Wright Together, page 21
She wasn’t going to call.
I was trying to feel better about all of this, and no matter what I did to distract myself, I wasn’t okay. After the night we’d had, I’d thought we were stronger than ever. I’d thought that she’d want my help with something like this. That I could be here for her. But that wasn’t what she wanted.
It wasn’t about the phone call.
I was certain that she was busy and freaked out and dealing with all this stress. That was the problem. That she had to deal with it alone. I knew that she could, but that didn’t mean she had to.
Yet I couldn’t barge down there and insist that I could help. That would be a dick move. I just had to sit here and hope that she knew I was waiting for her.
It was bad enough that my phone kept dinging with texts from my dad, telling me he’d be in town tomorrow and asking when we could meet up. As if I didn’t have better things to do. I ignored his latest text and dialed my brother’s phone number instead.
He answered a few rings later. “Yo.”
I shook my head. “Let’s go get a drink.”
After a pregnant pause, West asked, “What happened?”
“Can I tell you about it over a beer?”
West sighed. “Should I come over or—”
“Sure. Bring some beer with you.”
“Okayyy,” he said. “I’m going to pick up Harley on the way.”
“She can’t drink.”
West snorted. “She’s in college. She absolutely can drink.”
“Fine. I don’t even care.”
“Christ, what happened?” West asked, as if my dismissal of Harley’s alcohol consumption made it worse.
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
Then, I hung up and went in my fridge in search of a beer to get started.
West and Harley appeared a half hour later. They’d gone to the grocery store and picked up beer and some kind of seltzer for Harley. I didn’t bother asking. Just took a Stella out of West’s hand and popped it open. Harley and West exchanged the look that I was normally my go-to.
“I’m fine,” I muttered.
“Were you fired?” West asked.
I nearly choked on my beer. “No.”
“Did Eve break up with you?” Harley asked.
I tipped my bottle at her. “Not exactly.”
West’s eyes widened. “That doesn’t make sense. You two were all perfect together.”
“What did you do?” Harley demanded. “I like Eve.”
“I like Eve, too,” I snapped back. Then sighed. “I might love her in fact.”
Harley popped a seltzer and sank cross-legged onto the couch. “Wow.”
West similarly sat down at that declaration. His lips forming an O.
The word I hadn’t been able to say to her last night but had been thinking for weeks. The words that stuck to the roof of my mouth every time I opened them. As if, at any moment, she’d read them in my eyes when I stared down at her in adoration. I hadn’t wanted to scare her away. We hadn’t been officially together for that long. Not that it mattered. I’d felt it long enough to know it was true. The might in my statement was the only lie I’d told.
I absolutely loved Eve Houston.
And watching her drive away without me had driven a stake through my still-beating heart.
I lifted my beer to them. “So, yeah.”
“What happened?” West asked.
I explained as much as I could. I didn’t want to divulge Eve’s secrets, especially since she had spent so much time trying to hide what had happened with Bailey. But I gave my siblings enough details to understand that she was gone.
“But she’s coming back,” Harley said. She looked to West. “She’s coming back, right?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug.
West crossed his arms. “You know what the problem is?”
“What?”
“You’re completely out of control.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What does that mean?”
“Come on. Don’t bullshit us. We know the real Whitton Wright. You’re the five-year-plan guy. You have to be in control of everything and everyone around you. And now, everything that fit into place is all disrupted, and you can’t do anything about it.”
I clenched my jaw. “And?”
“And you need to stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Trying to control the situation.” West set his beer down. “Eve hasn’t called or texted. She left for home without you. There’s nothing you can do about it, man.”
“But I want to be there for her.”
“You’re just going to have to deal until she wants you there,” West said.
Harley nodded, downing more of her drink. “It’s not going to be fun, but she’ll appreciate that you’re waiting for her when she returns.”
I sighed heavily, dropped my phone and beer onto the coffee table, and put my head in my hands. “Fuck.”
Harley patted my back. “It’ll be okay.”
West plucked the beer off the table and took a sip. “In the meantime, we can still drink.”
“Yeah,” I grumbled. “Thanks for coming over.”
“Anything for your melodrama,” Harley said.
I jerked my head up at her, but she was already laughing.
“Siblings are the best,” I muttered sarcastically.
Harley and West laughed at me, but they did the best by me that they could. Harley turned on some rom-com that we both groaned about. West ordered pizza. It tasted like ash in my mouth, but at least it helped me forget, even for a short period, that I still hadn’t heard from Eve.
I got up to get another slice of pizza when Harley called from the living room, “Oh, your phone is ringing!”
I rushed back into the room. “Eve?”
Harley shook her head, and I frowned, snatching the phone off the coffee table. Colton’s name showed on the screen. What the fuck?
“Colt?”
“Hey, boss,” he said, the sounds of a raging party in the background. “I think I messed up.”
30
Eve
No one knew where Bailey was.
I’d reached out to every person in her phone who might know where she was. Her volleyball coach said that she’d never shown up for tryouts. The girls on her team claimed that she’d gone off and gotten “weird again.” Trevor, the last person she’d contacted in her phone, said he hadn’t heard from her, but she owed him two hundred dollars.
Not promising.
I’d driven around every place I could think that she might frequent.
The high school claimed she hadn’t been at her last class on Friday. I didn’t inform them that the dentist note was definitely forged. The gym she went to said they hadn’t seen her in weeks. Ellen at Boose said the last time she’d seen her was when I was in town.
And each and every single place I’d tried, progressively getting more desperate, had the same story.
“She isn’t here.”
“We haven’t seen her.”
“Not in weeks.”
I sank into the front seat of my 4Runner and slammed my hands on the steering wheel. It was nearing evening, and I’d been in the car all day with no luck. I couldn’t call it quits. There had to be somewhere that I hadn’t looked. I couldn’t get the police involved…not yet.
My phone buzzed, and a text came in from my dad.
Any luck?
I blew out a breath. The best I could say for the man was that he’d gone out of his way to look for Bailey, too. I’d covered one half of town, and he’d driven to the other. He’d grumbled about it since he wanted to get the police involved. I’d vetoed that immediately, but I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out. If Bailey was back to her ways—and everything indicated that she was—then we were going to need all the help we could get. The longer she was gone, the harder it would be to find her.
Not yet. You?
Nothing. We’re going to have to call it.
I closed my eyes and clenched the phone in my fist. No. I wasn’t ready to give up.
This was Dad’s fault. She was his responsibility. That had been the entire point of making her stay with him through her senior year. I’d wanted custody, and he’d insisted that we shouldn’t uproot her life any more than it had been due to rehab. But he should have been checking his accounts better. The fact that Bailey had been siphoning money without him even realizing or checking to see what was going on was bullshit. And he’d accused me of not giving him enough money when, in fact, Bailey had stolen it.
This was my fault. I should have been paying more attention. Instead, I had been so into my own life that I neglected what was right in front of me. If the money was missing, then there was a reason. I didn’t want to believe that the reason was Bailey. But I should have been more diligent. Not wrapped up in my own shit.
And the truth of it all, this was Bailey’s fault.
She’d chosen to steal from Dad.
She’d chosen to lie to us.
She’d chosen to disappear.
I loved her, but right now, I had never hated her more.
Let me check a few more places.
Eve, it’s a waste of time. We’re not going to find her.
I threw my phone to the side, ignoring the string of texts he’d sent. I didn’t care what he thought. That negativity was never going to help anything.
I was parked trying to plot my next move when the phone rang. Not mine, Bailey’s.
I lunged for it and saw Trevor’s name.
“Hello?”
“Hey, this Eve?”
“Yeah. Yes. Have you heard from Bailey?”
“Sorta. She texted me from a new number and invited me to some party.”
I blew out a breath of relief and horror, all mingled in one. “What party?”
“Some house party in the country. I didn’t know if I should call you. You were pressed earlier.”
“Yes. Thank you so much for calling. Can you send me the address?”
“Uh…” He paused, as if searching his messages for the address, then added, “You going to get me my two hundred dollars back?”
“Of course,” I said through gritted teeth. “Not a problem. As soon as I find Bailey.”
“Bet.”
He sent the address in a text to Bailey’s phone. I thanked him profusely and then hightailed it out of the parking lot I’d been camped out in.
As Trevor had described, the house was in the country. Even for Midland, which was known for its sparse housing and backwoods locales, this was the middle of nowhere. The house was two stories tall, surrounded by oil rigs on all sides. And it was hopping.
I could hear the music from the street. Bright lights were bouncing around inside like a rave. And I had to park in a field nearby because there were so many cars. We were far enough away from civilization that the cops wouldn’t bother with it. No neighbors to issue noise complaints.
This was going to suck.
And there was nothing to be done for it.
I tied my hair up into a ponytail, threw both of the phones into my purse, and headed down the street toward the house. I didn’t look like a teenager, but I was still young enough not to look like a typical adult. I was glad that I’d changed into something casual for the drive—jean shorts and a tank top with white tennis shoes.
When I stepped into the house, I was assaulted by the smell of beer, weed, and vomit. I refrained from gagging, feeling a contact high imminent. There had to be over a hundred people inside. More than half with red Solo cups in hand, dancing to the music, and the rest in various stages of undress, hooking up. I had no fucking clue how I’d find Bailey in this.
Still, it was my mission. Thanks to Trevor, I actually had something to go off of. It was my only lead.
I gazed around the living room but didn’t see any sign of Bailey. All the people I asked said they didn’t know her. Great.
Likewise, she wasn’t in the dining room or the office space. A bunch of drunk bros tried to cajole me into doing a keg stand in the kitchen. A girl looked like she was drowning under an upside-down margarita.
“Hey, have any of you seen Bailey?” I asked one of the guys by the keg.
“Bailey?” guy number one asked. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was drunk.
“Yes, Bailey Houston. Have you seen her?”
“Haven’t seen her,” guy number two said.
“Bet she’s upstairs with Xavier,” guy number three said.
Xavier.
I felt sick to my stomach. Of course she’d gotten involved with that bastard again. She’d refused to rat him out to the cops, and even when I provided evidence that he’d been dealing, somehow, he had gotten out of it. Something to do with his daddy working for the force. I hated him with every fiber of my being.
“Said he was going to rail her on the balcony,” guy number four said.
“Oh yeah,” guy number one said.
They all high-fived like they weren’t disgusting degenerates.
“Thanks,” I said before muttering, “I guess,” under my breath.
If Bailey was with Xavier again, we were fucked. Xavier dealt to half the town. So much for the tens of thousands of dollars I’d spent on her rehab.
I found the stairs at the front of the house and climbed them. The first few doors I opened were full of random hookups. One even had a full-on orgy. I didn’t want to ask questions. I just shut each door and moved on.
“Bailey?” I called into the house.
Literally how many bedrooms could it have?
On the fifth, I found the one that the guys must have been talking about. It was the only one with a balcony. But instead of Xavier railing my seventeen-year-old sister, she was huddled in the corner of the balcony. Her head lolled against the balcony door. Cocaine was cut into lines on the glass table in front of her. A rolled dollar bill sat next to it. Pills were in a mess of little bottles. A few had opened and spilled out onto the table. A discarded bong was on the wood floor. No Xavier in sight.
“Bailey!” I gasped, sprinting to her side. I lifted her up and forced her to look at me. “Bailey. Bails, are you okay? Can you hear me?”
She laughed. Her pupils were blasted out, as wide as saucers. “Evie!”
“Bailey, we need to get you out of here.”
“No, Evie, stay!” She tugged on my arm. All the strength from her athletic training evaporated in the wake of the drugs. “Stay! We’re having such a good time.”
I recoiled from that assessment. She wasn’t in her right mind. She needed help.
“Sorry, kiddo, it’s time to go home.”
“No! I’m not going home. I’m never going home again. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.” She slurred the last word and tugged out of my arms. “I’m going to stay here, where it’s quiet.”
Quiet. Yes, a rager was so quiet.
I knew she meant in her mind. It was one of the things she’d confessed to me after rehab with all her many hours of therapy. The problem when Gram had died was that her grief was so severe that she couldn’t quiet the anxiety in her mind, that loud voice that yelled at her constantly day and night. Medicine helped to an extent. If she had stayed the course, I was sure antidepressants and anxiety pills could have done the trick, but too late. She’d found something that worked a lot faster.
“You don’t have to go back with him, but you can’t stay here either.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Xavier asked from the bedroom. He was in a grungy white tank top and distressed jeans. He’d grown a curly mullet since I’d last seen him, and it did him no favors.
“We’re leaving.”
“Fuck no, you’re not.”
“Try to stop us,” I snarled.
He tipped his chin at her. “She owes me two thousand dollars.”
I nearly screamed. “What the fuck did she take for two thousand dollars?”
He shrugged. “She was going to work it off with me. I don’t mind if you want to help.”
Then, he winked, and I considered punching him in the face.
This was the first moment that I’d wished Whitt were here. That guy would have never fucking said that to me with him at my side.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” I said, tugging Bailey to her feet.
“Look, baby—”
“I already called the cops,” I lied. His eyes narrowed. “I know who your daddy is, but even you can’t escape what’s all over this house.”
“You wouldn’t do that while she’s here.”
“You sure?”
But he wasn’t. I could see it on his stoned face.
“Fuck,” he ground out. Then, he turned and walked out.
“You called the cops?” Bailey asked, fear suddenly registering.
“Yeah. We have to get out of here.”
I didn’t give her a chance to respond. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and out of the house. Xavier’s fancy sports car zipped away just as I got her to the car. He hadn’t even told anyone else that the cops were coming. What an asshole.
I forced Bailey into the car. My anger mounting every second that she fought me along the way. I wanted to kick and scream and rage at her. But I was just so relieved that she wasn’t dead. All I could do was buckle her seat belt and drive away.
There would be time for my anger.
Time for her to account for what she’d done.
But right now, she was safe.
31
Whitton
Harley was the only one sober enough to drive since she’d given up her seltzer hours earlier. She held her hand out. “Keys.”
I blinked at her. “You’re not driving my car.”
“I didn’t drive here. West picked me up.”
“West, give her the keys.”
West grinned as he admired his new red BMW M2. It was the fancy car he’d always wanted when he was broke as shit. “It’s a stick shift.”
