Chapter 17
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
SLOANE
“That’s Dax, huh?” He asks this question with his eyes on the road, hand on the shifter, one gripping the wheel. I glance at the tattoos on his fingers over the shifter. Variations of knives and spiders and a distinct lightning bolt on his hand.
To think I held that hand just a week ago.
I cross my arms over my chest and refuse to look at his perfect jawline, his lips pressed together, those veins in his hands and up his arms.
I stare straight ahead at the dark, winding country road which leads to my house in twenty minutes or so, according to his phone open on the console, face up.
He only glanced at it once, when we were just starting out.
No way he memorized the directions but I guess we both lived in Aben, didn’t we?
Both went to high school at West River. No one had ever heard of him until he became a running back; apparently, he’d been homeschooled.
He was a wolf then just as he is now, but in a different way.
I don’t know why we never really talked back in school.
He was quiet and he always looked like he’d eat you alive if you ever spoke to him.
It didn’t stop me from trying once or twice but it never got me anywhere.
Cortland was the only person I ever saw him laugh with, and I don’t recall any rumors about anyone dating or hooking up with him.
Then again, he’d probably rather fuck MILFs, and I’m finally seeing the hidden charm which would make that all possible.
But I think back to how he touched me at the party. The way he put the cigarette out on Dax’s eye.
He’s hidden the charm away for tonight, I guess.
“Did he finger you out there? Were you gonna let him fuck you? Or did you already swallow all his cum down because he sure as hell doesn’t seem like the selfless type.”
I grit my teeth and cross one leg over the other, refusing to look at him or rise to the bait. Sure, I’ve got questions. About the coffin nails and the camera and the paranoia. But maybe I don’t want the answers.
I just want to be at my parents’ house. Even if Henry only talks to me enough to open the door, that’s fine with me.
Mom and Dad won’t be there which means I’ll be able to relax.
There’s so many fucked up memories in my house but it has nothing to do with my brothers and sister and everything to do with our parents’ nonstop fighting and how they’d sometimes pit us against each other and drag us in the middle of it.
“Say something, Sloane.” He says it in a low voice. Barely a whisper. That surprises me. And I actually turn to look at him when he adds, lower still, “Please.”
His handsome face is illuminated by the blue lights from his dash and I swallow the lump in my throat. It’s part anger, part wanting, part humiliation, all confusion.
But he asked nicely, even if the questions were rude.
“You interrupted that. The fingering, I mean.”
His eyes flash to mine for a heartbeat before his gaze is back on the road. He seems surprised I was so direct because he doesn’t really know me, does he?
“And no. I’ve never seen his dick.”
He shakes his head halfway, like he’s trying to get the words and the idea out of his head. The more I study him, the more I notice those shadows under his eyes haven’t gotten any better. Before I can say anything about it though, he speaks.
“You’re too good for him.”
“You put a lit cigarette out on his eye.”
“Oh, we already know you’re way too good for me. That was never up for debate.”
I raise my brows and open my mouth, but my stomach drops with his words and I don’t like them, not to mention I’m surprised he would say something like that.
Might be true but he seems too arrogant or indifferent to notice.
Maybe I don’t know him, either.
“I’m not sorry for it,” he keeps going. “The cigarette. He should respect you more than to touch you like that, there.”
“As I recall, you touched me too.”
He glances at me and doesn’t smile. “Did you hate it?”
I hug myself tighter and force myself to look away from him. I don’t give an answer. “Why do you look so tired?” I ask quietly instead.
Seconds pass, Bush drifting from his speakers.
“Machinehead.” I guess he does like some nineties music after all.
I expect he won’t answer me. That he’ll take my question as an insult or give me the same silent treatment I gave him when he asked me if I hated him touching me.
I start to think it’s better this way, us riding in silence.
I’ll hop out at the house and he won’t have to say another word at all to me when I do.
We’ll stop circling around one another because I don’t want to be in his world of shit and I’m moving in with Heather after my graduation trip and I’ve got my eye on a building space for my marketing agency after I get it off the ground and even if that doesn’t work out, I want to live at the beach.
Storm seems content here in the mountains.
I love it too, but I love the water and the sun and the ocean in the air more.
But after a moment, my eyes heavy and sleep tugging at me, he starts to talk.
“I did something bad Sunday night.”
The little hairs on my arm stand on end.
I hunch my shoulders close and don’t look at him.
“Who’d you hook up with?” I joke because I’m uncomfortable but we both know it wouldn’t matter to me if he fucked someone else.
At least…it shouldn’t. And the hypocrisy of it would be astounding, since maybe I didn’t let Dax finger me but I would have and he was right there anyway.
“You’re funny,” he says, but he doesn’t sound amused. “And you wouldn’t care. This was much worse than that.”
I would care. It’s on the tip of my tongue. And I’m not sure if it would be worse for my heart but that’s a tangled web I don’t want to weave.
“Go on.” I glance at his knuckles curled around the gear shift and have the sudden urge to fuck his fingers but I try to focus on the matter at hand. He did something bad. How bad? How worse? Like…worse than he usually does?
He doesn’t keep talking though.
I try a tactic I’ve used with my siblings in the past. Sometimes they might want to share something but they don’t want to say it. They need me to ask.
“Where were you?”
He tightens his finger on the wheel and it makes the bones in his forearms flex. “I went to someone’s house, then I had to go to the marina.”
I don’t know what marina he’s talking about. There are lakes dotted all up and down the Blue Ridge Mountains. But I don’t think the exact location is the important part.
“Okay.” I take a breath. My heart beats fast because we’ve never discussed anything I’m about to ask out loud.
“Were you…dealing?” Is that even the word to use?
Is there some slang I don’t know? The only drugs I’ve done are pot and appetite suppressants.
Marijuana makes my heart race and so does the other, actually.
I try to stay away from both now. Try, anyhow.
He shakes his head once but he doesn’t correct my word choice or tell me to stop asking questions.
“Whose house was it?” I wonder if I want to know even as I ask. What if he was with some girl? I’d rather be ignorant.
“Someone I…work with.” The shadow on his face as he makes a turn gives him an otherworldly glow. There’s all kinds of superstition in the mountains, particularly when it comes to the woods at night. He looks like something who might whistle back if you were out there.
I bring my feet up to his seat and wrap my arms around myself as I look at the desolate road. I can feel his eyes on me but he doesn’t tell me to put my feet down. Besides, I’d already kicked off my heels when I got in here.
“Why did you have to leave their house to go to the marina?” I press, my voice a whisper. It feels like we’re treading dangerous water here but I couldn’t say why.
“Something bad happened at the house.” He makes another turn, and we’re on my road, but the house is at the end. There are a few other two-story brick homes out here, and forest on one side of the street. I glance at my neighbors’ houses and don’t feel any comfort. Not right now.
“Okay.” I take a breath. “But why didn’t you just go home?” I feel shaky as my heart races and none of the vodka or wine cooler are doing me any bit of good right now.
“Sloane.” He drives slower and no one else is on the road. He said my name like he was desperate, but I don’t know what for.
“Tell me.” I don’t look at him as my house comes into view.
Southern brick, two stories, white window sills, a two-car garage.
I know it’ll be empty with Mom and Dad gone, and only Henry’s Sentra is in the driveway.
There aren’t any lights on. Behind the house is a gated yard, an inground pool we all begged for when we were younger, and past that, trees and hills.
I spent all the years between middle school and high school graduation in that house.
Over half of them I hid in my room with my fingers in my ears or my music turned up high to drown out the sounds of fighting. The other half, I tried not to be home.
Storm stops in the road, right before my driveway.
I feel him staring at me and I have the urge to duck my head and hide.
“The bad thing that happened at my friend’s house…it had to be dealt with. At the marina.”
No.
No, no, no.
I don’t believe it, the conclusion racing through my brain. There’s just no way. I don’t watch much television but I know enough about what marinas could be used for to “deal” with something bad that happened.
It’s not possible though.
Storm and Cortland both faced nearly a decade in prison because of what they did to Remi.
The case was dismissed and it never went to trial, but surely, they haven’t forgotten how the possibility felt?
Then again, allegedly he set someone’s house on fire who fucked with Remi in the aftermath.
But she’s never seemed scared of him, not since she’s been with Cortland.
And maybe Storm deals, but okay, like, giving a gram of weed to a kid at Ely U?
So what? That’s nothing, right? Or maybe it is, I don’t know what a gram means in jail time, if anything at all, but it’s not even close compared to what he’s suggesting.
Clearly, I’m thinking one thing and another thing is what actually happened.
Storm hasn’t turned into my driveway.
But no one is coming up behind us and we can see the house so Henry is safe and I doubt he’s looking outside anyway or even expecting me there at all anymore.
A tug of guilt pulls at my gut and I know I should’ve come sooner and I was so caught up in Dax and the feel of his hands on me, then there was the shit with Storm and…
We are so not good for each other, but at least I’m not a criminal.
I have to keep this all away from my brother.
He’s got two years left in this house. If Storm is into heavy crime, that’s two years Henry could be used as a pawn if I’m linked to Storm.
“You don’t want me to tell you after all, huh?” Storm’s voice sounds broken.
I stare ahead, unable to meet his eye. But there’s something in his tone that pulls at me. I shouldn’t want to know, not now. I should’ve never asked in the first place.
But despite the ways I want to keep my brother safe, I’m not a coward. I’m already in the car with him tonight anyway. I can’t undo that part.
“I’m not afraid of what you’ve done.” It takes everything in me to keep my words full of conviction. To make sure my voice doesn’t shake.
“I think you’ll change your mind soon enough. Your heaven doesn’t belong in my hell.”
I spin in my seat, my eyes locking onto his as I unravel my arms and clench my fists in my lap. “Tell me what you did and stop being such a pussy about it.”
He raises his brows, a small smile playing on his lips.
I’m not smiling but I am blushing.
When he swallows and looks away, his wrist resting now on the wheel, the smile is gone.
“Someone’s body is decomposing in the lake at the marina right now, and it wasn’t an accident.
When I close my eyes and inhale, I can still smell the bleach from the cleanup at the house.
The fire from burning my clothes, the ash in my eyes because I stood too close to the barrel, shaking, like a child.
And I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t kill them and I’m not entirely sure who did, although I have an idea.
But the reason they were murdered has everything to do with me and a stupid mistake I made.
I know this person isn’t going to stop there, either.
Those coffin nails on your doorstep were child’s play to all this.
Truth be told, I don’t know why they got them and not you first.” He looks at me then, with his last sentence.
My heart pulses too fast, but I still ask the stupidest question known to humankind. “Were you fucking them? The person they killed?” And even I hear the snarl in my own words.
This time, he doesn’t smile. “I didn’t even know them, not really.” He tilts his head. “But I don’t think that’s what you should be worried about, Sloane.”
No shit. And before I can stop myself, I snap, “Why not?”
And he says, “I’m not fucking anyone who isn’t you.”
“But we haven’t had sex and you…” I trail off, waiting for him to agree with my unspoken words.
But he lifts one shoulder. “I, what?” His voice is hard.
“You sleep around.” The accusation sounds weak, but it must be true, right? He had sex with Remi with all the boys and, I mean, look at him.
But he snorts and shakes his head. “There may be a lot of rumors floating around about me, and maybe most of them are true. But if that’s one, it’s bullshit, honey.”
Honey. It’s a pet name I would have said I loathed if anyone asked me, but why do I feel so warm with the word?
Without waiting for me to reply, he turns into my driveway.
“Are your parents home?” he asks as he parks beside my brother’s car.
I open and close my mouth, still processing what he said. Finally, a “No” leaves my lips.
“Good. I’m staying with you tonight.”
“But my brother—”
“Will be safer with me here, too. Don’t argue with me.” He turns off the car, and we’re cast in silence. “Not tonight,” he says, staring at his hands in his lap. “Please.”
When I glance where he’s looking, I see his fingers are trembling.
Nausea wells up inside of me, but I’m not afraid. Not of him.