Chapter 44
There’s no way most of the kids are asleep. Not after the day Camp Crestview had. But there’s only so much we can do, apart from drugging their cocoa, and since Liza isn’t here to advise us on morality and dosage, that’s not really an option.
But at least all the kids are in their cabins. I’d probably be able to tell from my perch in one of my top five trees if that wasn’t the case.
The camp is as quiet as it can be, and I can’t hear any human sounds from anywhere around me. Instead, cricket song fills my ears, along with the sounds of distant wildlife and a breeze blowing through the canopy of leaves. If I’m not mistaken, judging by the way the wind smells, it’s going to rain soon-ish. And with hiking day being tomorrow, despite my protests with Fink that maybe we should wait or cancel it given what had happened to Emily, I hope that it either rains tonight or holds out until tomorrow night. The kids are already going to be nervous about hiking, if I’m right. Although Fink had tried to keep what had happened to Emily under wraps, everyone knows.
It’s impossible to keep a secret around here, after all. Especially from a bunch of twelve-year-olds.
Hearing something that doesn’t sound like a cricket or deer, I turn to look down at the ground, and promptly find myself looking down into Kayde’s shrewd, thoughtful expression.
Honestly, I don’t even have it in me to be startled anymore. “That’s so creepy of you,” I tell him, eyes narrowing. “I have a question, actually.” I hold my hand down to him, but Kayde just eyes it before using two knots in the tree to propel himself up to my branch. It’s a damn good thing this is the most stable of my favorite trees, because our combined weight doesn’t even make the thick limb under us shudder, let alone creak.
“What’s creepy?” Kayde asks, swinging his legs leisurely under the branch. “That I just showed up? Pretty sure we’ve had the me following you discussion, right?”
“Something about you being overly possessive, obsessed, and unable to leave my orbit, right?” My brows raise as he just looks at me, but my grin turns a little savage at his flat, unamused glance. “Yeah, we’ve had that discussion. Plus, I’ve made my peace with that bit of your weirdness. What I was talking about is your ability to just, you know, show up like that.” I wave my hand dismissively in the air and pull my knee up to my chest before dropping the other one off of the branch to swing it below me.
“Was that a thing you could do pre-psychopath days?”
“Sociopath,” Kayde corrects automatically, his look turning baleful. “Sociopath, baby girl. There’s a difference. It’s important. If I were a psychopath, I don’t think we would have made it to this point.”
“I’m still calling you my psychopath. It sounds cooler, and when I tell my friends, you’ll sound more intimidating. More threatening.” I wiggle my fingers at him when he looks my way again, and I’m surprised to see an amused glint in his eyes.
“Fine,” he shrugs. “I don’t mind.”
“You don’t?” Hadn’t he just been the one lecturing me about what to call him?
“Not at all.” His smile grows crooked on his lips. “You’re calling me yours after all.”
Immediately my eyes narrow, and it’s hard not to groan in exasperation. “You’re so set on me loving you, huh? Have you considered maybe I’m wild and free and can’t be won over?”
“No. Because while you might be wild, and you might not want to be won over, you don’t love being free from me,” Kayde answers sweetly. “Otherwise, you’d put up some kind of fight anytime I pin you to your bed and remind you who you belong to.”
There’s no way I’m not blushing, and I’m glad for the darkness that hides my embarrassment from him.
“I’ve always been quiet,” Kayde admits, and it takes me a moment to realize what he’s talking about. My goldfish brain had completely forgotten my question about him being so quiet, and I scramble to backpedal to that part of the conversation. “Even before the sociopath thing. But I started trying more, after the accident. It’s easier to get what I want if I can sneak up on my victims.”
“Can we not call them that? Can we at least pretend you don’t murder kids?” God, part of me wants to ask him exactly how many kids he’s murdered, but there’s no way I could ever get those words out. Not if my life depended on it. It’s bad enough that I’m pretty sure this isn’t his first summer camp rodeo. I don’t need to know facts.
“No, Summer.” His voice is firm, and his grip on my calf mirrors his tone. “No, we’re not going to call them something else, or pretend that I’m not what I am.” As I watch, Kayde scoots closer to me until he’s straddling the branch to trap me against the trunk behind me. He leans in, his forearms resting comfortably on the bark, and his eyes glitter in the moonlight. “You don’t get to pretend not to know what I am, or who I am.”
“Yeah, I figured that would be too easy,” I breathe, unable to pull my eyes from his. “But I’d like it to go on record that I really don’t like it. And I don’t approve.”
His low scoff of a chuckle is barely audible, and he leans forward to brush his lips to mine. “It’s been noted. More than once, actually. But I can’t say that’ll change anything, sweetheart. I’m never going to hide what I do from you. And I’m never going to not want to tell you all about it.”
“Maybe you could just murder adults?” I ask finally, my voice weak. When he nudges my knee that’s pressed to my chest, I acquiesce and drop it off the other side of the limb so that I’m mirroring his pose. “Maybe you could, umm…just chill with the child murder?”
His head tilts to the side, and he reminds me of a curious puppy as he asks, “Would that make you love me?”
The way my stomach constricts and a tremble shooting up my spine have me gasping, and I curl my fingers into the bark under me and the fabric of his jeans. “You can’t ask me that. How do I know if it’ll make me love you?”
“Because I know I love you,” he replies. “I’m just trying to figure out how to make you want to love me, too.”
“Well, knocking me off this branch certainly won’t help, just in case that was going through your head.” I grumble the words nervously, reaching up to rub at my exposed arms under my tank top. While it’s not cold, the breeze makes the night a little chilly, and I wish I’d thought to wear something that would provide me with a little more warmth.
“I’m not going to knock you off the branch, Summer,” Kayde informs me, voice withering. “I am, however, seriously considering how I could fuck you up here.”
Yet again, I’m glad he can’t see the flush in my face. “I’d say maybe we shouldn’t, since I think I missed some blood during my shower,” I admit in a small voice. “But uh, I guess that’s not much of a turnoff for you, is it?”
Kayde is silent for longer than I expect, and when he moves, it’s simply to open his arms and gesture for me to lean forward. I don’t even have time to think before my body just…responds. Before I know it, I’m leaning into him; his arms wrap around my torso and scoot me forward until my body is flush against his. “You can relax, baby girl,” Kayde promises me in a soft murmur, his breath tickling my ear. “I won’t let you fall, and I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Why is all this shit happening this week?” I whisper, my hands clutched in his shirt. I squeeze my eyes shut and hate how much better this feels, and how much warmer I feel instantly. As if it hadn’t been the weather at all, but the lack of Kayde’s touch.
I really can’t be this hung up on him already.
I really, really can’t.
“Because bad things come in clusters,” Kayde answers reasonably. “Not always, but sometimes. And by the way, Kinsley asked me to tell you that Liza texted her.” I hold my breath as he pauses, and find comfort in the soft motion of his fingers on my exposed shoulders rubbing small, soothing circles on my skin. “Emily is going to be okay. She has a broken arm, cracked ribs, and a concussion. She’ll need surgery, but she’ll be fine, okay?”
Suddenly I let out a breath I feel like I’ve been holding for hours, and the rest of me gives in to sag against Kayde. “Fuck,” I mutter, eyes closed hard. “That’s…okay, at least she’ll be fine. At least she’s…” Alive sounds so morbid, so I don’t say it.
“Would you like me to remind Shawn why we don’t talk to kids about dangerous trails? Explain to him why we don’t show them where they are?” His voice is cold, and while I doubt he cares about Emily, it means something that he’s willing to do it because it means something to me.
I move just enough to stare up at him, trying to read his expression. “No,” I say at last, shaking my head. “No, it was a stupid mistake. He feels bad about it.”
“Does he?” Kayde’s brows rise incredulously, and he pins me with his gaze. “Does he, Summer?”
No.
The word echoes in my mind with no hesitation, but I press my lips together and refuse to let it come out of my mouth. Shawn doesn’t feel bad. Shawn doesn’t care. His performance earlier for Kinsley and me had seemed genuine, sure, but I cannot force myself to believe that he actually cares about what happened. Even if he’d taken the blame, admitted it was his fault, and begged us not to hate him for almost getting Emily killed.
It had felt so real, and so genuine, that I’m starting to think I’m an asshole for not believing him or accepting that he does actually care about the kids at Camp Crestview.
“We’ve got to figure out the Grey situation,” I mumble instead of answering his question. I can feel his arms on me, and when Kayde shifts to nudge my face upward to his, I let him.
“I can help you with that.” His lips brush mine on every word, and I suck in a lungful of air from the oxygen we’re sharing between us. “I have some ideas on how to get him to leave. And a few for if he doesn’t take the hint.”
“You’d do that?” Hope blooms in my chest, and I clutch onto his shirt more tightly. “You’re not afraid of him?”
That gets me another round of the look, before he scoffs in indignation. “I’m not afraid of an eighteen-year-old baby of a killer, no. Did you see him before? He was terrified of me. He may hide it okay, but if I put pressure on him, I think he’ll leave.” The confidence and arrogance in his tone seems to drip from every word, but I find that this time, I don’t mind. Him being so confident makes me worry a little less. “But tell me, sweetheart…” He nips my lower lip, surprising me into a gasp. “What do I get for it?”
What does he get for it? I blink once, then again, baffled at his question. “You get, uh, karma points?” I offer weakly. “Which, given the rest of your shit, I’d think you’d want.”
“I’m not interested in karma. Divine or otherwise,” my sociopath assures me with another soft bite.
It’s hard to think straight when he does that. Especially when his hands massage my hips and pull my shirt up a bit so he can touch the skin beneath it. “What do you want?” I breathe at last. “You know I’ll give you anything, Kayde. I always do.” I give him everything, my brain corrects, but I recoil from the thought because I’m definitely not ready to face it. Not yet.
“Simple. I want you to love me.” The words have me pulling back, and I stare at him with wide eyes. “Will you love me, sweetheart?” He leans forward until I’m pressed against the trunk again, and his hands grip my thighs on the limb under us. It’s easy for him to push the fabric of my shorts up as far as he can, and teasingly, Kayde tickles my stomach at the line of my waistband. “If I chase him away, will you love me then?”
“I don’t think…” I stare at him, utterly taken aback. “I don’t think that’s how it works, Kayde. Pretty sure I have to love you for you. I think.”
His bemusement is clear, and seconds later, he dips his fingers into my shorts to press his fingers to my slit. “I don’t like being up in a tree,” he muses, his hand slipping free so he can rearrange my legs to be over his. I hook my knees around his thighs, needing some security that I won’t fall off from a random bout of stupidity on my end. “It’s hard to play with you when I have to hold you up here and keep you from falling.”
“Excuse you?” My eyebrows shoot upward. “This is my tree, and I do fine staying in it on my own. I don’t need you to hold me up, Kayde.”
He just eyes me, his gaze narrowed, and drags me further over his lap until I’m straddling him properly, and I can feel that something about our conversation has him at least a little excited. “Think you can ride me up here, then?” he purrs playfully. His hand comes up to stroke through my hair, and I shudder at the feeling of him between my thighs.
It’s an understatement to say that I love Kayde’s cock. He rocks against me, one arm around my waist to keep me in place. It’s more teasing than anything, though when he buries his face against my throat and bites down hard with a growl, the lightheartedness of his movements evaporates.
Instead, it’s replaced with possessiveness and a touch of desperation from my end. Especially when he bites down harder and all I can do is wrap my arms around his shoulders to meet the movements of his body with mine.
“I’ll take care of Grey for you, Summer,” Kayde finally murmurs, pulling away so he can speak directly into my ear. “But I worry for you. I worry that we’re not seeing everything.” There’s a touch of frustration in his voice, and I suck in a breath at a sharp roll of his hips.
“What do you mean?” I ask with a whine, fingers digging into his shoulders and scratching against his skin.
“Just be safe for me, okay?” His hand slides down to my ass, and then he’s biting me again, clearly unworried about leaving a mark. “Don’t make me kill someone for breaking you and have to put you back together again. Plus, Kinsley will be traumatized if something happens to you, Summer.”
“How in the world would you put me back together again?” I scoff, only half focused on his words. The rest of me is prepared to jump out of this tree, drag him back to my cabin, and revisit the idea of riding his face until I get off.
“Any way you ask me to.” His answer is immediate, and before I know what he’s doing, Kayde has slid out of the tree, landed, and is dragging me down as well. I shriek a protest, sure I’m going to break a leg, but Kayde never lets me hit the ground.
Instead, I end up in his arms, one of mine hooked around his neck as he grins down at me. “I’m going to take you back to your cabin and wreck you, princess,” Kayde purrs, a promise on his lips. “And then I’m going to figure out how to get rid of Grey quickly and quietly for you, so you can fall in love with me that much faster.”
“It’s…still more complicated than that,” I mutter, rolling my eyes. “Didn’t I say that?”
“Yeah,” Kayde agrees, his smile wolfish. “I’m just refusing to accept that answer. You’re going to admit you love me by the end of the week, Summer. I’m counting on it.”
“And if I don’t?” I can”t help but ask, fingers bunching into his shirt.
But Kayde never stops grinning, and I can feel the chuckle that rumbles in his chest. “That won’t happen. There’s no version of this week that lets that happen. I won’t let it.”
And if that doesn’t sound like a threat, then I don’t know what ever could. But I lock my reply behind my teeth and pretend his words don’t have my thighs clenching and excitement running through my veins.