Chapter 51 Neve #2
After Faust fingerfucked me silly a few weeks ago, Sylvan carried me on his back to the kitchen and they fed me pizza, watching while I ate, before I went to see Nolan. Sylvan scolded Faust for not noticing I was dizzy before he decided to play his own version of a lie detector test.
I ate that night. Really, truly ate. And I didn’t regret it.
“Have you had breakfast?” Faust’s question again.
I roll my eyes but I can’t stop the smile on my lips either.
“No,” Sylvan says for me, “of course she hasn’t.” Then, surprising me more than anything else has over the past month, he reaches for my hand, lacing his long fingers with mine and gripping tight.
My mouth feels dry as I look at him, but he isn’t looking at me. He’s still got one hand in his hoodie pocket, his hood over his eyes, and he’s facing away from me. But I stroke my thumb over his hand and when I feel a soft ridge, I look down.
His scar.
Pearly white, just over a vein on his hand.
I keep my questions to myself and squeeze him tight.
When I look up, Faust’s near-black irises are locked on us, but there’s no tension in his body. If anything, he looks satisfied. Like we’re his to protect.
“We need to get you fed, Darling,” he says quietly. And it could be a pet name, or it could be him using his surname for mine.
The possibilities make my heart leap as a small smile plays on his lips.
“You’re ours, you know that?”
“What happens when we graduate—”
“Just answer his question,” Sylvan says coldly, but he squeezes my hand to soften his tone.
I look at each of them and watch in turn as they both put their gazes on me.
“The three of us together look far too suspicious.” It’s a deflection, and they both know it.
“We’re already together. Whether you admit it or not, people have seen us.” Sylvan’s clipped words.
“People have seen me with a lot of guys, including three who are now dead—”
“Don’t remind me, or I’ll dig their bodies up and kill them again.”
Faust huffs a laugh at Sylvan’s words.
“And what about Tasia?” I counter. “Have you dealt with that little problem yet?”
Sylvan’s hand tightens around mine. “I was kind of hoping you would,” he whispers, dragging his gaze from our entwined hands up to my eyes.
I feel dizzy staring at blue and ice gray and seeing myself falling into his coldness. Frostbite, they call him. I can feel the chill from here.
“Whether you want to give in or not,” Faust says, breaking mine and Sylvan’s eye contact as I turn to look at him. “We’re all staying at my place tonight.” It’s a tone no one should argue with, but I don’t go down without a fight. Particularly when my heart is on the line.
“Nolan wants me home.” As I say it, I know how it sounds. Sylvan grips my hand so tightly it aches and Faust’s already dark eyes seem to get blacker.
“You’re not going back home until he leaves.” He says it with authority. “And that’s not a suggestion, Darling.”
My heart skips, but before I can reply—unsure what I’ll say—a door thuds closed and we all look toward the source of the sound.
There, at the bottom of our section, where the corridor leads out to the staircases around the ice, a man appears. And he’s staring up at us.
Not just any man, I realize.
Whatever fear I felt with Nolan, however uncomfortable it was walking here without a jacket, none of it matters when I realize it’s Detective Lincoln staring up at the three of us, his arms folded across his chest and his head cocked.
“Neve Devine.” He says my name gently, but something twists in it. “I went by your place, but no one came to the door.”
I don’t let my flicker of confusion show.
Cynthia isn’t there, I’m sure, but wouldn’t Nolan be?
Why wouldn’t he open the door for a detective?
I’m sure Lincoln announced himself, probably showed a badge, too, because he seems like the type to do everything by the book.
He’s dressed in a sharp black coat, and even his winter boots look professional.
Nolan might work in tech law, but surely he knows enough to spot a detective thrusting a badge at the peephole.
Unless he went to eat, and I gave him an extra key to Darkmouth, so that’s possible.
“Here I am,” I say, keeping my tone even and my fingers laced with Sylvan’s. “You caught me.”
Sylvan breathes a laugh but I feel Faust tense at my side, his knee knocking into mine.
I’m unafraid.
I’m not guilty.
And I won’t betray either one of them. I trust them now, and there’s nothing Lincoln could say that would change my mind.
Besides, is the world really worse off with those men gone? Ace, maybe, but who knows what secrets he had in his closet? Will and Jackson deserved what they got. Mitchell was a stray, but there are casualties in any war.
I don’t say it though, because even I’m not that stupidly bold.
“Yeah,” the detective says, glancing down at the cement floor beneath his boots.
The scent of popcorn and the metallic tang of the ice hits my nose, but so does the cologne and soap radiating off my boys.
It grounds me.
I inhale softly through my nose, taking it all in.
We’re going to be okay. Whatever Lincoln has to say to me won’t upend my life. I’m innocent.
“You’re not quite the Devine I wanted to catch,” he says, looking back up at me.
Sylvan’s grip on my hand grows firmer. It hurts, but I don’t want him to stop.
I think of Nolan questioning me.
His sickly sweet voice.
Telling me in the most manipulative, subtle ways what I should and shouldn’t do growing up. Whispering in my head over the summer that the coaching business I started was too much for me, and who was I to give anyone advice?
“I can’t deal with him.” Mom’s words. I thought she was a cunt for that. I thought she chose her new husband over us. Like Marty blocked out her maternal instincts.
Now I wonder what she was really choosing between.
“I need you to come with me,” Lincoln continues, staring right at me. We’re far enough away I can’t quite make out his expression without my glasses, but his tone is softer.
I take a shaky breath in. I’m shivering and it’s not from the ice.
Faust puts his hand on my knee and curls his fingers there, holding onto me.
I think the detective notices, but he says nothing.
“Just her?” Sylvan asks, his tone antagonistic. Like he’ll protect me from the world.
“She’s not going anywhere without us.” Faust is the one who brings the hammer down. He’s not asking.
“You can come with her,” Lincoln says quietly. “But you can’t be in the room when I ask her questions.”
“Do I need a lawyer?” I’m proud of the strength in my voice, despite my fear.
“That’s up to you.”
“Try again,” Sylvan says, and his tone has shifted. Pleasantly deceptive. He’s like my brother in some ways, fitting in like a chameleon, but one who slithers. He’s a serpent, isn’t he?
“Is she a suspect?” Faust is my dragon. Direct. Dangerous.
“No,” Detective Lincoln admits. “But her brother might be.”