Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
KINSLEY
As you get older, aren’t you supposed to get used to adult things, such as waking up in the morning? I hate them, and this morning, it’s extra hard to wake up. My eyelids feel heavier than normal.
The hell? It’s the weekend, right? I can just fall back asleep. I’m headed back to sleepyland when a hand grips my ass; my eyes fly open to see olive skin, with a dusting of hair coming in on the jaw line.
“Jax.” His name comes out raspy. “What did you do to me?”
“What did I do to you?” he grunts. “If you rub your pussy along my dick one more time, Bunny.” That wakes me up more—all of me.
My hand feels a bare chest, and I quickly put together that I’m all over Jax. He’s flat on his back while I’m sprawled out on top of him. I lift my head, my eyes meeting his.
“Hi.” That’s the only word I can form because I very much do feel my sex pressed right against his very hard cock. Jax’s hand on my ass gives a squeeze.
“Hi.” He smirks, making my eyes drop to his mouth. My own mouth feels tender. That’s the first flash of what happened last night that flutters through my mind. Jax and I were in this bed, and I was kissing the hell out of him.
“Oh, gosh.” I roll off him.
“Kinsley?” I shoot out of bed as fast as I can, bolting for the bathroom. “Shit.” He’s hot on my heels. “What are you doing?” He pauses at the door as I grab my toothbrush.
“Brushing my teeth?”
“Right.” He walks over, grabbing his own. “I thought you were about to vomit.”
“Ahh, were you going to hold my hair back?” I ask before I start to brush them.
“I already tied it back, but I could have helped.” He puts the paste on his brush.
He had tied my hair back loosely after taking my braids out. Jax helped my drunk ass into bed last night, and all I kept doing was kissing him nonstop. Which makes me want to kiss him again, hence brushing my teeth.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
"I'm okay," I admit. "Wait, did I keep kissing you because I was worried I was going to jail and they could be our last kisses?" I recall saying that. Such an odd thing for me to have said.
"You're not going to jail." Jax's tone is way too serious. I wipe my mouth with a hand towel he hands me.
“Of course not.” I toss the towel back at him. “My drunk ass…” I trail off. “Oh my God.”
“Hey now.” Jax’s hands grip my hips as I sway on my feet to balance myself.
He lifts me, carrying me over to the sitting area, and sits down on the loveseat with me in his lap.
His shirt that I’m still wearing rides up.
He’s taken off my shoes and shorts. I recall reaching up under my shirt and taking my bra off myself before throwing it at him like I was some skilled stripper.
I am not. I’m mortified by the memory alone.
But there are bigger things to worry over than my lack of finesse in being sexy and trying to turn Jax on.
“I killed her.”
“You didn’t kill anyone.”
The screams. The dead girl was in one of the spare rooms. I didn't get much of a glimpse of her. Of course, everyone took off running toward the scream. Jax hadn't let me at first, but I was persistent in knowing what was happening.
Annie, the girl that I'd argued with earlier in the night, was dead on the bed. There was blood dripping from her nose, her eyes open, staring up at the ceiling.
"You're right. It was Blair's spell." I cringe at my own joke.
"She said the same shit. Still don't understand what the fuck that means, but unless the spell went up her nose—"
"She touched her nose," I whisper for some reason. I’m just trying to piece together whatever I can remember.
“Neither you nor Blair is responsible for that girl's death. No matter what anyone says.” Jax's words bring back a deluge of memories from last night. The stares, the whispers, all of them directed toward me.
That’s when Jax got me the hell out of there. Damon was going to handle Blair because she couldn't drive. Those tiny drinks got the best of us.
I'm not sure if I should be insulted because everyone thought I did it or a touch proud that people think I have this whole other side to me capable of such a thing. I did have it out with Annie a couple of times, but Blair was the spell caster.
I might not have cared for the girl, but I sure didn’t want her dead. She was a bitch, but people change, and often at our age, people are cruel because things in their own personal life bleed out onto everyone around them. I can understand that. I have my own shit because of my parents.
“What the hell, Jax?” I ask as the rest of the night floods in, giving me a dull headache, which I deserve.
“Pretty sure she OD’d. Coach said Trent was bleeding from the nose, too.”
“Wait, Trent Weaver? Football guy?”
“Yes, he’s a receiver on the team. That’s what I had to talk to Coach about. He’s been in the hospital in a coma.”
“Oh my God.” How is everyone at school not talking about this?
“They know he took something, but they don’t know what. He wanted to know if I knew about any new drugs going around.” I stare at him.
“It’s insane that the coach is asking you that, but understandable.”
“He wasn’t only asking me to find out information. I think he knew I’d take that information home to my uncles if I didn’t already know what was going around.”
“That’s a good point.” Wow, it’s such a reminder of what a different world Jax lives in. “You think it all could be related?”
“We have two dead girls and Trent in the hospital, and they don’t know if he’ll make it. They want to know what it was he took because it’s not a normal street drug, and I think his parents hope that if they figure it out, it might help save him.” Damn, I feel horrible for his parents.
“Shit, right, the first dead girl in the warehouse in our uniform. That makes three victims either from our school or associated with Golden Prep."
"Bingo," Jax says, clearly having pieced that together himself while I was being a drunk dumbass.
“This is like a whole new drug, you're saying? Movie shit.”
“You can call it movie shit, but new drugs do come along.”
“Oh, Jax.” I wiggle to try and get up, but Jax doesn’t release his hold on me. “I need to pace. It helps me think.” He releases me, and I hop up and start to walk back and forth.
“You got something?”
“My parents will often talk about work.” Who am I kidding? When we share a rare family dinner, it’s all they can talk about. They live and breathe it.
“Trent is in North Saints.”
“Okay, right, on the outer edge.” There are two main hospitals.
One that handles a big chunk of the city, Center Saints Hospital.
“My parents work at Center, but just like Center hospital has coverage per its county, the police do too, and communication isn’t always the best. Especially when things are new. It hasn’t been connected yet.”
Jax shifts, leaning forward. “Keep going,” he encourages.
“My mother and father told me this crazy-ass story of a girl that the cops found running down the street.” His brows lift.
“Well, let’s do story time,” I tell him.
“A girl is seen on surveillance running down the street at six in the morning.” Not sure why, but I do the action of running, I suppose getting into it.
“Then a group of people go running past her. She pauses and watches them and then turns and joins their run in the opposite direction.” I spin around to face the other way.
“She got lost from a race?”
“One might think that, but she’s not dressed for a race, and her running is really awkward. Something is off. That’s clear from the surveillance the police pulled up.”
“We got cops now.”
“We got cops now, but let’s not get ahead.”
“All right.” He leans back, waiting for me to continue.
“Now they’re all running but start to slow because up ahead they see fire trucks and ambulances.
They come upon an accident. A shiny new Lexus slammed into a van.
They are working to save the people in the van.
That's where my mom comes in. She was in the ER when the people in those vehicles were brought in. They couldn’t be saved. ”
“The Lexus driver?”
“Nowhere to be found. Just gone.”
“Or in a random marathon?”
“Hey, don’t spoil my story.” I give him a pointed look. “The girl ends up turning and keeps going down into the…” Now it’s me who pauses. “The fucking warehouse district! I mean, not right by the one you lured me to with the disappearing girl, but same-ish area.”
“Then what?”
“Well, she starts taking off her clothes, just tossing them off. A bunch of construction workers spot her and are wondering why a girl is running down the road naked.”
“Shit,” Jax mutters.
“It’s a fight to get her to stop. Then it’s a fight for the cops to get her under control. All she is screaming is that they are after her. Out of her freaking mind. They think she’s clearly on drugs. My mom said she kept saying her name was Lexis.”
“As in the car that hit the van.”
“Bingo.” I use his word. “Mom said she’s never seen anything like it.
And she’s dealt with some people that are fucked up in a whole other world, but it’s been driving her crazy because they still don’t know what was wrong with the girl.
When she woke up, she didn’t remember shit.
Didn’t even remember the party she was at the night before, so she couldn’t tell them what she took, but Mom said they ran everything.
It’s still bugging her because she does not believe it was a mental break.
Not one that wasn’t triggered at least.”
“It has to be connected. All of it fits. You’re brilliant.”
“I like to think so.” I smirk, only teasing.
Jax is standing and coming over to me. His fingers sink into my hair as his mouth comes down onto mine.
The expression on his face captures my attention as he lifts his head.
The way he stares at me with such adoration.
Except I’m not sure where we go from here. “Now what?”
“Now I feed you, and I need to talk to the parentals.” I nod.
That’s for the best. I’m an editor for the newspaper at my prep school. As much as I want to keep digging on my own, it’s not the smart choice and would be a selfish one at that.
The only thing I find myself wanting to be selfish with is Jax. I don't think he'll be too upset about that at all.