Last Good Man: A Crown Creek Novel Page 11

  Take that, Willa.

  I shook my head, unable to keep from grinning. Oh yeah. It was wrong, it was mean-spirited, but it would go a long way towards putting things right. A few days in the woods with her having to listen to me?

  Yeah. It might actually be fun.

  That's why I was doing this. Revenge. Punishment for the shit she'd put me through. Leaving the hospital like that. Slamming the door in my face. How disloyal could you get?

  Okay, Willa Harlow. You're going to have to depend on me now, and you're going to shut the fuck up and like it.

  The pep talk worked. I grumbled to myself, imagining fake arguments as I stuffed clean clothes into a duffel bag. I won every one of them too. “You’re right, Cooper. I’m sorry I was so stupid. You win.” In my head, she smiled a smile she had never shown me in real life.

  Except when the news camera was there. Except when she was looking up at me and pretending she was madly in love.

  I paused mid-stride and I wondered if I would ever see that smile again.

  Then I shook my head, angry with myself. That wasn’t the point of this. The point of this was… well, it was to win.

  By the time I returned to Willa's house, I had actually managed to convince myself that I had done just that.

  Right up until I saw her on the porch.

  She was sitting, straight-backed and uncomfortable looking but still somehow dignified, on the top step of her porch, waiting for me. The second I turned onto her long drive, she turned her head to watch me approach, and I could feel the heat of her dark eyes burning like coal. It did something to me, her watching me like that. It made me… forget why I was coming to get her and instead be grateful to see her again.

  Then I noticed her luggage. She was sitting there with nothing but the clothes on her back and one bag.

  One bag. And I knew it too. Sitting next to her on the sunken porch, faded like the gray-shingled roof above her head, sat her old high school backpack. I’d seen it every day from sixth grade right up until the last day of senior year. I knew that bag and I felt the tug of the past like a hard yank. It was threadbare, worn, patched in unfashionable places.

  And it was small.

  Too small for a trip.

  Something shook loose in my chest to see that bag again, and to see that she still held on to for either sentimentality or necessity, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t quite sure what I was feeling, I just knew I didn’t want to feel it.

  Instead, I threw anger up like a wall around me. I needed it if I was going to be able to get out of this truck and be near her.

  I pushed open the door with all of my strength and strode up to her with as much bravado as I could muster. “That's it?" I snapped, staring at her bag instead of her.

  "You won't tell me where I'm going or what I need, so yeah. That's it." She stood up - slowly and awkwardly. I didn’t help her. Then I felt like a dick. "And I have a fucking broken arm so it's not like I can lift anything heavier."

  "Give me that." I grabbed the pack from her good hand. It was even lighter than I was expecting.

  She didn't have nearly enough shit.

  Isn't that what girls are supposed to do? Overpack? She didn't even ask how long we were staying. And I had no clue either. All I knew was that Liam clearly had enough dirt on both of us to force this.

  Grumpily, I slung her too-light case into the back of my truck. "You sure you've got everything?"

  She lifted her chin. "I have no idea."

  "Fair enough." I slammed the door a bit too loud. "Hold on."

  "What?"

  I opened her door for her and gestured for her to get in.

  Her ferocious frown turned up into a mocking smile. “Are you trying to be chivalrous?"

  I rolled my eyes. “You have a fucking broken arm. Cut the feminist crap."

  "Feminist crap?" she echoed immediately.

  I was getting another headache. “Oh God, just stop, please." I saved her life, and now I wanted to strangle her. Instead, I shut the door a little too loudly. "Let's go."

  We drove off in a heavy, suffocating silence. Liam had given me directions, but I didn’t need them yet. For now, we headed out along Highway 12, alongside the winding creek, which hugged the road like it was trying to stay with us as long as it could.

  All I needed to do was turn my truck around. Follow the creek right back into town and be done with her. She didn’t even need to give the ring back. I just needed to be free. Free of this feeling that I… I needed to know she was okay. I needed to know she was taking care of herself and wasn’t hurting in any way, but being around her made me as jumpy as a damn squirrel. There had to be some way I could just snap my fingers and have everything go back to the way it was. Liam living in Crown Creek, and Willa whole again and back to being the pain in the ass I was used to. If I could just turn this truck around, I might be able to do just that.

  I glanced over at Willa. The setting sun caught her profile, highlighting the pale slope of her forehead, the scar sinking back into shadow and the smooth skin a pearly highlight. The tip of her nose turned up a little, like she was an elf or some other mystical creature who was far too beautiful for this world. The stubborn set of her mouth was softened by the sun’s glow, and as I watched, it turned downward as she nervously ran her tongue over her bottom lip.

  I could still remember the way those lips had felt against mine.

  If I could just turn the truck around, I could be free of her. But I kept driving farther away from town. And when the road turned away from the creek, I felt like a tether, a rubber band that had been stretched to its limit suddenly snapped inside of my body. A strange weightlessness came over me and I looked back over to Willa, wondering if she'd felt it too.

  Her head was nodding. Her eyes were closed and her curls bounced gently as her head bobbed with each swaying motion of the truck.

  I blew out a long breath. Fuck yeah, I wanted to tell her. "See?" I whispered under my breath. Half an hour away from that bullshit back at her house and she was already getting the sleep she needed to heal.

  We hit a bump, and her head snapped up. She opened her eyes and mumbled. "Crap." I reached into the back of the cab and grabbed my jacket. Using my knees to steer while I rolled it into a pillow, then reached way over and shoved it gently between her head and her shoulder.

  Her head lolled and then came to rest against it. With a sigh, she settled in and let out a light snore.

  "See?" I muttered. “This is for your own damn good."

  Because it sure wasn't any good for me.

  * * *

  Chapter

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Willa

  I wasn't asleep.

  Sitting silently next to Cooper was impossible. Unsaid accusations, unvoiced demands hung so thickly on the air I could choke on them. But I was afraid that if I said something - anything - to him, I might say something I couldn't take back.

  I wasn't sure what I was afraid of. I'd certainly had no problem with pissing him off before. I'd never once, in the whole time I'd known him, been unable to let Cooper know exactly what I thought of him. I'd never once felt the need to protect him from anything, least of all my temper.

  Why did it suddenly seem necessary to hold my tongue? I didn't know, but I also knew that if he kept looking at me like that, studying my profile like it was the first time he'd ever seen me before, I was going to open my mouth.

  So I closed my eyes instead.

  It was definitely easier not having to see him. Even staring straight ahead, I could still see him in the periphery of my vision. I kept turning my head slightly just to capture more of him.

  Yeah, closing my eyes made it much easier to be next to him in the truck that was like an extension of his body. But closing my eyes didn't entirely blot him out from my consciousness.

  No. I could feel him. I could feel his presence, the way the air shifted around him like it wanted to step out of his way. I could feel his heat - somehow, even though
it made no sense - and the warmth of his skin intensified his familiar scent. I'd never thought of Cooper having a smell before, but with my eyes closed, it was suddenly everywhere, enveloping me in an aroma that was every bit as complicated as he was. I knew he was there, just by breathing in and out. And I knew how he was feeling too.

  He was angry.

  Anger was rising off of him in waves, so intense I swore he was vibrating.

  And I didn't get it. Why was he mad?

  All the millions of other times Cooper had been angry about something - angry at me, even - I never once let it bother me. But now there was this strange new hurt in my chest, a small, open place where the anger could get in under my skin.

  Why was he angry? Was he angry with me? I hadn't asked for this. I'd never asked him for anything he insisted on doing. So why was he pissed with me? Why was he taking me somewhere if he didn't want to go with me?

  Come to think of it, why had I agreed to go with him?

  In my head, I rewound through the confusing past two hours. Voices echoed in my head with no sense of cause or effect. I couldn't put them in order, couldn't figure out how one thing led to another, how this cause had that effect. There were only the memories of shouting, yelling, and with that memory came a profound feeling of guilt, mixed with the even more profound sense of outrage. How could they gang up on me like that? I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to remember the white spots that blazed over my mother's nostrils or Liam's grim face on the screen.

  And Cooper. He'd been the worst of it. His silent, glowering presence hurt me more than my mother's tearful pleading. Because he shouldn't have been there, he didn't belong there. He was supposed to be outside of this part of my life, but instead, he'd inserted himself in the middle of it. I hated that he now seemed to be a part of my life. That he'd accidentally become so important to me that I now felt guilty for hurting him.

  A rush of hot indignation jolted through me. It wasn't fair. I'd done this for them. It did none of them any good to have me lying there rotting in a hospital bed. I'd left to protect them - all of them. My mother from having to juggle childcare another night. Liam from having to pay attention to my recovery instead of his new life in New York.

  And Cooper?

  Well, it was none of Cooper's business what I did. But I did it for him, too. For him the most. He'd been coming to the hospital every day, back and forth in an hour and a half round trip, when he should have been packing up his things and getting ready to move out. He was so excited to get his own place. He should be focused on that, not me. He had better things to do than be at my bedside out of some weird sense of obligation.

  Plus, I knew how he felt about me. And a small part of me felt bad about him coming every day, knowing what I knew. That love and devotion act was just for show.

  It was all just for show.

  And yeah, when I woke up this morning with a smile on my face and an eager glance toward the door, the stories I wanted to tell him already forming on my lips, I knew that was the last straw. I had to get out of there. I had to protect myself from the sinking sensation I felt in my chest every time I woke up in that room and saw he wasn't there yet. I was tired of looking for him, tired of hoping for him, tired of needing him.

  And fuck, I was protecting him too! With me out of the hospital, he could stop with this silly engagement charade. He'd get to stay a hero in the town's eyes. And hell, maybe we'd engineer a quiet "break-up" in a day or two. My fault of course. I was good at taking the fall like that. He'd be free of his obligation to me that way.

  I'd done the right thing for him. The best thing for him. I'd been so sure of it.

  And then it had all gone... wrong.

  I turned my face, burying it into the jacket that Cooper had placed under my head. I wasn't going to cry. I'd been doing way too much of that lately.

  But the jacket smelled of him. And he'd put it there as a pillow for me because he'd seen I wanted to sleep.

  I inhaled his scent. How... how had I gotten everything so wrong? I only wanted to make sure no one had to worry about me anymore. I only wanted to protect them all, make things easier for them. But they hadn't seen that. I'd tried to make things better and somehow I'd made it worse.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. The setting sun finally slipped away from my eyes and behind the trees. The truck slid smoothly along the highway, the only noise the swish of the road under the tires. And the sound of Cooper's quiet breathing.

  I listened. And as I listened, a calm washed over me. The steady, quiet rhythm, so quiet I had to strain to hear it, let me focus on something other than the turmoil inside of my head. I listened to Cooper breathe as I feigned sleep and slowly, slowly, I fell asleep for real.

  * * *

  Chapter

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Cooper

  My truck bounced up the steep gravel drive that wound and climbed on and on. We climbed past the top of the trees, a full moon rising up to meet us and bathing the house in its own personal spotlight.

  “The cabin” Liam had always called it. “Some fucking cabin.” I whistled through my teeth.

  Willa stretched, groaned, then twisted her body with a soft pained hiss. “You okay?” I heard myself asking. “Sorry about the bumps.” I turned the wheel and parked in the turnoff, thought about it a second, then pulled the e-brake. I looked at her again. “We’re here.”

  “We’re here,” she echoed in a strangely thick voice.

  My one focus had been getting her here. I hadn’t really thought about what happened next.

  She seemed to be realizing it at the same time I did. I pulled my key from the ignition and the interior light switched on, making us both wince. I blinked away from her. “You ready?”

  “Yeah I’m jus -“ She twisted to reach her door handle in a way that had me wincing.

  “Stop,” I barked. “I got it.”

  I got out, slamming the door with more force than was necessary.

  Above us, Liam’s family “cabin” loomed, a soaring three-story chalet. As soon as I walked close enough, the motion sensor lights switched on, bathing the house in a warm glow that highlighted the rustic stone and reddish timber that made it look like it hadn’t so much been built on the side of the mountain as planted in it.

  I flexed my fingers and opened the door for Willa. “I knew Liam’s dad was loaded, but damn.”

  I watched her as she slid out of the seat. Her eyes were wide, but there was something off about the way she was staring at the house. Not with wonder, but with… recognition. "So this is..." Willa trailed off, but I caught another word there, waiting to drop from her lips. She was about to reveal something.

  “Is this your first time here?”

  She nodded. “Yours?”

  I debated about lying. After all, we were best friends, Liam very well should have taken me with him on family trips. But that’s never how it worked with Liam. He seemed to prefer to keep me away from his family, hated when his mom or dad called him “Billy Junior” in front of me. I’d always chalked it up to the usual teenaged embarrassment about families, but now I felt that weak spot in our friendship. Like a bruise on an otherwise perfect apple. And seeing that flash of recognition in Willa’s eyes sparked something I didn’t want to feel.

  Jealousy. “You’ve really never been here before?” She recognized where she was. I could see it. This place was significant to her in some way.

  “No.”

  "Liam never took you here?"

  She looked me in the eye. "No,” she repeated.

  But it was there again. That thing she was catching herself before she revealed to me. A bruise I couldn’t help but press my thumb to. “Really?” I cocked my head skeptically. “You never snuck up here and had yourself a nice little getaway weekend?"

  She laughed. “In high school? We could only drive for like a month total.”

  "That's not true."

  The house lights switched off, plunging us into darkness. She yelped, a
nd I waved my hands to turn them back on again. When I could see her again, she was wearing an exasperated expression. “How long we could drive is completely irrelevant. I told you, I’ve never been here.” She looked at me. "Why are you being so weird about this?"

  "I'm not. I just get the feeling you're not telling the truth."

  Her face registered hurt, but she tried to mask it with a smile. “What is it? You don’t trust me?”

  I straightened up and stiffly walked around to the cab to grab my bag. I didn't trust her. I never had. How could I? I was used to her. I definitely felt like I had a better handle on her.

  But trust her?

  She’d kept the secret about the engagement, yes. But she’d played the part a little too well. Her performance as my devoted girlfriend was so believable that I had started… feeling things for her. Feelings I knew were stupid. It was fake. She was fake.

  Trust her? I wasn't sure if I ever could.

  I cleared my throat. ”Sure I do,” I lied. "I guess it's just for his family then?"

  “Guess so,” she agreed. I wasn't imagining it. There was definitely a note of "I-know-something-that-you don't" in her voice that rankled me.

  I came up behind her and slammed her door hard enough to make her jump. "What's up with you all of a sudden?" she asked as I hefted her bag - her way too small bag - and started up the stairs carved into the rock without looking back to see if she was following. "Oooookay then." She sighed heavily behind me, and that fucking bugged me too. This whole situation was weird as hell, and she needed to hurry up and get well enough that I could be free of this and back to my life the way it was supposed to be.

  She's not going to get better if you force her to hoof it up the side of a mountain with two broken ribs, you dipshit. "Fuck," I hissed through my teeth. I dropped our bags in the middle of the wide, terraced deck and stomped back down the stairs. "You okay down there?"