by Jordan Grant
I mutter my thank you and squeeze my way through Blaze’s posse.
“Chug! Chug! Chug!” a circle of students chants around a keg as they watch a bull of a guy with a bald head attempt to drink his weight in beer.
My hand steadies on the wrought-iron railing as I climb the stairs, my sneakers squeaking on the waxed hardwood. A bag of Cheetos spills out from the landing of the second floor, dusting the stairs in orange crumbs and Cheeto dust. The smell of pepperoni and cheese wafts in the air. The stoners must be hungry.
The place is what I imagine a rave would be like, sweaty bodies pressed together, an abundance of alcohol, and strings of multi-colored Christmas lights hanging haphazardly from the ceiling. Except Blaze doesn’t charge a cover, and it’s BYOB.
Myra—who I met in gym class last semester and who shares my dislike for group exercise and Coach Adams—pops a breath mint at the top of the stairs before kissing her girlfriend. She’s got a nose ring, and she’s changed her hair from purple to black and flat-ironed it straight. She looks kick-ass, and she smiles at me as I reach the landing.
“Harlow Weathersby,” she says, grinning. “I never thought you would grace one of Blaze’s famous parties.”
I shrug. “Just here for my brother. You seen him anywhere, Myra?”
She shakes her head, but her girlfriend gives me a glassy-eyed stare.
“You William’s sister?”
I nod.
“They went in there.” She points to a closed door down the hall.
I thank her and make my way forward. Crushed soda cans litter the floor and crackle under my feet.
I reach the closed door, and my hand stills on the handle. A cavity in the pit of my stomach tears open, and the world doesn’t feel right. It’s as if I have stepped off my planet and onto another one completely. My new world is dark and lonely and scary.
“William!” I yell at the door, my voice slightly quivering, but I don’t know why. “You better be dressed, or we’re going to have a talk about boundaries!”
As my hand turns the knob, I am suddenly breathless, the darkness squeezing the breath from my lungs.
I awake from the memories that haunt me. I’m in my dorm room, my bedsheets soaked with sweat, and my cheeks wet with tears. I blindly reach for the bottle on the nightstand next to me and twist open the cap. I swallow the pills dry.
“You okay, Harlow?” Molly asks, frowning at me over her copy of Beowulf. She doesn’t ask me every time I have a nightmare, but it’s like she’s got a sixth sense for the really bad ones.
I nod, my breath slowly returning to me as the darkness recedes.
“You want to go see a movie today?” I croak. I know I must look crazy, my hair as wild as my stare. Hell, I’m at least a little crazy. That’s why I have the pills after all and the doctor on speed-dial whom I’ve missed my last two telephonic appointments with.
I want to get out of here, away from the memories of William, for which I have no respite.
Molly shuts her book.
“Heck yeah,” she says. “It’s a pretty far drive but definitely.”
I remember I don’t have my car. I cringe by way of apology.
“Can you drive?” I ask. “I’ll pay for gas.”
Molly laughs. “It’s fine, girl.”
She hops out of bed and heads toward her closet, grabbing a pair of jeans and a sweater, tossing them onto her bed.
She turns to me, grinning widely. “Up and at ‘em! We don’t want to be late.”
I laugh because I know for sure she has no idea about the movie showtimes and just wants an excuse to avoid doing homework.
18
Harlow
Hungry and tired, I walk out of From Colonialism to Industrialization: The Birth of the Modern World. God forbid Voclain name its humanities classes anything normal like World History. My book bag digs into my shoulder like it weighs forty pounds, probably because it does.
I am exhausted, and my indolent feet protest at my shuffle. I know what I’d see if I looked in the mirror: a heavy-lidded gaze with blue eyes made even clearer by the dark circles underneath them. I could blame Ian or I could blame the Rules, but that’s not entirely truthful. A cloud stews and swirls above me, my own personal thunderstorm.
The nightmares are worse lately. William haunts my dreams, and with his every appearance, I fade a little more, like I’m the one who is the apparition.
I should tell someone—my doctor or maybe my parents—but it sort of feels like doing so would admit failure. And I don’t admit failure—I won’t admit it—because if I fail then the dreams that live on through me disappear from the world, just like he did.
On the rare nights I don’t dream about William, my mind cruelly deposits me in front of Ian. Those nights I wake up panting, yearning deep and low in my belly.
Ian Beckett has seared his imprint on my soul with a branding iron, and an ugly scab cracks open and bleeds every time I see his stupid, beautiful face, even if only in my imagination.
One dream plagues me more than most. It comes to me the same. Always the same.
In that dream, Ian walks lazily across the football field, shirtless as drops of sweat fall from his mess of inky hair to his bronze shoulders. Grass and dirt stain his football pants, and the sun kisses his devilish image like it is his own personal spotlight. There’s just him and me on our own personal gridiron.
He stares at me as he stalks forward, his gaze like thunderstorms rolling on the edge of the horizon. I am powerless as I take a hesitant step toward him. My feet move, but I am not in control. I’m just a girl locked in a cage inside her brain, pounding on the walls and screaming to be let free.
He smiles, all straight, white teeth and contagious charm as the sun bathes him in the last amber light of day. Helpless, my lips curve to return his smile, but inside I am yelling to not do it, to not go to him, but I am just a bystander, watching as I betray my friend and everything I hold dear.
My body walks toward him until I am less than a foot away, and he reaches for me. As our hands touch—and I pound on the walls of my cage, begging myself to turn and run in the other direction—I awake, feeling as though I have been capsized on a cloudless, sunny afternoon.
Ian visited me last night again in that dream, and I have spent the entire day trying to forget a memory that never even existed.
My stomach growls, and I skirt around a pair of girls blocking the hall and walk straight into a hard shoulder. My eyes snap open, and I am greeted by Aurora’s cruel glare.
“Watch where you are going, slut,” she sneers, before turning to her crew, Blythe, Lilith, Ivy, and Arabella. Each of them regards me with the same disgust. “Looks like money can’t buy manners after all.”
I blink at her, and it takes me a moment—longer than it should, but I blame it on the lack of sleep—before I retort. “Then what’s your excuse?”
“What did you say to me?” she snaps, her eyes darting wildly from me to her friends.
I am too tired for this crap. I ignore her and hike my book bag further up my shoulder.
I start away and decide to eat lunch in my dorm. The cafeteria is nicer than the prepackaged selections the school offers, but it’s hard to have an appetite surrounded by vultures.
My steps are slow as I pass through a sea of students, squeezing between oblivious bodies. I am nearly to the exit doors when I’m jerked back violently, the straps of my book bag digging into my shoulders.
I flounder, my arms waving like I’m a baby bird preparing to take its first flight. I’m shoved into the girls’ bathroom. My palms barely keep my face from crunching against the door.
I stumble forward, my steps wobbly and uneven, before I get my bearings and turn around.
Aurora is front and center, a blade in her hand. You have got to be kidding me.
It takes a good ten seconds before I realize I said the thought aloud.
She smiles, and it’s about a 50-50 ratio of shiny veneers to malice. Her cronies ar
e with her, but they stand a foot or so behind, unconsciously or not subservient to her.
“I’m going to carve that smile right out of your face, Harlot,” Aurora says.
I can’t even manage a jab at her lack of originality. This was all supposed to be a game—a stupid, ridiculous game—at least to them, anyway. I don’t want to look like Freddy freakin’ Krueger.
“A…Aurora…” I manage, but she steps forward. Arabella, Blythe, and Lilith block the exit, but if I’m being honest, they don’t look happy. They look surprised, and they don’t like the gift they have received. Ivy retreats until she is against the far wall, her back flush against the porcelain subway tile. She appears to be taking it even worse than I am, her freckle-free skin turning from porcelain to pallid to a jaundice green.
My heart hammers inside my chest like a runaway wind-up toy as adrenaline washes away the last of my exhaustion. I catch a whiff of Aurora’s perfume. Lilies, maybe.
Fuck. I can’t get distracted. I need to fight!
But I am stuck, rooted to the floor like my shoes have turned into cinder blocks. I am Alice in Wonderland, only I haven’t been dumped into the land of munchkins, melting witches, and flying monkeys. I’ve entered the land of Louboutins, lip-fillers, and liposuction.
Aurora weaves around me, her gymnastics and cheerleading experience paying off. I turn for the stall, ready to lock myself inside and scream, but it’s too late. She catches me, her manicured talons digging deep into my shoulders before she shoves me against the wall. I lift my arm just in time, taking the brunt of the impact on my forearm.
In the blink of an eye, she has the blade against my throat.
I scream, and I hope it’s loud enough for the teachers to hear. Voclain may have a long and sordid history with the Blue Bloods, but it doesn’t mean they will actually allow them to spill blood. Or at least, I hope not.
Adrenaline hums in my veins.
The speckles of light from the overhead chandelier glint brighter.
The chill of the tile turns icy against my cheek.
Time seems to freeze as though someone hit the pause button on the universe.
The door to the bathroom slams open, the blow violent and loud. I hear someone go sprawling, maybe Blythe by the string of curses that follows, but I can’t be sure. Then Aurora’s hand is yanked away, the knife clattering to the floor as she is torn away from me.
I jerk around, ready to sprint for safety, but what I see steals my ability to move.
Aurora picks herself up off the floor, her red hair askew. She swipes a stray lock behind her ear as her eyes narrow. Ian stands across from her, his glare murderous, his shoulders rising and falling as he stills his trembling hands into fists at his sides.
“I told you she is mine,” he warns, his words as sharp and deadly as the knife now on the floor.
I am captivated, entranced by him—this boy, this being—with a face so perfect he must have been sculpted by God itself and a silver gaze that promises hedonism and hellfire in equal parts.
It’s probably the high of the adrenaline and the lack of sleep—or at least that’s what I will blame it on—but right now, in this very moment, he is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
Obsidian hair falls into his pewter gray eyes, which match the color of his Academy-issued slacks. He doesn’t wear a jacket, and the fabric of his white button-down strains against the muscles of his back, drawn taut with rage.
He is a brooding tower of stone and angst. Has he always been this tall?
He could make an angel sin, my knight in shining armor. Only I have a feeling if he really did wear armor, it wouldn’t be shiny or polished at all. It would be dented and scratched and blood-splattered just like his soul.
Aurora’s cronies stare wide-eyed at her and Ian like they can’t decide whether to obey their Queen or Voclain’s King. Their gazes flit quickly back and forth between the two like little birds hoping along the shoreline.
Aurora frowns, her fuchsia pink lips disappearing into her teeth as she scowls at Ian.
“Why do you care?” she demands. “You never complained before. I was just giving you a head start.”
Ian’s gaze falls to the knife, a silver blade encased in black leather that lies under a vessel sink attached to the wall. His expression darkens, yet his words are calm and somehow it’s worse than if he had yelled them. “We don’t kill people.”
Aurora shrugs as though murder really isn’t so bad. She walks over, picks up the blade, and slides it beneath the waistband of her skirt. She eyes me, but the thread of Ian’s self-control snaps and he vaults forward, landing inches away from her face.
“Get out!” he roars, his words echoing off the tiled walls.
The anchors holding my feet to the floor evaporate with the command. I can’t be here. The darkness waves a murky hand out of the recesses in my brain. I should leave.
I need to leave.
LEAVE!
I catapult forward as Aurora and her friends scamper. Only I don’t make it to the door before Aurora does. She bolts in front of me, and the door hits me in the face. I tumble backward with an oomph and a burgeoning headache. I land against something…someone hard and warm.
Ian. Effing. Beckett.
I cradle my head in my hands as he stands there, not holding me, just a wall of muscle keeping me upright. I should run, but the fight has left me as quickly as it arrived. Plus, it’s not like I would get very far.
“Let me see,” he coaxes, his words pouring over me like a warm shower on a cold, winter night.
I turn around to face him. I know I shouldn’t. I should put an end to this—whatever this is—for both of our sakes. But I’m his sun and he’s my blood moon, right? Let’s fall from the sky together and set fire to the world.
He brushes a lock of hair away from my forehead and stares at me, his thumb tracing small circles over the spot on my temple I hit on the door.
He dips his head, the space between us evaporating, and asks, “Are you all right?”
I nod, the last vestiges of my resistance leaving me in a rush, and sag into his embrace. We stand there for a moment, my ear pressed against his chest so I hear the tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump of his heart.
I don’t know how long we stand there. Thirty seconds? A minute? Ten minutes?
Time passes differently under the drum of his heartbeat. The last of the adrenaline washes away, leaving me clammy and trembling. Although he surely notices, he says nothing as I quake in the anchors of his arms.
My stomach grumbles, reminding me I had plans to eat lunch before my next class. It’s loud enough that he must hear it, but still, he says nothing. I separate us, searching for words I can’t find, but when I catch his steely gaze, all of my thoughts vanish like smoke in the wind.
I am dry kindling, and he is an open flame.
I am gunpowder, and he is a lit fuse.
The reaction is inevitable. The results catastrophic.
I breathe in cloves and cardamom and the spiciness of that bubble gum he likes to chew. My gaze falls to his bottom lip as he releases it from between his teeth. When I look back up again, I find his molten gaze focused on me as his large hands lift to cradle my jaw. I know it’s coming, yet I do nothing except wait for impact.
“Harlow.” My name falls from his mouth in drops of pure reverence a moment before his lips collide with mine.
I lean into the kiss, arching up on the tips of my toes until my breasts brush against the line of his chest. He tastes like cinnamon, which is appropriate because I’m not sure sweetness would ever do him justice.
His hands never move from my face, his mouth never leaving mine, as he backs me against the wall, the tile cold and hard as it leeches through my shirt to cool my skin. He groans, his tongue sweeping into my mouth and teasing mine out of hibernation. I melt against him, my hands roaming across the impossibly hard ridges of his abdomen as traps me there. He kisses me like I am his life raft, and he is lost at sea.
My fingers dance across his chest, which feels impossibly hot. Or maybe my fingers are cold because all my blood seems to be pooling somewhere else. I tug his shirt free of his pants.
I have no idea what I’m thinking, probably because I’m not. I only…need. And I need to feel him, skin against skin, real and solid beneath my fingers. Still, his hands do not leave the line of my jaw, his mouth locked on mine.
His fingers bite into my skin, but I sense the restraint there, the thread of control he clings to desperately.
A jolt shoots through me as my hands slip under his shirt and find the bare plank of his belly. He sucks in a breath from behind my teeth as a pulse beats to life between my legs.
“Mr. Beckett!” a voice shrieks, drawing up the hairs on the back of my neck.
Ian continues to kiss me.
“Mr. Beckett!”
Ian stumbles away from me, Headmistress DuMonte’s arm latched on his shoulder. A gaggle of confused faces pass a door held open by Ms. Edmonds, who looks like she can’t fathom why she just saw two students making out in front of her. I am sure worse things have happened here.
“Beckett is banging Stormy!” someone yells, and a cheery chant starts, “Beckett and Stormy banging in a tree, F.U.C.K.I—”
“Mr. Farrish!” Headmistress screeches, jerking me back to reality and the embarrassment of what I’ve done.
Her attention snaps back to the two of us as Ethan Farrish—God bless his senior, don’t-give-a-fuck soul—continues to belt out all the raunchy, mostly made-up details. Within an hour, I’ll be pregnant with twins and Ian will have proposed.
“Out!” Headmistress commands. “I don’t have time for this today!”
As I scurry away, not daring a gaze back at the boy I still taste on my tongue, she adds, “And keep your pants on!”
My cheeks burn with embarrassment. I am so hot, it feels like I am on fire.