The Fiercest Heart Read online

  And then the seniors were seated and the ceremony began. Haley thought it was somehow very anticlimactic. Thirteen years had just been condensed to a prayer, a song and two five-minute speeches. When they began calling out names, she felt as if the room had become a vacuum. Sound faded, until everything was a faint echo and the loudest things she could hear as she walked across the stage to get her diploma were the whisper of her own breath and the thunder of her heartbeat in her ears.

  Then it was over, and flashbulbs were going off everywhere. Just in case, she kept a permanent smile on her face. Suddenly the air was full of red caps and tassels, and she was jumping up and down and laughing. Charley Samuels grabbed her around the waist and hugged her hard.

  “We did it, Haley. We did it!” he cried, and then danced off through the crowd, laughing all the way.

  Haley’s glance went straight to the bleachers. Her mom and dad were already standing and looking for a way to get out. She wouldn’t let herself care that everyone else was meeting up with their parents for pictures. She didn’t need a picture to remind her of how little they cared. That was already branded into her soul.

  As for her, she was off to Retta’s house. Retta’s parents were throwing a graduation party, and Haley had a twelve-o’clock curfew. She intended to say hi to everyone, then ditch the party and spend every spare moment she had tonight with Mack.

  * * *

  They were on their way out to the bluff. It was where everyone went to make out, and Haley wanted Mack’s arms around her so bad that she ached. He drove with the windows down and the radio blasting. Her hair was whipping around her face and eyes like crazy, which for some reason made everything funny.

  She was laughing at something Mack said when they suddenly realized there was a car coming up behind them, and coming fast.

  “What the hell?” Mack muttered, as he glanced up into the rearview mirror.

  Haley frowned as she turned to look. Even though she couldn’t see anything but headlights, all of a sudden she knew.

  “That’s Stewart!” she cried, and grabbed Mack’s arm. “I swear to God, that’s Stewart.”

  “Damn,” Mack said. “Couldn’t we have this one last night without drama?”

  “Maybe he’ll go around,” Haley said.

  No sooner had the words come out of her mouth than Stewart began flicking his lights from dim to bright and back again, signaling for them to pull over.

  Haley grabbed her cell phone and dialed Stewart’s phone. He answered on the second ring.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she screamed. “You’re going to cause a wreck!”

  “Tell that bastard to stop the car. Mom sent me after you, and I’m not going home without you.”

  “I’m not going home with you, and I don’t care what Mom wants,” Haley said, and hung up.

  Mack frowned. “If you want to go home, I’ll take you.”

  Before she could answer, Stewart rammed Mack’s bumper.

  “Son of a bitch!” Mack yelled, and fought to keep the car on the road. “He’s crazy. He’s going to get us all killed.”

  Mack started to slow down when Stewart hit them again.

  Haley felt their car starting to skid, and then suddenly Stewart broadsided them. The shocked look on his face told her that he hadn’t meant to do it, but when their car suddenly went sideways, he couldn’t stop.

  The sound was like an explosion, and then they were rolling and rolling and everything went black.

  * * *

  It was the hissing sound and the smell of burning rubber that woke Haley. Her head was hurting. She was upside-down, and couldn’t remember where she was or how she’d gotten there. Then she heard a groan, turned her head to the left and saw Mack. Blood was dripping from his head and his arm and his leg, and she remembered.

  Stewart! He’d hit them.

  “Mack. Mack. You’ve got to wake up!” she cried, then realized his leg was pinned beneath the steering wheel and a mass of crumpled metal.

  “Mack!” she screamed again, but he still didn’t answer.

  Her hands were shaking as she reached for the seat belt, and as she released herself, she dropped down with a thump, hitting her head and shoulder against the roof. After maneuvering herself around inside the confines of the crumpled car, she tried to release Mack’s seat belt, but it wouldn’t budge. He wasn’t moving, and he wasn’t answering her, and she was starting to panic. His leg was still caught, and the hiss of steam and smoke was getting worse.

  The phone. She needed to find her phone to call for help. She’d dropped it back into her purse. But where was her purse?

  “God, oh, God, oh, God, help me,” Haley whispered, but it was nowhere in sight. It was then that she thought of her brother again. He’d hit them! He’d caused the wreck. Surely he wouldn’t have driven away and left them. He would help.

  She crawled out through a broken window and then dragged herself up to a standing position. Within seconds everything started spinning, and she dropped back to her knees, then rocked back on her heels and started screaming.

  “Help! Help! Somebody help!”

  But the night was silent and the road was dark, and there was no one coming to the rescue. Once more she pulled herself upright, and this time she steadied herself against a wheel until the world stopped spinning. When she finally walked out from behind the wreck, the first thing she saw was Stewart’s car, smashed headfirst into a tree on the other side of the road.

  “No, God, no,” she moaned, and started running, stumbling, trying to get to her brother.

  The windows of his car were all broken, and the passenger’s side door had popped open. Haley crawled into the front seat and then fell onto her knees beside her brother. Blood was bubbling from the corner of his mouth, and coming out of his nose and ears.

  “Stewart? Stewart! Can you hear me? Why in God’s name did you do this?” she asked.

  But like Mack, Stewart wasn’t talking. In a panic, she backed out of the car, and as she did, she felt something beneath the palm of her hand. Stewart’s cell!

  “Thank God,” she said, and hit 9-1-1.

  “Stars Crossing Police Department. How may I help you?”

  “God…oh, God…I need help. We had a wreck. My brother and my boyfriend crashed their cars. They’re hurt bad.”

  Suddenly the dispatcher was all business.

  “Who is this?” she asked.

  “Haley Shore. My brother, Stewart, and my boyfriend, Mack Brolin…they’re both trapped in their cars. I can’t get them out, and they’re both bleeding. We’re about two miles west of town on North Hollow Road.”

  “Stay on the line with me, Haley,” the dispatcher said. “I’m going to send ambulances and the police. Don’t hang up while I do that, okay?”

  “Okay,” Haley said, and then started to cry as she ran back across the road to Mack.

  A few seconds later, the dispatcher was back on the line.

  “Are you hurt, Haley?”

  “I don’t know…. I don’t think so. I got out of the car on my own, and I’m walking.”

  “I want you to sit down,” the dispatcher said. “You could have internal injuries. Just sit still and stay on the line with me. Help is on the way.”

  Haley sank to the ground right beside Mack’s door, reached in the window and wrapped her hand around his wrist, then drew her knees up and lowered her head to keep from passing out.

  “I’m here, Mack, I’m here,” she mumbled. “Stay with me. Help is coming.”

  She was starting to crash from the adrenaline surge that had gotten her out of the wreck and across the road, and she could feel herself coming undone. Her voice began to shake, and when she started to talk, it came out in sobs.

  “Haley…talk to me,” the dispatcher said.

  “You need to call my mom and dad,” Haley said. “And Tom and Chloe Brolin. You need to tell them Mack and Stewart are hurt.”

  “We will, honey. Just sit tight. You’ll hear the sir
ens any minute now. Can you hear them yet?”

  In the distance, Haley could just make out the thin, high-pitched wail.

  “Yes. I can hear them,” she said.

  “You’re doing fine, Haley. You’re doing fine. Help is on the way.”

  CHAPTER 2

  When word of the wreck began spreading through Stars Crossing, it abruptly brought post-graduation parties to an end. The emergency room quickly became packed with Haley’s classmates, who had come to be with her.

  Judd and Lena Shore arrived within minutes of Tom and Chloe Brolin and their daughters, and the two couples sat on opposite sides of the waiting room, glaring at one another in stoic silence. Neither couple had spoken to Haley or bothered to ask after her welfare. The fact that she was mobile and alert was enough for them, even her own parents. They didn’t seem to care that she was pale and shaking and covered in blood, or that she had three stitches in her hairline, bruises rising on the side of her face and kept breaking into sobs every time another friend called her name.

  Her best friend, Retta, a short, perky blonde, was sitting with her, running interference every time someone asked too many questions for which Haley had no answers.

  An outpouring of blood donations had come in from friends and families alike, but the boys’ conditions were as yet unknown.

  It wasn’t until Jack Bullard, the chief of police, arrived to speak to Haley that Judd and Lena got up from where they were sitting and moved toward her.

  “Hey, Haley…how you doin’, honey?” Chief Bullard asked.

  She shrugged, her chin quivering too much to answer.

  “I know this is a rough time for you, but do you think you can talk to me for a bit?”

  She nodded

  Bullard smiled, and then sat down in the seat beside her.

  “I need to ask you some questions about the accident.”

  “Okay,” Haley said, and swiped her hands across her face, wiping away tears and smoothing back the tangles of her hair.

  Bullard waited until she seemed to settle, then said, “I need you to tell me, in your own words, what happened.”

  Suddenly Lena Shore pushed forward and started screaming. The rage in her voice was impossible to mistake.

  “I’ll tell you what happened!” she shrieked. “My slut of a daughter was sneaking around with a damned Brolin. If it wasn’t for her, none of this would have happened.”

  The minute the Brolins heard their name being slurred, they were up in the chief’s face and shouting back at Lena.

  “There’s nothing wrong with our son,” Tom said. “Your daughter is the one who kept chasing after him.”

  Haley shuddered and covered her face with her hands. This nightmare just kept getting worse and worse.

  Chief Bullard stood abruptly and put one hand on Tom Brolin’s chest and the other on Judd Shore’s before they came to blows.

  “Shut up!” he yelled. “Both of you. I’m talking to Haley, and unless you were in one of those cars, I want you all to be quiet.”

  Judd cursed.

  Tom puffed out his chest.

  And in the middle of the melee, Haley slowly stood. Something inside of her had finally come unwound. After all these years, she’d had enough. Suddenly the room went quiet as all eyes turned to her. Her words were angry, her own rage evident as her hands curled into fists as she spoke.

  “Just for the record, Mother, not once during the two years Mack and I have been seeing each other did I ever sneak anywhere. Just because you people have issues with one another, that didn’t mean we did. I love Mack, and he loves me. I don’t know what’s wrong between you and the Brolins, and frankly, I don’t care. You people have wasted eighteen years of my life acting like children. You can hate one another…and you can all hate me…if that’s what’s going to make you happy. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care about anything but knowing Stewart and Mack are okay. After that, you can all go to hell!”

  Her mother’s face had gone from pale to purple, her father’s to a dark, angry red. The Brolins wouldn’t look at her, and her classmates seemed to be in shock.

  At that point, Haley turned around to face Chief Bullard.

  “Mack and I were driving north out of town in his car. We were just listening to music and talking when lights appeared out of nowhere in the rearview mirror. All we knew was someone was coming up behind us too fast. When I thought I recognized Stewart’s car, I called him on my cell phone to be sure. When he answered, he began screaming at us to stop, that Mom had sent him to get me. I told him Mom didn’t run my life, and that we weren’t stopping, and for him to go home.”

  Lena gasped, and before anyone could stop her, she lashed out and slapped Haley’s face so hard her lip split.

  Chief Bullard grabbed Lena, but it was too late. “Ma’am, if you do that again, I will arrest you for assault.”

  “She’s my daughter. I can—”

  Haley pushed herself into Lena’s face. Her voice was soft, but her tone was hard and clipped.

  “I’m of age, Mother, and that’s the last time you’ll ever lay a hand on me, so back off.”

  Lena reeled as if Haley had just slapped her back. The fury in her daughter’s face was so virulent, she didn’t know how to react.

  Bullard decided to let the issue go. “Then what happened?” he prompted.

  Haley turned her back on her mother as if she no longer existed.

  “Instead of going home, Stewart accelerated even more and rammed Mack’s bumper.”

  At that point the Brolins gasped and started shouting at Judd and Lena, blaming them for Stewart’s actions.

  Once again Chief Bullard was forced to intervene. Within seconds, he put out a call for two deputies. They quickly arrived, and with orders from Bullard were told to keep the families apart.

  “Now. If I have to calm you people down one more time, I’ll arrest the whole damn lot of you. Are we clear?”

  They didn’t answer and wouldn’t look at him. Once again, he chose to ignore them.

  “What did Mack do when his car was struck?” he asked Haley.

  She shuddered, remembering their panic. “Mack managed to keep the car on the road. The trouble came when Stewart rammed us the second time, even harder. Mack’s car started to skid sideways, and before he could straighten it out, Stewart hit our car on the driver’s side. I don’t think he meant to, but he was going too fast to stop. After that…we started rolling. I don’t know how many times, because I blacked out. When I came to, we were upside-down and off the road, and Mack was unconscious and bleeding badly. I saw his leg was trapped and tried to get him out, but I couldn’t. Then I couldn’t find my phone to call for help. I managed to unbuckle my seat belt and get out. Then I saw Stewart’s car. He’d hit a tree head-on. When I went to check on him, he was unconscious, too. I found his cell phone, and that’s when I called for help.”

  Lena was sobbing loudly. Chloe was weeping without making a sound. Both men were glaring at Haley as if she’d grown horns.

  “It’s ironic. The bitch causing all the trouble is the only one not to get injured,” Tom snapped.

  Haley flinched but didn’t acknowledge the insult, and then, before any more slurs could be cast, a surgeon suddenly came out of a doorway at the end of the hall and started toward them.

  “Is the Brolin family here?” he asked.

  Haley held her breath as Tom and Chloe and Mack’s sisters crowded forward, all talking at once.

  “Is he alive? How bad was it? Will he be able to walk?”

  “Wait…wait…let me explain what we did,” the doctor said. “First of all, he came through the surgery fine. We were able to stop the bleeding and save his leg. He’ll walk just fine.”

  “Thank the Lord,” Tom muttered.

  “But his athletic career is over,” the doctor added.

  “No…no!” his mother screamed, and leaned against her husband. Tom Brolin glared at Haley, then reached for his wife.

  The doctor be
gan explaining the intricacies of the surgery, how many pins he’d had to put in the leg and the muscle damage, but Haley had phased out. All she could think was that Mack was going to hate her. UCLA wasn’t going to happen. His plans for a career in the NFL had ended before they began.

  She dropped into a chair and covered her face with her hands. She heard Retta’s voice, but not what she was saying. All she could think was, Why, God, why?

  Then she heard her mother cry out. When she looked up, another doctor had appeared in the crowd—the one who had operated on Stewart—and he was saying something to her parents.

  “No!” Lena screamed, and dropped to her knees. “No, no! Not my beautiful boy! If someone had to die, why wasn’t it Haley? I never wanted her. Why couldn’t she have been the one to die?”

  Everyone in the room gasped, then turned to stare at Haley. Even her classmates were stunned by Lena Shore’s words.

  Haley froze. God…oh, God, oh, God. Stewart? Dead?

  Judd spun, and before anyone could stop him, he yanked Haley up by the arm and began beating her with his fists.

  “Daddy! No, Daddy, no!” she screamed, then doubled over, trying to block his blows by covering her face with her arms.

  When she dropped to the floor, he fell on top of her and began pummeling her with every ounce of strength he had in him.

  It took both deputies to pull him off.

  “Lena is right! If someone had to die, why wasn’t it you?” he roared.

  Haley crawled to her knees, then pulled herself up. Blood was pouring from her nose and mouth. She was too dazed by the assault to even answer.

  Judd Shore was still cursing and crying as the deputies dragged him out of the hospital.

  A nurse came to Haley’s aid and led her away, leaving Chief Bullard to see that Lena Shore was taken home. All the way out the door she kept screaming at God, angry that he’d let Haley live and taken her boy instead.

  Haley found herself back on a gurney. Her stitches had to be replaced, and another three added. By the time they took her to X-ray, one eye was nearly swollen shut, and it hurt to open her mouth. When they finally finished working on her, it was after midnight.