“I didn’t use him.” I faltered, barely kept my footing on that particular tightrope. “I didn’t know he’d—”
“Excuse me, folks. Excuse me? Who all’s with this kid?”
The voice slid between us, tilted our heads back toward the entrance door. The store manager leaned halfway out, eyeing our little gathering. Grey stood to her left, clutching the open jar of cookie butter in sheepish, sticky hands.
“He’s mine. I mean, I am. He’s my brother.” I blinked hard, bit a ragged hole through the inside edge of my lower lip. “Stepbrother. Is everything okay?”
“Sure will be, once he pays for what he’s eating. Can’t let him leave until it’s settled.” She gave us the once-over, lingered on Sadie’s fury, Connor’s hunched shoulders and downcast eyes. My own bleary, red-threaded stare. “Not drinking out here, I hope?”
“No, ma’am. Grey, go ahead and check out if you’re—” I huffed the end off the sentence as he shook his head.
“Forgot my money. Thought I had it, but I don’t.”
“Really? Really, Greyson? I swear to God.”
“Sorry. I’ll pay you back as soon as we get home. Promise.”
I dug my wallet out of my bag and chucked it at Grey, squeezed my eyes shut as it went sailing past him into a display. The doors closed as he chased after it. I pivoted away from that nonsense and straight into the perfectly painted snarl of Sadie Hall—a glitter bomb of hairspray and eyeliner and candy-apple rage.
“He’s ‘yours,’ is he? That didn’t take long.”
“Oh, please. I’m tired, okay? I’m fucking tired, and I misspoke, so back off. Now.”
“Don’t you threaten me. I knew it. I should have anted up, huh? I’d be raking it in, what with all my insider information. But I never thought you actually would.”
“Sadie, I have literally no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, really? Well, allow me to inform you. Ever since your parents got married, there’ve been bets, Lane. Actual wagers, on how long it’ll take Grey to get you into bed. And most people don’t think it’ll take very long at all.”
The news scorched my scalp, slid icicle shards through the space behind my eyes. I pressed numb fingers to my temples and tried to speak through the rise of my gorge.
“Who’re ‘most people’?”
“Hmm, let’s see—maybe half the school? There’s even a bet on whose room you’ll use to do the deed.”
“Huh. Interesting. Which one has the higher odds?”
“Excuse me? You think this is funny?”
I didn’t, but I laughed anyway—a low, mad giggle that ended in a shudder as I drew a hand across my eyes. It came back wet.
“Sadie, what I’m dealing with right now … This information means less than nothing. And it’s far from the worst they’ve said about me.”
“But is it true?” Her eyes filled, but didn’t waver. “Tell me.”
“It’s bullshit. Believe me or don’t—though bullshit and Grey tend to go hand in hand, as I’m sure you’re well aware.”
Sadie’s hands clawed into talons, then doubled into threats that might have sent me fleeing, had I not been delirium in human form, without a fuck left to give in the wide, wide world. It was worse than guilt or resentment, that indifference to the girl who’d been my friend.
“You don’t know anything about Grey and me,” she spat. “There are things between us that are sacred—that are ours. Things a girl like you will never know.”
“I don’t doubt it. But there was plenty he hid from you. Things he wouldn’t have had to, if you weren’t such a pain in the ass.”
It was almost worth the entire mess, the look on her face. Her eyes were wildfire; her mouth a wet blur. Her answer sliced through me, words honed to razors on her dark, bitter drawl.
“Maybe not. But whatever you think of me, Lane, at least I’m not a whore.”
“Sadie, stop it.”
That voice, low and rough, filed dull along all its usual edges. Those unexpected words, washing me in wary hope. Connor’s back was rigid, and his head was down, face hidden by his hair as he spoke.
“Lane isn’t the problem. It’s me.”
“I’m sorry, honey, but I’m only—”
“Trying to help. I know. I appreciate it. Could you unlock the car and go get the stuff?” He finally raised his head, face blank and cold as the wind. “Sadie. Please.”
Her mouth pulled sour around the request, gnawed through what must have been a lexicon of angry words. She fumbled her key fob from her purse, tossed it to him, and swept away with her head held high, leaving me alone with a Connor who’d gone fuzzy at the edges. I blinked him back into focus, pressed a jagged fingernail against the ridge of my knucklebone. Swallowed yawn after yawn.
“Are you all right?” he hedged. “You look … How are you sleeping?”
“I’m not. Maybe one or two spells a night. Here and there in the daytime. Broken up in between longer periods of not even a little bit, and all of it bad.” I shook my head at his creased brow, swiped a hand across my stinging lip. Squinted at the tiny speck of blood on my thumb. “And don’t worry—it’s the nightmares. I’m not up at all hours getting nailed by my stepbrother, in case you’re looking to win a bet.”
“Jesus. I don’t know anything about all that, okay?” He cleared his throat. “Whatever information Sadie has, she didn’t hear it from me.”
“There’s nothing to hear. And at this point, it doesn’t matter anyway.”
“No. I guess it doesn’t.”
The doors opened behind me, ejecting my wallet, Grey, and his grocery bags on a gust of supermarket heat. He sidled up to me, subdued, reeking of cookies and weed. Connor stared at him, then at me, holding my burning, barely open eyes. Let me watch as something crumbled in his, then hardened over.
We’d veered too close to real. He’d field-dressed his heart and scattered the pieces, demanded I match them up with my own in a way that was beyond me, and how else had I really expected it to end? He was right. It was too fucked up. But he was also wrong.
He wasn’t the problem. I was. Me, with my riddler’s heart, every answer leading to no. Our future decided for him long before he’d ever seen my face.
By the time the car door slammed behind him, I’d already turned away.
29
I ROLLED HIS KNIFE OVER and over in my hands, the gleam of nightstand light twinkling in tiny starbursts off its edge. That lamp had been on for days—it was too easy, without it, to slide into slumber. Too easy to slide right into that bathroom on a slick, warm-puddled floor. It wasn’t much—mostly shadows—still, more than enough to see the blade-shaped dent in the pad of my thumb, as I pressed the two gently together.
It’s a fascinating thing, the fragility of human skin—the organ formed specifically to hold in everything that keeps us alive. You’d think we’d be made of something stronger, that didn’t give and split and empty so easily; that didn’t fail at the scrape of claws or teeth, or bubble away at the slightest lick of flame. And, when left to nature, the return to the earth doesn’t take long at all. The rotting starts immediately: limbs stiffen; innards evacuate and wither; even the blood goes bad, whether trapped in the veins or streaked across an otherwise spotless floor. Enough of that hits the air, and you can smell it across the house before you even know it’s been spilled.
It’s so very, very easy to bleed. A bitten lip during dinner, a careless kneecap nick in the shower, a cutting-board mishap in the kitchen—accidents, relatively painless. Quick to flow, quicker to stanch. Try holding that knife to your thigh, though. Try summoning the will to open your arms to the elbow when you have a shred of self-preservation left in your body. Even Connor didn’t get all the way there before backing out, and yet afterward he’d gone one step further, embraced the same sharp edge he’d used against himself. He’d taken a weapon and made it a tool, then turned it back once more by putting it in my hands.
And how easy he’d made
it, drawing his blood—like the act itself was poised in my DNA, ready to manifest at the wink of light on steel. I’d barely even argued. It was far, far simpler to make the cut when the resulting pain belonged to someone else.
My eyes drifted shut on the heels of those thoughts; my hands skittered the knife along my thumbnail, flicking a small sliver from the crescent, right down to the quick. I started, shook myself back to waking, blinked until my eyelids buzzed.
I had to move.
I wandered through the house, twirling the X-Acto between my fingers like a tiny baton, tossed it on the kitchen table on my way to the fridge. I needed to sleep, but I didn’t want to sleep, and what the fuck else was new. I poked through the shelves, ate a grape, drank straight from Dad’s cold-press carafe. Bit a chunk from the block of cheddar and left it unwrapped on the shelf. Left the door open as I shuffled through the cabinet of teas and herbs and essential oils, seeking something to knock me out. Maybe I could at least relax—bliss out on some organic chamomile, or goddamn belladonna, or whatever witchery Skye had stuffed in all the little pots and jars lining the shelves.
The remedies mocked me from their neat, benign rows: lavender and sandalwood, eucalyptus and clove oil. Ginseng capsules. Milk thistle. Rose hips. Echinacea. Ginkgo. Skye’s trusty guelder rose. Grey’s melatonin and valerian, which clearly didn’t help him a single goddamn bit. Enough loose tea to open a shop. Nothing that would actually help. I knew Grey’s weed stash was long gone; maybe I’d dig out Dad’s from its sad, easily discovered hiding place, get stoned enough to sleep without dreaming for more than five, ten, twenty minutes—maybe even a repeat of the rare hour I’d sometimes manage to snag between bouts of wakeful misery. If I could achieve that, I’d smoke everything in the house and wouldn’t even care if he caught me.
I didn’t know I was laughing until I choked on my own tears. The tremors started in my hands, spread upward through my arms and shoulders. Slid their madness down the ribbon of my spine.
“Elaine?”
His voice was a crack across the jaw. A double dose of Grey blinked at me from the doorway, then swam back into a single form as my eyes adjusted. He was awake, of course; that I might run into him hadn’t even crossed my bleary mind.
“Oh, hi. Insomnia?”
“Yeah.” He closed the fridge, zeroing in on the open cabinets at my back, concern and confusion playing tag across his face until his eyes landed on the table. He had the X-Acto in his hand before I could blink.
“What’s this?” His voice hissed somewhere between groggy and mad, S’s seething around his retainer. “Is this Connor’s?”
“Oh. Yeah, I might have taken a souvenir on my way out of the warehouse.” I snorted into my hand at his bug-eyed glare. I couldn’t help it—everything was silly and hilarious and heartbreakingly imperfect.
“You might have—goddamn it, Elaine. You know I’m not letting you keep this, right?”
“ ‘Letting’ me. Like that’s a thing.” I leaned back on the counter, noting the way his eyes slid up the length of my bare legs. I waited until they made it to my face, then returned fire, let my gaze roam its way from the floor to his flaming cheeks. Gave him a look dirty enough to stain. “So, were you out here hoping for another peep show tonight? Or do you think you’ll stick to mansplaining tea bags?”
“What the fuck. I was not hoping for—this whole thing—” His face twisted, frustration spattered in fury, at the stream of tiny, insane giggles bubbling over my fingers. “Come on.”
“Wherever are you taking me, Greyson?” My voice was light and mocking, threaded with delirium. Grey McIntyre had me by the wrist. He wore Stormtrooper pajama pants and was pulling me down the hallway to my very own bedroom, and just a few months earlier I’d have flayed skin from bone myself to make this moment real.
He deposited me through my doorway and ducked into his own room, returning sans both knife and retainer, his tongue working over his teeth. I grinned at him from my perch on the edge of the bed.
“Lane, this has to stop.”
“Ooooh, you called me Lane. This must be getting serious, Grey.”
“Cut the shit. When was the last time you slept?”
“Not sure. How long ago did we party with the dead boy?”
“Holy—that was almost two weeks ago.”
“Well, it hasn’t been that long. December. First. December first was the last.”
“Elaine.”
“I’m sorry.” My eyes fluttered, suddenly wet again, and I crumpled over, forehead to knees. My gasps rolled over themselves; a wild giggle cut through my tears, soaked up one too many, and dwindled to a wet cough. I didn’t hold back. I couldn’t.
I heard him sigh, then swear again under his breath, then felt the mattress shift as he sat next to me. Felt the warm drag of his hand across my back. It was the porch swing revisited, but it was different—I was different. Weaker. Emptier. Bled dry and scabbed over. He gathered me to him, though, held me against his shoulder and let me soak his shirt, same as before.
“You need to sleep,” he said, once I’d reduced myself to sniffles. “No more excuses.”
“I can’t sleep. It’s too much—every time I sleep, I dream. It feels like I’m dying.”
“You’ll die if you don’t. In reality.” His arms tightened around me, stilled the shudder of my frame. “Eventually, your body will revolt and make you sleep, whether you want to or not. You don’t want it to get that far.”
I was too defeated to do anything but nod. I let him take over, let him help me into bed and pull the quilt up to my shoulders. My eyes were closed by the time the light clicked off. I barely registered the dip of the mattress as he settled beside me, leaning against the headboard.
“Go to sleep.” His voice swam into my ear, nudged me further from my fading thoughts. “I’m right here.”
30
I WOKE CHOKING, HER FLAYED fingers tight around my throat.
“Whoa, steady. It’s just a dream.” Hands caught me as I scrambled up—Grey’s hands, gentle and safe, easing me back against the pillows. The light clicked on, pushing the shadows toward the door. He slid down to lie beside me, turned on his side so we were face-to-face, inches apart. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” And I didn’t. They were horrors best left in a single corner of the world; whispers spun into shadows at the edge of a work-space light. The wrong fingers wiped a stray tear from the bridge of my nose. “Now you see why I can’t sleep. You don’t have to stay with me, you know. I’ll be fine.”
“Stop. I said I’ll take care of you, and I will.” His breath caught, then frayed and shuddered, went jagged all at once as our eyes met. “I’m here—if you need me. However you need me.”
Something familiar and horrible snaked fingers around my throat; something pushed those same fingers in between my ribs, worked them into my lungs one at a time. The space between us buzzed and thickened, heavy with need. Hazy with fear.
“Grey?”
“Oh God. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He rolled away and sat up, hunched over his drawn-up knees. “I didn’t mean that. I swear—I would never—”
“Grey.”
His name. A sigh, not a question, slipping like water from my throat. Stopping him cold as he turned to face me.
“This is real, isn’t it, Elaine? There’s something here.”
The words burrowed deep inside me, tearing into that space between logic and dreams. Ripping me open, the way he always had. I sat up as he shifted closer, reached for me, trapped another tear beneath his thumb. His palms slid over my cheekbones, and God help me, I leaned into it. I let myself get lost between his hands.
“Is this okay? If not—” He swallowed the end of his thought, blew it out in a ragged sigh at my nod. “You want this too?”
“Yes.” It was an automatic whisper, skirting the edges of a lie. I closed my eyes, like blotting out his face would explain that fucking flicker of insight. Of course I wanted him—he’d laid th
e groundwork for what wanting meant. “But there’s so much you don’t know. You don’t understand—”
“I do. It’s the same for me.”
His kiss found my cheekbone, then my eyelid, stopping the world again and again. He was longing and memories, and surprisingly chapped lips; the whiff of nighttime retainer breath a slap to my gag reflex, a detail that damn sure had never factored into the old Grey McIntyre seduction fantasy. Not that I was one to judge, what with my stiff shoulders and claw-rigid fingers, my sweaty pajama top, my tangled, unwashed hair. I started as his finger traced my neck, flinched as it found my collarbone. My vision blurred and realigned, refocused on the shadow of his jawline stubble, a bit too rough to be inviting.
I was disconnected, so exhausted, so strangely analytical, and sweet fuck could I maybe stop scrambling for an exit tucked in the walls of this unreal maze? I’d turned myself inside out, wishing for this—how many nights had I spent consumed by a half-awake need, reaching for him across an empty space? How many times had I lived this moment in someone else’s arms?
“Is this okay, Elaine? I—oh. Sorry.”
Well, maybe not this moment. Maybe not the abrupt meeting of his forehead and my nose, or the clumsy trek of fingers that could have belonged to anyone. Skin he’d never touched broke out in chills, more of a crawl than a shiver, as his hands fumbled across the minefield of my hips. But I’d take the way those hands grew urgent, found the hem of my shirt and slipped beneath it, followed the trail of my spine to my rib cage. Slid carefully over my sides, pausing just at the swell of my breasts. Stirred through my ashes until they sparked.
His gaze found mine, unzipped me, stealing every wisp of air from my lungs. That spark leaped from my skin to his, lightning arcing puddle to puddle, and it was something at least. It wasn’t solace and secrets, or the warm press of familiar lips. It wasn’t the molten silver slide of skin and leather that ended with my senses shattered, never once failing to leave me weak.
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