Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Indi
I eventually do find remnants of an earlier, happier time in Marigold’s house. For reasons I can’t quite explain to myself yet, I don’t tell her about the intruder. Instead, I claim I saw a spider terrifying enough to make me run wet and partially naked from the bathroom.
She went to bed still wearing a grimace. That had been for the almost empty bottle of wine she spotted in the kitchen though, not my tale of arachnophobic horror.
Briar’s blue eyes kept me awake for an hour before I abandoned the concept of sleep altogether.
Intent on getting some warm milk, I head down to the kitchen. I walk past a hallway that heads to the back of the house, one Marigold never bothered to include in her initial tour. I always thought the room went to a study or a smaller sitting room, perhaps, so I never even bothered investigating.
The door’s locked. But there’s a hallway closet nearby I hadn’t seen before. I open the closet and rummage through the shelves.
I find a few photo albums and some dilapidated sporting equipment—a baseball bat and mitts, faded roller skates, a scratched bicycle helmet.
Weighing the bat in my hand, I purse my lips at its solidity. Then I grasp it tight and take a swing at an invisible enemy.
Not a bad self-defense weapon. Good to keep close at hand, should a certain Prince decide to sneak into my fucking house again. Fuck knows if I’d even use it. I should at least pretend that the fact that he’s not just a rapist and a murderer, but a creeping tom to boot, scares the living shit out of me.
Because it really should.
Somehow though, it doesn’t.
I guess after all the shit life’s dealt me recently, a run-in with a young Ted Bundy seems tame in comparison.
Briar
Marcus’s SUV is still out front when I finally get home. Inside, the mansion is quiet as the grave.
I find him in the pool house, immersing himself in weed and video games. He doesn’t even hear me come in—with such a dank haze in the room it doesn’t surprise me at all.
There’s beer inside the fridge—I take out two cans and bring them over to the sofa.
Marcus twitches when I move into his peripheral view, and then pauses his game and settles back on the sofa as if getting ready for battle.
I hold out the can until he takes it, and then I lower myself onto the seat with a sigh.
Marcus scans me with black, unreadable eyes, pops open his can, and says, “The fuck happened to your shoes?”
I laugh and wave away the question. Taking a sip of beer, I sit forward and grab a joint roach from the ashtray. I’m still hunting for a lighter when Marcus holds out a hand and flicks on his Zippo.
“Look, man, about earlier…” I trail off, expecting him to stop me, but he just watches with dead eyes and a line for a mouth.
“Yeah?” he prompts after a few seconds.
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugs. “Told you, that girl’s got you fucking obsessed.” He narrows his eyes. “Where’ve you been?”
“Sorry, love, I meant to call,” I say dryly. “Time just got away from me.”
He snorts and returns to his game. “You met up with her, didn’t you?”
I turn to him, wide-mouthed with disbelief. “The fuck, Mar?—?”
“Did you at least fuck her this time, get it out of your system?”
I don’t know if it’s because I still have way too much alcohol in my system, but déjà vu slams into me like a glass door.
Just fuck Jess and get her out of your system already.
Marcus had said that right after I told him that I had feelings for her.
When I don’t reply, he glances at me and then does a double take. Throwing down the game controller without bothering to pause this time, he says, “Tell me I’m wrong,” while cocking his head at me.
“I’ve known her for less than a week.” It’s a shitty defense, especially since he knows I liked Jessica from the moment I saw her, but it’s all I got.
“Well she’s obviously set off some kind of fucked-up chemical response in your brain.” Marcus grabs his dime bag of weed and starts rolling another joint, his eyes flickering up to me every other second as if to make sure I don’t launch myself at him while his attention is diverted. “That’s the only rational explanation, isn’t it?”
“That’s not?—”
“You want the same thing to happen to Indi?”
Now he’s staring solid at me and I don’t know what the fuck he means. Is he talking about the rape or the murder?
Cold fury bubbles inside me.
“I never asked you to do anything.”
“Yeah?” Marcus runs his tongue along the joint and then slips it through his lips in one movement. “Guess I should just have let her go to the police. Testify against you in court. You’d have done hard time, you know that, right?”
I swallow, but it’s as if all that guilt is stuck right there in my throat. “You didn’t have to?—”
“But I did, bro, because that’s what friends do!” Marcus stands in a rush, toking hard at the joint before stabbing it in my direction. “We look out for each other. And I’m telling you, this chick’s gonna get you in a world of fucking trouble. Think the fact she’s buddies with Addison is a coincidence? Addy’s been looking for a way back into your life for months now. She’s got that chick wrapped around her finger.”
“Addy doesn’t have any proof.”
“’Course she doesn’t,” Marcus says. I look up at him, and ignore the joint he’s holding out to me. “’Cos I made it all disappear, remember?”
His head tilts to the side, eyes so dead they could have been chips of coal.
Is he seriously expecting me to thank him? I’d been in such a state after Jess left Marcus’s house that afternoon, when he came and told me that she’d jumped off the bridge at Angel Falls, I’d broken down like a fucking baby.
For three months, I’d been hanging out with Marcus, going to school with him, letting him stay over at my house when his dad was in town.
Three months before I found out the truth about Jessica’s death.
Just goes to show how deviant I am. When he did tell me, instead of beating him up and dragging him to the police station, I said nothing.
I’ve never said anything to anyone.
Because that’s what friends do.
I won’t thank him. What he did was wrong. Just like what I did was fucking inexcusable. But we keep each other’s secrets like best friends should.
It doesn’t explain why I keep thinking he wants to screw me over.
“You’re right,” I say, nodding slowly. Marcus takes a slow drag of the joint, watching me with unveiled suspicion.
I hold up my hand, palm facing him. “No, seriously, you are. This chick’s gotten into my head.”
The simple truth.
“If she stays in there much longer then no, I don’t think I’ll be able to control myself.”
Marcus nods, hitting the joint again.
“So we stick to our plan,” I say.
“We get rid of her.”
I don’t like the sound of that, so I add, “We’ll turn Lavish Prep into her own personal hell. She’ll be begging her parents to send her back.”
Marcus smiles around the joint and sticks out his hand.
I grab it, squeeze it, shake it.
Then I take the joint from him and lift my eyebrows as my eyes slide to the game controller. “Duo?”
“Yeah, sure.” He grabs the spare controller off the game console and brings it to me.
I watch him as he sits, and can’t help but shake my head in reluctant admiration.
You’d never think, looking at him, that he murdered a girl in cold blood. I guess pushing someone off a bridge isn’t as chilling as stabbing or gunning them down, but still.
“What?” Marcus asks, and I realize I’d been staring. I look away, grab my beer, and chug at it.
“Thinking how I’m gonna kick your ass.”
“We’re on the same team, Briar,” Marcus says slowly. “Always will be.”
Of course we are. I don’t know why the fuck I ever doubted him.