Chapter 18
Quinn
Sitting at the worktable in my shop’s kitchen, I flip through Winslet’s diary, trying to concentrate on something other than Lucas.
I won’t tell him, but I liked last night for more than just the orgasm. He felt close to me again—like he still belonged to me in the way that I grew up with.
Different, but still a pair. Him looking out for me. Indulging my curiosity and my need to learn and to keep it a secret, except now we’re adults, and I need other things.
Oh, God. I don’t hate him like I said I did.
I just wish his attention didn’t give me whiplash. Half the time, I’m walking into a wall, and the other half, he’s as gentle as a breeze.
Blowing out a long breath, I blink my eyes back into focus and train them on the diary. I’ll see him later and “think” about him tonight when I’m alone.
I flip through the pages, trying to discern some sort of timeline from the clues.
Her entries are similar to the ones in my journals, whereas they’re not arranged as a narrative, so to speak. Neither of us tell stories.
I make lists.
And she rages in single-word thoughts, as if she’s trapped deep inside her head and doesn’t even know her own language.
Clusters of blank pages appear in between scribbles, notes, and hand-drawn maps. A blue pen running out of ink would disappear in favor of pencil or Sharpie or a fountain pen, but then reappear later in the book.
It’s all the same writing, though. I turn a page, seeing the upside-down script and pinch my brow as I turn it around to read. It’s like she just grabbed the book in fits, flipped it open, and spit out emotions wherever she could find space.
The only times she displays any semblance of control are when she draws.
Cars are a common theme. Illustrations, only in black and white, of a vehicle underwater.
Another of a scarf hanging out of a trunk as a hand pries open the lid.
The Shelburne Falls High School black pirate flag adorns the end of the fabric just before the tassels.
Is the scarf hers? Or is she trying to say the car belonged to a Pirate?
If they were planning on shoving someone, especially one of their own, into the river, they wouldn’t have left evidence in the car.
There are drawings of a second vehicle too. I turn the page, widening my eyes at the sketch of the ’72 black Dodge that followed me the other night.
Rain crashes onto the windshield as it races down a deserted road in the forest, looking like something out of a comic strip in simple black ink. Words float around the scene.
*parents
*clock
*firewood
*clothes
*food
*scream
Is it a to-do list?
I do kind of understand these short, one-word thoughts more now. In my house with Lucas last night, and later on the phone, all I could think were in feelings.
He’s not satiating me. I just want more.
Winslet’s not so different.
I glance at the clock on the wall, seeing it’s after six. I’ve been here for twelve hours, working alone, but I’m finally ready for the holiday. Everything is baked, frosted, and stored until tomorrow when we transport it all to our booth in the park. In twelve more hours.
Still have to get through tonight.
I fan the pages, reading various entries written in no intelligible order and studying drawings. Fists gripping a steering wheel. A boy running away from a car. Blackhawk Lake and the waterfalls our town is named after.
Death Falls reads the title above the drawing of water pouring down over a mountain.
Took them from me, took them from me, took them from me...she scrawled on another page.
I shake my head as I run my finger over the deep indentation of the letters, carved into the paper. Maniacal and desperate.
*dark
*water in the air
*scent of earth
*keys like claws
*headlights
*now
*now
*now
*now
*now
*now!
My heart beats faster, like I’m her. Like I’m feeling the keys between my knuckles. Like claws.
Vengeance.
It starts to come together. Winslet MacCreary went missing, and everyone thought it was Weston. Hawke, Dylan, and everyone surmised it was specifically the Doran brothers.
But this notebook makes it sound like it wasn’t.
She was taken. Someone else tried to murder her.
And when she survived, she hid. Possibly at the summer camp, which was abandoned in those years, as she planned revenge.
Why did Manas push her away, though? And what does she mean by “took them from me?”
I flip the page, reading.
My heart never hurt when it was empty.
You make me wanna die.
Needles prick the back of my throat, tears rising to my eyes. I don’t know what an empty heart feels like. I’ve always had love of some sort.
I get it, though. The longing when you can’t have who you want.
Memories of Lucas watching me last night wash over me. You’ll never be able to act like I’m your friends’ little sister again. When he looks at me, he’ll remember what he saw, and when I look at him, I’ll wonder if he wants to see it again.
The backdoor opens, and I hide the diary before even looking up.
Aro strolls in. “Hi.”
“Hey.”
She stops and heaves a sigh, looking around.
I bow my head, going back to jotting down my to-do list for tomorrow. “In the cooler.”
I hear the spring in her step as she dives into the walk-in refrigerator. She emerges with two pink lemonade cupcakes, half of one already in her mouth. A summer staple I quickly learned that she loves.
“Hawke thinks we’re going to skinny dip tomorrow,” she says, taking a seat across from me. “But I’ll be too sugared up to stay awake.”
Skinny-dipping. I should add that to my list. If Lucas still has it. It occurred to me somewhere in the middle of the night last night that we checked one thing off. Performing.
I keep my smirk to myself, but it’s hard.
“Here to talk me into letting you in the tower?” I ask her.
“I’m here for the cupcakes.”
I toss her a glance, but keep from reminding her that I’m not stupid. Hunter might feel like he owes me conversation for stealing treats, but Aro isn’t chatty.
But while she’s here…
I stop writing, resting my chin on my hand. “What do you know about the Legend of the Night Ride?”
She shrugs. “It’s your legend, not Weston’s.” She licks the frosting and then clears her throat. “Hawke says that there’s a rider out there,” she tells me. “Just searching.”
I think of the black car that followed me in the dark. No headlights. “Searching for what?”
She shakes her head. “He just follows you with his headlights off,” she goes on. “One night, he saw a young guy at a gas station. It was late, dark. When the kid finished fueling, the rider drove out in his car from just behind the building.”
It had been waiting for him?
She continues, “It followed him, and when he was on Blackhawk Road, he noticed the vehicle in his rearview mirror. He turned, it turned. He sped up, it kept up.” She peels the wrapper off the second cupcake. “He raced home, dashed up his porch steps, and turned. Headlights blinded him.”
Never lead danger home. Never lead it to you when you’re alone.
An ancient memory from when I was a kid surfaces. My parents’ basement. Flashlights. Dylan, Hawke, Kade, Hunter, and me telling ghost stories. Another urban legend lesson.
“He can’t see the figure emerging from the car.
” She sets the cupcake down and leans in.
“They say he was killed by whoever was driving, but Hawke and I never found a record of it. But the locals started having fun with the story anyway, and that part is well-documented. Just slightly before your brothers’ time in high school, locals copycatted the Night Ride story.
Some high school kids would follow a girl they liked, or sorority girls would follow a teacher,” she explains.
“What would they do?”
She picks up the cupcake again. “Whatever manifested, I guess. Scaring each other.” She takes a bite. “Maybe some foreplay.”
Realization hits me. “Like the Marauders back in the day in Weston.”
“Mm.” She nods. “But sometimes, it wasn’t fun. Sometimes the person being chased realized too late that it was him instead—the real rider—and not some friend playing a joke. It got bad, so they stopped.”
So the rider attacked several people.
“If you see him,” she says in a teasing voice, “don’t lead him back to your house. Drive to a safe place. Or…just keep driving.”
“How do they know it was a he?” I ask.
“Because it always is.”
And she takes another bite.
Winslet’s diary is like a voodoo doll. Filled with scratches and screams and tears and written in a way that maintains no clear thought other than what her senses are picking up or the deterioration of her mind.
But the feeling is obvious. She’s talking and drawing about the Night Ride. The car in her illustrations is the same one I’m seeing. The one Aro told me belongs to the auto shop at Weston High School.
So the questions are; who was driving then, and who’s driving now?
My voice comes out as a whisper, “What do you think the rider was looking for?”
Aro is quiet as she slowly chews. “Whatever it was, he must’ve found it.”
Because he—or she—stopped.
To us, the legend was always just that. No one we know has ever come into contact with the rider. If it ever really happened.
A knock rattles the back door, and I jump, watching Lucas enter from the alleyway.
Aro laughs under her breath at me, but she’d jump, too, if she was alone here late at night with a secret hideout just feet away.
Lucas steps in, dressed in a suit, and I stop breathing for a moment.
His crisp white shirt stands out against his dark suit, and our eyes meet, the memory of last night making me almost shiver.
His dark blond hair is pushed over to one side as if he raked through it with his fingers, and I can’t help but linger on his sun-kissed skin that’s the same tone as I now know his naked chest and back are.