Then There Was Maverick

** Chapter 8 **

**Trigger Warning: this chapter contains sensitive matters that could be considered triggering to some readers.**

~ Mason ~

             Once I had gotten back to the frat house, I decided to go downstairs to the basement and hang up the old, worn-out punching bag that was normally used for drunken tackling practice on the weekends. I knew that this was a better avenue for me to release all of the anger that had built up inside of me than to rearrange the face of the egotistical bastard I had called my "best friend." For the past three years, I had turned a blind eye to Zach Wesley's manipulative ways. He uses everyone around him to fulfil his own personal desires and pleasures, especially women. In all of the "relationships" Zach had been a part of over the course of our friendship had ended with someone getting hurt, but that someone was never him. He has taken many things from many girls, but I hadn't cared until now.

            Katie wasn't a prideful person. She didn't boast about her vanity or intelligence. However, she has always prided herself in one thing, that is until Zach took it from her. He had taken the one thing that she was openly proud of: her ability to resist temptation and control her hormones. She had never thought about those type of situations, or if she did, she never let anyone know it. Katie didn't want to be perceived as the girl who was easy. She cared about having a flawless reputation, one that her parents would be proud of. I loved Pastor and Mrs. Callahan as if they were my own parents – and in a sense they were – but they often placed high expectations on their children to maintain a good image due to their influential position in the community.

            This was something that Tommy always secretly struggled with, although he would never let anyone know it. On the outside, Tommy was the golden boy of our town. He made the grades in the classroom, made the plays on the field, and made sure he never screwed up in a way that would affect his father's position. On the inside though, he longed to be a normal teenager. Tommy turned eighteen the week before we graduated, so we decided to celebrate like every normal eighteen-year-old male would. We decided that we'd go to the gentlemen's club a couple of towns over. Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal, but if somebody were to catch Tommy there, it would ruin the respectable reputation that his family had built over the years. He recognized this and knew that he had to make sure that there wasn't any chance anybody could recognize him there.

            In attempts to escape the extreme expectations that had been set for Tommy, we decided to accept scholarship offers from a university that was three and a half hours away from our hometown. We knew that we would be able to start fresh and have a clean slate to be whoever we wanted to be without the judgmental eyes of people who knew our history. Our plan was fool-proof. We were going to escape our town and the grasp that it held on Tommy, until the night of the accident that was.

* * * *

"Tommy, slow down!" the blonde-headed girl suggested from the passenger's seat.

"I've got it under control, babe. Don't worry," I heard Tommy reassure her through the speaker of the phone.

Tommy and Raya were riding in the car in front of Kolt, Harley, and I as we made our way back to the hotel. He had called to tell us that they needed to go get something and that they'd catch up with us later. As we parted ways, I looked at my best friend's truck through the window of my own and smiled. He was finally going to tell Raya how he felt about her. Tommy had found this spot at the pier a couple of miles away from our hotel with "the greatest view in the city." Tonight was the night that he was going to drop the L-word, and he wanted it to be perfect. He had wanted to do it for months, but he hadn't worked up the balls to admit it. He knew it was now or never. Senior Trip was our last hurrah before we had to report to college a few weeks later for summer workouts. He had been so nervous that whole day as we sat down at the beach that he had almost backed out, but I wasn't going to allow that to happen. I knew that Raya had felt the same way about him. I knew that they could be the two to make a relationship work from two colleges two towns away from each other and end up getting married. I had a feeling that tonight was going to change everything, but I didn't think that it would bring the most terrible kind of change that I could imagine.