Chapter Meet Your Next Book Boyfriend
Meet Your Next Book Boyfriend
“I told you this was gonna be legendary.”
Declan’s grin is a slash of white in the gathering dusk, lighting up the whole damn parking lot. He tosses the keys to his dad’s midnight-black Range Rover to me. The metal catches the last of the sun’s glow in a brief, silver flash. “Warehouse party. No parents. No rules. Just vibes.”
The keys land in my palm with a solid clink, still warm from his hand. The weight feels like a promise. I toss them right back. “You’re driving. I’m drinking.”
He laughs, a deep, booming sound that vibrates right through the asphalt. It’s a physical thing, his laugh, making his whole body shake. “Cool. Just promise me you won’t do that tragic shoulder shimmy again. It haunts my dreams.”
A genuine smile stretches across my face, the muscles around my mouth aching with the easy joy of it. “You’re still thinking about that? Damn. Didn’t realize I made that big of an impression.”
“You did. On everyone. Some girl actually asked me if you were having a seizure.”
I shove his shoulder; the contact solid and familiar. “That girl was your ex.”
“She was concerned.”
“She was bitter.”
“She was both.”
Laughter rips from my chest, raw and unfiltered.
It’s the kind that starts deep in your gut and makes your face hurt.
The kind you only get with someone who has seen every stupid, broken, and ugly version of you and stuck around anyway.
The air hangs heavy with the scent of a perfect summer night: hot asphalt, engine oil, and the faint, illicit tang of cigarette smoke.
It’s a good filthy, a smell that wraps around your ribs and makes you feel eighteen and fucking invincible.
We’re reckless. We’re dumb in that specific way that feels untouchable. The warehouse looms ahead of us, a rusted, hunched silhouette half-swallowed by weeds, its shadow stretching toward us like a claw. The moon hangs too low in the sky, a silent, silver witness.
We hit the fence running. My boots find purchase, and I swing myself over, landing with a soft thud on the other side. Declan is right behind me. We jog a few more feet into the lot, the expected thrum of bass and shouting voices completely absent.
Then I stop short. So does Declan.
The silence is the first thing that hits me.
It’s not just quiet; it’s a physical presence.
A heavy, listening stillness broken only by the hollow echo of our footsteps on the cracked pavement and the nervous, high-pitched buzz of cicadas in the overgrown weeds.
A faint, sour smell of old exhaust and burnt rubber clings to the air, the ghost of a party that isn’t here.
The feeling of invincibility in my chest cracks, just a little. A cold knot of something that feels like dread forms in my gut.
“We’re early?” Declan asks, his grin finally slipping a notch. The confidence in his voice sounds a little thinner now.
“Better be,” I mutter, my voice a low growl. I need this night to be what he promised. I hop the next fence, the gravel crunching loudly under my boots. The sound is an intrusion. “If there’s no illegal fireworks, I’m leaving and taking the Range Rover.”
He snorts, catching up. “You wouldn’t even know where the hazard lights are.”
“You mean the emergency party strobes? Please.”
Declan adjusts the collar of the tailored jacket he’s wearing, his dark hair curling against the expensive fabric.
He’s trying to look older, cooler, less like the kid who fell off my roof last summer and blamed it on a phantom raccoon.
“Relax,” he says, bumping my shoulder. “You’ll get your pyro fix. And maybe a girl or two.”
My mind doesn’t go to a girl or two. It goes to one. Darla. The thought is a spark, hot and immediate, followed by a familiar, bitter wave of guilt. Declan’s girl. The one girl in this whole damn town I’m not allowed to want.
“Or three,” I toss back, the bravado a shield. I jog a few steps ahead and spin to face him, walking backward. “I’ve got options. Unlike you and your tragic love life.”
He scoffs, but the knowing smirk that crosses his face twists the knife of my guilt. “Tragic? Please. I’m emotionally selective. You’re out for a good time, brother. I’m in it for the long haul.”
Yeah, with her. The unspoken name hangs between us, and the words land with a quiet finality, a subtle drawing of a line in the sand. He’s reminding me where I stand. And it’s not at her side.
Laughter rips from my chest again, but this one is louder, a little more forced.
It’s too easy with him. Always has been.
The jacket Declan’s wearing was a birthday gift, an expensive, tailored thing that looks heavy on him, like he’s wearing a future he hasn’t grown into yet.
It reminds me of Winston. The man always looks at me like I’m the dirt under his polished shoes, the influence he wants to scrub from his perfect world.
Good. I take a swig from the backup flask I’m holding for Declan, the bite of bourbon a low simmer in my gut.
The warehouse looms, its windows boarded, the door cracked open just enough to suggest something waits inside. But the place is quiet. Too quiet. A black car is parked by the loading dock, its engine idling with a low, steady thrum.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickle while the sound of a car door closing nearby catches my attention. My gut tightens into the same icy knot as before. Something is wrong.
But Declan laughs, that big, easy sound that always chases away the shadows. He’s already retelling the story of our geometry teacher tripping over the projector cord, and his laughter is an anchor to the night we were supposed to have. I let it pull me along, chasing away the silence.
“He straight up gaslit the whole class,” I say, my grin returning.
Declan huffs a laugh, then stumbles half a step with mock drama. “Just proving his point. That floor is unstable.”
I shove him, the familiar, playful energy returning. “You’re such a menace.”
He stumbles for real this time, laughing, his phone slipping from his hand and clattering onto the gravel. He crouches to grab it. “Hey, jackass—”
The shot cracks.
It’s not just a sound—it’s a break in the world. A sharp, violent tear in the night's fabric. The air itself fractures. My ears explode with a high, shrill ringing, a pressure so intense it feels like my skull is going to split open. That wasn’t a gunshot. Couldn’t be.
Declan jerks upright. His body snaps tense, a puppet with its strings cut. For a split second, my brain can’t process it. He’s just startled. A firecracker. That’s all.
Then he sways.
His hand drifts up to his chest, slow, confused, as if he’s trying to swat away a fly.
Then I see it. The blood. It blooms across the front of his shirt, a dark, wet flower of crimson spreading too fast, too much.
It seeps out, slowly at first, then all at once, a sudden, horrific flood, like something vital inside him broke and couldn’t stop.
His eyes find mine. Wide. Scared. Full of a question he can’t ask. He opens his mouth, but only a wet, choking sound comes out as my heart free-falls through my ribs.
“Declan—” My voice is a strangled, useless thing.
I dive forward, my hands shaking as I catch him as his legs buckle.
We hit the pavement hard, the sharp edges of the gravel digging into my knees, the pain a distant, unimportant fact.
My hands slam into his chest, pressing into the impossible heat and slickness, trying to find something solid, something still holding him together.
“Hey. No. You’re fine. You’re okay,” I say, the words a frantic, shaking lie. My voice doesn’t sound like mine. My fingers slip on the slick warmth of his blood. It stains my jeans, streaks down my wrists. The metallic smell of iron hits the back of my throat, hot and thick, making me want to gag.
He blinks, slow, his jaw working like he’s trying to speak through wet cement. His hand twitches, his fingers grabbing weakly for my sleeve.
“I—” he rasps, his voice a wet, rattling sound. “Take care of her.”
My chest caves in. The weight of those four words crushes me. No, you do it. You stay and take care of her. “You’ll be here to take care of her,” I say, the words fast, panicked. “You’re not going anywhere.”
He wasn’t. He couldn’t.
I fumble for my phone, my hand slick and shaking. The screen slips once, twice under my bloody fingers. I punch at it, my vision shot, blurred by sweat and the hot sting of tears I didn’t know I was crying. “Come on. Come on,” I mutter, the sound a desperate prayer.
I glance back down. Declan’s eyes are still open, but the focus is gone. He’s looking at me, but he’s seeing something else. Something far away. His lips move again, a barely there flicker. I lean in, my ear close to his mouth. “Declan?”
There’s no sound this time. Only the soft, wet hitch of his chest, a desperate, fading gasp. His eyes, fixed on some unseen horror, slowly lose their light, becoming vacant and still as life drains from them, leaving only the chilling emptiness of death. Then… stillness.
Somewhere in the back of my brain, a cold, quiet voice knows. It knows that kind of stillness isn’t something you come back from.
My breath tears out of me in a raw, animal sob. “No. No. You don’t get to leave. Not like this.”
A sound cuts through the ringing in my ears.
Footsteps. Fast. Stumbling on the loose gravel.
My head jerks up, a flicker of instinct trying to identify a threat, but my eyes struggle to focus.
A shape breaks through the dark, dropping hard beside us.
Knees slam onto the pavement. Hands reach for Declan, frantic, shaking.
The shape makes a sound, a noise that is somewhere between a sob and a scream, and it folds over him, clutching his jacket, pressing its forehead to his chest as if proximity alone can keep him breathing.
I can’t speak. Can’t move. The shape rocks over him, gasping, whispering words I can’t make out, a desperate, pleading prayer.
And me? I just kneel there. My hands soaked in his blood. The phone forgotten on the concrete, its screen cracked. My heart splintered wide open.
The air is too quiet now. The ringing in my ears is a constant, deafening scream. Night has swallowed everything, and I already know, with a certainty that feels like a brand on my soul, this is the silence I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.