AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Brian said some things, and I’m wondering why I didn’t hear them from you,” I said, getting right to it. “Said some other things that I wanted to go over with you so I can try to figure out what the hell happened.”
A beat passed before he hesitantly said, “Okay?”
“Scarlet told me I was the last one to see her—” I swallowed the next word before it could slip free and glanced around the mostly empty beach. “Scarlet said I was the last one to see this guy...I’m guessing it was years ago. She said she didn’t ask for details of what happened when I saw him, and I didn’t tell her. Brian saidyouwere with me when it went down.”
“If she isn’t telling you, she isn’t ready for you to know,” Brandon said, voice cold and lethal.
“Apparently, I already know.”
“Yeah, but the guy who knew is a different person than the guy I’m talking to,” he said unapologetically. “That guy, to her, was allowed to know things about her life.”
I nodded for a while before pleading, “Just tell me what we did. You don’t have to say why or the details surrounding it,” I hurried to add. “Just tell me what we did.”
Brandon was silent for so long that I was sure he wasn’t going to respond. Just as I reached the shoreline, he muttered, “Beat the shit out of them.”
“Them?”
“That’s it, Chase.”
A harsh breath left me as all those scenarios I’d been thinking of earlier came flooding back. “Brandon, unless you’re in a ring, I can’t imagine you voluntarily going to beat anyone up.”
“You’ve been pushing for a front-row seat lately,” he muttered wryly.
“I’m serious, man.”
“And so was that situation,” he said, tone letting me know he was done talking about it.
“Understood,” I said, even though I wasn’t anywhere close to understanding what could’ve happened. Releasing a slow breath, I asked, “Was I okay the morning of the accident?”
A stuttered breath sounded through the phone. “What?”
“Was I okay?” I repeated. “Did you notice anything different about me? Was I saying anything weird?”
Realization and dread weighed down his voice when he said, “Brian knew something.”
“Need to know if I was okay,” I said firmly.
“Chase, what’d you do?” he asked instead.
“For fuck’s sake, Brandon.”
“I don’t know,” he shouted over me. “I mean, yeah. You were you. We were here, working out like we always do. We’d gone surfing.”
His tone didn’t change. He didn’t trail off.
But the way he’d gone from listing things off to not saying anything at all had that guilt exploding.
Because I could feel it. Creeping through the phone and crawling down my spine.
I might’ve been trying to keep it from my best friend, but he’d noticed it too.
“You weren’t talking,” he finally said, words slow. “You were going harder in the gym than usual, and you wouldn’t talk to Konrad or me.”
Fuck.
“We kept joking about it because you’d had a shitty run that morning on the waves. So, we thought you were just pissed about that.” He cleared his throat, his voice dropping even lower when he said, “Now that I think about it, you’d been quiet at your parents’ the night before. I forgot because of the accident, but Bree actually asked us if you were okay after you and Scarlet left that night.”
I closed my eyes tightly, my head bobbing as something Brian said pushed to the front of my mind. “It was an accident...right?”
