I couldn’t believe he was telling me this. I couldn’t believe this had happened to him. Braden, who I thought lived in a world of elegant dinners and fancy apartments. Apparently, he’d been in another world for a little while. “What happened?”
“I left, made an anonymous call for an ambulance, and told her what I’d done. She didn’t blame me. In fact when the police found him, we covered for each other. Her brother was a well-known junkie, there were no witnesses, and they just assumed it was drug-related. He was in a coma for a few days. The worst bloody days of my life. When he woke up, he told the police he couldn’t remember who’d attacked him, but when I walked in with his sister she told him what he did.” Braden’s voice hitched a little. “He started to cry. It was probably the most pitiful sight I’ve ever seen, him crying and her just staring at him with hatred in her eyes. She left. He promised me he wouldn’t tell the truth about what had happened. He said he’d deserved it, that I should have killed him. There was nothing I could do for either of them. I never saw him again. My relationship with her fell apart when she turned to drugs to deal with what happened, refusing my help. Last word I heard a few years back was that she’d OD’d.”
I pulled myself up beside him, my whole body aching for him. “Braden… I’m sorry.”
He nodded and turned his head to gaze at me. “I’ve never been in a fight since. Lifted my hands to no one. My dad and I buried a lot of shit after that. He was the only other person who knew the truth, and he helped me turn everything around. I owe him.”
“I think we all do.” I smiled sadly, brushing my fingers along his jaw as it sunk in that he’d trusted me with this.
Me.
Oh God.
Did I owe him somehow? Or wasn’t it like that? He’d trusted me because he knew I wouldn’t tell anyone, he knew I wouldn’t judge him.
It occurred to me sitting beside him—feeling pain for him—that I knew he would never tell anyone anything I shared with him. He would never judge me. I heaved a sigh and dropped my hand, my stomach twisting as I fought with myself. “Dru,” her name just fell out of my lips before I could even think about it.
Braden’s body tensed with alertness. “Dru?”
I nodded, my eyes on his stomach rather than his face. Blood rushed in my ears and I clutched the sheets to stop my fingers from trembling. “She was my best friend. We grew up together and when my family died, she was all I had left. There was no one else.” I swallowed hard on the memories. “I was a mess after… wild. I dragged Dru to parties we were too young to be at, did things we were too young to do. It was a little over a year after… and there was this kegger down at the river. I was on this path of picking guys off, some to just make-out with or if I was drunk enough, then other stuff, and Dru was trying to get up the confidence to ask Kyle Ramsey out.” I huffed humorlessly. “Kyle used to drive me crazy. He was always bugging me, but after… well, other than Dru he was the only person I sat down and talked to about everything. He was really a good kid. And I liked him,” I confessed softly. “I really liked him. But Dru had had a crush on him forever, and I was no longer the girl he used to have a crush on. She didn’t want to go that night. But I convinced her that Kyle would be there and I forced her to come along.
It was about halfway through the party and I thought Dru was off talking to Kyle while I was flirting with the captain of the football team, but Kyle was suddenly there with me, asking to speak with me. We walked off for some privacy and he started to say all these things. How I was better than what I was doing with all those guys. How my parents would be so upset if they could see me like that.” I took a shuddering breath on that confession. “And he told me that he cared about me. That he thought he could really love me. I didn’t think. I just let him kiss me, and before I knew it we were getting pretty hot and heavy. He stopped before it went too far and told me I didn’t have to sleep with him to keep his interest. That he wanted me to be his girlfriend. And I told him that I couldn’t be, that Dru was crazy about him, and I couldn’t do that to her. We talked in circles for a little while until I decided I needed to get drunk or something to get away from all the teen drama, but when I went out into the main party one of Dru’s friends told me I was a backstabbing slut. And I realized that Dru had found out about my make-out with Kyle.”
I closed my eyes, seeing the image of her standing by the rope swing, the hatred in her eyes so intense. “I found her further down the river, drunk off her ass. She was trying to get onto this old rope swing that swung you out into the water, but it was frayed and unused and the current that night was bad. I begged her to come back to the party and talk to me, but she just kept shouting that I was a traitor and a whore. ” I looked up at Braden now to find his sad eyes on me. “She swung out on the rope before I could stop her and it snapped. She screamed for my help as the current took her and I didn’t think—I just shot into the water after her. But Kyle had been behind us and he came in after me and was a far stronger swimmer. Rather than let me get to her, he tugged me back to the rocks. Dru’s body washed up down the river. She was gone. And I never spoke to Kyle again.”
“Baby,” Braden murmured, reaching for me but I held my hand up to warn him off, shaking my head, my eyes furious.
“I killed her, Braden. I don’t deserve sympathy.”
He looked shocked now. “Jocelyn, you did not kill her. It was a tragic accident.”