Chapter 4
“I’d like to go back now,” Ellory said, her arms folded. “This is a waste of a dress, and you damn well knew what you were doing.”
She couldn’t believe that she’d worn her most club outfit—a long-sleeved metallic-black minidress with sheer mesh between the bust and the skirt, and a pair of black heels she could kill a man with—only for Tai to drive her off campus to a house that belonged to none other than Hudson Graves.
Ellory hadn’t known that Hudson was somewhere inside by looking at it, of course.
Her obsession—and in the dark of the car with only the stars to witness, she could admit it was a bit of an obsession—didn’t extend that far.
Tai had instead shut off the engine and admitted this little proviso in quick, jumbled words, and Ellory was having none of it.
On top of all that, she was clearly overdressed.
The house was a flat-topped two-story redbrick building with five white columns that held up a gray box gable roof over the porch.
People spilled out onto that porch and the dying lawn beyond, chatting over the pounding of music with a lot of bass.
Everyone was carrying soda bottles that clearly did not contain soda, or narrow-necked flasks in crumpled paper bags, and they were dressed like extras on a teen drama, all flannel shirts and crewnecks, ripped jeans and ankle boots.
“Let’s go inside,” said Tai, affecting a pout. “Just for like five minutes.”
“You promised you’d take me home if I wasn’t having fun.”
“We’re in the car.”
“And I’m not having fun!”
Tai’s pout grew even more exaggerated. “It’s a big house, Lor. You probably won’t even see him.”
“Oh, I will,” Ellory said darkly. “I’m unlucky like that.”
Sometimes Ellory imagined herself and Hudson as magnets with opposing ends, but the universe seemed to think them more like nuclear fusion, binding together with explosive results.
The house could be two stories or ten, the yard could be ten acres or twenty, and she and Hudson Graves would find each other. The only real question was when.
“At least give me your flannel,” she finally relented, after five long minutes of Tai sulking in the driver’s seat without turning on the car. “I can still make this work.”
It was oversize and plaid, the deep red of Baldwin apples.
Ellory slipped it over her shoulders and tied it in a knot beneath her breasts, making her look less like she was standing in line at a nightclub and more like an actual person.
Her heels and cat’s-eye makeup, she could do nothing about, but she finally got out of the car.
Music drowned out the New England night, so loud that Ellory was shocked the neighbors hadn’t complained.
A light wind stirred her halo of curls, but it was a warm breeze like the dying breath of summer.
Yellow-green bushes clustered in front of the building, some tall enough to partially cover the ground-floor windows.
Between their stems, she could see crowds gyrating in flickering neon color.
In the corners of the house, shadows bubbled like fresh tar.
Ellory blinked once, twice, three times, but she could still see that teeming darkness spilling across the lawn, flooding every inch that wasn’t illuminated by porch lights.
It oozed closer and closer to where she was standing, indifferent to her racing heart.
She was outside a house party, but it was like she was in a painting and someone was taking varnish to the colorful details, leaving her alone in the void.
The music had been replaced by the buzzing of a thousand bees, and she couldn’t see anything but the wicked dark and the crouching building that now seemed farther away.
Hands grabbed her shoulders. A scream tore from her throat.
“Whoa, whoa,” said Tai, raising those same hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean to scare you. You zoned out on me for a second there.”
When Ellory looked back, the shadows were harmless and still. The only sound she could hear was the pulsing music.
It had all been in her head.
It had all been in her head.
Breathing hard, she dragged her gaze back to her confused friend. “Sorry, I thought I saw—sorry.”
“Sounds like somebody needs a drink.”
Tai linked their arms and dragged her through the front door.
The walls were baby blue. The spacious floor was gray wood.
That was all the detail Ellory managed to gather around all the people.
Either the students of Warren were starved for entertainment, or Hudson Graves really knew how to throw a party, because there was hardly any room to navigate the living area.
People were tucked into corners, talking, laughing, or making out.
Others were swaying to the music, half of them too drunk to remain on beat.
A group cheered one another on as they took turns chugging cups of who knew what.
Someone was fast asleep on the long side of an L-shaped couch.
On the other side, someone else—a friend?
—texted, pausing only to glare at anyone who came too close.
Ellory’s first and last college party had been during orientation week, in one of the residence halls with a dining hall on the first floor, and it had involved mild property damage and a warning from the resident manager.
By comparison, this was wildly boring. Too loud to think, too crowded to stand out, too tame to worry.
She loved it. In this chaos, she could breathe again.
Tai took her to the kitchen, where they found two unopened Coronas in a cooler on the kitchen island.
The fridge was stainless steel, sitting alongside white cupboards and black marble-top counters.
Half-full bowls of colorful snacks were everywhere: tortilla chips and spinach dip, pretzels and dried fruit, popcorn and carrot sticks.
Tai rooted through the cupboards until she found a clipped bag of barbecue potato chips.
“What?” she asked in the wake of Ellory’s judgmental stare.
“I don’t know where all these grubby hands have been, and that dip already looks funky. ”
Ellory grabbed a fistful of chips. The spinach did look funky.
They ended up in the backyard, a wide expanse of flattened grass protected from the other buildings and houses by trees on three corners and a listless chain-link fence on the fourth.
The party had spilled out here, too, but it felt more intentional.
Fairy lights were threaded through the tree branches.
Someone was fiddling with a keg. Folding tables were set up, and flip cup and beer pong were in full swing.
A Bluetooth speaker duct-taped to the side of the house made sure the music was still an invisible guest.
Tai was immediately sucked into a game of flip cup; Ellory wouldn’t cross her mind again until she’d made everyone else at the table cry.
Ellory wandered over to a small circle of people playing hacky sack and watched them kick the glow-in-the-dark footbag back and forth.
It looked like a confused meteor, an ever-moving orb of phosphorescent light in the dimness of the yard.
One of the players caught sight of her and, after knocking the footbag across the circle, broke rank to come over.
She had never seen him before, but he was catalog-model handsome, the kind of white man who looked like he answered to the name Tripp or Digby.
His carefully coiffed chestnut hair swooped back from his broad forehead just so, his clean-shaven square jaw gave him an approachably masculine appearance, and his thick biceps screamed crew team or tennis club or both.
He was over six feet tall, wearing a black-and-white-striped polo, loose blue jeans, and black plimsolls—a type of shoe Ellory had had no reason to know the name of before she’d come to Warren.
Now she didn’t dare confuse them with loafers or oxfords.
“Hey,” said Possibly Tripp, pushing a hand through his hair. His smile was relaxed, open, and practiced. Not toothy or overstretched, but a tool that only enhanced his natural good looks. “I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of these before.”
“I’ve never been to one of these before,” Ellory confirmed. “My friend brought me.”
She pointed over at Tai, then saw the light of recognition in his chocolate-brown eyes. Which was no surprise. Tai definitely knew the Tripps and Digbys of the world—or at least all the ones in New England. “Well, if you came with Tai, then you must be good people! Can I get you anything to drink?”
“I’m still working on this.”
“The Corona? It’s empty.”
“Because I’m working on it.” His pencil-thin eyebrows knitted together. Ellory decided to have mercy on him. “I could maybe use some more chips.”
The smile returned, this one like the spill of morning sunshine through a window.
He left Ellory standing there blinking, wondering what exactly she’d done to earn a smile like that.
Shame flared within her at how quickly she’d judged him, cutting him down to stereotypes that justified her sarcasm.
That feeling only increased when he returned less than five minutes later with a plate of individual snack packs of several different kinds.
“I didn’t know what you like,” he explained, “so I got the basics.”
The basics turned out to be potato chips, cheese puffs, pretzels, onion rings, cheesy tortilla chips, and graham crackers. Guilt softened her tone. “Thanks. This is great. I’m Ellory, by the way. Ellory Morgan.”
“Liam Blackwood,” he said, plucking the graham crackers from the plate with a wink.
“Delivery fee.” The wink must have been practiced, too.
It turned him from handsome to devastating.
There was no way he didn’t know it. “So, Ellory Morgan, what’s your story?
I would remember if I’d seen you around campus before now. ”