Blind Faith (32 page)

He wanted to ask if Serena had shown up yet but they left before he could figure out how to make it sound like a casual question.  Once they’d taken off in search of females, Will strolled around for awhile, occasionally stopping to talk about the game and celebrate their victory.  A good portion of the kids were drinking alcohol, beer mostly, and some of them were getting pretty rowdy.  His eyes scanned the crowd, pausing at every blonde female that crossed his line of vision, but there was no sign of Serena. 

He told himself she wasn’t his responsibility, that her brothers should be looking out for her, but he couldn’t help worrying about her.  She was young and naïve, and Will was afraid she would allow her friends to coax her into drinking.  He didn’t like the idea of
Serena getting tipsy with so many raging male hormones on the prowl, and it really shook him up to think of her getting into a car with an intoxicated driver.  So when he noticed McKinley extract herself from a group of adoring
sophomore
boys and head in his direction, Will was genuinely glad to see her.

“There you are,” she said, as if she
had
been looking all over for him.  “My brothers said you were being anti-social tonight and ordered me to come and drag you back to our private party in the woods.”

Will doubted McKinley allowed anyone to order her around, but he didn’t care enough to question it.  “So who else was invited to this private party?”

“My brothers, a couple of your football buddies, and…are you coming or not?”

There didn’t seem to be much of a choice since she
had
already turned away from him and was weaving her way through the mass of people.  Will trailed after her, convinced that the exaggerated swing in her tail was for his benefit.  McKinley wasn’t satisfied with having Rick on a leash, she wanted every male in school panting over her.  No, he wasn’t completely immune to her; she was a beautiful girl with an incredible body and a killer set of legs.  But she knew it,
which was just one more thing
Will
didn’t like about her. 

McKinley was so full of herself there wasn’t room to care for anyone else.  She wasn’t deliberately cruel, or at least he didn’t think so, but sometimes the things she said were really hurtful.  He’d seen the crestfallen look on Serena’s face when McKinley told her they needed to go shopping because Serena didn’t have any fashion sense.  He imagined McKinley thought it was a magnanimous offer to take her fashion challenged sister shopping, but to Serena it was a disparaging remark about her poor clothes selections.

“How much further?” he asked, after they’d trampled through the woods for several minutes.

“It’s just up ahead a little ways.”

Will couldn’t hold it in any longer and blurted out, “Is Serena with your brothers?”

“She’s coming with a group of her track friends, but they were going to grab a bite to eat first so she won’t be here for at least an hour.”

Disappointed, but not wanting to alert McKinley to that fact, he clamped his mouth shut to keep from asking any more questions about Serena.  Even so, McKinley must have picked up on it because she stopped so fast, he nearly ran her over.  She whirled around, looking thoroughly irritated as she angled her flashlight up towards his face.

“Don’t tell me you’re interest in that little plain Jane,” she said with a mocking laugh.  “Good Lord, Will, she won’t even be fifteen for two more days.  And even if she was old enough to date, she
is
so pitifully dull you
would
slip into a coma before the evening was over.”

“Serena is
not
dull,” his reply was heated.  “She’s just a little shy, but it’s no wonder when she has a sister who demands all the attention for herself.” 

Will expected her temper to flare
,
but it didn’t.  He figured
something
must have snapped in that delusional brain of hers though, because she started babbling about how shameful he was for trying to make her jealous of Serena.  It threw him for a loop when she accused him of doing it on purpose just so McKinley would admit she wanted him for herself.   

“
What?”
He shook his head in disbelief.  “Have you lost your…”

“It’s ridiculous to even think I
would
be jealous of Serena, but I’m flattered that you made the effort.”  McKinley slipped her arms around his neck, pressing herself so close a breath of air couldn’t get between them.  “I
would
throw Rick over for you in a New York minute,” she purred.  “We could slip away right now and find a nice, quiet place where we could get to know one another a little more…intimately.”

Good God, what had he gotten himself into? 
“McKinley, I don’t think…”

The only excuse he could offer for not pulling away when McKinley deflected his objection by kissing him was that he was a teenage male.  As such, it wasn’t always easy to control his hormones even when he wasn’t particularly attracted to the female he was with at the moment.  His body responded of its own accord to the eagerness of her mouth and provocative gyration of her hips, but it still wasn’t enough to tempt him into taking it any further.

McKinley’s kisses were seductive, Will couldn’t deny that.  But it was Serena he really wanted to be with.  So why was he kissing McKinley when he knew Serena would never have anything to do with him if she found out?  Serena probably knew as well as he did that the football team had scored more victories with her sister this season than they had on the field.

And what about Rick Porter?  He and Will had been friends since grade school, but this was something that not even the best of buddies could overlook.  Kissing someone else’s girl was bad enough, but it was doubly contemptible to betray a friend.  It was a sobering thought; one which finally brought him to his senses.  Will jerked his head back and was attempting to extract himself from her clinging arms when the crackling of dead twigs alerted him that someone was about to stumble across them.

For a moment, Will couldn’t believe his rotten luck when Rick emerged from between some trees
,
along with a few other couples.  After all, what were the chances of him
coming to this particular spot in the woods at precisely the same time Will was kissing his girlfriend?  As he grappled for something to say, he felt McKinley’s hair brush against his chin when she turned her head and knew she’d seen Rick too.  So why was she still hanging all over him?  One glance at McKinley’s face and he knew the answer;
because she arranged to meet Rick here. 
How could he have been so stupid?

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 seemed content enough to cozy up to Rick a few seconds later.  He had an overwhelming urge to applaud her performance; not only was McKinley a guiltless liar, she was quite the accomplished actress as well.  Laughing as if she found the whole situation amusing, she told Rick it was ridiculous to be jealous.  Will was like family, she insisted, and had only been giving her a brotherly kiss.  Rick didn’t buy a word of it, though he was smart enough not point the blame at McKinley. 

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

McKinley let out an indignant squeal.  “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.”

The evening, which had been on a downhill spiral from the moment he arrived, went from bad to worse when Rick turned to McKinley and demanded to know why she’d let Will do that to her.  The conniving little bitch had the audacity to claim she
was
so shocked by his behavior, it didn’t even occur to her to push him away.  Admittedly, he could have put a halt to the kiss as soon as it happened, so he wasn’t completely blameless.  But the temper he’d been so careful to contain finally came to a boiling point when McKinley insinuated he
had
forced himself on her.

“Oh, for God’s sake, stop acting like the innocent victim,” he snapped.  “The minute I mentioned Serena’s name, you were all over me.”

McKinley skewered him with a venomous glare but it was Rick who got the first word in.
 

“
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 sneered.  “Serena couldn’t compete with me in her wildest dreams.”

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

Will snorted in disgust. 
“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.  Tough luck, Duncan.  Looks like someone else will be giving your girlfriend a bit of
hands on
instructions in making out tonight.”

Will stomped off, ignoring Rick’s mocking laughter.  He was angry with himself for not suspecting McKinley was up to something when she lured him into the woods, and he was embarrassed that Rick and his buddies had caught them kissing.  He wasn’t exactly thrilled to discover Rick noticed how he watched Serena either because it undoubted
ly
meant all their friends knew too, including Anthony and Sawyer. 
Even worse than the embarrassment was the fierce streak of jealousy that shot through him when Rick mentioned seeing Serena with his kid brother, Randy.

He tried to shrug it off.  Hadn’t he already come to the conclusion that she was too young to consider dating?  And so what if she was making out with a boy her own age, there was nothing wrong with that.  Except all the logical reasons as to why it shouldn’t bother him or why he had no right to be jealous seemed to wither when he imagined Serena with someone else.  He’d always felt there was an unspoken agreement between them; a secret attraction she was too shy to act upon and he was too honorable to pursue until she was older.  Now Will realized it was all in his mind.  It made him feel foolish, which in turn stoked his simmering anger.

Obviously he’d been wrong about Serena.  She was probably more like McKinley than he thought.  She had to be, otherwise why would she duck into one of those caves and make out with Randy Porter when she barely knew him?  Will was fuming by the time he emerged from the woods.  As he headed towards the bonfire, there was 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 mind.

He zeroed in on one of the cheerleaders he knew had a crush on him and spent the next hour with his arm draped around Jennie Barkley’s shoulders while she giggled and flirted outrageously.  But no matter how hard he tried to focus on the pretty girl beside him, Will’s thoughts kept circling back around to Serena.  He finally gave up the charade and left Jennie standing there looking as if she wanted to claw his heart out for abandoning her in front of her friends.

His search for Serena proved fruitless, which did nothing to salve the uneasiness that was beginning to fray his nerves.  Her friends from the track team said they hadn’t seen
her all night so someone else had have brought her.  It couldn’t have been Randy Porter, he reasoned, because Randy was among the other sophomore boys that had been worshiping McKinley just before she conned him into going in the woods with her.  Besides, he could see Randy and several of his friends milling around the bonfire and there weren’t any girls with them.