Breathless In Love

“I was a bully. I was a thief. I could hotwire a car like that.” He snapped his fingers, a loud, sharp sound in the quiet. “Still can. I probably would have gone to juvie when they put my dad in jail if it hadn’t been for Susan and Bob. Daniel’s parents took us all in when we needed it. Except for Matt.” He shrugged, pressed his lips together, the shadows taking over his beautiful face. “He never moved in officially, he was just underfoot all the time.”

When he talked about Susan and Bob, his voice was reverent, rife with emotion and meaning. The Mavericks, Susan and Bob—these people were the most important in the world to him. No wonder they were bonded beyond blood relation. She didn’t know his friends’ stories or anything about their lives, but if they’d come to Daniel’s parents, she now knew they must have seen things as bad as Will had.

She wanted so desperately to reach out. But Will remained untouchable. “They must be good people.”

“The best. I should have accepted what they offered me long before I did.” A wisp of wind could have carried the soft words away, but other than the rustle of sheets as Will moved, there was only the sound of his voice. “But I didn’t stop doing the things my dad taught me.” His fingers bunched in the sheet as he pulled it higher. “I loved speed. I loved drag racing. I loved cars. And I loved stealing them. I was one of the Road Warriors. And I thought they loved me, too. But I didn’t have a clue.” He turned his head, finally looking at her, one half of his face in light, the other in darkness. “That’s what I did to Susan and Bob. To the people who tried to help me. Gave them heartache and worry.”

“I’m sure they understood, Will.” But she realized the useless platitude in that even as she spoke the words. Words that did nothing to ease his pain.

“I left the Road Warriors when I was sixteen.” He paused, stared at the far bedroom wall as though he could actually see his life playing before him. “Or maybe it’s better to say that they ceased to exist.” Harper stretched out her hand, across the wide chasm of mattress between them as he told her, “That day with Matt, I at least learned I didn’t want to be a bully. And I never did that shit again. But the Road Warriors were different. The lowest on the totem pole always got picked on. That was our way of life. It happened to me, it happened to all of them. Until you weren’t the lowest anymore.

“We had this kid who wanted to be one of us more than anything. He was like a gnat, always buzzing around. And he couldn’t do anything right. His name was Eddie, and they called him Eddie Munster after that old TV show.” He shook his head at the wall, still watching the movie in his mind. “They didn’t let up on Eddie. It was freaking endless. But he kept coming back for more. You just wanted to tell him to give up. It was never gonna happen. He’d never be one of us.” Even his voice changed as he spoke, dropping letters off his words. “But ya gotta understand how badly you need a family out there. You’ll take any kind of abuse just to belong.”

She closed her eyes, held her breath as her heart broke in two for him. That was Will himself, the kid who’d taken any abuse just so he could be a part of them. She wanted to cry for him, scream for him, take care of him, never let him hurt ever again.

“Eddie couldn’t drive for crap. And someone got the brilliant idea of giving him his absolute last chance to make it with us. They wanted to set him up in a car, let him race, and watch him crash. ’Cause they were all sure he’d crash. I saw Eddie talking to himself, a pep talk, psyching himself up. He was gonna do it. This time he’d get it right.” He gritted his teeth. “Light—we called him that because he had the lightest fingers and could pick anything out of any pocket—he stood there telling the Munster he had shit for brains and he couldn’t do it, he was nothing, would always be nothing, and this would prove it. On and on. And I watched. All I did was watch.”

He stopped speaking, then stayed silent so long she thought the story had cost him his power of speech.

“He lost it,” Will finally said in a soft voice, one she could barely hear. “The way they all thought he would. Sideswiped another car. That was it. His last chance. And he was out. I can still hear them laughing at him. Until he made them stop.” He closed his eyes, shuddered. “I guess he snapped. He turned the car around, and he plowed right through them.” His tanned skin had gone white, as if the memories were draining all the blood from him. “He killed Light and two other guys. Then he slammed into a wall head on. Killed himself, too.”

She couldn’t manage to hold in her gasp at Will’s revelation, but less than a heartbeat later, she needed him to know, “You didn’t bully him. You didn’t do anything.”

He looked at her then, and she swore she could see him shutting off the movie screen in his head. “That’s exactly right. I did nothing. I let them drive him into the ground. I never stuck up for him the way I did for Matt. Matt was an outsider, an innocent. Eddie, he wanted to be one of us. So I let them haze him to death. Literally. And he took the guys I thought were my friends with him. If I’d done something long before then…”

“Could you really have stopped it? Or would they simply have beaten on you like they did when you stood up for Matt?”

He shook his head sharply. “It doesn’t matter. I never tried. A crime of omission is still a crime.”

She understood then why he drove so fast. It wasn’t so much a love of speed as it was a way to run from his memories, his past. “And you’re still racing after all these years,” she said aloud.