Elizabeth Finn - Unforgiven

After he put the Band-Aid over the injection site, he froze, and his hands dropped to his lap. She could see him staring at the side of her face, but she didn’t have the nerve to look at him. He stayed staring at her, and Bailey started trembling again. The tears she’d been fighting started pricking her eyes again, and she fought with every ounce of herself to keep them hidden from him, but it was no use. When he exhaled a deep breath, he opened his mouth, and her tears fell as she listened to him speak. “I never wanted to hate you. Not ever. You did this.”

Bailey didn’t bother apologizing; she didn’t bother trying to say anything at all. It was impossible with her tears streaming, and the breath she held captive in her chest was the only thing keeping her silent tears from turning to sobs of anguish. She would let him stick her with a thousand needles dipped in alcohol before she allowed herself to feel the pain of his words again.

Nurse Marie pushed the door open at just that moment, took one look at Bailey before her eyes flashed to Darren’s slumped figure sitting in the chair in front of her, and Bailey bolted. She snatched up her bag, grabbed her old hoodie that she’d abandoned on the exam table, and she pushed past Marie on her way out the door. Bailey ignored Marie’s concerned voice trailing after her, and she kept her head down until she’d reached the lobby of the hospital. She used the pay phone to call her mother, and she nearly hung up on her after she told her she was ready to be picked up. Bailey found a tree to stand under in the parking lot, and she waited. It wasn’t near the pick-up zone, but Bailey didn’t want to be any closer to the hospital than absolutely necessary.

This was the hell Bailey had been dreading, the hell she deserved. She was in it, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever get back out of it. Could she live like this for the rest of her life? Taunted and haunted, always running into her ghosts? She wanted to run away, but she couldn’t. Her mother needed her here, and there was just nowhere for her to go. She was trapped in this place, doomed to suffer for her sins.

Six Years Before

“Your turn, Bailey.” The look in Darren’s eyes was taunting, challenging. Bailey was very used to that look, though it had admittedly changed to something a bit different than it was when she was a child. He was flirting. He couldn’t possibly be flirting. There was no reason. His girlfriend-of-the-moment was sitting right beside him, and she was that knock-out type that left little room in the world for the likes of Bailey. Not that Bailey was ugly. She wasn’t, and she wasn’t so filled with self-loathing to try to convince herself otherwise, but she was only twenty-one, and this girl, Trinity if she’d remembered correctly, was older than that. Hell, Darren was twenty-four, and Bailey felt little more than a child compared to them.

“Stop stalling, Bay.” Jess beside her nudged her in the side. She wasn’t stalling, she was aiming. This was a serious, albeit slightly inebriated, game of quarters, for crap’s sake, and Bailey intended to win. That was actually not likely at all, but she was making a show of it anyway.

The shot glass was a good two feet in front of her on the granite countertop of the large kitchen island they were sitting around. It was a beach home in Galveston. They’d rented the stilted home for spring break, and they’d somehow made it half a week without completely trashing it. Of course, the group of fifteen or so other college kids in the living room was threatening that at the moment. How the four of them had managed to bail on their own party was a mystery. They’d just found their way into the kitchen, abandoning the group in the other room. A few they knew from school, and they’d rented a place a few houses down. Others they literally had no idea where they’d even come from. They could apparently smell a party from a mile away and come running, but their small group of four wasn’t concerned with anything but their game of quarters. It was Olympic level at this point after all.

Bailey aimed, she held her quarter between the pad of her thumb and her middle finger, and just as she dropped her hand to bounce the quarter toward the shot glass, she caught Darren winking at her. The quarter was sent bouncing from the island over to the kitchen counter and into the sink. Shit. That wasn’t going to win her any medals.

“Asshole,” she muttered to Darren as he started chuckling.

“Drink.” He was pinning her to her place, waiting with that taunting look in his eyes that he was just far too good at giving her. She poured a small shot, likely only a third of a shot, of whiskey. She threw it back with a grimace. Her shots were getting smaller and smaller with every loss.

“Who’s up next?” Jess slurred the question. She was fading fast, and she was starting to sway in her chair on the side of the island.

“My turn, sis.” Darren stood and rounded to the end of the island where Bailey still stood. His hand found her lower back, waiting for her to step back over to the side by Jess, and Bailey nudged him with an elbow in his gut. He laughed as she stumbled her way to the sink to collect her quarter.

“Does anyone think we should kick that room of party crashers out before they tear this place apart?” Darren spoke as he started lining himself up with the shot glass.

Bailey turned toward him as she fished her quarter from the garbage disposal. “Yes. I don’t really wanna pay extra just to have this place cleaned.” Jess was too busy staring into her shot glass, and Trinity was too busy checking her makeup in a compact to care about what they were talking about.

She watched as Darren set his quarter down on the countertop and walked to the doorway that separated them from the living room, which they’d kept closed to shut out the commotion and the loud sound from the stereo. He opened the door and stepped through.

“Get out! Everyone out! Cops are at the front door!” he hollered to the room, and as his complete lie sank in, the group of party crashers could be heard hustling, panicking, and running out the sliding door to the large deck that spanned the beach side of the house. They scurried down the steps as Bailey laughed, and when Darren finally walked back in, he was chuckling. He took a quick bow as Bailey applauded. Jess pulled her head up from her somewhat drunken stupor and mumbled something incoherent. She was almost down for the count. “I think it’s time for you to hit the sack, little sis.” Darren walked to Jess, helped her up, and supported her weight as he led her upstairs, tossing over his shoulder. “I’ll be back to kick your ass in a minute.”

Trinity wasted no time abandoning Bailey and the disastrously messy kitchen, and Bailey started collecting shot glasses and bottles of liquor. When Darren walked in on her as she was standing at the sink rinsing glasses, he walked up behind her, snatched three shot glasses from the counter that she’d just rinsed, and grabbed her hand, pulling her back to the island. “We’re not done.” She smiled. She couldn’t help it. He might not be her boyfriend, but he was damn good at making her wish he was.

He was wearing his worn and faded University of Arkansas T-shirt, and she trilled with warmth as he filled their glasses, placed the empty one between them, and took the abandoned quarter from the island countertop. He was across from her with the corner of his lips pulled up seductively. “What do you think of Trinity?” He watched her carefully.

“You can’t really want me to answer that.”

“Sure I can.”

“How long have you been dating?” She wasn’t ready to give him an answer.

He smiled. “Nice avoidance. Month and a half maybe. Now answer my question.”

“Fine. Vapid. Beautiful. Very beautiful . . . Vain.”

“Fun-with-words. I like this game. So what words would you ascribe to me?”

“I don’t like this game.”

“Really, Ms. English major? I know you do.” He was taunting again. “I make this one, you play the game.” He held his quarter up again, but he refused to look away from her.

He’d been kicking her ass all night. Did she really want to do this? Hell no. Was she going to? Of course. “Fine.”

Ping.

She knew that was going to happen. “So?”

“Umm . . . nice?” He smirked. She was holding out, and he knew it.

“Come on. You can do better than that.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine . . . Moral, decent, honest, kind, caring, toying, playful, laid back, smart.” Brilliant was likely closer to the truth. “Handsome.” Stunningly handsome in fact, but there was no way she was going to admit that. “Very handsome.” It came out whisper quiet. He watched her impassively, but the deep and steady rise and fall of his chest said something else. She wasn’t sure what, but there was more to his calm reaction than he was showing her. “Your turn.” She still couldn’t seem to get her voice to rise higher than a whisper.

He finally broke his expressionless stare and smiled gently at her. “Perhaps another night. I might get myself in trouble tonight with this game.” He winked as he snatched the quarter from the glass between them. “Drink.” Now he was whispering.

She wasn’t sure what to make of his words. Was he afraid he’d hurt her feelings by describing her? Or was it something else entirely? She wanted to think it was something else entirely, and there were times . . .

As she took the quarter from his outstretched hand, she tried to let go of her curiosity. If she pushed it, he wouldn’t give in. She knew him well enough after years of being his sister’s friend to know that much.