Chapter Sixteen
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Kingswood kids aren’t as bright as the world thinks they are. Case in point: having a bonfire in the dead of winter.
If I hadn’t come along with Poppy, I never would have been able to find the party. She guided our Uber driver all the way across town to the edge of the forest, tipping him fifty dollars in cash before pulling me out of the car and toward an opening in the trees.
Waiting for us at the mouth of the path is an unfamiliar boy in a thick wool coat. Without a word, he holds up a plastic bin full of phones, blocking us from walking any farther.
“Seriously?!” Poppy scoffs, crossing her arms. The boy doesn’t say anything, just nudges the bin forward. After several seconds of silence, Poppy finally gives in with a groan. “ Fine .”
I clutch my phone like a lifeline. In a way, it is. I’m not going into a remote wooded area with Hunter. Sure, the service would probably be nonexistent, but no phone means no chance of getting help if I need it.
“Can I keep mine?” I blurt out. Poppy narrows her eyes at me from her place farther down the path.
The boy grunts in reply and shoves the bin closer to my face. “No.”
“It’s just my mom’s been texting me all night, and if I don’t—”
“About time you made it,” Hunter calls out before suddenly appearing at my side, practically out of thin air.
“Can we go, please?” Poppy urges, crossing her arms over her chest. Her coat might be fashionable, but nowhere near warm enough.
“I need to keep my phone,” I plead to Hunter this time. It’s easier to push down the revulsion when the alternative is giving up one of the only things keeping me safe. “My mom’s been super paranoid lately. If I don’t text her updates, she’ll send the Navy out to look for me.”
Hunter chuckles at my excuse, shaking his head at me like I’m a na ? ve child. “Babe, you’ll be fine.”
“But—”
“If you need to check your phone, you can go to the cabin and use it there. But don’t use it anywhere else, got it?”
The arch of his brow and purse of his lips feel threatening even though his tone is light. No one else says a word as he keeps his gaze fixed on me, jutting his chin toward my phone. “C’mon. We all had to do it.”
“Even you?” I ask, trying to keep the curiosity out of my voice. Make it sound playful.
“Even me,” he replies, grabbing the bin from the boy and popping it open to reveal his phone, covered by a brown leather case, at the center of the pile.
I inhale sharply to muffle a gasp. There it is, all the answers I need sitting in a pile so large its absence could go unnoticed. I don’t know where this cabin is or what I need to do to get inside it, but it’s a chance I’m willing to take. Hesitantly, I place my phone in the bin, holding on to it for a second longer than I should—Hunter almost snaps the lid shut on my hand.
“C’mon,” Hunter says to me and Poppy before tucking the bin under his arm and ducking into the trees.
“What’s the deal with the bodyguard?” Poppy asks once we’re out of earshot of the boy.
Hunter shrugs. “Just playing it safe.”
“By taking our phones?”
He sighs dramatically. “Look, you can go an hour or two without your phone, okay? The dean’s been looking for a scapegoat after all the shit that went down last semester, and I’m not letting some dickhead’s Instagram story screw all of us over.”
His reasoning is enough for Poppy to huff and cross her arms again, but not protest.
“One girl ODs and now we all have to go off the grid. Fantastic,” Poppy mutters under her breath, while Hunter rushes off to the clearing at the end of the path to greet a group of cheering boys.
Poppy sways, unsteady on her feet as she reaches into her jacket for her drink. “Wasn’t she from your floor? Laura something?” she asks me while she struggles to unscrew the cap. “The one that got expelled.”
I swallow hard, remembering the name tags on the door opposite mine. Charlisa’s file on Izzy rushes back to mind, the mention of an “incident” with her old roommate. That answers one question, but now I just have a dozen more. “I didn’t really know her.”
Poppy ignores my reply and jogs ahead of me, stumbling along the way.
At the end of the path, the party is in full swing. The only thing louder than the music blasting from an unseen speaker is the roar of the fire, warming me up as soon as we step into the clearing. People I only vaguely recognize are huddled together, exchanging sips from red plastic cups and snorting white powder off the backs of platinum credit cards.
Poppy waves to someone across the bonfire and abandons us without another word. She disappears into the crowd, blowing kisses at strangers and taking sips from drinks that aren’t hers.
I’m not alone for long.
I let out a quiet shriek when Hunter comes up behind me and wraps an arm around my waist. “My bad,” he replies with a giggle, his cheeks pink. “Drink?”
He gestures to a row of coolers sitting beside the fire. Unlabeled bottles stick out of the melting ice. I shake my head and pass on a sip from his cup too. With pleasantries out of the way, Hunter gloms on to me like a leech, pressing kisses to my cheek and inching toward my jaw like we’re not surrounded by our classmates.
“Where’s Gabe?” I ask, purely to give him a reason to stop kissing me. I’ll need to kill at least a few minutes before I try to get to the cabin, and I’d ideally not spend them avoiding his too-heavy touch.
He shrugs, pulling away from me to scan the crowd. After all the pressure he put on Gabe to show up, he doesn’t seem to care that he’s not around. We got to the party late, based on the way everyone is tripping over their own feet. A major hazard, considering how close we are to an open flame.
Across the clearing, Poppy leans heavily on a boy I recognize from calculus. She smirks up at him, pulling him in for a kiss that’s all tongue and teeth. He’s stiff at first, unsure until she runs a hand down his chest, then meets her touch with a hunger of his own. Hunter lets out a low chuckle, the sound rumbling through him. When they pull apart, her eyes lock on us, immediately finding us in the crowd, as she wipes her smeared lipstick with the edge of her thumb. A satisfied smirk tugs at her lips.
“He left a while ago,” Hunter finally answers, tearing his eyes away from Poppy and her new toy to take a sip of his drink. “He’s being such a prick about this whole scholarship thing.”
As much as I don’t trust anything about Gabe, I can’t say I blame him for wanting to stay away from here.
“Can you believe he was actually fun freshman year?” The question is rhetorical, but I take the bait anyway.
“Really?”
Hunter nods as he knocks back the last of his drink, crushing the cup in his fist before tossing it into the forest. “His mom used to be loaded. Her family owned, like, a bunch of properties, or something. Then things went sideways after Daddy Dean convinced her to make a bunch of shitty investments. Now Gabe acts like he’s Oliver Twist.”
That explains the clothes—expensive, but out of date. Stylish, but worn. And the scholarship, one less debt. And it explains the way he looks at me—like he wishes he could crush me beneath his shoe. Solina was the competition.
“He did bring the goods, though,” Hunter says before pulling away from me to reach into his pocket. He pulls out a baggie stuffed with thin pink strips. The same type of baggie as the one beneath Solina’s bed, I notice. Looking around, there are no peach pills passing between hands, but I make a point to look closer for them. “Want one?”
Fear shoots through me. I may not know what those strips are, but I know I want nothing to do with it.
“I’m good,” I mumble, pulling my peacoat closer to my chest, as if that’ll hide me from his judgment. Memories of Papi’s voice, shouting at me and Solina as we hid from him in our bedrooms, ring in my ears. I can feel the rattle of him pounding on the door beneath my skin.
Hunter lets out a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a scoff, rolling his eyes as he opens the bag and pops one of the strips onto the center of his tongue, washing it down with a drink he steals from a girl to our right. “Poppy’s right, you’re no fun anymore.”
I go still in his grip. The thought of him and Poppy talking about me behind my back doesn’t surprise me, but the way he loosens his hold on me does. If this isn’t all some game he’s playing, then he just doesn’t care about keeping me around for long. I’m as disposable to him as the cup in his hand, but I won’t let him crush me. Not before I know what he did, how he did it. Not until I stick him in the throat.
And if this is all a game, I’m going to win.
I kiss him.
His lips part, half in a gasp and half in a smirk as I tug him down by the collar. He meets my lips with ease, fingers curling along the curve of my hips. He doesn’t notice the smooth plains of my body where Solina’s was fuller. Or if he does, he doesn’t care. A body is a body.
When his tongue pushes into my mouth I let him take control again, and he relishes it. Pushes me up against the tree behind us and kisses me hard enough to bruise. I can feel the hard lines of his chest against mine, bark and branches digging into the thin material of my coat.
Something cold splits us apart, colliding with Hunter’s cheek and flaking onto mine. A misshapen snowball, I realize as we pull apart. Snow dips below the collar of Hunter’s jacket, his cheeks as red as his lips.
“Bro, what the fuck?!” he shouts across the clearing.
A bulky boy in a lacrosse hoodie holds his hands up. Snowflakes cling to his gloves. “You’re out of vodka.” He kicks the cooler at his feet. Nothing left but melted ice.
Hunter runs a hand down his face, rubbing his jaw before turning back to me. “I’ll be back in a sec, okay?”
He’s gone before I can reply, disappearing into the crowd. The second I’m alone, I bolt into the trees. No one from the party cares enough to follow me, but I don’t stray far. Close enough to hear the bass of the music beneath my feet, but far enough that no one can see me crouch and spit into the snow. I wish I’d thought to bring water, juice, anything to wash out my mouth. The taste of Hunter lingers on my tongue, and if I’m not careful, whatever was in that pink strip he took will be running through me in the next few minutes.
I spit up until my mouth is as dry as my skin, the sour aftertaste starting to fade. Chances are no one brought a water bottle to a rager in the woods. At least not one that isn’t spiked with something. Either way, I don’t trust anything here. The lip gloss Poppy insisted I dab on in the car smears on the back of my glove as I wipe my mouth. Sticky pink glitter and sparkles.
Peace has been restored by the time I trek back to the party, fresh bottles of liquor and cans of beer stacked inside the cooler. The music is cranked up as loud as it can go, rattling snow off tree branches and onto unsuspecting couples huddled in the shadows. I stick to the edges of the crowd. Making sure not to leave my back to the woods and staying close enough to other people that they’ll notice if I disappear. I crane my neck toward each group I pass, struggling to catch scraps of conversations over the blaring music. I give up when my neck starts to cramp. There’s no point. Half the people here are too high to form a coherent sentence and the other half I’ve never seen before. It’s not like someone is going to be bragging about a murder they committed when their victim is at the party.
They’re not why I’m here.
Hunter plays the kind and generous host while I fade into the background. He refills drinks from his own bottle of suspect liquid and places pink strips on pretty girls’ tongues. He lets people whisper in his ear and grants their wishes, giving them light blue pills from his pocket or another drink.
A god among gods.
What’s eerie about him isn’t the strength in his grip, or the way he smirks at me from across the clearing, my gloss still smeared on his lower lip. It’s the way he smiles. The way he pulls in a guy he recognizes for a hug. The way he throws his head back when he laughs.
It’s how carefree he is. That he doesn’t seem to care about Solina at all. Three weeks ago, he may have pushed her off the edge of a cliff and either doesn’t remember or knows damn well what he did and thinks it all turned out okay, just like everything else in his life does. And now he’s throwing a party.
Rage pulses through me, my teeth grinding until my jaw starts to ache. My nails dig crescent moons into my palm. It takes everything in me not to pull the blade out and shove it in between his drug-blown eyes. Hurt him now and worry about the consequences later. Because unlike him, there will be consequences for me.
I can’t afford not to play smart.
My patience is too thin to put up with more of this wallflower bullshit. I’m finding that phone and getting out of here.
The crowd doesn’t part for me like it does for Hunter. Bodies slam into me from all sides, almost knocking me into a snowbank, when something solid catches me by the arm.
“Watch where you’re going, dick,” Hunter spits at the boy who bumped into me. The boy’s eyes are bloodshot, but Hunter’s voice is sobering enough to make him cower. He stumbles in his rush to put distance between them, smacking into someone and spilling their drink.
The commotion that follows—a drunken shout from the guy who spilled his drink, a defensive one from the guy who made him spill it—is the perfect distraction for Hunter to pull me aside. Looping his arm around my waist, he guides me to the opposite edge of the clearing. The snow is cleared off here, a path snaking into the darkness.
“You okay?” he asks, brushing snow off my shoulder.
“Can I check my phone?” I almost cut him off. The first pangs of a migraine push at my temples, sending sharp stabs of pain down my spine. Too searing for me to worry about not playing the part perfectly.
Hunter nods before wrapping an arm around my shoulders and guiding me down a new path, the sounds of the party fading to a dull hum. My heart pounds faster with each step into the dark. The switchblade is in the pocket pressed up against Hunter’s side. I brace myself to push him off and reach for it, my arm bent at the ready. Fantasies of pushing him to the snow and shoving the cool blade into his chest drift through my mind like daydreams. A twisted hunger burns inside me at the thought of making him pay.
The thrill fades when we reach another clearing, a small cabin decorated with string lights that flicker to life once we’re close enough.
The interior of the cabin is a travel influencer’s wet dream. Subtle but upscale d é cor, a kitchen so spotless it gleams in the dim glow of the fairy lights, and a back wall made of windows to let in the morning sun. Sitting on the kitchen counter is the bin full of phones.
I rush over to it, popping the lid open and cradling the phone to my chest. As expected, no service. Still, having it is a comfort.
Hunter makes himself at home, tossing his coat on the love seat. “Want anything?”
It’s not until he offers me a sip of the water bottle he’s pulled out of the fridge that I realize he asked me a question.
“I’m good,” I reply, swallowing hard around the lump in my throat.
How the hell am I gonna get him to leave?
Hunter meets my silence with a smirk, sliding across the short distance between us to wrap his arms low around my waist. I take a step back but hit the counter. Nowhere to run, and no excuses to push him away. His fingers reach under my coat to dance along the waistband of my jeans, his touch warm against my cold skin.
When he kisses me this time, it’s rougher. Harder. More urgent. It’s not the first time someone’s kissed me like this. There were other boys, back in Luster. A dishwasher at the diner who moved to Chicago after the summer, and a guy with a bad crew cut who didn’t have anything better to do after school than hit on overworked waitresses. I’d never bothered telling Solina or Tiffany about them, not when everything about those boys felt like running through a routine. Being with them was like scratching an itch. Every kiss and every touch building toward something we both wanted, but not enough to actually talk to one another once it was done.
Still, I didn’t think kisses could start this way—all tongue and teeth and roaming hands. The other boys had one thing on their mind, but they still had the courtesy to pretend they didn’t. Hunter doesn’t waste time on pretense. We both know why he followed me here.
It’s easier to kiss him when I think of the other boys. The revulsion dulls as I give myself up to the routine and move on autopilot. Bending my body the way I know he wants me to.
I meet the force of him. Encourage it. Make him lean so hard into me I can barely keep my balance. If I kiss him hard enough, maybe he’ll let me go. He’ll slide off to the bedroom and I can excuse myself to come up with a plan to grab his phone and leave. Still, I eye the knives on the counter. Keep my right hand close to my pocket. Ready to attack.
We stumble backward until the sharp edge of the kitchen counter digs into my back. “You’re so fucking hot,” he whispers in my ear, nudging my cheek until I tilt my head back.
His lips run along the column of my neck, teeth pressing just hard enough to bruise. Time slows to a crawl, the edges of the world blurring as my body goes slack in his arms. My guard starts to slip, the nerves and spite that fueled me ten minutes ago fading like the noise from the party. Somewhere deep in the back of my mind, a more rational part of me shouts to be heard. I have something to do, something to find.
But what was it again? Why did I bring him here?
When Hunter pulls away from my neck, his face is framed by a forest of flowers. Roses and sunflowers and peonies falling from the sky as he smiles down at me like I’m the only girl in the world. The green of his eyes devoured by the blackness of his pupils.
Has he always been this beautiful? How did I never notice?
Our next kiss tastes like honey, like gloss, like something I never knew I needed. I lean into him, let him pull our hips flush together as my fingers reach up to tangle in his dirty-blond hair. Product sticks to my fingers, but nothing matters except pulling him in closer. Tasting more of him. I fight the urge to bite down, to taste him with my teeth and not just my tongue.
His grip shifts, one hand cupping my jaw while the other curls around the back of my thigh, hooking it around his hip. For the briefest second, his thumb skims the edge of my throat.
That’s all it takes for everything to fall apart.
All I see is Solina. The finger-shaped bruises at the base of her throat. The leaves and twigs tangled in her curls. The blood caked under her nails.
The smell.
The sweet bitter scent of rot clogs my throat like the blood found in hers. I shove Hunter back hard enough that he smacks against the counter opposite me. His crown of flowers withers with his smile. Every part of me trembles as I struggle to hold myself up and not claw at my skin.
I can’t keep that smell inside me anymore.
His hands find me like nothing happened, grabbing my wrist and then my waist when I try to pull away. The illusion is gone when he kisses me again, as bitter and rotten as the taste I can’t get out of my mouth.
“I need a minute. Can we … just … take a break …,” I mumble when he pulls back long enough to nip at my throat, pressing hard into the bruises his teeth left behind. Every kiss comes with another memory. Solina at the diner, pale and cold and reading a book she’ll never finish. Solina slamming the door in my face. Solina on the slab, missing teeth and chunks of skin and light behind her eyes. She’s everywhere and everything and nothing all at once.
“Stop.” If he hears me, he doesn’t act like it. All he does is hold me tighter, kiss me harder—bruises blossoming wherever he touches. “I said stop!”
The sound of my own voice startles me. I was loud enough to make my throat ache, but he still claws at me like he didn’t hear a thing. Every second he’s on me is another wave of her, another thought I can’t bear, another step closer to emptying my stomach or my heart, and I can’t tell which is worse.
Suddenly, I let go. My body whips forward like a spring coming undone, my fist colliding with his jaw and sending him tumbling into the cabinet door. Blood spurts from the cut on his brow bone, staining the polished wood as he crumbles to the ground, hitting his forehead against the counter along the way. He tries to grab the counter for balance, but winds up knocking the bin to the ground instead. Phones scatter across the carpet. More blood stains the marble, dripping down to where Hunter crumples onto the floor.
My breath comes out in ragged sputters as I collapse against the counter, trembling as I wait for him to get back up, to make me pay for hurting him. Nothing is in my control anymore, my body shocked still by fear.
But Hunter doesn’t get up.
He curls in on himself, groaning as he clutches weakly at his bruised face. His other hand moves limply across the floor, searching for something in the sea of scattered phones.
The phones.
Clarity finally breaks through. The edges of the world are still blurred as I rush over to the pile of phones, but at least I have some semblance of control again. I need it to sort through the dozens of iPhones on the floor, all of them starting to blend together after just a few seconds of searching.
Solina’s voice returns when I finally find Hunter’s phone. She taunts me as I tap it to life, tells me I never cared as I realize with a frustrated grunt that it’s locked.
“Wha …,” Hunter manages to choke out, his eye swollen shut, as I kneel down beside him.
“Please, please, please,” I chant, holding my breath as I wait and pray for the phone to unlock.
The phone buzzes, still stuck on the lock screen. “ C’mon, ” I urge, rubbing the screen off on my sweater before holding it back up to Hunter’s face. What if his eye is too swollen for it to recognize him? Or maybe it’s the blood caked on his cheek. Or maybe none of it will matter, because in a few seconds he’s going to pin me to the ground and finish what he started.
Just as I’m about to give up hope, the phone unlocks.
I let out a choked sob of relief as I spring back up to my feet. The room spins as I struggle to steady myself again. Too much too fast.
Hunter makes vague sounds of protest but doesn’t have the strength to move. I quickly navigate to the privacy settings and hold the phone up to him one last time to remove the face ID lock. He pushes the phone away weakly, averting his eyes from the too-bright light of the screen, but doesn’t put up any more fight.
His blood is streaked across the screen, but I couldn’t care less as I tuck the phone into my pocket and rush out of the cabin. I have what I need, and that’s all that matters.