Chapter 8
If he pauses to grip your face during a kiss, just know that it’s about to be real disrespectful.
— Shayne’s secret thoughts
SHAYNE
The calls kept coming.
They were happening every couple of hours, like clockwork.
I tried and failed to be mad at Quinn .
I liked that he was being persistent.
I liked it even more that he was stopping by my Nonna’s place and checking on me, even if I never answered the door.
Speaking of the devil, my phone beeped, and I reluctantly picked it up to stare at it.
Quinn .
Again .
The old man that was going to be my pilot for the day finally made his way out of the hangar, smiling and waving when he saw me. “ You ready?”
“ I’m more than ready,” I said, patting my parachute harness. “ Just waiting on you to get here, Tom !”
Tom and I had first met when we’d shown up to fly out of the private airstrip.
He’d been flying a crop duster, while I’d been flying a small Cessna to get some flight hours in.
We’d talked for a couple of hours, and he’d told me that he would love to take me flying, and that I could jump out of his plane anytime.
From then on, I’d bummed a ride out of him any time I had time to spare, then paid him a few bucks for gas a couple of times a month.
He gestured toward the plane, and I climbed inside, excitement starting to fill my veins.
When we got to the cruising altitude a couple of minutes later, I was practically bouncing in my seat.
“ Never seen a woman get so excited about throwing herself into dangerous situations,” Tom chuckled as I started to check everything once last time.
“ It’s in the blood,” I declared as I unbuckled my belt. “ You ready?”
Tom gestured to me to go, and I did just that, throwing myself out of the plane and waving as I fell.
The adrenaline that hit me sent shocks of excitement through my veins.
When I was freefalling through the air, all of my worries seemed to melt away.
No more worries about bills, my grandmother dying, my brother being a dumbass, or Quinn were able to penetrate the high.
Only me and the sky, and the freeing feeling of falling, were on my mind.
But , like all good things, it came to an end.
It took me all of forty-five minutes to get back to the airport and pack up my parachute.
It took me twenty more minutes to get my butt in my SUV and head home.
Sadly , when I got there, the first person I saw was a gang member sneaking out the side door of my Nonna’s place, and I knew I couldn’t handle that tonight.
Instead of entering the house through the front door, I snuck around to the back, heading to the side door that my Nonna used as her private entrance.
Sneaking in the door, I was unsurprised to find Nonna’s bedroom untouched.
The place had remained a shrine to her.
The book she’d been reading before she died was still face down on her nightstand.
The reading glasses that she’d discarded haphazardly right next to it.
There were all her meds, too.
Hell , even her shoes that she’d worn the day before were still right beside her bed.
I looked away, unwilling to acknowledge the pain that was ever present now that Nonna was gone.
Instead , I used the door that adjoined our two bedrooms by way of a bathroom to enter my own space.
I quickly chose to get changed, stupidly not checking the door to make sure it was locked when I did.
I was lost in thought, looking inside my closet for something comfortable to wear when I heard the intake of breath.
I looked over my shoulder and narrowed my eyes. “ Get . Out .”
Costas’s right hand man, Salvator Santini , leered at me.
“ Get out!” I screeched, my voice cracking.
I knew that my brother would hear. He had this annoying ability to always hear what was going on in the house and had since I was a small kid.
“ Get out!” I heard him snarl from somewhere in the hall.
The door slammed closed, and I was left deflated.
Jesus , why didn’t that man know basic etiquette?
I furiously yanked on a soft t-shirt, one that’d once belonged to Quinn , and his Colleyville High School Football sweatshirt.
I glared at it as I pulled it on, remembering a time when I hadn’t been able to wear it as I stormed out of the house and to my car.
“ Please , please, please?” I begged.
“ No , baby. I can’t. The coaches would lose their shit,” he said. “ They straight up said, do not give these sweatshirts to your girlfriends. They’re part of our uniforms for Fridays .”
He sounded apologetic, that was something, right?
“ Fine ,” I grumbled.
That was the first time Quinn Carter disappointed me.
The day after I’d asked him if I could wear his sweatshirt, I’d walked out of my freshman Spanish I class and had seen a girl wearing it. I’d felt my entire heart all but seize at the sight.
The girl, Lita James , was in all of Quinn’s senior classes.
I’d hated her ever since.
When I’d confronted Quinn between classes, he’d winced.
His ‘she was cold’ hadn’t been good enough of an answer for me, and I hadn’t spoken to him for days after.
Even worse, he never got that sweatshirt back.
I had, though.
A couple of years later, I’d seen her wearing it out and about with a friend.
I’d reacted badly at seeing her wearing it and demanded she give it to me.
She had, reluctantly, and I’d never spoken to her again.
She’d spread rumors amongst our high school friends, so there was no way that Quinn hadn’t heard about it.
Speaking of Quinn , he called again, and I scoffed.
There was no way I was talking to him now, not after being reminded of him letting Lita wear this sweatshirt when he hadn’t given me the same opportunity. What made it even worse was knowing that I was his girlfriend, and she was just some rando chick who wanted to bang him.
I started driving to the movie theater not far from my house, my thoughts dark.
My phone rang again as I pulled into the parking spot at the theater that was closest to the gas station next door, and I shot a glare at the phone.
I ignored the call and stared at the blinking sign that kept switching between the cash price for diesel, and the card price.
My phone rang a third time, and since I didn’t recognize the number, I answered it.
I shouldn’t have.
“ Don’t hang up,” Quinn ordered.
I hung up.
Then I silenced my phone before marking that number in my phonebook as ‘ Quinn .’
Nobody would be calling me tonight.
Ande was out of town.
The rest of the Carter clan that called only wanted me to check in so Quinn would know that I was all right.
Well , it was none of his fucking business.
I wouldn’t be telling him that I was a shell of the person I’d once been.
I wouldn’t be telling him that my brother was burying himself in a gang that was probably going to kill him sooner rather than later.
I wouldn’t tell him that money was tight as hell, and sometimes I wondered if it would be easier to start traveling again, without Ande this time.
In an act of desperation, I decided to go for a walk.
It wasn’t the safest place in the world, but there was a movie theater across the street that I knew I could make it to without too much fuss.
It wasn’t the nicest one in town.
In fact, it was the one I most expected to be closed by the end of the year.
I got into the movie theater thanks to the owner, who’d been working the booth since his employees refused to come to work. He must’ve given my name or photo to the staff, because they all knew to let me in free of charge.
The phone in my pocket rang again, and I ignored it.
I walked up to the ticket counter and smiled at the older woman.
Before Nonna had died, I’d brought her here with me to escape reality for a few hours.
Now I stopped by and the owner always smiled sadly at me and let me in.
After insisting that I pay like I always did, and her insisting that I go in without paying, like she always did, I reluctantly left without paying because I was going to miss the movie.
Today was a rerun of Battleship .
I loved the movie, and though I’d seen it so many times I could recite every single word, I still wanted to see it from the beginning.
I also didn’t examine the way my brain lit up with happiness because I’d been with Quinn the first time we’d both watched it, and we realized it was one of the best movies ever created.
I took my usual seat in the front left closest to the emergency exit, then snacked on my popcorn and Dr . Pepper that was also free.
At first, I wasn’t aware that there was anything going on around me.
The movie I was watching had a lot of gunfire in it.
Also , the acoustics in the place had definitely seen better days, so I could be hearing clatter from the next theater over, as well.
But then a faint ‘pop’ had me glancing up.
I watched in confusion as the man’s extra-large drink just down the row from me started to leak.
Brown liquid gushed from a hole…
My heart seized.
Panic started to fill my lungs.
Gunfire .
I was hearing actual gunfire.
I started processing it a half second before everyone else and found myself diving onto the sticky ground.
My fingers landed on something lumpy and hard, and I forcibly opened my eyes to see that it was stuck on a gummy bear.
My eyes were so focused on that gummy bear that at first, I didn’t notice the man whose drink had exploded was on the ground next to me.
He was staring at me with panic in his eyes, and I felt the calmness I always had when flying take over.
With a look of understanding, we both turned and started crawling toward the exit.
People were screaming. The movie was still playing. And it was as I was about to get into the aisle to head toward the exit door that I saw the pile of bodies that’d already tried before me.
People were a writhing mass on the floor as they cried and screamed.
Blood .
There was a lot of it.
It was coming in flashes because of the movie playing above us. Light . Dark . Light . Dark .
Blood and mayhem. Dark . Blood and more blood. Dark .
Time seemed to slow as I tried and failed to think about what I should do next.
“ We have to get out of here,” I heard the man behind me say. “ Let’s go another way.”
We did the awkward turn thing again and started crawling back the way we’d come.
I ignored the fact that we had to crawl over a clearly dead woman at the end of the aisle, and also ignored all the neon green that I kept seeing standing up in the front as we crawled farther and farther away.
What many didn’t know about this theater was that it had three exits.
Technically , there were only really two for the public.
One where you came in, and the emergency exit.
However , there was a third, lesser known place we could go.
I touched the man’s leg and stilled his progress that would’ve taken him to the main entrance.
“ Here ,” I pointed as I army-crawled past him. “ This way.”
I led him to the back curtain and said, “ This is where I saw…”
I pushed the curtain aside, and there was the entrance to the media room where there was a set of stairs that led to the projector at the top.
I’d actually spoken to quite a few people about the maze of rooms that would lead them from projector room to projector room. A couple of months ago, a storm had rolled in, and the staff had urged the ten people in the theater into this same entrance where it then led to a back door that was an enclosed room.
We’d stayed there for what felt like hours but ended up being twenty minutes as we waited for the threat of a tornado to pass us by.
That’s when I learned I could go this way.
“ Where are we?” the man asked as we made it inside.
I stood up and started walking, feeling a weird tingling in my foot.
“ Acoustic room, I think they call it,” I said. “ We need to get more people in here.”
“ Everyone in that room is hurt,” he said. “ The only people left standing are gangs.”
My stomach sank.
If Costas’s people were involved with this…
“ How do you know?” I whispered.
“ I heard them talking,” he said. “ When we came in and paid. They were buying food. But I really like this movie, so I decided to come anyway. So fuckin’ stupid.”
I looked at the man who wasn’t really a man.
He was more of a kid.
The weird stage between full adult and still teen.
“ It’s not like you knew a different gang was going to show and start firing off shots in the middle of a movie theater,” I said as I tried the door that would lead us to the exit.
Locked .
“ Goddammit ,” I grumbled darkly, looking back at the door we’d entered through.
“ The equipment,” my companion said. “ Let’s …”
More shots, and then the kid/man went down.
I cursed and pulled him out of the way of the huge rolling speaker, then moved the speaker into the spot between the door and the shelf.
I locked the wheels, then hurried back to the man, placing my hand on the seeping wound in his left shoulder. “ We’ll get out of here.”
The kid looked terrified. “ I just wanted to escape.”
I knew the feeling. “ Same .”
“ I want to call my mom,” he whispered. “ We had a fight.”
I helped him pull his phone out of his pocket, then supported him as he propped himself up against the far wall.
Then I followed suit.
I desperately dialed the number that I knew by heart.
It rang and it rang and it rang.
He didn’t answer.
Not that I expected him to after I’d been ignoring his phone calls all day.
Then , remembering that I’d gotten a call from his house earlier, I’d desperately hit redial on that and waited.
It didn’t take long for the phone to be answered.
However , who I expected to answer the phone wasn’t who answered it.
“ Hello ?”
“ Quinn ,” I whispered, unable to get my voice to go any higher. “ I need Quinn .”
“ Sorry , you have the wrong number,” Elliette quipped before hanging up the phone.
A loud bang sounded beside my ear, and I felt warm wetness start to seep into my pants around my waist.
I called back, but the phone immediately was sent to voicemail.
I closed my eyes, then started whispering into the phone, trying to keep myself calm by telling him about the sweatshirt I was wearing, reminding him of the time he hurt me.
Quinn did, eventually, show.
But by then, I’d lost any and all hope I had left that this relationship would ever be able to be rekindled.
You just couldn’t fix something so broken. Not if the universe was convinced you should stay apart.