In My Dreams I Hold a Knife

by Ashley Winstead

  He tilted my head back. “Tell me you love me.”

  There was a sharp crack behind us, and the glass shattered on the French doors leading to Coop’s backyard.

  I screamed, scrambling to sit up, and Coop rolled quickly to his bedside table, groping for something.

  A hand snaked through the broken pane on the door and untwisted the lock, swinging the door open.

  “Fuck,” Coop hissed, tearing open his bedside drawer.

  Two men walked into the apartment, glass crunching under their shoes. Though my instincts screamed not to, I couldn’t help it—I looked at their faces.

  They were both tall. The one with long hair had a scar running diagonally across his pale face, so deep it changed the shape of his mouth. The one with a buzzed scalp had eyes so dark the pupils were drowned.

  I froze, heart thundering. These were not good men. I could see the evil in their faces.

  “Cooper,” said the one with the scar. “Bad time for company.”

  Coop reached an arm across me like a shield, his other hand still rooting in his drawer.

  The one with the buzzed scalp stalked to him and wrenched his hand from the drawer. He reached in himself and pulled out a long knife—a machete. “Nice try.”

  Coop had a machete? Next to his bed, this whole time? That meant he knew he was in danger, no matter how much he insisted he wasn’t.

  The man with the buzzed scalp pointed the tip of the knife at Coop. “I told you you’d regret trying to leave.”

  “Fuck off,” Coop said. “I have neighbors. Cops are probably already on their way.”

  The man with the scar smiled a jagged smile. “In this neighborhood? Nah. I’m sure we have plenty of time.”

  My attention had narrowed to one place: The machete in the man’s hand. My body was so tense, so still, it was like I was dead already, suffering rigor mortis, head to foot.

  “I’m not changing my mind,” Coop said, brave and stupid as ever.

  The man with the scar walked closer, shaking his head. “Not only are you changing your mind, but you’re going to level up. From now on, weed’s for high schoolers. You’re on tweak, making us some real money.”

  “I don’t know what I have to say to get this through your thick skulls—”

  The man with the scar seized me, and I screamed, the rigor mortis broken. I scrambled in the bedsheets, trying to wrench my arm from his grasp.

  He pulled a gun out of his jacket with his free arm and flipped the safety. He held it to my head, and my entire existence became a ring of cold metal pressed against my temple.

  “Watch your mouth, or I’ll put something through her skull.”

  Coop lunged at him, moving so fast I didn’t have time to react, knocking the gun out of his hand and shoving him to the floor.

  “Coop!” My scream was gutteral. But Coop wasn’t listening to me; he was punching the man, over and over, blood flying.

  The man with the buzzed scalp shoved Coop off his partner and thrust the machete under his chin. “Don’t move.” His voice was ice. His eyes dilated, making him look mad, and his veins twisted like dark tree branches under his pale skin.

  Coop froze. The man with the scar scrambled to his feet and wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand. “You’re going to regret that.”

  I leapt from the bed to the kitchen, where I’d left my phone.

  “Hey!” barked the man with the machete. “Move one more inch and I slit his throat.”

  I stopped and turned.

  The man with the scar seized Coop’s wrist. “You’re not quitting. You’re coming back and you’re recommitting.”

  “Go to hell,” insisted Coop.

  The man grinned and pulled Coop’s arm straight. For a second, I was confused, because it looked like a dance move. Then the man struck like a viper, snapping Coop’s arm at the joint.

  For a split second, it was the worst sound I’d ever heard—bone shattering, ligaments tearing—until Coop’s bloodcurdling scream.

  He dropped to his knees. I rushed forward, barely able to see past my tears, knowing I had to protect him. But the man with the machete pointed it at me, and I halted before I ran into the blade.

  “Coop,” I sobbed.

  “If you don’t come back,” said the man with the scar, “we will hunt you down.” His eyes shifted to me. “We’ll hunt her down. And we’ll kill you both.”

  “You don’t get to walk away,” the man with the knife said. “Remember that.”

  Waiting in the emergency room that night, alone and shaking, all I could see was Coop’s face when the glass door first shattered, his lack of surprise. The way he reached automatically for the machete in his bedside table—the movement quick and fluid. Practiced.

  I’d known, but I’d forgotten: Coop was dark, wrong, the opposite of perfect. What was I playing at?

  It would never be right between us. Not after this.

  He may not be able to walk away, but I—I still could.

  Chapter 19

  Now

  The police. Years of being an outlaw, of skirting the cops, and now Coop was handing himself over. Tying himself to the stake. Going up in flames.

  “I won’t let you.” I moved ahead of him and crossed my arms.

  “You don’t get a vote. For about a thousand reasons.”

  “Does Caro know?” I hated to bring her up, but I needed any ally I could get.

  A rustling noise made Coop look past me into the trees. “I came clean about dealing. Told her all of it—the pot, the molly, the tweak. The whole thing.” His eyes found mine. “Well, I left you out. She doesn’t want me to go to Eric or the cops, either.”

  “That’s because it’s an insane plan. The cops are not the answer.”

  Just like that, we were twenty-two again, arguing a decade-old argument. My voice echoed back: Just go to the cops, Coop, and turn them in. They’re dangerous, and they’re going to hurt you. I bet you’ll get immunity or something. His voice: I can’t do that. I’d torpedo law school and kill my mom. It’s hypocritical, anyway. I’m not innocent.

  How ironic that we’d now switched sides: Coop, running to the cops. Me, urging him not to.

  Time, making fools of us all.

  He schooled his face into a blank expression. “Jess, if you don’t agree with me, just walk away. It should feel pretty familiar by now.”

  Like a knife to the heart. “I don’t want to.”

  Coop moved around me. “Let me guess: you just want everything to go back to normal. You want to go back to the party and parade yourself in front of everyone, show the whole school how successful and glamorous you turned out. You want Mint to follow you around like a lovesick puppy. You want to pretend everything’s perfect and none of us are fucked up. Same old, same old.”

  I seized him before he could walk away. “You’re wrong. I don’t want anything to stay the same. Don’t you see? I hate how things used to be. I hate it so much I want to scream.”

  “Then scream, Jessica. Christ, be honest.”

  When I moved, it was both surprising and inevitable. Like a gun going off in a movie you’ve already seen. I saw my hands move to Coop’s face, pull him down with a familiar roughness. Twenty-two or thirty-two, it didn’t matter: it was always going to happen like this. The movement echoed backward and forward through time, too quick for Coop to be anything but surprised. I kissed him and drowned in it.

  If we were being self-destructive tonight, Coop had nothing on me.

  There was a moment of perfect—his stubble rough against my fingers, his hair as soft as I remembered, his mouth moving against mine, breathing me in, my heart, untethered, lifting—and then he broke away with a sharp intake of breath.

  Coop looked at me with such wonder that I knew, for all his provocations, he’d never expected me to
do this. Then the wonder turned to hunger—that old, private look, like he was a man starving for me, and no amount would ever be enough.

  “I’ve got to admit, I didn’t see this coming.”

  I wrenched myself out of Coop’s arms.

  Eric. He stepped out of the dark trees, where there wasn’t even a path.

  “It’s not…” I fumbled the words. “We were just…”

  Coop moved in front of me. “I have something to tell you.”

  Still cloaked in shadow, away from the circle of light cast by one of the old-fashioned lamps, Eric crossed his arms. “It would seem so.”

  “Don’t—” Before I could finish, there was a slapping sound—footsteps on the stone path.

  Oh god. My heart seized. Caro ran toward us, Mint and Courtney close behind.

  Ground, swallow me whole. This was it. Eric would tell them.

  “Coop, I told you no!” Caro’s perfectly curled dark hair was now loose and stringy over her shoulders, a sheen to her face. Her eyes were red-rimmed. She looked terrible.

  Caro, who didn’t deserve any of it. Caro, who would hate me if she knew.

  “Will someone please explain what’s going on?” Mint clutched his chest. “And why Caro made us run out of the party?”

  Courtney swayed on her feet. “You took us back to him.”

  “It’s past time this came out,” Coop said. He looked at Caro apologetically, and I hated myself for feeling wounded by it. “Eric, I know why the toxicology report showed tweak in Heather’s system.”

  The shadow that was Eric didn’t move.

  “I sold pot and molly in college. Party drugs. I needed fast money, and I’ve never thought those kinds of drugs should be illegal in the first place. I’m not proud of it now, because of everything that happened, but I swear, until senior year, I wasn’t hurting anybody.”

  I thought of my father, bent over the steering wheel of his smoking car, the office lobby in shambles around him.

  “Yeah, we all know,” Mint said. “Everyone bought from you.”

  “I didn’t know,” Caro said.

  “Neither did Eric,” Coop said. “He was too young. I didn’t fully realize until I tried to stop selling, but the guys I worked for were territorial and violent. I brought in a lot of money selling on campus, and they didn’t want to lose it. After I quit, they broke into my apartment and broke my arm as a warning.”

  The terrible scream. The machete, the gun, the evil pulsing underneath their skin. Those dark eyes.

  “Wait, that’s how you broke your arm?” Mint looked stunned. “Not playing basketball?”

  “I lied,” Coop said. “In reality, a hulking man snapped it while I watched.”

  “I can’t…” Caro shivered.

  “They told me if I refused to sell—and if I refused to sell tweak, specifically, which was hot back then, profitable but dangerous—they’d kill me. And…” Coop looked at me, then looked away quickly. “My friends. To teach me a lesson.”

  “It was you,” Courtney breathed, a strange look on her face. “Are the rest of you hearing this? It was his fault.”

  “Shut up, Courtney,” Caro snapped, to everyone’s surprise.

  Coop turned to face Eric. “No, Courtney’s right. It is my fault. The guys tracked me on campus, and I led them right to Heather’s suite. I was trying to hide and I wasn’t thinking straight. I told them I’d sell tweak just to get them off my back, and the day Heather died, I was supposed to start. But I didn’t want to. They went searching for me. They knew what my friends looked like. I think there’s a strong chance they went back to the suite looking to hurt someone close to me and found Heather. And then they…” His voice faltered, but he straightened his shoulders and drew a breath. “Killed her. Making me responsible.”

  “You’re not,” I said quickly.

  “I can’t believe you kept this secret for ten years.” Coop’s news seemed to act like a splash of cold water to Courtney. She was no longer wobbling, her face now lucid. “You’re a bigger liar than Frankie.”

  Caro whirled on Courtney. “I have been nothing but nice to you since college, defended you despite everything you’ve done, and you have the nerve—”

  “No one broke into the suite,” Eric said. “And it wasn’t tweak.”

  Everyone turned to stare.

  “What?” Coop asked.

  Eric finally stepped out of the shadow, into the light. “The cops found no evidence of a break-in. They suspect whoever killed Heather knew the code to the suite.”

  Someone close to her.

  “And you’re forgetting what I said. I told you the cops found a drug like tweak in Heather’s system. It looked like the street drug, but it wasn’t tweak itself. The cops checked.”

  Coop blinked. “What was it, then?”

  “It was a weight-loss drug,” Eric said, his eyes leaving Coop to travel over the rest of us. “Illegal in the States because it was basically speed. Ridiculous, toxic side effects. It baffled the cops, because we told them Heather didn’t take things like that. You could only buy the drug in China, and the cops could never find the purchase transactions in any students’ or professors’ accounts.”

  My stomach dropped. Coop had been right—the drug in Heather’s system was a smoking gun, a virtual fingerprint, but it didn’t point to him.

  I spun, but Caro beat me to it.

  “You!” she yelled, pointing at Courtney. “You did it!”

  Courtney looked like a deer caught in headlights. All of a sudden she turned to bolt, but Caro—tiny Caro—sprang and knocked her to the ground.

  “Caro, Jesus!” Mint knelt and pulled Caro off his wife.

  Caro thrust her finger in Courtney’s face. “She’s guilty.”

  “Give her a chance to defend herself.” Mint looked at his wife. “Babe?”

  Courtney blinked at him, then turned to look around the circle of faces, searching for an ally, a single measure of sympathy. That day freshman year echoed back—the one where she’d tried to humiliate me but Heather had stepped in to stop it. Heather wasn’t here anymore.

  Courtney’s eyes found mine. Her stare was murderous. A chill crept up my neck.

  “Fine,” she said, taking me by surprise. “I drugged Heather. Are you happy?”

  Chapter 20

  February, senior year

  Courtney

  If ever someone was born to wear a crown, it was Courtney Kennedy. She of the glossy blond hair, regal face, and astounding proportions. And she knew it, which was important, because other people wasted so much time demurring. Every Valentine’s Day since freshman year, she’d watched girls get crowned Phi Delt Sweetheart—always a Chi O, always a senior—and she knew, with unshakable certainty, that one day it would be hers.

  That day was today.

  The Phi Delt basement was packed with brothers. They’d dragged in a keg and were doing keg stands, following with shots of whiskey. Tonight was no regular night. The Sweetheart Ball was a famous party, and this year was going to be bigger than ever, because Mint was president, and Mint and his real estate money did everything bigger and better than anyone else.

  Courtney watched Mint from across the room, ignoring the small crowd of guys who’d gathered around her, trying to get her attention, trying to get in her pants. There was never a shortage of boys, and tonight—well, tonight she was extraordinary. A skintight red dress, red lips, the perfect amount of tasteful cleavage. A look that screamed I am your Sweetheart, your college queen.

  It didn’t matter how many boys surrounded her, because to Courtney there was only one who mattered. Mark Minter. If there was ever a boy born to be with Courtney, it was him. Gorgeous, heir to a fortune, practically Duquette royalty. She would never understand why he’d dated Jessica Miller, that absolute nonperson, since freshman year. That was the frustrating
thing about life: sometimes the losers won, for absolutely no discernible reason.

  Sometimes people met freshman year and banded together into stupid groups like the East House Seven, and cut you out of the deal right before they rode to campus glory. Just because of some stupid comment she’d made to Jessica—as if no one else in the history of the world ever teased each other—they’d forged this thing without her, even though she lived in the same dorm, in the same room as one of them, and was Courtney Kennedy to boot.

  Mint was talking to Frankie, that giant oaf, when he looked over and caught her staring. Courtney smiled her best smile, and he smiled back. She lifted her Solo cup to say cheers, and he echoed her, taking a sip. Even after Courtney looked away, then slid her eyes back, his gaze lingered. He was going to be hers one day; she could feel it.

  Maybe that day was today.

  She was about to walk over, leaving the circle of boys—who were still talking, maybe even asking her questions—when Heather stumbled down the stairs, practically tripping into Courtney’s arms.

  “Christ, Heather.” Courtney shooed the boys away and righted her friend. “What’s your damage?”

  Heather hiccupped, which was not a good sign. In fact, now that Courtney could get a good look at her, something was definitely wrong. Heather was never going to win any beauty pageants, let’s be honest, but the girl had a zero-limit credit card, thanks to her doctor mom, and could usually pull herself together. But now, even though Heather’s pink chiffon dress was cute and obviously designer, her mascara was smeared and her nose red, like she’d been crying. Courtney felt a reflexive kick of worry and glanced around, trying to see who’d noticed Heather in this state.

  Heather followed her eyes around the basement, clocking Mint and Frankie, and pulled Courtney into a corner. “It’s Jack,” she said, her voice low and thick with feeling. “He just broke up with me, and I’m freaking out.”