[ vi. the price of retribution ]

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MUCH TO HER INITIAL distaste, Kiara Carrera had a surprise change of heart and ultimately agreed to take Willa Deveraux to the south end of the island, deep into the Cut, to where only the former knew of JJ Maybank's current whereabouts.

In the moment—reeling in her groggy grief and overwhelming anger, all the while embarrassingly breaking down in her own driveway for all kook eyes to see—Willa was rather relieved that Kiara had otherwise been so understanding of Willa's situation, even if it still had gone against her own better judgement. Without any questions at all, Kiara had offered to take her to the Cut, had assured that she would get to see JJ, even if she could also only promise that the fallout of their clashing was one guaranteed to end in disaster.

In the moment, that vow had been enough for Willa. Actually, it had been more than enough for Willa. But that moment of promised retribution had long since vanished with the distance that Willa now had to cross to get to JJ.

With no cars, no bikes, no scooters or skateboards to help the girls on their way down the long winding roads that stretched to nearly every surface of the island, Willa was very much starting to regret her adventuresome little tirade.

Because Willa Deveraux had lived in the Outer Banks for her whole life, she found that she very rarely ever became distracted by the heat anymore. The humidity and mosquitoes and the blistering summer heat had long since become a part of the girl. In the summertime, she did not bother with makeup, knowing that her sweet, natural sweaty sheen was highlight enough. Willa had also long since accepted that her body would always be clammy, and that her bare arms and legs would always be riddled with mosquito bites. But while even the luxurious Deveraux home could not always keep itself clean of the bloodsucking insects, there were still definitely some advantages to living in the Figure Eight during the hotter months. Not only did Willa have fresh water, abundant patches of shade, and air conditioning, but she also had an entire ocean only a couple hundred yards from her backdoor that she could easily dive into to cool off.

Now, though, standing in the middle of a desolate, blistering hot road with no water, no shade, no air conditioning—nothing at all—to keep herself cool and with no ocean in sight, Willa was finally this close to losing it.

Less than an hour had passed since Willa and Kiara had left the former kook's property and had headed off in the direction of the swampy, overheated marshes of the Cut. Willa's flannel was now wrapped loosely around her waist and a small pool of sweat clung to the small of her back, seeping into her gray tank top. Her feet were also throbbing, her soft soles screaming against the agonizing rub that was the bottoms of her feet against the felt and leather of her sandals. She had only just begun to break her Birkenstocks in and the further she walked the more it now felt like the shoes were beginning to break her in.

Willa should have known better than to leave without changing her shoes, but she had not wanted to deal with her mother's nosy presence upon reentering the beach house. Willa had believed there could be no worse pain to her currently pounding headache than the bossy and arrogant tone of Maren Deveraux, but the universe had once again shown her otherwise. No—the most pain that Willa could possibly feel came entirely from own her stupidity. From her own pride. From her hatred for her mother.

Earlier that morning Willa had told herself she would not be going far from her home. She had told herself that the Cut was not that far from the Figure Eight, but now she was entirely regretting giving herself false hope. Now, rather than crossing a small island, it felt as if Willa were crossing a large continent, painfully navigating all its hills, valleys, mountains and more.

Things only got worse from there for Willa.

At one point along the way, now finally on the south side of the island, Willa had to abruptly stop to throw up on the side of the road, and then had nearly fainted into her own vomit once she tried to stand back up. After that, Kiara had nearly forced the sickly, drastically dehydrated and hungover girl to go back home. She had threatened to drag her back if need be, but Willa stood firm like a boulder, even if her trembling knees did dare to collapse.

But nonetheless, Willa Deveraux pushed on—slightly dizzy and extremely nauseous—deeper and deeper into the marshes of the Cut.

Thankfully, it was not long after that gruesome incident Kiara was finally diverting away from the main highway to begin her trek down a dirt driveway, leading in the shade of surrounding oak trees. With newfound strength, Willa eagerly followed, opting to move into the deadened but soft grass that lined the outer edges of the road so that she could walk barefoot. With her Birkenstocks now dangling idly in her hands, Willa soon found herself struggling to remain focused on the path and was now doing everything she could to avoid throwing her deathtraps-for-shoes into the surrounding deep marshes.

Willa and Kiara conversed quietly as they walked through the mazes of the Outer Banks marshes, slowly but surely catching up in one another's personal lives, even if they were not aware of what exactly they were doing. To both of their surprises, the two sixteen-year-old girls found that they could still speak to each other rather easily, as if they were still just little children talking about the princes and princesses that they both found beautiful, who they both found they had wanted to marry at such a silly, innocent time in their lives. Willa could still remember so long ago when she had promised Kiara that she would be her princess if all other princes, princesses, knights, and other noble specimen fell through in her life. What a silly little girl Willa had once been, but in the back of her mind she still wondered if Kiara remembered her promise, too.

Before she could work up the courage to even ask the kook girl, though, Kiara was suddenly lifting her soft auburn gaze from Willa's pale face and pointing further ahead. "There it is," She informed aloud. Willa let her attention shift to where Kiara was pointing and soon found herself looking at none other than John B. Routledge's waterside home. Hidden amongst the trees and the marshes was a cabin-like house, its warm wood glowing in the hot sun above. "The Chateau."

John B. lived on the practical opposite side of the island from Willa, but his home—though much smaller—still mirrored her own beachfront home all the same. Her mansion and his shack were both only steps away from their own watery paradises, where their occupants could both escape into the unknown of the horizon at a moment's notice. It was both so beautiful and so terrifying to have so much freedom, so close that one could almost taste it.

"Nice place," Willa commented softly, her pace slowing as she took in more of the surrounding property. A nearby rusted garage and metal shack rested at the far end of the house, partially hidden by the house's sharp curve, and on the west side of the yard was a narrow jetty that stretched out into the marshes. With the open woods laying out on one side of Routledge home and the endless water presiding on the other, Willa was mesmerized by this tiny piece of paradise. Oh, the adventures John B. must have had as a child in this home.

Willa Deveraux could only imagine—could only dream of—one day living in a such a gentle, quiet, forestry area all to her own. In a world of constant glamour and shine, Willa could do with a little rust and dirt.

"Yeah, you think that now," Kiara replied, wrinkling her nose. "Just wait until you see the inside."

"I'm not planning on staying long," Willa reminded the girl beside her. She hastily side-stepped around a muddy brown Volkswagen van parked hazardously in the middle of the front yard, only to then nearly trip on an unseen, idly lain dirty red motorbike that had been abandoned on the opposite side of the van.

Kiara snorted as she watched Willa navigate. "We'll see about that," She snickered.

Just then, the screen front door to the Routledge home swung open and none other than John B. appeared on the porch, slowly and stiffly, but cautioned, nonetheless. His long brunette locks were sticking up in all different directions and it was as if he, too, had just barely woken up, though the alertness in his eyes still suggested otherwise. His shirt was also unbuttoned, the soft summer wind pushing back against the light-yellow fabric to reveal his tanned bare chest. Even from the distance she currently stood in the yard, she could easily see the bruises that trailed up and down John B.'s rib cage from Topper's severe punches and brutal kicks.

"Willa?" John B. called out, his voice laced with confusion. What the hell was she doing at his house?

Willa Deveraux lifted a hand—the one that was still not holding on to her awful shoes—and waved briefly. "Jesus, John B.," She responded, still standing in the grass, not quite daring to move forward onto his property when the owner was currently holding her under a laser-like gaze. "Your face," She murmured.

John B. Routledge's face had definitely seen better days and as he finally stepped off the wooden, creaky porch and walked closer to her, Willa could see the snarl of ugly bruises in their entirety that ran up and down the left side of his face. Topper Thornton had not shown any mercy in the fight last night; John B.'s left eye was practically swollen shut and there was a large knot atop his head, jutting out from underneath his skin like a small golf ball.

"Looks worse than it feels," John B. insisted grimly. He was smiling, oddly enough, as if his joy was enough to mask the pain that he could so vividly feel. The facade was not enough, though, in the careful eyes of Kiara and Willa. Not even close. In her eighth-grade year, Willa had gotten into a fight in the middle school schoolyard and had suffered a black eye of her own. There was no ignoring that pain; the ache had been so severe it was as if her own eye socket was a mere blink away from shattering altogether.

"Well," Willa sighed softly, brushing her curly knots back from her eyes. "Here's hoping whatever mark you left on Topper is worse than the one he left on you."

"Thanks," John B. said sincerely to Willa. His dark eyes then flickered to where Kiara stood farther behind the unexpected kook, her tanned arms resting loosely behind her back. "And thanks, Kie," He added gently. "For getting me back to the house last night. I know it wasn't easy, but I really appreciate—"

"Did I really just hear a kook wishing bad on another kook?"

Willa's stomach instantly recoiled at the newfound familiar voice of none other than JJ Maybank filling her ears, and her grip on her sandals tightened significantly. Willa's sage eyes narrowed in on the screen door of John B.'s home opening once more as the lean, hot-headed blonde boy pushed his way through the doorway. Following close behind JJ was, unsurprisingly, none other than Pope Heyward, and—also unsurprisingly—the boy was holding a thickly bound book in his hands, though Willa could not see the cover from angle he held the hardback against his slim hip.

"Here's your chance," Kiara muttered underneath her breath. Despite the warning in her tone, secretly, the Carrera girl was just as eager to see how Willa would handle the situation, if she would manage to get an apology from the otherwise unapologetic boy. Hell, there was still some instances that had happened between Kiara and JJ from over a year ago that he had yet to apologize for.

If Willa Deveraux managed to get anything out of JJ Maybank, it would be an absolute miracle. It might truly be doomsday if these two storms of young beating hearts and violent vicious words finally clashed, and still managed to see light in the wakes of their own inner darkness.

"Are . . . Are you here for him?" John B. questioned, absolutely dumbfounded as Willa merely brushed past him, still barefoot, making her way right towards his best friend. John B. turned, as if wanting to follow her to stop any conflict that might ensue, but Kiara instantly reached out and grabbed his arm, holding him in place on the dying grass.

"Don't, John B.," Kiara Carrera warned carefully, shaking her head softly. "Let her do this." Her gaze then hesitantly flickered back to the approaching pair of boys from the Routledge house, and she instantly beckoned for the Heyward boy to come over to them to avoid being caught in the crossfire.

As Pope went over to John. B and Kiara, JJ came to a soft stop at the bottom of the porch steps and lazily crossed his arms over his chest as he rocked back on the heels of his worn leather boots. "What're you doin' here, sunshine?" He questioned.

Willa's jaw clenched as she looked up to JJ, leaving several inches of space between them. "I wanted to talk to you," She informed bitterly.

"Lucky me," JJ scoffed, all the while still smirking down at Willa, even when the annoyance of her presence was so very evident in his icy blue stare. "About what?"

"About last night."

All at once the playful smirk that had once been written so clearly on JJ's cracked lips slipped from his expression altogether, and his arms tightened against his chest, the muscles in his biceps now pressing threateningly against his burning skin. With only three words from the Deveraux kook, the Maybank pogue was instantly taken back to the bone-rattling night before. In his nightmares JJ could still feel Willa's scorching touch against his bare hands, see her smoldering sage green orbs hold his own in the darkness that had encompassed them both as the gun—that fucking gun—lied in the void between them.

"There's nothing to talk about," JJ dismissed crudely.

Willa had to bite down her laughter, a sound that would have been so cold, so callous, that it would have surely did herself in. "Do you have any idea what you did last night?" She forced out from between gritted teeth.

JJ only blinked. "I saved my best friend's life."

"And threatened countless more," Willa challenged, never missing a beat.

JJ's expression twisted with ignorance. "Oh, please—"

"You could have killed Topper!"

JJ rose his hands in exasperation and then let them crash back down to his sides with a loud slap. "You told me to do something about it!" He exclaimed sternly.

Willa's jaw dropped in surprise, her widening green eyes flashing against the beady blue of JJ's own narrowed ones. Was he really trying to turn this back around on her? To blame her for the gun? Willa could feel her cheeks growing flush beneath her pale skin and her heart was beginning to beat much too quickly for what she could afford to handle that day. "That is not what I meant, JJ," She growled defensively, pointing a jeweled finger in his chest. "and you know that."

"I don't need you to patronize me," JJ snipped. "Until you're put in that situation, you don't get to tell me anything." After all, what right did she have to tell JJ that he fucked up? She did not know him. She would never know him. If anyone had any say at all in JJ's reckless behavior last night, it was his crew. And sure, his own friends had been upset with him, but they had also understood that it only was to protect John B. And JJ would do anything it took to protect his friends, his family. "I mean," JJ finally started again, his voice growing louder, the instinct to fight pushing back against the small voice that argued for him to be calm, to not lose himself in front of Willa again. "You're telling me if that had been Cruz, you wouldn't have done everything you could to protect him?"

"Don't you dare bring my brother into this!" Willa snapped back, her voice growing hoarse. "You should have seen how scared he was when I found him. You caused that, JJ. Not anyone else." She exhaled sharply, never letting her stern eyes fall away from JJ's own stormy ones. "Aren't you at all sorry?"

JJ Maybank licked his lips. "No. No, not really," He confessed.  Because truthfully? JJ was not sorry. Not at all. He did not give a damn about any of the kook kids that had gotten scared off from the party last night. None of those kids knew fear like JJ Maybank did. They never would. To JJ a gun was not a violent weapon to fear; to him, it was his only means of protection from a home that only knew of hate and hellfire.

Willa rolled her eyes. "You are unbelievable," She scoffed with a shake of her head.

"I'm unbelievable?" JJ exclaimed. "Oh, my God. Are you hearing yourself right now? You shouldn't even be here! This isn't—"

"Hang on. Hang on!" Suddenly, Willa's stomach was dangerously uncoiling, and she lifted her free hand to her mouth. "Oh, shit. Hold these!"

With hardly any warning at all, Willa Deveraux hastily shoved her pair of black Birkenstocks into JJ's solid chest, not bothering to ensure he had a firm hold on them before she was abruptly turning away and going off to the side of the house to vomit up the remainder of the alcohol that had been so persistently tearing away at her weakened, hungover system. Her rage had finally gotten the better of her and her exhaustion was now beginning to win. Unable to hold herself up on two feet, Willa sufficed to dropping down to a lone knee, struggling to ensure that she was not crouching in her own sick.

Meanwhile, even though Willa had stepped away from the spotlight of the Routledge porch, she was still very much in the sights of JJ, John B., Pope and Kiara, and all of their faces were now contorted in disgust as they watched her. None of them, not even Kiara, wanted to go over and get involved in the mess, and Willa was rather grateful to be left alone to her own agony. This was not the first time she had suffered so horribly from a hangover. She was used to this part. Just give her a minute.

Back on the bottom porch step, JJ exhaled a tight breath he had not realized he had been holding. As his three other friends finally dared to approach him, seeing how it would nearly be futile for such a conversation between two raging storms to continue, JJ's brow furrowed as he looked down to the pair of sandals he now held in his arms. "Did she really just interrupt me to go puke her guts out?" He asked his friends.

"I think she did," John B. replied squeamishly.

"Huh." JJ pursed his lips. "That's never happened before."

"What'd you do to her?" Pope questioned in concern.

"Nothing!" JJ insisted loudly. "She started it."

"She just wants an apology," Kiara reminded the three boys that stood around her. "Last night really messed with her, guys, and I think that it's fair to want some type of closure. I mean, imagine if that had been any of us in her shoes. We, at least, had some idea of what was going on. She didn't. For all she knew, you were going to start shooting up the beach. And even though I told her that you obviously wouldn't, an apology is still the least you could do."

Despite the sincerity in Kiara's words, JJ hardly held onto more than a few words. Suddenly, the smirk returned to JJ's lips as he glanced back to Willa who had finally managed to clamber back to her feet. She was so, so unsuspecting of the blonde boy's intentions that JJ nearly felt sorry for the chaos he was about to bring her way. "No, I want to have some fun with this," He snickered.

Kiara's eyes darkened. "JJ, don't. This means a lot more to her than—"

"Relax, Kie."

Pope scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief. "You really are unbelievable, JJ."

As the three friends continued to mindlessly bicker over the thought of an apology, meanwhile, John B. was still stuck on the thought of Willa practically dying right off his porch. His dark eyes were still locked on her figure, his jaw dipped just the slightest; just like it had been the moment he saw her throw back a shot of Fireball for the first time last night on their shared piece of warm driftwood. "I can't believe Willa Deveraux just threw up in my yard," He murmured.

Suddenly, at the sound of John B.'s voice slipping into the cracks of his foggy focus, JJ's attention was ripped back to his best friend and he glowered at the taller boy. "Hey, you wouldn't even know she was here if we had gone out on the Pogue like we were supposed to," He muttered.

Now snapped from his awe, John B. merely rolled his eyes at his friend's underlying sinister tone. "You're not seriously still going on about this, JJ," He grumbled in annoyance.

"Going on about what?" Kiara questioned.

"The wreck," John B. explained with a huff.  Kiera merely nodded her head in understanding and softly pressed her lips together in a firm line.

Meanwhile, now making her way back across the dead grass, Willa swallowed stiffly and shuddered, laying a careful jeweled hand flat against her softly protruding abdomen. Never in a million years did she ever imagine that she would have done that when she encountered JJ Maybank in the aftermath of the Boneyard beach. It was horrifying. It was disgusting. It was embarrassing—so much so that Willa was in desperate need of a distraction away from herself and the retribution she had so utterly and painfully butchered.

And so, without further hesitation, Willa Deveraux hastily pushed her way into the space between Kiara and Pope. With her head still spinning and her stomach still churning, the seemingly wannabe pogue abruptly and eagerly dove into the group of four's private conversation, completely unsuspecting of what she had just inevitably done to herself by choosing to do so.

"What wreck?"

~~~~~~~~~~

you honestly didn't expect jj to apologize to willa, did you?

it ain't going to be that easy.

but on another note, leave it to willa deveraux to interrupt jj mid-argument just to go throw up. and to also give him her shoes without a say??  an iconic bisexual queen.

i hope this chapter was okay? from the moment i started it, i knew that jj was of course not going to apologize to willa, but i hope their interactions were well put together?  i will admit that i was struggling a bit with this chapter, trying to figure out the dynamic that willa is going to establish with this close crew. for now, she's kinda just this annoying little fly that they can't bat away, but soon she'll hopefully be one of them xx and i just cannot wait to see the bonds that grow from this.

anyways, i hope you all enjoyed willa and her introduction into the pogue group.  it only gets crazier, and wilder, and better from here! so, what're you all thinking? how're we feeling about willa??  i hope you all like her.. and i hope you all enjoyed the chapter! so, what are y'all thinking?? what do you hope to see from willa and her people next?? i'd love to hear your thoughts and what you'd like to see next! so please, leave some votes and comments because your girl would really appreciate it! thanks for reading! and i hope y'all are having a lovely day or night.

stay safe and stay well.

—B.