Chapter 49 Neve
FORTY-NINE
NEVE
“Be careful with him.” Cynthia’s parting words to me before she left Darkmouth to head to Tylone’s lace themselves around my brain as I sit in the passenger seat of Faust Darling’s BMW.
His hand is resting lightly on the shifter, but I still see every vein in the dark, his olive skin illuminated from the console. The scent of pine and crisp woods makes my heart beat faster as he drives in the night, and there’s so much unsaid between us, it feels like another body is in the car.
Or maybe that’s just the reminder of the four that already dropped.
I keep my hands in the pockets of my red wool coat and force myself to stare straight ahead at the icy roads and drifting snow.
The drive is twisty, curling around the edges of Drayton’s campus, and the tension makes it seem infinite.
It allows wayward thoughts to drift like the snow across his windshield.
Part of me would fuck him in this car. Part of me wants to call Nolan and tell him to take me away from Drayton University and every murder that comes with it.
I still see his last text in my head.
Brotherrr
You need to be very, VERY fucking careful.
“Do you know the last time a game was canceled for me?” Faust’s low voice swirls between us and I press my knees together, grateful for my sheer tights beneath my favorite black velvet mini skirt.
I lift my chin and cut him a glance as we roll to a red light, the intersection empty. It’s Saturday, freezing, and, on this side of Drayton’s campus, empty.
Karter asked me to go downtown with her. That would have probably been the brighter choice.
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.” I keep my voice bored even as hunger eats at my brain and my self-control. I almost told him to fuck off when he texted me to ask if I’d like to stay with him tonight considering “everything.” His words.
Inhaling mashed potatoes and gravy and fries without cheese curds—memories of home—was on my to-do list. Indulging where no one could see me inside the quiet of Darkmouth.
Where no one had to know.
Now, my stomach feels concave and if Faust plans to fuck me, he’ll be dealing with dead weight. My energy is gone.
“Never,” he says softly. “Not once in my entire career. Since I was a kid in skates, every show has gone on, even if I wasn’t there.”
“Faust Darling miss a game?” I feign shock and horror without looking at him.
He’s quiet, and when I can’t resist the urge to glance his way, I see a smile pulling on those full lips.
I clench my teeth together and refuse to react even as my heart lurches faster inside my chest. This man makes me weak.
“I am only human.” He says it so seriously I have to purse my lips to stop from laughing, but I don’t give him the satisfaction.
It’s not that I’m mad at him. What’s there to be angry about?
But something strange is happening between him and Sylvan, and this entire university campus.
And either they have odd coincidences landing on them at all times, or there’s a plot between the two of them that started with Jackson.
A puzzle I don’t yet understand. It feels as if I’m playing with fire, coming into their orbit, even being in the car with Faust, and yet I can’t resist the flame.
Nolan once told me I loved to get burned, just to wear the scars.
Maybe he wasn’t wrong. Maybe without his leash, I’m restless. Itching for danger.
“And not once has a season been interrupted by a murder. Not in any league, anywhere.” His tone is heavy, each word prickling at my silent, sullen defense.
He casually puts on his turn signal for Sainte Street, but he doesn’t turn, despite the empty roads.
I frown, directing the expression to him. When I open my mouth to ask what he’s doing, he speaks first, silencing me.
“And not once have I been so concerned over a girl who I wasn’t sleeping with that I’d gladly have sat this game out despite the fact it would ruin my entire future.”
The words fall heavy.
They land harder.
I try to hide my surprise, refusing to frown or blink or knit my brows together. But the confession makes me feel unsteady. Off balance.
“Why?” A broken whisper from my lips.
He shakes his head once, his dark eyes locked on mine. “That’s the question, isn’t it, North?” He doesn’t look away. “Tonight, I want to find an answer.”
We keep going in the dark, and Castle Darling looms ahead of us in the night, a shadow darker than the rest.
When Faust locks the door behind him and the sound of the security system snapping into place pierces the darkened entryway of his Gothic home, I stand in the shadows and hold my breath.
My coat is still on, boots too, and while I dropped my leather weekender on the bench seats, I don’t move to take anything off.
There’s a scent in here that isn’t Faust’s.
It isn’t food, and it isn’t a candle or disgusting air freshener. It’s not the oldness of the castle, the cloistered secrets draped in centuries.
It’s familiar, somehow, and I inhale deep, trying to parse it. Nolan always says I have a wicked sense of smell, and he’s not wrong.
The little hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and I hear Faust move toward me in the dark. He reaches around me for the lapel of my coat, to pull it off my body, and I allow it, even as I don’t move.
His fingers skim my sides, and when the wool leaves my body, I shiver. Behind me, he hangs up the coat, then he’s standing at my back, looming over me. We’re so close I feel his body heat, but at first, he doesn’t touch me.
Until the recollection clicks into place and I stagger back a step, right into his hard body.
He wraps one arm around my waist, tugging me closer, and he loops my hair behind an ear with his free hand, the touch sending shivers down my spine.
“He’s here,” I whisper, dizziness clouding my mind. It feels as if my blood sugar has bottomed out with my mild panic.
Are they setting me up?
Did Faust lure me here to hurt me?
Has it been this way all along, Sylvan playing bad cop while Faust pretended to be the nice guy? Perfect foils of one another to commit perfect crimes?
Faust’s hand claims the back of my neck. “And how do you know that, North?”
I swallow hard, staring into the darkness. I don’t hear anything beyond my own pulse, and I don’t see anything in the gloom. But he’s here. I know he is.
The question is… why?
“Why did you bring me here?” My voice doesn’t shake but I feel as if I am speaking over my own pulse. “What are you going to do to me?”
Faust’s fingers dig into the back of my neck. Not painful; almost like he’s finding pressure points to soothe me.
I am not soothed. But I don’t fight back either.
“What is it you want us to do to you?” he whispers, his breath brushing my ear as he leans down close.
He sounds calm. Controlled. But there’s still a hint of coldness in his words.
He hasn’t broken down his walls for me. Why would he?
He brought me to the dragon’s den to toy with me. Not for a heart-to-heart.
“Faust.” I don’t let my fear show as I lift my chin and his hold around my waist tightens. “Tell me where he is, and why he’s here.”
Faust doesn’t move an inch, save to speak. “I think he’ll need to be the one to tell you that.”
“Where the fuck is he?” This time, I jerk away from Faust.
And surprising me, he doesn’t let me go. Instead, his hand slides from the back of my neck to my throat. He splays his fingers, and although he isn’t hurting me, the force shocks me.
I suck in a breath, my body tense.
I still don’t fight back, because I know I won’t win. But whatever trust I had in Faust shrivels.
“That,” he says against my ear, “is an excellent question.” Then he tightens his hold around my throat.
This time, I gasp, and I don’t stay still. My body blares with alarms, and I think I’ve miscalculated the murders, the suspicion, my trust.
I ball my fist with my free hand—the one he doesn’t have pinned down with his hold on my waist—and jerk my elbow back as hard as I can, hitting him straight in the chest.
His grip doesn’t loosen. He doesn’t so much as breathe in deep.
He holds me tighter, squeezing the air from my lungs, my belly.
Panic engulfs me. I should have listened to Nolan. Gotten a lawyer, carried myself away from Drayton. I knew the connections. The targets. The common denominator.
Me.
And if I die in here, they’ll go after Cynthia, too, thinking she knew more than she did. She won’t even know to be on alert because she has no idea Sylvan broke Will’s nose in our home.
Why didn’t I let Tasia have Sylvan? Why did I let Faust in?
Am I always going to fuck up my life?
The lack of food in my body makes me feel weak, unsteady, and I curse myself for that too.
For wanting a constantly flat stomach, to feel smaller in my clothes, to never nourish myself so I could relish in the feel of “skinny.” As my ribs showed and my bones between my breasts became more apparent, I felt a sick and twisted pride.
Now, without a single strand of hope that I might twist out of Faust’s grip, there’s a different type of self-loathing running through my veins.
“I think I know, though,” Faust says quietly as his hold becomes more cruel. “Just what he wants to do to you.” He laughs, but it doesn’t sound right. Contrived, still with his signature coldness. I’m unsure what’s real and what’s not. This isn’t the Faust I’ve come to know.
“Eventually, he was going to stab you too, North. Let your blood clot the snow.” His breath sends shivers down my spine as spots pop in front of my eyes.
“Maybe I can save him the trouble.” His lips ghost that spot between my shoulder and my neck.
“After all, it’s so much easier to fuck a corpse if she’s still intact. ”
No.
How could I not have seen this?
What did I miss?