Gripping the steering wheel so hard I felt as if it might snap in half, I forced a few deep breaths down my throat. When that didn’t fucking work, I growled and got out of the car. Maybe blowing some shit up on a big screen would distract me.
I barreled into the house and slumped onto the couch, but instead of reaching for the remote, I found myself just clenching my fists repeatedly, thinking about how fucking helpless she’d looked passed out in my bed all night.
“Hey.”
I shot to my feet at my aunt’s casual greeting, every muscle in my body tense.
“Whoa.” Her eyes widened in surprise, her OJ halfway to her mouth as she leaned against the wall. “Sorry to interrupt your intense scowling session there. You all right?”
“Shit.” I ran my hands through my hair for about the millionth time in the past twenty-four hours. I was going to go bald at this rate. “Sorry. I . . . you just startled me. I’m fine.” I forced a smile that felt fake to its core and lowered myself back to the couch. “I thought you were spending the day with Robbie.”
“He got called into work, so I came home.” She made her way over to sit down, took a sip of her juice, and looked at me expectantly.
“What?” I tried, and failed, to keep the irritation out of my tone.
“We had a deal, Hendrix. You come to me if you’re in any kind of trouble. You’re clearly not fine. Start talking, kid.”
“I’m not a kid,” I argued childishly.
“Then act like it and tell me what’s going on.”
Damn her and her logic. “Look, I’m not in any kind of trouble, OK? I promise. I’m sticking to our deal.”
“Yeah, well, the deal included emotional and existential trouble, so . . .” She gestured for me to start talking.
I gave her a withering look. “I don’t remember agreeing to that.”
“Should’ve read the fine print.” She took another sip of OJ. “Spill.”
Her banter was a good distraction for about two minutes, but the restless, tight feeling in my body just wouldn’t leave. Maybe talking about it would help. And my aunt was literally the only person I felt I could trust right now.
“I don’t really know where to start.”
“How about at the end?”
I laughed despite myself. “Usually people say start at the beginning.”
“Yeah, but fuck them. Tell me where you just came from. Obviously it has something to do with this. Then we can work backward.”
How the hell was I supposed to tell her I’d just come from dropping off a drugged girl at the seediest bar in the state? Hannah was cool, but even she wasn’t that cool. Not to mention this wasn’t technically even my problem.
“I . . . look . . . it’s not really my story to tell. When I said I wasn’t in trouble, I wasn’t lying.”
“But someone else is?”
“Not yet, but she will be if she keeps going like she is. But the fucked-up thing is that when you asked that, my first instinct was to say, ‘Not if I have anything to do with it.’”
“Are you romantically involved with this girl?”
I snorted. “Trust me, there’s been no romance.” There’d been heat, sexual release, a pull damn near impossible to resist, plenty of hurtful words, but no romance . . .
“OK, so then why do you care so much?”
“I don’t know!” I pulled at my hair again. “That’s a big part of the problem. I wanted to just come here, keep my head down, get good grades, and finish high school before figuring out how to make my life mean something after what I did. I didn’t even want to make friends. I don’t want anything to do with this. But every time I see her . . . doing some stupid shit, I just want to shake her. I see that desperate, caged-animal look in her eyes, and I know exactly how she feels, even if I don’t really know her at all. Because I used to feel like that. I used to have that look in my eyes.”
“You want to save her from making your mistakes.”
I paused, thought about it. “Yes.”
“You can’t save people who don’t want to be saved, Hendrix.” She got a knowing, almost faraway look in her eyes, and I had a feeling she was talking about more than just my current situation.
“That’s just it though. I think she does. She just won’t admit it. And then she makes me feel like shit when I try to be there for her.”
“Does she know? About . . .”
“No.” I shook my head. “No one knows, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Fair enough. But I think you should talk to her. In a real way. Try to explain where you’re coming from. Lay it all out, and then you have to be OK with what she does with that. You can’t force someone to accept your help, but you can say your piece and move on knowing you did all you could.”
“She won’t talk to me.” I slumped against the back of the couch.
“Make her.” She shrugged. “You’re a big strong man.”
“I thought I was a kid.”
“Clearly, I was mistaken.”
“Did you just advise me to manhandle an innocent young girl?”
“I did no such thing. A man knows how to make someone hear him without resorting to violence or childish yelling.” She gave me a pointed look.
I sighed and stared at the ceiling. She was right. I had to make her listen. This churning, unsettling feeling in my gut wouldn’t go away until I did.
I got to my feet. “OK. I’ll be back.”
“Now?” Hannah bugged her eyes out.
“No time like the present. Life’s too short. Carpe diem, et cetera, et cetera.”
I grabbed my keys and waved over my shoulder as I headed right back to my car.
It took less than ten minutes to drive to her house. The big black metal gates were open wide, her ostentatious driveway curving up and around a bend. The top of the house was just visible in the distance.
I slowed down, nearly came to a stop . . . then pushed down on the accelerator and drove off again, swearing under my breath. I’d driven over here determined to make her listen, but with no idea what I wanted to say.
After pulling over around the corner, I pinched the bridge of my nose. What exactly did I want to tell her? I definitely didn’t want to detail my whole sordid past. I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone about that, let alone the girl who’d managed to get under my skin more than anyone ever had.
Nearly half an hour went by as my mind wandered off on tangents, the same frustrations looping around and around, half-finished sentences floating past. None of it felt right.
I was getting nowhere.
“Fuck it.” I started the car.
Driving around the block took almost as long as it had taken me to drive there in the first place, as the properties in the area were massive. I pulled into the driveway and made slow progress up the hill, then parked away from the imposing front doors, on the other side of the fountain.
No way was I going to slink up to that front door looking timid and unsure, so I squared my shoulders, ran a hand through my hair—again—and walked up the stairs steadily and confidently.
I rang the doorbell and resisted the urge to fidget as I waited.
Donna’s mom pulled the door open—there was no way the petite blonde in three-quarter yoga pants and a loose shirt was a servant. Plus, Donna and Harlow looked like her.