“Thank you for that,” I tell him, feeling this tightness in my chest when he looks at me. It’s like, no matter how much time we spend together, it isn’t enough. It’ll never be enough, but I guess that’s the point, isn’t it? When you’re in love with someone. I wonder if he’d like me to handcuff him again? If he’s still suffering from what happened with Kali, he isn’t letting on. I can’t decide if that’s because he’s doing fine, or if he’s just bullshitting himself and me both. “This game sounds stupid. I’m not the murderer anyway, so why bother to play? But if it helps Havoc out in any way, I can at least talk to the guy.”
“Have some whiskey first for fuck’s sake,” Hael says, offering up the bottle and then snatching me by the wrist at the last second. I barely have time to let out a gasp when he pushes me into the wall with his hard body, his pelvis pressed up tight against me. With one hand, he keeps my wrist encircled in his fingers. With the other, he captures me by the waist. When he touches his lips to my neck, I sag back against the wall, acutely aware of all the eyes on us.
Some people are wondering why the fuck I’m kissing Hael Harbin when I’m supposed to be with Vic. The rest are wishing I’d drop dead so they could take my place.
Then there’s James Barrasso.
He’s looking at me like he wants to take Hael’s place.
“That son of a bitch is looking again,” Aaron says as Hael kisses his way down the side of my neck, leaving a trail of fire in his wake. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open, my fingers curled over his shoulders. A wet heat builds between my legs, making me wonder if there really is a maid costume in that room and if I shouldn’t just put it on.
“Good,” Hael says, and then he grabs me by the cunt and presses his lips against my cheek, so I can feel his words when he talks. “Think about this when you’re talking to James.” He lets go of me suddenly, and I struggle to straighten up without letting anyone see how easily he just got to me. “And now you may go and enjoy the party.” Hael laughs and then moves away before I can even ask him which character in the game he’s supposed to be. Hopefully it’s the asshole because then he wouldn’t have to act like anything other than himself.
“I’m the murderer,” Cal says, flashing his booklet at me for a second. The way he smiles tells me he smells trouble in the air, and he’s going to go off in search of it. “If you need to end the game, you know the answer.”
He takes off, slipping into the small crowd and disappearing into a hallway that leads toward the back of the house. If I didn’t know to watch for him, I’d have never seen him leave at all.
“I’ll be watching,” Aaron says, leaning back against the wall, the fingers of his right hand curling and uncurling in frustration, like if he does it enough, maybe the cast will just fall off on its own. It doesn’t make him any less beautiful though, any less my savior with chestnut curls and a dimple that shows only when he’s smiling like the world isn’t a broken and desolate place. “If you leave the main area, I’ll follow.”
“You? The cripple of the group?” Oscar says, which is probably a pretty fucking offensive term to some people. “Don’t bother. I’ll watch over her. You make conversation with some of these idiots and see if any of them know Kali, Ophelia, or Tom.”
Victor’s already leaving, slipping away to go talk with Trinity. Just seeing him standing next to her fills me with a fury that I can’t put a name to. It’s the color of Kali’s hair, the green half of it anyway, and it reeks of envy.
I move across the room with a purpose, finding myself in front of James. According to Oscar, he’s the apple of his father’s eye, more like a friend or a brother rather than a son. He should have at least some idea of what the GMP is up to.
“Three guys?” James asks me, leaning back against the wall. His dark hair is tousled, but obviously styled. It’s just this side of too much for me, but he isn’t hideous or anything. If I didn’t sense the uneasy character of the man at first glance, I might’ve looked at him twice just to appreciate the view. As things stand, I’d rather just be done with him. I’m obviously not interested, and I’m actually bored at the prospect of being pursued. As soon as I joined Havoc, all the advances stopped. Not just at Prescott, but around the city, too. “Or is it all five?”
“Are you fucking Trinity or are you fucking Trinity?” I ask, because there’s only one reason he would be here. Besides, if I’m too nice to him then he’ll know I’m totally full of shit. “Wait, don’t answer; I’ve already figured it out.”
James ignores me, lighting up a cigarette and offering me the pack. I decline by lifting a hand, palm out.
“I like your outfit,” he tells me, opening his eyes as he studies me with sea glass blue ones, less like Callum’s endless winter sky eyes and more like empty vessels. There’s nothing deep or introspective in that gaze. Actually, there’s little there but primal want and selfish greed. “Are you planning on holding a séance later?”
“Did you know who the fuck you were messing with when you asked to dance with me at the club?” I cross my arms over my chest, over the planchet, and try to see if I can feel any of my Havoc Boys watching me. If I concentrate, I can, I fucking swear it.
“I did,” James starts, pushing up from the wall like he’s going to come for me. I back up, but it’s not out of fear. I just want distance between us; I don’t like his aura. To be quite honest, he reminds me of the Thing in the way he moves, the way his eyes dart around the room like every woman in it belongs to him.
“You really shouldn’t have,” I warn him, and then I retreat back to the bar for some alcohol. Victor watches me pass by; I know because I can feel his stare, too. He can also see when James follows and comes up behind me at the bar. The asshole’s hands hover too close, and I have to resist the urge to headbutt him.
“Can I make you a drink?” James asks, lowering his voice to a seductive purr. I listen to it, compare it to the way Hael’s fingers etched my skin like lasers, and decide that I’ve been truly and utterly ruined by Havoc. I’ll never be able to have anything less than what they give me.
“I’ll make it myself, thanks,” I quip, adding some vodka and Red Bull to a glass. A little raspberry syrup and voila, the fanciest drink I know. Pam used to make me mix them for her when I was in seventh grade. She went through a sugar-free kick, so it was always sugar-free energy drinks and sugar-free raspberry syrup—to make it healthier, she’d say. Anyway, my naturally bitchy personality seems to be coming in handy.
I don’t want James to think this is going to be easy. I mean, that’s what he thinks anyway. I can see it in the way he licks his lips, or the way his eyes follow me. That, and the fact that he finds it amusing that I might have five lovers.
I turn around, my drink in my hand.
“What’s that called?” James asks me, because he thinks he’s slick. He’s got girls all over the States and even a few in Mexico and Canada. I sip my drink. Obviously, I’m making all of this up, but that’s what it feels like. I’ve been looked at like this since I was eight. Maybe younger. Like a conquest, like a challenge, like a checkmark on a man’s ugly list.
I’m used to it.
But that doesn’t mean I like it.
“Vodka and Red Bull, usually called the Heart Attack Special.” I down half the glass and smile through the overwhelming sweetness of sugared raspberries on my tongue. “When I add the syrup, it becomes mine.”
“It’s pretty,” James says, smiling at me in a way that says he thinks he’s already won. “But not as pretty as you.”
I laugh in his face and push past him.
“It’s the color of blood,” I tell him matter-of-factly. “There’s nothing pretty about this drink.”
“It’s the same color as your hair,” he informs me, but I ignore him, moving through the crowd and pausing by some girls who are busy discussing their character cards.
“I’m fucking the master of the house,” I tell them, pouting slightly, the way the French maid in my stereotypica
l imaginings might. “But don’t tell anyone. Last night, I saw blood on his shirt just before I took it off.”
The girls all stare at me like I’m an alien creature, most definitely not used to the presence of someone from Prescott High at one of their parties.
“You’re the Havoc girl, right?” one of them finally asks, finally choosing which switch inside her privileged brain to flick. When I first approached them, I could tell they were torn between ripping me apart for being different and falling in love with me. One of the girls is already breathing heavily, like she’d fuck me in the bathroom if I so much as asked.
“That’s me,” I tell them, lifting my glass in salute. “Forgive me if I’m a little off. Fucking five dudes on the regular is exhausting.” That’s a lie, it’s thrilling. You just don’t want them to know how fucking thrilled you are. You love this, love being bad and finding yourself in trouble and feeling emotions like thunderstorms.
I exhale.
“Jesus,” one of the girls says, forgetting for just a second to filter her disgust. She blinks and the emotion is gone. “So why is Jimmy panting after you?”
“Jimmy?” I ask, and the girl lifts her glass in indication. I follow the direction of her bright blue drink with my eyes, finding James Barrasso at the bar, mixing two drinks. Jesus, this guy. He’s clearly making more of what I’ve already got in my glass. In a minute here, he’s going to come back and offer one to me. “Ah, a nickname for James,” I murmur, thinking of the book, Practical Magic, and the movie that followed. Personally—and I know this is a cardinal sin among book lovers—I prefer the movie.
I finish my drink, so that James aka Jimmy can have an opening when he comes over here.
I turn back to the girls.
“Are any of my boys watching?” I ask in a scandalous tone. But again, I didn’t need to ask. I can feel Aaron and Oscar staring at me. Callum is long gone, buried in the crypt of the house, and Hael is too busy collecting gossip to look my way. Maybe that means he trusts me? Or maybe he’s too jealous to look?
My skin burns in all the places his fingers touched me. I want to go find out if there’s a maid costume in that room, put it on, and fuck his brains out in the guest room, on top of everyone else’s expensive coats.
But, business first. Pleasure later.
“The tall one in the suit,” the bisexual or pansexual or whatever girl asks me. The way she describes Oscar, I can tell that she’d fuck him, too, if he were to offer. Even better if we both did, at the same time. I smile into my empty drink.
“Oops,” I say as James slides up alongside of me, offering up one of the drinks.
“Not sure if I got the ratio right, but I tried,” he explains, nodding at my empty glass. “Shall I take that for you?”
“She’s not going to fuck you, Jimmy,” the mean girl says, the one with the nose that’s too sharp. Hope she sued her plastic surgeon for that botch job. Looks like shit. I have to hold back a laugh.
“Why not?” James asks, and I wonder why he hasn’t smiled sloppily and said call me Jimmy, babe. Ugh.
“Because I’m married,” I say, wiggling my fingers to show off the ring that Victor gave me. It’s nice enough that the other girls actually nod in approval. Even to their rich sensibilities, a thirty-thousand ring is okay-ish.
“Not for long,” the spiteful cunt with the fucked-up nose says. She smiles to soften the blow, but I realize then that she never flipped that switch from disgust to interest. She hates me the way Trinity does. Jealous and seething. I’m not saying this because I think I’m fabulous. I just think people always want what everyone else has. Nothing is more desirable than something that isn’t yours yet, but could be, if you just played your cards right. Nothing is prettier than the forbidden, nothing shines so bright and so wicked on a moonlit night. “You’re getting an annulment I hear?”
“What?” one of the girls asks, blinking like she’s just realized she’s stumbled onto a juicy secret. “Am I missing something here?”
“Look, I’m fucking the master of the house and he had blood on his shirt. You want to weigh in on that?” I snap, getting annoyed all of a sudden. When I look back, I see Victor’s still talking to Trinity. He’s smiling, and she’s laughing. Trust your motherfucking husband! I tell myself, but it’s so damn hard. He isn’t making it easy either, Mr. Hard to Fucking Get.
“Um, I’m the laundry lady, and I washed that shirt myself. It wasn’t blood, it was red wine. I’m the suspicious type, so I think he’s having an affair with someone other than the maid.” Pansexual Girl at least deigns to reply to me, the alcohol she’s been drinking slurring her words a bit. The girl’s friend smacks her shoulder and rolls her eyes.
“You’re not supposed to say I’m the suspicious type. You just act that way. It’s how the game works. You’re terrible at this, Amy.” Nose Job rolls her eyes, and I frown. This girl is trouble, clearly a friend of Trinity’s. She likes to brag, obviously, so she might be a good source of information.
I move away though before I decide to throw my drink in her face and then punch her in the gut.
I notice that James has left and is talking to another girl.
My eyes lift up and meet Vic’s, and my breath catches and holds in such a way that I feel like I’m being strangled. It’s not fair that he can do that to me with just a look. I sip my drink and pretend like I’m not miserable, all the way across the room from him. He’s turned you into a bitch, Bernadette, I warn myself, turning away and heading straight for James.
“The fuck?” I ask him, grabbing onto his shoulder to get his attention. He turns a dismissive look my way and shrugs one shoulder. “You give up that easily?”
“I’m not going to waste my time chasing around a bitch who doesn’t want to be caught,” James tells me, and then he smiles. His eyes remind me of a reptile’s. Not the color, but the way his Jurassic reptilian instincts control his every move. “And you can call me Jimmy.”
He turns back to the group in front of him as my fingers reach up to touch my waist, feeling the knife I hid under the loose fabric. Something about the movement draws Jimmy’s attention.
He stares at me, black hair slicked back in a way that tells me he’d literally kill to have some of Victor’s charisma. Just an ounce. A teaspoon.
“Aw, did I hurt your feelings?” Jimmy asks me. Maybe he thinks I’ve put my palm flat against my belly to control something other than blind rage. I already feel like a failure because of what happened with Kali. The first chance I get to right that wrong—even if it’s at the most inappropriate possible time—I’m going to do it. I’m going to kill someone without even meaning to. I’ll blink, and it’ll all be over, and someone like Trinity or James-Jimmy-whatever or Nose Job girl is going to be on the ground in front of me in a pool of blood.
“You have no idea what you’ve just done to me,” I say, moving back from the group while I try to catch my breath. Jimmy smirks at me, rubbing his hand over the lower half of his face. He thinks he’s turned me on by being a dick. While I can’t deny there’s a certain charm to it when Hael does it, or Vic, or Oscar … this guy is nothing to me. He barely registers.
“Oh yeah?” Jimmy asks as I turn, making sure to toss my blood-dipped hair as I do. I head straight for the French doors that open into the entryway. There’s a hallway on one side, with a bathroom and a single guest bedroom. That’s where the costumes must be, based on the people coming and going from down the hall with props in hand.
I decide to start there first, timing my steps so that I enter the room just as the last couple exits the hallway. There are costumes everywhere, all carefully labelled. I bet Trinity hired someone to set up this party for her. There’s no way in fuck she, like, found a game on the internet and printed the character cards. That’s far too rachet.
“I’m the master of the house,” Jimmy tells me, flashing his card as proof. “I hear we’re having a sordid affair.” He looks at me like he thinks he’s got me again.
“I
shouldn’t even be talking to you,” I murmur, finding the maid costume. It’s in a package, clearly a Halloween costume, but much nicer than the ones at the Hellhole or Spirit Halloween. It would look good on me; Hael would love it.
“Oh baby,” Jimmy starts, stepping up on me like he thinks I’m examining the costume for his benefit. His hands slide up my waist, and I do what we like to call at Prescott High the poor girl turn. It’s called that because when some skeezy guy comes up to you, thinking you’re nothing but southside trash, and he puts his hands on you, you can spin around and carefully extract his unwanted grip at the same time. It seems flirtatious and fun, so it doesn’t trigger the worst guys right off the bat.
And it’s such a sad fucking thing to do that it makes me sick. Put your hands on me, and I have the right to put my goddamn hands on you. Don’t touch people that don’t want to be touched. If you really need to learn no means no then you should check your privilege at the door and shut the fuck up.
Jimmy accepts the poor girl turn, laughing and downing the rest of his drink. When he backs up toward the door and heels it shut, locking it behind him, I know that one of only two things is going to happen in this room.
Either I’m going to fuck James Barrasso, or I’m going to kill him. Because if I try to leave now, he’s going to force the point and I’m going to be left with no choice. My phone is on the table in the entryway, a terrible place for it to be, no doubt.
“Why don’t you put that little costume on, and I’ll show you what’s missing when Victor takes you to bed.” Jimmy takes a careful step back, leaving me just enough room between him and the bed behind me to put the costume on without touching him. I feel his breath on my skin though, his eyes following the movements of my breasts.
“You say his name so dismissively, but we’re here because he’s a problem. Your father wouldn’t have sent goons to a high school after-party if that weren’t the case.” Jimmy’s face changes slightly, but then he lets out a harsh laugh, like he can’t believe I just said that to him. I keep going, tossing the maid costume behind me and onto the bed.
Anarchy at Prescott High Page 24