by Eva Ashwood
It doesn’t come, but wallowing isn’t my style, so after a few long minutes of silence, I push myself up and crawl off the bed. I clean up and pull my clothes back on like the grown-ass woman I am, then rummage through my messenger bag until I find the little bag of weed and the new lighter I picked up a few weeks ago.
If I don’t watch out, I’m gonna form some kind of Pavlovian response to the emotional turmoil of my fucked up relationship with Gray.
Have a traumatizing encounter with Gray Eastwood, go smoke some weed.
Whatever. There are worse ways to deal with shit.
I roll a joint and slip it into my back pocket along with the lighter, then step out into the dormitory hallway.
But as the door closes behind me, I stop.
“Declan? What the fuck are you doing here?”
He’s sitting on the floor, back to the wall, knees up. He’s got his phone in his hands, some random game on the screen, and when he looks up at me, I can’t quite read the expression on his face.
“I saw Gray leave. Figured I’d make sure you were okay.”
I scoff. “Bit late to make sure he wasn’t assaulting me.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
My brows furrow as I study him. I’m tempted to ask what he does mean, but I’m not sure I’m prepared to hear the answer. I’m too on-edge, my nerves too raw and exposed right now to deal with anything else.
“Does Gray know you’re here?” I ask instead.
Declan’s deep brown eyes flicker slightly, but he doesn’t answer. Which is all the answer I need.
No.
“Well, I’m fine.” I lean against my closed door, crossing my arms over my chest. “So you can leave.”
He doesn’t say anything in response to that either, nor does he make a move to go anywhere.
I don’t know what Declan’s deal is, but I’ve got no energy left to try to force him to fuck off. So I shrug and make my way toward the stairwell. “Fine. You can sit outside my door all damn night if you want. I need a smoke.”
The stairwell has become my usual smoking spot, since most of the girls in my dorm take the elevators—too good to walk up stairs like the mere mortals, I can only assume. I plop myself down on one of the steps, pull out my joint, and light it.
Declan joins me a few seconds later. He’s not as big as Elias or Gray, but his bulk takes up a good portion of the stair, his shoulder against mine.
I ignore it, and I especially ignore the way a little trickle of heat works its way down my arm from the point of contact between us. When I tug my bottom lip between my teeth, I can still taste Gray on my skin. But I swear I can also taste the lingering flavor of Declan.
That kiss was…
Jesus, I don’t even know what it was. But I know Gray was trying to fuck it out of my system when he kicked his two friends out before hauling me into the bedroom like a damn caveman.
The honest truth is, it didn’t work. My body is sore and sated, still recovering from the intense sex with Gray.
That kiss, though?
It’s not out of my system.
Taking another long drag from the joint, I do my best to clear my head of all thought. Declan is the quietest of the three Sinners, but he’s observant as fuck, and I don’t want him to guess what I’m thinking about.
We sit in a comfortable silence for a little while, passing the joint back and forth. I let the smoke fill my lungs, and even though it doesn’t bring the numbness I was hoping for, it at least slows my spinning thoughts.
“What’s Gray’s deal?” I ask finally, the words slipping out before I can stop them.
It’s an open ended question that could have a number of answers. Mostly, I’m curious about whether or not Declan will answer me at all, let alone answer honestly if he does. Given how tight the three Sinners seem to be, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he tells me to fuck off.
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything at all for a while. He’s got the joint pinched between his thumb and forefinger, staring at it without really seeing it. A slight frown tugs at the corners of his lips as a wispy trail of smoke floats past his face.
I watch him open his mouth, then close it again, and I unconsciously lean a little closer to him, as if I might draw the answers out that way.
Finally, he hands the joint back to me without taking another hit. “Listen, Gray’s got his own problems, okay? And whatever you think about him, he’s got a good reason for acting the way he does.”
I grimace. “Of course he does. Doesn’t every asshole? At least in their own mind.”
Declan lets out a sound, and I can’t tell if it’s agreeing or disagreeing with me.
“Well, I’m not leaving,” I say idly, running a hand through my tangled blond and blue hair. I didn’t shower before stepping out into the hall, and it occurs to me belatedly that I probably still smell like sex. “I know none of you think I earned my place here, but I did, and I’m not gonna give it up just because a boy was mean to me.”
“I never said I think that.”
His quiet words draw my attention, and my head turns sharply toward him. He’s staring at me with an inscrutable look, his elbows resting on his knees.
“Yeah. Well. Tell Gray that.”
“I think he knows it already. Or some part of him does anyway.” Declan sighs. Then he straightens, bringing us face to face. “And whether you earned it or not, I think you’re one of the few people who could come in from the outside and survive here. This place, this life, chews people up and spits them out.” The corner of his lip twitches, like he’s holding in a grin. “I’ve seen you get chewed on plenty since you got here, but every time you get spit out, you’re still in one piece.”
I pull a face, surprised by the laugh that bubbles out of me. “That’s a disgusting analogy.”
He shrugs, the grin finally breaking free. “Yeah. It’s not my best. I’m usually better at them than that. I’ll keep thinking about it.”
“Good. Let me know what you come up with.”
I find myself smiling back at him, and I don’t know if it’s the moment of easy banter or the fact that I think he actually just gave me a compliment, but my chest feels a little lighter.
“Why did you kiss me?”
His question comes out of nowhere, just like mine did earlier, and I jerk a little, caught off guard.
“Why did you kiss me back?” I demand, covering my surprise by turning it back on him.
He doesn’t answer. His hand comes up, tangling loosely in my hair as he curls a lock of dyed-blue strands around his finger. He gives a light tug, a gentler mirror of the way Gray grabbed my hair earlier, and even though I could easily resist the pull, I don’t.
I let him draw my face closer to his until his breath fans across my lips, sparking more memories of what it felt like to kiss him.
I just got so thoroughly fucked that I feel it in every atom of my body, but that doesn’t stop a new hunger from growing deep in my belly. For so much of my life, I’ve existed in a state of numbness—a neutral stasis that wasn’t exactly comfortable but that hurt a lot less than the alternative.
But now…
It’s like Gray flipped some sort of switch inside me, turning my dead soul back on. And now I don’t know how to turn it off again.
I don’t know how to find the nothingness again, and I wish like fuck I could.
Because everything I’m feeling is dangerous.
Declan’s face is so close to mine that I can see his pupils contracting and expanding, his eyes moving slightly as his gaze tracks over me. He’s so close that our noses brush, our knees pressed together as we lean into each other.
Then he draws back a few inches. Slowly, stiffly, his fingers uncurl, sliding out of my hair, and he rises to his feet.
“I’ll see you around, Soph.”
With that, he heads down the stairs, his footsteps echoing in the stairwell. They grow quieter as he gets farther away, and I sit still until I hear the
faint sound of the stairwell door opening and closing on the first floor.
Just like when Gray left my dorm room earlier, the space suddenly feels too empty, too cold, too big for one person. But even as I wrap my arms around myself to ward off the chill, my chest doesn’t ache in quite the same way it did before.
When Gray left, it felt like he took a piece of me with him.
When Declan walked away, he left of a piece of himself behind.
17
A long corridor stretches out in front of me. It seems to get longer and longer with every lethargic step that I take, and it sounds like I’m under water. Everything is muffled, distorted, and strange.
I don’t know where I am.
Am I at Hawthorne?
Am I back at the McAlisters’ house?
Am I at one of the half-dozen other foster houses I lived in before that?
I can’t tell. Everything around me is familiar and strange at the same time, images processed by my brain and then immediately forgotten. The only thing I know is that I shouldn’t be here. I need to get away.
This corridor…
This windowless, doorless stretch of floor and wall will somehow take me to my salvation, if only I can get to the end before…
Before…
I wake up in a cold sweat. My skin, my clothes, my blankets—everything is drenched. My heart gallops in my chest, and my head aches like it’s being squeezed in a vise. I feel a splitting migraine coming on.
What the fuck was that?
I never have dreams. Ever.
I don’t know if it’s because I simply can’t remember them, or if my sleeping mind literally just doesn’t go there, but this is the first time in years that I’ve remembered even a snippet of a dream.
Already, the strange images and feelings are slipping away, leaving me feeling woozy, confused, and agitated.
Fighting back a wave of nausea, I slip out of bed and stumble to the bathroom, flicking on the tap before splashing water on my face. When I pat my face off and look into the mirror over the sink, my skin looks pale in the darkness, my eyes like dark shadows. The image creeps me the fuck out, so I flip on the light even though the sudden flood of brightness makes my temples throb even harder.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
After I left the stairwell, I didn’t have the motivation to do much of anything. I fell asleep ten minutes into a half-hearted attempt to study, barely managing to set down my tablet and turn off the lamp beside my bed before I passed out.
Jesus, if I knew what was waiting for me, I would’ve tried harder to stay awake.
I’ve never been the type to be afraid of the dark. In fact, I usually prefer it. But that doesn’t stop me from turning on every damn light in my dorm before finally crawling back into bed. I stare at the ceiling until the first hints of dawn are creeping through the windows, and only then do I finally fall asleep.
The dreams don’t stop.
I expected the remembered images to be a one-time fluke, but instead, the dreams persist almost nightly, getting wilder and more bizarre than my nonsensical run down the long corridor of the first dream.
My sleep for the next two weeks is, in a word, shit.
Just like the black hole that used to live in my chest, sleep was once a place of blissful nothingness for me. But no longer. This new nightly intrusion is unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
“You look like you need to get out and do something fun.” Max slides into a seat beside me as we settle in for lunch.
We’ve almost reached the mid-point of the semester, and she’s actually starting to fit in here—much more than I am, anyway. I half expected her to stop hanging out with me as the rich little clique absorbed her into their ranks, but she’s steadfastly refused to do that.
And she still hates Caitlin and her posse with a vengeance, so as far as I’m concerned, we’re good.
“Is this you inviting me to a party?” I shoot her a look. “Because I’m all booked up for stripping sessions, unfortunately.”
Max snorts. “Nah, no parties. But seriously, you do look a little strung out. You should do something this weekend besides just study and paint. There’s a home football game—”
“Oh, hell no.” I shake my head. “Seriously?”
She shrugs. “I mean, I’m not gonna paint my face blue and gold or put on a cheerleading outfit or anything. But sure, I’ll go watch some beefy guys throw a ball around, tackle each other, and slap each other on the ass.”
“Well, when you put it that way…” I cock my head, a lascivious grin tilting my lips.
“Exactly.” She nods, as if she’s proved her point completely. “So you’ll come with me?”
I spread the last few bites of my lunch around on my plate, making a noise in the back of my throat. “Maybe.”
“I’ll take it.”
As she grins at me, I catch movement over her shoulder. Declan slides his chair back from the table where he’s been sitting with Gray and Elias in their usual spot. His gaze flicks to me so fast that it’s almost imperceptible, then he says something to his two friends and leaves the cafeteria.
I force my attention back to Max as she fills me in on the details of the game—what time it’s at and where we should meet beforehand. My “maybe” has already been turned into a “yes,” but I can’t get mad at her for it. She’s just trying to help, and she’s right. I do need a distraction. Something to get my mind off those fucking dreams.
I wait a few minutes, taking my time finishing my lunch, then tell Max I’ll text her later before rising from the table. I don’t look in Gray’s direction as I walk across the cafeteria and slip out into the hall. If he’s watching me, I don’t want to know or think about it. We haven’t talked once since that day in my dorm room, and I’ve decided the only way to deal with this fucking hot and cold thing we have going on is to make sure the temperature stays set to frigid at all times.
Fuck Gray Eastwood.
Any way but literally.
The second floor of this building has smaller meeting rooms for events and fundraisers and stuff. I push open the door to the stairwell and head up, slowing as I near the second-floor landing.
Declan sits on the top step, a rolled cigarette dangling from his lips. He tips his head toward me as he takes a drag, but he doesn’t say anything as I settle on the stairs beside him.
This is another thing that’s kind of become… a thing. An unspoken thing that we don’t formally plan, and as far as I know, no one else is aware of—least of all Gray.
We meet up here to smoke and shoot the shit. The first time it happened was a few days after we smoked in my dorm building, and since then, it’s become an almost daily occurrence.
I’ve also finally figured out why I thought I recognized Declan when I first met him. Fucker has music out. He’s not with a big label or anything, but he’s had a couple of singles do pretty well.
Sometimes he’ll put an earbud in my ear with one of his tracks playing. I don’t compliment him, and I don’t disparage him. He seems to be able to tell what I think about a song by looking at my face, though he never asks me to confirm if his inner suspicions are correct.
I don’t know what to make of this, to be honest. It’s not the chaotic and tumultuous thing that Gray and I have going on, and yet it’s not…
Fuck. I don’t know what to make of it, but it isn’t bad, whatever it is.
Declan doesn’t fill the space with needless words. I’m pretty sure our first stairwell conversation was the longest one we’ve actually had. I think he only speaks when it’s important, and I kind of like that. It takes the pressure off me to speak too.
“Max talked me into going to the football game on Friday,” I say after a few moments of comfortable silence.
“Yeah?” He lifts an eyebrow at me. “You’ll be able to see Gray play.”
“Not why I’m going.” I pluck the joint from his fingers.
“Didn’t say it was.”
“Will you be
there? To watch your boy play?”
I don’t know why I’m sort of hoping the answer is yes, but Declan shakes his head. “Can’t. My folks want me home this weekend.”
Home is nearby for him, I think. I’m pretty sure his parents live in Calabasas. But I don’t want to ask, because I still don’t want to admit I’d like to know more about him.
“Oh,” I say instead, taking a drag before passing him back the joint.
“It’s too bad.” A half-grin curves his lips. I’m starting to realize he usually smiles in halves, one corner of his mouth or the other quirking up. “I think I’d like watching you watch football for the first time.”
“How do you know I’ve never watched it?” I shoot back.
“Have you?”
“No.”
He chuckles. “There you go.”
I roll my eyes. “Excuse me if I was busy doing better things.”
“Hey, I’m not arguing that.” He takes a long drag and holds it for a long beat before blowing it out. “I never really got into it myself. I only started watching because Gray and Elias play—well, played.”
“Elias played?” I bite my tongue as soon as the words slip out of my mouth. I’m not supposed to be asking questions. Not supposed to be interested in any of them.
Declan’s gaze shoots to me, almost as if he’s guessed my thoughts. He shakes his head. “Yeah, he used to play. But that’s really his story to tell, not mine.”
That’s another thing Declan does. He won’t tell me private details about either of his friends, steering the conversation away if it ever veers into that territory. I don’t quite get it.
Is he trying to protect them? Protect me? Or does he just not like talking about them when we’re in the strange little bubble of peace we’ve formed while we get high in the stairwell?
We each take one more hit, lapsing back into easy silence as we do. Then Declan gives me a small nod, pushing his unruly black hair back from his face before standing up and heading down the stairs. I watch him go, then lean back on my hands and gaze up at the ceiling, letting the pleasant buzz work its way through my system.