by Callie Rose
The engine idles with a low sound, and again, the irrationally terrified part of my mind expects the man in black to whip around the corner, to have been lying in wait for us this whole time—or to have heard the soft rumble of Lincoln’s engine from wherever he is now.
But nothing changes on the road ahead of us as Lincoln slowly backs down the small side street. Chase’s arms are still a vise around my body, clamping me tight to him, keeping me from hurling myself out of the car.
“We have to do something!” I shriek, and I know I shouldn’t be this loud, the man in black will hear us, but I can’t keep it inside.
“Yeah, we do.” River’s voice has that same dark, hollow quality as Lincoln’s did. “We need to get out of here. Now. If that motherfucker realizes we saw him, he’ll be after us next.”
“But Iris—”
“Are you gonna save her, Harlow?” Lincoln growls over his shoulder, finally backing us past another small side street before turning onto it. “She’s gone. You can’t bring her back. All you’d be doing is risking yourself.”
“That’s not—” I start, but I don’t finish the sentence because I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do.
What I saw still feels like an unreal dream to me. A waking nightmare or shared hallucination that we’ll all snap out of soon. Something that happens in movies, or to other people. But not here. Not in real life.
My heart is still beating too fast, my brain moving too slow. My body feels like a strange vessel, an unfamiliar thing I suddenly find myself trapped inside. I’m vaguely aware of Chase’s arms wrapped around me, of the two of us shifting and sliding across the seat as Lincoln whips around turns, but I can’t quite process any of it.
By the time he pulls into the motor court in his family’s mansion and slides into one of the two garages inside the space, I’m wheezing. I can hear the sound, but I don’t even realize at first that it’s coming from me. Lincoln turns back to me, worry flashing in his almost inhuman amber eyes.
“Shit. We need to get her inside. Quietly. Her lips are turning fucking blue.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Chase’s voice rumbles against my back.
“Shock, probably. Fuck. Fuck!” He slams his fist against the wheel again, and the tenor of his voice makes my stomach clench so hard it threatens to expel every last thing I’ve eaten. He might’ve sounded almost calm earlier, but he’s not.
None of them are.
None of us are in control here.
And for as long as I’ve known Lincoln, or any of these boys, the one thing they’ve always been is in control.
“We—we—”
Nothing more comes out. I’m shaking violently now, deep tremors that wrack my body and make my muscles ache.
Lincoln’s gaze zeroes in on me, and a little of the panic leaves his expression, as if having something to focus on helps. “Bring her upstairs. My room. I’ll go inside first and make sure no one’s up. Give me two seconds, and I’ll text you.”
He slides out of the car quickly and slips through the door into the house. Less than a minute later, River’s phone vibrates. He checks the screen and nods. “We’re good. Let’s go.”
I’ve stopped trying to reach the door handle on my side of the car. Iris is too far away to help now, and I don’t think I could coordinate my muscles to grasp anything at the moment. I hear the door on my other side open, and then Chase is pulling me backward across the seat. One of my heels falls off, but he just leaves it, sweeping me up into his arms with a grip under my shoulders and knees. My jacket is on the floor of the car, and I’m still clutching my phone and wallet so hard my knuckles are white, as though I’ll die if I drop them.
The interior of the house is dark, and I don’t like it. It’s too much like the street, like that man, like the dark, dark lump that was Iris’s body. A low moan falls from my lips, and Dax mutters, “Hurry up, dude.”
My body jostles against Chase’s as he takes the stairs quickly, and the next thing I know, we’re stepping into Lincoln’s bedroom. It’s big, twice the size of mine, and even though I’ve been in here before to clean, I barely recognize it right now.
The lamp on the nightstand is on, casting a dim, warm glow around the room, and when Chase sets me down on the bed, I try to crawl toward it. I need the light. I need the safety it offers, the warmth.
“What the fuck is she doing?” Dax asks.
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing. I told you, she’s in shock,” Lincoln says. “Help her, I gotta take care of something.”
Chase tugs me back again, and I shove at his chest, at his arms, trying to break free of his grip.
“Hey, woah, Pool Girl. Calm down. It’s okay!”
He restrains me, grabbing both my wrists in a firm but gentle grip. I’m lying on Lincoln’s large bed, my dress riding up on my hips and my other shoe gone now too. He kneels on the mattress next to me as his upper body leans over mine, his blue eyes clouded with concern.
I keep trying to wriggle out of his grasp, to kick or fight my way free, even though I don’t know what I’m trying to escape from or where I’m trying to flee.
“Harlow.”
That one word makes me pause. He never calls me that.
He takes advantage of my momentary hesitation, letting go of my wrists and cupping my face with his large hands.
“Harlow. Breathe, baby. Just breathe. Just look at me and breathe.”
My windpipe is still too constricted, and even though I try to do what he says, the breath I suck in is painful and raspy. I can hear murmured voices on the other side of the room, but I can’t focus on those. All I can focus on are Chase’s eyes. They’re such a clear, bright blue, and they usually spark with humor. But there’s something else in them now, an intensity I’ve never seen before. He lies down on the bed next to me, his sky-blue gaze still connected with mine.
“Good,” he whispers. “Keep breathing.”
The mattress shifts, and another body comes up behind me, warm and solid at my back.
“You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.”
It’s Dax’s voice, and as he speaks, his hand comes to rest on my bare shoulder. I jump at the contact, and he immediately removes it, but when I lean back against him a little, he gently replaces it, rubbing softly against my skin with his thumb.
His hand is warm too, and the weight of it is comforting, just like the feel of Chase’s hands on my face. The combined heat of their bodies is leeching some of the ice out of mine, and the shudders quaking through me ease a little.
In this bubble, this tiny bubble created between them, I can finally pull in a full breath.
I do, and it’s like a drowning person coming up for air, my lungs filling with so much oxygen that my ribs press against the constraints of my dress.
Chase chuckles, his eyes warming a little, a hint of the humor returning. “That’s good. Just like that.”
His hands start to roam, smoothing my hair back from my face, wiping away the wetness on my cheeks from tears I don’t even remember crying. Dax is running his palm up and down my arm, and this—this is what I need right now. It’s the only thing I need, the only thing that will save me from the dark chaos pressing at the edges of my mind.
I don’t know why I do it, am barely conscious of my body moving, but the next thing I know, my lips are pressing against Chase’s, my tongue sliding into his mouth. Maybe it’s because of what I saw the night of that party, the image I’ve never been able to erase from my mind.
She looked like she was in heaven.
The girl sandwiched between them had looked lost in ecstasy, and that’s what I want right now. To lose myself.
Chase jerks in surprise, just like I did when Dax first touched me, but he doesn’t pull away. His tongue works against mine, meeting my fierce, desperate strokes as he pulls me toward him. Dax presses closer on my other side, and I feel his lips on my skin, trailing up my shoulder to my neck.
The shudders have stoppe
d, and my body finally feels like my own again. My muscles feel shaky and weak, worn out from contracting over and over again, but feeling is returning to my fingertips. I skate my hands up the soft fabric of Chase’s shirt, clutching it in my fists as I draw him even closer—
“What the fuck?”
Lincoln’s voice from the foot of the bed snaps the bubble, popping the fragile, gossamer shield that kept the rest of the world out.
Reality comes rushing back in, and with it, the realization of what I’m doing.
I just witnessed someone die—saw someone be murdered—and now I’m sprawled on a bed making out with two guys. I sit up suddenly, pushing Chase away. He and Dax roll away from me, rising to sit too. My cheeks flame as embarrassment and guilt tear through me.
But even through those emotions, and through the returning horror of what we saw tonight, I can tell my body isn’t sinking back into the state of disassociation it was in. I can think a little more clearly.
“She was in shock. We were calming her down,” Chase says, a slight note of defensiveness in his voice.
Lincoln narrows his eyes at the three of us, a muscle in his jaw ticking. River is standing behind him, watching us silently too. I can’t handle their scrutiny right now, so I scoot off the bed, tugging the too-short dress down as I do. I’m barefoot, and my phone and wallet lie on the mattress where I finally dropped them.
“We have to call the police,” I say in a voice that hardly sounds like my own.
“You don’t have to do anything.” Lincoln crosses his arms over his chest, leveling a quelling gaze at me.
“Are you kidding?” I stammer. “We’re the only fucking witnesses to what happened! We’re the only ones who know—”
“What do you know, Pool Girl?” he interrupts, cocking his head. “Do you know what the guy looks like? His license plate number? Where he went?”
I lick my lips. “No. But I can describe his car.”
“Can you? What kind was it?”
“It was… it was black and—”
“Are you sure? Maybe it was dark blue or gray.”
My stomach twists, anger joining the other emotions roiling through my body.
“Why are you trying to convince me I don’t know anything? We saw something. We need to go to the cops—”
He moves toward me so fast I don’t even have time to stumble backward before he’s in my face.
“Listen, Pool Girl. I know you’re new around here, so I’ll explain a few things for you, okay? Whoever did this wasn’t fucking around. And half the richest families in Fox Hill have the cops in their pocket. So going to the police won’t do shit except paint a target on our backs. Do you get that? I know you want to follow the rules like a good little girl and do the right thing, but there is no ‘right thing’ here. ‘Right’ doesn’t win this time, do you understand?”
I blink at him slowly, taking in his darkly handsome features like I’ve never seen him before.
And in a way, it feels like I haven’t.
I thought I had my guard up, I thought I was keeping me and Mom safe by not getting too comfortable, by being paranoid and suspicious of everyone here.
But it turns out, I wasn’t paranoid enough.
Things in this twisted world I’ve fallen into are more fucked up than I ever imagined.
16
Lincoln and I stare each other down for another full minute. But I’m the one who finally breaks the standoff. I turn away from him, snatch my phone and wallet off the bed with one hand, and storm toward the door.
I don’t shut it because I can’t trust myself not to slam it, and the light from inside the room spills out into the hallway behind me as I stride quickly toward the north side of the house, where my bedroom is located.
“Harlow, wait.”
It’s the second time one of them has called me by my name tonight, and just like the first time it happened, it makes me hesitate. As if there’s some power in the word that only they possess, as if it’s a command instead of just my name.
Lincoln’s voice is soft, but his grip on my elbow is hard as he forces me to a stop. He spins me to face him, and his eyes burn in the darkness as he gazes down at me.
“You can’t tell me what to do!” I whisper fiercely.
“No.” His expression hardens. “But I can tell you that I look out for the people I care about. I’d do anything to keep them from getting hurt. I told you we can’t go to the police, and I’ve been nice about it so far, but I don’t have to be. So think twice before you say anything about this to anyone.”
My brows draw together slightly, and I shift uncomfortably in the tight grip of his hands, which are clamped around my shoulders.
There’s a warning in his voice, but there’s something else too.
A plea.
He means what he’s saying. And no matter what else I might think about Lincoln Black, I don’t believe he’s an evil person. All five of us had our lives turned upside down tonight, and I honestly think he’s trying to do the best thing he can right now. He’s worried for his friends, I can see that in his eyes. Maybe even worried for me—although that makes less sense. You have to care about someone to worry for them.
His hands move up my shoulders, and one slides around the back of my neck, threading through the hair at the base of my skull, while the other traces the line of my jaw. I freeze, blinking at him as his thumb skims lightly over my lower lip. He’s staring at it, but I’m not sure he’s really seeing it. His mind seems a million miles away.
“It’ll be okay, Harlow,” he murmurs. “No one will hurt you. But you have to trust me on this.”
Warmth cascades through my body from the places he’s touching me, and I swallow hard. What the hell is wrong with me? Two seconds ago, I was kissing his friend, and now I’m responding to his touch like my body has been craving this for weeks.
It’s the shock. It has to be.
It’s left me feeling too open and vulnerable, exposed and raw like a fresh wound. My emotions are all over the place, and my body is looking for comfort from any source it can find.
My hand drifts up to brush the back of his, and I can feel his grip tighten slightly.
Then he stiffens, as if he just realized he was seeking comfort from the wrong place too. His voice is harder when he whispers again.
“All you have to do is not do anything. Let the police sort it out on their own. This is important, Pool Girl. You’re the help—so help.”
My lip curls, and I pull my chin out of his grasp. Goddammit. Every time I think he’s shown another side of himself, he reminds me it’s all the same stupid side. Selfish. Entitled. Condescending. When am I going to stop looking for more? When am I going to stop letting him slip past my walls only to fuck with my emotions?
I bat his hand away, stepping back. “Yeah, I get it, sir. Duly noted. Don’t worry, I’ll be a good little maid.” My nostrils flare. “I’ll keep your damn secret, but I don’t want anything else to do with you, your friends, or your insane, fucked up world. Leave me out of your plans and your stupid schemes from now on. And as far as I’m concerned, my favor to River has been cashed in. I don’t owe any of you shit.”
Without waiting for him to respond, I turn and stalk down the hall toward the wing I share with my mom. I swipe under my eyes as more tears well, clearing away the mascara I’m sure is smeared there.
Before I go into my room, I peer around the corner at my mom’s apartment. I press a button on the side of my phone, and the screen lights up, flashing 11:54 p.m. She’s probably home from her date, but for some reason, I’m filled with a desperate need to be sure. To be absolutely certain my mom is tucked safely away in her bed, and not out there in the dark night where a man in a black ski mask roams the streets.
So I slip inside her apartment and pad toward the bedroom door. It’s open a crack already, and I push it wider as I peer inside.
She’s sprawled on the right side of her bed, her hair messy and her face peacefully comp
osed.
I let out a soft breath of relief, and she stirs slightly, blinking awake with that mom sixth sense she’s had since I was a little kid.
“Hey, Low,” she murmurs, squinting through the darkness at me. “You okay, sweetie?”
“Yeah.” The word is a little choked, but for this one second, I am okay. Because she’s okay.
She blinks again. “What are you wearing?”
Oh. I look down at the skimpy black dress the guys brought me. It’s still twisted slightly on my body, still riding up too high on my hips.
“It’s a… Halloween costume. I went to a party tonight.”
“Ah.” The word is half sigh as her eyes drift closed again. “I hope you had fun.”
“Yeah,” I lie. “I did.”
Her breathing evens out, and I step carefully across the room, tugging the covers up tighter around her before pressing a kiss to her forehead.
“I love you, Mom.”
“Love… you more… Low.”
When I return to my own bedroom, I turn on all the lights. Then I quickly strip off the dress and toss it in the laundry basket before stepping into the shower. I turn on the water as hot as I can tolerate and stand under it, not even bothering to use soap, just baptizing myself in the spray of scalding water.
When my skin is pink and almost numb again, I finally get out and put on a soft pair of pajamas before crawling into bed.
But I don’t sleep.
17
I spend most of Sunday in bed. I feel hungover, even though I didn’t drink anything last night. My body is exhausted, wrung out, and sore, like I ran a marathon or something, and the shakes return for a while.
My mom insists on taking my temperature, and even though I don’t have one, she hovers anyway, which is how I know I look like shit. I think she worries a little bit every time I get sick that it could be the cancer returning, but she usually hides it pretty well. I tell her I just need sleep though. And it’s true. I do.
I just wish I could get it.
All last night, I lay awake staring at the ceiling, the lights still on around me. I don’t feel ready to face darkness yet, and every time I close my eyes, images flash behind my eyelids that make me feel like I’m going to throw up.