Chapter Twenty-Nine
TWENTY-NINE
AS WE SNAKE OUR WAY through the thinning crowd, I crane my neck, searching for Daisy or Sam to let them know I’m leaving, but I don’t see them.
I let Lucas lead me away from the party and the half-dead fire pit. I’m anxious, hungry for privacy. Thirsty for an escape. To channel everything from the last few months into the way our bodies touch. Even if I can only conjure visions of someone else.
Instead of following the trail that leads back to campus, he pulls me farther into the trees.
“Where are we going?” I ask, amused by how he seems to know exactly where to step to avoid tripping in the dark.
“There’s this old cabin my dad uses sometimes for guests or adjunct teachers. It’s the only place to get real privacy around here.”
We turn onto a path worn into the brush from years of use. Solar lanterns swing from the branches of the trees surrounding a peculiar opening and a squat cabin with a cross nailed to the door.
“Really?” I ask, pausing.
“This cabin belonged to the old Biltmores. They were a little freaky. Crosses on the doors and garlic in their socks. Wards against the evil stalking through Appalachia.”
My smile falters at the edges.
“It’s… a little creepy,” I admit.
He tugs me close, throwing his arm over my shoulder. “You’re so strange,” he says, and I can tell from the way he says it that he means it in the most adoring way. “I figured you’d like it.”
I laugh because he’s right, I am strange. But so is he.
We’re quiet as we ascend the creaky wooden steps, as he opens the door and pulls me inside.
It’s cozy and warm, with a worn, green couch made of corduroy and a buffalo plaid blanket flung over the top. There’s a small kitchenette and a tiny lamp in the corner that gives the smallest golden glow.
By the time the door is shutting behind us, the tension is nearly sentient, slithering between us, pulling us together. Lucas’s hand tightens on my own as he guides me back until I’m flush against the wall and his fingers are trailing down my sides.
My heartbeat thunders in my chest. “What now?” I ask, head spinning.
How much did I drink?
“Shhh.” His breath glides across my lips. “Stay here.” He points at me as he backs away, his long arm reaching out to pull the cord of the lamp until we’re plunged into the pitch-black dark.
“We don’t need the light,” he murmurs as he walks back to me, slowly. So slowly. “It’s more fun without it.”
In the absence of sight, his touch is amplified. I shiver at every brush against my skin.
Just like earlier. There is no buzzing, no electric current, no sting, no pain, nothing nothing nothing but us and the draft ruffling the hair at my neck.
The back of his hand smooths down my cheek. “You glow, did you know that?”
Words fail me, but I hum against his lips, my hands inching up his biceps, the muscles flexing in response.
He walks me along the wall, peppering kisses across my shoulder the whole way.
My head is full of clouds, and I’m floating as he presses against me, his knee snaking between my legs, his fingertips digging into my thighs in question.
I nod, wrapping my arms around his neck.
“No.” He shakes his head. “I need to hear you say it.”
Whatever this is—this quiet inside me, I can’t get enough.
“Please,” I whisper, and he hoists me up, wrapping me around his waist.
I gasp into his open mouth, and he chuckles. The ease with which he lifted me. The grace… I can barely breathe.
“There was a time,” he says, his finger brushing my bottom lip, “where all I thought about was you.” He pushes his thumb against my mouth, and on instinct my lips part, wrapping around him.
Groaning, he presses himself against me even harder as I tighten my legs.
“I couldn’t take it this summer. Being away from you.
Every moment without you was agonizing.”
My cheeks flush at his confession.
A pit swells in my belly.
I don’t deserve him.
He pulls his finger back slowly, and I bare my teeth, grazing them against his skin. He sucks in a breath like a hiss.
When he lifts his chin, I trail my tongue down the length of his throat.
“You’re perfect,” he rasps, his voice strained. We’re moving again, his legs inching until we’re suddenly tumbling into the abyss.
“I’m far from perfect,” I laugh into his mouth as he lowers me onto the couch. My eyes adjust to the fragmented moonlight streaming in through a round window, slashes of metal crisscrossing its face. They line his body, dividing him into jagged pieces. “Just ask Kai.”
I feel raw. Exposed. Desperate for more of whatever this is between us. For the silence in my head that being with Lucas gives me. But still, something feels wrong. How much guilt can one heart hold before it bursts?
I shouldn’t care that so much has changed between the three of us, but I do, despite everything.
Emotion flickers across his face. It’s new. A vulnerable admission of something darker than I’m used to.
“I don’t want to talk about him,” he says, with an edge.
“Oh—” I sit up on my elbows. “I’m sorry, I just, I don’t know why I said that.”
He braces himself above me, the corded muscle of his arms taut, and the air rushing between our bodies leaves me chilled. “Harper, why are you even thinking about him right now?” His voice has gone flat as he sits back, shoving his hand through his hair. His eyes are trained on the wall behind me.
The mood has shifted so suddenly. Nudging him back with my fingers, I bookend his hips with my thighs.
“I—I’m not!”
“You are,” he says. It’s not angry or cruel.
It’s resigned. “I always knew my feelings were one sided. I knew he hung the stars for you, and I was just there. But we aren’t kids anymore, and I’m not second best. I waited for you to come back.
I saw the way you looked at me differently. But I guess I got my hopes up…”
“No, Lucas, stop. I—”
“Five minutes ago I had my finger in your mouth, and now you’re talking to me about Kai.”
“Wait—” Panic erupts in my chest. I feel like I’m falling. Plummeting to some unknown depth. A breeze sweeps through the room, though the window is closed.
His eyebrows pull together.
Outside the wind howls a mournful song.
He leans forward, the pads of his fingers tracing my lips and sliding down across the flesh that hides my collarbone. “I know you’ve got secrets, Harper. They’re written all over your face.”
Flinching, I pull away from his touch. “What are you talking about?”
He shakes his head as he stands, lifting me with him before dropping me gently off his lap, the angle casting his face in shadow as he turns his back to me.
“Wait here,” he says. “I’ve got to use the bathroom.”
When the bathroom door clicks behind him, I spring to my feet. I want to yell after him, but what is there to say, really? I know I fucked up. I ruined it.
Restless, I turn the lamp back on, taking in the cabin again. I don’t hear the water running in the sink yet, so I walk to the shelves on the other side of the room and thump my fingers over the spines of the books.
There are texts about Appalachia and cryptid legends, a few leather-bound journals with tasseled bookmarks. I slip one from the shelf and crack it open, the stiff binding creaking softly.
The words are in a language I don’t recognize, all twisted symbols and markings that have no meaning to me. Weird. I slide it back into place.
From the bathroom I hear a flush and then the rushing sound of water against porcelain.
The bottom shelf has a few ceramic vases and trinket dishes for decoration. An intricately carved wooden box with fancy gold-plated corners. Intrigued, I flick the clasp up and lift the top. For some reason my breath is coming quicker now, a vibration thrumming somewhere deep inside me.
There are a few items in the box, small pieces of paper, a fountain pen, a pair of broken glasses, but there, at the top, sitting as if it’s been waiting for me, a delicate opal bracelet. I rub the small iridescent stones between my fingers.
Mine, the voice says. Mine mine mine mine. But that’s not right. I’ve never seen this before. It’s not mine.
Or it wasn’t, until now.
I don’t know what compels me to slip the bracelet into my pocket, but I do it with shaking fingers. As I stand, Lucas swings open the bathroom door.
His eyes flick between me and the shelf. “You ready?” he asks, scratching his chin, his voice somewhere between cold and resigned.
“Um, yeah, sure.”
I cross the room slowly, watching as he drags his gaze to my face.
Seeing the pain in his eyes feels like being stabbed in the chest.
“Are you—I mean—I’m sorry, I—”
“It’s okay.” His palm rests at the base of my spine as he opens the door. “Let me walk you back. I was planning on spending the night here—I do that sometimes. To get away from the noise of the dorms. Perks of being the headmaster’s kid, I guess. But it’s not that far of a walk.”
“No. No, that’s okay. You’ve—you’re great. I can walk back by myself. I have something I need to do anyway…”
He peers down at me, concern breaking through the muddied slog of other, more complicated feelings. “You sure? It’s late. And dark.”
I nod. “I’ve spent enough nights in these woods to know how to get back safely. I appreciate it though.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “No, Harper, I insist. The woods… they’re not safe at night, you know that.”
I’m certain he’s talking about coyotes and bears and not the woman with bones for hands or the glowing red eyes, and yet I almost dare to ask.
“Lucas… I just, I need to be alone right now. I’m sorry.”
Maybe it’s unfair of me, but I can’t take another moment of looking at his sad ocean eyes. I can’t face the truth of who—what I am reflected back at me.
So I leave him on the porch, hands shoved deep into his pockets, his shoulder pressed firmly against the door frame as he watches me walk away. The worn path leads swiftly to the east side of campus and spits me out behind the art and theater building.