his wrist, he swipes my sunglasses straight off my face and holds them away from me. “Because you’re being pretty weird, too.”
“I told you. I’m tired,” I mutter. I snatch the sunglasses back out of his hand, but now that Holden is gone, I don’t bother to put them back on. Instead, I throw them into my backpack and begin to walk. There is a breeze in the air that chills my face. “Is that such a crime?”
Will holds up both his hands in surrender and dramatically takes a sideways step away from me, increasing the distance between us. “Alright, so now I have two moody best friends,” he jokes, but I don’t laugh. If only he knew what the situation really was, then he definitely wouldn’t be rolling his eyes at us.
I keep my head down as we head for the school’s main door and I stuff one hand into the front pocket of the huge oversized hoodie that I’m wearing. We still have five minutes or so until first period begins, so just enough time for the usual locker trip and hallway gossip. If there was ever a day that I could sincerely say I would rather do anything else than go to my classes, it is today.
Will and I are walking through the courtyard in silence when I hear my name faintly being called from somewhere in the distance. Not MacKenzie, not Kenzie, but Kenz. That’s why I know that it’s Jaden before I’ve even turned around, and I stop dead in my tracks, bracing myself. No matter how much I want to avoid him today, I just can’t. In my heart, I know that I want nothing more than to be around him. I just have to remain calm and collected, strong and in control until I make a decision. I take several slow, deep breaths and then finally turn around. So does Will. Walking straight toward us are, of course, Jaden and Dani.
I can still remember the first day they returned to school after the accident. They had slowly walked across the courtyard, side by side with their eyes on the ground, Jaden’s arm around Dani’s shoulder. Hardly anyone recognized Dani that day. She had cut her hair and dyed it black, and by second period she had already burst into tears and gone home. Jaden, however, stuck it out for the entire school day. There were a lot of hushed whispers that day. A lot of sympathetic glances and commiserating frowns. No one knew what to say, and if anyone did say something, it was nothing more than a few words of consolation. That entire day, I kept quiet. I kept my head down in class, didn’t linger in the hallways, went home for lunch. I was so afraid of bumping into Jaden Hunter that day. I was so scared that he wouldn’t be the same boy I was in love with six months before.
Now, however, it is a different story. Jaden and Danielle Hunter are strolling across the courtyard with confidence in their stride, their heads held high, their blue eyes brighter than ever. Jaden gives a nod of acknowledgment to one of the guys from the team as they pass each other, and Dani can’t stop running her fingers through the ends of her hair. She doesn’t look the same as the girl with the long blond hair, but she als
o doesn’t look like the girl with the blunt black hair anymore either. There is an exuberance to Dani that I haven’t seen in her for a long time. A bounce in her stride. A smile on her face that is sincere. Her hair is now a rich, dark brunette and it really does suit her. It’s not exactly the same shade as her mom’s, but it’s so much closer than it was before. Yesterday in Spanish class alone, I counted compliments from three different people about how great she looks.
“Hey guys!” Will says, raising his hand to give them a small wave. Will is friends with almost everyone, so he looks pleased to see Jaden and Dani as they reach us, especially now that we are no longer keeping our distance from the two of them. “Kenzie says you can make my party this weekend. You’re still coming, right?”
“Yes, we are! What’s the dress code?” Dani asks. The ends of her hair are curled and she is still running her fingers through them, unable to stop herself. In all of the years that I have known Danielle, I have never seen her look so happy and content. “No dress code,” Will tells her. “Just wear whatever is comfortable.”
The party this weekend is the last thing on my mind right now. Both Holden and the Hunters will be there, and a party puts the three of them within much closer proximity than school does. It will be a lot harder for Holden to avoid the two of them in the confinement of a house. Right now, I try not to think about the problems that will cause, so I tune out of Will and Dani’s conversation and look over to Jaden instead. His focus is already on me, his smoldering eyes burning into me.
“Hey you,” he murmurs, stepping forward. The smile playing at his lips is genuine and there is a glossy shine to his blue eyes that is so sincere that it’s beautiful to look at. After everything that Jaden has gone through, he has found his way back to being content and happy. Dani is on that same road, though her journey is slightly slower, but as the two of them stand before me now, reality hits me all at once—the Hunter twins are happy.
