Chapter 22 A Place Of No Return
A Place Of No Return
Georgie drove slowly. But she didn’t seem to be paying particular attention to the road. I stared nervously ahead as we veered too close to the edge, and a sharp drop, more than once. Music filled the car, as she chatted about Jeff and how excited she was he would be home in time for the ball.
Apparently, Trent, Jodie’s boyfriend, would be home too. BJ had a date, and I’d be tagging along like a boil on their asses. I tried to protest about going, like I tried to protest about the sickening love songs that ground into my ears the whole ride. But she wouldn’t hear of changing either.
She asked a lot of questions about home and family. I gave her sheltered versions of the truth. But I told her the story of Tom and Kelly’s betrayal.
“Oh, Amy, that sucks. Your best friend. Jesus, what a cow!” She looked at me with a mixture of sympathy and annoyance.
An an oncoming car blasted its horn as she veered toward the wrong side of the road.
My heart skittered in my chest and my nails gripped the edge of the seat.
She corrected the car and glanced back, scowling.
“And Tom, he’s a fucking ass, no wonder you ignore every male who looks at you. ”
Two Peaks was appropriately named from the two mountains looming directly behind the town. It was a lot larger than Church Heights and had a lot more shops, including the dress shop we were headed to today. Georgie jerked the car to a halt outside of the store.
“What’s that saying? You have to get rid of the clutter to make way for the new?
You have us now. So goodbye Tom and Kelly, hello Georgie, Jodie, and BJ.
” She smiled, and it was infectious. “Oh, and Sarah—I can’t wait for you to meet her.
She’s Bob’s daughter. She’s awesome. Funny like me and sweet. You guys will hit it off.”
Bob was going to close the shop for a while when she came home to spend time with her.
I’d offered to keep it open for him, but he said it was a quiet time of year, and avid readers would stock up.
I got the impression he didn’t need the income, and the bookstore was just something to fill his days.
“Is she coming to the ball?” I asked, hopeful she was, and then maybe she would be dateless like me.
Georgie shook her head. “No, I’m not sure when she’s coming home. They are all going traveling—Bob has hired a camper van and Sarah is beside herself. Can you imagine being that cooped up in a caravan with your parents?” She chuckled, as she pushed the shop door open.
I lagged behind her. “Does everyone else have a date to go with?”
“Yes, probably.” She glanced over her shoulder and must have noted the look on my face. “Why don’t you ask Karson to take you?”
“What?” The shock stopped me in my tracks. “Don’t be absurd! Girls don’t ask boys.”
She shrugged. “It’s the twenty-first century, Amy. BJ’s date, Gina, asked him.” She leaned in and spoke in a hushed tone, raising her eyebrows. “She’s a cow, by the way. I can’t believe he said yes.”
The dress shop was huge, and beautiful. There were full-length antique gold-framed mirrors and large chandelier crystals caught the light and glittered around the room.
Gowns hung neatly along the wall to the right on a copper railing. Huge changing rooms divided the room in half, and the other side was full of men’s suits.
Georgie bounced over to the gowns.
“Here, try this one,” she said, pulling out a long, fully sequined silver gown and holding it out for my appraisal.
I wrinkled my nose. “Um, no. Perhaps something a little less standout.”
Georgie folded the dress over her arm. “Oh well, I’m trying it.”
“Let me take that to a changing room for you.” A petite saleswoman with bobbed blond hair approached us with a pleasant smile. The name badge pinned to her white blouse said Jane.
Georgie grabbed a long red one, a full blue dress with a sequin bust, and a white strapless, fitted gown. She came out in the blue dress first, with a full tulle skirt and sequin bodice. I tried not to laugh—she looked like a toilet dolly.
“Too much?” she asked, seeing the expression on my face.
“Too much,” I agreed, grinning.
“Okay, in you go,” Georgie said, pulling my hand and directing me into the change room beside her, hanging a sequin gown and a red one up.
I sighed. I tried the silver glitter dress on first, and the sparkles bounced off the walls like a disco ball. I hated it. “This is a definite no,” I called out.
“Surely it can’t be that bad. Show me then,” Georgie called back.
Hesitantly, I stepped out into the room, glad no other customers were around to see me.
“Oh.” She grimaced, her eyes sweeping over my body. “Right, that’s not fabulous. Let’s try the other one.”
I went back in and pulled on the red dress.
It fit like a glove. It was so low-cut at the front that it opened to the top of my belly button.
One wrong move and my nipples would pop out like a nun doing squats in cucumber patch.
It was the most stunning gown I’d ever worn.
And I didn’t feel at all comfortable in it.
“Also a no,” I called out, stepping out to show her, because I knew she would insist.
“Hello, Amelia.”
The voice ran a current straight through me. Startled, I pivoted.
To say Karson looked handsome was way too bland a word to describe what stood before me.
My heart took off, charging forward, and it thudded so loud, I worried he’d hear it.
He wore a fitted black short-sleeve shirt and beige pants, and he was holding a suit wrapped in a white cover in one hand.
His shirt had the top four buttons undone.
The stretchy fabric curved around his sleek, tanned chest, and the tattoo peeking out was a black raven.
I craned my neck, trying to see more detail, but I stopped gawking like an idiot when I realized he was watching me with a bemused expression.
He couldn’t have heard about our shopping plans. He would have no way of knowing we would be in this particular shop, at this particular time.
Say something, fool.
I blurted, “Are you stalking me?”
His eyes glinted and he crooned, “And if I answered yes?”
A thrill shot through my stomach. Even though I knew he was only joking, I bit back a smile and stated, “Then I would be the one calling Matt.”
Karson’s full lips lifted into a smile that lit up the room. I couldn’t help smiling back.
His eyes drank all of me in, and the hazel deepened. “You should wear that dress. Red looks stunning on you,” he purred. Purred. In a way that stroked my skin. My nipples hardened, and I snapped my arms up, covering my chest.
His smile collapsed. He stared at the long blue bruise on my arm, then wrapped his fingers around my wrist. The touch was whisper soft, but it was electrifying.
My adrenaline spiked. My heart raced. My knees grew weak.
I felt an invisible force wrap around us, pulling us together, like a gentle current I wanted to be swept away in.
He studied the bruise as if it was an atrocity he needed to rectify. “You’re hurt,” he growled.
“It’s nothing,” I mumbled, embarrassed by his overkill of concern for a simple bruise. Embarrassed by my body’s reaction. If he touched me any longer, I wasn’t going to be able to control myself—I’d drift in.
Karson didn’t take his eyes from mine. Maybe it was the dim light, but his pupils seemed to dilate until the hazel color became almost black.
Did he feel it too?
“Oh my god, Amy, you look gorgeous,” Georgie squealed, popping her head out of the change room, the curtain draped across her naked body.
I pulled my hand away and stepped back, my face flushing.
I stood awkwardly as my brain searched for words, the perfect thing to say. I came up with nothing. The annoying man, with his perfect face and perfect lips, almost laughed, completely amused by my embarrassment.
“I hope you’ll dance with me Saturday night, Amelia. That is, I assume, given your outfit, that you won’t be on bouncer duties this week?”
“Funny,” I muttered.
“Georgie.” He nodded at her, then turned and left, ending my exquisite torture.
I stared after him, watching as his slacks hugged his tight ass. His legs seemed to float across the floor.
“It should be illegal to be that hot,” Georgie whispered. “Amy, he’s so into you. I almost asked him if he had a date for the night.”
I swung back. “I would have killed you.”
She grinned. “He likes you.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said tensely, too scared to allow myself the thought and hardly believing I could be so fiercely attracted to a man so soon after Tom. “Just hurry up and find a gown.”
Jane handed me a strapless emerald-green gown with a sweetheart neckline. Its soft fabric was fitted down to below my bottom, then gently cascaded out. It was simple, but elegant, and I didn’t need to try on any others.
Georgie, on the other hand, tried on half the shop before finally deciding on a blue strapless dress with a fitted bodice and fuller skirt. I was beginning to think we’d never get out of there.
On the way home I noticed the sign to Church Heights again. It read:
Church Heights
Population 3561
A place of no return
I frowned. “Why did they change the caption on the sign?”
Georgie squinted at the sign. “It’s always said that. It’s because everyone ends up stuck in this shithole. It’s like a living graveyard; once you come in, you never get out,” she said with a spooky voice and laughed.
“No,” I insisted, “when I came, I’m sure it said ‘A place to start again.’”
She shrugged. “Probably kids playing pranks.”
I turned my head to look out the window. The first caption didn’t look like the work of kids. It looked like it had always been there, as old and faded as the one there now. Then I was thrust back to a time before now.
I woke with a start. Something had torn me from my sleep.
I lay on my side, curled into a ball, and stared into the thick black of night.
The ghostly pale moonlight drizzled through the window, the layers of darkness peeling themselves back as my eyes adjusted.
The curtains on the window were draped to the side, like a gaping mouth.
The creak of a floorboard, the third step from the bottom of the stairs.
Someone was in the house.
I jolted up, blinking to clear my vision, and what I saw took the breath from my lungs. A man dressed in black was standing at the end of my bed.
My heart stopped. My throat squeezed shut. I opened my mouth to scream, but all that came out was a pathetic whine.
“Go away, go away,” I begged in my head. I couldn’t make out any detail of his face; there was just his dark shadow. He took a step toward me, and I screamed.
The nightmare could’ve possibly been a trait of delusional disorder, I’d heard the therapist tell my parents. Maybe I’d been so desperate to start again I’d somehow conjured up the caption. I’d imagined the sign just as I’d imagined the man? I swallowed heavily.
“If Karson doesn’t try to taste some mint chocolate on ball night, I’ll run in the streets naked. He’s so hot, you’ll be dripping cream down his cone everywhere.” She giggled hysterically.
I laughed. “You know I’m going to hold you to that.”
We turned up the road toward . . . A place of no return.