Chapter 14 Faust
FOURTEEN
FAUST
“Don’t you have your own elite parking in the back? A secret future millionaire’s club?”
I glance at the blond woman by my side and I don’t know if that was a joke but it makes me want to laugh.
The front parking lot for Sky Arena is mostly deserted now; no more snapping photos or filming footage that will be dissected for hours on social media.
I don’t actively scroll through my accounts, but when I get on to approve brand posts, there are always so many notifications I want to throw up.
I never look, but I hear whispers from the guys about the shots of us people post, the memes they make, the videos that objectify or stupidify us.
Mostly, I’m indifferent, since I avoid all of it.
Now I find myself wondering if Neve Devine, age twenty-one—same as me—a senior (not the same as me), a psych major, and an American, has social media.
If she’d post me for clout, or worse. She’s got this edge to her that makes me think she’d use anyone or anything to get ahead, and you’d thank her for it.
But she hasn’t taken any photos. Oddly, I haven’t seen her phone out at all so far.
Then again, I doubt she’d want any memory of attacking Connor, spitting on him, then watching as he put her spit in his mouth.
But maybe it’s something else. Like the way the paranoia is quiet in my mind now, being with her. Same as it is on the ice, but it’s better, because it doesn’t feel like a thing I have to do. Just one I want.
I squeeze my hands into fists at my side, the key ring to my BMW biting into my palm as we stride to the backed-in red car at the far end of the lot.
My mind fills with Sylvan again. How he spoke to her. How he touched her.
If he wasn’t my teammate, I would have hit him and I don’t think I would have minded at all who saw me.
But he is my teammate, and hitting him could cost me too much.
He isn’t worth it, even if his gloved finger in his mouth was hot. But as Neve sighs by my side and I think of how confused she looked when I told her what Sylvan had implied, I wonder if she could be.
Tired thoughts. My brain is moving too slow because I’m exhausted and while a win like that one is absolutely incredible—I know for a fact there were several scouts in those stands and while I have an offer, it’s good to be noticed—it doesn’t make the ache in my bones and my mind lessen.
If anything, it feels heavier.
More pressure.
More expectations.
Now we need to do it again. Always the cycle. It never ends. I love it, most of the time. But sometimes I wonder if Dad is proud of me, and sometimes I want to quit just to spite him for it.
“We do have an elite parking lot,” I say quietly as Neve’s heels echo on the asphalt, her arms wrapped around her body in her brown wool coat.
It looks good on her, and I like she’s wearing heels, too.
Unusual for a game, but she’s really classy.
Or high maintenance. Either way, I’m into it.
“As I recall, you were running in it just the other night.” I glance at her as I speak, but I didn’t need to.
The hitch in her breath confirms it all.
She’s unsettled.
I’ve come to understand since Wednesday the scope of her relationship with the dead boy. Jackson Merit was twenty-nine years old and had a prior warrant out for his arrest years ago for domestic assault but for some interesting reason, never was brought in.
And Neve knew him exactly two weeks to the day he died.
All of this information gleaned from Drayton’s general counsel. It makes sense. Sylvan and I are star players, but we can’t ruin the reputation of the team, and thus, the university, so lawyers are sticking their hands in things just in case.
I don’t know if we’ll need personal lawyers or not. So far we’ve got no information on possible suspects, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t on the short list.
Thanks to our PR, lawyers, and the money in Drayton’s hockey team, we haven’t been named at all, and neither has Neve.
Perks of being, as Neve put it, “future millionaires.” Not a word I’d necessarily use to describe myself or any of my teammates, but playing hockey for a school like Drayton does have its privileges.
If Sylvan isn’t careful, touching Neve how he did, he might lose all of his. I’m just not sure if it’s Drayton that’ll be ripping them from his gloved hands, or me.
“Then why did you park out here?” Neve finally asks, my car only a few strides away.
After Sylvan stalked off, I told her that he was right about one thing. I really did have something to give to her.
But I have something to take, too.
She just doesn’t know it yet.
We both stop as we come to the driver’s side door of my car. Neve eyes it coolly, appraising the black rims, the blacked-out tint, the garage-kept red paint. It’s used, a gift from Mom I still don’t understand how she managed to pull off, but I love this car.
Neve squeezes her arms close to her chest but the look she cuts to me is anything but nervous. She pops a brow, waiting for me to answer her question about my chosen parking spot.
“I didn’t think you’d want to be back there again so soon.” I tell her the truth, then press the button on the fob to unlock the car. I don’t look at her as I open the rear door and pull something out of my backseat.
When I nudge the door closed again and turn to face her, her eyes are big as she studies me. There’s something probing there, too intense, so I just thrust her white sweater toward her, and hope it distracts her from whatever it is she’s thinking about me.
She looks down and instinctively catches the sweater, a furrow in her brows now as she studies it.
Does she see the red on the bottom hem? The flecks of blood?
At least, that’s what I think it is.
But maybe—hopefully—I’m wrong.
It’s possible if it is blood, it happened when she nearly fell on Jackson, except she didn’t. Fall, that is.
And how would blood splash up when there was only frost on the ground? It was getting wet, but there weren't any puddles yet. The officers examined our shoes to confirm as much, to see if we had blood or water or anything else on them, and I saw the flashlight shine on her Uggs.
Then there’s the fact she wasn’t wearing that sweater when she found the body.
If she’s feeling guilty, she doesn’t show it, but I could be wrong. Maybe she’s good at masking. Apparently, I am, although it doesn’t feel “good” to me. Like a special skill or anything. Just survival.
But maybe that’s not right either. I’ve volunteered on the ice with kids who are non-verbal well past the age I started talking. Those with intellectual disabilities, too. They’re funny and kind and smart, but their challenges outnumber mine.
It’s something I don’t take for granted, being able to do what I do.
I shove that all aside as I drop my hands, folding my key in one, and say, “It’s yours, isn’t it?”
She snaps her head up, her brows still pressed together. “Where did you find it?”
“Where I found you.”
She doesn’t say anything. She’s clutching the sweater and looking past me.
Sylvan told me he found her number through a mutual friend, then got her address from texting her, and went over to see if “she was okay.” He implied they slept together at her place, which it seems isn’t true, but that begs the question… What the fuck did they talk about?
I need to know how full of shit Sylvan is, or if she’s a beautiful liar, too.
The answer seems obvious, given Sylvan’s clear propensity for bullshit, but the truth is, I don’t know either of them well.
Sylvan is a freshman. Neve is a stranger.
Both are practically the same thing to me.
Connor is good at hockey, and I can anticipate his movements on the ice, but off it, away from the sport…
I don’t pretend to know what anyone is really like behind their own masks.
“When I first saw you that night, you were wearing it.”
She cuts her gaze to me. “Was I?” Her voice sounds far away.
I narrow my eyes. “Please don’t fuck with me.” It’s too hard for me to decipher what’s what when people do that.
“You think I killed him? And this,” she holds up the white fabric between us under the lights of the parking lot, “is proof?” She rolls her eyes and the motion sends a hot jolt through me.
“Thank you for returning it. I’m going to walk home now.
” She turns on her heel to walk along the outskirts of the parking lot, no doubt to the brick walkways that are infamous throughout campus, eventually winding and twisting themselves to nearly anywhere on Drayton’s sprawling estate.
There’s no one out here, though. I’m sure people are awake, including my teammates, partying at some girl’s house or another, getting hammered and doing their version of enjoying the night.
Maybe on her walk home, she’ll stop by one of those parties, and with her long blond hair, slim figure, and gorgeous face, not to mention those big brown-green eyes, they’ll invite her inside and she’ll lose that fucking sweater again.
Maybe she’ll forget about me, and Sylvan, and Wednesday night with Jackson.
I have no idea if he meant to hurt her or not, but she was really running, and he was clearly no stranger to putting his hands on women.
I take a crisp, cold breath in, then I call out her name.
“Neve.”
She stops walking, her heels pausing their even clatter on the asphalt. The snow is cleared, and there’s nothing falling from the sky now, but somehow, out here, she looks like a nightmare carved from ice.
She doesn’t look over her shoulder and she doesn’t reply to me, but she’s waiting.
“Please let me take you home.”
At this, she spins fast, the sweater clenched in one fist, her eyes narrowed into slits. “Do you know where I live, too?” she snaps.
I stiffen, biting the key in my fist deeper into my skin. “What.” It’s not really a question. My mind races to catch up and I know what she’s talking about.
She stalks toward me, heels clacking with each elegant step. She stops right in front of me, nearly bringing us nose-to-nose as I look down at her.
“How did he find out? How did he know my number? Why did he break someone’s fucking nose inside my house?”
My mind races. I don’t speak because I don’t know what she’s talking about.
I understand the words, but they don’t make sense.
If I’m thinking through each question logically, piecing together answers for her, I guess Drayton’s counsel could have illegally and immorally given Sylvan Neve’s address and her number.
But I would think our attorney would want him to stay far away from her, to protect Drayton, if nothing else.
Sylvan is a freshman which means he’s reckless.
Why would they put themselves in more danger by letting Sylvan speak off-the-record with her?
As for her last question.
“Whose nose?” Her roommate? I assume she has one. Most people do. But if Sylvan hurt a woman, he’s done. And the way he grabbed Neve Wednesday night, then tonight, I don’t think I should put it past him.
Neve is studying my face, like she can read the truth there versus in my words. But I’m not a liar.
“You really don’t know.” She doesn’t ask.
I say nothing.
“I didn’t stab Jackson.” Her voice breaks on his name.
“I don’t know how the blood got on my sweater.
Maybe because I started my period that night or something.
” She says it boldly. I like it. “I took it off so I wouldn’t be so visible in the night when he came chasing after me.
” She takes a breath, then glances at my car.
A shiver rolls through her, and she tries to hide it.
“Give me a fucking ride, please, Darling.”