30. Juliet
30
JULIET
N olan’s place is not what I would have predicted. When he pulls into a gravel driveway in front of the one-story, cottage-style house, I expect him to back right out because he missed the correct address somewhere amongst the various streets and turns we took to get here. He doesn't.
Instead, Nolan shuts off the Pontiac Firebird that might have once been a bright cherry red, but over time has become a faded orange-red. From what I’d heard of Gio’s love for his Firebird, I’m surprised Nolan appeared so comfortable in the driver’s seat. A car is a luxury for the kids of southern Silverwood, and yet it’s clear that the Scorpion Kings share their things—even if they’re important to them. It almost makes me respect them, or at the very least, their comfort and trust in one another.
What would it be like to have that?
The lights of the Firebird dim and Nolan gets out of the car, pocketing the keys before popping the front seat forward to retrieve the duffle bag of my stuff. I open the passenger door, and the loud groan it makes causes me to jump in the near silence of the rest of the neighborhood.
Looking around, I take in the darkened street corners and empty sidewalks. It's not a bad neighborhood, more well- maintained than my complex for sure. Although some of the lawns are overgrown and there are plenty of fences in need of repair, there aren’t any boarded-up windows or cars on cinder blocks.
Nolan appears at my side, shutting the car door with a quick movement. I go still at his nearness and then slowly lift my gaze to his. At first, I think he's going to mock me for living in a place that's below his own. Perhaps he'll scoff and snarl that I shouldn't get used to this because I'll be going right back as soon as my apartment is fixed up.
Then again, why the hell would he or any of the Scorpion Kings offer to shelter me in the first place?
That question has been an ever-present curiosity in my mind since I walked out of my studio and got into the car. The Scorpion Kings are supposed to hate me. This whole fucking town hates me. Why would they bother to help me now?
"Come on," is all Nolan says, turning and heading up the front steps.
I follow behind him at a sedate pace, watching him as he unlocks the front door and holds it wide for me to pass through. I duck under his arm and look around. The first room reveals a small living area with a single three-seater couch, chipped box-like coffee table, and a lamp in the corner that belongs in the grandma section of the local thrift store. There’s only one thing on the wall—a painting that’s too faded for me to see well in the dim lighting. The newest thing in the room is the flat screen mounted on the wall.
The front door closes at my back and the lock is flipped, the sound of it echoing around the square room. Glancing back at Nolan, I swallow around a dry, swollen tongue.
"Where's your..." I don't finish. I was about to ask where his parents are before I remembered that Nolan's dad had gone missing a few years back.
‘Missing’ meaning he’d probably up and run away from his responsibilities. At least, that’s what most of the town assumed. Though there had been a good month or so following that people had speculated that Nolan, himself, had killed the man. Considering how well he’s taking my own recent murder, I’m starting to wonder if he actually did kill his father.
Would it bother me if he did? I wait, anticipating a rush of disgust or even unease, but nothing comes. Why would it? After all, if he’s a killer then so am I now. Either I’m fucked in the head or I just realized there are worse things to be than a killer.
"My mom's on night shift," Nolan says, answering my unfinished question. I nod, and he gestures to the hallway to the right of the living room. “Bedrooms are this way."
I trail Nolan in silence, letting him lead me through the house and feeling almost detached from my own body. My feet shuffle forward as my earlier questions come back to haunt me.
The Scorpion Kings do hate me, don’t they? They have no reason to like me. But enemies don’t get rid of bodies for each other. I narrow my gaze on the back of Nolan’s head.
It’s a debt , I remind myself. A debt that they’ll no doubt collect at some point.
As I follow Nolan down the hallway, I rub my hands up and down my arms. My skin, though clean, feels stretched tight over my bones. So tight that any added movement on my part pulls and tugs at the flesh, making my body feel too small. I’ve never felt as if I were too big for my own skin. I don’t like the sensation.
Nolan leaves the hallway light off, bypassing the switch, but stops next to a tiny slit of a doorway and reaches inside. I flinch when dull yellow light illuminates the space, and though he doesn't seem to notice my reaction, he pulls the door to what looks like a bathroom mostly shut. The action leaves only the barest sliver of light to shine over the faded dark carpet underfoot.
Nolan points to the room across from the bathroom, gesturing for me to go ahead of him. “In here.”
I stop on the threshold. "This is your room." It’s a statement, not a question.
“Yes, it is.” Nolan nudges me, and I take one halting step inside.
The bedspread is a dark plaid pattern that can be bought at any general store. It’s folded back, the double mattress bed made with military precision. Aside from that, there’s little else in the room. A bench press, some weights, football gear in the corner, and a rickety-looking desk and chair combo that I refuse to believe Nolan actually uses.
Looking at the desk’s practically concave seat and then back at the man eyeing me with dark curiosity, I shake my head. He’s far too fucking big to sit in that chair. He’s built like the football player he is. It’d break under the weighty mass of him.
“Disappointed?” Nolan asks when I don’t say anything else.
I don’t respond, instead taking another step into the room and turning in a circle. There's no sour smell, no hint of body odor or days-old sweat. It's clean and fresh, the scent more like laundry soap and cotton than what I’d expected a man’s room to smell like.
Warm heat touches my back and my gaze unfocuses. The room goes blurry for a split second as Nolan's hot breath hits my ear, nearly burning my skin when he speaks. "Did you think I was rich, Princess?" His voice is low, deep. "There are only two bedrooms, and I'm not asking my mom to give up her bed—she works too damn hard to give it up for someone like you.”
“Someone like me?” I pivot to face him. “What kind of person is that?” Before he gets a chance to answer, more words shoot out of my mouth. “The kind whose parents are criminals and deadbeats? The kind who kills a man that tries to rape her?” I laugh, but the sound is anything but amused. “Hell, maybe I belong in the gutter more than any of you. Maybe it was just an accident that I was born a Donovan and this is the universe’s way of righting that wrong.”
Nolan’s dark eyes stare into mine. He doesn’t speak and doesn’t respond to my assessment. Instead, the two of us stand there, our gazes locked in battle. The only problem is … I don’t know what we’re fighting for.
“We're bunking together,” he says, breaking the tension.
I back away from him, my breaths rushing in and out in uneven spurts. He’s too close, too big, too much. The bare hint of light from the bathroom in the hall does nothing to help me. Without the overhead light on, I’m reliant on that singular beam of illumination as well as the moonlight coming in through his bedroom window.
Nolan steps closer, following my retreat. My heart jumps against my ribcage, thumping in a rapid unsteady beat. The urge to flee overwhelms me. He must see that in my eyes too because upon his next shift forward, he speaks. "Where else are you gonna go, Jules?" The question is presented in a low tone. It’s not sarcastic, it’s not cruel, but merely curious.
When I don’t answer immediately, he reaches out and flicks the light switch. The whole room is bathed in the yellow glow, and I close my eyes against the glare. Relief slides through my veins a split second before I snap my eyes open again when his fingers brush my arm. I take another step into the room, the backs of my legs bumping into the bench press, causing me to stop and glare up at him.
"I can go to a motel." I can , but I don’t want to. Not that I’ll tell him that.
"You got the money for that, Princess?" He arches a brow. "I thought you didn't even have the cash to pony up for a phone."
I grit my teeth, annoyed and far beyond humiliated. "That's none of your fucking business."
Nolan tilts his head to the side, a strand of sable hair falling over his forehead giving him a boyish look. It's not fair. He shouldn't look boyish. He should look like the conniving and manipulative motherfucker that he is.
Why did I come here again?
I supply an answer even as I think the question—I’m still in shock. He used that to his advantage.
Or maybe you don't want to be alone after what happened, a snide inner voice whispers back.
Nolan backs away just as quickly as he advanced. He turns and hefts the duffle bag from his shoulder onto the bed and strides to the open closet in the corner. Reaching inside, he withdraws something and then heads back for the door.
"I'm going to get changed and grab a drink," he says. "Do you want anything?"
I shake my head before I realize he can't see it with how he's facing the doorway. "No, thanks." Gratitude sounds a bit awkward considering who he is, considering who I am, but I get the words out anyway.
Nolan doesn’t taunt me for it. He just gives me a firm nod and leaves the room, shutting the door on his way out, leaving me alone. I’m not leaving. There will be no motel, not just because he’s right—I don’t have the money for one—but because it would be stupid to be alone right now. Even if Nolan is the last man I’d ever have expected to offer me this kindness, I’ll take it.
Kindness for outcasts like me is in short supply.
As soon as the door shuts behind him, I feel something in my chest crack wide open. I stumble under the weight of it and slump onto the edge of the bed. Staring down at my hands, I blink and try to focus, but they’re moving all over the place. It takes me a few more seconds to realize that it’s not my vision but my hands. They’re shaking, practically vibrating as I bring them closer to my face.
I killed a man tonight.
The memory is fresh in my head. Yet, even as I draw it back up—it feels hundreds of miles away, collected into a bubble that’s attached to me, but only by the thinnest of strings. All it would take is one little snip and it’d float away, never to be seen again. My breath comes faster, sawing in and out of my throat as I push the heels of my palms into my eye sockets.
They, the man who’d tried to rape me had said. They told me you’d fight harder. What did that mean? Who the fuck is ‘they?'
The logical conclusion would be that someone had either paid the man or convinced him to harm me as revenge for my father’s crimes. Although I’d asked about calling the police, the truth is that they wouldn’t protect me, and I don’t need them to anymore anyway. That fucker had tried to take something from me, and I’d killed to protect it, to protect myself. Lowering my arms from my face, I sigh and look up.
There’s nothing really to look at in Nolan Pierce’s room. No mementos, no photographs, nothing to hint at any of his interests other than living, breathing, and working out—as if he, himself, is little more than a guest in his own life. I find myself staring at the laptop sitting in the center of his desk. The screen is dark, offering a reflection of my face. My arms close around myself, rubbing up and down once again as a chill seeps into my body. I rock back and forth.
“I don't regret it," I tell myself. "I don't regret it. I did what I had to do. I don't regret it." The truth burrows into me. I don’t regret it, but I should .
A roil of emotion swarms me, swimming through my veins. I curl inward, dragging my legs up until my feet hang off the edge of the mattress and I can wrap my arms around myself. I’m too close to the edge, sure that with little effort, I’ll splinter apart and pieces of me will be lost forever.
My stomach is a ball and chain hanging in my body, weighing me down. It tightens and contracts as if someone is punching me right in my abdomen, over and over again. The pain moves up to my head, the repetitive thud thud thud taking root in my temples.
I killed a man tonight, and I'm not sorry.
"Jesus ... who the fuck am I?"
I don't even realize I've spoken aloud or that Nolan's bedroom door is open again until he replies to my question. "You're someone who's had a bad night, Princess," he says, causing me to lift my head to meet his gaze.
My eyes widen in shock. Oh ... my ... God.
Nolan Pierce is ripped. In the back of my mind, I knew he had to be. He's a football player after all. He has weights and a bench press in his room. His friends work out at Cory's Gym. Reality is far different when you just know something versus when you can see and experience it for yourself.
I can't stop the way my gaze drops over his wide chest, down to the grooves of his abdomen and then the juncture of his hips where two diagonal lines disappear beneath the waistband of the plaid, cotton pajama bottoms he's wearing. Standing in the now open doorway with a bottle of water in one hand and what looks to be his old clothes in the other, he casually tosses the shirt and jeans into the nearby plastic white hamper and shuts the door behind him.
Stop fucking looking, Jules.
Nolan strides to the bed, those abs getting closer and closer, shifting with each step as he passes me, and then he picks up the duffle off the bed and drops it to the floor. I release my legs and let my feet touch the floor again. He sets the bottle of water on top of the chipped TV tray table that acts as a nightstand and turns on the lamp stationed there. No wonder all of the girls at school want to fuck the Scorpion Kings.
Even as numb as I am, when Nolan turns to reach for the light switch on the wall, I nearly fall off the bed. Scars. A fuck load of them. They line the length of his spine, almost like … whip marks. Some are wide and some are slender, but there’s no doubt that they’re old. Beneath them, the muscles of his back flex and shift as he walks. He doesn’t even seem to notice that I’m staring and I quickly glance away. As much as I want to, I shouldn’t ask about them. He flips off the main light, casting the rest of the room in the light glow of the lamp.
"Shoes off," he tells me, turning back around and pointing to my feet, "if you're sleeping on the bed."
I glance over to the tucked-in sheets because I really need to look somewhere other than the soda cans he's smuggling under his fucking stomach muscles. With him facing me again, it’s hard to focus anywhere else. There's no way he's real. I thought the Adonis belt was a fantasy that desperately horny people made up. It's just not physiologically possible—is it?
"You're letting me take the bed?" I ask because that doesn't seem like him at all.
Nolan snorts and then folds down the sheets and blankets, straightening the top of the bed as he does. Reaching into the pocket of his pajama bottoms, he withdraws a cell phone and hooks it to a black charger on the TV tray table.
"Letting you take the bed?" He looks back at me and gestures for me to hurry up and get in.
Left with little else to do, I slowly get to my feet and then look down. I'm still wearing my converse. Stepping on the back of one shoe, I toe it off and then do the same to the other, leaving them next to the bench press before I move towards the bed and then bend down, crawling onto the surprisingly clean sheets. His room is a little cluttered, but it's not dirty. Bran had been a fucking slob, too used to having a maid clean his room and make his bed every day to concern himself with even the simplest of tasks.
Once I'm far back onto the bed and against the wall, Nolan slips onto the mattress. I slap a hand out onto the sheets and sit up. "Wait, what the hell are you doing?"
A scowl overtakes his handsome face. "It's a fucking double," he snaps. "Unless you want to sleep on the floor, you'll deal."
"I am not sleeping with you. " No way in fucking hell.
Nolan points to the floor. "Then you’re welcome to the floor, Princess, because I’m not giving up my fucking bed."
My hand curls into a fist. "You're such a dick," I hiss.
Sinking down to the mattress, he punches the pillow behind his head and stretches out. I glance down when the sheets shift. His feet damn near hang off the bed. "Make up your mind," he says. "Three ... two ... one..." Reaching over, the last light goes out, plunging the room into near-total darkness.