Silver (29 page)

Debris was littered across three lanes of traffic.

Glass and metal and blood.

So much blood.

She had never seen someone bleed that much. Red and thick and oozing out of Boomer from multiple wounds. So much blood that she could smell the tangy copper scent near the wreckage. Enough that she gagged and threw up the entire contents of her vodka-coated stomach into the grass.

And she saw it all through slow motion. The wreck. She could hear the screeching tires, the crunch as Boomer’s car had flipped over and over again, the split second of silence after it was all over. Then, it all sped up. Rushing to the car, speaking to the other woman involved in the accident, Pace’s face when he’d realized who was in the car.

The police and ambulance appeared a few minutes later. Pace had wanted to get Boomer out of the car but was too worried about moving him and making it worse. Stacia had seen every line of concern on Pace’s face. Every moment would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Boomer was carried out on a stretcher, heading to the local hospital. He was alive but barely. Stacia didn’t speak doctor lingo, but she’d seen enough hospital dramas to know that what they were saying was not good. Tears pricked her eyes as true fear slammed through her.

Boomer had not been a good person. He had done bad things in his life. Bad things to both her and Pace. But he didn’t deserve to
die
.

“Ma’am? Ma’am?” a police officer said, trying to signal her attention.

She was staring vacantly at the ambulance doors as they hoisted Boomer into the back and then slammed the doors shut. They took off as soon as the doors were closed.

“Excuse me, ma’am.”

“Yes?” she said hoarsely. Her throat was dry and rough from vomiting. “Sorry.”

“We just need to get a statement from you about what happened.”

Stacia nodded. “Okay.”

She rattled off the story to the cops. She told them everything—from the argument between Pace and Boomer at Posse to the car chase and the accident. She didn’t know how it could help now, but she gave everything she had.

“Was TJ drinking at the time?” the cop asked.

Stacia shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Was Pace drinking at the time?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“No? Or you don’t think so?” he asked.

Stacia bit her lip. “He came straight from the football game, but I wasn’t with him before then.”

“So, you don’t know?”

“I don’t, but he didn’t act drunk. And he drove just fine.”

The cop looked down at her statement again. “You would say, carrying you out of the nightclub is not acting like he was drunk?”

Stacia frowned. “Yes.”

“Okay. And you said you were drinking?”

“Yes. But I wasn’t driving.”

“Got it. I think that will be all for now. Thank you for your time.”

“Wait,” Stacia said. “You’re not trying to say that this is anyone’s fault, are you?”

He smiled kindly. “I’m just trying to get the facts. Do you think it was anyone’s fault?”

Stacia shook her head. “No, I don’t. I think it was a horrible accident.”

He nodded. “It was horrible. I’m sorry you had to go through this. We’ll contact you if we need anything else.”

“Okay,” Stacia said.

As soon as they were finished up with the police, Pace wandered back over to Stacia. His hair was a mess from running his hands through it. He looked completely disheveled. No one would guess he had just won a huge football game to secure the team going into the playoffs. He just looked like a scared, lost boy.

“Hospital?” she asked.

He nodded without comment.

“You okay?”

“What do you think?” he asked.

Stacia reached out and held his hand. “This is not your fault.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“You didn’t have to.”

He frowned and looked away. Then, he pulled her into him and rested his chin on her forehead. He took two deep breaths and then shuddered against her. All the fear he had been keeping bottled up released in that moment. He breathed in her hair and shook again.

“I don’t know what to do, Stacia.”

“Go to the hospital. We should be there. It will help,” she told him.

“You’ll be with me?”

She didn’t have the heart to say anything else. Their relationship was on the rocks, but with Boomer’s life in the balance, she just nodded and followed Pace back to the truck. The moment was too perilous, and the ground under Pace’s feet was too shaky to say anything else.

They drove to the hospital in silence. After rushing into the emergency room, they were told to sit and wait since Boomer was in surgery and they were trying to reach next of kin.

Pace looked shell-shocked, and Stacia had to walk him to the nearest chair to wait it out. She managed to convince him to call Coach Galloway, and he appeared fifteen minutes later.

“What happened? What’s going on?” the coach asked.

Stacia briefly explained to him what had happened in the accident. “He was taken in an ambulance. We got here a few minutes ago, but he’s in surgery. They’ll probably want to talk to you to contact his family.”

Coach Galloway nodded and then reached out and put his hand on Pace’s shoulder. “How are you holding up, son?”

“Fine, sir.”

“You don’t look fine. You look as white as a ghost.”

Pace nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Coach Galloway frowned. “We’ll get through this together. I’m going to go talk to the staff and find out what I can. Keep it together until then.”

“Yes, sir,” Pace said, straightening a bit, as if he needed an order to get through this.

The coach was gone for a long time as he tried to give a nurse all the information that he had about who to contact for Boomer. But he didn’t get all that much more information about Boomer’s condition than Stacia had.

Slowly, over the course of the next hour, other players started to trickle in. Then, the information spread like wildfire, and Bryna and Trihn showed up with Eric in tow.

“Stacia,” Bryna said, pulling her into a hug, “what happened?”

Stacia shook her head. She saw the bad turn and heard the screeching tires and the crunch of his car all over again. “It’s bad. I just…it’s bad.”

“How’s Pace?”

“Barely holding it together,” Stacia told her. She glanced back over to Pace, who had his head in his hands and hadn’t acknowledged anyone else in the room. “I think he blames himself.”

“That’s ridiculous. It’s not his fault.”

“You weren’t there. It was terrible, Bri. And Pace was the one who found Boomer in the car. He’s not going to forget that anytime soon. Neither am I.”

“So, what can we do to help?” Trihn asked. She rested her hand on Stacia’s shoulder in that comforting way that only Trihn knew how.

“Nothing. We’re just waiting for him to get out of surgery, hoping it all goes well.”

Bryna nodded and then wandered off to go talk to Pace.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Trihn said. “Coffee maybe?”

Stacia shook her head. “No. I’m just waiting.”

Coach Galloway came back over and sat by Pace and Bryna. Stacia joined them and listened to their conversation.

“I contacted Boomer’s brother, Shawn, and I’m flying him out to be here,” Coach said. “The first flight out of Mississippi is in two hours. He should be here by tomorrow morning. I hope it’s enough time.”

“You did what you could,” Pace said.

“I just hope it’s enough.”

Coach got up to go talk to some of the other concerned players, and Stacia took his vacated seat. Pace reached his hand out, and Stacia took it. Bryna frowned at the pair of them, but when she met Stacia’s eyes, she didn’t say anything.

A few minutes later, the doctor appeared. Everyone rushed over, but the doctor urged them all away and said he would only talk to Coach Galloway. But Pace wouldn’t budge, and he wouldn’t let go of Stacia’s hand.

“It’s fine,” Coach said. “They were involved in the accident.”

“Very well,” the doctor said. He looked them square in the eyes, and Stacia swallowed back tears. “He didn’t make it.”

Pace’s grip on her hand tightened, and a gasp escaped her lips.

“I’m sorry. We did everything we could.”

Tears streamed down Stacia’s face without warning.
How could life be so short and so cruel?
There was no reason for this. None of it made sense. She had wanted him to pay for what he’d done, but she had never thought this. No one deserved to die this young with this much talent and this much potential. He could have gotten help. He could have changed his ways. He could have grown up to be a good man, a good husband, a good father. But that had been taken away from him. Everything had been taken away from him.

Tomorrow, his brother would show up, and Boomer was already gone. Shawn would walk into this hospital, and the brother he had known his whole life would be missing. A piece of him would always be missing.

And all for what?

Stacia didn’t know. She didn’t know why Boomer had followed them out of Posse tonight. She didn’t know why he had taken that turn like that. She didn’t know what he had been thinking when he acted so recklessly, and now, she would never know.

Pace drew her into his chest as sobs escaped her, and she couldn’t stop. This could have been anyone. It could have been her brother. It could have been her father. She could get a phone call, and poof, her life would be turned upside down.

Perspective—that was what death gave you. The realization that your problems were small and your life mattered. To live every day as if it were your last. To realize that, no matter how hard it got or how rough you had it, time was short. Cherish what you had and let go of the rest.

After that announcement, time seemed to just slip away. The hospital cleared out. Soon, she was just left with Coach Galloway, Pace, Bryna, and Eric, who had agreed to let Stacia stay at their place. At first, she had been hesitant. Pace needed her. But, truly…she needed some time to herself. She needed time to think about what had happened and not in a crowded club or a crowded hospital room. She needed silence and space. Now, she just had to tell Pace that.

Pace shook hands with Coach, and Coach walked over to talk to Eric.

“Hey, can I talk to you?” she asked.

“Yeah, I guess.”

She took a deep breath. “I’m staying with Bryna and Eric tonight.”

His pale blue eyes lifted to hers, and all they held was pain. “You’re still leaving?”

“I need some time to clear my head and think about tonight.”

“And you can’t do that at our place?”

“
Your
place,” she corrected. “And, no.”

“Why not?”

“Because you hurt me and someone we know just died,” she whispered.

“That’s why we should be together. We were the only ones there. We were the only ones who saw it happen and dealt with the aftermath. We should deal with this together.”

“We’re not the only ones grieving though,” she told him. “As much as I’d like to forget everything else that happened, I have to deal with this. Our problems are nothing compared to what happened with Boomer. But I can’t work it all out with you when I’m still upset.”

“Fine. Let’s talk about it now then.”

“Pace, you are in no place to talk things out with me,” she said gently.

He didn’t seem to care though. “Yes. I said that I was going to make you fall in love with me and then dump you at the last game. I said it after Marshall showed up at the end of last semester because I was angry and an idiot. It was a joke. A bad one. But I was
never
going to follow through with it.”

“I don’t want to talk about this tonight, Pace. I just want to go home and sleep.”

“We’re already talking about it. I would never do something like that to you.”

“Then, why did Madison think it was going to happen?” Stacia asked.

“The guys that I made the joke to spread the word that it was happening.”

“And you…what? Just let them think that it was going to happen?”

“No. Well, yes. But not really. Shit, Stacia, it was a joke. I was never going to do it. The guys thought I’d been planning it the whole time, but I hadn’t been. I hadn’t even thought about it until—”

“The USC game,” she finished for him.

“Yeah. When you were off, I thought that you might have heard about it, and by then, I was so head over heels in love with you that I didn’t want you to find out something like that. I didn’t want you to know the worst of me.”

“And, now, I do. So, you can understand why I’m going to need some time to process this.”

“Do you really think I was planning this all along? That I was planning to humiliate you tonight?”

Stacia wanted to believe him so bad. But she had given him her trust, and he had broken it. Again. Despite all that had happened, she just didn’t know what to believe. “How do I know that you weren’t? How do I know you’re not just covering your tracks now that you’ve been caught? Or…now that you’ve fallen for me?”

“I’m not,” he insisted.

“That’s not good enough for me. Why didn’t you just tell me?” she pleaded.

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Because you knew that I wouldn’t trust you. You knew that what you had done was wrong, and instead of fixing it, you let it fester. You let someone else tell me. You humiliated me
anyway
.” She took a calming breath and glanced away from him. She hadn’t wanted this to turn into an argument, but it always seemed to with Pace. “I just…need some time alone. I’m going to stay with Bryna and Eric. And you are
not
going to contact me.”

“Stacia—”

“Good night, Pace.”

With a heavy heart, she turned and walked away. Bryna wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

Stacia was sure that she had heard everything. But that was fine. Life was too short to keep secrets.