Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Holli came back for me.
I stare at her, not entirely convinced I didn’t just dream this up.
But then she looks at the door behind me, and reality settles in.
She’s mad at me. She’s mad at me, and Ky ran from me last night.
I’d been so crippled and confused about him running that I got in the shower to try and process it, then I was thinking about him, and one thing led to another and… oh fuck. She saw me.
And I’m naked in front of her.
My face heats up so much it feels like it’s on fire.
“Please, Holli, just…give me a second,” I plead. I reach out to grab her baggy shirt, meaning to guide her into the bathroom with me. But she jerks away, sliding my grip down to the pocket where I hit something hard. Hard like a rock. Like the rocks she smashes into my skull when she’s mad.
Instinctually, I snatch it up so she can’t hit me with it. Only, when I pull it out of her pocket, it’s not a rock. It’s a…vape?
A gold vape with a skull on the side.
“I’m leaving.” Holli steps into me and bumps her chest with mine, staring up into my eyes with fiery passion. Passion that makes me hard.
Holli’s voice lowers. “Let. Go. Of. Me.”
I do, because I think I’d do anything Holli asked me to at this point. I drop her clothes as my brain slowly works. I hold up the object from her pocket. The vape. “How…where did you get this?”
But Holli is already turning to the door.
That’s when I hear the door rattle. There’s a pause, then a curse, then a bang so loud I jump.
Someone’s beating the door in.
Before I can think, I shove Holli behind me. The door splinters open, and in strides Kyan. Immediately, relief floods my system, mixed with confusion.
He came back. But why not knock?
“Ky,” I breathe.
Kyan’s handsome face is fixed in a scowl, and he’s thrown his usually wild hair up in a top knot. His expression turns thunderous. “There you are.”
Confusion hits me for a second. I never left? Then I realize he’s looking past me at Holli.
“Oakley.” Holli is pulling on me, trying to yank us back further into the room, and there’s a frantic note in her voice.
“Is everything alright?” I ask.
Kyan’s gaze snaps to mine, and any hint of warmth from last night is gone. The lips that were all over my body now twist in a sneer. “Figures you’d be here with her.” He spits the word like it’s poison, and my body locks up.
Is he mad…about Holli?
“Where is my brother?” He looks past me like I don’t exist, gaze locking on Holli’s.
“I don’t know!” she spits back. “I’ve never known your stupid fucking brother!”
What the hell is happening? Why are they yelling at each other like they know each other?
Kyan takes a threatening step forward, and I’m reminded of the first time I met him. I knew he was dangerous, but he never acted aggressively like this. The cat-that-caught-the-mouse look is gone from his eyes. Now he looks predatory…almost like a wolf.
“Kyan,” his name spills out of me in a sort of plea. A plea for him to snap out of it. To snap back to the man who cuddled with me last night. The man who looked at me like I was…somebody.
Instead, he completely ignores me.
A humming starts in my ears. I know Kyan heard me, but his gaze is only on Holli.
They’re exchanging words, but I can’t hear them because out of nowhere, my chest feels too tight to breathe, and I feel small.
So small. Small like I’m a kid again, and Jeremy is ignoring me in the hallway, calling out to Andrew, hammering the final nail in the coffin of my invisibility.
It’s happening again. Only this time, the guy wanted to get in my pants. And I’m an idiot for believing that someone wanted to be close to me for me.
Suddenly, I’m angry. I’m so angry I feel like I can’t breathe. My pulse hammers in my ears, and all I can think of is to get away. I have to get away. I can’t stay here. I refuse to sit back and let this happen again.
For once in my life, I’m going to stand up for myself.
I take a step toward the door while the threatening shouts surround me. Threatening and angry and not at all like the Kyan I know. I stop, halted in my tracks by a magnetic pull that weighs me to the floor.
Holli. I’m not sure what his deal is, but I can’t leave her here alone.
I turn to see her facing down an enraged Kyan, and for a second, I’m frozen staring at her.
She doesn’t look like the Holli from her photos, or even the Holli I met on the beach.
Now, her gaze is cold. Shuttered, intense, and calculating.
Her stance is poised, as if she’s ready to spring forward at any moment, and it makes the hair on my arms stand on end.
In this moment, Holli doesn’t look like someone who needs saving.
She looks like a hunter.