Between (Tory's School for the Troubled Book 1)

by Katie May

  It was Kace who answered, leaning languidly back in his chair and kicking his feet up.

  “Maybe. We considered that option.” He exchanged a glance with Aiden and Tanner and even Beau. The Three Horsemen. No, the Four Horsemen. I didn’t know when it happened or how, but somehow, Beau had joined their little group.

  Without me.

  “My bet is a governmental experiment,” Tanner said succinctly. Aiden rolled his eyes.

  “That doesn’t seem likely.”

  “And supernatural does?” he retorted back.

  Ignoring him, Aiden looked at me. “We believe only one person knows the truth about this place.”

  Kelly, I thought, but didn’t say aloud.

  Aiden’s answer took me by surprise. “Heath.”

  “Heath?”

  I had never heard of a Heath before.

  Aiden nodded seriously, flickering his eyes over my shoulder. “He’s the student body president appointed by the professors themselves. How would he not know?”

  I followed his gaze toward a boy sitting at a table with a dozen others, laughing. He was handsome with wind-swept brown hair and a large smile. It was his eyes, though, that gave me a pause. They were surprisingly cold on his handsome face. Icy.

  I knew innately that his smile was a mask.

  A girl had her arm curled around his bicep as she giggled at something he said. Another girl was leaning so far over the table her large, perky breasts were practically spilling out. Still, he ignored them all as he talked. He was talking to them, but not at them.

  And then I spotted Dylan a few people over, eagerly eating up whatever Heath was saying. Seeing my nemesis, my tormentor, made my blood run cold.

  I turned back toward the four men eagerly, unable to quell the growing panic Dylan’s mere presence evoked within me.

  “He’s an asshole,” Aiden explained icily, oblivious to my inner turmoil.

  “You’re one to talk,” Tanner snapped.

  But it was Kace who was staring at me intently, brow furrowed. He had obviously seen something in my face, something that hinted at the fear I wished to remain hidden. His lips were pursed delicately as he surveyed me, but he didn’t ask. He didn’t demand answers.

  But for some inexplicable reason, I felt as if I had just been seen more clearly than I ever had before.

  “I want to know everything,” I whispered, pulling my gaze away from Kace’s. Aiden’s smile was speculative, eyes amused, when I finally faced him.

  “What if we told you everything in exchange for your help?”

  “My help?” I parroted dumbly.

  But I would do whatever they needed, as long as I was included in their little escape plan.

  Aiden smiled wickedly.

  “Meet us in the shed tonight. Leave exactly at 11:42 PM. Not a second earlier or later.”

  “Why?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. Was this just another game?

  I was fucking tired of being a pawn on a game board.

  So fucking tired.

  “Because,” Aiden replied, “you want answers. I want your help. It’s a win-win situation, isn’t it?”

  Isn’t it, indeed.

  20

  Bianaca

  Time trudged by, each second feeling like hours.

  I glanced anxiously at my bedside clock, waiting attentively for the little red light to mark the time as 11:42. Why I trusted Aiden with something like this remained a mystery. Logically, I knew it was dumb to trust someone like him—a predator. A wolf not bothering to hide its predatory intent behind sheep clothing. He was a lion out for the kill, not merely the hunt.

  Somehow, I had found myself as the helpless gazelle.

  At 11:30, I heard the familiar scuttling of beetles just outside my door. The mundane sound caused my hair to rise on the back of my neck. I was coiled tightly, a snake waiting to strike. Lashing out with my venom.

  The sound receded as the…monster…turned the corner. Still, I couldn’t quite calm my abnormally tense muscles or the pitter-pattering of my heart. No, not a mere pitter-pattering. It was pounding with the force of a thousand drums. Each one threatened to tear the organ straight out of my chest. Finally, when the clock struck the desired time, I climbed out of bed and tentatively ventured toward the door.

  Was this going to be my life? Sneaking out of dorm rooms but not because I was afraid of getting caught by an RA, but by a monster?

  Traveling to an abandoned shed to meet my bullies not a boyfriend?

  After a quick glance in both directions, confirming the hall was clear, I crept down the hall now as familiar to me as my house back home. Fortunately, I remembered a jacket, so I immediately slid it on the second I was outside, the frigid air assaulting me instantly. Shivering, I burrowed my face farther into the soft fabric and made a beeline in the direction of the shed.

  I vaguely wondered where Kelly was. Was she on the balcony again watching helplessly as students were fed to a monster? Was she safe in her dorm room? I didn’t know why I was so worried about the smaller girl, but I couldn’t deny that I was. Somehow, someway, she had weaseled her way into my heart, and I had taken responsibility for her. We had a kinship, her and I, forged by trauma we couldn’t articulate into words. For some reason, she had trusted me with a secret that could alter the world as we knew it. But why? Why me?

  Was it because I stood up for her?

  Shaking my head, I stopped in front of the dilapidated building dwarfed by trees. Voices reached me before I even entered.

  “We have to tell her!”

  I froze, one foot in front of the other. That voice…

  Impossible.

  “And what? She won’t fucking believe us.” Tanner. His growly tenor was unmistakable.

  “She’ll believe me,” Beau said resolutely.

  Beau. Beau talking.

  Beau fucking talking.

  A variety of emotions flashed through me, too fast for me to fully grasp onto any of them. Shock. Happiness. And then a blistering anger, red hot. It threatened to burn me from the inside out.

  Beau hadn’t spoken a word in years, not even to me. To hear him finally speak sent chills up my body, goosebumps across my arms.

  Then, the jealousy hit.

  It clambered to life in my stomach, tangling with the giant ball of nerves.

  He hadn’t spoken in years, and his first words were said to my tormentors? Anger thrummed through my veins.

  Before I could stop myself, I stormed into the shed.

  Aiden, Beau, and Tanner were all standing around the small work table. Kace sat on the ground against the wall, his eyes trained intently on his hands. He glanced up when I walked in before flickering his gaze back down.

  “What the hell, Beau?” I asked, ignoring the other three men. My entire attention was on my best friend.

  Combined with the jealousy and anger was something else, something that I had felt only this morning.

  Betrayal.

  All of my emotions must’ve been evident on my face, for Beau took an automatic step toward me, hands extended.

  “Don’t touch me,” I hissed. “What’s going on?” Finally, I addressed all four of them. Tanner had the decency to look sheepish, but Aiden met my gaze defiantly.

  “I think you already figured it out,” he said tersely. Each word was clipped, succinct, the biting slash of a whip. I felt it ram into me physically.

  “You’re escaping,” I whispered. Not one of them denied it.

  “That’s right.” It was Kace that spoke, his eyes still trained on his hand. “We can’t stay here any longer. Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” I repeated numbly. There was this roaring sound in my ears. A scream.

  I turned my eyes onto Beau, who was watching me helplessly.

  The air around us practically vibrated with tension. I kept my gaze locked on his as I finally dared a step closer.

  “You knew.” It wasn’t a question, but he nodded in assent anyway. Tears sprang to my
eyes, and I didn’t bother to brush them away. I wanted him to see the hurt, the pain, the anguish. “You would’ve left me behind?”

  At my soft words, he began to shake his head vehemently. His shaking hand reached for my arm to write on the sensitive skin, but I wrenched it away.

  “No, you don’t get to do that. If you have something to say, then say it. You talked to all of them. Why can’t you talk to me?” I took a step closer until the tips of my shoes were touching his. Until our noses were a mere inch apart and his hot breath wafted over my face. “Talk, Beau. Fucking talk.”

  He remained stubbornly silent, his eyes begging me, beseeching me, to trust him. There was something near pleading in his golden-flecked gaze.

  But my nerves were alight, my stomach a tumultuous mixture of dread and anger, and the last thing I wanted to do was trust him.

  What people failed to tell you was that the people you loved the most were capable of hurting you the most.

  “Talk, dammit!” I screamed, pounding on his chest. “Talk!”

  My only answer was the slightest shake of his head.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t be near him. It hurt too much.

  Despite his anguished gaze and reaching hands, I ducked away, moving to sit beside Kace. The auburn-haired man immediately shifted until our arms brushed, his own eyes flickering with sympathy.

  “So you’re escaping,” I whispered harshly. Grit and other unsavory substances clung to my clothes, but I paid them no mind.

  “Yes,” Aiden answered immediately. “And we need your help.”

  A strangled laugh escaped me. “Is that the only reason you brought me? Allowed me to join your little club? Because you need my help? What if you didn’t need me? Would you have left me here to die?”

  Nobody answered, but their silence was answer enough.

  “Fuck you,” I snapped. “Fuck you all.”

  “It’s not like that,” Tanner snapped. “We have come to…care about you. We wouldn’t have left you behind.”

  Care about me? I wanted to scoff. The only thing they cared about was themselves. I was just the girl who dared to defy them, the girl who had gotten in the way of their plans, the girl who had found herself in a dead girl’s room.

  “Down that staircase,” Aiden began, pointing toward the door he had attempted to lure me down before, “is a tunnel. We don’t know how long it’s been here or what its purpose is, but we believe it will get us out of here.”

  “Or…” I met his stare with a quirk to my brow. “The tunnel will just lead us back to where we once were. Like the gates.”

  Aiden shrugged, undisturbed. “Maybe. But it’s the only option we have. It’s either leave through the tunnel or leave through a bodybag. And I don’t want it to be the latter.”

  His words made sense, in a twisted sort of way. I filed the information away to look into at a later time.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “So you found this tunnel. Why haven’t you left yet?”

  “There was a cave-in,” Kace answered. He indolently rested his head on my shoulder, and I stiffened at the initiation of contact. My muscles slowly relaxed when I came to the conclusion he wasn’t planning on slashing open my neck or anything like that. “But we believe another group of students were trying to escape before us. They marked on the rock where we could dig without the entire tunnel collapsing.”

  “Other students…?” I trailed off.

  Other students had tried to escape?

  What had happened to them?

  That answer was simple if today’s demonstration was any indication.

  “We believe they were caught,” Tanner parroted my thoughts with a nod of his head. “But, B, we’re so fucking close. So close. We think we can do it. Escape, that is. Maybe in the next few days.”

  His words twisted my insides. Escape. Leave.

  Those two words sounded so fucking appealing.

  But so, so dangerous.

  “Okay, so what do you need me for?” I asked, raising a brow. “I obviously won’t be much help with the heavy labor.” I was fit from gymnastics, but I wasn’t as buff as the four guys around me. Even Kace, the skinniest of the bunch, had corded muscles accentuated clearly through the school uniform.

  “Heath,” Tanner answered.

  “Heath? The president?”

  He nodded. “We believe he has more information than the average student. Maybe he’ll be able to tell us what’s on the other side of that wall.”

  I gulped audibly, and Kace reached down to squeeze my hand.

  “On the other side? Isn’t it…well…you know,” I stammered, eyes zeroing in on the anxious glances exchanged between all four of the guys.

  “Maybe. That’s what we want to determine,” Aiden said at last. “It will be dangerous if we go through the tunnel blind. If Heath knows anything, we need to know.”

  “And that involves me how?” I asked, though I already feared the answer.

  “Use your female…charms,” Aiden said after a long moment of silence. Both Tanner and Beau refused to meet my eyes.

  “You want me to seduce him?” I asked in disbelief. My stomach tightened to exponential levels. When no one answered, I narrowed my eyes into thin slits. “Fuck you all.”

  “We need your help, little gymnast. We wouldn’t have asked if one of us could do it. Or if there was another female we could trust.”

  “Fuck you.” It seemed to be the only two words I was capable of saying.

  My fingernails dug into Kace’s palm, my eyes spewing heat.

  Fucking pricks.

  “Okay, so we discover what’s on the other side of the wall. We time our escape so the professors aren’t around and won’t notice our absence for at least a little bit. What about the monster?” I asked.

  All four of the guys blinked at me.

  “Monster?” Kace asked, staring up at me through his dark lashes.

  I frowned. Was I going crazy? Was what Kelly showed me real?

  How did they know about everything else, but not the monster lurking these halls?

  I brought a hand up to my head as if that physical gesture could somehow clear my foggy mind. Memories bombarded me. Ali’s death. The dark, sunken skin of the hand. The clattering noise echoing in the halls.

  “Little gymnast, we don’t understand what you mean,” Tanner said at last. He stared at me long and hard, as if questioning my sanity.

  “But…but…what do you think happens to the students that are taken? I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen them become sacrificed to the monster.”

  21

  Kace

  All we could do was stare at the petite blond.

  Stare.

  As if that nonsensical, wordless gesture would grant some clarity on the fucking bomb she dropped with the finesse of a bull traipsing through a china shop. It didn’t just sit on the floor idly; it exploded. Fucking exploded.

  When nobody answered her and she didn’t rush to clarify her strange statement, the silence grew. And grew. And grew. What started as a minuscule seed became a full-fledged tree towering in the center of the shed. It provided a metaphysical wall between us and her. Me and her. Her body may have been pressed to mine, my head on her shoulder, but there was an ocean of space between us.

  “You don’t believe me,” she whispered. It wasn’t a question, but Aiden, of-fucking-course, felt the need to respond.

  “Monsters, sweetheart?” He quirked an eyebrow mockingly, but only someone who knew him as well as I did could see the tightening of his eyes. He didn’t believe the little firecracker, but her words made him nervous.

  What had she seen that made her think monsters existed?

  What had happened to her?

  I could see Beau itching to go to her, to comfort her, to wrap his arms around her and hold her tight. I knew because it was a reflection of my own feelings. Almost instinctively, I shifted so my arm was over her stomach. If it bothered her, she didn’t protest. I would be the first t
o admit that butterflies fluttered in my stomach, their wings beating against the lining.

  “Monsters exist,” she said demurely. “I’ve seen them.”

  “We all have.” Aiden spread his arms to encompass all of us in the room. “Humans are the worst monsters out there. Sometimes, our subconscious takes the form of—”

  “Don’t fucking bullshit me,” Bianaca snapped, removing herself from my embrace. Instantly, I missed the way she felt against me. The heat of her. Her absence pulled back layers of skin and bone and muscle. “You think I’m making this up.”

  Aiden held her stare stubbornly. “I don’t think you’re making this up. I think that sometimes our brain compartmentalizes things to make you believe stuff that doesn’t exist.”

  “Whatever. I don’t fucking need this right now.” Each word was succinct, a slash of a knife against flesh. She made a beeline toward the exit, her footsteps echoing, and every pore in my body wanted to call her back to me. I didn’t know why I felt the way I did. I barely knew the girl but yet…

  She was intimately familiar to me. Almost painfully so.

  “Wait!” Tanner called. He ventured a step toward her but stopped when he saw the expression on her face. Cornered, almost. Wounded. She was scared and was trying to hide it behind an impeccably detailed mask. How was I able to read her so easily? Why were her facial expressions so familiar to me? I didn’t know the answers to those questions. When B stopped at Tanner’s one word, hand extended toward the doorknob, I thought that he had reached her. I thought she would come back and listen to us.

  But she was stubborn and seemed to have this delusional mentality that real life monsters existed. I knew that monsters existed—I believed myself to be one of them—but not in the form of sharp teeth and milky white eyes. They didn’t hide under the bed, but they did lurk in the shadows. Always waiting. Always seeking out new, unsuspecting victims.