“Please, Will,” she said, her voice shaking. “You’re not like him. You have a future. Don’t throw it all away.”
As she gradually loosened her grip, he felt his energy drain away. He struggled to stand, the adrenaline leaving him shaky and off balance. Ronnie slipped an arm around his waist, and they slowly began walking back to the truck.
The next morning, he went to work with his hand aching, only to find Scott waiting for him in the small locker room. As Scott pulled up his coverall, he glared at Will before shrugging the one-piece over his shoulders.
“You didn’t have to quit the match,” he said, pulling up the zipper. “The paramedics were there the whole time.”
“I know,” Will said. “I wasn’t thinking. I’d seen them earlier, but I forgot. I’m sorry about having to forfeit the match.”
“Yeah, well, so am I,” Scott snapped. He reached for a rag and tucked it into his belt. “We could have won it all, but you had to rush off to play hero.”
“Scott, man, she needed help-”
“Yeah? And why did it have to be you? Why couldn’t you wait for help? Why didn’t you call 911? Why did you have to haul her off in your truck?”
“I told you-I forgot the paramedics were there. I thought it would take too long for an ambulance to arrive…”
Scott slammed his fist against the locker. “But you don’t even like her!” he shouted. “You don’t even know her anymore! Yeah, if it was Ashley or Cassie or even Ronnie, I could understand it. Hell, if it was a stranger, I could understand it. But Blaze? Blaze? The same chick who’s gonna send your girlfriend to jail? The chick that hangs out with Marcus?” Scott took a step toward him. “Do you think for a second she would have done the same for you? If you were hurt and you needed help? Not a chance!”
“It’s just a game,” Will objected, feeling his own anger begin to surface.
“To you!” Scott screamed. “To you it’s a game! But for you, everything’s a game! Don’t you get that? Because nothing matters to you! You don’t need to win things like this, because even if you lose, you still get life handed to you on a silver platter! But I needed this! It’s my future on the line, man!”
“Yeah, well, it was a girl’s life on the line,” Will lashed back. “And if you could stop being so self-centered for once, you’d see that saving someone’s life is more important than your precious volleyball scholarship!”
Scott shook his head in disgust. “You’ve been my friend for a long time… but you know, it’s always been on your terms. Everything has always been what you want. You want to break up with Ashley, you want to hang out with Ronnie, you want to blow off practice for weeks on end, you want to play hero. Well, you know what? You were wrong. I talked to the paramedics. They told me you were wrong. That by hauling her to the truck the way you did, you might have made things worse. And what did you get? Did she thank you? No, of course she didn’t. And she won’t. But you’re perfectly willing to screw a friend over because what you want to do is most important.”
Scott’s words were like blows to his stomach, but they only stoked his anger. “Get over yourself, Scott,” Will said. “This time, it’s not all about you.”
“You owed me!” Scott screamed, slamming the locker again. “I asked for this one simple thing! You know how much it meant to me!”
“I don’t owe you anything,” Will said with quiet fury. “I’ve been covering for you for the past eight months. I’m tired of Marcus playing us. You need to do the right thing. You need to tell the truth. Things have changed.”
Will turned and strode to the door. As he pushed it open, he heard Scott behind him.
“What did you do?”
Will turned, holding the door half-open and meeting Scott’s gaze with steely intent. “Like I said, you need to tell the truth.”
He waited until Scott absorbed his words, then stepped out, letting the door slam shut behind him. As he made his way past the cars on lifts, he could hear Scott calling after him.
“You want to ruin my life? You want me to go to jail for an accident? I’m not going to do that!”
Even as he neared the lobby, he could still hear Scott slamming his hand into the lockers.
29 Ronnie
The next week was tense for both of them. Ronnie wasn’t comfortable with the violence she’d seen Will display, nor was she entirely comfortable with the way it had made her feel. She didn’t like fights, she didn’t like to see people get hurt, and she knew that it rarely improved a situation. Yet she couldn’t force herself to be angry at Will for what he’d done. As much as she didn’t want to condone what happened, watching Will completely dismantle the three of them made her feel just a bit safer when she was with him.
But Will was stressed. He was certain that Marcus would report what happened and that the police would come knocking at his door any minute, but Ronnie sensed that something else was bothering him, something he wasn’t letting on. For some reason he and Scott weren’t on speaking terms, and she wondered whether that had something to do with Will’s unease.
Then, of course, there was the family. Particularly Will’s mother. Ronnie had seen her twice since the wedding: once as she waited in the truck at Will’s house while Will ran inside to pick up a clean shirt, and once at a restaurant in downtown Wilmington when Will took her out. As they’d taken their seats, Susan had walked in with a group of her friends. Ronnie had a perfect view of the entrance, but Will was facing in the other direction. On both occasions, Susan had pointedly turned her back to Ronnie.
She hadn’t told Will about either incident. While Will was lost in his own world of retribution and worry, Ronnie noticed that Susan seemed to believe Ronnie was somehow personally responsible for the tragedy that had befallen Blaze.
As she stood in her bedroom, she watched Will’s sleeping figure from a distance. He was curled up near the turtles’ nest; because a few of the other nests had begun to hatch, they’d removed the cage this afternoon, and the nest was completely exposed. Neither of them felt good about leaving it unattended for the night, and because Will was spending less and less time at home anyway, he’d volunteered to watch it.
She didn’t want to think about their newfound troubles, but she found herself replaying all that had happened this summer. She could barely remember the girl she’d been when she’d first arrived at the beach. And the summer wasn’t over yet; in a couple of days, she’d turn eighteen, and after one last weekend together, Will would be leaving for college. Her next court appearance was scheduled a few days after that, and then she’d have to go back to New York. So much already done and so much left to do.
She shook her head. Who was she? And whose life was she leading? More than that, where would it take her?
These days, none of it and all of it felt real, more real than anything she’d known: her love for Will, her growing bond with her father, the way her life had slowed down, so simply and completely. All of it sometimes seemed to be happening to someone else, someone she was still getting to know. Never in a million years would she have considered the idea that a sleepy beach town somewhere in the South would have been filled with so much more… life and drama than Manhattan.
Smiling, she had to admit that with a few exceptions, it hadn’t been all that bad, either. She was sleeping in a quiet bedroom beside her brother, separated only by glass and sand from the young man she loved, a young man who loved her back. She wondered whether there could be anything greater in life. And despite all that had happened, maybe because of it, she knew she would never forget the summer they’d spent together, no matter what the future might bring.