My wipers screeched across the dry windshield, jarring my already jangling nerves. I swore and viciously twisted the knob to turn them back off again. Another thing that was clearly Willa's fault. Along with the fact that my buzz had worn off and the steady thump of a headache was forming between my eyebrows. It was her fault my night was ruined, her fault my gas tank was almost empty.
She had to still be at the party. All I needed to do was show up and throw her body into my truck. The broken down trailer where she lived with her mom and little brother was right on my ride home. I could grab her, dump her off at her door and be done with it. "Yeah, she was fine," I imagined telling Liam when he called tomorrow. "Annoying and full of shit, but safe." For a second, I resented the hell out of my friend for putting this on me, but really, wasn't it her fault? She should have taken the damn ride when Liam offered it to her. Hell, I never said 'no,' right?
The second I picked her up, I planned on saying this all right to her face. With Liam not here to police me, I would finally be free to let her know exactly how I felt about her.
I was kind of looking forward to it.
The curve past Cutter's farm was where we always parked for creek parties. A light drizzle was falling now, steady, but not enough to disperse the party yet. A few cars were still scattered across the shoulder. I peered out and saw Ryan's old Ford and Ethan's antique Honda. But there was no sign of Livvy's shitty little hatchback or Claire's white Jeep.
Well there was my answer, right? She clearly went home with one of her girlfriends.
I sat there tapping a frantic beat on the steering wheel as I tried to convince myself this was enough. She was gone. She got a ride. I was free and clear, right?
You promised.
"Goddammit." I threw my truck into park and grabbed the flashlight from the glovebox. It was full dark now, and the gathering clouds had almost completely hidden the moon. The beam jostled wildly over dark rocks and formless bushes as I leaped down the boulder staircase to the creek bank. "Yo!" I called out. "Who's down here?"
There was a rustle, then a whispered giggle. In the glow of the dying fire, one dark shape split into two. "Sorry," I grumbled, shutting the beam off to give them privacy.
"Coop?" Ryan's voice floated up to me, sounding even more wasted than Liam had. "That you, man?"
The headache settled even more firmly between my eyes. "No, it's God, the Father thundering down from the heavens, telling you to stop jerking off so much. Of course it's me." I turned my light back on again and emerged down at the creek bank to shine it on Ryan, who was all snuggled up with Naomi Chadwell. That was... odd... but I filed that information away to be dealt with later. "Willa here?"
Ryan blinked up woozily and squinted when I shone my flashlight in his face. "Ow, what the hell?" He batted at the light like he could dislodge it. "What? You're looking for Willa?"
"I know. I know. It's weird." I clicked the light back off again. "Just tell me who took her home."
He paused for so long I shone the flashlight in his face again. He recoiled with a whimper. "Ow! No one!"
"What?" I turned in a full circle, shining my light on the trees. "Is she with Ethan? Willa, where the fuck are you hiding?"
"He means she didn't get a ride," Naomi corrected tiredly. She sounded sober - much too sober for the way she was letting Ryan paw at her. "She walked home."
"What?" I shouted. The dull pain in my head sharpened to a knifepoint. "She walked?"
"Yeah. Said something about needing to cool off. Livvy tried to get her to come with them, but she refused."
"She walked home. Along the road. In the dark."
"She was wearing a white hoodie at least?"
Naomi's voice shrugged right along with her. "I don't know, you know how she gets."
I knew exactly how she gets. “Oh my God.” I was already scaling the rocks back up to the road, cursing with every leaping step. "She walked? She fucking walked?" Sprinting across the road, I yanked open my door and slammed it behind me as hard as I could, but I still wanted to hit something. "What the hell is wrong with you, Willa?"
I peeled out in my third U-turn of the night and floored it out of there. Willa’s hissy fit was not my responsibility. If she wanted to be a fucking martyr about everything, that was her call, not my problem. Except - and I pushed the gas harder - I’d made it my fucking problem when I promised Liam I’d get her home safe.
She was probably home already, I reasoned. Her mom’s trailer was about a mile down the road past Cutter’s farm. I drove past it every time I headed into town. Now all I had to do was go knocking at her door in the middle of the night. Just to make sure she was home just so I could tell Liam I’d done what he asked. I jammed my foot down harder on the gas. I could just picture her face when I showed up there. I’d be lucky she didn’t go right for the gun.
A faint patter of raindrops smeared across the windshield again. The rain was picking up. Grunting, I flicked on the wipers. Then turned on the high beams. Liam always said the LED headlights on my truck were obnoxious, but they cut through the sudden rainstorm like a knife, lighting up Ed Cutter's cornfield like it was daytime. They were so bright that a reflected flash of white almost blinded me, and I slowed automatically. "The fuck is that?" I said aloud.
‘That’ was a shape, slumped and crumpled, half on the shoulder and half in the high grass alongside it. "Oh for fuck's sake," I admonished myself, because it was clearly the white belly of a roadkill deer that had scared me. I was sure of it.
Almost sure of it.
But I was suddenly slowing to a halt anyway. I felt stupid as hell opening my driver's side door to check on what was clearly roadkill. And I felt even stupider when the lashing rain hit my face. "Aw for fuck's sake," I growled again and slammed the door shut. And looked again.
"Aw shit." I was jogging, then running. My stomach lurched because the closer I got to the body, the harder it got to convince myself it was a deer. Deer don't have hands. Deer don't have fingers splayed to the sky. Deer don't wear jeans and a white hoodie. A white hoodie I'd seen earlier tonight.
I stopped short. Skidded. Then sank to my knees. "Oh my God. Willa? Willa!?!"
Chapter