15. Pandora #2
I burst out laughing, the sound barely distinguishable from sobs.
“Fuck you, Papa,” I say. “Why didn’t you put the card at the top of the pile?”
I breathe heavily, puffs of condensation filling the cooling air inside the car.
My phone starts buzzing, too. I let it go for a few minutes before I check.
Cry Me A
Where are you?
Blabe
If River scared you off, we can kill him.
Cry Me A
Ha. Ha. I didn’t scare her off.
Boyfriend
Are you sure?
Cry Me A
We’re in the same room. You could just ask me.
Pandora
I’ll be there in a few. No murder without me.
Blabe
Ok, we’ll save the murder for when you’re here.
Boyfriend
He’s thoughtful that way.
I clutch the gun, and I consider how easily I’d be able to take out the three of them. I wouldn’t need more than three bullets. They wouldn’t see it coming.
That makes the sobs worse, though.
I guess I don’t want them dead after all, despite everything.
I want them to want me.
I want them at my side.
I want to trust them.
After another two breaths, I place the gun and the business card in the compartment underneath the driver’s seat.
The drive to their house is over faster than I anticipated. I hadn’t gone that far off course after all. River’s car is already there, blocking in Blaze’s fancier one.
I park on the street, and I look down at my hands. I should wash them before I talk to them, or they’ll get worried.
There’s no blood, not on my hands and not on the steering wheel.
Oh, duh.
Maybe Papa wasn’t wrong about me needing professional help. But I like his murder plan more. Murder sounds easier. Less painful.
For me, anyway.
I take a deep breath and head out to the house. The door opens before I even get near it, and Asch and River approach me.
“You two are really hard up, huh?” I say with a bright smile that strains my cheeks. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you hanging.”
“Good,” Asch says. He takes my hand and tugs me close, brushing his lips against mine. “We missed you, that’s all.”
River nods, but I know that’s not what he’s really thinking.
I turn away from River and focus on Asch instead.
“It’s been a while, boyfriend,” I say, kissing him again. I raise my thigh to rub it against his. “I’ve got some ideas of how we can make up for all those days apart.”
“Then let’s get inside before I freeze my balls off,” Asch says. “I don’t know how you can handle these winters. This is my second year here, and I thought, hey, it won’t be so bad this year. I was wrong.” He steps back and coaxes me into the doorway.
River steps aside, his expression intent upon mine until I catch him staring. Then he glances at Asch before following us inside.
“It builds character!” I say. “And you can’t play in the snow if the weather is too warm to even create snow.”
I take my boots off at the door and hang my coat up on the coat hanger. Blaze really likes his things neat and tidy, although I spot a hint of Asch’s mess in the shoe rack, which is in complete disarray.
“See, that’s why I didn’t go outside,” Blaze says from the living room couch. “Because I knew it was cold.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Asch says. He still doesn’t release my hand, and despite his complaints about it being cold, his is still warm in mine.
“Where’d you go?” River asks, heading over to the couch and sitting down.
“I told you. Downtown.” I shrug casually. “Not that Harmony has a downtown, but there’s a sleepy charm to it I’m coming around on.”
“It has a downtown,” Blaze argues. “It’s just small and pathetic.”
“Like your dick?” I quip, laughing when Blaze scowls.
“Maybe you need a reminder of just how small and pathetic it is,” Asch suggests, but his touches are more casual than sexual as he wraps an arm around my waist.
I squirm against his hold. “Well, if we want to see that, I think we need to get naked. Maybe I need to get my mouth on all your cocks, so I can properly assess which one is the best.” Asch doesn’t let go, so I awkwardly go for my jeans buttons around his arm.
“That sounds fun, actually. A literal dick measure contest. I’ll give points for good taste and mouthfeel, too. ”
Asch snorts. “Or we could hang out,” he says. “Which we haven’t done nearly enough of.”
“Ooh, are you afraid you won’t measure up?” I joke, but none of them laugh. Not even Blaze, who’s looking at me far too seriously.
My blood scrapes against my veins, and I glare at River. “What did you say? What did you tell them?”
“That you have an appointment with the dean that you’re thinking about blowing off,” River says matter-of-factly, like he’s not a fucking traitor.
“It’s nothing!” I complain, and this time I struggle properly against Asch’s hold. “He’s probably going to congratulate me on being the best student the school has ever seen.”
Asch doesn’t loosen his grip on me at all, not even when I stomp down hard on his feet, though I do feel him wince.
I shouldn’t have taken my boots off.
“Come sit down,” River says. “We don’t have to talk about that, but let’s do something other than have sex for a little while.”
“We already did plenty of non-sex things,” I say, elbowing Asch, who still doesn’t let me go. “We went ice skating. You suffered my family. We took Samantha to the monuments!”
“Wow, you did date things with River and not us?” Blaze comments. “Now I’m jealous. I want a date with you too.”
“Just as long as it’s inside,” Asch says.
“Too much of a wuss to go ice skating?” River asks him with a smirk.
“Absolutely,” Asch replies without hesitation. “And not ashamed to admit it.” He suddenly lifts me up, and I squeak as he carries me over to the couch.
“Put me down!” I yell, slamming my hands against his chest. “I do still have a knife on me, you know.”
“You are not cutting Asch.” Blaze gets up and grabs my wrists. “Do we have to tie you down to have a real conversation with you? Because we will.”
Tying me up sounds like it could lead to something good. I grin at Blaze. “You liked tying me up the other day. Do you have a crop in your closet, too?”
“Do you even know Blaze and Asch at all?” River abruptly asks. “Why can’t we sit and talk for a little while, Pandora?”
“There’s nothing to talk about!” I turn my glare on him.
“What would we talk about? How fucked up everything is? How the world hates me? How there’s no fucking way in hell we’ll actually fix anything?
How all my promises to Samantha are a fucking joke?
Maybe you want to talk about all the needles scraping through my skin? ”
Asch holds me closer. “How about we talk about how intelligent you are? How passionate, how protective, how determined you are?” he asks, his voice soft. “And yeah, we should talk about how to fix things. Everything.”
Blaze lifts my hands up and kisses my knuckles. “We don’t need to worry about any of that today, Pandora. But we do need to worry about you. You haven’t been acting like yourself.”
I burst out laughing, because that’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard all day, right alongside the business card Papa gave me as my fucking Christmas present.
“What does Pandora act like?” I ask through my laughter. “I’m a terrible destroyer of worlds, and all I want to do is devour my enemies. Which I’m doing!”
“What needles are you talking about, Pandora?” River asks softly. “What’s been going on?”
Asch and Blaze maneuver me onto the couch. I try to get up, but Blaze immediately pulls me down and against himself. Asch boxes me in from the other side. If I could reach my knife, I’d still be able to escape, but they each grabbed one of my wrists to trap me.
“There are no needles,” I tell River sourly. “Of course there aren’t any.”
“But you said something similar before,” Blaze says. “About knives and needles in your skin.”
Shit, had I done that?
“I didn’t mean literally,” I huff. “I speak in metaphors. I’m a woman of class who enjoys literary wordplay.”
None of them look like they believe me.
Asch replies, “Do you remember our talk about trust?”
How could I forget? They’d pretty much held me down then, too, forcing me to listen to them.
I’d broken down.
I can’t break down like that again.
“I’m fine,” I hiss. “Seriously, you’re all being overdramatic here. And I say that as the most dramatic person in every room.”
Blaze glances between Asch and River. “How about we watch that documentary we found?”
“It’s about snakes,” Asch tells me. “It’s recent, too, so it might even have things that you don’t know. We definitely won’t know any of it, so it’ll be all new to us.”
“I might know,” River interjects. “But not nearly as much as Pandora does.”
“Seriously, River?” Blaze rolls his eyes. “Anyway, I definitely won’t know, because snakes are still gross.”
“They aren’t,” I grumble.
River turns the TV on and scrolls through the apps until he finds the documentary.
All about the snakes in Southeast Asia.
“I’m going to hate it,” I declare mulishly, although the first scene is footage of a snake coiling around its prey.
“Fuck, that’s nasty.” Blaze shudders and shakes his head. “How do you touch those things?”
“They’re not slimy or anything,” I explain. “The scales are smooth and cool. The snakes mostly want to be left alone.”