Chapter 16
All my fear about facing Kiki and Carla comes rushing back as I listen to Mikey’s voicemail again. If they had something planned, they would have done it by now, right? Or were they waiting to get me away from Kai? To get me alone—like I am now?
But that’s Mami talking. The paranoia she instilled in me is hard to shake. Her voice in my head tells me to lock the door and not leave until the lights come back on, but the rational side of my brain tells me to find Kai. To ask him if he has any idea what Mikey may have meant.
Without giving myself the chance to overthink it, I bolt out of the room and back downstairs as quickly as my legs will carry me. The door to Kiki and Carla’s room is closed, and I hope they don’t hear me pass by.
The living room is colder than I remember it being just a few minutes earlier. A chill creeps down my spine as I reach the bottom of the stairs—stopping so quickly I nearly trip over myself as I realize the reason for the cold.
The sliding door is open.
Using my phone flashlight, I quickly scan the room for any sign of an intruder, but it seems empty. There are no damp footprints on the ground, no indents on the couch, nothing obviously out of place. No shadows lurking in corners or flashes of movement out of the corner of my eye.
Still, I stay on guard.
“Hello?” I call out, but no one answers. I take a cautious step forward, shining the flashlight across the room once again. “Kai?”
I brace myself for Kai’s voice, his laugh teasing me for being so on edge, but still nothing.
Moving on instinct, I reach out for the first sturdy thing I can find—a decorative vase perched on the mantel beside me.
It’s heavy enough to do some damage if I slam it over someone’s head, but not so heavy that I struggle to carry it with me.
I turn around and scan the kitchen. I’m sure there are knives somewhere in the dozens of drawers and cabinets, but I’m not sure I trust myself with something that dangerous. I’d probably wind up hurting myself before I could hurt a potential intruder.
And that’s assuming this isn’t all an elaborate prank.
Edging toward the open sliding door, I tell myself that’s all this is.
The “something” Mikey said they had planned.
A cruel joke—planned by either Kiki or Carla or Timothy, or maybe even Kai—to scare the hell out of me.
While I might be safer with a knife, they wouldn’t be.
With my reputation, that’s the last thing I need.
Ammo for them to tell the entire school that the murderer’s daughter pulled a knife on them in the woods.
I swallow hard and creep to the edge of the room, peering out the sliding door for any signs of life.
Steam rises out of the powered down hot tub, the water now still without the jets at full blast. A plastic cup knocked on its side dances along the edge of the table, threatening to tip over onto the ground any second. And then I see it, quick as a flash.
Something moving through the trees.
I’d swear it was my imagination if I hadn’t heard it too.
The crunch of dried leaves and snapped twigs.
I scan my flashlight across the horizon but can’t see anything.
Don’t spot any footprints in the mud at the edge of the tree line.
Maybe it was an animal. A deer, or maybe something else.
I kick myself for not paying better attention in bio—to what animals might lurk in the woods on the edge of Millcreek.
In a probably foolish move, I step outside.
“Kai?” I call out again, louder this time. If there is something out there, I want to make sure he’s safe. Call him back inside where at least we can stick together.
Something rustles in the trees when I take another step out onto the deck. I point my flashlight directly at it and tighten my grip on the vase, prepared to lob it if I have to. A branch twitches, shaking dead leaves onto the ground but nothing comes out of the shadows.
“Hey.”
The scream I let out could wake the dead. There are no neighbors within visible distance, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the closest one still heard my shout. I nearly leap out of my skin at the sight of Timothy, hands held high in the air as he backs away from me as if burned.
“Jesus, it’s just me,” he reassures, but it’s too late. The vase slips out of my hands when I jump back in surprise, shattering the second it hits the ground. Shards of glass scatter across the deck, most big enough to avoid but some so small it would be impossible to spot them even during the day.
“Where’s Kai?” I ask instantly, holding my phone close to my chest now that my weapon is gone.
Suddenly, I regret not changing out of my swimsuit before I headed back downstairs.
An untouched stack of fresh towels is sitting on the table just a few feet away, but I don’t dare move an inch.
Without shoes or flip-flops on I’m practically guaranteed to get a piece of glass wedged in my foot if I move.
Timothy must catch my eyes lingering on the towels.
I recognize Kiki’s hot pink phone case as he holds the flashlight up and gingerly crosses the deck toward the table.
Last I checked, Kai was the one who had Kiki’s phone.
The thought of Timothy taking it from Kai makes me worry, but I can’t do anything, trapped by the ring of broken glass.
I can hear the shards crunching beneath his sneakers, but if they pierce through the soles he doesn’t seem to notice.
Once he’s made it to the table, he tosses me a towel before wrapping one around his own shoulders.
I quickly wrap mine around my torso but don’t feel any less exposed when he saunters back to me with a glint in his eyes that I don’t trust.
“He’s in the middle of doing some rewiring shit. Asked me to grab him some tweezers from the bathroom cabinet.” He wiggles the phone, an explanation for how he got it.
It takes me a moment to realize what he’s talking about, completely forgetting that I’d asked him about Kai.
The reassurance that he’s just on the other side of the cabin sets me at ease, but I know better than to let my guard down.
Clutching the knot of the towel tight, I give him a tightlipped smile and gesture toward the open sliding door. “Well, I won’t stop you.”
Timothy lets out a quiet laugh that I’m not sure how to interpret—whether it’s meant at my expense or not.
Either way, he turns around and heads for the door.
But my breath hitches as he walks away, waiting until he’s fully out of view to breathe out again.
Sure enough, he stops at the entryway, pausing for a moment before flipping around. “I’m sorry for what Carla said.”
“Wh—” The shock of the apology catches me so off guard I almost step out of my protective ring and toward the shattered glass. I shake my head and the apology off. “It’s fine.”
“She’s such a bitch sometimes,” he says so casually you’d never think he was talking about his girlfriend.
The harshness of it stings like a slap. He wasn’t talking about me, and I’m by no means Carla’s number one fan, but the way he talks about someone he supposedly loves sits uncomfortably in my gut.
And as much as I don’t like Carla, she’s not wrong to be upset at the way he talked about her ex.
Or the way she feels about me. I may not have been the one who murdered Jose, but we rarely point our anger at the person who deserves it most. I’m the closest thing she has to Papi, so I’m her target.
Does he know about her and Kiki? I wonder, biting down on my lip before I can give in to my curiosity and ask.
Clearly his and Carla’s relationship is a special kind of toxic.
Even if I hadn’t seen his girlfriend and Kiki hooking up a few minutes earlier, that much was obvious from the minute they both essentially confessed to cheating on each other during Never Have I Ever.
Suddenly, I see the game in a new, voyeuristic light. The knowing glances between Kiki and Carla feel even more loaded now. The tension between Carla and Timothy. They’d seemed like every other PDA-obsessed teenage couple. Was that all just a show for the rest of us? Or for each other?
Timothy sighs and runs a hand through his thick brown hair, dragging it down along the edge of his defined jaw.
“Don’t listen to anything she says,” he continues, not picking up on my obvious discomfort.
He takes a step toward me. Then another, and another, until he’s uncomfortably close to invading my space again.
He’s tall enough that he has to lean down slightly to look me in the eyes—his so piercing that if I were a different girl, the weakness in my knees might be for all the right reasons. “Her opinion doesn’t matter.”
And yours does? I think bitterly but would never say out loud. He has me exactly where he wants me—pinned in place and surrounded by an ocean of broken glass. No matter what I do—run away or stay—I’m going to get hurt.
“It’s n—”
I’m not sure how I’m going to finish that sentence—what I could possibly say to make him back away—but he doesn’t give me the chance.
Before the words can tumble out of my mouth, he has his on my mine, cutting me short like I’ve come unplugged.
His lips are as cold as his hands. Damp all over like he’s still drying off from the hot tub with pruned fingertips.
Despite the cold, his touch is urgent, firm as he cups my cheek with enough force to hold me in place and kiss me as hard as he wants.
It’s rough and teeth and the taste of tequila and too fast and too much.
Everything about it is wrong, wrong, wrong.
From the way his thumb digs into the curve of my jaw tight enough to leave the wrong kind of bruise in the morning.
From the way he reaches for the small of my back, clothed by the towel but still too close.
From the earthy smell of smoke and cherries still clinging to his skin.