I squealed and laughed helplessly, slapping at his hands. When he finally let up I was completely out of breath.
“Naps then,” I gasped. He’d managed to roll me all the way onto the bed. I grinned at him. “Kiss me.”
He kissed me. Then he kept kissing me until my clothes fell off. This time, when we had sex, I didn’t do a damn thing. I was naked as the day I was born, my body aching to have Rudy smooth away all the tension. Talented as ever, he did so without ever using his hands.
Rudy’s tongue searched until he found the bundle of nerves he would use to unravel me. He licked and he sucked, two fingers forcing my folds out of the way as he gave all his attention to my clit.
I tried to touch him, to reach for him, but he threw my hands above my head. “Let me take care of you,” he said.
And take care of me, he did. One orgasm after the next lifted me away from my problems. And when Rudy finally sank himself into me, it was sweet and passionate, long strokes accentuated by tender kisses.
He teased the moans out of me the way one teases music out of an instrument - delicately, intentionally.
Right then, it was just what I needed.
Chapter Forty-One
RUDY
“I thought you said he did this sometimes,” Kennedy said as she strapped herself into the passenger’s seat. “I mean, he’s a grown man, right? What exactly are you worried about?”
I twisted my hands on the steering wheel, fighting the cold lump in the pit of my stomach. My fears from the night before had grown and expanded in my dreams, driving me awake before my alarm went off.
“He doesn’t miss game night without a reason,” I told her. “He always calls or something, lets us know what’s going on, or just that he can’t make it. He’s the one who started it in the first place, because he was afraid that once people started moving out we’d all end up alone again. Game night is important to him.”
She sat quietly for a moment, frowning out into the early morning light. The roads were empty on that sleepy, cold Sunday morning, and we made it to the highway out of town in less than five minutes.
I opened up the throttle and hit the freeway speeding, trying to outrun the feeling that something was very, very wrong.
“Has anyone talked to him since he was at my house?” she asked.
I shook my head. “That’s another thing. He likes to keep tabs on us, especially when he thinks we’re about to get into trouble. Any other time he would have been blowing up my phone or Bradley’s to intervene in the Julianne thing. I know Bradley sent him a text about it and he got no response.”
Kennedy tensed and sucked in a long breath.
“You don’t think he’s—I mean—what do you think we’re going to find when we get there?”
I ground my teeth, considering that question for the first time through her eyes.
Worst case scenario, we find him dead. It wouldn’t be the first time for me; my bio-dad’s life attracted those situations and his neglect left me to discover them.
Kennedy, though—my gut churned, making my chest tight. She’d been through so many new horrors already, mostly because of me. I really didn’t want to add finding a dead body to the list.
That probably wasn’t it, though. Eric didn’t have any medical issues and he didn’t associate with violent people.
Still—accidents happen, right? Random violence happens. But that was worst case scenario.
Best case scenario? He was in love and so wrapped up with his girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever that he hadn’t had time to look at his phone. That option wasn’t much more likely than the other, but it made me feel slightly better. Only slightly, because I didn’t really want to walk in on Eric balls-deep in someone either.
“Maybe he lost his job and his phone got turned off,” I said, bringing my thoughts out where she could hear them now that I’d gotten past the worst of it. “Maybe he got a promotion and is too busy to pick up the phone. Maybe he fell down the stairs and knocked himself out and caught amnesia or maybe he was abducted by aliens, how the hell should I know what we’re walking into? He’s never done this before!”
I stopped when I realized I was shouting, but couldn’t keep from breathing hard.
She was probably right, my brothers were probably right, there was probably nothing to worry about, but that wasn’t how my life worked.
When people stop behaving like themselves, something terrible is about to happen. It didn’t need to make sense to my head to sit like a cold hard fact in my gut.
Besides, Jason was worried too. That was more than enough confirmation for me.
Kennedy was staring at me. I glanced in the rearview to change lanes and caught a glimpse of myself—wild eyes, wild hair, red face, huffing hot air through flared nostrils—and understood why. I looked like I was out of my mind.
“Do you want me to drop you off?” It was a real offer, but it slapped out of my mouth like a razor-barbed guilt trip.
She raised an eyebrow at me, her face blank and cold. “No.”
“Fine.”
Every time I opened my mouth I made it worse. This is why I didn’t talk under pressure. I could never seem to say the right thing the right way and always made the situation so much worse just for speaking.
Kennedy sat cool and rigid beside me, like a regal dictator preparing to give the order. Off with his head!
Shit, I probably deserved it, too. Shame threw in with dread, boiling in anxiety, and grew spiky barbs of temper all through my being.
I kept my mouth shut and let the feelings roil as they pleased.
After ten minutes of silence Kennedy turned the radio on and turned it up loud. A few more minutes and she was singing along to it. A bit after that, and so was I.
It wasn’t an apology and it didn’t fix anything—but there was a moment when it didn’t matter. Neutral ground with nobody’s pride or feelings on the line, just us and the road and the music.
The bass line beat my temper into submission one throb at a time, the chorus sucked the anxiety from my heart with every scream-sung word.
By the time we reached our exit, something inside had stabilized. Dreadful certainty withdrew, leaving room for possibilities and space to wait and see.
I turned the radio down, then reached for Kennedy’s hand. She gave it to me and squeezed. Her warm reassurance startled me out of the apology I’d prepared in my head, making it feel stilted and false.
I squeezed her hand back. Good enough for now.
“This town’s pretty,” she said, looking around. “I can’t believe I’ve never been here. It’s so close! And it reminds me of this one little place in New Mexico. We stopped for lunch there when we moved from California—they had all these adobe buildings and stuff, too.” She paused and sort of wilted a little as the happy memory crashed into the depressing present. “Not as many murals, though,” she finished quietly.
“Lots of artists live around here, I guess,” I said, trying to distract her. “And lots of people that just don’t quite fit anywhere else.” Like Eric. I left that bit unsaid, but I think we both heard it.
I took the car carefully down the narrow, pitted driveway, past the gangly trees and tangled underbrush, then came to a stop in front of Eric’s place. His car was parked outside.
“This is it?” Kennedy asked doubtfully.
“He likes it,” I told her.
Eric’s house was a small cottage which looked as though it had been pulled in pieces from a junkyard and slapped together haphazardly with adobe.
The slanted chimney and slightly tilted windows gave the illusion that the whole place was sliding downhill.
“Is—is it safe?” she asked.
“I mean, yeah, it’s safe. Look, there’s three others just like it on this block. Somebody had some fun, I guess. The inside usually looks normal.”
“Usually?”
I shrugged.
“It’s Eric,” I said simply.
She looked worried.
She hadn’t really spent enough time with him to understand.
Eric sort of lived on his own plane of existence, even before losing Sabrina, and seemed to get weirder as he got older. Not in a bad way. He wasn’t running around skinning cats or anything. He was just…Eric.
A chilly wind which doubled down on the threat of freezing rain cut through my hoodie as we stepped out of the car.
Kennedy hugged herself and shivered, rubbing her knees together.
“It’s weird,” she said as we walked up the multi-colored stone path. “How you get used to things. Like heat. I used to spend months in colder weather than this. Never bothered me until I moved here and got used to the heat. Now the wind is like actual torture.”
I put my arm around her and pulled her close.
“It’s just a little cold,” I said. “Don’t let comfort make you soft.”
I said it as much to myself as to her. The anxiety roiling in my gut was strong, potent, the way it was a long time ago—before I got used to things like safety and certainty. I wouldn’t trade it back, but I didn’t like how vulnerable I felt. I might have overcompensated just a little bit, pounding on the door like a cop.
There was no answer, but there was a new sort of stillness from within the house, as if barely-perceptible sounds of motion had suddenly stopped.
Kennedy shivered and curled against me a little tighter.
“Eric, open up! It’s Rudy.” I knocked again, louder. A ghost of movement flickered in my peripheral, a twitch of a curtain or a shift in the light, just enough to tip my anxiety closer to frustration than fear.
“Man, it’s fucking cold out here, will you open the goddamn door?”
“Rudy,” Kennedy murmured. “What if—”
The door opened before she could finish voicing one of any number of fears. Not far, just a crack—just enough for me to see Eric’s red-rimmed eyes and swollen nose under a wild shock of untamed hair.
My heart sank like a stone.
I took a deep breath in through my nose on instinct, searching the air for that particular scorched cat piss smell to confirm what my eyes were telling me. I didn’t smell anything but coffee, but that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t tweaking.
“What do you need?” Eric asked. His voice sounded like he hadn’t used it in weeks, full of foggy gravel.
“To get out of the cold, man. Let us in.”
I’d do a quick sweep of the house, use the bathroom or whatever. Might not even have to go that far—he lived alone, after all. If he was using anything he’d probably have it stashed somewhere close to the TV.
“So get back in your car,” Eric said. “I’m sorry man. I’m sick as hell. Don’t want you catching anything.”
Can’t catch tweaker flu. The words almost came out of my mouth, but I managed to bite them back. Score one for self-control.
“We took our Flintstones this morning,” I said wryly. “Come on, man, everybody’s worried about you. At least let us come in and make sure you aren’t being held hostage or something.”
“I’m not,” Eric said, rolling his eyes. “I’m fine. Go home before the weather hits, Rudy.”
I shrugged. “If you let us in, we can be out of here before the weather hits. You got spooked at Kennedy’s and it’s been radio silence from you since. What the fuck, man?”
“If I did something wrong, I’d like to try to fix it,” Kennedy added.
I cringed. Calling him out wasn’t going to work if she was going to muddy the water like that. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought her.
“You didn’t—” Eric cut himself off with a frustrated sigh. “Look, this isn’t the kind of shit you two need to be involved in.”
God damn it, I fucking knew it.
“What kind of shit is that?” I asked, almost growling.
“The kind you can’t handle,” Eric snapped. “Now go home.”
Snapping at me like that was probably the wrong call.
Anger exploded through me and I caught the door before he could close it, shoving it hard. He stumbled, further confirming my theory, and yelped.
I stepped inside, holding the door open for Kennedy, then slammed it closed.
“What the hell, Rudolph?” Eric’s muffled voice demanded.
He was sitting with his legs sprawled on the floor, holding his nose. Bright red blood dripped down from it to his shirt, which was already stained with sweat and something that I hoped was coffee.
He glared up at me, but there wasn’t as much fire in his eyes as I was expecting. He looked more afraid than anything, which splashed like ice water over my hot temper.
“Sorry,” I said, reaching down to give him a hand up. “You gotta admit you’re acting fucking weird.”
“Couldn’t wait till Saturday to tell me that?” he grumbled.
I blinked at him. “You know it’s Sunday, right?”
He paused in the middle of wiping his nose on his shirt. “No it’s not. If it was Sunday, that would mean I missed game night.”
“Rudy,” Kennedy said behind me.
I barely heard her. I was focused on my brother. “Yeah. You did. That’s why I’m here. You haven’t been answering your phone, you don’t know what day it is, and you look like you’ve been run over by a bull. Twice.”
Eric opened his mouth and closed it again, grinding his teeth.
“Rudy,” Kennedy whispered insistently.
“Eric, look at me,” I ordered. “No, at me. Are you high?”
He blinked at me once, then scoffed. “Man, get the fuck out of here. Am I high? The hell kind of question is that?”
“The kind you ask a person who looks and smells and acts the way you are,” I snapped.
“Rudy!”
“What?” I whirled around, lashing out at the interruption. Kennedy gave me a patient, long-suffering look.
“Look at the walls,” she said.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to hold back the violent temper which was once again pounding at my temples.
“Kennedy—you interrupted me at the crucial moment—to tell me to look at the mother fucking walls?” My voice trembled with the effort it took to not scream at her.
“Yes,” she said calmly.
I scrubbed my hands over my face hard and fast, forcing myself under control.
“Fine,” I said, thinking there better be a whole ass confession on the wallpaper to make up for this. “Fine.” I dropped my hands and looked.
At first I didn’t see what was so goddamn important, just weird wallpaper that looked like a social media timeline mated with a newspaper and their children exploded all over the wall.
A bit of the green paint that I remembered being in that room showed above and between a few bits of paper—without that and the look on Kennedy’s face, I probably wouldn’t have looked closer.
I glanced back at Eric, who was staring at the floor. The back of his neck was red and flushed, his hands balled into fists at his side.
Okay, I thought. So I’ll look at the wall. Slowly what I thought was wallpaper resolved itself into individual articles, photos, and scribbled notes. I frowned at the first page.
“Genetics? I thought your thesis was on cyber forensics.”
Eric didn’t respond. I looked back at him to find his face a blank mask, his eyes trying to bore a hole in the doorframe.
Frowning, I turned back to the wall. There were words. A lot of goddamn words. I was a half-decent student on my best days, but I never really got into speed-reading.
I scanned for something I could latch onto. One word caught my attention, but only after I’d passed over it a dozen times on five different papers.
“Ectrodactyly?” I asked.
“Ectro-what?” Kennedy replied after Eric spent several silent seconds stubbornly refusing to engage.
“I’m probably not saying it right,” I said.
I kept going down the wall, slowly scanning. Pictures started popping up in grainy relief of different deformations o
f human body parts—long bones and skulls, eyes and mouths, but mostly hands and feet.
The farther along the wall I went, the more the photos focused on hands. A note scribbled on one page said, “environment unlikely.”
Then there were graphs and charts and statistics. That word popped up again, this time on a graph which clearly indicated that it affected a tiny percentage of the population.
The next was a mock family tree, tracing the movement of that word through a family.
My head was starting to hurt and I still couldn’t understand just why in hell he would have wanted me to stay out of—whatever this was.
Kennedy had started to wander too, though she spent more time on the wordy parts than I had. Eric looked a little deflated and resigned. He sighed heavily.
“Anybody want coffee?” he asked dully.
“I’d rather have an explanation,” I said.
“I’ll take some, please,” Kennedy said.
I glared at her.
She stared flatly back at me.
Eric asked her how she took it, she told him, and he left the room.
Once he was gone, she moved like a cat down the little entry hall, passing over the spot where he’d been standing, and into the living room beyond.
Curious, I followed her.
“This is what he didn’t want you to see,” she murmured as I rounded the corner.
She was looking at the wall which would have faced the front of the house if the bedroom hadn’t been in the way.
There was no way I would have been able to see it from where I’d been standing, and no way to get past Eric without getting physical.
Okay, so maybe accepting coffee hadn’t been the worst thing she could have done.
I followed her gaze. Grandmother Bird smiled down at me from her photo on the wall. Her long, witchy fingers caressed a crystal ball, and that part of the picture had been circled in red.
Beside that photo was one of Mr. Bird—an unedited candid photo of him visiting a factory, reaching out his hand to greet one of the line workers. His hand had been circled, too. Seeing it so close to someone else’s hand, the odd proportions were striking.
His fingers were at least twice as long as his palm. The middle two were webbed up to the first knuckle, and his pinkie finger was as long as his pointer.
Something Wicked: An Enemies to Lovers Bully Romance (The Seymore Brothers Book 2) Page 25