Chapter 45 Neve
FORTY-FIVE
NEVE
“It’s freezing out here!” Cynthia shivers under her black fur coat.
Real, because she is her mother’s daughter.
On the plus side, the fashion designer Lola Espinosa doesn’t use any fur—real or synthetic—in her designs.
But she has no qualms buying real from thrift stores and gifting them to her daughter.
It still isn’t quite enough to fight off the unseasonal temperatures outside.
My cheeks feel numb, and I’m wearing black fur myself—Lola’s gift to me last Christmas, bless that woman—a black toque with a leopard-print pom pom, and a skin tight black ski suit, plus my fleece and leather black gloves.
“We’ll probably only be out ten minutes more, max,” Karter says, tossing back her green hair.
She’s in a white winter coat and she looks like a mermaid out of season.
None of us bothered to dress up for Halloween for this; we agreed to change into our costumes if we feel like it after we endure Castle Morack’s Haunt Night. It’s just too fucking cold.
Even inside the towering luxury castle with its midnight black turrets and orange lights framing each of the dozens of windows, it’s rumored to be drafty. Last year, Cyn took her family through for the Christmas event and her mother complained she should sue; she nearly got frostbite, she claimed.
I stand on my tiptoes in my platform black fur-trimmed boots, looking over the heads in front of us toward the towering entrance.
They keep closing the heavy glass doors for obvious reasons as they check everyone’s digital tickets, but they can also only let a small number of people in at a time for each haunted experience.
My friends and I are still on the staircase leading up to the expansive stone porch.
Clouds of cold billow in the air from everyone’s breath and while there are small, grated fires ahead, we aren’t close enough to feel them.
“I don’t know,” I say, my lips going numb as I shiver under the night sky. “They’re moving slow.”
“Okay,” Cyn says as she pops her hip and looks me up and down. “Between the three of us, you’re the one showing off the most.” She nods toward my skintight ski uniform. “Go skip the line and invite us up.”
I roll my eyes but a smile leaves my lips all the same. “Not a chance. Not with…” I trail off, refusing to think of Jackson. The blood. I clear my throat. “I don’t need any more stalkers.”
Karter sighs dramatically and rakes her hand through her hair as her eyes find mine. In the orange-tinted spooky lights from the castle, her hair takes on an odd hell-ish tint. “They were definitely talking about you, weren’t they?” she asks, and I know she’s talking about the game.
I lift my chin as we inch forward when another group goes inside the castle and a scream leaks out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But inside my head, I feel Sylvan at my back.
I see his dead eyes when I asked about his parents.
And his anger a heartbeat before when he asked if I’d fucked Faust.
Then they’re at each other’s throats on the ice, right after Faust just… snapped. Karter said he’d never gotten a penalty like that. He was ejected from the game, and it wasn’t retaliation for a bad hit. Just standard collision as far as I could tell.
Cyn didn’t come with us to the game; she’d had dinner with Tylone before meeting us here. They planned to link back up after the castle.
The same one Faust wanted me to go with him to.
But after spending the night with him, then being ambushed by Sylvan, I needed to be with the girls.
And if Tasia couldn’t make it to the game because she was headed to a Halloween party at the Beaches, I certainly wasn’t mad about it.
I like Karter a hell of a lot more than I like her friend.
Or at least… I did. Before she started being nosy.
“What? Who?” Cyn asks, looking between Karter and me.
I sigh, loudly, and Karter flashes me a grin.
“Oh? She didn’t tell you?”
“No,” I say pleasantly, full of sarcasm, “but you’re going to, aren’t you?”
“First,” Karter says, drawing out the word as she drags her eyes from me to Cynthia. “Faust took his gloves off to punch one of the other team’s players in the face. He got ejected from the game for that.” Karter waits, her eyebrows raised, so Cynthia can respond appropriately.
Meanwhile, impossibly, the warmth in my cheeks overpowers the below freezing temperatures as snow starts to drop from the sky and we all shuffle forward another few steps.
“What?” Cyn gasps the word as she looks from me, to Karter, and back again. “I’ve never seen Faust Darling fight.”
“How many games have you even been to?” I challenge.
“No, she’s right,” Karter rushes in. “I’ve been to almost all of them.
” She shrugs. “Free hockey? Sign me up. Anyway, I’ve never seen him do anything like that.
” She grins, triumphant. “But that’s not the best part.
” She gives her attention back to Cynthia.
“The best part is, Faust charged over to Sylvan as soon as he was pulled off the other guy and got in his face. I don’t know what they said, but Faust looked like he was about to beat his ass, too. ”
Cynthia’s mouth drops open, her eyes wide on me. “Was it about you? You were at his place last night; was Sylvan there—”
“Woah, wait, what.” Karter holds up her hand to pause Cyn. “Rewind. You were at Faust’s house last night? That Gothic mansion that got leaked on social before?”
I exhale loudly and stare up at the sky. “I’m sure a dozen other girls at Drayton could say the same.” That’s probably how it was leaked.
“Actually, uh, no.” Karter’s tone is serious, and reluctantly, I eye her carefully.
“I don’t know a single girl—or person for that matter—who has gone to thirty-three’s house.
” She says his number like it’s his name which, despite their fixation on me and what went down with Faust and Sylvan, makes me smile.
I quickly ditch the expression, though, and shake my head. “We don’t need to talk about this here.”
“The fuck we don’t,” Cyn says, looking at me. “Did you sleep with him? Or did you sleep with both of them? You need to be careful. I told he’s…”
“A psychopath?” Karter supplies, watching me.
She isn’t smiling anymore, and I’m long past that.
Neither of them know how he ambushed me in the alleyway, his palm over my mouth. In the end, he didn’t hurt me. If anything, he took care of me. But didn’t Ted Bundy take care of his girlfriend, too? The one with the kid?
That doesn’t mean Sylvan didn’t do it. Because he tried to feed me and hold me and…
No.
Jackson. Will. Mitchell.
Suddenly, it doesn’t feel cold enough. The panic heats me up from the inside out.
“Neve?” Cynthia says quietly, stepping closer to me.
I inhale and alongside the frozen night, I catch the scent of her sensual perfume.
It grounds me, but before I can reach for her, tell her I’m scared one of them actually had something to do with it, I hear a familiar, feminine laugh, and the crunch of boots on ice.
I spin at the same time Cyn catches my arm, as if to steady me, and Karter says a name, low and shocked.
Tasia.
She’s there, right in front of me, cat eyeliner, a painted on nose and whiskers, cartoon freckles. Cat ears pushing back her long, inky hair.
And her green eyes are fixed on mine, her expression triumphant.
I know why.
She’s under the arm of Sylvan himself, his expression cold as he stares down at me. He’s wearing a gray toque, nearly the same color as his eyes, and his jaw is tight, the lines along his face sharp as ice.
Black wool coat, black leather gloves, he looks like a model.
He looks like he hates me.
And for his arm to be slung around Tasia, his fingertips dangling just over her left breast, he must.
“We’re going to jump the line,” Tasia says, grinning at Karter, and it looks real, her white teeth flashing. But when she cuts her eyes to mine, the expression vanishes. “You wanna come with?”
I clench down on my back teeth.
“You fucking him, too?” Cynthia asks bluntly, the implication clear in her last word as she steps up beside me, releasing her hold on my arm, because we’re side-by-side.
A surge of love flows through me toward her, and I don’t say a word, just let Tasia’s brow wrinkle as she twists to glare up at Sylvan, who remains silent.
How’s that feel, bitch?
But I don’t know if I’m asking her, or him.
It’s not like he owes me anything. It’s not like we’re anything. But it doesn’t make the burn coursing through me at the sight of him so close to her lessen. Is he mad at me because Faust chewed him out on the ice? That’s not my fucking problem.
“Neve?” Another voice calls my name, and this one makes my pulse race, but not because of who it is.
I glance past the two assholes in front of me and see Ace, his broad shoulders pushing through the crowd around us.
He’s wearing white earmuffs which are wildly endearing, especially with those visible tattoos beneath the black winter coat he has on. He glances at Sylvan and I see his eyes narrow a fraction, but he jumps right over Tasia and my heart leaps.
Whatever happened between them, whatever bullshit she said about wanting him, it seems to be over now.
And right on time.
“Tasia, what are you doing?” Karter asks, and it sounds like she’s scolding her friend. Clearly, they haven’t discussed whatever the fuck is going down here.
But Cynthia nudges me, and I know exactly what she’s thinking.
I slowly smile at Ace, flicking my gaze up and down his body like I’m checking him out, completely ignoring Sylvan, whose eyes are on me like a brand.
“Ace.” I say his name breathlessly, like I’ve been dying to see him, then I step away from my friends, shoulder past Sylvan, who refuses to move, and stretch my arms up, standing on my tiptoes to press my body into Ace.
I think, when he wraps his arms around me and squeezes me so tight I can barely breathe, we’re both using each other.
And I think he’s just saved the night.
“Fuck them both,” I whisper against his ear, just to see if we’re on the same page.
He turns his head and buries his cold nose against my neck. “Fuck. Them. Both.”
I refuse to talk myself out of what I do next.
I pull back as Ace slides his hands down my body and grabs my ass, and I tilt my head.
Then I kiss him like I’m fucking starving.
His teeth clash with mine, someone whistles behind us, someone claps, another person tells us to get a room, but there’s a grin in their words.
And I devour his mouth, licking along his lips, twirling his tongue with mine.
I can feel the anger emanating from Sylvan without looking at him. Some part of my brain, the psych major part, knows I’m poking the bear. But the rest of me, twenty-one and reckless, slutty and bold, she doesn’t give a fuck.
Reluctantly, I pull back, but I press my temple to his, staying on my toes as he squeezes my ass.
“God, I’ve missed you,” Ace says, his voice a low rumble, but loud enough for our intended audience to hear.
“I need you to fuck me—”
“If you kiss her like that again,” Sylvan is there, between us, his voice low, his lips nearly pressed to Ace’s ear while his eyes are on me, hard and icy. “I’ll break your fucking neck.”
But it’s me who responds. I stare back at him as I say, “Until you can grow the fuck up and have an adult conversation, you don’t get to make my adult choices. Fuck off, Frostbite.”