Chasm was involved that night. Parrish, too, probably. How could I have missed that?
My hand goes to my neck as I step up onto the back porch and notice that the door is already cracked. There’s no point in knocking, right, if what I’m here to do is teach Chasm about proper consent with a kick to the balls?
Slowly, I push the door open, running over that night in my mind. The way the person chasing me smelled, the blood that splattered when I hit the second attacker, the prick of the needle in my neck. Isn’t that a fucked-up prank for high schoolers? Even bullies like Parrish and Chasm?
But then I think about the fact that Chasm just picked up a drunk girl from the side of the lake and brought her … here. Wherever here is.
I step into the house and pause, noticing a row of photos along the wall beside me. There’s a small boy with jet-black hair posed with a smile in front of an old woman with silver hair. She’s sitting on a wood porch with one leg propped up, her elbow thrown across her knee. In front of the pair of them is a basket filled with vegetables.
With a squint, I lean in and take note of the boy’s face, of the familiar shape of his mouth and eyes, the amber color of his irises. Oh. Oh. This is Chasm’s house?
I pause, feeling suddenly more awkward than if it were the drunk girl’s house, or some other random person that’s still hanging out down by the lake. My left hand drops to my side as I notice the shoes kicked off near the back staircase. I kick my own off—I’ll try to respect Chasm’s dad, even if Chas is an idiot—and make my way up the stairs.
That’s when I hear his voice, low and cool and calm. The sound of it gives me chills, but not in the way I was expecting. I’m pleased to hear it. And that bothers me. I move forward across the hardwood floors, ready to throw open the first door I see, when I hear something that surprises me.
“You can sleep here as long as you need and go home when you feel better,” Chasm is saying, and I find myself leaning forward so I can peak through the crack in the door. The drunk girl is sitting on the edge of a bed, a blanket wrapped around her, and a glass of water and some pills on the nightstand.
“Thank you,” she breathes, slurring her words slightly.
Chasm sighs and puts his hands in his pockets.
“You should always watch how much you drink at parties,” he says, pushing the water glass closer to her. “Even at small hangouts like this. Boys can be monsters sometimes. Trust me: I am one and I know how they are.”
“You’re the best, Kwang-seon,” she hiccups, and I frown again. That asshole! He lets other people—other girls, for that matter—call him by his real name? What a hypocrite. A pang of hurt rings in my belly, but I ignore it, watching as he urges the girl to drink the water and take what I’m assuming are painkillers. As soon as he’s sure that she’s had enough to drink, he plugs in her phone to charge, and hands her a remote to the wall-mounted TV.
When the girl reaches out a hand to touch his arm, Chasm very gently pushes her away.
“You don’t think I’m pretty?” she pouts, like she’s on the verge of a drunken meltdown.
“You’re gorgeous, babe, but I’m not a predator; you’re plastered.” He goes to stand up and she grabs onto the bottom of his shirt, clinging to him with tears sliding down her face. How Chasm handles this situation will determine whether I kill him or not.
Metaphorically speaking. I’m no serial killer.
“You slept with like, three of my friends, but I’m not good enough? I’m not hot enough?”
“You mean three of your friends lied and told you they slept with me because they didn’t want to admit to puking all over my carpet and leaving me to clean it up. I told each and every one of them what I’m going to tell you: I don’t fuck drunk chicks.” He untangles the girl’s fingers from his shirt as she cries. “Jesus, you won’t even remember this in the morning.” He swipes a hand over his face like he’s suddenly exhausted. “Leave whenever you want, even if it’s tomorrow. I can give you a ride home.” He turns around and heads for the door so quickly that I’m caught off-guard. My attempts to scurry away are foiled by a potted plant that I end up knocking over, spilling dirt and small rocks all over the floor.
I cringe as I hear Chasm step into the hallway. I’m kneeling down by the plant, holding onto the edges of the pot and wishing I could disappear into the floor.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house?” he asks with a long-suffering sigh, moving over to help me right the plant. We squat side by side, scooping up dirt with our hands and putting it back into the pot. Sorry, plant.
“I wanted to see what you were doing with a drunk and vulnerable girl,” I say, lifting my chin and knowing that my cause was worthwhile, even if I was wrong. More often than not, I’d probably be right to make the same assumption again.
Chasm goes very still beside me, and it becomes immediately obvious that I’ve offended him somehow. I turn back to look at him, remembering the drunk girl from the party that threw her arms around him, the one he disappeared with. Does he do this a lot, rescue drunk girls from parties?
“It’s my business what I do with the girls I like,” he snaps, and it occurs to me that the girl in that room—in what I think is probably his room—is blonde. Pretty sure I recognize her from some of Lumen’s classes, all the fancy, advanced, AP ones that I wouldn’t last a day in. So she’s smart. She could be the crush he was talking about.
“Is that girl your crush?” I ask, and he sighs, shoving that lightning-bolt colored hair away from his forehead with a deep-set frown.
“She doesn’t creep into my house uninvited and spy on me, so yeah, she could easily be my crush. I already told you: she’s the opposite of you.” Chasm stands up suddenly and yanks me along with him. “What did you hear?” he demands, like I’ve encountered some terrible state secret.
I yank my arm from his grip, trying not to think about the way he said fuck it just before he tried to kiss me.
“What are you planning on doing with her?” I demand as he grunts in annoyance and grabs my arm, attempting to drag me toward the stairs. I resist, digging my heels into the wood floor. With a sharp yank, I manage to free myself from his grip again and turn around, scrambling across the floor and bursting into his bedroom with a crash.
The girl in the bed sits up suddenly, her cheeks and forehead red.
We stare at each other as Chasm curses behind me.
“Are you okay?” I ask, because I can’t not check. What kind of person would I be if I didn’t? “Do you need me to call anyone? Or take you home?”
The girl blinks at me a few times before turning her attention to Chasm and then back to me again.
“I’m fine,” she replies, sounding confused but a hell of a lot more sober than she was a few minutes ago. Pretty sure I startled some sense into her. “Just had a bit too much to drink.”
“Little Sister …” Chasm warns from over my shoulder, but I just stay where I am, taking another step into the room. It’s austere as hell, as personality free as my own room was when Tess first showed it to me. Is this really Chasm’s room? Because it doesn’t display a single thing about his personality.
“He didn’t try anything untoward?” I ask, and the girl shakes her head.
“He doesn’t want me, but I hear he’s pretty easy. You can have him.” She smirks at Chas, but then her face sours like she’s going to puke, and she’s scrambling out of the bed and disappearing into what appears to be an attached bathroom.
The door slams shut behind her, and I can suddenly feel the weight of being alone with Chasm like an iron collar around my neck.
“Get out of my room. Get out of my house. Or I swear to god, Little Sister …”
I whirl around on him, my cheeks and tits flaming, my breathing heavy.
“I’m no more your little sister than I am Parrish’s,” I snap back, unsure where the anger is even coming from. “Sorry I found out your secret, but you get why I was concerned, right?”
“You t
hink I’m a monster, I get it,” Chasm spits out, scowling at me again. According to school gossip, I’m the only person he scowls at like that. Everyone else, he’s nice to apparently. “Because I’m the type of guy who’d take advantage of a drunk girl.”
“That’s the persona you put on!” I shout back, unsure why it is I’m shouting at all. The air feels thick and hot between us, and it’s pissing me off. “You could’ve just told me you watch over drunk girls.” His knight-like persona is coming out again. “Besides, it’s not like you’re some innocent virgin either. You’re always bragging about—”
With a yelp, Chasm grabs me and throws me over his shoulder. I’m tempted to bite him, but who knows what I’d catch? He carries me down the stairs like it’s nothing, deposits me onto the back porch, and then slams the door right in my face. I’m still gaping after him when he turns the porch light on and flicks the dead bolt.
And I didn’t even get to confront him about the kidnapping prank.
With a huff, I turn around and shove my fingers through my hair, shaking out the loose waves and closing my eyes tight to get ahold of myself. There’s just something about Parrish and Chasm that gets me frothing. A few deep breaths of the cool Pacific Northwest air, and I remember where I am and who I’m with.
Lumen and Danyella.
Yanking my phone from my pocket, I start to answer Danyella’s most recent text and then pause, lifting my head up and watching the branches of the trees rustling above my head. A prickle starts at the base of my spine and travels up, like the fingers of a skeleton stroking my skin.
It creeps me the fuck out, but I can’t explain why. It’s like that night, that night I thought I was sleepwalking but maybe wasn’t. Ugh.
“Shit,” I murmur, tucking some hair behind my ear and finishing up my text. At Chasm’s house, omw back.
I keep my phone clutched in my hand and hop off the porch step, adjusting the buttons on my blazer. Sometimes I hate the uniform—lack of self-expression and all that—and sometimes I like it because it feels like I’m in an anime or something. That’s what I focus on as I start the walk back down the hill. It isn’t far; I can already see the lake and the small shapes of my new friends in the distance.
About halfway down, I swear that I can hear someone creeping in the bushes beside me. I spin quickly, glaring into the growing shadows around me and frowning.
“Chasm, for real,” I snap, feeling that hot, itchy anger take over me again. The thing is, this time it’s underwritten with a cold fear. A person acting all sus in the bushes? Never a good thing. I wait there for a moment, hoping that I’m right, that it really is Chasm … but knowing instinctually that it isn’t.
With a quick glance down at my phone, I realize that I’ve somehow missed a few texts from Parrish.
Don’t mess around with Chasm. You and Kimber are fucking thirsty. Back off.
My teeth clench again, and I almost briefly forget about the person moving in the bushes. A twig snaps, and my heart leaps into my throat, convincing me to start moving again. The wind teases my skirt up around my thighs, causing the plaid fabric to billow. That’s when my neck begins to throb, and I know I need to get the hell out of there.
Sprinting down the hill, I end up falling on my ass and sliding part of the way down, hitting the flat ground near the lake and collapsing to my knees. I’m panting as I glance over my shoulder, but I don’t see anyone lurking in the evening shadows.
“So fucking creepy,” I murmur, standing up and brushing the dirt off my knees. I feel silly for overreacting, but I would’ve felt even worse if I’d underreacted and something happened. Who would be stalking you, Dakota? Who? As a teenage girl, I’m more than well-aware of how predatory men can be, but this feels like something different. It rings a different set of alarm bells, and I don’t recognize the sound.
“Are you ready to head out?” Lumen asks as I look up and find her waiting in a towel beside a cluster of blackberry bushes.
“I’m ready,” I agree, but I can’t resist just one, last look over my shoulder as I walk away.
Still, there’s nothing. Somehow, I feel like there is most definitely something.
Later that night, when I part Danyella’s curtains and peer out, I swear I see a shadow watching us from the edge of the property. But when I run down the hall and flick on the outside light, there’s nothing there.
I must be losing my goddamn mind.
Or … somebody else already has.
When I get home on Saturday, I head straight for Parrish’s room and throw open the door which, surprisingly, is unlocked. He lifts his head up from his sketchbook to stare at me through a slitted gaze.
“What the fuck do you want?” he drawls, as if he didn’t go out of his way to embarrass me in front of the entire school. I’m starting to see that Kimber’s assessment of the situation was accurate: if I hadn’t somehow endeared myself to Lumen, I might very well be in trouble here.
“You were creeping around in the bushes outside of Chasm’s place last night,” I snap, shoving the door closed behind me and putting my back against it. Parrish continues to do his prince of the angry sloth routine where he moves like he’s wading through molasses, pushing himself into a sitting position and frowning at me like I’ve lost my damn mind. “And Danyella’s, too.”
“Why the fuck,” he hisses, shoving some of that pretty tousled hair back from his face, “would I bother doing that? If I wanted to see you naked, all I’d have to do is wait for you to change with your door cracked which, I might add, you do on the regular. Trust me: I’ve seen enough, and I’m not impressed.”
Anger ripples through me, a boulder crashing into the serene surface of a lake. I had a good time last night, great actually. For the first time in weeks, I’m starting to see through the murky shadows of my situation. I don’t have to like Tess; I don’t even have to like Washington. But I can have friends, I can enjoy the experience of having younger siblings. I won’t let Parrish ruin that for me.
“Nice. Keep body-shaming me, asshole. It helps emphasize your natural level of maturity.”
Parrish swings his long legs over the side of the bed and stands up, moving over to where I’m standing. My body betrays me, my breath stilling as that angry heat mixes with my natural attraction toward him.
“Ask yourself this: would I waste my Friday night hiding in the bushes on the off-chance that I might see you having a pillow fight with Lumen of all people? Danyella, the theater geek? Or is it you that I’m supposed to be interested in?”
I force myself to exhale as Parrish reaches around me, going for the handle of his bedroom door. I clamp my hand over his to stop him from turning it, and my stomach flip-flops dangerously.
“If it wasn’t you, then who was it?” I demand. “Someone was out there; someone was watching us.”
“How the fuck should I know? There are perverts everywhere,” he says, trying to turn the doorknob again. I tighten my grip on his hand, and he turns those toasted almond eyes of his over to me. Our faces are stupid close, like way closer than any two normal people would ever stand. “You seem to think you have a stalker who kidnaps you in the middle of the night and returns you unharmed to your bed. Maybe it was him? Like I said, if you’re that worried, go tell Tess all about it and see how much harder your life gets.”
Parrish yanks his hand back and turns away, returning to his bed and his abandoned sketchbook. He lounges back into his pillows and starts to sketch again, like I’m not even here. That infuriates me. It’s worse, I think, when he pretends I don’t exist versus when he actively ridicules me. Why is that?
“Don’t ignore me,” I demand, moving over to his bed and then climbing onto it. He whips his gaze up to glare at me and scowls. We do that a lot in one another’s presence, scowl like that. “I know it was you. It had to be. With Chasm tagging along, probably.”
“Why are you so goddamn obsessed with Chasm?” he bites back, slamming the cover on his sketchbook closed before I can snag a p
eek at it. “If you like him so much, ask him out.”
“I don’t date manwhores,” I tell him, biting my lower lip and then lunging forward to grab the sketchbook. Parrish doesn’t expect it, so I manage to pull the move off, yanking the book away from him and then rolling off the bed and onto the floor. As I scramble away, I flip it open to see what he’s been working on.
There’s a dead body with a puddle of blood nearby.
“Whoa, need to see a psychologist much?” I ask just before Parrish snatches the sketchbook back from me. “You need to stop listening to those murder Podcasts; they’re not doing much for your psyche.”
“Get out of my room,” he breathes, just like he did the night I got kidnapped. “Now.”
“Make me.”
The words come out before I can stop them, and we’re left standing there toe to toe, the air thickening and heating with unspoken things, forbidden things, taboo things. He kissed your neck, I remind myself, thinking of that night again, but for entirely different reasons. Why? If he hates you so much, then why?
Parrish just stands there, and then he smiles at me in a way that I can’t explain.
That’s about … two seconds before he leans down and presses his mouth against mine. Just like that. His tongue slips between my lips or maybe I part them for him, I’m not sure, but either way, as soon as he starts kissing me, I start kissing back.
That’s when things get really weird. Parrish’s right arm sweeps me up and he drags me closer, crushing our bodies together. The fingers of his left hand tangle in my hair as he tastes me, slow and languorous, like he has all the time in the world. Stupid, annoying, irritating, rude, piggish, selfish rich boy, I think, but ohmyfuckinggod, he’s delicious, too.
“Stop telling everyone at school I have a small dick,” he whispers, pulling back slightly. He can’t hide the way he’s panting, the way his eyes are half-lidded and heavy. It’s painfully obvious that he’s attracted to me—even if he doesn’t want to be. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were doing it just to keep the other girls away from me.”
Stolen Crush Page 24