Chapter 47 Haven #2
“Tonight’s party?” I say, feigning idiocy. “Why? Think it’s got something to do with this?” I wave a hand in the vague direction of upstairs, where I assume the break-in happened, because I can’t see anything out-of-place down here.
Except a shitload of upset sorority girls. Someone is off sobbing in one corner, and someone else is still demanding to know the whereabouts of her purses.
It’s Melissa. She’s super emotional when she’s been drinking. And she loves her purses.
See? I can be a detective too.
Thatcher taps his pencil against his notebook. “I never said that.”
He didn’t imply it either. But now that I’ve said it out loud, I can’t shake the thought that whatever happened upstairs is connected.
Not to the Rain Dance, like Thatcher so carefully didn’t imply.
To me.
Not because, as Kai dramatically stated, I think the world revolves around me, but because what are the chances this doesn’t have something to do with me and Kai?
I did force him to suck Professor Rooke’s dick. At gunpoint. I didn’t accept his measly apology. And I didn’t stop Melissa warding him off with pepper spray.
The way he’s been looking at me this week—like he soaked me in gasoline and now his lighter doesn’t want to work—made it very hard to keep calm and carry on.
It would be totally understandable if he’s feeling a teensy bit…resentful.
My gaze snaps back to the cop. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me, like he can read my mind.
Thank God that’s not possible.
When he just keeps staring expectantly at me, I give my arm a nervous scratch. My damp, itchy skin suddenly feels two sizes too small.
“Can I go now?”
“Look, Miss Lee, there’s no need to be cagey. I don’t care how much you had to drink tonight, or if you took any other substances…” He locks his legs, looking like he can stand that way for hours if he has to. “I’m just after the facts of this case.”
Now it’s a case?
I swoon, scrunching up my face, and wishing I could produce tears on the spot. “You know, I’m not feeling all that great. The booze, the excitement…”
He’s nonplussed. “I just have a few more—”
“Look, Officer Thatcher—”
“Deputy.”
“—Deputy Officer Thatcher, unless you want me puking on your nice shiny shoes, then—”
“Ugh!” Melissa appears at my side, glaring at Deputy Thatcher.
“Your friend won’t tell me anything! He just keeps saying we can’t go upstairs.
” She runs her hands over her hair, grimacing.
Like mine, it’s starting to frizz. Guess there’s not enough product or flat ironing in the world to combat this rain. “I need to check on my things!”
She pauses, hands still on her hair, and eyes the deputy up and down. “Damn. You’re fucking hot.” She gives me a filthy, lopsided smile. “He’s hot, right?” Her face clears. “Or’m I just really drunk?”
I purse my lips, wiggling my hand. “Meh.”
Thatcher clears his throat, sending a terse smile her way before focusing on me again. “How about we pick this up tomorrow, Miss Lee? If you’d please give me your number, I can call to confirm your whereabouts—“
“He wants your number!” Melissa stage-whispers loud enough that a dead-drunk girl propping herself up against the wall beside the front door squints over at us.
“Phone’s broken,” I say.
It’s not entirely a lie. My phone is in pieces. No one knows about the one Bastian gave me.
“Oh, yeah.” Melissa nods sagely. “It really is, Officer.” That dirty smile crawls back onto her mouth. “Howabout I give you my number…?”
Thatcher’s mouth tightens as he side-eyes Melissa. “I’ll find you,” he says to me.
Ha ha. No, you won’t. Call it a skill.
He scribbles something in his notebook and gives me that same blisteringly polite smile before walking away.
“Mm-mm!” Melissa ogles his ass as he walks away. “We’re going to the Gs. Don’t know where everyone’s gonna sleep, but I guess we’ll figure it out.”
I stare after the Deputy. I only confirmed what he already knew, yet somehow I’m filled with a sense of dread, like I said way too much.
If there’s going to be some kind of fallout from this, I need to be prepared. First, I need to know if Kai’s even responsible for this mess.
But if I can’t go upstairs…
I whip my head around to look at Melissa. “Who called the cops?”
“Abigail. She was the first one back. Remember, she had too many—”
Thankfully, Melissa cuts off when I raise my hand. My stomach is way too tender for a rehash of that story. We all heard her retching in the bathroom.
“Where is she?”
Melissa points, and I grimace when I see Deputy Thatcher talking to Abigail.
Come on, man.
“I need to talk to her. Find out what happened,” I mutter.
“Yes!” Melissa grabs my arm, giving me a hard shake. “She’ll know about my purses. If something happened to my Hermès, I’m gonna rage.”
“You gotta distract the cop.”
“How?”
“I dunno. Give him a statement or something.”
Her eyes narrow as she turns to look at Thatcher. “Fuck a statement,” she mutters. “Ima give him enough probable cause to arrest me.” She struts over to them like a supermodel on crack before I can get a word out.
I roll my lips together, my eyes misting.
I’ve never been more proud.
Deputy Thatcher recoils when she arrives at his side, eyebrows furrowing at whatever she says to him. But a second later, he’s dismissing Abigail and grabbing Melissa’s elbow to lead her out of earshot.
I should be shocked, but it’s Melissa. I can’t think of any guy who wouldn’t want to fuck her. Although it kinda just looks like they’re arguing.
Whatever.
I hurry over to Abigail, pulling her into the kitchen by her arm. Her face is pale, her eyes bloodshot, but she looks more shaken by all the activity in the sorority house than by her mild case of chocolate-alcohol poisoning.
“What happened?” I whisper, crossing my arms and darting quick glances over at Thatcher and Melissa.
“Don’t know how they got in. Everything was still locked when I got here.”
“Probably climbed through a window,” I say, waving a hand. “What did they take?”
“I don’t know. It was such a mess. You’ll have to see for yourself when they let you up there.”
“What…” I trail off with a low groan.
What was a tiny, sneaky suspicion when I saw the police lights has evolved into icy dread.
“It’s just me and Melissa’s room, isn’t it?”
It’s rhetorical.
I already know Abigail’s going to nod her head before she does.
What the hell triggered Kai to do something like that?
Her face drains of what little color it had left, and she presses the back of her hand against her mouth. “Oh, God,” she moans, her eyes squeezing shut. “I think I’m going to be—“
I hurry away before I can hear the rest. Melissa’s trailing a finger down Thatcher’s chest, despite the angry frown on his face. She wasn’t kidding about getting arrested.
Tucking the black pumps Melissa lent me under my arm, I make sure no one’s watching me, and slip out the front door.
Rain patters down on my hair and face as I splash down the street. It’s drumming so hard on the road and the houses I pass that I can’t hear anything else—a solid wall of water and sound that makes me feel like I’m all alone in an alien landscape.
Or it could be the booze.
I shield my eyes with a hand as I jog down the sidewalk, squinting across the street to see the Greek letters nailed above each front door. I spot a dark-blue door, the letters NEX in white above it.
Thanks, Thatcher.
I stand shivering for a long moment, dredging up some courage.
What the hell will I say to him?
Hey, I know you wrecked my room, what the fuck is your problem?
Avoiding him hasn’t worked. Forcing him into sexual servitude only made shit worse.
If we’re going to be in each other’s space like this all the time, then we need to work out some kind of compromise.
A truce.
I won’t spend the next few years of my life at war with my best friend.
My ex-best friend.
Maybe it’s the alcohol talking, but despite all the rage and hurt, I still see traces of the boy who’d do anything to make me smile.
Who’d painstakingly separate the green M&M’s from his candy and give them to me…
after he made me arm wrestle him, of course.
If that Kai still exists, surely we can figure out some way to coexist without destroying each other.
Fuck, maybe this is exactly what needs to happen.
I take a breath, wipe hair and rain out of my face, and run across the road.
A car horn blares.
It’s so close, so fucking loud, it’s like it’s inside my fucking head.
Headlamps paint the rain, casting a bright cloud around me. I can’t tell from which direction the light is coming. I nearly slip in my hurry to stop, in case I’m running into the path of the car.
Should have kept running.
When I turn, the car appears through the curtain of rain, speeding toward me at a million miles a second. The brakes lock with a demonic screech, and the car shudders as its tires try to grip the wet road.
Death should have been swift.
Done and dusted in a millisecond.
But the moment stretches into eternity. Or at least, long enough for me to question every life choice I’ve made up to this point.
Like how I keep struggling to claw my way out of this hole, even as life keeps shoveling dirt over my face.
How I cling so desperately to a relic of my lost childhood, when it’s obvious he’s changed for the worse.
How I’m willing to toss aside my dignity for even a sliver of a normal, when I should know by now that an apple-pie life never has, and never will be, on Haven Lee’s bingo card.
Maybe it’s better that it’s over now. Finally.
No more fighting for scraps. An end to those awful memories that surface at the worst times.
Just darkness and nothingness forever. Because, fuck, when it’s all said and done…I’m tired, man.
I’m so fucking tired.
Death, dark and solid, hurtles toward me.
And I fucking welcome it.