Page 8 of Bombshell

“It’s not like I wasn’t hiding it. It’s just…” he trails off, a little anxious.

“What?” Poppy demands.

“He told me he needed to get away from everyone. He swiped a bottle of whiskey from the bar downstairs and left.” His eyes dart to mine, looking guilty for ratting out his friend.

“Cyrus!” Poppy gasps. “Why didn’t you try to stop him?”

“No—it’s not his fault, Poppy,” I interject. “He probably didn’t want to get Sterling into trouble.”

“Exactly. I tried to talk to him,” Cyrus says. “Look, if he’s on foot, he can’t have gotten far.”

“I have to find him. How long ago did he leave?”

“About fifteen minutes, I think. But I haven’t really been checking the time.”

I go to the dressing rooms, where I left my purse and keys, and Cyrus and Poppy follow after me, offering helpful suggestions about where Sterling might have gone.

I call his phone, but it goes straight to voicemail, meaning it’s probably switched off. I call again, just in case, but the result is the same.

“I don’t think Sterling knows much about this area,” I say, feeling increasingly anxious. The Valmont Country Club is huge, and backs up against a state park, meaning Sterling probably didn’t wander into the woods. “He’ll stick to the main access road, I think. I’ll go that way. You two can check wherever else you think he could be. As soon as anyone finds him, we call to let each other know. Alright?”

“Yes. Now go,” says Poppy, giving me a quick hug and a look that reminds me of my mother: all empathy and love.

Which is probably why I pull her into the world’s worst hug. “Thanks.”

The Jaguar spins its tires as soon as the security guard opens the gate, and I fishtail onto the main road. I quickly realize the car’s biggest fault: headlight power. There are no streetlights along the wide, manicured drive leading to and from the country club, and tall trees line the shoulder of the road, blocking most of the moon and starlight. The Jag’s high beams don’t seem brighter than the normal ones, and I have to force myself to slow down as I go around bends—or else drive straight into darkness.

The main road branches off about a mile down from the gate, but I leave it for Poppy and Cy to check. If Sterling walked at a normal pace, that would leave him somewhere between here and the highway another mile farther down.

My heart leaps when I catch sight of someone walking along ahead of me, and I slam on my brakes. It’s Sterling, holding a bottle in one hand. He holds his other between my headlights and his eyes, and when I turn them down, I see a look on his face I’ve never seen before.

His eyes are somehow wild and frozen at the same time, and when I turn on the dash light so he can see me, too, his look doesn’t brighten. His bowtie is undone, hanging loosely around his neck. His manic eyes fade to a dull grey, and suddenly he looks tired, like he doesn’t have the energy to deal with me.

I’ve seen that look before: in the eyes of the staff at Windfall, or my mother’s eyes even looking back from the mirror. I want to scream at him—ask him how dare he scare me like this—but that’s not what someone needs after dealing with my father. And so, I take a deep breath and do my best to put my feelings aside.

“Hey there, sailor,” I yell, hoping he’ll find it funny.

Sterling doesn’t reply. Instead, he starts toward the passenger seat of the car, which I lean over to unlock for him.

He sinks into the bucket seat with a grunt, not meeting my eyes.

“Are you okay?”

Sterling holds the bottle of booze in his lap protectively, his face a mixture of revulsion and anger.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “I’m not sure I want to talk about it.”

“I won’t make you.” I’m not quite sure where to go, with the conversation, or with the car, but I turn on the engine anyway. “Where to?”

“I don’t want to be around people,” Sterling says through gritted teeth.

“Does people include me?” I ask, trying to keep my tone neutral, but praying he doesn’t say yes. Does he know how much it would break me for him to say yes?

He stays silent for an unnervingly long time, and I start driving towards campus. I’ll drop him off and wait for this to blow over. I have some experience avoiding the storms my father causes. After a couple of minutes he finally responds. “It’s not your fault. I just...don’t want to be reminded of how all those rich assholes look at me. And where the fuck can I get away from that in this fucking town?”

“I know a place,” I say absently, thinking of Little Love.

We drive in silence for about ten minutes, and by the time the Jag’s tires begin crunching along the gravel drive leading to the Little Love parking lot, Sterling has stopped staring at the bottle. I park as far down the lot as I can, about 50 feet past the nearest car, right in front of a log barrier designed to prevent cars from sliding down the steep slope behind it.