14. Ivy
Chapter fourteen
Ivy
Age Eighteen
The summer sun is low in the sky, cicadas singing their nighttime symphony in the darkness outside the windows. Nervousness coils in my stomach as I tiptoe into the living room and get a glance at Uncle Vitoli on the couch, an arm slung over his forehead as if he'd simply fainted there. He didn't, of course. I know the truth of it—the bottle of vodka that's currently hanging loosely in his fingers.
My breath is stale in my chest as I debate about taking the bottle from his hands and setting it on the floor. If I do, I risk waking him as I get close, but if I don't, I run the risk of him waking up when the bottle clatters to the floor.
I decide to go for longevity, so I creep close to him, trying not to breathe in the scent of the alcohol he's been marinating in as I let my fingers wrap around the neck of the bottle. I don't dare take my eyes off his pudgy face as I ease it away from him, letting his fingers slip away from the glass little by little. When he rolls over, I bite down on my lower lip and take advantage of his newfound comfort to slip the glass out from under his hand and then scramble away before his eyes can pop open and see me out of my room.
I'm eighteen, technically an adult, but he terrifies me as much as he did when I was eight, when I was twelve, when I was first old enough to realize that the way he regarded me wasn't normal. If he catches me slipping out of the cabin, he'll likely chain my door from the outside, and then who knows when I'll get my freedom back?
Once the vodka is in my grasp, I decide that I'll be taking it with me. He's drunk enough that by the time he wakes up and wonders where he put the bottle, I'll be back in my bed safe and sound, and he'll simply open a new one. I'll leave the evidence in the woods, and no one will be any wiser about where it came from.
I slip out of the front door without incident and let go of the breath I've been clinging to as soon as the door clicks into place—a click that sounds like a thunderbolt in the balmy evening. Sound carries here, and yet no one has ever come running when they hear the screams. Maybe it's their attempt at hospitality to leave the tourists to themselves, or maybe they just know it's in their best interest to look the other way. Regardless of the reason, nobody seems to care that we're here… Just like at home, I'm invisible.
It's why I like the pain; it reminds me that I am alive, and I guess as long as I am, there's hope for my life to change. It's not the pain of my father's hand across my face or the feel of his leather belt against the backs of my thighs that I crave, though. I don't want to sit around and wait until I breathe the wrong way and get slapped across the cheek or say something that's considered disrespectful and get kicked to the ground. I crave the predictable pain I can give myself—the bite of a blade, the drag of nails against sensitive skin. I almost like to see my own blood when I'm the one bringing it out of me. I think it's why I like vodka when I first take a sip. It burns against my tongue, but I've got it curled, creating a funnel to drink it down. It burns again at the back of my throat as I pull the liquor away from my lips and gasp for air, coughing at the sting.
I wonder if Uncle Vitoli likes vodka for the same reason. I have a hard time imagining him liking pain, though. He just seems to enjoy inflicting it and then forgetting that the world exists beyond the bottle.
It's getting dark, and I've never traipsed along the mountainside at night before, but I couldn't stay in that cabin a second longer. I needed to get out and breathe fresh air, even if it meant that they'd punish me for it.
Since visibility is bad and I didn't bring a flashlight, I decide not to take the mountainside up to my favorite getaway place, deciding it's better to stick to the road that I can see enough of thanks to the moonlight slipping between the breaks in the canopy of trees. No one will be coming up the road at this time of night—we aren't just the last house on the left, but we're the last house on the entire hill.
My parents are out for the night, which is why Vitoli is here to babysit me as if I'm not entirely capable of handling myself... as if he does anything when he's here anyway.
The further I get from the house, the more distance I put between myself and that prison, the more I can breathe. It’s like his hands are loosening from around my neck. And the more I drink, stopping for a few seconds at a time to tip the bottle back and let it work its magic, creating a path of heat down my throat and into my stomach, the better I feel. I'm liberated when I'm alone in the open, but the moments are so rare that I sometimes feel lost without the security of my cage, my collar. Not tonight, though.
Tonight, the moon is on my side and my problems are all behind me, which is how I end up walking a little too fast down the hill and stumbling, my toes catching against the gravel. It bites into my palms as I fall to the ground, the bottle of vodka rolling away from me. It was low enough that none of it pours out onto the ground, and as I reach for it, I'm grateful.
The headlights come at me fast—I barely have a chance to scramble to my feet before they're there, blinding me as I look up at the sudden intrusion, confusion numbing me for a moment. I hear the screech and the kick of the gravel as the car comes to a quick stop, and as I'm moving out of the way, the driver's side door opens, and someone steps out.
Shit .
Killian.
It's the first time I've seen him this summer, and I hate that it's like this. As much as I secretly crave running into him, I don't want it to be when I'm in his way.
The resident bad boy, he's made no qualms about how he feels about me—I’m annoying, spoiled, petulant, a waste of the precious mountain air that exists for him and other locals. He's hated my family from the moment he was sentient enough to realize we existed, and I don't exactly blame him. I have also hated my family for as long as I can recall. The difference, though, is that Killian hates me more than I hate myself—an impressive feat given that I don't understand why I am still walking around this earth. Maybe because it's always treated me with such apathy that it feels wrong to do something so dramatic as take my own life to leave it behind.
The weirdest part is that he didn’t seem to hate me from the first time we met, when he found me trying to run from home. He’d been kind then, or at least not cruel . He introduced me to his friends, and even though they were all boys, we got along so well. They called me weird, and they made jokes about me being such a girl when I wouldn’t catch toads with them, but they made my first few summers here tolerable whenever I could find them.
And then, out of the blue, everything changed. It’s like they flipped a switch, and instead of being friends, I became a nuisance to them. That was about five summers ago, and it’s been five lonely summers. Five summers of hiding mostly in my room, finally obeying my father’s demand to ‘stay away from the mountain trash’.
"Watch where you're going, bitch!” Killian growls, shoving me in the shoulder to demand my attention. “I almost hit you!"
I bite back the desire to ask if that really would have been such a bad thing, but figure the answer is yes, because hitting me would have probably done some damage to his car... and his car is his prized possession.
When he first started driving, he took over his mom’s Kia crossover, so his upgrade last year was probably a defining moment for him. When I stand on the balcony in just the right spot, I can see into Killian’s driveway, where he spent a good part of the last summer with Monty and Theo fixing that thing up, making it into what it is now. I won’t lie, it was a good show. As much as I hate to admit it, they’re hotter than any of the stuffy guys from the school I graduated from a few weeks ago. I guess I’m more into the rugged type—the antithesis of everything I am usually surrounded by.
"Sorry!" I mumble, grabbing the vodka bottle by the neck and moving out of the haze of the headlights.
I can hear Don’t Fear the Reaper playing from inside his car, though I’m pretty sure it’s a cover. The loud music on top of the headlight haze makes it hard to pull myself out of the way. Killian takes my laugh as a personal offense, pressing himself against my chest like he wants to fight me. “What’s so funny?”
“The song.” I laugh again, my lips feeling numb as I fail to keep the sound in.
They’ve been the reapers to me for my whole life—the boys of Reaper’s Row. The trash my parents warned me to stay away from; the no-good kids who are involved in some ‘dark stuff’ according to my mother. I wonder if the locals call them the same thing, if they fear these guys as much as I do, if they look forward to seeing them as much as I do.
I'm nearly past him when Killian grabs me by the arm and reels me against him. He smells like bonfire smoke and whiskey, and his touch is too warm for the staggering heat of the summer. It's unusually warm for this time of year; I feel sticky with the humidity that’s crept its way up the mountain in the wake of summer storms.
"I should have known it was you, Bambi. Running like always."
"Let me go," I mutter, pushing against the solid weight of his arm to try and get some leverage.
As a general rule, I avoid the three of them these days, but I don't let them control me. I'm allowed to walk around the mountain, regardless of what I know Killian is about to say. But he doesn't say it. The car door opens, and I turn my head to see Theo walking toward us, a smile on one side of his face that makes my mouth go dry. He's taller than I remember, and the shadow as he approaches me is somehow more intimidating because of it. His sun-bleached curls hang in his left eye, but I don’t miss the look in the right one.
Behind him, Monty sidles up with a smile that's softer. That's no surprise, since all of him is softer. He's always been kinder than the others, and yet his loyalty is to them. They’re his brothers—not biologically or even legally, but I guess they did make a blood pact when they were younger that they'd all always have each other's backs. Maybe if I’d been around back then, they wouldn’t have cast me out. Maybe I’d be one of them if I didn’t have to return to the staggering confinement of the city every summer.
"I thought we told you not to come back here, Tiger Lily?" Theo chuckles, drawing right up to where Killian stands with me pressed against him. I don't bother trying to free myself from his grip, refusing to give them any more fuel to antagonize me than they already have just by virtue of me being an outsider, let alone a girl.
"Don't call me that." I snap, anger lighting a path through me that the vodka fueled. It reaches through me, pools in my stomach, and dips ever so slightly lower. Monty grips the vodka and pries it out of my hands, holding it up to let the headlights shine on the label.
"Damn, Poison." He chuckles. "You're hitting the hard stuff, huh?"
I roll my eyes at him and try to slip out of Killian's grip again, annoyed that my moment of freedom was so damn short lived. Why did they have to stop me? Why do they hate me so much that they can't even ignore me?
"I can give you something harder." Killian whispers, his voice deeper than it was last time I saw him. It's weird. In some ways, it's rougher and deeper than before, and in other ways, it sounds slightly softer and breathy.
Theo's snigger is all the proof I need of the fact that they're fucking with me, and I don't like it. I swing my elbow back to try and catch Killian in a rib, but he drags me against his hard chest, a thick arm wrapped around me and trapping me there so that his breath skates on my neck.
"Fuck off." I grumble.
"So, you don't want something harder?"
He laughs, and I shake my head as the 'harder' thing he has to offer me makes itself known. I feel it against the small of my back, and it sends chills down my arms, making everything in me tighten with fear... or maybe not fear . Whatever it is, it's potent. I'm trying to wriggle out of his grip when he lets go of me all at once, and I nearly fall to the ground again.
The heat in my cheeks, put there by the vodka starting to work through my bloodstream, increases with my embarrassment. Theo catches me before I can fall, though, grabbing me beneath the elbow and pulling me back to the right center of gravity.
"Falling for me, Tiger Lily?" He mocks, stealing the thank you that was sitting on the tip of my tongue.
"You wish." I jerk out of his grasp and turn to get away from them, pushing further down the path.
"I've got weed." Killian's voice sounds just as I get past them.
"Good for you." I mutter, not bothering to turn back to face him.
Monty chuckles as Killian runs after me, his hands closing around my arm again. I turn to glare at him but find him watching me without the smirk I've come to think never leaves his mouth.
"You drink now? I thought you were too good for that?"
"I've never said I was too good for anything." I shrug.
"Yeah?" He laughs, his eyes glittering at whatever wicked ideas his brain just conjured. "Prove it."
"What?"
His smirk is back in an instant as he tips his head at the car. "Prove it, Bambi. Get in the car."
My eyes trail to the door that Monty left open when he slipped out of the backseat, to the two guys leaning against it, as amused as Killian with his antics, and then back to the boy in front of me. Except Killian looks more man than the boy I've grown accustomed to dodging around here.
"Where are you going?"
My heart thunders in my chest, knowing that getting in the car with them would be stupid. But I'm more afraid of what Uncle Vitoli will do to me if he finds I snuck out than I am of whatever these guys have planned. I've summered in this town for years, ten of which I've known these three guys.
They're loud and rowdy, and they like to tease me mercilessly, but they're not a threat. At least, not enough of a threat to stop me from getting into the car.
Monty whoops excitedly as I slide into the backseat, giving Killian a look that says, your move .
When he sinks behind the wheel, I realize just how big he's really gotten. I guess I grew too, so the difference in his size hadn't seemed as acute when I stood by him. But now, seeing him folded behind the steering wheel of the Impala, I realize he takes up a lot of space.
A shiver runs through me, but I hold it tight, refusing to show that the gun sitting on the dashboard just gave me pause. Guns are common around here. There’s all sorts of things you need to protect yourself from in the woods—bears, coyotes. It’s not lost on me that these guys could be the most dangerous thing out here.
"I'm impressed, Poison." Monty says, winking in my direction. "You've got balls."
"Balls?" I laugh as Killian reverses back the way we came, taking us down the hill backwards. My throat feels thick, and my stomach is jittery, but I refuse to let them see that they scare me.
"Getting in a car alone with three men?" Theo explains. "Not the smartest thing you could do."
"No.” I swallow. “The smartest thing I could do is take that gun on the dashboard there and blow my brains across your backseat. You'd be stuck with me forever that way."
"Fuck." Monty whispers, and when I turn to him, his onyx eyes are wide. "That's dark."
I huff out a laugh and lean back, relaxing against the seat.
"You have a death wish, Bambi?" Killian's voice is thick, and when I flick my eyes up to his green ones in the rearview mirror, he's watching me intently.
"No." I shrug. "But I'm not scared of you."
"You should be." Theo says, digging around in the glove compartment for something before straightening up with a plastic baggie in his hand. I think it's supposed to be a stupid scare tactic, but then he continues. "Killian's a real psychopath."
"That so?" I muse.
"Yep." Monty agrees. "He has a thing for blood."
Me too.
I almost say it, but I bite it back and roll my eyes instead, the way I'd planned to a minute earlier.
"Pick your poison, Ivy." Theo says, turning to grin at me as he holds the little plastic baggie up between us. It's full of pills—far too many of them to pass as a raid on their mothers' antidepressants.
"What are they?"
"Think of them like Skittles." Monty says, winking. "Pick one and taste the rainbow."
"Is that what Theo tells you when he asks you to suck his dick?"
That gets a surprisingly loud laugh out of Theo, who claps the dashboard with amusement.
When Killian turns to glare at him, he just shrugs. "Come on; that was good. Our little Ivy is getting so witty."
"Pick one..." Killian says, sounding bored. "Or you can have the weed."
I don't want to have to smoke anything, but I don't hate the idea of getting high. The alcohol didn't get much chance to numb me yet, but I bet something else will.
"Fine."
I close my eyes and stick a hand in the bag, sifting through the pills until I pinch one between my fingers. When I open my eyes to watch as I draw it out of the bag, my fingers are closed around a little blue one. It looks innocent enough, but a little bit of fear slithers in my stomach as I stare at it. My eyes flicker to Monty, seeking reassurance, but he just shrugs.
"I'm not sure. Could be Molly, could be Valium."
It doesn't really matter what it is, I decide, because I don't want to be me tonight anyway. And that little pill promises that I won't have to be.
When I place it on the tip of my tongue, it doesn't immediately disintegrate, so Theo passes me the Vodka bottle he took off me to chase it down. It goes down smoother than any of the other times, and in spite of myself, I feel myself truly beginning to relax.