Chapter Fourteen
Danny
“I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one.”
-Lord Byron
Sam and I don’t talk on the way to the hotel. Sam says she sorry, I say I’m glad I found her, and we leave it at that for the drive.
But we both know a confrontation is coming.
The impending meltdown hangs thick in the silence, as ominous as the black storm clouds gathering behind the mountains on the other side of Lake Taupo, making the snow-capped peaks look even brighter against the bruised sky.
I park near the main lodge and we walk up the gravel trail side by side, but not touching or holding hands the way we usually would. When we arrive at our cabin, there’s a note on the door apologizing that the heat still isn’t fixed and another two bundles of firewood on the mat, but Sam and I don’t talk about that either. We just let ourselves into the cold room and I get to work building a fire while Sam starts water and makes tea.
I hardly ever drink tea, but when she hands me the cup of cloudy brown liquid, it smells good—sane, and I could use some sanity right now. I sit in the armchair that doesn’t have a view of the bed—I can’t stand to look at it and think about how good things were this morning—and take a sip. I close my eyes, relishing the way the hot water burns a trail down my throat and the honey aftertaste lingers on my tongue.
It’s time to say something, but I don’t know what to say, how to start to tackle this.
It feels like everything is on the verge of unraveling. I don’t want to pull at any of the threads for fear I’ll start something I won’t be able to fix, but we can’t stay like this. Sam has been lying to me and is headed down a path that will damage her life and royally fuck our future.
If it isn’t fucked already…
Something in the set of her chin since she got into the car makes me feel like she’s still running away from me. She’s with me in body, but her mind is somewhere else, thinking things she might never tell me.
She’s getting so good at keeping secrets…
When I open my eyes and meet her gaze across the low table nestled between the armchairs, I have no clue what she’s thinking. It’s the most awful, foreign feeling. It’s like a part of my own body has gone to sleep and I can’t feel it anymore; that’s how insane it is to look at my best friend, since I was thirteen, and feel shut out of her heart.
“I’m sorry,” she says, but her eyes are still glassy, reflecting my own hurt, but showing me nothing of what she’s feeling. “I panicked. I wasn’t thinking straight or I wouldn’t have run off like that. It was stupid. I promise it won’t happen again.”
“Promise.” I bite my bottom lip. “I’m not sure I can trust your promises anymore. I’m not even sure who you are right now, Sam.”
“Don’t say that,” she says, in this calm voice that makes me want to throw my mug across the room. How can she act like this isn’t a big deal? How can she sit there and look at me like I’m the one being crazy? “Nothing has changed. I’m still the same person.”
“No, you’re not.” My chest is so tight I have to concentrate on relaxing my muscles to pull in a deep breath. “The Sam I know would never have put herself in this kind of position. What were you thinking? You could go to prison. You know that, right?”
I wait for a response, for some sign that maybe she didn’t realize what a serious mistake she was making, but she just sits there staring at me with those guarded eyes.
“Seriously, Sam,” I continue in a harder voice. “The federal justice system doesn’t fuck around. If you ignore a subpoena, they can put you in prison. Not county correctional or state lockup—prison, with women who will eat you for breakfast.”
“I know,” she says with a tired sigh. “But it’s not as simple as it sounds. There are…other factors, things that—”
“Is it because of Alec?” My grip tightens on my mug until my fingertips start to burn. “Are you protecting him? Because if you are, you should rethink that decision. Real quick. He’s not your brother. You don’t owe him anything. And that son of a bitch certainly wouldn’t stick his neck out for you if you were the one in trouble.”
“I know,” Sam says, chin tipping down as she stares into her mug of tea. “That’s part of the reason I left. He and his friends need me to testify. They think it will get them off the hook.”
“How?” I ask, more confused than ever. “What do—”
“I don’t know. They’re crazy.” She shakes her head but doesn’t lift her eyes to mine. “I don’t think anything I have to say will reflect well on them, but the lawyers think differently. I don’t know, maybe I’m the crazy one. Either way…I can’t do it. It would be too hard, and it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t bring Deidre back.”
I prop my elbows on my knees and lean forward. “Was she your friend?”
Sam tucks her chin even tighter to her chest. “No,” she whispers. “I barely knew her, but I felt awful when I found out she’d killed herself. She seemed like a sweet person. She was majoring in PT and wanted to start her own clinic. She had a boyfriend back in Utah she talked to every night and lots of friends…”
She draws in a ragged breath. “She was just…innocent. She couldn’t take everything that happened and knowing everyone had seen it on the campus website before they took it down…”
Sam trails off and after a moment I realize she’s crying—soft, nearly silent tears, nothing like the way she usually cries.
I push the table out of the way and set my tea down before going to my knees in front of her.
“It’s okay, babe.” I take her tea, setting it next to mine before bringing my hands to rest on her knees through her jeans. “I know this has to be hard. But if Alec and his friends did this to her, and you know something, you have to go back and testify. Rape is bad enough, but five big guys ganging up on one girl like that…”
Sam’s shoulders shudder silently.
“They’re monsters, Sam,” I continue in a gentle voice. “They deserve to go to jail for the rest of their lives for what they’ve done.”
“But what if they don’t?” she asks in a sharp tone as she finally looks up at me, her eyes glittering with grief and rage. “What if they get off and get away with it? You know how trials like this go. They’re going to try to prove that Deidre was a slut who’d been screwing her boyfriend since she was thirteen and deserved what she got. They’ll say she was asking for it. Or so drunk the boys couldn’t tell she wasn’t into it, or something.”
She swipes the back of her hand across her cheeks, smearing her tears. “Then I will have sat up there and told the truth for nothing. Deidre is already dead; I’m not. I just want to move forward and stop letting Alec’s mistake ruin my entire life.”
I shake my head, genuinely shocked. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you.”
“What?” She shifts her knees sharply to one side of the chair as she brushes my hands away. “You think I’m being selfish? Well, you don’t know these people. These guys are rich and connected and they have amazing lawyers who won’t hesitate to tear to pieces anyone who gets up there for the prosecution. It’s going to come down to my word versus theirs and no one is going to believe me after—”
She breaks off with a shake of her head.
A second later, she’s out of the chair, pacing past me into the room. “It doesn’t matter. Just trust me, no one at that school is going to believe a word I say.”
“Why?” I stand and face her, getting more confused the deeper we get into this story. “Why wouldn’t they believe you? You’re a straight A student and one of the stars of the volleyball team. You’re vice president of the honor society, for God’s sake. Why would anyone—”
“I got caught cheating on a test,” she says, eyes squeezing closed as the words come out. “I got behind after I was sick during Spring Break and I…I thought I was going to fail one of my midterms. So I cheated and…I got caught.”
I don’t know what to say. Sam never cheats; she doesn’t need to.
She’s so smart even a couple of hours of studying is usually enough for her to ace any test, while I would have to hit the books for days to get better than a C+ back in high school.
“What happened?” I finally ask. “Did you get kicked out of school?”
She brings one hand to her face and digs her fingers and thumb into the tops of her eyes. “No, just the honor society, but it was…bad. I was on academic probation and it ruined my reputation with my teachers… Cheating is a really big deal at Sterling. It’s enough to throw my word into doubt, and make it pointless for me to testify.”
“I don’t agree,” I say, shaking my head. “You cheated to get ahead, you’d be testifying to help someone else. It’s a totally different thing.”
Her hand falls away from her pale face and she meets my gaze with a stubborn look. “It doesn’t matter, Danny. I’m not going back. I’m not going to take that chance. I can’t afford to make the kind of enemies testifying against Todd Winslow will earn me.”
“Are you afraid they’ll hurt you?” I feel stupid for not considering it before. Of course she must be afraid. These creeps brutalized a girl so badly it drove her to take her own life.
“If that’s it, you don’t have to be,” I say, crossing the room to cup her face in my hands, to let her know with my touch that I want to be there anytime she’s afraid. “I’ll come with you to L.A., and sit in the courtroom the entire time. I’ll stay right next to you every second we’re in California, and beat the shit out of—”
“This isn’t something you can solve with your fists, Danny,” she says, voice rising as she takes a step back, severing our connection. “And this isn’t up for debate. I’m not going back. I’m staying here. I want you to stay with me, but if you can’t forgive me for being a coward for once in my life then—”
“That’s it,” I snap, lifting my fisted hands into the air at my sides. “You’re not a coward! This isn’t who you are, and I know you’re going to regret it. It’s going to affect the rest of our fucking lives, Sam! If you have a warrant out for your arrest, we can never go back to the states. Never.”
“So?” Sam shouts, pointing one arm toward the cabin door. “Your sister ran away from the police, and her life turned out just fine. She’s living happily ever after and about to have a beautiful baby.”
“Caitlin had a millionaire boyfriend with tons of fucking money,” I shout back. “We’ve got nothing, not even minimum wage jobs. And Caitlin ran to keep our family together and be with the person she loved, she didn’t do it to hurt anyone.”
Sam’s forehead wrinkles. “I’m not doing it to hurt anyone, either, I—”
“But you are, Sam,” I interrupt. “Like it or not, you’re hurting people. Think of that girl’s parents, her boyfriend, her friends. Think how all of them must be hurting right now. And how much they want justice for what happened to the person they loved.”
Sam bites her lips for a long moment before shaking her head slowly back and forth. “But it won’t bring her back, Danny. Nothing can bring her back.”
“You’re right,” I agree. “But you can make something horrible a little bit better. You can help bring some peace to her family, and show the other monsters out there that they can’t get away with doing shit like this. You can help other girls who are scared to come forward and—”
“You don’t get it. I don’t want to be a hero,” she says, voice tight. “I know you want me to be, but I can’t. Not this time. It’s too complicated, and I’m not going to do it.”
I study her for a long moment, reading her determination to stand her ground in her eyes, her squared shoulders, the hands curled into fists at her sides. She’s dug her heels in and she’s not going to budge, no matter what I say, no matter how many people she’s going to hurt.
All that’s left to decide is if I’m going to stand with her after everything I’ve learned this afternoon.
On the one hand, she’s still Sam, still my best friend, my lover, and the only person who could ever make me laugh so hard I literally couldn’t stand. On the other hand, she’s lied to me, run away from me, and is determined to choose the easy path over the right one. It’s not an unforgivable sin, and it’s not like I can’t understand the urge to shy away from the hard stuff, but it’s just so not Sam.
The girl I fell in love with would never do half of the things Sam’s done in the past few days, would never say the things Sam has said in this room. I’m not sure who she is, or what she stands for right now.
And if I don’t know that, how can I know our love is going to survive?
How can I know it isn’t already dying, and the optimistic way I felt today just a brief stutter in the downward spiral?
“If you need to go home, I understand,” she says softly. “I won’t blame you.”
I shake my head. The thought of leaving her is unimaginable. I can’t envision a life without her, but I’m not sure I can envision a life where Sam is wanted on a felony charge for obstruction of justice, either. This is all so crazy, and so…avoidable.
I’m never going to understand why she’s doing this. Even if I stay here and things go back to being good between us, it’s going to take a long time for me to trust her the way I used to, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to look at her the same way ever again.
“You’ve always been one of my heroes,” I say, voice rough. “You know that, right? Ever since we were kids. I wouldn’t have become a person I’m proud of without you.”
Sam’s throat works as she swallows. “So it’s my fault?”
“What?” My brows draw together, the movement making me realize my head feels like it’s going to explode. I haven’t had a headache like this in longer than I can remember. “What’s your fault?”
“That you’re leaving,” she says, the next blink of her eyelids sending tears spilling quietly down her cheeks. “Because I helped make you into someone too good for the person I am now?”
I suck in a breath, so close to crying with her I can barely breathe. “I don’t understand Sam. I don’t understand why this is happening, why we can’t just go back to California together and fix this.”
“Some things are too broken to be fixed, Danny,” she says softly before she turns and walks to the door.
She lingers with her hand on the knob but doesn’t turn around to look at me. “I’m going for a walk. If you decide you want to leave, please be gone before I get back. You can take the car to the airport and I’ll pay for your flight back to Maui. I’ll get online in the lobby tonight and have the ticket booked before you get to Auckland.”
“Sam, wait,” I say. “We’re not done. You can’t—”
I break off as she closes the door behind her, leaving me alone in the cabin where just this morning I was sure I’d woken up with everything I really needed in my arms.
But now my arms are empty and my heart hurts so bad I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the night.