CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
AUBREY
THE KIDS WENT to get cleaned up when Margie informed us that Rodney may not be coming back because his mother wanted to move out of state with her boyfriend. We talked over different scenarios but knew that ultimately it would be the mother’s choice.
The situation weighed on our minds the whole ride home.
When we got back to my apartment, Katie and I let Vick turn on the TV and indulge in her favorite guilty pleasure—celebrity gossip. She turned up Entertainment Tonight, but I barely listened as the host droned on and on.
That was until the screen showed the same dark vehicle I always saw on the same damn road in my nightmares. They showed a scene that had my stomach twisting in knots, bottoming out, and then rolling down a hill collecting more and more anger.
I blinked and then blinked again.
Surely, I was imagining that damn SUV.
I tried to rationalize that maybe Jax hadn’t meant what he said, and he really wouldn’t have gone.
Not after kissing me.
Not after helping me with my class.
Not after he’d been nice enough to get me tea.
I blinked, slower this time. So slow that I commended myself on the control of the movement.
Me. That is who I can control.
I sighed and let the anger roll on in. As the truth washed over me, I rolled my lips between my teeth and tried not to scream. I coiled control around the truth and the anger and the hurt. I wrapped it up tight and double knotted it, hoping it would hold.
When they cut to commercial, after promising to reveal who was in the SUV and where he was going when they returned, Vick turned to me. “Do you think …”
“Don’t ask the obvious, Vick,” Katie sighed.
“Maybe it’s someone else,” she tried.
The coils strained a little at her comment.
I normally welcomed Vick’s unwavering optimism of love or at least ignored it. She nudged Jax and I together ever since she’d heard my story. “He was your hero,” she would say or, “He has to still love you,” or “Just see where it goes.”
I always rolled my eyes, but now, I realized I had secretly wanted to believe her.
I’d walked out onto the battlefield wearing a target, waving for him to take his shot. I’d opened my arms to it and let my damn guard down.
The coils tightened even more. “It isn’t someone else,” I stated.
Katie grabbed the remote to turn it off.
Was she serious? She, of all people, wanted to shield me now?
I lunged for it. “Oh no! I’m going to watch every minute. You should want me to considering …” I stopped, trying so hard not to let my friends have it. My anger wasn’t for them.
“Considering what?” Katie asked, her eyes narrowing a little.
I looked up at the ceiling and imagined that ceiling coming down on my anger. It was all part of controlling it and keeping it bottled up.
“Nothing. Nothing,” I sighed. “It’s the SUV, you guys. And it’s the road.”
Vick squinted at the screen as if willing it to show us something better. “If that’s true, I’m sorry, Brey.”