Chapter 22
Mads
The credits roll, headlights flick on one row at a time, and the drive-in slowly dissolves into a mess of cars shuffling toward the exit.
Blake yawns beside me, tugging the blanket tighter around her shoulders.
She seems seconds from passing out. I plan to take her home.
Let her crash, sleep for twelve hours, pretend we’re normal college students for once.
But then movement catches my eye.
A group of college kids is darting between the cars near the concession stand, loud and obnoxious. At first, it looks harmless. Then one of them turns, and my stomach drops.
The mask.
Not the flimsy vampire fangs or skeleton grins everyone else has been wearing tonight. No. This is the same mask from the video. That uncanny blankness that still knots my gut every time I think about it.
Blake notices the way I’ve frozen. “What?”
I nod toward the group, keeping my chin low so I don’t draw attention.
Her eyes narrow, tracking my gaze across the crowd. The second she lands on them, the shift in her is instant.
I don’t have to ask if she recognizes the masks; the way she stiffens tells me everything. Familiar, unmistakable. Those cheap, taunting things we’ve been chasing through half the semester.
We don’t move toward them. That would be too risky.
But I tug my phone out, flick the camera on, and angle it just enough to catch the kids messing around under the floodlights.
They’re laughing too loudly, shoving each other hard enough to stumble, breaking into sprints that end in shoulder checks and near collisions.
It passes for playful, though it’s not.
I zoom in, focus on the edges of the masks, the way they sit on their faces, hoping like hell one of them decides to take theirs off.
“Think it’s them?” Blake whispers.
“It has to be,” I murmur, watching the recording tick by. “If we can figure out who’s behind them, we’ll be one step closer.”
We stay quiet, crouched in the shadow of the SUV. Everything about them screams that they’re who we’re looking for. The masks, the way they lumber around, seemingly half-drunk. Too loud, too careless.
One of them shoves a smaller guy—someone definitely not with them—face-first into the gravel.
He hits hard, rocks scattering, and when he tries to get up, they close in on him like fucking hyenas.
Another shove drops him again; boots find ribs. His jaw.
My insides knot tight.
He wipes at his mouth and comes away with blood on his hand. Their laughter echoes across the lot.
One grabs him by the collar and hauls him up. He lifts his mask just enough to spit in his face, then shoves him so hard he nearly eats gravel again.
He takes off running this time, stumbling into the dark while the masked trio howl and high-five each other, eating it up.
Blake’s fingers dig into my bicep. I don’t look at her. I keep the camera steady, catching as much as I can.
Then, finally, one yanks his mask off, shaking sweaty blond hair out of his eyes.
Fucking Jonah. I guess we have a definitive answer.
The other two rip their masks up as well, still laughing, but their faces aren’t familiar.
Doesn’t matter. Having a clear picture of them is enough to figure out who they are.
Blake swallows hard, gaze still pinned on them as Jonah slings an arm around one of the others, mask dangling from his fingers. “Better than nothing. I just wish we had that freaking drive now.”
By the time we get back to the flat, it’s close to one in the morning, and every muscle in my body feels like it’s made of wet cement. Blake drops her bag by the bedroom door and disappears into the bathroom without a word, the shuffle of her feet giving her away. She’s just as drained.
The mental weight of all this is exhausting, enough to siphon a person dry.
I peel off my hoodie, kick my shoes into the corner, and collapse onto the mattress.
We’ve got faces now. At least one name. A recording of Jonah and his friends acting like complete psychos in masks that match the ones from the video.
But it’s not enough.
The drive was our smoking gun, and the second it wiped itself clean really fucked anything else we might have been able to do. Which leaves us with scraps. Our word against nothing, and a bloody basement floor that might as well not exist.
If we go to the cops now, what do we really have? Suspicion. A half-drunk recording of a few assholes hazing some random kid in a parking lot. Empty claims about a drive that doesn’t exist anymore.
They’d laugh us out of the station.
I rake a hand down my face, staring up at the ceiling. One wrong move, and this whole thing folds in on us.
Kind of feels like it already has.
My eyes catch on the sliver of light spilling from the bathroom. Blake left the door mostly open, steam still curling out into the room.
The shadow of her body stretches against the fogged glass, soft curves and long lines.
Every thought about Jonah, the drive, the cops—all of it drowns under the weight of her.
The way she drags a towel through her damp hair, the shape of her shoulders, the tug of shorts over bare legs.
My chest tightens, hungry and irrational, because I’ve been in her already, I’ve had her mouth, her gasps, her pretty little moans—but it’s never enough.
It will never be enough.
I want all of it. I want her until there’s nothing left she can give.
She doesn’t even know what the fuck she’s doing to me. She turns me inside out without even trying.
The door creaks the rest of the way open, and she steps out wearing one of my shirts, shorts barely peeking beneath the hem, skin flushed from the heat of the shower. Her eyes land on me, and she takes a few steps forward. There’s the smallest curve at the corner of her mouth.
“Stop staring,” she says, tugging at the bottom of the shirt.
“Not a chance.” I reach out, snag her wrist, and tug until she’s stumbling into me, half-laughing, half-protesting as she lands on top of me on the bed.
She huffs, trying for unimpressed, but her cheeks give her away. “You drive me insane.”
"Good.” My mouth hooks into a smirk as my fingers press harder into the curve of her ass. “It’s mutual, Blue.”
She rolls her eyes, but when I pull her face to mine, she doesn’t resist.
Her legs shift to either side of my hips as I drag her closer, and I feel the fight drain out of her one heartbeat at a time.
“You really should’ve gone straight to sleep,” I murmur against her lips. “Because now I’m not letting you.”
“I’m not that tired,” she breathes, her voice catching when I slip my hand under the hem of her shorts.
“Yeah, me neither,” I respond, lips ghosting over her jaw, down to the soft curve of her neck. “And I’m well aware of how much you want me to keep going.”
She makes a noise—half groan, half laugh—and smacks my shoulder weakly. “You’re unbelievable.”
What used to be push and pull between us has quickly become just… pull.
“Unbelievably into you, yeah.” My mouth curves against her skin.
Her hips shift forward, breath stuttering when I suck at the spot just beneath her ear. Her hands fist in my hair, not pulling me away, but closer. Always closer.
“Tell me to stop,” I whisper, dragging the words over her skin. “And I will. But you won’t, will you? Because you’re just as gone for me as I am for you.”
“Shut up,” she mutters, so fucking half-hearted it’s not even funny.
I pull back just enough to meet her eyes. “Not a chance. I’m going to tell you exactly what I want to do to you until you beg me for it.”
Her lips part, and for once, she doesn’t have a comeback ready. It only makes me fucking harder, because Blake doesn’t submit to anyone. But lately, she does for me, whether she realizes it or not.
I fist the hem of my shirt where it hangs loose on her and drag it higher.
“God, Blue,” I mutter as I pull the fabric over her head and toss it aside. The sight of her on top of me wrecks my train of thought. Every inch of bare skin I get makes it harder to think straight. “You kill me. Do you know that?”
My hands roam up her sides, greedy to touch everywhere at once.
“You’ve driven me insane for years, Blake,” I rasp, pulling her down and pressing my mouth to her jaw, then along her throat to her shoulder. “And now you’re here, letting me strip you down like you belong to me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted—every fucking part of you.”
She shivers against me, fingers tangling in my hair. I can feel her give. Not just to the fucking, but to us. She’s known it as long as I have. We were always headed here.
“Tell me you feel this too,” I whisper, biting lightly at her skin, unable to stop myself. “Tell me you’re just as fucked over me as I am over you.”
Her answer isn’t words. It’s the way she arches into me, and fuck, it’s better than any confession.
“You know what I’ve been thinking about since the first time you kissed me?” I slide my hands down, tugging at the waistband of what’s left between us. “How good you’d look underneath me. How good you’d sound when I finally push into you and make you forget everything else.”
A precious little noise slips out of her throat, half a warning, half a plea.
“And it was perfect, Blue,” I whisper, grinning against her skin as I strip the last of her clothes away. “So perfect, I want to do it again.” I kiss her. “And again.”
She pulls at my sweats, desperate, and I help her, shoving them down and catching her mouth in another kiss, all teeth and tongue and nothing patient about it.
“I’m going to teach your body my name, make every other touch feel like nothing,” I groan, lining myself against her as my control frays. “Everyone before and after me will feel like background noise.”
I flinch at the thought—at the idea that there could be anyone after me. I hate how small it makes me feel and how fast I want to erase every possibility she might ever belong to someone else.
She answers before I can swallow it down.
Quiet, sure. “There won’t be anyone else.
I’ve wanted you more than I wanted to be right about half the things I’m stubborn about, even when it seemed like I didn’t.
I don’t want anyone else touching me. Ever.
I only want you. I want you to be the only one who gets this. ”
The words hang between us, shocking and holy all at once. Relief floods through me, slow and greedy. I pull her closer until there’s no space left for doubt, and the way she’s kissing me now is the kind of answer that makes me believe it.
I sink into her, everything reduced to the pressing together of our skin and the way her body takes me in. Her gasp tears through me, and I swear under my breath, pressing my forehead to hers.
“That’s it,” I rasp, already lost. “That’s mine. You’re mine.”
And for the next stretch of time, there’s nothing but her. Every sound she makes pulls me deeper. Every shift of her body has me clinging tighter, desperate to memorize the way she feels under me, around me, with me. It’s raw and consuming, the kind of closeness that drowns out coherent thoughts.
I don’t want it to stop. I don’t want her to stop wanting me this way.
I flip our positions until she’s under me.
I rut into her, again and again, until I can’t tell where I end and she begins.
Her nails score my back, her breath catches against my throat, and I know I’ll never be able to forget this.
Not the rhythm of us. Not the way she looks at me when I falter and find her still there, still holding on.
We break at the same second, and it guts me in a way I’m not prepared for.
Her body answers mine, pulling me under with her, and I can’t hold back.
It isn’t just release—it’s the way she clings to me, the way her voice cracks on my name, the way she looks at me when she falls apart.
I give in with her, helpless, every part of me unraveling at once.
And in that moment, all I can think is that I’m hers as much as she’s mine, that I’m never walking away from this, from her.
I collapse against her, chest heaving, sweat cooling on my skin.
“Jesus, Blue,” I mutter into the curve of her neck, kissing the damp skin there. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
She lets out a shaky laugh, but her fingers are gentle where they comb through my hair. It undoes me more than anything else tonight, how soft she is now.
I shift, easing my weight off her, but she follows, curling into my side without hesitation. My arm goes around her automatically, hand tracing lazy circles on her hip.
“You okay?” I ask, voice rough.
“Yeah,” she says quietly, and I can feel her smile against my chest. “You?”
“Never better.” I kiss the top of her head, softer this time, then add with a grin she can definitely hear, “Though I’m not sure any passersby will agree once they replay the soundtrack of your moans in their heads tomorrow.”
She gives me a look, but then she’s laughing, and I’d take that over anything.
The room falls quiet after, just our breathing and the faint tick of the radiator cooling. I stare at the ceiling, wide awake despite how wrung out I feel, because my head won’t stop circling back to the same thought: I don’t just want this piece of her. I want the whole damn thing.
She shifts closer, burrows against me, and I tighten my hold, pressing one last kiss to her hair.
“Sleep,” I whisper, mostly to myself. “We’ll figure out the rest tomorrow.”