Chapter 22 Ronan
Twenty-Two
Ronan
May
“Well, gentlemen.” Holden stretched like a cat. “What kind of trouble shall we get into tonight?”
I squeezed the bottle of lighter fluid. A stream arced into the bonfire, making it roar.
“Arson,” Holden mused. “An interesting option. We haven’t tried that one, but I’m game. Stratton?”
Miller strummed his guitar and sang, “All my friends are heathens, take it slow…”
“Indeed,” Holden said. “I am the psychopath sitting next to you. Or is that Wentz?”
I smirked. “You’re in a good mood.”
“Is that allowed? Or do the Lost Boys have to be tragic and lost every minute of every day?”
I exchanged amused glances with Miller, but inwardly, I was glad. Lately, Holden had been sticking to beer instead of vodka, and the smile plastered to his face wouldn’t quit. I guessed things were going good between him and River Whitmore, though I wondered if it would last.
And if I’d have to kick Whitmore’s ass if it didn’t.
Miller smiled a lot more too. Violet wasn’t here that afternoon, it was just us, but she and Shiloh were regulars now.
Holden never brought River, who was barricaded in the closet behind his king-of-the-jocks rep, so the five of us hung out most nights, laughing, talking, and listening to Miller play.
He strummed a few more bars of “Heathens.”
“Who is that again?” I asked.
“Twenty One Pilots. It was on the Suicide Squad soundtrack. I think it’s our theme song.”
“I prefer Suicide Squad to the Lost Boys,” Holden said. “Would I not make an exceptional Joker?”
He tugged on the lapels of his expensive winter coat. The weather was growing warmer by the day, but he was still bundled up. I guessed that meant things with River weren’t perfect. But what was ever perfect? They hid their relationship at school, same as Shiloh and me.
Shiloh and me.
It’d been weeks, and that phrase wasn’t close to getting old. I hid a smile behind my beer so the others wouldn’t see it and give me shit.
Holden settled into his chair with a satisfied sigh as the sun began to dip below the horizon. “This, gentlemen, is a rare moment of tranquility.” He looked to Miller. “You’re on the cusp of stardom and—even more miraculous—Wentz here hasn’t been suspended in more than a month.”
They both applauded, and Miller whistled through his teeth.
I chuckled. Assholes.
“And for the time being, I’m…what’s the word?” Holden snapped his fingers, pretending to think. “Starts with an H?”
“Heathen,” Miller put in and strummed a few chords.
“Yes, but that other, more elusive H word.”
“Happy,” I muttered into my beer bottle. The word tasted foreign to me too, but for the first time in a long time, it was starting to fit.
“Bingo.” Holden beamed, but I saw how fragile his happiness was in his eyes. Whitmore still had plans to go away to college and play football, leaving Holden behind.
But things are good now. They might stay good.
Like they were with Shiloh and me.
I felt like shit keeping us on the down-low at school when I wanted to show her off.
Kiss her in front of God and everybody, claiming her as mine.
But she was okay with the secrecy for different reasons.
Trying to keep her shields up. I couldn’t blame her; she’d been burned hard, but day by day, she was letting them go. For me.
I felt richer than Holden.
“And I have news,” he said. “It concerns a certain rapey football player whose pristine white Jeep was given a new paint job by our own resident vigilante.”
I sat up, my pulse kicking. “What did you hear?”
“I heard that said paint job made the local news.”
I frowned. “That shit went down months ago.”
Holden shrugged. “Seems Kimberly’s friends weren’t satisfied with her having to leave town while Mikey struts around school, suffering precisely jack shit in the consequences department.”
“So what’s the deal?” Miller asked.
“Michael ‘Douchebag’ Grimaldi has been booted from the football team,” Holden said, tossing one end of his scarf over his shoulder. “More of a symbolic gesture, given the season’s over, but he’s losing his letter and—word has it—his ticket to Texas A she wore a sundress in deep blue. A lantern hung above her in the twilight, making her skin glow. Her expression was tight with concentration.
Fuck, she was too beautiful. Too much for a poor bastard like me. Yet when she felt me watching her, she lifted her head, and her face lit up, became more beautiful.
Then she caught herself and turned her tone casual. “Hey, you.”
I joined her in the shed, sitting on the other side of her.
I watched as she pressed a plate of silver about the size of a playing card onto a small anvil that was attached to the table with a bench pin.
The silver plate was etched with a rose design, and Shiloh was using a jeweler’s saw—its blade as thin as string—to cut it out.
“I feel you watching me,” she said with a faint smile, not looking up as she sawed and turned the plate, the blade following the lines of the rose exactly.
“Fucking amazing.”
Her deep-brown eyes flickered up to me, then back to her work. “Don’t say things like that. I’ll mess up.”
But she didn’t. The last piece was cut away, and she was left with a silver rose as large as the palm of her hand.
“You’re just going to watch?” she asked as she picked up her hand torch and soldered a tiny loop of silver to the back.
“For now.”
Shiloh’s lips parted in a little gasp. “Damn, Ronan…”
My blood heated, and I waited, my hands itching to touch her.
To strip her naked in the twilight and spread her over the table.
No, not a goddamn table. Or her car. Or the shack.
In the last month, we’d never fucked in a bed.
Never been fully naked. I couldn’t take her to my place, and Shiloh hadn’t offered hers. Our way of trying to slow things down.
Stupid.
I was all in. And if I thought about it, I’d gone all in for this girl the first damn minute I laid eyes on her.
“Nearly done.” She took up a string of smoky quartz beads and held the rose against them. “The backing needs to cool before I can string it, but not bad, eh? I kind of like how it turned out.”
She glanced up to see me watching her, drinking her in.
Her eyes flared, and she carefully set the necklace aside and moved around the table to sit in my lap.
Her hands went into my hair. I loved her hands in my hair.
She’d changed hers a few weeks ago—the microbraids were replaced by thicker ones she called box braids.
More for me to grip.
“Bibi went to visit a friend down the street,” I said. “We have twenty minutes.”
Shiloh’s fingertips traced my lips. “Mmm, you can do a lot of damage in twenty minutes. Shut the door.”
She stood up while I did as she asked, and then we reached for each other in the dim space, the lantern casting a yellow light.
I took a handful of thicker, soft braids and gently pulled her head back, exposing her throat.
Her pulse was a flickering beat in the hollow of her collarbone.
I put my mouth there, savoring the taste of her that was salty and sweet.
“God, Ronan… How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Make me want you so bad.”
Her fingers raked through my hair, cradling my head, and she moaned as I worked over the delicate skin of her neck, biting, grazing, licking, until I was at her mouth again. I kissed her deep, my tongue exploring every corner, tasting her until we were both out of breath.
Our eyes met, and she nodded.
I spun her around and held her to me, my mouth on the delicate skin behind her ear, biting. She gasped and braced herself on the table.