Ditched

Ditched By Amity Hope


Chapter 1

“They’re not here. They’re for sure not in here,” Felicia moaned. She looked up from her purse. Her expression was worried and apologetic.

Dani let out a little huff of annoyance. Her gaze met mine. She looked as frustrated as I felt.

“No keys were turned in,” Lanna informed us as she crossed the parking lot to complete our quartet of friends.

“I knew I should’ve driven,” Dani muttered under her breath.

“I’m sorry,” Felicia said, yet again. She turned to me. “I’m really so sorry. Holly, this was supposed to be a fun night out for you and I ruined it.”

“Well,” I said with a shrug, “these things happen.” I was trying to keep any possible snippiness in check. I didn’t point out that these types of things happened more to Felicia than the rest of us combined. She already felt bad enough so I tried to keep my attitude upbeat. “We’ll just have to call someone.”

My fingers of my right hand went to my left wrist. Collin had given me a dainty diamond tennis bracelet a few months ago. It was a gift for my nineteenth birthday. I almost never took it off because he was insistent that I wear it. However, when I was nervous, I found myself twisting it around and around. I was doing that at the moment. I wasn’t too pleased with our current situation.

We looked around at each other, all of us realizing that with the four of us here, we really had no one left to call.

Felicia’s worried gaze swept the parking lot. We were downtown Chamberlain. It was late; the club we’d gone to was closing down. Everyone had already exited the club and even the parking lot was emptying out. Standing around wasn’t the best idea.

“We could call Max?” I suggested. While Max was a close friend, he wasn’t a female, and therefore, he hadn’t been invited to our girls’ night out. My last night going out as a single girl, actually.

“No,” Lanna said. “Not Max. I don’t want to bother him.”

I frowned, wondering why not. I was sure he wouldn’t care.

“I could call my mom,” Felicia suggested.

“No, I’d really rather not be picked up from a club by a mom in a mini-van. Sorry, but no,” Lanna told her. She emitted a little growl of defeat. She turned to me. “Fine. Call Max.”

“It is kind of an emergency,” Dani pointed out. “I don’t think he’ll mind.”

“Or if he does,” Lanna said sweetly, “he’ll be too polite to admit it.”

Lanna was right. But so was Dani. This late at night we could be facing a potential emergency. Our options were limited and Max, I knew, would come to our rescue. I glanced around the gloomily lit parking lot. Even though the club had emptied out, there were a few clusters of people standing around but not many. As people headed to their cars, there was less by the minute. I’d rather get out of here sooner than later. I rooted around in my purse for my phone.

Max answered sounding groggy. I was glad he’d answered at all. When I explained our predicament, he assured me he was already getting dressed and would be on his way.

He arrived less than fifteen minutes later. I spotted him first. His new, white Dodge Charger—last year’s graduation gift—was hard to miss. It rolled down the street, pulling off to the side as we made our way to the edge of the parking lot.

He was just in time, too. The lot had entirely emptied out. Even though I wasn’t alone, I was wondering what might be lurking in the shadows. It was a gloomy, late night scene that I didn’t want to be a part of. The only thing missing were sirens. I was sure if we’d been left standing there much longer, they’d be blaring in the distance, completing the effect.

My group of friends thanked him as they tumbled into his backseat, one by one.

“Thank you,” I said as I slid into the front. “I owe you.”

“No problem.”

He was wearing a plain white t-shirt and sweats with a pair of flip-flops. He looked like he’d rolled out of bed, which, I knew he had. Max Campbell was a big guy. He’d been a linebacker on our football team. Despite his size, he was one of the most easy-going guys I knew. He gave me a smile. His bronze hair was rumpled but his light green eyes showed nothing but humor. He was as aware as the rest of us of Felicia’s innate ability to bring bad luck.

“Where to, ladies?”

I turned around so I was facing the backseat. I could barely make out my friends’ features. “Who wants to be dropped off first?”

“You can take Felicia and Dani back to their apartment. Holly, you can stay with me. It’s closer than having Max drive you all the way out to your parents’ house,” Lanna offered. She had been gone for nearly a year and had just returned to Chamberlain for the summer. She was staying at her mom’s house, for the time being.

I had been staying with my parents for the past week as well. The semester had just ended and the dorms had closed. I was marrying Collin this weekend. For the week in between, I’d moved back into my old room.

For the most part.

I hesitated. “I think I might go to Collin’s.” I glanced at Max. “If you don’t mind? Is it too far out of your way?”

He shrugged. “No. It’s fine.”

“You should just come to my house,” Lanna pressed. “It’s bad enough we already drug Max out of bed. It’s late. He shouldn’t have to drive us all over town.”

I turned back to Max. He looked pretty ambivalent to me.

“Lanna, you can just stay with us,” Dani offered. Lanna shot her a look that I wasn’t sure how to decipher. Apparently, Dani didn’t know either. She shrugged. “Or not.”

“Fine,” Lanna said. She turned back to me and sighed. “Max can bring you to Collin’s.”

“Okay?” It came out sounding more like a question than anything. I wasn’t sure why it felt like I was getting her permission. I turned back around in my seat.

Max glanced over at me. “Did you have fun tonight?”

“Yeah, I did.”

He winced and said, “I can’t believe you’re getting married in two days.”

“I can’t believe you’re leaving for California in two days.” I slumped down in my seat. “I’m really going to miss you.”

He scoffed at that. “You’ll be too busy to miss me.”

“That’s not possible,” I assured him.

Max had been one of my best friends for years. He’d moved to Chamberlain from California during the middle of our sophomore year. His parents had just gotten divorced and his mom had been hired as head of the radiology department at our local hospital.

Halfway through our freshman year at Chamberlain University, he’d decided he wanted to move back to Sapphire Bay. His grandparents owned a vineyard and Max was interested in taking it over someday. Why he thought he had to leave as soon as summer began, I didn’t quite understand. But it was his decision. He was sticking around for my wedding but heading out immediately afterward.

I could hear my friends chatting in the backseat, though I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Whatever they were talking about, Lanna didn’t sound very happy. I glanced over my shoulder and they all stopped talking to look at me.

“What?” I demanded.

“Are you sure you need Max to drop you off at Collin’s?” Lanna demanded.

I narrowed my eyes at her.

“It’s fine, Lanna,” Max said.

They shared a glance in the rearview mirror and I frowned. “Am I missing something?”

“No,” Max was quick to say.

I turned in my seat to face Lanna again. I could barely make her out in the darkness.

“It’s just…nothing.”

It didn’t feel like ‘nothing’. It felt like she and Max were keeping something from me.

“Thanks so much for coming to get us Max,” Felicia said.

I realized we had just pulled up to their apartment building.

“Anytime,” Max answered as he pulled up to the curb.

“I’ll just stay here, too,” Lanna decided. “I’d rather sleep on their lumpy couch than have to deal with Gerald.”

Gerald was her mom’s new husband. She’d remarried while Lanna was out of the country this past year. Lanna didn’t like Gerald in the least and she didn’t expect this husband to be around too long.

She leaned forward and squeezed my shoulder. “See you tomorrow,” she said quietly.

“Thanks for tonight,” I told the three of them. “I had the best time!”

“Are you excited to leave?” I asked Max when we were on our way again.

He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Well, I’m not excited to see you go,” I admitted.

Max and I had spent a lot of time together over the years. We had run our school’s poor excuse for a newspaper. Funding had been cut years ago. We’d been reduced to an on-line version. While I was all for being more environmentally friendly, there was a definite drawback. It seemed that if students had to actually seek out the paper, they weren’t going to bother to read it.

When views dropped to deplorable levels, most of the staff bailed. No one wanted to put in the time. Not if they weren’t going to be read. Our junior and senior years, Max had been the only one who faithfully stayed by my side. I was forever grateful because a paper without a photographer truly wouldn’t have been a paper at all.

“Do you really think you’ll miss me?” he asked. He shot me a glance and a smirk to go along with it.

“Absolutely. I’ll be counting down the days until your visits.”

He gave me an apologetic smile. “You know I probably won’t be coming back until Christmas.”

I did know. I didn’t like it at all.

He let out a low laugh. “Don’t look so glum. We’ll keep in touch.”

“Promise?” I demanded.

“Promise,” he assured me.

“That’s funny,” I muttered, more to myself than Max. I could see Collin’s house in the distance. It was a small rental his parents paid for. His roommate had moved out because after this weekend, I’d be moving in. “Neil must still be around,” I noted. I wasn’t sure who else the second car in the driveway would belong to.

Collin was a year older than me. He’d had a roommate over the school year while he attended Chamberlain U. But Neil was supposed to have moved out at the end of the month. May was over and we had crept into June.

As Max pulled up beside the unfamiliar car, I frowned. Hanging from the rearview mirror was a pair of pink fuzzy dice. Who even bought fuzzy dice these days? But the bigger question was why they were pink?

I sat there for a second, feeling a little flustered.

“You okay?” Max asked.

I nodded. When I turned to look at him, his brow was creased with concern.

“Of course,” I said. “I’m just not sure who’s here. Maybe someone just gave him a ride home.” He’d gone out with his friends, too. Unlike my friends and me, he and his friends had fake IDs. Chamberlain was a college town so when the guys went out, they blended right in. It wouldn’t be a big surprise if he’d needed someone sober to drive him home.

I just wondered who the “someone” was. And why they weren’t coming back out of the house.

“You don’t recognize the car?” he asked.

I shook my head. Maybe a friend’s girlfriend had given them all a ride home. That made sense. More sense than anything else.

“I can go in with you. Just in case,” Max said.

I shot him an offended look. “What’s that supposed to mean? There is no ‘just in case’.”

Just in case what?

He had the decency to give me a sheepish look. “Right, I know. Well…I’ll see you later. Call if you…you know…need anything.”

“Thanks again,” I said. I reached over to give him a quick hug. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“’Kay,” he said as I got out.

I dug the key out of my purse. Collin and I had known each other since we were toddlers because our families were friends. He and I had dabbled in dating throughout high school. We’d had an on-again off-again relationship that was usually more on than off. Since we were both now in college, things had gotten serious. We’d been engaged since winter break. He’d given me a key to his house just last month.

I made my way to the front steps in the beams of Max’s headlights. Once I had the key in the lock, the door opened and I had stepped inside, it occurred to me how odd it was that no lights were on. If someone was just dropping Collin off…shouldn’t the lights be on?

I fumbled for the light switch that was just inside the entry way. In the short time it took me to find it, I realized that whoever was here was not simply dropping Collin off. Judging by the sounds floating down the hallway, they were doing a whole lot more than that.

In that instant, too shocked to feel much of anything, I stormed down the hall, thinking for a split second that maybe someone was staying in the spare room that Neil had abandoned. As I walked past the open doorway, I realized that was not the case.

The sounds were definitely coming from Collin’s bedroom. If it hadn’t been so late, if I hadn’t been so clueless, so trusting, so…naïve, I would’ve realized that those noises were exactly what I thought they were.

But I just knew they couldn’t be.

I pushed Collin’s door open, flipped his light on and was greeted by a sight that would undoubtedly be emblazoned into my subconscious until the day I died.

“What the hell?” Collin cried.

I barely registered the shocked look on his face as he glanced over his shoulder at me. I squeezed my eyes shut and backed up. Or more accurately, I stumbled backward. I’d seen more than I ever wanted to see. I had no idea who he was with—only that he was most definitely with someone. She’d been buried beneath him and I hadn’t seen her face.

Not that I needed to see her face. I’d already seen plenty.

I slammed into the wall behind me. My heart was pounding and my limbs had gone numb. I was vaguely aware of the absence of tears. Apparently, they were too shocked to appear.

“Holly! HollyHollyHolly!”

I heard Collin saying my name. I also realized I had already taken off down the hallway. My body and mind were flooded with a deluge of emotions. More than anything, I just wanted to get away. I stumbled down the short hallway, back into the entryway. It was a small miracle I didn’t trip and fall over my own feet. Black spots were dancing in front of my eyes, making it difficult to see. My heart was thrashing and I threw my hand to my chest, as if that alone would make it settle down.

Collin grabbed me by the elbow; somehow he’d managed to yank some boxers on.

“Holly, stop!”

I shook my head, but my throat was too constricted to force any words out. My breathing had become too fast and too irregular. I was afraid I was going to add to my humiliation by passing out cold on the floor.

“Let go of me!” I managed to grate out. I couldn’t look him in the eye as I futilely tried to pull from his grip. My gaze landed on an object on the floor. A pair of objects actually. Something I had missed when I first walked in. They were white cowboy boots, blue and green gemstones adorned the sides.

Tacky! was the thought that went through my mind. I latched onto the sight of them, trying to push the sight of the other right out of my head.

“Collin,” I ground out again. I squirmed in his grasp. “Let go of me! Right now!”

“No, no…we need to talk,” he said. His voice was shaking. I finally dragged my gaze up to his. His emotions seemed to match my own…too many to identify. “It’s not what it looks like!”

I laughed at that. It was sarcastic and sharp and it tore at my throat.

“Oh, I think it was. There’s really no way you can explain that away! I mean, what the hell?!” My voice cracked and broke. Damnit! I was going to cry. I desperately didn’t want to do that. Not when I realized whoever she was, she was just down the hallway. The thought made me sick and more than a little panicked.

“I just…” he started. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! It’s just that it hit me tonight. I’m getting married in two days and then after that, I’ll never be able to be with another—”

I cut him off. “After that?! We’ve been together for years! We’re engaged! Our wedding is this weekend. You shouldn’t be able to be with anyone else now, you jackass!”

“I know,” he hung his head. “I just…I had too much to drink.”

“Don’t you even dare try to blame it on that!” I realized how loud, how high-pitched my voice had become. I was hit yet again with the realization we had an audience. I jerked myself backward. I was determined to get out of Collin’s grip because now, finally, the tears were starting to fall. They were gushing down, making up for lost minutes.

He didn’t let me budge. His fingers dug into my skin. So instead of throwing myself backward again, like he’d expect me to do, I dropped my body down. I grabbed the only thing within my reach. One of those damn boots. I’m not proud to say I smacked him alongside the head with it. That act was the single most violent act of my life. In that moment, I didn’t bother to care.

He made a grunting sound at impact. His fingers slipped from my arm and I lunged toward the door. I yanked it open, flew out and crashed into something hard.

“Hey, I’ve got ya,” Max said as he pulled me into his arms.

“What the hell is he doing here?!” Collin demanded.

I felt Max tense as I cried into his shoulder, in the darkness of the early June night. I felt my knees give out but Max held me up, crushing me to his chest.

“I think the real question is what the hell is going on,” Max said.

“What’s going on is none of your damn business!” Collin growled at him. “Holly, get back in here so we can talk! Please!” He sounded desperate, frantic.

I shook my head without looking at him. Was he serious?! When that…that…tramp was still there?! The very thought set free another torrent of loud, painful sobs.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Max said.

I barely heard him over the sound of my tears.