—and then Alec disappears.
32
Mackenzie
It happens so fast I think I’ve imagined it. The heat and the terror have sent me outside my body, or I’ve gone to the void in my head to keep myself sane, and in the void I no longer feel Alec’s snake coiling against my entrance.
But no, he’s gone. He’s no longer on top of me. But how—
I dare a glance behind me. Alec rolls in the sand ten feet from the other cars, his trousers around his ankles. He clutches his face. Blood covers his hands. Noah strides toward me. His arms go around my waist. He picks me up like I’m nothing and throws me over his shoulder.
“We’re leaving,” he barks at Alec. “Don’t follow us.”
Even though the jocks outnumber him, no one moves to stop Noah. Alec lets out a growl like a wild fucking beast, but all he can do kick a cloud of sand at us.
Noah nods once, then starts off across the desert.
He walks in silence. Each heavy tread of his boots jerks my body, but I don’t ask to be put down. I’m not strong enough. The full horror of what nearly happened hits me in a shudder. Tears slide from my eyes, but the desert wind blasts them away. By the time we can no longer see the cars, my skin feels flayed alive by it.
The pain is good, cleansing. I want the desert to slough away my skin until there’s no part of me left that Alec LeMarque has touched.
Noah’s strong arms feel so good around me.
I hate him for rescuing me.
I hate myself.
I lose myself in the delirium of my humiliation. I don’t know how long we walk, but Noah’s breath comes out in shaking rasps. His steps become slow, shaky. His skin is slick with sweat by the time we reach civilization – and calling it civilization is a stretch. We arrive at a gas station on a crossroads, a few miles off the highway I can just make out winding through the desert beyond. Noah leaves me in a lawn chair and points at a payphone. “I’ll be over there. I need to make a call.”
I don’t move or reply. I can’t.
My fingers search for the locket around my neck, and when they find it still there, I slip it under the fabric of my top so Noah can’t see it.
I stare out across the desert, at the scrabbly bushes and gnarled Joshua trees and Jurassic rock formations jutting from the earth like dinosaur teeth. I think about what happened, what could have happened. I close my eyes and see my blood-splattered reflection, feel a gnawing pain in my heart that will never heal.
Something plops down on the table in front of me. I cry out, tripping over myself as I struggle away.
“Didn’t mean to startle you.” Noah slides into the chair opposite me and holds out an object. A plastic spoon.
I peer through a curtain of blonde hair matted with dust and dirt and blood at the object on the table. It’s a chocolate cake, five miles high – layers and layers of cake and cream and frosting and a mountain of fresh, glistening cherries on top. It looks like the kind of cake you’d see at a high-end wedding, not at a gas station in the middle of the fucking desert.
It’s so fucking random and crazy that I burst out laughing.
Noah digs his own spoon into an equally ridiculously slice of key lime pie. “There’s an entire cabinet of epic cakes inside. I remember you used to like cherry-flavored stuff.”
“I did?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
“Sure.” Noah gives me an odd look, those coal eyes studying me intently. “At school, whenever they had cherry pie for dessert you shoved everyone out of the way in the cafeteria line so you could get there first. You used to take three slices even though we were only allowed one. The rest of the class was too afraid of you to rat you out.”
“I bet you did, though.” I carve off the tip of the cake. It’s so tall I can’t get the entire thing on the fork.
“Nope. I was afraid of you, too.”
Hmmm. I watch Noah as he carves off the tip of his pie and slides it between his lips. He no longer is the arrogant, aristocratic king. The desert has stripped him of his crown – his wavy hair rumpled and plastered to his scalp with sweat, his skin dry and patched with grazes, his eyes red and bloodshot. And yet, to me, he’s never appeared more noble.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” I blurt out.
Noah turns away, hiding his face. “Eat your ridiculous cake.”
“Answer me, Marlowe.”
He sighs. “I’m not being nice. No matter how much I fucking hate you, I’m not going to rape you in the middle of the desert. What Alec tried to do was sick. End of.”
I’m dying to ask him about the party the other night where his hard cock ground into my hip. But I can’t deal with thinking about cock right now, so instead I carve off another corner of the cake with my fork and shove it into my mouth.
“Okay, this is amazing. You have to try it.” I wave my spoon at him.
“I have my own.”
“Not for long.” I reach across and swipe a decent chunk off the side of his pie.
“What are you doing?”
“Enjoying the spoils of war.” I grin as I shove the pie into my mouth. Something about the sugar and about being here with Noah and the relief at not being a corpse roasting under the desert sun turns me giddy.
Noah watches me out of the corner of his eye, and I notice that the fire on the edge of his coal-black irises has dimmed. The hatred that usually burns for me alone is now the warmth that dragged me from the desert. He swipes his cake away from me. “Are you high?”
“No, I’m hungry. And these cakes are amazing.”
“See, I don’t get it – you’re not supposed to be impressed by cake. Especially not a cake purchased from a gas station. Every girl at our school is a hundred pounds of pure bitchy hummus, and you’re supposed to be Queen of them all.”
I poke my tongue out at him, showing him the half-chewed cake on the end of it. “Maybe I’m not like other girls. Also, when we get back, I’m trademarking ‘bitchy hummus’ – it would make a great health-food company name. Maybe it will supply snacks to Stonehurst vending machines.”
Noah snorts. We finish our cakes in silence. Maybe I’m delirious from heat and trauma, but hatred doesn’t seem to roll off his body any longer. Now it’s more of a low-level annoyance that buzzes in the air around us like an annoying fly.
“I meant what I said at the party.” I don’t know why I say this. “I used to crush on you hard. It must’ve been your superior cake-purchasing abilities.”
Noah throws his head back and laughs. It’s a real laugh, devoid of that hard edge. “Yeah, well… I had a crush on you, too.”
“Don’t lie. You acted like I didn’t exist.” I remember those weepy words in my diary, how Noah would avoid me at school and refuse to be in group projects or playground teams with me.
“Only because you were Eli’s girl.” Noah looks away again.
“I was thirteen. I was nobody’s girl.”
Noah shook his head. “You and Eli were written in the stars. That was obvious even to me, even when I wasn’t supposed to know you guys were hanging out. Eli’s my best friend, and when you disappeared, it nearly destroyed him. I hated you for that as much as for my brother.”
“I can’t imagine Eli destroyed by anything. He’s so… steady.”
Noah rolls his eyes, and for a moment, just a moment, I catch a glimmer of something like amusement in them before they return to their calm, dark state. “Oh yeah, Eli was wretched. He only spoke in sighs. For a whole year, he did no better than a B on any exam or test, which for Eli is like flunking out. He listened to that playlist you made him on constant repeat, and he even threw himself off his balcony like a character in a Shakespeare play.”
“He did not throw himself off a balcony,” I scoff.
“He did. He landed in his mother’s prize rose bushes. Broke his arm in two places. He was pulling thorns out of his ass for weeks. The only thing that seemed to help him was getting his cat, Gizmo. And, weirdly, t
he FBI going after his Dad. Eli loves solving puzzles, and I think he figured if he couldn’t figure out why you left him he could at least save his Dad’s ass—”
An engine roars, drowning out the rest of Noah’s words. A moment later, a Porsche rolls up in a cloud of dust. I cough, waving my hands to try and save my cake. The dust and sand settle, revealing the edges of the vehicle and driver at the wheel. Eli peers over the top of his glasses.
“Need a lift?” He cocks an eyebrow at me.
Dealing with Eli’s intensity usually puts me off my lunch, but right now his car is a fucking chariot from heaven. I stand on shaky legs. Noah reaches out, his warm hand steadying me, and together we limp toward the Porsche.
“Careful.” Eli’s smirk crumples when he sees Noah holding me. In a flash, he vaults from the car and is on the other side of me, piling me into the passenger seat.
Noah climbs in back, sprawling out across the narrow seat, dangling his sand-coated boots over the side. “Possibly you should’ve put the top up before you went cruising in the desert.”
“Shut up. Mac, are you okay?” Eli leans over the seat, his ocean eyes stormy, wide with concern.
I stare out at the gas station and the hostile landscape beyond. Now that I’m inside the car, everything that happened, that nearly happened, rushes at me in an avalanche of fear. A tremble starts in my feet and ripples through my whole body. I grip the edge of the seat and clench my teeth as I ride through the terror.
The reaction reminds me of the darkest night of my life, of getting into Antony’s car after he dug me out of the dirt, of trembling on the seat while he told me what happened to my parents.
“Shit, she’s not okay.” Eli glares at Noah. “What the fuck did you do to her out there?”
“Nothing,” Noah snaps back. “I put a stop to it. Get us out of here. She’s having a trauma reaction. She’ll feel better once we’re back in the city.”
Eli’s face tightens. He reaches over me and pulls my belt across my lap. His fingers graze my skin, and I murmur something that might’ve been a protest, might’ve been a desire for more. “Mackenzie, do you want us to take you home? There’s something at Gabe’s you should really see.”
I don’t answer. The truth is, after what Alec did to Queen Boudica, home doesn’t feel safe to me right now. But I don’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t have the words I need to ask.
“Let’s take her to Gabe’s,” says Noah. He picks up Eli’s phone from between the seats and chooses a new song. Pounding blastbeats and black metal assault my ears as Eli jerks the car away and speeds back down the highway. I lose myself in the bleakness of the music, imagining myself in a Norwegian forest, cold and surrounded by wolves and as far from the fucking desert as it’s possible to get.
As we hit the outer suburbs of Emerald Beach, Eli switches the playlist to 90s grunge and indie music, and the boys sing along. I glance down at the phone and notice the playlist is called, simply, Mackenzie.
The playlist Noah mentioned – the one I gave Eli before I disappeared.
I watch Eli as he drives, one hand on the wheel, the other draped casually over the door. He nods his head to the music, and the breeze ripples through his blond hair, whipping loose strands around his face. He’s wearing a grey t-shirt that hugs his muscles, and he looks every inch the fresh-faced, pretty-mouthed boy that every girl wants for a boyfriend.
He still has my playlist.
We merge onto the highway that hugs the beach, turning off to pass bars and shops and co-working spaces until we pull up at Gabriel’s condo.
Gabriel opens the door wearing nothing but a pair of black jeans. My throat dries at the sight of his naked chest and those beautiful tattoos. All that skin begging to be touched. It’s enough to make a girl forget she’s just been assaulted.
I’m crazy. I’m totally screwed up.
“Hey, Mac. You look like shite. Gimmie a sec.” Gabriel leaves the door open and pads up to his mezzanine bedroom. While Noah settles me on the couch and points out the faint outline of the giant dick still visible on Gabriel’s windows, I hear Gabriel talking softly, and a girl’s voice answering. My heart patters in my chest.
Of course, Gabriel has a girl here. I flattered myself when he said he never brought another girl to his condo. I thought it made me special, but it just makes me a gullible fool. Even more reason why you should not trust these guys.
A few moments later, Gabriel leans over the railing, his voice as sweet as triple-chocolate-cherry cake.
“Someone’s here to see you.”
He steps aside, and George stands in the stairwell, her face ashen, her arms covered in cuts and bruises, her cheeks smudged with tears.
That’s not the face of someone who’s just had sex with Gabriel Fallen.
“George, what happened?” I try to rise off the couch to go to her, but Noah shoves me down again.
“Mackenzie, I—” the words catch in George’s throat. Fresh tears well in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. Alec and Cleo put around that no one should hang out with you, and I got scared. I should have—”
Her face crumples, and she buries her head in Gabriel’s shoulder. He places an arm around her and glares at Noah. “Apparently, Alec saw the two of you hanging out at school, and with his expert powers of deduction concluded she’s breaking his ridiculous rules. He won’t come after me for hanging with you, but he feels good about attacking a girl.”
“I had nothing to do with this.” Noah’s hands curl into fists. “I wanted Mackenzie to suffer, but if I had any idea of what Alec was really planning, I—”
“What the fuck happened to George?” I yell. Eli winces.
“George works in a vintage store in Brawley where Cleo loves to shop. She overheard Cleo in the changing rooms with her friends last night talking about their nefarious scheme, so she went to school early to warn you. She couldn’t catch you, so she went to the gym and saw them carrying you away. She went to find a teacher, but Cleo got to her first. While the guys took you to the car, Cleo and her snakes beat George up and locked her in the school basement. I only found her because I go down there sometimes to get blazed.”
Realization hits me. In the desert, Alec wasn’t talking about Queen Boudica, he was talking about George. Which is odd – he knows I came after him because of what he did to my cat, so why didn’t he acknowledge it?
“Fuck.” My head spins. “George, I’m so sorry. This shit is between me and Alec. Not you. You were never supposed to be involved. You were right to run away from me. I— I’m bad news.”
Her eyes are wide as saucers, and for a moment I think she’s going to run at the window and leap through to freedom. Instead, she shuffles across the room and sits down beside me, curling her feet beneath her. I see she’s wearing Gabriel’s clothes – she’s swimming in an old tour t-shirt and a pair of drawstring sweatpants, but in an adorable way they suit her.
“I shouldn’t have run,” she says. “I just… I already knew about the rule when we went outside for lunch, but I didn’t think anyone would care until I saw Cleo staring at me. She was even worse to me after you disappeared. I didn’t want to give her a reason to—” George swallows. A spasm of pain hits her, and I’m ready to head back out to ram Cleo’s head into a wall. “I’m sorry. I thought you were tricking me. You and Cleo – just like in the old days. You’d pretend to be my friend so I went against the rule and then the two of you would do something horrible to me.”
“I used to be a mean bitch, huh?” I place my hand over hers.
“The meanest.”
I smile, and in that smile I pour all of my cruelty. Cleo will burn for this. “Let me say this once, and know that I mean what I say. You have nothing to fear from me. This mean bitch is on your side now.”
The grin on George’s face could light up the Emerald Beach NYE bonfire.
“Now that’s taken care of, anyone for a drink?” Gabriel has a cocktail shaker in his hand. He still hasn’t put a shirt on, but I’m not goi
ng to be the one to ask.
“I think Mackenzie just needs to lie down,” says Eli.
“Guess again.” I hold out my hand. “Make mine a double.”
While the guys get snacks from the kitchen, Gabriel does a big show of tossing the shaker over his head and behind his back. He drops it on his second go and alcohol splooshes across the floor. Gabriel mutters something into an intercom, and a few minutes later a guy in a spotless white uniform arrives to clean up the spill.
I throw my arm around George’s shoulder. She leans in and rests her cheek on my chest, and even though I’ve had the shittest possible day, something featherlight flutters inside me. Like maybe this is the start of something. Like maybe Stonehurst Prep will turn out just like those dumb teen movies.
“For you, m’lady.” Gabriel holds out a drink for George. She reaches for it, then seems to think again. She pulls her phone off the table.
“I can’t. I wish I could, but I have to get home.” She gives me a final squeeze. “I hope you’re feeling better.”
“I am, thanks to you.” I grin. “I’ll see you at lunch. We’re eating together, right?”
Her whole face lights up again, and for the first time in a long time, I feel like I might’ve actually done a nice thing. It was odd. Good odd, but still odd.
When I get out of the shower, wearing Gabriel’s clothes that I plan never to take off, the guys have put on a Marvel movie. Noah and Eli sink down next to me, while Gabriel meets his concierge at the door and carries in even more food – pizza, fries, Chinese food, tubs of cherry-flavored ice cream.
By the time the first Stan Lee cameo plays, I’m already asleep. Just as my eyelids droop closed, I imagine I hear Eli whisper, “I swore to protect you once, and I failed. I’ll never, ever let that happen again.”
33
Noah
Mackenzie’s head droops on my shoulder, and in minutes she’s asleep. Her breathing steadies, and occasionally she lets out these snorting noises that make my chest feel tight. With her hair freshly washed and fanned over her shoulders, and her face soft and free of tension, she looks… peaceful.
My Stolen Life: a high school bully romance (Stonehurst Prep Book 1) Page 16