Caged(100)

"So did you leave him there so you could nail the homecoming queen?"



       
         
       
        

He snorted. "No. I didn't lose my virginity until I was nineteen. I just . . . I had no interest in sex. That'll make more sense later. Anyway, Cassidy stumbled back to the bonfire totally hammered. So I had to deal with my drunken brother and my drunken girlfriend." Deacon turned around and looked Molly in the eye. "I hadn't been drinking. Period. Not a fucking drop."

"You must be making that distinction for a reason."

He nodded and turned back toward the window. "The party was thirty miles out of town. When I realized it was two a.m. and we'd missed our curfew by an hour, I debated on whether to even go home or just stay at the campground, but it started to rain. So I poured the drunken duo into my truck, with Cassidy sitting in the middle. I told them to buckle up, but I'd been too focused on the fog rolling in to double-check if they'd listened to me. By then they'd both passed out anyway."

He clenched his fists. "I don't even know how it happened. One second the truck was on the road, and the next it spun out of control, plowed through the ditch, and headed straight for a tree. The impact knocked me out. When I came to, I didn't see Cassidy or Dante. I thought they'd gotten out. Everything was hazy. I noticed the windshield was gone. In the headlights I saw Dante suspended in midair outside the truck and Cassidy's legs on the hood. I couldn't see the rest of her." The immediate sick feeling threatened to choke him. He swallowed the bile and kept going, wanting to get through this. "Later I learned Dante had been thrown into a barbed-wire fence and had died instantly. Same with Cassidy, only her body hadn't made it past the hood.

"I don't remember the ambulance guys pulling me out. The impact with the steering wheel had broken two of my ribs, punctured my lung, and caused internal bleeding, requiring emergency surgery. So I didn't actually wake up until almost forty-eight hours after the accident. My first conscious thought was Dante is dead."

Needing a moment, he paced to the end of the reception area and looked out the window covered in metal safety bars. That reminded him of where everyone in town had wanted him after the accident.

Molly's arms circled his waist, and she rested her face between his shoulder blades. She didn't say a word, just gave him the strength to go on.

"As if it wasn't bad enough I'd been driving the vehicle that killed two people, because we'd been at the party, rumors were going around town that I'd been drinking."

"But didn't the hospital test your blood-alcohol level before you went into surgery?"

"Yeah. The hospital staff, the cops, and EMTs knew I had a zero blood-alcohol level. But the rumor was since my family had . . . influence, they'd paid off the officials to hide the fact I'd been driving drunk." 

"Omigod. That is awful."

He closed his eyes. "The entire town thought I should be in jail for manslaughter. More rumors circulated that Cassidy's parents planned to sue us. Not that it was an option, since Cassidy's parents received a copy of the accident report, including their daughter's blood-alcohol level and that she hadn't worn a seat belt. Her parents only added more speculation when they banned me from Cassidy's funeral. I was a pariah."

Her tears dampened the back of his shirt. "Deacon. Stop. I've heard enough."

He spun around and forced her to look into his anguished eyes, to really see him, to see what this had done to him. "No, goddammit. You were willing to kick me to the fucking curb because I kept this from you, so you damn well will hear every bit of it. All the way to the bitter end, because, babe, it gets even uglier."

Embarrassment flared in her eyes before she glanced down. "Okay. Finish it. But I can't . . . look at you while you're telling me."

"Why not?"

"Because I'll be so focused on how I can be there for you now that I'll miss what you went through then." Her tears landed on his hands. Then she tenderly kissed his scraped and scabbed knuckles. "I'll listen to whatever you want to tell me whenever you're ready. And I'll be right here for you when you're done."

It took a moment to find his balance. "My parents were lost in grief. I was filled with guilt and anger and loneliness like I'd never known. I didn't go back to school as I recovered from my physical injuries. Two months after the accident, when I couldn't take the rage anymore, I went out and picked a fight with the biggest, meanest motherfucker I could find."

"Where'd you find him?"