Chapter 34
ASHLEY
Heath: Okay, I made a short list of properties that fit all of our criteria, and when I say short list…I mean short. You guys are fucking fussy.
Carter: And?
Royce: Have a cry, why don’t ya? Share the list.
Nate: It’s not fussy to want perfection.
Heath: Sometimes I wonder if you reread the shit you write before you send it.
T he final verdict had come in from Heath’s grandfather that one of the mechanics had tampered with several of the cars at the ice track, but when they’d tracked him down to question, they’d found him dead. He’d hung himself.
All they knew about him was that he had some prior military experience but had been dishonorably discharged in the previous year. Considering what we knew of Jocelyn’s military funding for her project, it sort of made a weak connection that she was behind the sabotage.
Not enough evidence to prove anything, but enough for my gut to feel like it was full of thorns at every waking moment. It also destroyed my ability to sleep properly because I found myself waking in fright at literally every whisper of noise throughout the night.
By the time the weekend rolled around, I was seriously considering a lobotomy. Or sleeping pills. Neither of which were really a viable option, but I was growing that desperate.
“How do you think she was getting to you and Nate?” I asked Carter as we drove home from campus on Friday afternoon.
“Heath and Royce were being fucked with in Dr. Fox’s therapy sessions…
but how was she getting to you guys?” Because both Carter and Nate had been susceptible to her hypnosis experiment just as much as the others had.
Carter glanced over as he drove, his expression thoughtful.
“She used to have a regular catch-up with Nate, maybe once a month while she was in town for whatever work shit she was doing at Nevaeh. Often they’d meet at our apartment.
She would have had plenty of opportunity to slip drugs into literally anything in our kitchen.
After that…well, we would have no idea what fuckery she’d gotten up to in our heads.
You know that you left Nate’s birthday totally coherent, right? ”
I nodded uncomfortably. Nate had explained to me how it’d all played out, but my last memory was running into Jocelyn in the corridor and then nothing . Which meant she could have done similar fuckery to the boys and they’d have no memory, like me.
“Nate mentioned you guys have all been keeping journals, so you can pinpoint any gaps or weird shit,” I murmured, shifting my gaze out the window and noticing it was gloomy and dark already. “Has there been anything…worrying?”
“No,” he replied firmly. “Nothing at all. Not since we figured out what was happening…and we threw out everything in our kitchen to be safe. Why, has something happened?”
I shook my head quickly. “No, not at all. I’m just…I’m not sleeping well and my imagination is working overtime. I keep having these awful feelings of second-guessing everything. Like maybe this is all…fake. What if I’m still at Mallard and this is all in my head?”
Carter didn’t rush to reassure me with false platitudes.
Instead, he blew out a long sigh and shook his head.
“Honestly, Spark? I don’t know. I think we have all expressed similar concerns over the recent months about our own state of mind.
How can any of us be sure when she’s fucked with our heads so thoroughly? ”
“Fuck,” I whispered, combing a shaking hand through my hair. “I want to say we should all get therapy but…”
He barked a sharp laugh, then bit his lip in shock. “Sorry. It’s not funny.”
I shrugged. “It’s kinda funny…just not in a ha-ha funny way. It’s fine, I’m fine. We just need to hope that the grown-ups actually do what they’ve promised and find her before one of her plans actually works out. God only knows how we’ve survived this long.”
“Pure dumb luck, honestly,” he replied with a lopsided smile. “So what are we doing tonight? You didn’t look too interested when Carly mentioned a party earlier.”
I wrinkled my nose and shook my head. “Parties seem like an awful idea right now, don’t you think? Besides…I have plans.”
Carter glanced over at me in surprise, but returned his eyes to the road quickly. “You do? With me?”
I laughed, feeling a small measure of the anxiety lifting from my chest. “Actually, with Nate. We had an incident on Monday that I kind of want to clear the air about and the moment hasn’t been right.
So I asked if we could talk tonight and he offered to take me out.
” I said it quickly, still unsure how I felt about what was essentially a date.
Like an actual dinner date . It was…surreal, considering the extenuating circumstances.
“I see,” Carter purred thoughtfully. “Well, does that mean I can take you out tomorrow night? Just the two of us?”
I turned to look at him properly, smiling. “Depends if that’s just an excuse to fuck me in another dubious public location.”
He quirked a brow. “Would that be a deal breaker? Last I checked, you quite enjoy our public quickies.”
A warm laugh bubbled out of me. “Good point. Let’s see whether Nate and I get through tonight without getting murdered—or murdering each other—and we can take it from there.”
Carter reluctantly agreed, once I promised I wouldn’t let Royce or Heath talk me into committing to plans with them when they caught wind of my date with Nate.
Once I pointed out that technically I’d been somewhat dating Carter the longest out of all of them, he seemed satisfied. Maybe a little smug.
Once we got home, I spent a couple of hours working on my overdue assignments, then got ready to go out while the boys were downstairs in the gym. Nate had briefly mentioned the name of the restaurant he was taking me to, and a quick Google told me it wasn’t a jeans-and-sneakers kind of place.
My closet had a significant lack of clothes that fit the in-between range—dressier than jeans but not haute couture evening gowns—which made me realize I actually did need to go shopping with Carly, just at a lower price point than she was used to.
For lack of any better ideas, I pulled out a black, pleated miniskirt and sapphire-blue satin cami.
Those with a pair of heels would have to do.
At the last minute, I decided to add a white blazer because the weather was still cool enough to need another layer. Especially with my legs bare. It was the right choice too, because the restaurant was shockingly drafty for such a high-end place.
“Do you want to swap seats?” Nate asked when I commented on the cold and pulled my blazer tighter around me. I declined purely out of habit, so he rolled his eyes and got up anyway. “Come on. Swap. As much as I love seeing you in white, you don’t look comfortable.”
Kind of sweet. It was a good move too because his seat was out of the breeze coming from the air-conditioning, and I slipped my jacket off a few minutes later.
“So…” I said awkwardly after the waiter took our orders. “How’s Paige?”
Nate deflated so fast at that question, he actually ended up with his forehead on the table. “Layne…” he groaned painfully, sitting up again with a grimace.
I shrugged. “What? I’m just asking how she’s doing. Are you still talking?”
“It’s not—” He broke off with a heavy sigh. “I feel like a fucking cliché insisting it’s not like that but it really isn’t. Also, have you been sitting on this all week? Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?”
“Yes,” I replied honestly, reaching for my glass of wine and taking a sip.
“Because intellectually I’m fully aware that you’re allowed to have female friends and not make me jealous.
But at the same time, she’s your ex…and she fucked Royce .
Not to mention the shit she put Carly through because of you.
I’m a little confused about why you’re still talking? ”
He nodded, rubbing a hand over his jaw as he carefully considered his response.
“I said she’d been calling a lot, but I only actually spoke with her twice and that was because I was worried.
Our dating history aside, I’ve known Paige since we were six.
We used to be friends…as much as I’m friends with anyone outside of the guys.
So when she was consistently calling at odd times, I got worried.
Her mother is coming down hard on her about, uh, me. So I felt guilty.”
I took another sip of my wine to give me time to process that information. It made sense, sure. But I still didn’t like it. Still, petty jealousy was a waste of energy if there was no real threat posed by her. And I was fairly sure there wasn’t.
“I should have told you,” he continued with undeniable regret. “But part of me knew it wasn’t going to be well received, considering how awful she’s been to you and Carly. I’m sorry.”
“Do you…” I started to ask the one screaming question in my mind, but immediately cringed at my own insecurity, shaking my head.
Nate tilted his head to the side, his gaze unblinking and serious. “Do I what?”
I bit my lip, holding his gaze for a moment. “Nothing.”
“Not nothing,” he pushed. “Ask me whatever’s on your mind. I won’t lie to you, Ash, not even to save my own ass.”
“Do you still care about her?” I forced myself to ask. “You went back to her even after she fucked your best friend. That sort of implies there were some serious feelings involved, and it’s not uncommon to use a rebound to get over a person like that.”
His brows lifted in surprise, his eyes widening. “You think you’re my rebound?” he asked with disbelief. “From Paige ?” Then his lips curled in a smile, and the fucker started laughing!
“It’s not funny!” I protested, sitting back in my seat with frustration.
The fucking smile on his face was so hard to resist, though. Why did my very valid question make him so fucking happy?
“Layne… Duckling …I think maybe you have the wrong idea about what Paige was to me. I never loved her. I barely even liked her. We were dating purely because it was expected and that was the extent of it. I went back to her after Royce because I literally cared so little for her that I wasn’t even mad about it.
Like, Royce is a good-looking rooster. I don’t blame her. ”
Well. That left me speechless. Then I frowned as my mood soured even further. “I see.”
As if he could read my mind, the amusement evaporated and his eyes narrowed.
“No. You don’t see. You just immediately applied the same reasoning to yourself, didn’t you?
You heard that I didn’t care about Paige fucking Royce because she means nothing to me and put yourself in her place.
But you couldn’t be further from the truth.
You and Paige could not be more different in my eyes. ”
He paused then, as our first course arrived and the waiter refilled my wine, which I’d somehow nearly finished already. It gave me a moment to process and question whether I was being a paranoid dickhead. Ultimately…yes.
“I know that words mean very little,” Nate said softly when the waiter left us alone once more. “So I hope that you can trust your gut. What’s it telling you now, about us?”
I wet my lips, clenching my fist to stop my hand trembling. “I don’t know,” I lied, because I was scared to admit what my gut was screaming at me. To trust him. To believe him. That he was falling for me just as hard as I was for him.
Nate’s lips tightened, and his eyes hardened ever so slightly at my refusal to open up, but he didn’t push the issue.
Instead, he sighed slightly and redirected his attention to his food.
I picked up my own fork, but I’d officially lost my appetite.
The mood was sour and the atmosphere between us fraught with tension and unspoken truths—it made my skin crawl.
“Can we go?” I blurted out after choking down only a couple of bites. “This is…not fun.”
Nate inhaled sharply, like I’d just tossed a drink in his face. “Okay, sure. You want to go home?”
I shook my head. “No. But I don’t want to stay here. Can we do something more…us?”
His hurt expression shifted to curiosity with the quirk of a brow. “What are you thinking?”
Honestly, I had nothing specific in mind.
I just wanted to get out of the uncomfortable formality of a dinner date, but at the same time I wasn’t willing to simply go home with all the unresolved tension between us.
“Umm…I don’t know. Carly and I walked past a newly opened smash room the other day. We could go break shit?”
His lips curved up in a grin, and I mirrored it without a second thought. “That, little Layne, sounds fucking perfect. Let’s go.”
When he put his hand out, I didn’t hesitate to take it. Maybe I was too scared to tell him what my gut instincts were, but I could at least admit it to myself. I was falling hard and fast, and if my gut was wrong, I would likely never recover.
Oh well, too late to get out now.