63. Bastian
Chapter 63
Bastian
I turn off the faucet, but I stand with my head bowed for a moment before dragging my hand through my hair. I saw Haven’s epiphany as it hit her. The flash of panic on her face said it all.
She’d made a mistake.
MDMA does that to you. That’s why I only ever took it once.
That bullshit drug scrounges up the tiniest morsel of emotion you have and inflates it like a fucking balloon animal.
She’d never have walked in here if she was sober.
But how am I supposed to pretend that everything’s normal now? Just shrug it off, and hope she’s a better actress than she’s proved to be thus far?
Ridiculous.
This whole fucking scenario is bullshit.
What the fuck was I thinking?
I should have left the country club instead of heading to the party. I’d have been back home an hour ago, sitting by the fire, and?—
Reading my mother’s book?
Fucking pussy.
She wants me, like I want her. I’ve seen my need reflected in her eyes countless times. And what’s holding us back? Some archaic rule forbidding relationships with unbalanced power dynamics. Taboo. Bordering on criminal.
We’re all adults here.
And I could pretend that I give a fuck about how this would affect her schooling.
But I don’t.
I became a teacher for a very specific set of reasons, none of them having anything to do with nurturing young adults into intelligent, responsible members of society.
I snort, pushing away from the shower wall so I can grab a towel and dry off.
Fuck society.
It’s the reason I’m in this shithole of a town, stuck in a dead end teaching job that’ll probably see me swallowing a bullet in another ten, twenty years just to end the unfunny joke my life has become.
I hear a strange noise coming from the living area, and quickly step into my sweatpants, grabbing my shirt so I can pull it over my head as I walk.
But I never get the chance, because when I turn the corner and see Haven with her back pressed to the front door, hands flat on the wood, her eyes squeezed closed like she’s holding back The Thing, my heart fucking flat lines.
My bare feet don’t make a sound as I detour for my nightstand. I pull open the drawer and slip a hand inside, drawing out my Beretta.
On instinct, I quietly rack the slide to check that there’s a bullet in the chamber, and that the safety is on. Then I pad quickly and silently to the wall nearest the front door.
Haven turns her head, her body dipping a little as she sees me. She shakes her head, mouth pressing into a line.
Fuck.
I beckon her with a flick of my fingers, and she hesitates before throwing a nervous glance at the door, then scurries over to me, grabbing me around the waist and burrowing her face into my chest.
“Who’s at the door, Haven?” I whisper, my hand on the top of her head, holding her tight against me.
She shakes her head. “Not real,” she says. “It’s not real.”
Christ, how much molly did her friends give her? Enough to hallucinate?
“Okay. You stay here. I’m going to?—“
“No!” she whispers, holding onto me even tighter. “Don’t go. He’ll kill you.”
I didn’t sign up for this.
But I let her cling to me as I go to investigate, because it seems trying to talk her down will take longer than just opening the door to show her there’s no one?—
She seizes my hand when I go for the doorknob. “No, stop! Don’t open it!”
“Haven, there’s no one?—“
Thank fuck my finger wasn’t on the trigger when someone raps against the other side of the door. I’d have blown a hole in my goddamn foot.
“Christ.” I lean forward, putting my eye by the peephole. “Kai?”
Haven clutches me even tighter and pulls my hand away when I try to open the door. “No!”
“Enough!” I grate out, pushing her away.
She stumbles back, eyes wide, dark, frantic. Shaking her head and murmuring, “No, no, no, no,” as I flip the lock and turn the knob.
The porch light reflects off a wall of rain. Kai looks at me, then down at the Beretta in my hand.
His face is covered with blood. And body paint. He’s wearing a trash bag, like Haven, and a pair of boxers. Bare feet, like her.
The fuck are these kids thinking?
I eject the round from the chamber, catching it mid-air, pocketing it. Shake my head as I tuck the gun behind the waistband of my sweats.
“What are you doing here?”
“Could ask you the same thing,” he snaps. His hands are in fists, but he’s swaying like he’s rolling. Judging from the size of his pupils, he’s on as much, if not more, MDMA as Haven.
“I live here,” I say dryly.
“And her?” Kai’s eyes cut past me, Haven’s body warming mine a second before soft fabric brushes the small of my back. “She live here too now?”
“Haven is a guest seeking respite after some idiot kid padlocked a collar around her throat.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Know anything about that, Mr. Jordan?”
Kai’s gaze darts to the side, then down. “No, Sir.”
Behind me, Haven whispers, “Filthy liar.” I reach behind me and push her out of sight behind my back.
“Are you injured?”
His head is still down. He shakes it. “No, Sir.”
“So that’s someone else’s blood on your face? Are the police going to show up at my house?”
Kai holds out his arms, head bobbing as he scans himself. “It’s paint, Sir.”
I step out onto the porch and drag my finger over Kai’s jaw. He lifts his head, eyes flickering away before settling on me. Then my finger, as I hold it up for him to see.
“Fuck.” He swipes at his face with a hand. Looks at his palm. Swipes with the other hand. “Fuck, fuck .”
My mind goes to the ambulance we passed on the way over here.
Melissa hadn’t said who exactly had padlocked Haven’s collar. I’d assumed it was Kai.
Maybe it wasn’t.
I sincerely doubt the two incidents aren’t related. Which means he was trying to protect her.
Kai flinches when I grab his shoulder, but doesn’t resist when I draw him inside my home. “I think you need to take a shower, Kai.”
When I turn, Haven is left exposed, and she freezes up when Kai steps closer to her. They stare at each other like strange cats, Haven’s hands curling into fists, Kai’s hands opening into stiff blades.
“Haven, turn on the fireplace.”
She starts, turning wide eyes to me.
“Now.”
Kai throws me a quizzical look, but I seize the back of his neck and steer him to my bathroom, not giving him time to ask whatever question is brewing in his drug-addled mind.
“Why is she here?” he asks, sounding so forlorn and confused that I almost pity him.
“More importantly, why are you here, Kai?”
I walk him into the shower cubicle like I had Haven. Unlike her, he turns to face me, frowning. “You took her.”
“I didn’t take her,” I say, my eyes dropping to his trash bag. I start ripping it apart with my fingers, but he doesn’t even seem to notice. “I helped her. She’s just gone through something very traumatic. I’m simply giving her a safe place to decompress.”
“Safe,” he murmurs, looking down as I tear the last shreds of plastic off his skin. He scrapes his nails over his chest like he’s trying to get rid of the paint. I flip him around, reach past him, and turn on the faucet.
He immediately turns his head up to the spray, and it’s like I cease to exist.
“I’ll go fetch you some clean clothes.”
Kai ignores me, his hands sliding over his face as he washes off the blood and the paint.
I find a pair of sweats and a t-shirt that will fit him, and go back into the bathroom to put it on the counter.
When I look over at Kai, I get the feeling he’s staying in that shower until the warm water runs out. He’s taken off his boxers, lathering soap over himself with long, lazy strokes, swiveling his head around in the spray.
He’s so zoned out, he doesn’t even know I’m here. So I stay to watch for a few minutes, my dick getting hard at the sheer second-hand ecstasy he’s so blatantly experiencing.
“Fuck this,” I mutter. If I’d wanted to become a babysitter, I’d have posted an ad on the town’s bulletin board.
I leave the bathroom, putting my revolver back in its place inside the nightstand. Last night’s bourbon is still here, right beside last night’s glass.
Fuck the ice.
I pour a generous shot and drain it, closing my eyes to better experience the smokey sting sliding over my tongue and throat.
Then I down another.
Next is the small leather traveling bag from my nightstand. Measuring out two lines of coke from a small baggie, I snort them both, tipping my head back and closing my eyes as the rush hits me.
“Fuuuuck,” comes a voice behind me.
I twist on the bed to look behind me, frowning at Kai. He’s staring at me with owlish eyes, one hand on his pec, the other on his stomach.
“Dude, this fabric…” He drops his chin to his chest, rubbing his hands over the soft fabric of the white t-shirt I took out for him.
I huff through my nose and then look back at the faint traces of coke left on my nightstand. I wet the pad of my finger and run it through, gathering up every crumb.
“Come here, Kai.”