Crushing (2 page)

“Obviously the kid is still getting into trouble after all these years,” he said.

“You don’t even know what went on, Dad.”

“I know he was trouble when he was here before, and you got into most of your trouble when you were with him.”

“I told you the majority of that was my idea! Gage went along to keep me from getting hurt or getting into more trouble. I was the instigator. Not him.”

“I find that hard to believe. Besides, he got in plenty of trouble at school for fighting when he was here too. Face it, Rory—he was trouble and still is.”

“Arrgh!” I shoved back in my seat.

Now, it wasn’t as if I didn’t understand some of where they were coming from. I had always been their problem child. When I was younger I was severely asthmatic. I spent a lot of time in the hospital as a baby. It got a little better as I got older, but I still had “episodes.” They were always worrying about me and my health, and the fact that trouble had a way of finding me didn’t help.

I spent a lot of time trying to impress my older identical twin brothers. They always made sure I knew I couldn’t do this or that because it wasn’t safe, because I was a girl, or because of my asthma.

That had led to me trying to prove myself by doing things that weren’t always safe or legal. Shinnying down my drainpipe to sneak out onto the golf course at night, stealing a golf cart, and lighting firecrackers and throwing them in the men’s locker room at the country club helped me prove them wrong but got me in a lot of trouble.

Gage and I had roamed the beaches and golf course as if they were our own personal playground. We got into the biggest trouble at the golf course. My parents were members, as were his grandparents. The people that worked there hated us. Well, most of them. The greens guys were okay, but the pros and the guys in the pro shop hated us. We went to the driving range and purposely tried to hit the guy driving the cart that picked up the balls. We ran amok all over the course at night and did things like fish in the pond and fork the green on one of the holes and egg the pro shop.

Most of the time we didn’t get caught, but they knew we were the offenders. The worst was the firecracker incident. I was grounded for a month in the middle of the summer, and that was when my dad went on the rampage about me staying away from Gage, so this whole thing was not new.

“You seem to like the friends I have now, so I’m pretty sure I can decide for myself who to hang out with.”

He gave me another glare. “Let’s just keep things the way they are. You have plenty of friends. You don’t need to get involved with him again. It’s unnecessary.”

My parents hadn’t addressed the elephant in the living room. How devastated I was when Gage had left and the aftermath that followed the next year. I think my mother saw I was getting really upset and she stepped in.

“Rory, we just want you to be wise. You only have this last semester, and then you are off to college. We don’t want anything to get you off track, that’s all.”

“You mean off the track you want me on, right? Don’t worry—I’m clear on exactly where that track leads, Mom. No one is questioning that.” I rolled my eyes. Really, they were so single-minded. My brothers were allowed to choose their future, but my parents had mine all picked out for me. Go to college, date and marry Dominic Rossi, and live happily ever after with 2.5 children. Ugh. I didn’t want my future decided by anyone but me. I want to be in charge of my own life.

“Why don’t you just put me in a bubble? Then you can make all my choices for me.” I slouched down in my seat. The headache was full scale now, and I really didn’t feel like arguing anymore.

“No need to get all grouchy when we just want what’s best for you.” My mother sniffed.

“Whatever.”

I would never understand them. I spent the rest of dinner trying to be invisible and wishing my brothers were there.

The rain fell from the sky in sheets. Hiding in the huge woodpile the golf course drew from when they needed wood for outside fire pits or the fireplaces in the clubhouse meant I would win hide-and-seek for sure. I found this hiding spot weeks ago. Higher than me by a foot at least, I had pulled out some of the wood to make a little niche I could hide in. Not quite big enough for two. I also moved some of the wood in the front out of the way to make a peephole to see out of.

It was my best hiding spot ever. I could see if anyone came across the golf course toward me, and the forest was to my back. No one knew about it. I could make a run to the clubhouse from here, and no one would see me if I ran just inside the tree line.

I was about to sneak out of my spot, when a car drove up and backed right up to one of the greenskeeper sheds across the fairway. The shed was kind of off to the side, and I had actually never seen anyone use it.

Odd. There was literally no one on the course today. Even the greens people had left because of the rain. I decided to stay put. We weren’t supposed to be playing on the golf course. Even though the course was closed because it was raining, we would get in trouble if we were caught out here. Games of hide-and-seek in the warm summer rain were the best, but getting caught on the course meant a lecture from the parents and probable grounding.

The man got out and opened the trunk of the car. He went into the shack. What would he need out of there? When he came out he carried something big over his shoulder. It looked like a big canvas sack. I couldn’t tell if he worked here or not. As he went to put it in his trunk the canvas slid off, and I saw a head of black hair hanging down. Good grief, was that a person?

I started to breathe too fast and the wheezing started. A ton of dust and stuff was floating around in here. I started to cough. He must have heard because he whipped his head around fast. He paused, staring right at the woodpile. I covered my mouth with my hand. The woodpile was too far away for me to make out his face because of the rain, but I could see he had heard me. He started to head directly toward my hiding spot.

I was a little dizzy. I felt around in my pocket. Oh man. Where was it? At that moment I had a picture of my inhaler at home sitting on the bathroom counter. This was bad. I knew I needed to get out of there, but what if he saw me? I had to try to sneak out the back side of the woodpile and get to the woods.

I started to slowly scoot my way backward on my butt. I was coughing and wheezing with almost every breath now. I had almost made it out of the opening, when a big piece of wood fell and landed on my leg. Time to panic. I tried to pull my leg out. I didn’t have enough breath to pull very hard. Stuck. The wood was too heavy. And I couldn’t pull back hard enough.

I couldn’t see out the front anymore, but I could hear him coming. He called out.

“Hey there. Why don’t you come on out?” His voice singsonged.

Totally creepy. Did he sound familiar? I could barely hear him over the wheezing of my breath. I pulled harder. It didn’t even budge. He was going to get me. I heard the man call out from even closer.

“Don’t be shy now.” I saw a hand reach into the peephole. I was going to die.

He grabbed the leg that wasn’t stuck and pulled me forward. “I’ve got you.”

I screamed as I sat straight up in bed. I was hyperventilating and wheezing. I grabbed my inhaler off the nightstand. I breathed in the medicine and tried to calm down. The nightmare. Again. My body poured sweat, and my heart pounded in my chest. I sucked in air and tried to breathe slowly. Please don’t let me have screamed too loud. Sometimes I could scream pretty loud and sometimes I couldn’t, depending on how bad it was. I listened for anyone coming down the hall. No running feet. Okay. The last time I remembered having that nightmare I was eleven or twelve. I rubbed my face and got out of bed. I opened the curtains to my balcony and looked out past the golf course to the ocean.

I had put those memories into the back of my mind and purposely didn’t ever think about that day. The story didn’t end there, but I always woke up screaming at that exact moment. The nightmares hadn’t started until Gage moved away a couple of weeks after the incident.

It made sense, I guess. In my dream I woke up right before he saved me. As soon as he’d moved away, my brain must have thought creepy guy would get me and Gage wouldn’t be there to save me. But in the real story, he did.

I had been pulling as hard as I could to get both of my legs free, when I felt two hands grab underneath my arms. I was about to really panic, when Gage whispered from behind me.

“It’s me. Shhhhh.” He had maneuvered himself into the small space as far as he could. He pulled and I yanked, and my leg finally came free of the wood. The momentum pulled me out of the creep’s hand. We scrambled out the back, and once we were upright Gage pushed me in front of him. I tried to run for the trees, but I stumbled. I heard a bellow from the woodpile, and I thought we were both going to die. He was going to grab us, but Gage never even broke stride. He grabbed me up into his arms and just ran for my house full-out. I ended up in the hospital for a day or two, and this time I was kind of glad. In my eleven-year-old mind it had seemed like a safe place to be.

Gage had come to see me in the hospital with his grandma.

“You okay?” He asked. He always used as few words as possible. Even with me.

“Yeah, just an asthma attack. No big deal. You know the drill.” I shrugged. I checked to see that my mom was busy chatting with his grandma. “Did you see him?”

He shook his head.

“Should we tell someone?” I asked

“I-I d-d-don’t think they’ll believe us. I d-d-didn’t s-s-s-see what you saw,” he pointed out.

I nodded. It was the last time we spoke of it.

In the wake of teenage girls disappearing from the area all summer, people were starting to panic. People in our small sleepy town started locking their doors. Two weeks after the woodpile incident a body of one of the missing girls washed up on one of the beaches not too far away. I thought about telling someone, but what would I say? That I saw “someone” putting “something” that looked like a body in a trunk? Gage hadn’t even seen the guy, only heard his voice. We were kids. We were also trouble. We shouldn’t have been there in the first place. They would never have believed me. In my world adults rarely took anything we said seriously. The whole thing didn’t seem real. Sometimes I thought maybe I had imagined it. So I kept quiet. Gage moved away shortly after that, and, strangely, the disappearances stopped by the time school started.

I did, however, start having nightmares and woke up screaming almost every night, starting when Gage moved away with his grandparents. It was always the same dream. Looking back on it now, I knew that part of it had been the fear and the asthma. I had always had nightmares about suffocating or drowning when I was having an attack in the middle of the night. But the other part had been the grief over the loss of Gage. Loss was something new in my life. I didn’t understand where they had gone or why, and nobody really knew. Or if they did, they didn’t want to tell me.

For the next year my whole family didn’t get much sleep. My brothers were annoyed, and my dad couldn’t understand why my asthma was so out of control. Most nights someone ended up sleeping on my bedroom floor. More hospital trips. Lots of nightmares. He hounded the family doctor until we finally found something that worked. At the same time I decided to stop even thinking about or remembering Gage. It was too painful. The nightmares finally stopped, and life went on with a little piece of my heart missing. Until now. Hmmm.

I got back in bed and lay on my side so I could look out my balcony doors. I wasn’t exactly sure if I was happy he was back. I had been a mess when he left. I didn’t know if I was willing to allow him—or anyone, for that matter—that kind of power again.

#

The next day I wanted to sleep in since it had taken me so long to get back to sleep after my nightmare, but I had to get up with enough time to go shopping. My friends had decided we needed new outfits for the beach party tonight, and spending a day of mindless shopping with the girls was perfect after yesterday’s drama. Thankfully, Wynter Island was only a twenty-minute drive and a quick trip over a bridge to get to Charleston’s King Street shopping.

I was meeting the girls at our island’s local coffee house—Running Latte. Then we were heading out. My mom had given me her credit card and a budget, so I was set.

We had been shopping for a few hours and were trying to decide where to go for lunch, when the day started to go sideways. We were crossing the street not paying attention, when out of nowhere Dominic and his buddies surrounded us.

“Where are you ladies going?” He put his arm around me as we crossed the street. He always took it upon himself to touch me. I knew he was just that kind of person, but it was awkward. I had been sort of avoiding Dom. Not as easy as it sounded.

I knew he liked me, but I didn’t totally know how I felt about him. He was one of my best friends and the sweetest guy I knew. My parents loved him. They had long-term plans for him and me. It was beyond irritating. His parents were my parents’ best friends. We vacationed together and went to dinner parties at each other’s houses. We were expected to attend events as each other’s dates even though we weren’t dating. It was a bit suffocating.

“Shopping, Dom.” I shook my bags at him.

Most of my friends thought I was nuts because everyone loved Dom. He was good-looking, with towheaded blond hair and green eyes, and was built like the football player he was and incredibly popular. Why weren’t we dating? I hadn’t been ready to make that leap. Once I did, I knew there was no going back with how connected our families were. It was a lot of pressure.

“Well, it looks like y’all need escorts.” He wiggled his eyebrows. He was also a bit overprotective, which I guess some girls don’t mind, but with parents as overbearing as mine, it annoyed me.

“We were just going to lunch.” Laken looked hopefully at Walker. I gave her the stink eye, which she ignored. Just what I didn’t want—them joining us for lunch and then following us around the rest of the day. I really wanted a girls-only day.

“Awesome! I’m starved!” Walker grabbed Laken’s hand. They were a thing. Not a FBO thing yet, but getting there. “Let’s go.” He dragged Laken across the street to a burger place that the three of us never would have chosen.

When we went into the restaurant and got seated, somehow it ended up boy/girl. How did they do that? I, of course, had no choice but to sit between Holden and Dom. Oh joy. I would get to listen to them talk about cars, sports, and their muscles for all of lunch. I had the shakes from hunger, and I still needed shoes or I would have gone home.

“Want me to pick you up for the party, Ror?” Dom asked, scooting his chair closer so he could lay his arm on the back of mine. Sigh.

“I’m going to walk. It’s right down the beach. Thanks though.” Sweet and adorable Dominic. Most of the time he was the coolest. A good listener, and he cared about me. Unfortunately, his closeness with my parents turned me off.

As far as my dating life, Wynter Island was a small place. I had known most of the kids here since kindergarten. Not really easy to think about dating someone when you remember them throwing up all over the teacher’s shoes in fourth grade. So even though I had gone to some dances with a few guys and group-dated a lot, I hadn’t met anyone that interested me enough to put forth that much effort.

Dominic was a different story. The Rossis moved here when we were in junior high. Our families hit it off right away. Well, most of us. His sister, Makenzie, and I aren’t close. She’s older and kind of snobby. The rest of the family is great, especially Dominic. He’s fun; we love a lot of the same things, and we are thrown together all the time. It’s not like it’s a hardship. I’m just not sure I want to get into a relationship with him, especially when college is in my very near future.

Now after the incident with Gage yesterday, I was even more confused. I had been thinking about him all day. I shouldn’t be thinking about other guys if I was thinking about dating Dom. I did not need drama right now. Or anytime, honestly.

“I don’t like the idea of you walking on the beach alone at night, even for a little while. I’ll come over and walk with you. You never know who could be out there. There could be psycho killers. Besides, if I come over early enough, your mom will feed me.”

I had to smile. Dominic was always hungry. My mom loved that about him. She loved to feed people, and he was always making a big deal about her cooking.

“All right. And no doubt she will feed you.” Although I couldn’t believe he would be hungry again when I saw what he ordered for lunch. Double bacon cheeseburger, fries, onion rings, sides of ranch, and a strawberry shake. Who eats like that?

When I looked up from my menu to order, I saw him standing at the counter. Gage. Looking right at me. Well, not me exactly but at Dom’s arm lying on the back of my chair specifically. I saw his eyes narrow for a moment. He looked up into my eyes, and I froze to the chair. I couldn’t look away. What was he doing here? He was even hotter than I remembered.

The teenage hostess came rushing up smiling and fawning all over him. He finally turned to her and paid, smiling sweetly at her. She needed a bib for all the drool. I could relate.

When he grabbed his to-go bags, he looked at me one more time. He smirked and walked out.

Why did I want to jump up and run after him? Why did I feel like I was doing something wrong right now?

“Who was that, Rory?” Dom looked confused. He had seen him too. “Do you know him?”

“That was Gage Maddox,” I said, looking down at the menu and trying to sound casual.

“Oh, that guy? My dad said he got into so much trouble at his last school they kicked him out,” Dominic said.

Holden mumbled something with his mouth full of the bread that they had set in front of us.

“Oh yeah. I heard that too.” Dominic nodded.