“Senior year.”
“Yeah, anyway, I wanted her to break up with Tuck. I figured, after some time had passed, I’d tell him I was interested in her, and then she and I would start seeing each other in public.”
The more Jace pressured her, the more anxious she became about it. She told him she was afraid Tucker would be angry. He kept telling her he thought she was wrong, but the truth was, she hadn’t been honest about what was happening between her and Tuck.
“It got to the point where I was the one who was angry. I started asking her if she was sleeping with both me and my brother, which she insisted she wasn’t.
“What she didn’t tell me was that Tuck had started talking about the two of them getting married. It wasn’t until I overheard Tuck talking to our dad about it, the night before Thanksgiving, that I realized how serious he was.
“I called Rosa while Tuck was still talking to my parents, and I gotta tell you, I was pissed. She kept saying she was afraid to tell him. In hindsight, I should have told him myself.”
“In hindsight, maybe you shouldn’t have gotten involved with your brother’s girlfriend.”
“In hindsight, I should become a monk or somethin’,” he laughed. Bree didn’t.
“Anyway, Tucker was spending Thanksgiving with her family, which was another thing I was mad as hell about.”
Rosa called Jace after Tucker left their house, and told him how upset he’d been after talking with her father. She begged Jace to meet her. It hadn’t been easy to come up with a reason for him to leave on Thanksgiving, but he managed. There was a creek that ran behind her house, and they’d been meeting there when the weather was nice enough. It was warm that day, so that’s where they met.
“It took her quite a while to talk down my mad. Even then, I felt as though Rosa was playin’ us. I had decided to end things with her myself, and I guess she sensed it, because she started begging me not to break up with her, tellin’ me how much she loved me, and all that. I was walkin’ her up to the house, and she wrapped herself around me. She was kissin’ me like her life depended on it when we saw somebody drive up to the house. We were far enough away that whoever it was couldn’t see us, but she was quick to realize it was Tucker’s truck.
“She went running up to him, begging him to listen to her. My heart was breakin’, I gotta tell you. When I heard her scream for him to wait, and then got in his truck, I realized she loved him all along, and that she’d been lying to me. Maybe it was worse than that. Maybe she didn’t love either one of us.”
Bree was still huddled under the blanket, but her face had softened.
“Tucker told me bits and pieces about what he remembered of the accident. He also told me that she’d been trying to tell him that she was in love with someone else.
“That near broke my heart. That she’d been trying to tell him. The
other thing he said was that she hadn’t told him who it was before he lost control of the truck and it rolled. She was killed on impact, and Tuck was in pretty bad shape.”
Jace wiped at his tears. Bree reached out from under the blanket and put her hand on his arm.
“After Tucker recovered, things got worse.”
Jace told her that Tucker was hell-bent on finding who the other guy was, and that everyone believed, if he found him, he’d kill him. He’d never seen Tucker act that way, and worse, he could feel the rage inside his brother. There was sadness too—they were both feeling it—but Tucker didn’t know how much of the sadness was Jace’s.
“I never told anyone it was me. No one. Until today, I never told anyone any of it.”
“I’m the first person you told this story?”
“No, I gotta be honest. You’re not.”
“Did you tell Blythe?”
“God, no. It wouldn’t be my place to tell Blythe.”
He told her that, when he woke up before dawn, he could feel Tucker’s anguish, and that was why he got up and left. He told her about meeting up with Tucker at the scene of his accident—the one with Blythe—and how the pieces fell into place.
“Tucker realized it was me that night. That’s why I look the way I do. I tried to get him to talk to me, but he wasn’t havin’ any part of it. I guess beatin’ the shit outta me was more what he was after.”
“Can you blame him?”
“No. Can’t say I do.”
“Now what?”
“I have no idea. I don’t know what’s goin’ on with him and Blythe. I don’t know if he’ll ever want to talk to me again. I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.”