61. Kai
Chapter 61
Kai
There’s blood in my eyes and my mouth. I can taste it and smell it. Feel it coating my face and my hands. Even the downpour isn’t washing it away.
Everyone’s talking at once. Shouting and yelling.
Then Ezra is getting smaller. His limp body dwindling as I’m dragged away, and I kick my feet out, trying to stop, trying to get back to Ezra so I can finish the fucking job, because I don’t think I killed him, and fuck it, I want to.
I need to.
“Leave me!” I roar, yanking so hard that I get one of my arms free. I turn to the other guy still holding me, and snarl at Kruger. “Get the fuck off me!”
“Not a chance, bro.” He twists my arm, and then grabs my other one, locking them behind my back.
I’m waiting, fucking expectingly , someone to come up and start punching me. Maybe Ezra, if Ezra wasn’t still lying there, dying.
Kruger drags me off the DJ stand, him and iPhone maneuvering me into the trees through the pouring rain.
By the time the party lights are blocked by the leaves, and the panicked noise is left behind, my heart rate has dropped, and my veins aren’t pumping pure adrenaline through my body.
The icy rain helps. Like it’s cooling down the inferno of hatred seething inside me. But, man, there’s just too much of it.
“You wanna tell me what the fuck snapped in that head of yours?” iPhone asks, handing me a bottle of water.
I chug half of it before I dare take a breath. And it helps, suffocating the rage churning inside me some. But then my brain flashes me an image of Haven on her knees, that collar around her neck, looking so confused and scared and naked and?—
“Dude, stop!” Kruger seizes my arm, hauling me back as I make a lunge for the dance floor, flicking his head to get his wet hair out of his face. “Whatever point you were trying to make, you fucking made it already.”
I pull out of his grip, drag my hands through my own matted mess.
“Cunt!” I yell, kicking a tree. “Fuck!” I grab my foot, hopping on one leg until iPhone angles me toward a tree and I can lean against it for balance.
“Motherfucking cunt!” I roar toward the dance floor. “I’ll fucking kill you!”
“Yeah, Kai, dude?” iPhone laughs with zero humor. “Ezra’s knocked the fuck out, bro. He can’t hear you for shit.”
Kruger grabs my wrist, shoves a lit joint between my fingers, forcing me to cup it so it doesn’t get rained on. “Smoke this. Chill the fuck out.”
iPhone pats my shoulder. “We gotta get your story straight before the cops show up.”
Cops?
Jesus.
I hit the joint like my life depends on it. Because, fuck, it probably does.
There’s a surge of queasiness as my hyper-sensitive body recoils from the intense taste of the weed, then a lead sheet falls over me.
It brings clarity with it.
“Where is she?” I push away from the tree, growling when Kruger drags me back.
“Who, bro?”
“Haven! The girl my fucking cunt of an asshole brother—” I cut off, because I want to puke even repeating what he did to her.
iPhone’s on his phone, signaling something to Kruger as he turns away to make a call.
“More, bro.” Kruger urges my wrist up, and I hit the joint that had been dangling from a limp hand at my side. “You ain’t chill enough yet.”
iPhone is back. “Nolan saw her leave with Melissa.”
“So where the fuck is she?” At least I’m not yelling, but from the way iPhone flinches, it doesn’t fucking matter.
There’s murder in my voice.
iPhone holds up a finger, turns, and makes another call.
“How you feeling, bro?” Kruger takes the joint out of my fingers, hits it, passes it back.
I should have waited for the first few drags to kick in before smoking more, but the rage is still there. Bubbling. Boiling. Seconds away from burning down the whole fucking house.
My lips curl in disgust as I realize I’m smoking filter. I crush out what’s left under my heel, wince when I remember I’m barefoot.
But I don’t feel a thing because it’s pouring with rain and I’m soaked. Cold.
Still pissed, but simmering now.
Then the weed hits.
And it hits fucking hard.
Kruger and iPhone both grab me as I tip forward, my eyes rolling back, but all they can do is slow my descent into a crouch with my back hard against the tree.
My head is in my hands.
“Dude. You chill?”
“Fuuuuck,” is all I can get past my clenched jaw.
Kruger stands up. I hear him over my head, talking to iPhone. “Shit. Guess he’s rolling again.”
“Because you gave him too much.”
“Nah, man, this guy’s got mad tolerance. It’s just…it’s stress, right?”
“I’d fucking be stressed too. Ezra’s gonna need reconstructive fucking surgery to?—“
“Jesus, man, shut up.”
“I’ve never seen someone flip out like that on molly.”
“There’s obviously some serious shit going on between them.”
“Yeah, but, shouldn’t they just be hugging it out?”
“I don’t know, man. Guess it’s all about state of mind. He was having a chill time, until he wasn’t, and that shit with Ezra and Haven, that’s what triggered him. Unresolved?—“
A phone rings. “Sorry, man. One sec.”
Kruger crouches beside me. “Dude, we gotta go. This rain is nonstop. Can you stand?”
I try, but my legs are rubber, the ground a fucking bouncy ball.
iPhone is back. “The fuck was in that weed?”
“Don’t blame the tree, bro,” Kruger grumbles. “Blame the mind.”
We weave our way through the forest and back over the lawn toward the country club. When my head rolls back and I see all the bright lights and the straight-up walls and the white paint, all I can think about is that fucked up wallpaper, and I fight them.
“Geez, relax, bro.”
“We’re going to my truck,” iPhone says.
It takes an eternity to get there. An eternity of squelching over muddy, drowned grass and trying to use legs that have forgotten how to walk as iPhone and Kruger’s hands dig into my biceps as they try to keep me up.
But we’re finally there, and I’m being half-pushed, half-rolled into the back of an Escalade.
I lie on my back, staring up at a light gray, featureless ceiling. Then iPhone appears, craning over the backrest. He’s working his jaw so hard, it’s like he’s trying to grind his teeth into a straight line.
He pats my chest. “Got hold of Melissa. She said Rooke’s got her.”
I frown at him. “Rooke’s got who?”
iPhone frowns right back. “Your girl, Haven.” Then he looks up past me, nods, and pats me again. “We’re heading back to the frat house.”
I catch his wrist as just before he can slither out of view. “No.”
“Yeah.” He reappears, jaw clenching. “Yeah, man. Safest place right now.”
“Haven.” Seeing how high he’s rolling makes me feel even more fucked. But I push through, because this shit’s important. “Gotta find Haven.”
“Yeah, told you. Rooke’s got her.”
Rooke.
Professor Rooke?
“Why?”
“Why?” iPhone parrots back. “Man…I dunno. Hospital?”
Hospital.
I sit up like Dracula rising from his fucking coffin. “Take me there. Now.”
“Probably where Ezra’s headed too,” Kruger calls out from the front a moment before the sweet scent of weed fills the Escalade’s cab. “Dude, you okay to drive?”
“No fucking way, man,” iPhone says, disappearing again. “You?”
“Yeah, sure. I don’t do drugs like you chumps.”
“And the weed?”
“What about it?” Kruger says, laughing.
“Don’t mess up my car.”
“Don’t mess up my vibe.”
The Escalade’s engine rumbles under me, and I have to force my eyes to stay open. We accelerate, my body rolling back and forward every time Kruger brakes or hits the gas.
Street lights flash through the window above my head, and it feels like I’m being scanned by some intergalactic being.
A thought I quickly shove out of my head before it can grow legs and infest my mind.
But when I crowd out all other thoughts, it’s just Haven.
Blond-haired, blue eyed, five-year-old Haven pouting at me because I told her she can’t play the part of Columbus, she has to be Jane. Because she’s a girl. And because I don’t want to be a girl.
Dark-blond Haven, almost sixteen years old. Wringing her hands, biting her lip, waiting for me to answer her. And my heart pounding, pounding, as I say yes. Yes to her fucked up plan, yes to her blue eyes I’d fallen in love with many, many years ago.
Mousy-brown Haven. Nineteen years old. Naked, collared, leashed.
I grab the back of the seat and haul myself up. “Where is she?”
Kruger glances at me in the rearview mirror. iPhone has his arm slung over the back of Kruger’s seat and rests his chin on his arm as he looks at me over his shoulder.
“Bro, that’s where we’re?—“
A high-pitched wail cuts him off. We all turn back to the road as an ambulance tears past us. Red and blue lights paint the cabin of the Escalade, the siren deafening until we’re past.
iPhone sounds terrified when he says, “Dude, you think that’s for?—“
“Shut it, man.” Kruger blows out a breath. “You know how to roll a joint?”
“Uh…”
“Fucking learn, fast. Here.” He digs a baggie out of his shoe and tosses it at iPhone.
I turn to stare out the window, my eyes feeling like they’re filling my whole face.
That ambulance was headed for the country club.
For my brother.
He’s not just gonna walk this off.
Fuck him.
I wanted this.
Right?
That’s why I didn’t stop?
I wanted to fuck him up.
“Hey, man, check it.” Kruger is pointing at something through the windshield. “That look like a Tesla to you?”
“Bro, I’m seeing fractals right now, so you gotta be a lot more fucking specific.”
“That car.” Kruger presses his finger on the glass. “The one turning off, just up ahead.” He taps the glass. “Is. That. A. Tesla?”
I shuffle forward, arms on their backrests as I crane my head and squint through the glass.
“That’s Rooke’s car,” I say, my stomach tightening like I’m going to puke.
“He’s coming back from the hospital,” iPhone says.
Kruger shakes his head. “He’d still be there. Admissions takes fucking forever in this place.”
“Yeah? Then it’s someone else.”
“You know of anyone in town who drives a Tesla?” Kruger keeps ducking his head, peering at the Tesla through the windshield.
“So then where’s he headed?” iPhone asks.
There’s a beat of silence, and I swear all of us are holding our breath.
“Follow him,” I murmur.