by Tijan
His arm tightened around me. “He did what?”
“Don’t worry.” I swiped my thumb back and forth again, feeling his pulse thrum against the pad of my finger. “I told him to fuck off and to say it to your face when you came to visit. He’s stayed away since, but he torments a girl in class. I didn’t know it’d been going on since August, but I overheard it this past week.” My stomach churned just remembering it. “He complimented her breasts like they were actually people and then kept licking his lips every time she got up from her desk or moved in class.”
“You know her?”
“Not personally. I know her name. I know she’s super quiet. I know that I’ve been watching her this past week, and every time I see her on campus, she isn’t with anyone else. She eats alone. I saw her studying in the library alone.”
I kept flipping each instance over and over in my mind. My gut was literally tightening into one hard knot.
“And he’s the guy you know down there.”
“Yeah. He’s been boasting for a long time about this maze tonight. Who knows what sick shit he might be doing down there, grabbing people, scaring them a little more than necessary.”
I half expected my own memories to surface. I’d been bullied, kicked, ganged up on. I’d had my tormentors, but they weren’t there. I no longer felt them swimming in the background. No, all that was there was a desire to give someone a small taste of their own medicine.
Lawrence had tried with me, but he was shut down, and unlike some, he slunk away and stayed there.
“Did you tell Logan about him?”
I heard the slight roughness in Mason’s voice. He was concerned about future retaliation, but that wasn’t going to be a problem. The guy was scared of girls, picking on the ones that didn’t stand up for themselves, that didn’t know they could, so I would. And I wasn’t alone.
I didn’t have my one friend anymore. I had a solid group of female friends, and we helped take care of each other.
I bent down, dislodging myself from Mason, and pulled out my phone from a bag. “I want to scare the actual shit out of him.”
It was small. It was a little petty, but it was something I wanted to do.
Mason nodded, his eyes darkening. “The way you’re holding your phone shouldn’t turn me on, but you’re fucking hot, Sam.”
I cocked my head, smirking. “Fuck yeah. Ready to do this?”
He didn’t respond. He turned, grabbed the ski masks, and handed me one.
Almost as one person, we turned for the path leading down to the haunted maze and pulled our ski masks down. We were about to hunt a hunter.
* * *
I had studied the maze enough times when I ran on the hills that I had it memorized. We bypassed the main entrance since I didn’t want to go through where everyone else did. I wanted to sneak in the back.
Yearly was stationed by one of the ghosts right before the witch’s broom started, so he wasn’t completely at the edge of the maze. We did have to venture through it a little.
The masks covered our faces, and if someone saw us, they’d assume we were volunteers with the maze itself. I was banking on that, and when we slipped around a section where a bunch of people were in cages, it worked. They didn’t reach out for us or screech. They were quiet, letting us get to our section.
I hoped it would work for the next two.
A bunch of mirrors were set up behind the corn stalks, and they were covered with strings of neon lights. I saw the flashing ahead of time, heard the clown’s booming hysterical laugh over a megaphone, and knew people were walking ahead of us. I paused, holding Mason back a little. I wanted some space. When people went past those mirrors, they lit up suddenly. It went from complete darkness in that corner to the bright lights and images of yourself behind the corn. On top of that, a clown who was wearing a matching neon-lit costume would chase people. It wasn’t that I’d get scared; I knew that clown was another one of Yearly’s fraternity brothers.
I didn’t want to punch him if he tried to chase us.
I shouldn’t have even worried, because when we got there, the lights did go off. He started toward us, but two things happened at once.
Mason moved in front of me, his shoulders going back, his head lifting as he squared off against the clown, and the clown braked so abruptly, he almost fell over.
“Oh. Sorry.” He lifted a hand, and the lights turned off. “I heard they were rotating some sections. You must be one of the new ones, huh?”
“Yeah.” One clipped word from Mason, a matching nod, and we walked right past the clown.
We had to go through two more rows. They kept each section far enough from the other to give the people a break, or at least I had guessed that was why, but being in the maze, I realized they had another reason. They allowed enough space and distance from the other section so lights didn’t travel ahead, giving people a glimpse of what was coming and ruining the surprise. It didn’t matter because the last section was for us.
I almost touched Mason’s back to warn him.
Unlike the last section, which set the mirrors on the other side of the corn, this one had put up walls of black plastic tarps. They were stretched tight with a ceiling above, like a tunnel. I saw them being put up during the day but didn’t know what they were used for until I heard one woman screaming about a snake.
I had a feeling about what we would be walking into.
Mason saw the tunnel and paused. “What the fuck?” he muttered under his breath.
I was guessing, but . . . I pressed against him, murmuring quietly in case someone was near us, “I think they send fake snakes over our feet.”
“Shit.” His back tightened even more. “Okay. Let’s go.”
We treaded closer, not pausing or slacking in our stride.
We were there for a purpose. We couldn’t let them think we weren’t a part of them, but once we stepped foot in the tunnel-esque area, I saw the fear factor. It added an extra layer of foreboding. Then, suddenly, a hand smeared with white neon paint pressed against the black plastic, and I felt something slimy touch a bit of skin by my ankle at the same time.
I didn’t look down. Nope. It was fake. It better have been fake.
“We fucking work here.”
“Oh,” a voice said from behind the sheet a second before the hand disappeared. “Sorry about that. We can’t see the best from this side. Just saw your shadows and assumed, you know?”
“Yeah.”
The same guy raised his voice a little, saying, “Hold off, guys. The next two work here.”
“Got it.”
“Okay.”
“Do they have supplies? I radioed for water thirty minutes ago.”
“Uh,” the voice closest to us said. “You guys aren’t here with food and drinks, are you?”
“No.” Mason pressed a hand against the small of my back, moving behind me again. He urged me forward as he said over his shoulder, “We’ll pass the requests on, though.”
“Thanks, man!”
A few repeated his sentiments as we went by. The last one, the one who asked for water, added, “Yearly’s up ahead. He has the main radio. Can you tell him to order a pizza? I’m starving.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
I suppressed a laugh, but then we went a few feet, and I felt my stomach dip.
We were nearing the entire reason we came out there.
To be honest, I didn’t have much of a plan. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision when Mason asked what I wanted to do tonight. Images of me sneaking up on Yearly, playing a chainsaw behind him, playing that woman’s screams, or even that child’s whisper, had been the extent of it. But, as we went past those sections, I realized the scream wouldn’t scare him. I wasn’t sure if the chainsaw would, either. Maybe the abruptness of it? That it would come from behind him and it wasn’t the one he was holding? I knew he was the guy starting the fake chainsaw and chasing people with it. He had bragged about it in class, his chest puffing up when he d
escribed how fast he would make those “fat asses” run.
Mason was right next to me, and as if sensing my hesitation, he stopped us. “What is it?”
I didn’t run these operations. This was more of a Mason mission. He could’ve done this in his sleep with Nate and Logan, but it wasn’t his idea. It’d been mine, and feeling a little bereft, I admitted, “I don’t know how to get even with him.”
He peeled up his mask so I could see his eyes. He dipped his head down so we could see each other clearer. “What do you mean?”
I explained my doubts and handed him my phone. “I have those ready to play, but I don’t think they’re enough.”
“What’s your goal?”
I shrugged. “Get an image of him actually crapping his pants? Give it to that girl in class so she can use it against him if she wants? I’m not the best at these things.”
A faint smile spread over his face, and he leaned close, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “I have a distinct memory of you throwing a firecracker in your dad’s car, shutting the door, and getting back in mine.”
“Oh yeah.” I grinned. “I forgot about that.”
* * *
The ski mask was taken off. My phone and the bag were with Mason, and as I walked down the row toward Yearly’s section of the maze, Mason was slipping up in the rows to the side.
I heard Mason’s voice in my head as Yearly stepped out in front of me, waiting for me.
“Guys like that, you can’t scare them.”
Okay. Check.
Yearly thought I was a regular customer, and he lifted his chainsaw. A light flared from behind him, illuminating both of us so he was able to see my face. He faltered, his eyes widening.
“Strattan?”
Mason was right. I saw a cocky flare that lit up in Yearly’s eyes, but behind it was a hardness too. It went perfectly with his costume. Decked out in a ripped-up old mechanic’s uniform, red dye or paint was splattered all over him and went all the way into his hair.
He looked different from how he looked in class. Normally, he was dressed in brand-name jeans and shirts. His hair an unruly mess because it was the “in” style. Basically, he always looked like a stereotypical fraternity brother. I had no idea, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to go to his fraternity and find a picture of him wearing a button-up shirt, a V-neck sweater tied around his shoulders, and his hair perfectly combed to the side. I would put money on him either smiling like a realtor or being stone-cold serious in the thing.
Lawrence Yearly was handsome, but that was it.
He wasn’t mouthwateringly gorgeous like Mason. He wasn’t the reformed player with a wicked glint in his eye like Logan. He wasn’t in their league, and it was a fact Lawrence Yearly knew, which was probably why suspicion flared, shrouding over his eyes as I raised a hand.
“Hey, Lawrence.”
“If you want to scare them, you have to fully commit. That takes time. It takes commitment. It takes the willingness to cross over a boundary I know you don’t want to cross.” Mason shook his head, watching Yearly’s section from the shadows before he nodded. “Okay. I have an idea.”
“You remember what you said to me the first day of classes?” I stopped right in front of him, putting some frostiness in my tone. I chewed the inside of my cheek.
“You need to use what he gives you, what kind of guy he is.”
Yearly pissed me off. I was embracing that feeling, letting him see some of it, but I wasn’t letting him know where it was coming from.
His eyes narrowed, staring at me hard as his forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Yeah. Why?”
“Ask me again.”
“He’s cocky. He has an ego. He likes sex.” I had agreed with all three things Mason had said, and then he had added, “But he likes power, most of all. That’s what you’re going to use against him.”
Yearly’s voice was flat. “Did Kade cheat on you yet?”
There it was. I looked a little harder, and I saw what Mason said.
“Dangle me in front of him. Guys like him salivate at the idea of getting another guy’s girl. They look at you like things, like objects. They want to steal you away from guys like me.” I hadn’t needed Mason to explain how guys like him and his brother were viewed by guys like Yearly.
They were better than them, and Yearly knew it.
“They judge guys by money, power, and height.”
Mason bested him in all three things. He was wealthy from not only his father’s trust fund but also from his contract with the Patriots. He had fame, which gave him power, and he was an inch taller than Yearly.
Yearly was looking at me differently. His eyes slid down my body and then back up. He leaned forward, just a centimeter, but it was enough. I was hooking him, just like Mason said I would.
“And lastly, they judge guys by the women they have. You’re an ‘it’ girl.”
“An ‘it’ girl?” I had laughed.
Mason hadn’t. His face had become a cement mask. “You’re the girl most guys want, the one they dream about having. And you’re mine. Give him an indication you’re upset with me, because that makes sense to them. They cheat, so they think all girls cheat. They lie, so they assume everyone lies. They’re willing to do horrible things to another human being because they think everyone has it in them to do it too. They don’t believe everyone will do it, just that every person has it in them to do it.” He held his hand out. “Show him you have nothing on you. Show him you have no pockets.”
Which I didn’t. My pants had no pockets, and I only wore a long-sleeved shirt. I held my hands up, showing Yearly I had nothing there. “I run these hills for my training, and I dropped my phone somewhere.”
He glanced up, as if he could see the trail I took. “And you were running tonight?”
“What?” I laughed, making sure it was breezy and slightly husky-sounding. “No, no, no. I went for a walk.” I looked away, hugging myself, acting the part. “I was upset, and then I saw the maze and remembered you mentioned in class that you were the chainsaw guy tonight.”
“Yeah.” His eyes flicked down to the chainsaw in his hands, and back to me. He straightened, his shoulders back, his head up. He was almost taking the same stance Mason did before we came down here, like we were going off to battle. The difference between the two was that Mason was dangerous in a way Yearly wasn’t. Mason would follow through, destroying everything and anyone for someone he loved. Yearly was dangerous in that he would hurt someone weaker than he was, did hurt people weaker than he was.
That girl in class. She was why I was there.
Okay, truth time, Samantha. I needed to be honest with myself. That girl in class wasn’t the whole reason I came out here. Yes, my demons were laid to rest. Yes, I had healed those wounds, but I was in this corn maze because it wasn’t just that girl. It was the girl after her, the girl after her, another girl, maybe a woman, maybe his wife? I didn’t know Yearly. I didn’t know the extent of how he could hurt someone, but I felt it in my gut. He had, he did, and he would again.
I was out there for them too.
“So what’d Kade do to piss you off?”
God. A shiver went down my spine. Just in that tone from him, like it was inevitable, like Mason couldn’t help himself, like he sympathized with him.
“You know that girl in class?”
He stilled, his mouth losing the smirk to flatten into a disapproving line. “What girl?”
“You know, the one you were flirting with this week.” Not flirting. Harassing.
His shoulders relaxed a little, and he nodded, the movement more fluid. “Yeah, yeah. Her name’s Brittany.”
Brittany. I felt a pang in my chest. I wished I had found out her name myself instead of having to learn it from him.
“Yeah.” But I didn’t sound like that. I sounded almost seductive, coy. “I checked Mason’s Instagram. She’s been sending him pictures of herself in his DMs.”
I had laughed when Mason told me that.
“I don’t know your password. Are you for real?”
“But he would. If you were his girlfriend? He’d know every password you had, and the sooner the better.”
“Are you joking?’
Mason sighed, some of the cement wall softening around his mouth. “He cheats, so he assumes the girl will cheat. So he’ll control her to make sure she doesn’t. He doesn’t understand that you trust me, so you don’t know my passwords.” He reached out, tugging me to him, and bent down. His mouth nuzzled my neck a moment before he whispered, “But you should know that my password is your full future name.” He pressed a kiss there before stepping back, nodding in Yearly’s direction. “Go. I’ll be following behind you behind this corn row.”
I had shivered then too. “You’ll be with me?”
“Always. Just in the shadows.”
And I looked, my eyes trailing past Yearly’s shoulder to find Mason standing in the shadows. His eyes held mine, and I saw all the goodness in him that wasn’t in Yearly’s eyes, and I thanked God for that.
Yearly barked out a laugh. It was harsh, almost making me jump from how abrupt it was. “Strattan, hate to break it to you, but I’m sure your boy’s been doing worse than just getting tittie shots sent to him.”
A whole new burn was starting in my gut. Of course he’d think they were those types of images.
I forced a laugh, keeping it sharp, like I was mad at her. “Yeah, well, those titties might just end up in more places than Mason’s DM by the end of the night.”
His eyes grew keen, and he leaned another centimeter closer. “Yeah? What do you mean?”
Play it cool, Sam, I told myself.
I was reeling him in, but I didn’t want to lose him by going too fast.
I rocked back on my heels, shrugging. “I don’t know. You tell me. Give me some dirt on her. You must know something.”
Tell me something you did to her. Give me dirt we can use on you. Please.
He didn’t answer. He was silent. A second passed. Another. Five seconds. And when I was about to burst at the eighth second, he grunted. “You want to know something dirty about the girl?”
“Yeah.” He fell for it. I could hear it in his voice. Surrender . . . but also eagerness. And enjoyment. Fuck’s sakes, Mason had been right.