Nightfall

by Douglas, Penelope

  “She loved to love,” Aydin said. “She loved to touch and to feel and to wrap her every breath around someone and hold them with it, because she was an artist.”

  Everything warmed, and I envied how he described her. Whoever she was.

  What would Will say about me?

  “It wasn’t her job,” Aydin said, “but it was her calling.”

  He paused, and then he dropped his voice as if thinking out loud. “It wasn’t her job,” he said again. “Then.”

  It was like Will. He loved to love. He loved to be happy.

  He’d wanted to make me happy once.

  “I’d never wanted anything more in my whole life,” Aydin went on, “and I was studying to be a surgeon who would’ve gladly cut off his own hands to have her.”

  Will squeezed his eyes shut, and I dropped my gaze to his cock again, my breathing nearly in sync with his strokes. What was he thinking about?

  “Maybe I’m to blame,” Aydin told me. “In the end, I didn’t claim what was born to be mine because I was a shit twenty-two-year-old kid who knew nothing.” He trailed off and then continued, his voice lower again. “But later when I could finally stand up and claim her, I spit on her instead, because every effortless breath she wrapped around everyone else became another nail through my heart, and I couldn’t look at her.”

  My chin trembled, and I wasn’t sure why. He wasn’t special. We’d all suffered loss.

  But one thing was pretty clear. She was the reason he was here. Much like Will could saddle me with that honor, possibly, as well.

  A woman happened to them both.

  “I couldn’t look at her, much like he can’t look at you,” Aydin said.

  My stomach coiled, and he released me, backing away.

  I turned and looked at him.

  “I just wonder…” Aydin said. “If he ever decided to run from here, would he care to take you?”

  He turned and walked away, leaving me there and feeling more alone than I ever had in my life.

  Will would leave me, and he would be right to.

  • • •

  I stood there next to the pool for I didn’t know how long, Aydin’s words hanging in the air even after he’d left the room.

  Was Will planning on running? What would happen to me if he weren’t here? Or if he were sent home?

  Would he fight for me?

  I’d left him once. I’d let him be arrested and sent to prison, and in his head, I hadn’t cared at all. Maybe I deserved the same.

  I walked to the pool’s edge, descended the steps into the water, and jumped in, sinking my entire body below the surface.

  The water held me, warm and weightless, and I drifted back up to the surface, floating on my back.

  The saltwater stung the cut on my lip, but the pain filled me with anger and memory, and I knew this was coming. I always knew.

  I just figured it would’ve come after he got out of prison, and as the subsequent years passed, it didn’t. I got comfortable.

  Where would both of us be if he had just left me alone like I told him to?

  I stood up, walking to the side of the pool as the shorts and shirt stuck to me like a second skin and tears hung in my eyes.

  I used to think that if I got out of Thunder Bay and lived my life for me, doing what I loved and inviting only the people into my life whom I wanted, everything would be perfect someday.

  But I hated everything I had, and loved nothing as well as what I’d given up, all of it tainted from the moment he was charged seven years ago, because I knew I didn’t deserve to be happy.

  Despair sat on my heart as warm tears streamed down my cheeks, and I didn’t even realize the shower had stopped running until I noticed him standing there.

  I looked up, seeing a towel wrapped around his waist as he stared at me. The air thickened, I almost couldn’t breathe, and I was torn between wanting to run to him and run away from him.

  Just go.

  I begged him in my head, meeting his hard eyes with my blurry ones, and there was so much to say, but if I didn’t explain, then maybe I wouldn’t have to feel him spit on me and throw me away for good.

  Please just go.

  He charged over instead, not going, and I gasped as he reached down, grabbing me by the collar and hauling me out of the water.

  “Will,” I cried.

  He picked me up under my arms and lifted me up, nose to nose with him, glaring at me as he dug his fingers into my body.

  Another cry escaped.

  My legs dangled, and I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.

  I was frozen, waiting for what was to come.

  I could see it inside of him, ripping him apart, his lips tight and his brow narrow.

  But instead of spitting, he shook me hard, growling like he was frustrated with himself more than me, and I broke into more tears.

  “I’m sorry,” I cried.

  I was so sorry for all of his pain.

  But when I thought he was going to throw me back into the pool, he brought me in instead, wrapping an arm around me and pressing his forehead to mine.

  His hard muscle nudged my thigh through the towel, and he took my face in his hand, breath pouring out of him as he hovered over my mouth.

  “Will…” I started.

  But he lifted my thighs up around his waist and backed into the shower again, slamming me into the wall as he took my bottom lip between his teeth.

  I opened my mouth to argue, but the heat of his breath made my whole body shiver, and I sucked in a breath, tightening my thighs around him.

  He ripped open my shirt, and a whimper escaped me as he pressed his chest into my bare breasts and thrust up into me, grinding hard.

  I dug my nails in, but when he came in for my mouth, I turned away.

  “Get off,” I told him. “I—We can’t.”

  He wrapped his fingers around my throat and squeezed. “This is how it should’ve gone,” he whispered up to me, cutting me off. “You were a hot little piece of meat, and I know you liked it.”

  He let my neck go and grabbed my breast instead, plumping it up and out for him as he dipped down and covered my nipple with his mouth.

  I moaned as the heat of his tongue covered my skin, my clit throbbing as I grinded on him.

  “We should’ve just kept it this simple, huh?” he said. “But you didn’t want people to know the shit we did.”

  His mouth covered mine, stealing my breath as he slid his tongue inside and completely took me over, moving across my lips like I was a car he was shifting into gear.

  “Why did you do it?” he asked. “Ashamed of what you liked me to do? There was still so much more to come, but you cut us short. We didn’t even do half of everything I had planned for you.”

  I rocked into him again, panting. Yes.

  But then suddenly, he dropped me to my feet, and my knees shook, everything going cold.

  Huh? I opened my eyes.

  I barely even registered him peeling my bottoms down my legs and taking my panties.

  What?

  “And now that you’re here,” he said, grabbing the back of my hair.

  I gasped as he brought me in nose to nose again, slipping his hand between my legs and caressing my pussy.

  “We have all the time in the world.”

  Then…he turned and left, his threat echoing through my ears as it took a moment to realize what had just happened.

  I blinked, locking my knees under me as I quickly closed my shirt and covered myself.

  Dammit.

  Aydin was right.

  Will wasn’t an ally.

  Will

  Nine Years Ago

  “Arion Ashby’s having a party,” Damon told us, lying on the hood of his car and blowing a stream of smoke up toward the sky. “Her parents will be out of town.”

  Kai groaned, and Michael laughed at him under his breath.

  “What?” Damon taunted. “Are you bored, Kai? Restless? Need a new kind of fun?”


  “Me?” Kai retorted. “Never. I’m perfectly content. Loving life.”

  Damon smiled to himself, taking another drag off his cigarette, looking like he didn’t believe Kai for a second.

  The school parking lot swarmed with students, all of us hanging out and trying to soak up the rare, warm October morning before classes started. A calm breeze swept through the trees, clouds rolled in, the air charged, and I looked around for any sign of Emmy Scott.

  Without looking like I was looking for her.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want my friends to know that I was into her, because they already knew I was, but if she got the slightest attention for it, she’d get scared off, and she was already constantly bolting away from me.

  My eyes lifted, covertly scanning the crowd.

  She wasn’t waiting for me this morning.

  I mean, of course she wasn’t, but still. Pretty sure I would’ve died, seeing her waiting on the corner of her block for me, but as much as I wished I didn’t know, I did.

  She would never make anything easy.

  Or maybe she couldn’t. Something kept bugging me about Friday night. Dropping her off at her house, I could hear it in her voice when she demanded I stop a couple houses down, instead of right in front of her driveaway. It was fear.

  Almost like she was panicked.

  I tied my tie, keeping it loose around my collar, and watched cars enter the gates, parents drop off their freshmen, and some students head through the parking lot on foot.

  I was one of the first here this morning. Where the hell was she? Was she already inside?

  “Same parties. Same girls,” Michael mumbled. “I’m fucking bored.”

  “I know.” Kai let out a sigh. “I’m feeling it, too. I need something to happen.”

  “Something to obsess over,” Michael added.

  And then Damon chimed in. “We should kill someone.”

  Michael snorted, Kai rolled his eyes, and I plucked the cigarette out of Damon’s mouth, taking a drag and shaking my head.

  Michael whipped his uniform blazer at Damon. “I was thinking I needed the season to start, you fucking psycho.”

  “Or maybe you need to fall for someone,” Kai told him, pulling his jacket out of his Jeep and slipping it on. “I’m ready to have my guts twisted into knots.”

  But instead of looking at Damon or Michael when he said that, Kai met my eyes, a knowing smile playing behind them. I flipped him off, and he just laughed silently.

  “Blood would be better,” Damon pointed out, plucking his cigarette back, taking a drag, blowing the smoke up to the sky, and then flicking the butt off somewhere. “Come on. We’ll pick someone. Someone who deserves it. Stalk her—or him—watch them, plan how we’re going to get away with it, dispose of the body…”

  I shook my head, only half listening as I scanned the parking lot again for Em.

  “And then watch this town lose their minds at the danger lurking right under their noses,” Damon said. “It’ll be fun.”

  I heard someone breathe out a laugh again, but then silence fell, and no one said anything.

  Because while no one was ready to do more than entertain the idea as a joke, not one of us doubted that Damon was somewhat serious.

  He might even already have someone in mind.

  “I’m so glad you’re on my side sometimes,” Michael told him.

  But Damon just took out another cigarette and lit it, musing out loud. “We’d be bound together in the secret forever.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s no one I want to kill,” Kai said.

  Damon just stared up to the sky before bringing the cigarette toward his mouth again. “Lucky you,” he murmured.

  I looked down at him, his gaze still on the clouds, and I couldn’t help this feeling in my gut.

  Michael and Kai needed something to happen, and I… I already felt it coming.

  The first bell rang, and we all headed indoors, students racing up the steps and trying to maneuver their way down the halls.

  She’ll be in class. She never misses school.

  After stopping at the lockers and dodging conversations the others got tangled in on the way down the hall, I finally dove into lit class with my book and binder, looking to see who she planted herself around, so I knew whose ass to move.

  But as I looked, I only spotted Chase Deery and Morgan Rackham in the classroom. No one else.

  I stopped for a moment, faltering. Fucking great. This was what I got for rushing and trying to pretend like I wasn’t rushing. Now I got to sit here like a dumbbell, and if she came in and sat far away, I couldn’t move, or else she’d know I was waiting for her.

  And I didn’t want her to know I was waiting for her.

  Continuing to a seat toward the windows, I took out my phone, pretending to look busy.

  People drifted in, filling the seats, but I didn’t look up as Kai, Michael, and Damon surrounded me.

  As the minutes passed, I barely registered the teacher talking, the papers shuffling, or the nudge on my shoulder to pass the new packets back.

  There was only one thing I was aware of as I sat there.

  She wasn’t here.

  Maybe she was taking her time. She hated this class, after all.

  But as the class wore on and she was nowhere to be seen, I barely heard a fucking word the whole time.

  We started a new book. The teacher passed them out and finished his lecture, and something was due by the end of the week, but if it wasn’t tomorrow, then I didn’t care.

  I didn’t give a shit. Where the hell was she?

  The bell rang, and everyone rose from their seats, piling out of the classroom, but instead of turning left outside the classroom, toward my next class, I turned right.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Michael asked.

  He and I shared government and economics.

  “I’ll be at practice,” I assured him.

  And I spun around and headed toward the library.

  Coach would make me run laps once he found out I’d skipped classes, but I’d run so many laps the past few years, I was kind of perfect at it.

  I couldn’t sit in class right now. My head ached and heated up like a fuse, and I refused to look for her, because even though I told myself it would be just to make sure she was safe—make sure everything was okay—it was because I was pissed.

  She really went to any length to avoid me, didn’t she?

  Rushing into the library, I made my way through the tables of students working and jogged up the open stairwell all the way to the third floor. I tossed my binder and books onto a table and pulled the group phone out of my pocket, heading down the long aisle and turning right down the fifth row. I reached up to a line of books and pulled out a fat, navy blue text, titled Data Entry and Transcendental Curves of Non-Regular Polytopes, something we know no one on this planet would even be interested in touching.

  Opening the cover, I punched in the combination to the lock box inside, stuck the phone in, and closed it, placing it back onto the shelf. The communal phone that recorded all of our pranks had to be hidden somewhere no one would look and all of us could have ready access to it. Not sure why, since I ended up being the one to fetch it and record most of the videos.

  But then I heard someone’s voice. “That title makes no sense.”

  I turned my head over my shoulder, seeing a glimpse of brown hair through the bookcases.

  I clutched the disguised lock box in my hand, pausing. Had she’d seen what I put in here?

  I let go, peering through the bookcase and seeing Emory lean against the back wall, her head down with her hair and glasses covering her face.

  “You weren’t in class,” I said.

  Her chest shook, and I thought I saw her lip tremble.

  But then she cleared her throat. “Wasn’t I?” she snipped. “Wow, you’re outstanding. Maybe for your next trick you can make fire and draw stories in the dirt about those funny holes in the sky that let
the light in.”

  Huh? Holes in the sky?

  Oh, stars. Was she calling me a caveman?

  Little shit. I mean, I did do her literature assignment for her. Did she have any idea how hard it was to try to sound like an angry teenage girl with zero sense of humor?

  Then a tear fell down her cheek, and she quickly swiped it away.

  I dropped my eyes down her body, taking in the worn and cracked gray Chucks, and the skirt two inches too short with the green and navy blue tartan pattern that was two years outdated. The glowing olive skin of her beautiful legs, interrupted with the occasional bruise or scrape, which I actually kind of loved because she probably got them from constructing that gazebo and being amazing at something most of us could never do.

  Her shirt tail and cuffs hung out of her navy blue cardigan because it was too big, and her tie was missing, her blouse laying open an extra button. A lock of hair was caught inside her shirt, laying against her chest.

  She was here and dressed for school, but she was hiding instead of going to class?

  “What happened?” I asked.

  But she just shook her head. “Just leave me alone,” she whispered. “Please.”

  Please? God, she must be desperate if she was using manners.

  “We started a new book in class,” I told her.

  She remained quiet, chewing on her lip.

  “We had a choice,” I said. “The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Grapes of Wrath, or Mrs. Dalloway.”

  A little snarl peeked out, and I bit back my smile.

  “I chose for you.”

  She gently pushed off the wall and started walking, dragging her satchel slowly down the aisle of books as I followed on the other side of the bookcase.

  “I have your paperback in my binder,” I told her. “Don’t you want it?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Don’t you want to know which one I picked for you?”

  She kept walking, but she was going so slowly. Like she wasn’t in her body.

  “I picked something good.”

  “There’s nothing in that selection that’s good, so just give me The Grapes of Wrath paperback, because things can always get worse, and that choice will really make this day complete.”

  Seriously? How the hell did she guess which book I picked?