The Wrong Path

Chapter Seven





Annabelle stared at Trevor, passed out in the passenger seat, then looked into the backseat of the SUV at the pile of unconscious bodies that made up her friends, dismayed. Out of the twelve people crammed into the SUV, only Parker remained awake. He sat in the backseat squished between Erin and Mary, belligerently talking about how gorgeous Annabelle was and all the things he could do to her.

Tears of helplessness welled up in her eyes as she stared at the dashboard. The night had started out well enough—they had gotten together as planned at Claudia’s, packed into Trevor’s SUV, and had successfully managed to get into the club. But then her friends had started drinking copious amounts of alcohol, growing increasingly rowdy and dancing wildly on tables. When Mary had passed out mid-sentence onto Zach’s shoulder and the others had just laughed hysterically, Annabelle had decided it was time to leave. It had taken almost an hour to gather everyone together to get them out to the SUV, but she had managed.

And then they had all promptly fallen asleep, including Trevor, who Parker had practically carried out of the club.

Annabelle choked on a sob. She didn’t know how to drive a manual car. How was she going to get everyone home when she was the only sober one and she couldn’t drive? If she called her parents to come get them her friends would never forgive her. But every other person she could call was crammed into Trevor’s SUV.

She held a hand to her head to try and calm down as she mentally went over every person she knew. She had a cousin who could have come to get them, but he was away at college in another state. She had only had a few acquaintances at her private school, and she hadn’t spoken to them since she had transferred, so it wasn’t like she could just call them up randomly and ask for a ride. And she just didn’t know anyone else. She had tried to drive the SUV, but she kept killing the engine, growing more flustered when Parker had started screaming incoherent instructions at her. Finally, even though she hated to admit defeat, she had given up.

Most of her friends were only children, or the oldest, so it wasn’t going to be possible for someone’s sibling to come out and…

Annabelle straightened, swiped the tears from her eyes, and quickly reached over to the passenger seat to rummage through Trevor’s pockets.

“Oooh, baby, why not me?” Parker taunted. She felt more tears in her eyes as her fingers closed around the cell phone in Trevor’s jeans. “At least I’m awake. I can show you a good time.”

She cried out when she felt his hand on her neck and lunged back to the safety of the driver’s side door, Trevor’s cell phone in her hand. She scrolled through the numbers while Parker started singing at the top of his lungs, pausing occasionally to interject a nasty comment about what he wanted to do to her.

Fear set in and she reached for her purse, closing her hand around her pepper spray. She twisted in the seat to lean sideways against the steering wheel, facing the back of the car to prevent any surprises. Then, to her vast relief, she finally found Will’s number.

She just prayed that he would answer.

Her fingers trembled as she hit the call button. She listened to it ring once, twice, three times… then voice mail. She nervously looked around the packed parking lot, hoping a security guard wouldn’t show up and ask to see their IDs. Parker was certainly going out of his way to draw attention to them—people walking by the SUV were staring into its tinted windows, making puzzled, annoyed faces at the noise.

“Parker, shut up!” Annabelle hissed as she called Will’s phone again.

“Oooh, she’s got a mouth on her!” Parker taunted, as Annabelle desperately listened to the phone ring. Suddenly, a hand clamped around her jaw in a vice-like grip. She cried out in terror, Parker’s face only inches from hers. “I don’t like it when my girls talk back to me.”

“Get away from me!” Annabelle shrieked, trying to push herself further into the corner of the SUV.

“What the hell is your problem?” Parker laughed coldly, his dark eyes glassy. “I’m offering to show you a good time. Your boyfriend’s too messed up to do it right now. Shouldn’t you take what you can get?” His voice lowered. “And you’ve got such a body on you…”

“I swear, Parker, I will use this pepper spray on you if you don’t back off now!” Annabelle all-but screamed at him, brandishing the bottle inches from his face.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Parker objected, holding up his hands. She felt hot, heavy tears stream down her cheeks as he fell back into his seat. “I was just offering, sweetheart. No need to get so angry.”

She sniffled, and then, to her complete disbelief, heard through the cell phone, “Belle? Where are you?”

She let out a sob of relief. Will. Will had answered his phone. She hadn’t heard the click or heard him say hello, but he must have answered while she and Parker had been fighting. She had never been so happy to hear another person’s voice before. “The-the new club that opened. Rainstorm.”

“How far is it?”

“I-I don’t know… Twenty minutes?”

“Where are you parked?”

He sounded so calm and in control… So reassuring. She choked on another sob and tried to compose herself. She could hear his feet through the phone, moving quickly, and then the jangle of keys. “We’re… we’re facing the right wall of the building. We’re in the first row.”

“Okay. Don’t. Move. If Parker gives you any trouble at all, spray him until he screams. I’ll be right there.”

She watched Parker reach around and start groping under Erin’s unconscious body. “Hurry,” she pleaded. She ended the call and looked around for something… anything… to throw at Parker to stop him. His hand was under Erin’s shirt, now, and he didn’t look ready to stop.

Her eyes landed on a half-full bottle of water in the cup holder. Bracing herself, she held the pepper spray in one hand with her finger on the button, and with her other hand took the top off of the bottle, reaching over and dumping it on Parker’s head.

He let out a litany of curses and started to lunge at her. She scrambled against the driver’s side door and kicked at him, trying frantically to keep him at bay. He grabbed her ankles and she cried out, kicking harder, keeping her grip firmly on the pepper spray. She screamed and pleaded with him to stop, but he just continued to swear at her, rage emanating from him.

Her heel caught him along the side of his cheek and he let out a horrible yelp, leaping at her angrily. She kicked again, the sole of her shoe landing squarely against his forehead. He fell back, looking dazed.

For a small eternity they sat there, Parker swearing and holding his bleeding cheek, and Annabelle crouched in her corner of the car, trying to keep herself from crying.

The knock on her window made her scream. She whirled to the side, a sob of relief choking her as she recognized the person staring back at her. She flung open the door and threw herself desperately into Will’s arms, burying her face in his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice calm but urgent. His embrace was warm and safe, and for the first time since the group had stepped into the club, she felt like she could relax. She trembled so hard that she could feel him shaking and tried to take deep breaths, forcing herself to recompose.

Reluctantly, not wanting to leave the protective circle of his arms, she stepped away and nodded. “I’m okay,” she confirmed. “Thank you for coming. I-I’m sorry… I didn’t know who else to call.”

He didn’t say anything as he leaned into the car through the driver’s side door, surveying its occupants. She held onto his arm, too afraid to let him go, and watched as his eyes settled on his older brother, slumped unconscious in the passenger seat.

“I’m sure you didn’t,” he said finally, straightening and looking down at her. “Looks like every one of your friends somehow crammed into this car.”

She nodded, wiping tears from her eyes. “I can’t drive a stick,” she told him, shaking.

From the backseat, there were giggles. “I can teach you, sweetheart,” Parker offered, slumping forward into the driver’s seat.

Annabelle cried out as Will suddenly surged forward, grabbed Parker by the shirt, and hauled him out of the car through the door. Once out, with lightning-fast reflexes, Will threw a punch that had Parker on the ground, his lip split, moaning in pain. Annabelle held her hands over her mouth as Parker lay there, spitting blood, looking stunned. Will stood over him menacingly, his jaw clenched.

“Will!” she pleaded, when it looked like Will was going to pick him up and do it again. He paused and looked up at her, his eyes dark. Then he looked back down at Parker and gave him a little shove with his shoe.

“You can find your own way home,” Will told him flatly.

“What? You can’t just leave me here—“ Parker objected.

“I can,” Will corrected. He crouched down and spoke lowly. “And if you ever try to force yourself on Annabelle or any other girl again, I will do much, much worse. Do you understand?”

Parker tried to protest, but he could only split blood.

Looking satisfied, Will stood and gestured for Annabelle to get into the car. “Let’s go.”

She hesitated. “What about your car?” she asked. “It’s an automatic, right? I can drive it.”

“People leave their cars at clubs all the time for this very reason. I’ll come get it tomorrow.” She felt a gentle pressure against her back as he stepped toward her and guided her to the car. “Come on.”

She cast one last look down at Parker, who sat on the ground, blood pouring from his lip, and climbed into the car.

They drove mostly in silence, except for the occasional direction Annabelle gave to Will. She figured Claire’s house was the best place to take everyone, including Trevor, since that was where they always went after a wild night of partying.

At the house, Annabelle retrieved Claire’s house key from her purse and unlocked the door while Will opened all of the doors to the SUV, her friends practically falling out in their inebriated state. She cringed at the sight and the smell of alcohol as she rejoined Will at the car. Together they began carrying her friends into the house, some of them rousing at being jostled, others never doing more than breathe.

Annabelle lightly touched Trevor’s cheek as he lay peacefully in one of Claire’s guest beds, sighing. She wished she could be as oblivious to the night’s events as he was. She turned off the light and shut the door behind her as she exited the room, joining Will down at the front door.

“What about Parker?” Annabelle couldn’t resist asking as she followed Will out of the house. She locked the door behind them with Claire’s key and then slid it back under the door, as they always did.

“What about him?” Will asked flatly, leading the way back to the car. He unlocked the passenger door and pulled it open, leaving it open for her as he crossed to the driver’s side.

She climbed in, shutting the door behind her as he slid into the driver’s seat. “Well… We can’t really just leave him there, can we?”

His hand, which had been about to put the key in the ignition, fell onto his leg. She looked over at him, startled, and was taken aback by the look of pure disbelief and disgust on Will’s face.

“Are you serious?” he finally asked. “He tried to rape you at the party last week. He tried to rape you while you were on the phone with me. And you still want to give him a ride home?”

She flushed and tugged on the short skirt, trying to pull it down. Suddenly, the car felt too empty, and she felt too exposed. “I-I just…” she trailed off, not sure how to answer. “Well… We came together. I feel bad just abandoning him…”

Will roughly stuck the key in the engine and gunned it. “You mean that you don’t want your friends to be mad that you left one of their pack behind,” he corrected flatly.

She looked up at him, horrified and embarrassed. “N-no!”

He shot her a dirty look. “You can do whatever you want when I’m not around. But you called, and I’m not going to sit idly by or passed out in a passenger seat while you get attacked. So you’ll have to keep up appearances on your own time.”

She scowled. “Trevor drank too much—everyone did. It’s not their fault—“

“Open your eyes, Belle!” Will snapped. “They’re not just drunk. No drunk person is that bad off. Get me?”

She fell back against the seat, stunned as his words sunk in. Her mind spun. “It… it must have been an accident…”

“An accident?” he repeated in disbelief, glancing over at her as he finished pulling out of a curve. “All of them except you?”

“Well… Your brother would never—“

“Don’t,” Will warned coldly. “I know the signs.”

She frowned in confusion, shaking her head. They couldn’t be talking about the same person, could they? Trevor would never do drugs. It wasn’t like him. He wasn’t a big partier. Will had to be mistaken. “No. You’re wrong. He has a two-drink limit usually, and he just went overboard tonight. Everyone did.”

Will gaped at her, then suddenly laughed and shook his head. As he pulled up to a red light he threw the stick shift into the proper gear with a practiced ease and fell back against the seat, still smiling and shaking his head. “Unbelievable. You really are unbelievable.”

She pressed her lips together unhappily. “I’m not naïve. I-I know that some of my friends do drugs sometimes. It’s just, I don’t think Trevor, of all people, would do them.”

Will let out a soft laugh and shook his head again, fluidly moving the shift into the correct position as the light turned green and he accelerated. He said nothing else, though, and while she was grateful that he had stopped talking bad about Trevor, she wished he would say something. Anything. She just wanted to talk to him.

But he didn’t. And she didn’t know what to say to him. Even with the heavy silence between them, when he pulled the car up to the street between their houses, she climbed out slowly, a bit reluctant to leave his company.

“I’ll wait,” he said, leaning against the side of the hood closest to her house. He crossed his arms over his chest and nodded at her house. “Go on.”

She paused in front of him, hesitantly meeting his dark eyes. “Thank you, Will. I-I can’t tell you how much I appreciated you… being there.” She lightly squeezed his arm in a gesture of thanks, but he didn’t move. She smiled up at him, but the expression broke and she turned away, her shoulders slumping as she headed up to her front door.

The night had been a complete and utter disaster.