Blind Faith (15 page)

Rick Porter was another good reason he shouldn’t have allowed the kiss happen, or go on as long as it did.
 
He’d been friends with Rick since grade school and they were both on the football team, but none of that would make any difference if Rick found out.
 
Kissing someone else’s girl was bad enough, but it was doubly contemptible to betray a friend.
 
At the time, Will believed it was just a stroke of bad luck when Rick chose that particular moment to come trampling through the woods with a few other couples
.  N
ow he realized Rick hadn’t accidentally stumbled across them; McKinley had arranged for him to meet her there.

Rick was livid, and he had every right to be.
 
“What the hell is going on here?”

McKinley made a small sound of protest when Will griped her arms and pried her off of him, but not two seconds later she was cozying up to Rick.
 
She tried to laugh it off, insisting that Will was like family and had only been giving her a brotherly kiss, but Rick wasn’t buying it.
 
Even in the dim light afforded by the small flashlight McKinley was
holding, he could see the glaring accusation in Rick’s eyes.
 
Obviously he felt Will was to blame so it would have been useless to point out that McKinley had instigated the kiss.

“Come on, Rick,” McKinley was all wide-eyed innocence, “it was one harmless little kiss.
 
Honestly, it didn’t mean a thing, did it, Will?”

“No, it didn’t,” he replied, and meant it.
 
“It was a mistake…”

“You got
that
right, Duncan,” Rick growled.
 
“What the hell is your problem anyway?
 
You don’t have enough girls panting after you so you have to go after mine?”

“Hardly.
 
Look, I’m not interested in McKinley so let’s just chalk this whole thing up to really poor judgment on my part and call it square, okay?”

McKinley instantly bristled.
 
“Stop talking about me as if I’m not here.
 
And don’t tell me you weren’t
interested
.
 
You seemed pretty damn interested when your tongue was halfway down my throat and your hands were all over my ass.”

Rick clenched his fists but to Will’s surprise, his anger was directed at McKinley.
 
“You let him do that to you?”

“No, I didn’t
let
him,” she lied through her pearly white teeth.
 
“I was just so shocked he would kiss me like that, it took me a minute to recover.”

Will had only been mildly irritated by the situation she’d put him in up until then, but his temper flared at such a bold face lie.
 
Admittedly, he could have put a halt to the kiss as soon as it happened, so he wasn’t completely blameless.
 
By the same token, if McKinley hadn’t contrived to get him out
t
here alone, he would have been hanging around with Anthony and Sawyer and enjoying himself at that moment instead of defending himself to an irate boyfriend.

Rick’s narrowed eyes turned to Will, his voice shaking with anger.
 
“Are you saying Duncan forced you?”

“I didn’t force her to do anything,” Will denied heatedly.

“No, I…I wouldn’t exactly call it that either,” McKinley said in a convincingly tremulous voice.

Will snorted in disgust.
 
Just what the hell was she playing at?
 
“Oh, for God’s sake, stop acting like the innocent victim.
 
The minute I mentioned Serena’s name, you were all over me.”

McKinley’s face twisted into an unattractive scowl
,
but Rick interjected before she could come back with another ridiculous insinuation.
 

“
Serena?
 
What does she…ah, I get it now,” he said with a derisive smile.
 
“Little sister is off limits so you go after McKinley.”

“That will be the day,” McKinley’s scowl deepened.
 
“Serena couldn’t compete with me in her wildest dreams.”

“Well
,
she must have something Duncan wants,” Rick shot back.
 
“Obviously he prefers the shy, virginal type or he
would
have his eyes on you all of the time instead of your sister.”

Will couldn’t believe he was still standing there listening to such ludicrous accusations.
 
“You
are
so far off the mark it’s not even worth arguing about.”

A malicious smirk tipped one corner of Rick’s mouth.
 
“If that’s true then it shouldn’t bother you to know I saw Serena slip into one of the make
-
out caves with my brother
,
Randy
,
and a few of his friends.
 
Tough luck, Duncan.
 
Looks like someone else will be giving your girlfriend a bit of
hands on
instructions in making out tonight.”

Rick and his buddies laughed as Will stomped off,
al
though he’d heard McKinley harping at them for doing so.
 
He was fuming because of the lies that had flowed so easily from her lips and the uncomfortable situation she’d put him in.
 
He was also embarrassed to discover that Rick
had
notice
d
how he watched Serena because it undoubtedly meant all their friends knew too, including Anthony and Sawyer.
 
They probably thought he was some kind of cradle robber who preyed on young, innocent girls, and that didn’t sit too well with him.
 
But even worse than the anger and embarrassment was the unexpected jealousy that sliced through him when Rick told him about Serena and Randy.

He tried to shrug it off.
 
So she was making out with a boy her own age, there was nothing wrong with that.
 
He’d been making out with girls since he was twelve years old and certainly hadn’t wondered if any of his partners were too young to be French kissing or getting their bodies felt up by his roving hands.
 
It shouldn’t have bothered him that Serena was doing the same thing half of the other girls
t
here
were
doing tonight.
 
Except it did; it bothered him a lot.

It was unreasonable to be jealous, and beyond unreasonable to feel as if Serena had somehow betrayed him.
 
Maybe it was because he’d always felt there was a silent agreement between them; a secret attraction she was too shy to act upon and he was too honorable to pursue until she was a little older.
 
Now he realized it was all in his mind, and that made him feel foolish, which in turn stoked his simmering anger.

He started
to
wonder if he
had
been wrong about Serena, and if maybe she was more like McKinley than he thought.
 
After all, he’d never seen her hanging around with Randy Porter or any of his friends before so she couldn’t possibly know him very well.
 
At least not well enough to duck into one of those caves and make out with him.
 
As he emerged from the woods, Will had only one thing on his mind; finding the first available
female to cuddle up with so he could drive the image of Serena kissing Randy out of his head.

He spotted Jennie Barkley standing near
 
the fire pit with a few of the other cheerleaders and headed straight for her, his steps purposeful.
 
He spent the next hour
 
with his arm draped around Jennie’s slender shoulders while she giggled and batted her eyelashes at him, but when she started dropping hints about exploring one of the caves, Will’s thoughts circled back around to Serena.

With an apologetic smile, he left Jennie standing there looking as if she could spit nails and took a slow walk around the clearing where most of the other
kids
were gathered.
 
He was beginning to feel a bit edgy, especially after he approached Serena’s group of girlfriends from her track team and discovered she hadn’t been with them all night.
 
None of them had seen her and said they assumed she’d chickened out and stayed home, which meant Serena
must have
arrived before they’d gotten
t
here.

Will rubbed the back of his neck, his muscles tense from the irrational certainty that something was seriously wrong.
 
If her friends were convinced she
was
too shy to even show up tonight, it didn’t make any sense that Serena would sneak off with Randy within minutes of her arrival.
 
Will ground out an oath under his breath.
 
What an idiot he’d been to believe Serena was anything like McKinley.
 
If she really had gone into one of the caves as Rick
claimed
she had, then it was because she hadn’t known any better.
 

The sight of Randy Porter milling around the fire pit brought him a few moments of relief before more unsettling thoughts started crowding into his head.
 
If Randy was here, where was Serena?
 
His imagination invoked all kinds of horrible scenarios; Randy making a pass at her while Serena tried to ward off his advances and then escaping from the cave in tears…or being left behind to try and find her way back out again.
 
That one gnawed at his gut as he studied Randy and the three other boys he was with.

Whatever they were discussing as they guzzled down their beers had
them on edge; it was evident by the nervous
fidgeting and
occasional
furtive glance over the shoulder.
 
It took Will several minutes of observing their strange behavior before he realized that at some point or another, each of them in turn had cast those
anxious
glances in the same direction.
 
His eyes moved past them, up a small incline where a well worn path led to one of the caves.
 
Was Serena still in there?
 
Was that why they kept looking back at it, because they were waiting for her to feel her way out of the darkness?

It was a cruel trick to play on anyone, but to do it to someone like Serena who had probably mustered every ounce of courage she had just to be here was downright sadistic.
 
He borrowed a flashlight and headed across the clearing, firing a heated glare at Randy Porter as he passed by.
 
The guilty look that stole across Randy’s face confirmed his belief that Serena was still inside the cave.
 
Will could almost feel her fear as he made his way up the hill and into the mouth of the cave, but the fear became more tangible after calling out her name several times with no reply.

He panned the flashlight from side to side, the boulders in his stomach growing heavier and heavier with each step he took.
 
Most of the time, the couples who ducked inside the caves stayed relatively close to the entrance so they wouldn’t get lost, but something kept propelling him forward until he’d gone so deep he started to wonder if she
had
made it out after all.
 
Somehow the darkness seemed thicker, making it
im
possible for the beam of the flashlight to penetrate more than a few feet in front of him.

Will had just about made up his mind to turn back when something on the outer edges of the light caught his attention.
 
He inched closer, an icy chill seizing his heart when his eyes finally made sense of what he was seeing.
 
At first, he thought it was dirt that covered her thighs
,
but as he drew nearer and realized it was dried blood, Will’s gut wrenched.
 
He dropped to his knees, terrified that the lack of response when he croaked out her name meant she was dead.
 
Unshed tears stung his eyes as he leaned over Serena, desperate to discern some sign of life.

“Serena?”
 

He shone the light on her face but there wasn’t so much as a flicker of movement.
 
He reached out and gently brushed the tangled strands of hair from her face, his heart silently breaking when he felt how cold her skin was.
 
She must have fallen in the dark and hit her head on one of the larger rocks, but how had the blood gotten on her legs?