My One Good Thing Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  EPILOGUE

  MY THANKS

  For my utterly awesome daughter Enize

  To whom I owe so much more

  Copyright

  Cover image: ShutterStock.com

  Copyright 2017 Nicky Wilson

  First Kindle Edition published 2017

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including recording, scanning, photocopying or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the author

  Disclaimer: The persons, places, things, and otherwise animate or inanimate objects mentioned in this novel are figments of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to anything or anyone living or dead is unintentional.

  CHAPTER 1

  Danny and Sam / Saturday before graduation

  He lay on his back, staring at his feet, feeling the buzz. The night had reached its tipping point. A little earlier than usual; but the party was dull.

  He lifted his eyes from his feet, and surveyed the crowd across the pool.

  Most of them only had a week to go. After high school graduation they would be on the downhill side of their lives. He couldn’t wait. Stanford. People with more than parties and pointless high school gossip on their minds. Daniel Summers was not going to be looking back.

  His last high school party. He sat on the ratty foldout couch he’d dragged out of the pool house and onto the lawn. Across the pool, they were dancing and drinking and he could see Michael Drake bouncing up and down, laughing his head off.

  This was Mike’s party.

  Mike was on the chess team with Danny. Had been on the chess team. But he was funny and smart and had been hiding behind the class clown act for years now. It worked: he was one of those weird high school social success stories that wasn’t really meant to happen. He liked to be called Mickey Dee. Danny wasn’t a social success story.

  But he knew most of the crowd well, or at least, he knew their histories. The cove was a small place to grow up in. They’d all been at school together since Kindergarten.

  A movement in the crowd caught Danny’s eye. Erin raised her hands above her head, the red cup he knew she hadn’t refilled all night gracefully swinging without spilling a drop as she moved her hips to the music. She stood out from the crowd, and then, for a moment, she raised her eyes to his, as if she could feel his gaze like a physical thing. She blinked and smiled at him, shaking her head ruefully at his position.

  He grinned back at his twin, and tipped his cup at her. Erin was the only reason he came to these parties. Their parents would not let her go alone — despite that she was eighteen and actually eighteen minutes older than he was.

  They were two halves of a whole, but their parents didn’t understand they were also opposite halves. That they moved in different circles. One, the head cheerleader. The other, captain of the chess team.

  She pointed across her body, to her left, brows raised. He didn’t look across the crowd to where Sam was.

  She turned back to the blond at her side, lifting her chin and laughing at something Sara said. They were best friends and even he had to admit Sara was a nice person. Unlike some of the bitches in their golden circle. He studied the half circle of eager jocks surrounding his sister. What a bunch of hormone-overloaded losers.

  He tilted the cup and found it was empty. Time for more. Or maybe something harder. It was his last high school party. And he had reached the tipping point. That spot in the evening when you had to make a decision about how to play the rest of the night.

  He couldn’t help it. His eyes wandered across the dancers on the other side of the pool. Stopped the moment he caught the unmistakable flash of Sam’s head, the glossy deep red of her hair loose in the light. He could always find Sam in a crowd. No matter that she was so small.

  She was still with Ballard. He’d been hanging over her all night. The big jock was looking to get lucky. He probably would. Sam was like that. Erin called her “that slut” and Daniel had heard much worse. He felt gutted. Every time it happened.

  But the little junior was nice. At least, that’s what he thought. She had a nice smile, and she used it a lot.

  Right now she looked a little sick. Daniel frowned as Ballard looked over her shoulder and nodded at two guys Danny didn’t recognize standing one side of the courtyard. Ballard leaned forward and whispered into Sam’s ear, and she seemed to giggle. Her movements were uncoordinated and when she slipped slightly Ballard put his arms around her. His head was close to hers, his mouth moving. Talking.

  Daniel found he was tensing.

  Relax. Forget about her. So what if she smiled at him in the halls and was an interesting biology lab partner, according to Erin, who had unexpectedly defended her that day Sara called her stupid.

  His eyes were pulled back to watch Ballard move off with her. He seemed almost to be carrying her. Off upstairs to get lucky.

  Ignore it, Daniel told himself. You’re a high school nerd. He’s a jock. She’s the slut. Stick to the parts in the play. For just one more lousy week.

  Then, as Ballard passed his two buddies, he signaled. They put down their cups, looked around, and followed him into the house.

  So fucking wrong.

  He didn’t realize what he was doing until he was inside the big house and halfway up the stairs. He was fast enough to catch sight of the closing bedroom door. Just the feet of the strangers slipping in after their friend. He was frightened for her. She was nice. An insecure kid who hooked up with random guys at every party he’d seen her at in the last year.

  The adrenaline sizzled with the booze and he stared at the bedroom door. If it was locked, he was fucked, but then he also knew it couldn’t be. Mickey’s parents saw to that. He wiped his face. The beer was beating in his head. He was fucked if it was unlocked. Shit, he was plain fucked no matter what.

  Time...

  It could’ve been Erin.

  He had no time for this. He stepped up to the door, and pulled out his phone. Dialed 911. Pulled at the door handle. Stupid. He pushed it. It opened.

  He held up his phone.

  She screamed. Soundlessly.

  She couldn’t lift her head. Couldn’t move. The panic was blocking her breathing. She tried to shake her head. They had her blouse open, her bra was loose and she could feel hands moving up her legs.

  No. Her throat cramped.

  Not this.

  The door banged open, the light from the hallway pouring in. He stood, one hand up.

  “You have six seconds to get out or I hit the button to dial 911,” he said.

  It was a tableau of shock. A split second of frozen time. It would be in her memory forever.

  “Six.”

  Ballard spoke. “Get the fuck out of here. This is a private party.”

  She couldn’t move her head, couldn’t see Ballard, couldn’t see the others. She thought there were three, maybe four of them.

  “Five”

  A shadow moved into the corner of her eye, she strained, and thought it might be one of the others. Not Ballard.

  “I don’t know what you gave her, or if she’ll remember, but this is finished. It only works if nobody else knows,” the shape in the door said. She could hear the shake in his voice. “Four.”

  “Joe, we better go.” Somebody else. “Just forget it, okay. No harm, no foul.”

  “Join us?” Ballard was mocking, but half serious too.

  “Three.”

  “I’m leaving. Shit, this was wrong anyway.” A third voice, and one of the shadows moved out of the corner and into the light. She still couldn’t say who they were.

  Ballard moved last.

  “Two.”

  “You’re fucked, you know that,” Ballard growled and crashed his shoulder into the silhouette as he moved past it.

  The silhouette gasped and then doubled up, but Ballard kept moving.

  “The bitch isn’t worth the fuss anyway. You can have her. She won’t mind a nerd right now. And trust me. She won’t remember.”

  The door slammed and then he was scrabbling for the key. There wasn’t one.

  He swung, searching the room, striding out of her vision and then coming back with a chair. He jammed it up against the door handle and then sank to the floor, his back to the door, his knees to his chest, his face in his hands.

  With the door closed, she could see better. The d
im bedside light was the only one in the room. When he stretched out those long legs and uncovered his face, she saw Daniel Summers.

  The panic subsided.

  Then he stood up, wobbled slightly, muttered, and disappeared towards the foot of the bed. She heard noises from the en-suite bathroom. He was retching. Water ran.

  “Idiot.” Talking to himself. She couldn’t hear the words.

  She closed her eyes for a moment. If she wished hard enough, maybe she could be someplace else when she opened them. She heard him bump into the room, smelt toothpaste. She opened her eyes. Still here. She could feel the fear coming back, the darkness rising in her.

  He was looking down at her, his eyes on her chest, and then flicking up to her face.

  “Sam? Sam? Are you okay?” He looked hesitant, worried. “I’m sorry Sam, I’m a bit wasted.” He waved away from him, to where she couldn’t see. “Feeling a little better now though.” He wiped at his face.

  “You need a doctor,” he said. “The hospital. We need to get you to the hospital.”

  The panic rose again.

  He hesitated, the phone in his hand. She looked fearful, panicky, her eyes were blinking rapidly, rolling from side-to-side as if she was trying to tell him something.

  His phone’s messaging tone blipped. He ignored it.

  She could understand? He’d been talking to himself.

  “You don’t want to go to the hospital?” She was pale as a ghost, the faint freckles that powdered her skin standing out. But her eyes were sharp and bright. She scrunched her eyes up and rolled them up and down.

  “You think you’re going to be okay?” She nodded with her eyes but he hesitated still. She had drugs in her system, that was plain to see. He found his eyes wandering again and pulled them sharply back up to her face.

  She was gorgeous.

  “Okay,” he said, more as an experiment to see what she would do than because he was convinced not to call for an ambulance. Her face relaxed, the fear leaving her. He put his phone into his pocket.

  The tone blipped again.

  It had to be Erin. She must have felt something.

  “Um, listen, I know you’re probably not going to remember anything in the morning but I have to fix this.” He reached around her, lifting her, scrabbling for her bra strap and the panic rose briefly in her eyes again until he fumbled the hooks together. Pulling at the straps, trying to dress her without touching her.

  Her eyes were wide, so close to him he could see the tiny ring of green right on the inside of her iris. To everyone they looked completely gray, the color of the high tide water over the granite at Little Beach. But he had always known it was there. He’s seen it before, at the party all those years ago. He fumbled at the buttons of her blouse. Closing them up.

  “Better.” He stepped back. “Less distracting.”

  She was staring up at him again, blankly, and he wondered what she was thinking.

  “Maybe I should get somebody else up here.”

  Who would Sam want here? A girlfriend. It needed to be a girl. It should be a girl. He couldn’t think of anybody. She was always with guys. She seemed never to have a friend who was a girl. He thought of Erin and his phone blipped again. She would know what to do. She was the practical one.

  “A girl? My sister, maybe?”

  Sam’s eyes were telling him no. “It’s okay now, you look decent, I can just say I found you like this.” This strange one-sided conversation made him feel moronic. She didn’t want people to see her like this. He got that. But she wouldn’t remember anything in the morning anyway.

  He sat down, back to the door, and pulled out his phone.

  It blipped again. Erin.

  “I have to text my sister,” he told her. “She’s going nuts. Then I’m going to search for date rape drug stuff. If I don’t like what I find, I’m calling for help, okay?”

  A slight frown crinkled his brow as he concentrated on the phone, there was a straight line above his nose that kept appearing and re-appearing. She was very familiar with that line. She’d shared a lab desk with his sister for the past year, and she had an identical concentration face.

  His brown eyes were Erin’s eyes too — deep dark chocolate brown that did nothing to hide feelings. She knew Erin better than she knew Daniel. They were seniors and she was a junior and her social circles crossed paths with Erin’s because the popular guys came looking for Sam at parties.

  But Daniel was one of those socially awkward hard workers. The honors student, the valedictorian, the highest GPA in the school. He was going to Stanford. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would walk up to her and suggest a dance, meaning a whole lot more.

  He groaned and then stretched and she found she could turn her head now and look at him.

  “You know, you got really lucky tonight. If I hadn’t been so wasted I might not have had the guts to pull that off.”

  You would have done it anyway. She knew, just knew it deep down in her somewhere. Nobody looked at her the way Daniel Summers looked at her when he thought she wasn’t watching.

  He waved the phone at her. “I’ve told Erin to go home without me — she’s with Sara and Ben, we came with them, so it’ll be okay. We were going back to Sara’s place for the night anyway.”

  He tapped the phone again. It was one of those new, touch screen smart phones, really expensive.

  “Fuck there’s some horrible shit out there.” He was talking to himself now, muttering. He stood up and came over to the bed, staring down at her. The mattress buckled as he sat down, her body rolling slightly towards him. They touched, hip to hip as he perched beside her. He fumbled for her wrist, trying to find her pulse. She felt the warm pads of his fingers on her hand.

  “Not so easy when its for real,” he said, pushing her sleeve back. He stopped then, stopped dead, and she knew what he had seen. The reason she was wearing long sleeves on a clear, warm, summer night.

  He looked back up at her face and opened his mouth, then shut it again. He gently put the hand back down again, then hesitated before reaching for her neck, to where her pulse fluttered the skin in the hollow of her throat. She felt his two fingers on her pulse, could feel her heart beating against him. She stared up at him as he watched the glass of his phone, his lips moving as he counted.

  He dropped his hand.

  “Ninety six,” he said. “That’s not good. It’s too fast.” He watched her face and then said: “Why? Why do you do it Sam?” He waved his hand at the door. “You’re so beautiful and — and special. They’re creeps.”

  He sounded lost. She knew he meant the last party. And the party before that. She felt his eyes on her each time. She knew he wouldn’t understand.

  She found the sadness in her again. It squeezed from the corner of her eye, she found it trickling down her cheek and he startled, reached for the tear, wiping it gently, so gently she barely felt the flit of his finger on her face. Nobody had touched her like that for years. Nobody. Then her eyes filled and she could feel the tickling spiderwebs on her face as the tears rolled down her face. She couldn’t help it.

  He fumbled with something beside the bed and then he was gently wiping her face, the tissue rougher than his finger tip had been. The touch burned her. Seared her heart.

  “Sam, it’s okay, I’m here Sam, you’re safe Sam. It’s going to be okay.”

  No it wasn’t. It hadn’t been okay for a long time. Nothing had. But one day it would be better.

  She lifted her hand but it was too heavy and it dropped again but the movement had him startled and he glanced at it.

  “You can move?” he said, relief in his voice and she found the strength to move her head, or thought maybe she managed to move her head, she couldn’t be sure, and he reached for her hand and then across her body for her other hand.

  “Can you squeeze my hands?” he asked urgently. “It says I must check.”

  She concentrated on her fingers, wrapped around his, and found she could. He nodded. She wanted to hold on forever. It had been so long.

  “Better,” he said. “I still want to call someone. What if you die in the night?” The cold coils of panic spread up her throat again and she opened her mouth. She didn’t want to die. Not now. One day it would get better. She had promised herself.

  He seemed to see it in her face though, and reached up and brushed back a stray strand of hair from her eyes.