39. Teddy
THIRTY-NINE
TEDDY
Binx rides in the pocket of my hoodie as Eden and I meander down the desolate dirt road, hand in hand, the two of us quiet. Something is on her mind, because she keeps chewing her bottom lip and staring at the ground instead of peering through the forest for her ghosts. Mist clings to the mossy trunks of the innumerable trees around us, and scant sunlight the hue of a pale, silvery fish glitters down in patches along the puddle-ridden muddy path.
“How’d you get out here?” she asks, head snapping up quickly. Her face is paler than usual, her hair tangled from our thorough and honestly beautiful fuck-session. I never knew an intimacy like that could be real—tangible— yet I’ve discovered it is, and I just want more . Forever.
I smirk down at her little doll-like face, those violet eyes round and innocent. She’s still just a little girl, hiding in the shell of an almost-adult. The voices have added new victims to their long list, bumping Miss Goss almost to the bottom in favor of decimating her mother and the man who molested her as a child. Although I am slightly apprehensive to share what the voices have demanded, I think Eden will understand when I disappear soon and hunt them down.
“Cash was owed a date, so I convinced him to have it at the diner down in Hangman Hollow. He dropped me at the end of the road and he’s picking us up there.”
Her brows slant and her eyes narrow.
“A date? With?”
I snort, tearing my eyes from hers and glancing around us to ensure nothing follows. The spirits are allowed to.
It’s humans and voracious mountain lions I’m worried about.
“Juniper.”
She stops in her tracks, our arms going taut between us, and I glance down at her again, our height difference so much more stark when we’re not horizontal. It sends that shiver of pleasure down my spine, how little and fierce my ghost is. I wish we had time to play another game of chase, but darkness is about to prevail, and I know the two of us have finals to study for to prepare for our last week of school.
“Juniper? Juniper Wells?” she hisses.
“The one and only,” I quip, tugging her along and quickening our pace. She makes a befuddled face but relents, following me silently once more.
“Am I allowed to know anything about that?” she grumbles. I give her a sideways glance and smirk.
“I’m sure she’ll shit her pants when you get into the car. The gist of it is…Cash helps her. A lot. With various things. He’s just getting what he’s owed,” I say with a simple shrug. Her lips purse, and she cocks a brow at me.
“You said at prom it was a blow job.”
“I did,” I say, hiding my laughter. Hearing my innocent little Eden talk so brazenly warms the cockles of my heart.
“So she’s prostituting herself?”
I can’t fight my smile, and my eyes slice to hers sideways.
“I wouldn’t worry about Juni. She just hasn’t come to terms with the fact that she’s always been in love with Cash. He knows it, and he’s wearing her down.”
“You two,” she mutters, wandering off in her mind again. I give her hand a squeeze.
“You seem…distracted. After what we shared. You…you okay?” I hedge, fucking nervous for her answer. Her face pops up to mine again, and she somehow pales another few shades, the violet veins beneath her almost-translucent skin matching her eyes. She bites her plump bottom lip again, and I worry it’s going to fall off before we reach the end of the road.
“I’m…I’m good. Just weird sharing that and…being understood,” she says, whispering the last part. She swallows hard, and I wait for her to say more. “And I know you’re going to kill him.”
My veins become rivulets filled with lava straight from the core of the earth. Fuck, she’s perceptive, and it’s such a fucking turn-on, to be understood the way we understand one another without even trying. It’s like breathing air for the first time.
“Yes, I will, little ghost. Is that going to be a problem?”
Up ahead, there’s a break in the trees, and the gray, wet pavement peeks through the dripping boughs. The tempered yellow lines in the middle of the highway become interrupted by cherry red as Cash pulls to a stop right on time.
Eden doesn’t bother answering me, but I know by the squeeze of her hand that my newfound resolution to end the lives of those who’ve hurt her isn’t something she will stand in the way of. If anything, I’m sure she’d want to partake. The thought of teaching her to hunt, to kill…it sends a shiver down my spine that has nothing to do with the chill in the air and everything to do with white-hot lust rolling through me at the images the voices conjure up.
Reaching for the handle, I open the back door and allow Eden in first, though she’s tense, and Juniper turns in the front seat, her green eyed glare directed at my little ghost. The voices gnash their teeth at her, but I bite my tongue for Cash’s sake. For some reason, he’s really fucking into Juniper, has been for years. I’ll play nice as long as she does.
“How was it, lovebirds?” Cash says from the driver’s seat, grinning impishly.
“Great,” I say back, settling in and throwing my arm around Eden, pulling her cold body closer to my warmth. “We became parents today.”
“To a kitten,” Eden adds hastily, elbowing me in the ribs as I laugh. Cash snorts and I grin down at her.
“At the rate you two are going, I’ll be an uncle by next year.”
He eases back out onto the highway and flips around, and Juniper stews in the front seat, arms crossed and lips pressed thin. Eden doesn’t pay her any mind, but I know Juniper has bullied her in the past. Tired and unable to stem the voices as effectively as normal, I begin to pester her.
“How was your date, Juni?”
“Thought I told you to keep your freak mouth shut around me,” she hisses icily. I snort, and Eden tenses beneath my arm, fury written into all of the lines on her stunning face. Before she can jump across the seat and throttle her—which would be kinda fucking hot—Binx begins to mewl loudly, discontent in a car for the first time. Juniper whirls in her seat, glaring at his innocent face as he peeks from my pocket.
“You seriously brought that thing with you? It probably has fleas and rabies!”
“Juni, if you want my cock again, you should probably quit being an ass to my friends,” Cash chastises. Her face becomes a mottled crimson, her long, acrylic nails digging into her palms as she buries her fury.
“I didn’t agree to be paraded around in front of them ,” she seethes to Cash.
Before I can muster a smart retort, Eden beats me to it, and I watch in loving adoration as she defends me.
“You think we want to breathe the same air as you, Malibu Barbie? I can’t wait until you get a taste of the real world soon.”
I snort, and Cash tries and fails to hide his grin as we speed down the highway back toward Seattle. She whirls in her seat again, thick blonde hair swishing across her bony shoulders, her ire directed at my woman.
“And what do you know about the real world, Eden?” she spits.
The chiming of multiple phones splinters the tense silence between the two quarreling girls. We must’ve hit a spot of reception, and Eden is quick to fish her cell out of her bag, argument forgotten.
Shame. I was kinda getting turned on by witnessing it.
Cash answers his cell, and Juniper becomes absorbed in her phone as well. Being the only one without any sort of technology, I stare at the side of Eden’s face, my guts churning as she turns paler by the second, listening to a voicemail I can only catch snippets of.
When her eyes find mine, they are glassy with tears, and I grit my teeth against the impending wave of foreboding that threatens to consume me.
“What’s wrong?” I say softly. Cash glances in the rearview mirror at the same moment, pressing down a little harder on the gas pedal. A tear slips over the brim of her eye and rushes down her cheek.
“My…my dad. He’s…” she swallows thickly, and in my peripherals, Juniper sets aside her phone, turning to glance at Eden with a touch of worry in her gaze, their little spat forgotten. My eyes search Eden’s quickly, my heart pierced on a spire and left for the crows to feast upon.
“I’ll get you there, Edie,” Cash murmurs, taking the winding turns too fast for it to be safe. Eden holds my gaze, lips trembling as she shakes her head.
“He’s not going to make it,” she finally whispers to me.
The beginning of the destruction of the kingdom we’ve painstakingly built starts to crumble in that moment, for the woman I love is about to lose everything she’s ever fought for.
And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.