Chapter 3 #3
Cort has circles beneath his eyes and he swipes his tongue over his lip ring before letting his eyelids drop closed.
Lyle is kind of sleeping through the night; five hour stretches, which is much better than the ninety minutes before.
Cortland takes turns with Remi, then he gets up at dawn to work.
It’s different every day but lately he’s been laying concrete and relishing in the cool dip the October temperatures have taken.
His shoulders look broader, the veins in his arms beneath his gray T-shirt more pronounced.
“You love my games. But you should sleep while you can,” I say, turning back to the movie and feeling the need for rest taking over me, too.
But I wouldn’t be able to drift off even if I laid down.
I want to check in again with Sloane. The unknown number hasn’t texted me anymore and I start to wonder if Remi Ocean herself is fucking with me upstairs, bored with Lyle.
Anonymous texting is not really like her but she’s become more comfortable since she’s lived here.
Stronger, too. Then again, she takes all the sleep she can get.
I don’t think she’d spend any of that time fucking with me.
For about half a heartbeat I once wondered what the three of us could be together—me, Cort, Remi. But that pulse passed and now I see her differently. Someone to protect but love from a distance.
Besides, I’m fucking selfish and I love Cortland to death, but whoever I find, I’ll possess.
That will never change.
Cortland yawns again, proving my point.
Amazingly, I sleep right through Lyle’s cries in the night. My problem is falling asleep, not staying asleep. Lately it feels impossible to get there. But Remi doesn’t have such a luxury, and neither does my best friend.
“Yeah,” Cortland says, the word sluggish with exhaustion. “For once, you’re right.” He gets to his feet and stretches his arms up overhead, his shirt riding up.
For once. With him, I’ve been more right than wrong, but despite his sarcasm, he’s aware. I don’t feel the need to point it out.
“‘Night,” he says as he passes by me to head to the staircase. “And maybe consider walking through a forest with a heavy deer population in daylight hours next time, huh?” He doesn’t even look at me as he says it, but I tense, narrowing my eyes on his retreating back, his hand on the staircase railing.
“No one hunts in our woods.” I try to keep my tone even, despite the way my heart races. But he must be mistaken. Even the property adjacent to ours is usually quiet. From hunters, anyway.
“No one, huh?” He’s a third of the way up the stairs and he turns to look at me, his head cocked. “This morning, you didn’t hear that round go off?”
I grip the remote in my hand tighter. I think of the texts on my phone. “No.” I was dead asleep then, a rarity. “What time?”
His brows furrow. “I don’t know? Sun wasn’t up yet.”
What the fuck? I don’t want to get him all worked up about why I’m asking so many questions so I pretend I’m uninterested. “Nah, I didn’t hear it.”
“Hope they got something,” he says bitterly, shaking his head as he starts up the steps again. “Too many shots popped off and woke Lyle.” Grumbling under his breath about babies and bad ideas, he disappears from view.
Someone shooting rounds off in the woods.
I need to ask Dad if he’s done something to piss anyone off lately.
It’s not implausible I become a target when that happens.
In the past, my parents have always settled their shit before it could reach me—usually with a bullet in the enemy’s brain—but it doesn’t mean it’ll always be that way, especially now I’m doing my own thing.
We run in different circles—I didn’t want any part of what they do; I found that out last year—but the underground is the underground and you’re bound to bump into someone you know every now and then, no matter what crime you choose.
A scream tears through the living room and I flinch, dropping the remote and pulling my gun from my waistband, where I’d hid it from Cortland when I sat down.
When it’s not on me, it’s stowed in a locked gun safe in my room in the back of the closet.
But when I’m on my feet and I glance at the TV, my pulse hammering hard in my chest, I see a man’s hand wrapped around a woman’s mouth, the butcher knife held to her throat, and I realize maybe I shouldn’t be trusted with a gun at all.
Fuck.
I take a breath in through my nose. Out through my mouth.
Close my eyes.
But in my head, I’m in a hotel room. Vomit coming through my nose.
I run my fingers through my hair, gun caught between my thumb and my skull and I feel unsteady on my feet.
I’m okay.
I’m definitely okay.
It’s just a movie and it was just a hotel room and whoever is fucking with me doesn’t want to hurt Sloane. They want to unnerve me. It’s rare, the person who shoots first and asks questions later. Especially if they know I’m a Leary. My family name is a line most sane people won’t cross.
How did they know I was texting Sloane, though? But it’s possible they didn’t. If they know anything about me, and it seems they do, they know she’s one of the few girls aside from Remi I even talk to.
There are possibilities. Women I could fuck or even marry. But after the last girl… I can’t.
I sink down to the couch and set the gun on the coffee table, then pull my phone from my pocket.
I open up my messages to Sloane. I know it’s probably nothing, but the adrenaline in my chest is rapid and unsettling.
Are you still up?
I stare at my screen, hoping she’s awake. It’s not really late, but it’s not like she owes me a reply.
My phone goes dim and I lean back into the couch, closing my eyes as someone gets murdered on TV.
Maybe I should pick a new genre because I’m still feeling twitchy.
I hold my phone over my head and open my eyes, and my pulse quickens as a stupid smile I can’t fight curves my lips.
Sloane
Yes, and the door is still locked, Daddy.
Fuck.
You missing me?
I shouldn’t fuck with her, but I do like her, and I feel calm with her. Besides, whether this is a thing or not, I don’t want anything to happen to her on account of me.
I know these are excuses, but she’s leaving next year. In the spring, she’ll graduate, and she’ll leave this place and me far behind. I tell myself I’m glad. I tell myself she’d never survive me. I tell myself I can’t deal with a complication.
I tap the side of my screen and want to roll a joint. But since the hotel, I’ve tried to let the habit go for a little bit and now it seems I’m replacing it with a prettier one.
I’m fucking missing you.
It’s not even a lie. I shift on the couch, leaning up, elbows on my knees.
The unmistakable sounds of two people having sex start up on the TV and I glance at the screen.
The woman has the butcher knife on the man’s throat as she rides him and he’s wearing a mask that obscures all of his features, but the way the nails of her free hand are digging into his shoulder blades, I don’t think she minds.
If anything, when she lifts her chin and her blond hair flows down her back, nearly to her ass, I think she’s fucking into it.
My screen glows brighter out of my peripheral and I drop my head down to read Sloane’s text, my pulse racing and I’m not even sure why.
Sloane
So you’re horny?
My breath catches because we’ve never done this before, whatever this is.
I imagine her in her apartment, snug under her lilac sheets and the cloud-like white comforter she owns, her long, bright blond hair piled into a thick bun on her head with a silk hair tie.
Fuck. Me.
Let me come over and show you.
The woman is moaning louder now and the masked guy groans, too.
I rest my temple in my hand and watch Sloane typing. If she lets me, I’ll drive over there right fucking now. Not to fuck her. I don’t trust myself with that.
To protect her.
Sloane
I just started my period and…
As if I fucking care. I’d go down on her and paint the inside of her thighs with blood from my tongue.
My leg starts bouncing and I squeeze my eyes tight shut for a second, clenching and unclenching my teeth.
It’s been so long since I’ve had sex, sometimes I think I might explode from want. If Sloane sent me a photo right now, I might even come in my fucking pants.
But it doesn’t matter. I’ve mastered self-control.
I think I’d dive into Sloane’s bed and hold her all night if she wanted me to.
Not that she’s ever seemed like she needed something like that.
I’ve been to her place but always with Remi and Cortland, and we’ve flirted, but nothing more.
I only really started to talk to her at all during Thanksgiving last year when Remi hosted a Friendsgiving dinner.
I was in a bad mood but she kept looking at me, smiling, and it reminded me of the one morning at West River and I obviously didn’t fall in love with her either of those times, but I can’t say I felt nothing.
Yet as soft and sweet as she is, there’s a way she keeps everyone at a polite distance that makes it hard to get inside her head and I don’t know what she actually thinks about me, but I want to find out.
At a party last year, Cortland wanted me to make sure she wasn’t too drunk to be on top of some guy, her tongue down his throat, for Remi’s sake.
She was drunk all right, but she smiled at me and politely told me to “fuck off” and it was the hottest thing I’d heard in a while, even with some guy’s hard cock straining in his pants beneath her.
I pop my eyes open and read her most recent text.
Sloane
I just got back from a date. I’ve got his cologne all over me.
Considering our nonexistent “relationship,” I don’t think she’s trying to make me jealous. And maybe another night, I wouldn’t be, but tonight I’m feeling thrown and too tired but not tired enough to sleep and there’s those unknown texts asking about her and…
Did you fuck him?
It’s not any of my business. I should let it go, but my knee doesn’t stop bouncing and I can’t stop glaring at my own phone as if it’s personally offended me.
Sloane
You mad?
I inhale sharp through my nose and try to be logical.
No, of course I’m not fucking mad, but… I mean, yeah.
I am. And I could hurt this guy. She has no idea the kind of world I live in.
Fuck him. If the hotel room with Dad taught me anything, it was how to be ruthless without regret.
Maybe I’m still working on the last bit but I wouldn’t be with some guy who got to fuck Sloane.
In the midst of my existential crisis, she sends another text.
Sloane
You can come over if you want but I’m not fucking you either.
A stupid sort of relief floods through me with her text. She’s playing coy, but she didn’t fuck him, and the thought makes me feel good even though it shouldn’t matter.
Wash his cologne off you or you’ll see me actually mad.
Guess I’m going out tonight.