Rooney wipes tears from my cheeks that I didn’t know were there. “I’m here to remind you of who you are and what you want, Willa. You will always be Joy Sutter’s daughter. That’s never going to change. But you won’t always be a soccer powerhouse. You won’t always have this free education. You won’t always have a man waiting at your door to give you comfort. Some things are timeless—your mother’s love, her mark on your life. But so much else, you have to find the strength to snatch them up before they’re gone.”
“Roo, I don’t know how,” I choke. She pulls me toward her, rocking me in her arms.
“I know. Shhh.” Rooney kisses my hair. It makes me think of Ryder and his kisses to my crazy locks. I miss that spark and fire that used to crackle and roar between us. I miss his bushy beard and his butter-soft lumberjack flannel. I miss our loaded silences as much as his newfound, deep voice.
“First things first, okay?” Rooney says. “Let’s get you set up with a university counselor. Get you feeling better rested and clear-headed. Get your grades back on track. Then we get the guy.”
I laugh. “Yeah, that’s still not happening. Not the way you think. I need friends, Roo. Nothing else.”
Rooney pauses her rocking for just a moment and squeezes me tighter. “Okay, Willa. Okay.”
25
Ryder
Playlist: “Do I Wanna Know?” Arctic Monkeys
“Who did it!?” I roar.
Both Tucker and Becks have the wisdom to look terrified.
“Yeah!” I kick an errant soccer ball right at them and watch with satisfaction as they scatter to avoid getting nailed. “You still glad I got my voice back? You motherfuckers!” I lunge for Tucker, quickly wrestling him down to the ground. His back is pinned under my knee and I have his arm twisted in a position that’s hopefully excruciating.
“It was his idea!” Tuck howls.
I release Tucker with a lunge upright and bolt for Becks. He barely sidesteps me before he trips, then slams into the table and crumples to the floor.
“Please!” Becks holds up his hands. He looks like he’s about to shit himself, and he should. My six-foot-three, two-hundred pounds is south on both Becks’s height and Tucker’s weight, but it doesn’t matter. I’m an angry, angry man, and when I’m pissed, my Viking blood roars through my veins, demanding violence.
“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t break your goddamn arm, Beckett Beckerson.”
Becks whimpers as I set my foot on his throat. “B-because you’ll thank me once you shave that animal off your face and it knocks Willa on her ass.”
I hiss in a breath because it hurts to hear her voice. We don’t talk about Willa. I got very drunk a few months ago, not long after Joy died and Willa shut me out, and I told them everything. Then I made them swear not to speak about Willa or torture me with anything related to her. They’ve been saints about it.
Until now.
“Why?” I growl.
Becks glances over to Tucker, then back to me. “Rooney said she’s going to grief counseling and finally coming around. Before that, she was getting bad—”
“Don’t.” I can’t hear it. I almost lost my mind at first, desperate to push myself on her, when I knew how badly she was hurting. I tried everything I could think of, and still, she wouldn’t look at me, talk to me, answer my texts or calls or notes.
I understood she needed to grieve, and that she’d grieve in her own way, which was obviously entirely alone. But for once, logically understanding something didn’t make it hurt any less.
Taking a long, slow breath, I look between the two of them. “So because Willa’s back on the grid, you two decided this was the best time to shave the middle of my fucking beard off my face.”
Tucker has the dumbass audacity to giggle from the corner, where he cowers. I fake a lunge at him and earn a high-pitched yelp. “Fucker,” I grumble.
Becks’s throat is still stuck under my instep. I feel his Adam’s apple roll under the arch of my foot when he swallows. “Okay, it was…a little aggressive. But I saw you take melatonin. That shit knocks you out—”
“Because I’ve had insomnia!” I yell. Since Willa stonewalled me, my mind was racing constantly at night. I kept having these horrible nightmares about her wading into the Pacific and drowning, hiking alone, getting lost and falling off cliffs. Dad told me melatonin was a gentle, non-habit-forming supplement that would help me fall asleep, and as everyone knows, Ryder’s a sedative lightweight. Melatonin doesn’t just quiet my mind—it knocks me out.
“Okay.” Becks swallows nervously. “Okay, so that was a little shitty, to prey on your drugged state. But the intent was noble.”
“Noble.” Scrubbing my face, I stare up at the ceiling, reminding myself murdering them will put a cramp in my outdoorsy lifestyle. Jail’s claustrophobic as hell, I hear. Barely any time outside.
“Shave that thing all the way, man,” Becks has the balls to say. “Look less like a doomsday woodsman and a bit more like a collegiate hottie.”
Tucker snorts. “Hottie’s a stretch.”
“Please.” Becks rolls his eyes. “We all know why Ryder grew the beard. Because he got too much attention clean-shaven, and when his ears went to shit, attention was the last thing he wanted.”
“Damn. Okay, Dr. Phil.” I let off Becks’s throat and trudge back to my bathroom, eyeing the damage.
They’re stupid enough to follow and stand behind me as I face the mirror. I tip my head from one angle to another, trying to figure out how to salvage this without shaving my entire beard.
There’s no way.
“Unless you want mutton chops,” Tucker offers. “But considering I grew up next door to a creepy guy with mutton chops who always tried to offer me popsicles, I’d get very strong pedophilic vibes. Your facial hair would be triggering, so for my emotional safety, that only leaves fully shaving your face.”
I stare at him in the mirror. “You have serious balls to shave a landing strip on my face, then make up emotional triggers and a pedophilic neighbor.”
Tucker groans. “You’re too hard to lie to.”
“Nah. You’re just a shit liar,” Becks chimes in.
I throw up a hand, silencing them. “Both of you. Out.”
Tucker fist-pumps the air. “You’re going to do it?”
I level him with a look that makes his hand drop slowly to his side. “Right. We’re leaving.”
“Sorry again,” Becks says right before they shut the door.
Staring at my reflection, I heave a long sigh. When I pull open the vanity drawer, the hair scissors sit right in front, gleaming as if they’ve been waiting for me.
Joy’s voice echoes in my head. “Promise me something. Don’t give up on her, okay?”
“All right, Joy.” I tug the first chunk of beard away from my face, then drag the scissors through it with an echoing snip. “This one’s for you.”
I feel naked. As I walk campus, it’s just like those recurring dreams I had as a kid. The ones in which I showed up at school only wearing my parka. The moment the dream became a nightmare was when I began to unzip my coat, only to realize I had nothing on underneath. In my dream, I’d yank the zipper up and hide in the coat closet until Mom came to get me.