Dirty Girls

by Lily White

“What? But I thought you said I’m good.”

  “Out,” Quinton reminded him.

  The look of dejection on Chad’s face made my head spin. Why did these people care so much? Why did any of this matter?

  As for Soren, I wanted to strangle him. Instead, I shook my head in disgust and walked away. He called my name, but I gave him the finger without bothering to turn around.

  All I wanted was to curl up in my bed and forget I’d ever known Soren. I wanted to forget all his friends. Forget Winter Ridge and forget every fucking moment I’d spent hurting because I’d allowed them into my head, my house and my life. I wanted to find Nolan and sell the house so we both could move away from here. I could go to college and he could open a bike shop like he’d always wanted.

  There was no one else to blame but me for the situation I was living with, and after crying about it in the privacy of my room, I promised myself I would figure out a way to get out of this mess. One way or another, because I was done.

  I hadn’t shut my bedroom door all the way before Soren came barging through it.

  “What the fuck was that?” He asked as he kicked the door closed behind him.

  All we ever did was fight. Okay, not really fight, more like he yells, I yell back, he makes demands and I give in. My fault again, but the last few months have been so confusing that it was easier to go along with whatever he wanted than to buck the system.

  If anything was going to change, I had to be the one to change it.

  “What was what? I asked, turning to him with my arms crossed and my body exhausted. “You got what you wanted. Shouldn’t you be celebrating or something? Or maybe you could assign me a task that gets me killed just like you tried to do to Chad?”

  “It wouldn’t have killed him.” Making his argument behind clenched teeth, Soren wasn’t the picture of arrogant victory I assumed he would be when I agreed to pledge. “He wouldn’t have slept for a couple of days and -“

  “Gone crazy as a result of it?” I laughed, the sound vacant of humor. “And if Becky had landed two feet shy of that pool, she would have splat all over the deck.”

  “She wasn’t that high up.”

  “She could have been hurt,” I countered. “Or she could have drowned when she went under the water.”

  “We had people waiting to jump in after her.”

  He stepped toward me, but I stepped back. I wasn’t in the mood for our usual antics. Not anymore. He would either be real with me and stop living in whatever screwed up fantasy this town had provided him as King of Winter Ridge, or we had nothing left to discuss.

  That’s the thing with bullies:

  They only have the platform that we give them. Their pedestal teeters dangerously on the backs of every person that foolishly believes there’s something special about them. But in truth, they’re just as weak as the rest of us. Maybe even more so, because their only value is the amount of friends they have, the power behind their punch, or the buckets of money they flash around like it means something.

  They’re empty. Shallow. And in many cases so insecure that they create fake personas to be the center of attention.

  When you strip away the lies they use to build themselves up, bullies are nothing more than silhouettes and shadows with no substance, no truth, and no warmth.

  “What is your problem, Soren? All you’ve been doing since you got out of prison is harass me. You haven’t given a single fuck about how I’m feeling or where the hell my brother is, while I’ve spent the last few weeks scared out of my mind that something has happened to him. Is this fun for you? Are you so empty that the only way you know how to have fun is to shove people around like you own them? And every time I try to get an answer out of you, all you give me is some cryptic, bullshit statements like I remind you of someone.”

  Our eyes locked and judging by the demon peeking out from behind his furious, dark eyes, I wasn’t just walking on thin ice but jumping up and down on it with a pogo stick.

  “Why don’t you just come out and be honest? Picking on your little sister until she drowned wasn’t enough. You set your sights on a new target when Nolan and I came to town and you plan on pushing me to the point where I’m buried next to Emily.”

  I wasn’t sure where that thought came from. It hadn’t been one I’d made consciously. But somewhere deep inside it must have been festering beneath my thoughts just waiting for a moment like this to escape.

  The cold wind blew again, between both of us this time, except where it sent goosebumps up my arms and grasped at my bones until my muscles shook from the pain of it, that damn wind froze Soren from the inside out.

  Gone was the hot anger I’d seen in him a second ago, and in its place was a fury so cold, my teeth chattered just to look at it.

  His head canted left, dark eyes trapping mine as if summoning me to the depths of Hell. His voice dropped low, the smooth cadence like a whisper that warned me of the violence to come.

  “What do you know about my sister, Olly? Is that why we keep finding you with Jonah? Because you’re using him to find out all there is to know about me?”

  I may have been over our fighting a few minutes ago, and I may have been brave enough to face it down. But now I wished the yelling would come back again because the way he was staring at me after what I said was terrifying.

  We started the dance again, the one where I retreat as he moves forward, my back eventually hitting a wall just as the heat of his body cages me against it. Craning my neck, I looked up at a man who had switched between hot and cold so fast it gave me whiplash.

  His forearms were pressed to the wall on either side of my head and I wanted to cry like the little girl I was when faced with whatever he was feeling.

  All this time, I wanted Soren to be real with me. But now, seeing the man behind the mask made me wish I’d never asked for this in the first place.

  “Jonah didn’t tell me about your sister.”

  I swallowed hard because talking around the knot in my throat was next to impossible. “I mean, we found out at the same time but -“

  “But what?”

  His head tilted again, his face so close to mine that the heat of his breath crept over my cheek, the scent sweet from the whiskey he drank earlier. Maybe it would have been better to have this conversation at a time where he didn’t have alcohol and drugs in his system.

  Hindsight’s 20/20, right?

  “But he didn’t tell me and I haven’t been using him to find out about you. We don’t even talk about you. We talk about Nolan.”

  “Nolan.” It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway.

  “Yes.”

  I closed my eyes because looking at Soren was doing horrible things to my pulse.

  “Why Nolan?” He asked, the tip of his nose tracing the line of my jaw. A shiver coursed down my spine and my tongue felt too full for my mouth.

  “Because Jonah thinks he’s responsible for Teagan and Maia’s deaths.”

  Soren grinned against my cheek. Just from the feel of it, I knew it wasn’t friendly. His body vibrated with something unrestrained, the heat coming off him so thick that I thought I might faint.

  “You’re something else, you know that? And here I thought you were different from everybody in Winter Ridge. But I guess I was wrong. You’re just as vile as them. Sneaking around and talking shit behind the backs of the people who should matter to you most.”

  I was on the defensive now without knowing how he’d flipped the script. He was the liar, not me. He was the backstabber and all around asshole that used people only to turn on them when they least expected it.

  “I was defending him,” I yelled, not giving much of a damn that our mouths were only inches apart and a whisper would have been enough.

  Soren’s grin widened, his gaze locked to mine as soon as I dared open my eyes again. “So in defending him, you decided to look into me? Do you think I’m a killer, Olly?”

  “No, I -“

  “Accused me of killing
my sister,” he finished for me. “Accused me of trying to kill you.”

  Damn it. That’s exactly what I’d done. I had no defense.

  His hand trapped my chin and forced my head to tip back farther. Resting his forehead against mine, he stared into my eyes like he could see through me.

  Seconds passed in heavy silence, only the rapid beat of my heart sounding between us until he spoke again.

  “Did you ever stop to think that maybe I loved my sister? Did you ever consider for even one moment that it destroyed me when she died? And did you ever stop to wonder if I treat every kid in this town like crap because I blame all of them for what happened to her? They tossed her in that water. They laughed while she drowned. And nothing happened to them because they got to act like innocent children and keep living while she was buried in the ground.”

  His fingers tightened and I flinched from the pain. Not just the physical discomfort of the way he was holding me, but the ugly truth of what he carried inside.

  I didn’t know the other kids in Winter Ridge were what killed her, and after hearing it, I wanted to punish them right alongside him.

  Moving so close that his lips brushed against mine, Soren finally told me the truth I’d wanted.

  “You reminded me of Emily when you were young. I had just lost someone who meant the world to me and then you come along to take her place. Constantly following us. Crying when you couldn’t tag along. And while Nolan saw you as an annoyance he couldn’t wait to get away from, I saw you as something more. You were sweet like Emily. Smart. And you were pure. The only difference was that you didn’t care about being part of the crowd, which made you stronger. I knew they wouldn’t be able to hurt you like they hurt her. So I looked out for you. Nolan hated it, but I didn’t care. Nobody bothered you because they knew they would have to get through me first. Didn’t you ever notice how nobody messed with you in school? Not until recently, at least. Did you think that was because of Nolan?”

  He paused, and God, my heart was shattering apart. Tears stung my eyes that I refused to blink away, my fingers digging into the walls to keep from touching him to soothe away his pain.

  Pulling away, he kept his hold on my face as his eyes softened. It wasn’t that he was calming down. More that he was accepting some unspoken thought in his head.

  “And then you grew up. You didn’t remind me of my sister anymore because you weren’t the child she had been. You became something more. Something beautiful. Something so rare and wonderful that I was terrified of how I felt about it. I didn’t want to touch you, Olly, because everything I fucking touch turns to crap. I didn’t want you to break in the way that I was broken. In the way every kid in this town is broken.”

  Another pause, his eyes searching mine for any hint of what I was thinking.

  “I did everything I could to resist wanting you. And yet I couldn’t stop. I was drunk the first time I made the mistake of tasting you. And that hadn’t been enough. It would never be enough. I thought two years in prison would help me get over you, but the second I got out, there you were. So I broke again. I tried pushing you away again. The entire time hating myself because all I wanted to do was drag you back to bed and show you just how much you belonged to me.”

  Soren released me and shoved away from the wall at the same time. Cold air crashed against my body where his heat had once been. I wrapped shaking arms around myself as if that could ease the chill.

  He crossed the room and stopped just before reaching my door. Without looking back at me, he drove the knife in a bit deeper, twisting it just enough to show me just how wrong I’d been.

  “The only reason I’ve been driving you around everywhere and watching over you is because women are being murdered. But you didn’t stop to think about that. You just hated me instead. You assumed I was tormenting you just because I could.”

  My voice shook when I answered him. “Why didn’t you tell me that? Why wait until now to say anything?”

  This was all so frustrating. How many arguments could be avoided in this world if people would just communicate?

  He glanced over his shoulder. “What would be the fun in that? You’re adorable when you’re angry.”

  A humorless laugh shook his shoulders and he shook his head. “Guess it doesn’t matter now. You want to be left alone. So that’s what I’m doing.”

  My door slammed behind him when he left the room. Downstairs, the music stopped playing, a bunch of voices rising up in complaint just before car doors opened and shut, engines roaring to life and driving away. The entire time I stood against my wall right where Soren had left me.

  I needed time to think. Time to gather my bearings before talking to him again.

  The house had gone silent after ten minutes, and when I was ready to face the music and finish our conversation, I left the room in search of Soren.

  The living room was empty. The kitchen and family room, too. There was nobody near the pools or hogging the bathrooms.

  I realized that for the first time since Soren had come back to Winter Ridge, I was completely alone.

  Earlier that night, being by myself was exactly what I’d wanted.

  So why did it feel so painful now that the house was empty and everyone was gone?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Olive

  I called out of work the next day. And the day after that. Lying about being sick, I figured Irene couldn’t fire me since I’d never called out before.

  Tristan had answered the phone at the diner both times. He’d sounded on edge and wanted to talk to me, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen. He’d asked to come over and bring me something to eat, but I declined the offer. The last thing I needed was his lecture to avoid Soren.

  Not that it was a problem anymore because Soren was doing a damn fine job of avoiding me.

  After finding myself alone that night, I went to bed and convinced myself that Soren would be back the following morning. I was so sure of it, in fact, that I woke up early, got a shower and ran downstairs to make breakfast and clean up.

  I made enough for all three of the guys. Pancakes. Eggs. Bacon. You name it. But it sat on the table and got cold when nobody came to the house to eat it.

  He was mad, I reminded myself, and as usual Quinton and Grady had his back. More than likely they were talking him down and working to convince him to come over and work things out with me.

  They weren’t.

  The hours ticked by, eventually becoming days, and still there was no sign of them.

  Hoping Nolan would show up in their place, I stayed in the house with my false expectations. Not even he could be bothered to check in and make sure I was okay.

  By day three, I gave up and resigned myself to the fact that I had been shoved out of the circle.

  I never thought the day would come where I’d be sad about being excluded, just like the rest of the kids in Winter Ridge.

  My, how the mighty had fallen.

  Day four rolled around and I spent it lying on the couch writhing around in my personal pity party. I couldn’t skip work again because it occurred to me that there would be bills in the mail I couldn’t pay.

  Begrudgingly, I’d peeled myself off the couch at four that afternoon, climbed the stairs to my room and pulled on the blue gingham dress I hated more than anything.

  Surprisingly, my car fired to life when I climbed in and turned the key. Pulling out of the driveway, I wondered who had replaced the battery or when they had found the time.

  It was Thanksgiving week, which meant the roads were clear because people were spending time with their families. The diner wouldn’t be too busy. The thought made me happy. Only the regulars who were on their own would show up to occupy the booths with sad expressions and hunched shoulders.

  Light snow had powered the road as I drove in, the cold outside doing wonders for my already fragile emotional state. I was more of a summer girl, the sunshine of California still alive in my veins from the years I’d lived there
when younger.

  Pulling into the parking lot, I was surprised to see only two cars: Tristan’s sensible sedan that his parents had handed down to him after graduation and Kendall’s blue Lexus.

  Facing Tristan was bad enough, but I dreaded having to deal with Kendall as well.

  Sucking it up and preparing myself for whatever they would throw at me, I tugged my coat around my body and walked quickly into the diner. The warm air inside was a welcome change, but the immediate look of concern from Tristan made me want to turn around and walk back out.

  Guessing they both already heard that I was the new persona non grata in the Winter Ridge social circles, I lifted my hand in a feeble wave and turned to go to the back office without saying a word.

  It didn’t surprise me when I heard the door close at my back.

  “It’s about time you show up. We need to talk.”

  I dropped my purse into the filing cabinet drawer, kicked it closed and turned around to face the firing squad.

  “Was Irene mad I called out?”

  He blinked and shook his head. “What? No. She was fine with it.”

  “So then what do we need to talk about?”

  “Camilla Hughes is dead.”

  I stumbled back, my heart dropping into my stomach while my mind struggled to catch up. “How?”

  “How do you think? They found her body a few days ago but have somehow kept it quiet.”

  And of course Tristan knew because his brother told him everything.

  “Do they think she was murdered by the same person?”

  “Same people,” he answered, adding emphasis to the word correction. “Simon believes there are more than one of them committing these crimes.”

  Tristan was panicked, his skin a faint shade of red and his voice strained. By the look of his messy hair and the bags under his eyes, he hadn’t slept in days.

  “So why are you telling me this? Does Kendall know?”

  That was a stupid question. If Kendall knew then there would be a billboard the size of Winter Ridge blabbing all about it complete with pictures, scene maps and the medical exam findings. Hell, for as good as Kendall was for digging up dirt, they would be smart to hire her as an investigator. She was a professional gossip queen.