"A Hollywood game," he explains when I ask him.
I shake my head, not following.
He releases my hand long enough to run his fingers through his hair. "When I came back with the sodas that night and found you gone, I thought I'd pressured you. That you were angry at yourself. At me. And that you bolted."
"Oh, Wyatt. No."
"I was kicking myself. I couldn't believe I'd been such an insensitive prick. I knew how inexperienced you were. How strict your family was. It should have occurred to me that you couldn't handle it. At the very least your first time shouldn't have been at a huge party with dozens of kids roaming around the same damn house."
"No," I whisper again. I want to tell him how wrong he is--how wonderful he made me feel--but he rushes on.
"I felt like the world's biggest ass. Or at least I did until I went back to the club and overheard that bitch Grace and her idiot friends."
"Why? What did they say?" I couldn't imagine what Grace could possibly say about me leaving. But when Wyatt tells me--about the game, about winning points for sleeping with a celebrity kid--I'm pretty sure I'm going to throw up.
"That bitch," I snap. "That goddamn bitch."
Beside me, Wyatt actually laughs.
"What?" I snap, irritated by pretty much the whole world right then.
"It's just that if I hadn't already realized that Grace was full of shit, hearing you curse would convince me."
"Oh." I lift a shoulder. "Yeah, I still don't do that very often. I'm kind of a freak that way."
"A refreshing freak," he says, erasing the rest of my foul mood.
Wyatt's grin fades, however, and he turns serious again. "My dad killed himself that day."
"What?" His shocking words chill me to the bone.
"I found him--I found him hanging in his office."
My chest clenches. "Wyatt, no." I swallow as tears prick my eyes. "I heard that he committed suicide, but only long after the fact--I didn't hear much about anything those first months when Griff was in the hospital. And I heard he died in LA. So I never thought--I mean, it never occurred to me it happened around the time Griff got burned. Oh, God, Wyatt. I'm so sorry."
"He just couldn't take it anymore," Wyatt continues." And I thought--" His voice breaks. "Fuck. Kelsey, I should have known better. I should have known you better. But all of that mess got into my head. I let myself believe Grace's nonsense."
He exhales loudly, and he's squeezing my hand so tight I have to fight the urge to pull it free.
"I think that, instead of being angry with my dad, I let myself be angry with you," he continues. "And I let myself believe all of it. That everything my dad thought--about the world not valuing him--was true. I'm sorry," he says. "I'm so sorry."
"It's okay," I say, my heart breaking as I clutch his hand tighter. "You had to believe it. It was the only way you could handle it."
He frowns thoughtfully as he looks at me, then turns his attention back to the road. "Yeah," he says softly. "That's pretty much it."
We drive in silence for a while. Me, trying to think of something to say to make it all better. Him, lost in whatever memories our conversation has dredged up.
About the time we hit the valley and the terrain levels out, he turns to me again. "Even when I was angry, I thought about you all the time. I didn't want to, but you were in my head. You got under my skin, Kelsey, in a way no one else ever has.
"I've dated," he continues. "And God knows I'm not a monk. But seeing you again . . ."
My breath hitches, and my heart flutters at his admission. "Me, too," I whisper.
For a moment, neither of us says anything, and as the silence hangs heavily, I reach for the radio to start the CD again. "Wait," he says. "Do you have any Aerosmith? Maybe 'Walk This Way'?"
I peer at him through narrowed eyes. "Why?"
"Because we're here." He slows the car and pulls onto the shoulder. We're on a sun-bleached road somewhere on the outskirts of Lancaster, and there's really nothing to see.