Chapter 7
CHAPTER
SEVEN
STORM
Rain beats against the windowpane of the second floor of The Veil and Sloane gazes at its downpour and gray-purple skies with something like fondness.
Her lips are turned slightly up and her fingers drum lightly against the glass in her hand, double shot iced latte with whipped cream and sprinkles of chocolate chips in the whip.
I half-expected her to order from the “Spooky Section” of seasonal drinks but I guess I don’t know her that well.
Just like I’m surprised she likes the storm, but maybe it’s the location, instead.
The Veil is a bar and lounge but they’ve started early morning breakfast too, closed for lunch, open again at dinner.
This early, we’re the only ones in the place, so we ducked into a blacked-out booth upstairs, the curtain cloistering us off from everyone else, all the decor in our section the same shade of midnight.
It gives the illusion of privacy, and for me, being on the second story feels more secure.
Then again, I don’t know who owns this place.
Allegedly, it’s used for moonshine and coke, but I’ve never known if those are rumors or based on any facts.
I’m a mid-level dealer for people with money; they want coke, I’ll get it to them.
Weed is a lesser business; it’s too easy to score.
Pills I don’t like but if the payoff is good, I’m not opposed, like the clientele I have based on Dad’s introduction.
It’s new recipes I want, though. Like the one I’m working on with Grey.
Personally, I think he needs to scrap the formula entirely.
The paranoia has strangely increased for me and it was one dose.
In two days, on Friday, I’ve got a meeting with him.
Little does he know I’m going to ask a lot of fucking questions and none have anything to do with teddy bears, the formula we’re testing.
If he knows who the hell is sending these messages, we’re going to have problems
I glance down at my empty plate. Bacon, eggs, biscuits…it’s all gone. The apple juice is drained too. I should get coffee; I’ve been up all night but I’m wired as is.
It’s the texts.
Unknown
Did you fuck her good?
It came in the middle of the night, almost morning. At first, I didn’t know what they meant. Same number who said I might be in trouble. But if they were really following me, they’d know I haven’t slept with anyone since the summer. Since after the hotel.
It’s not that I don’t like sex. It’s not that I don’t need it. I feel like I’m going to explode just looking at Sloane’s lips right now, the way they’re parted a little, shiny with what must be gloss.
Fuck.
Yeah. It’s not a lack of desire.
It’s something else.
I ignored that text because they seemed like less of a threat since they don’t really know what’s going on.
But then more came through.
Unknown
Sloane Stevens gets around but only if she doesn’t really like you. I guess you’re on that list, huh?
Those words got me out of bed.
I crept down the hall and checked on Cort, Remi, and Lyle.
Then I left, setting up the security alarm as I did and shooting Cortland a quick text to let him know since we don’t always use it.
I told him it was because I had to be at the marina extra early.
That’s a lie. I’m not working for Jeremy today.
Because of my paranoia, I got in the WRX, drove to the warehouse in the middle of the woods, up in the mountains, then switched into the blacked-out Jeep after I parked the Subaru in the building.
Sloane asked me how long I’d had a Jeep.
I told her I just got it which isn’t true either, but I don’t trust her. Not like that.
It wasn’t until I made it to Sloane’s apartment and saw the coffin nails littered on her pastel purple doormat that I knew I had to find her.
I knocked on the door, pounded the damn thing so loud a neighbor came out, silently gave me her middle finger, then slammed the door as she retreated back inside.
The coffin nails are in the console of my Jeep.
I haven’t told Sloane about them yet.
I told her I’d answer her questions here.
But now she’s across the table from me in her lilac set with her white manicured nails tapping on the glass of her latte, her pink lips curved upward and a lock of light blond hair tumbling around her pretty face and all I want to do is see her naked.
The hoodie has a deep V and I can see her cream colored sports bra under it and her clavicle bone and I flex my fingers on my lap to stop from imagining what it would feel like to bite her.
I need to get laid.
And not by her.
She’s leaving, but it’s not the future distance which bothers me most. Not yet.
It’s something worse: I’d care about how she felt afterward.
I can’t do that anymore.
I think of the hotel.
The woman’s mouth under my palm, the crushing weight of me over top of her, the way she squirmed but didn’t scream.
It makes me feel sick.
I don’t know who she was.
There was so little of her to see.
The coffin nails though, they’ve been in my dreams. Sometimes I think I remember why, but other times I wonder if the memory is something I dreamed too.
“Did you still wanna know why I brought you here or are you good checking out the clouds?”
Sloane whips her head toward me so fast the end of her long ponytail switches shoulders.
I wonder what it would feel like to twist her strands in my fingers and pull, but I force myself to hold her gaze instead of imagining fantasies I can’t have.
Her eyes are a color I’ve never seen, green but mixed with a completely different shade of blue than mine, and they have a black ring around them that drives me insane.
Fuck.
She wrinkles her nose up like I pissed her off and takes a sip from her latte.
A dot of whipped cream is on her upturned nose but I don’t dare say a word as she glares at me, then sets the drink down.
She stacks her hands on top of each other and I glance at them.
They’re veiny and beautiful and I remember how it felt when she grabbed mine as I led her off campus to the parking lot nearby.
“Why did you bring me here, Storm Leary?” She raises her brows. Hers are thin, light brown, and fit her diamond shaped face so well.
I tilt my head. “Did you end up fucking that guy?” The one she went on a date with. It’s been a few days between when she said she didn’t and now. She could’ve.
She narrows her eyes. “If I did, I don’t see how it would be any of your business.”
Everything about you is my fucking business now. “What does he do? Does he work? Or is he a pretty boy, surviving off Mom and Dad’s dime?”
Pops of color appear on the circles of her cheeks. “Go fuck yourself, Storm. Is this what you stalked me before sunrise for? To ask me about my sex life? I’m sure you’ve fucked your way through half the town and I don’t care about that so—”
“You don’t?” I ask her, my tone low. God, she’s so wrong.
She swallows hard and glances down at her drink. When she cuts her eyes back my way, she doesn’t so much as flinch.
“No,” she says, her voice cold. “I don’t.”
We stare at one another for a heartbeat.
The rain splatters against the window and thunder rumbles in the distance, long and low.
I think about Remi and Lyle. Cortland is off today too so he’ll be with them but if this person keeps texting me, they’ll need to go up to West Virginia to visit his dad and Tristan, his brother.
And I need to go to the Hollows.
But first I had to make sure Sloane was safe.
She is. I can be done now. A coffin nail is a threat but it was meant to get to me. I guess it worked.
I glance at the whipped cream still on her nose.
She must notice my focus because she brushes it off with her index finger, then puts her finger in her mouth.
I breathe in sharp.
She sucks the sugar from herself before she pulls it out with a pop.
Her eyes don’t leave mine.
Sloane Stevens gets around.
I don’t think of the rest of the text. It doesn’t matter, because she’s not fucking me and it’s clear she doesn’t really like me.
But her ass pressed to mine on her couch, holding her all night long, drifting into sleep with her in my arms, it felt like we liked each other.
Then again, she was tipsy or she’d never let me do that.
And I wasn’t thinking clearly because of those texts in the woods or I’d never show up at her place like that.
“You could’ve told me,” she mutters, stacking her hands again and looking at the table. I know she means the whipped cream.
I clear my throat but don’t say anything about it. I don’t tell her it was cute. That she’s so pristine and perfect, it’s hot when she’s messy.
I don’t say anything like that. Then I’ll start thinking about how I fucked the woman in the hotel and the memory makes me feel like I want to crawl out of my own skin.
And she saves me from having to speak at all when she looks up and asks, “What did you mean? About something on my doorstep?”
I inhale deep. If I tell her, she’ll be paranoid too, although I don’t really know if Sloane Stevens has a care in the world about anything. She lives in a lilac cloud and everything in her bubble feels too wholesome and good.
“Why did you ask where I was? Why did you come find me?” she presses, stubborn and gorgeous.
She’s from North Carolina’s coast, near Wilmington I think, and I can see it.
The ocean on her. Freckles and a tan even in fall like it never faded.
The unique accent that’s different from the mountains, the way it’s soft and a little faster all at once, but lazy, too.
Impossible to explain but it does something when I hear it.
“I’ve heard things about that guy you went out with,” I lie.
“What?” She scoffs. “Dax?”
I don’t mention the fact I didn’t know his name until this moment and she doesn’t catch the error as she rolls her eyes.
“He’s as honorable as they come.” She says it like it’s a bad thing. “I promise he won’t hurt me, Stormy, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She mocks me as she says it and it’s fucking hot. No one mocks me. No one teases me except Cortland on rare occasions. No one plays with me.
No one ever has.
Not my mom, and definitely not Dad.
The hotel room. The blood weighing down the carpets. The scent of it.
I almost gag and have to bite my back teeth to fight it.
“Besides…” She pulls her drink toward her and takes a sip, then sets it back down and stares at the rain lashing the glass. “I haven’t seen him since I saw you.” Her voice is quiet when she says it.
“Why?” I shouldn’t ask. It doesn’t matter. I need to get out of this booth, take her to her place, and go to the Hollows to find out who the fuck is texting me and why. But killing time with her is something I don’t hate.
She lifts one shoulder in a shrug, the material of her sweatshirt bunching up as she does. “He’s too good, remember?” She cuts her green eyes to me, like a challenge. Like she knows how bad I am and she wants me to offer myself up to her.
I’ve seen it play out. Good girl who wants to fuck a bad boy. She gets tired of it, though, always. It’s only glamorous when he’s making her come. Then she needs security, someone to pick up her pieces.
I can’t be stability for Sloane.
“So you’re not gonna fuck him?” I smile at her as I ask, even though if it’s any other answer but no, I might leap over this fucking table.
“I didn’t say all that,” she says, and she smiles back, evil and perfect, all at once.
I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. But for one single second, I think of her at West River.
The morning after I saw things I shouldn’t, when I discovered what kind of people my parents really were—all along, I thought I’d known, but I hadn’t, not until then—and she was in the hall, taunting me with that heaven I was cast out of.
Just like my own paradise lost. Because I knew then there would never be anyone on this planet who could deal with me the way my parents dealt with one another, and there would never be a world I wanted a thing like that anyway.
I brush my plate aside with my forearm, both on the table now, hands clasped together and rings clinking.
She glances down, then up, but her gaze lingers on the gold chain I still have around my neck. The same one she asked me about that morning all those years ago.
Is it real gold?
Nothing about my life isn’t real, beautiful girl.
I want to say it, but she probably doesn’t even remember the morning she changed my life in a single moment. She has no idea she fucking saved me, just the once, but the once was all I needed.
She swallows hard, her throat rolling, and her gaze comes back to mine. Her hands are in her lap now, and she looks like a good little girl, someone I could easily corrupt.
Would she let me fuck her in latex, only an opening for her cunt, so I could use her like I used that girl over the summer?
Would I?
If I’m not detached from sex, though, I can’t do it.
It doesn’t mean anything and I can never let it.
My parents taught me that.
“Do you want to know what was on your doorstep, Sloane?” I whisper the words inside the restaurant while the storm howls without.
She glances at my hands, so close to her body, I could rip her apart if I wanted. Slowly, she nods.
“Coffin nails.” I let my eyes fall over her body, then back up. “Do you know what I could do to you with a coffin nail?”
Her nostrils flare as she breathes in. “You wouldn’t hurt me.” But it sounds like a question.
“You have no idea what I would do to you. I could drive them into your wrists. Nail you to a fucking bed frame. I could spread you apart and really hurt you with them.”
Her lips press together. She narrows her eyes. Good girl. But she doesn’t say a word, and more importantly, she doesn’t fucking run.
She should.
“And that’s me being nice.”
She takes a breath. Her chest rises. Then falls. “Why were there coffin nails on my doorstep? Who put them there?” Her voice is paper thin. Her complexion has gone nearly gray. She doesn’t ask about what I said, and she tries not to show it, but I can see it in her eyes.
She’s terrified.
So I smile at her. And I fucking lie. “I did.”
She shakes her head once. “Why? Why would you tell me that and why would you text me so early and—”
I cut her off with the truth this time: “Because I fucking wanted to.”
“Liar.”
I don’t speak. I just watch her.
“You’re so full of shit and you’re nowhere near as scary as you try to be.”
I almost laugh, but I bite it back. “Not to you,” I admit instead. “Not yet.”