Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ishould not be allowed bolt cutters.
I know this because they’re heavy, unwieldy, and the last time I borrowed a pair, I almost took out a porch light and a squirrel in the same swing. But tonight? Tonight I’m wielding them like the sexy little cat burglar of Skully’s wet dreams.
“Hold it steady,” I hiss, wedging the blades around a chain-link fence that looks older than my moral compass. Rust flakes sprinkle into my hair. Perfect. Accessorized.
Skully turns and leans against a broken lamppost a few feet back just to spite me, cigarette dangling from his lips, lighter flick-flick-flicking open and shut in his fingers like a heartbeat.
He’s dressed in all black—dark-wash jeans, boots, leather jacket—like a delinquent scarecrow who figured out how to be hot.
He’s pretending to be bored, but I catch the sharp gleam in his eyes every time he looks at me like, this bitch is trouble, and I love it.
“You know,” he drawls, smoke curling around his smirk, “most girls get their boyfriends dinner reservations. Maybe a concert. You drag me into tetanus alley.”
Snip. The chain gives. The fence yawns open with a squeal that sounds like a dying ghost. I beam. “Ta-da! Welcome to the best date night ever: petty crime edition.”
He exhales through his nose, shaking his head like I’m a walking lawsuit, but his grin betrays him.
He flicks his cigarette away, stalks forward, and slips through the gap after me.
The abandoned rail yard stretches out in front of us, rusted freight cars lined up like gravestones, steel beams cutting into the moonlight, spray paint fumes already hanging in the cold air like ghosts that never left.
And I’m giddy. Absolutely feral. This is our playground tonight.
The gravel crunches under my boots like bones in a blender, every sound too loud in the empty yard. The trains loom over us—hulking, rust-sick giants, graffiti from decades of teenage vandals scrawled across their bellies. I clap my hands like I’ve just been let loose in a candy store.
“Okay,” I announce, yanking my backpack around and unzipping it with a flourish. “Date kit reveal!”
Out comes: an entire rainbow collection of spray paint, a Bluetooth speaker shaped like a jack-o’-lantern, and—because I believe in ambiance—an entire bag of glow sticks I cracked open early so I could string them along the fence like sickly halos.
Skully squats down beside me, eyeing the pile like it’s evidence. “You’re actually insane.”
“Yes,” I chirp. “But look at this green. It’s the exact shade of Nickelodeon slime if Nickelodeon was run by Satan. Actually, scratch that, I’m pretty sure it was.”
He picks up the orange can, turns it in his hands, and I swear I catch him smiling. Not his usual razor-blade grin, but something softer, fleeting. He shakes it anyway, the rattle echoing like bones in a jar. “Fine. But I’m not drawing dicks.”
I gasp, scandalized. “Excuse you, sir. Phallic art is a noble tradition stretching back to cave paintings.”
“Of course you’d know that.” He kicks at the gravel, then stalks toward the side of the nearest freight car, jacket creaking. “Try to keep up, Picasso.”
The hiss of his paint can echoes sharp, decisive as he gets to work—black skulls with crooked smiles, jagged letters that look like they’re bleeding down the steel.
I bounce over to the next panel and start my masterpiece: a lopsided heart with vampire fangs biting into it, candy corns raining down like confetti.
Then I scrawl: EAT CANDY, NOT CORPSES in bubble letters so chaotic they look drunk.
Skully snorts when he sees it. “You’re a menace.”
“I’m festive,” I correct, shaking my pink can like a maraca. “And you love it.”
“Debatable,” he mutters, but his smirk says otherwise.
We fall into rhythm—hiss, shake, hiss—the air thick with paint fumes and cold night.
Somewhere in the distance, a train horn groans low and long, like the whole yard is sighing awake.
The glow sticks flicker sick neon halos over us, casting Skully’s cheekbones into knife-points and painting me into a cartoon villainess in a miniskirt.
I spin, spray a crooked ghost with eyelashes, then whirl on him, grinning wickedly. “Bet I can tag faster than you.”
“Oh, it’s like that?” He steps back, snaps his lighter open, flame flaring against his smirk. “Game on, Baby.”
The hiss of paint turns into our soundtrack, sharp and wet, echoing off steel. Every few seconds the rattle of a can fills the silence.
I’m crouched low, painting candy hearts with jagged cracks down the middle, when Skully sidles up behind me.
Not quite touching—but close enough that his heat prickles against my spine.
His voice drops low, all smoke and teeth.
“You know your ghosts look like they’re about to start a girl band, right? ”
I tip my head back, just enough that my hair brushes his chest, looking up at him upside-down. “Good. They’ll open for your skulls.”
He flicks his lighter open and shut again, flame catching the side of his jaw, painting him in orange like a devil caught mid-thought.
His eyes drag over me—legs bent, skirt riding up shamelessly, tights streaked with paint mist—and linger a beat too long.
I smirk because I like being a distraction.
“You missed a spot,” he says finally, and reaches down. His thumb swipes a smear of wet paint from my thigh, slow, deliberate. He doesn’t wipe it off. Just stares at his hand, orange glowing against his skin, then at me. My breath hiccups in my throat.
“Oh, that was on purpose,” I whisper, tilting my head so my lips almost brush his knuckles. “Body art.”
His laugh is quick and sharp, like breaking glass, but there’s a hitch to it. He pulls back before he can do something reckless, spins on his heel, and starts another tag like he’s not vibrating out of his skin.
I watch him work—long strokes, clean edges, his wrist confident in a way that makes me think about what else he could do with that precision. My body hums, restless.
So I get petty. I spray a quick cock on the corner of his skull, cartoonish and grinning, and shout, “Beat that, Picasso!”
He wheels on me, scandal written across his eyeliner-smeared face. Then—without missing a beat—he scrawls my name above it in jagged, bleeding letters, sharp as a wound. He steps back, caps the can, and gives me a slow, filthy wink.
My thighs press together on instinct.
“You’re cheating,” I accuse, my voice coming out a little higher than I meant it to.
“Or maybe,” he says, leaning in just enough that the smell of paint, smoke and man fills me, “I’m just better.”
His lips hover at my ear for a second too long before he pulls away. My knees nearly give out.
So I chase him—literally. I sprint to the next car, pop a green can, and start scribbling pumpkins with vampire fangs over all of his work after he’s done.
He just chuckles, his shoulder brushing mine when he crowds in to take half the panel for himself.
Every accidental touch feels like anything but.
My elbow bumps his ribs. His hip presses mine for balance.
A stray lock of my hair catches on his hoodie zipper and he doesn’t move for a heartbeat too long before untangling it.
The freight car becomes a war zone—neon chaos versus sharp monochrome. Hearts bleeding into skulls. Candy slogans clashing with lyrics he won’t admit are his. Every time our spray arcs overlap, our hands nearly touch. Every time the wind shifts, we breathe each other in.
At one point, I reach over him to add fangs to his skull, my chest brushing his back, and he just…freezes. Spray hissing, his whole body goes still, coiled. I whisper against his shoulder, “Fixed it for you.”
He exhales heavily.
The glow sticks sputter above us, flickering green across his jaw, and for a second I think, this is it—this is the part where he breaks.
But he doesn’t. Not yet. He just smirks, spins his can in his hand, and says, “Careful, Baby. Keep pushing me and I’ll show you what real vandalism looks like.”
And God help me, I want him to.
The paint fumes hang heavy, sweet and acrid, and I’m buzzing on them like it’s champagne. Skully caps his can, tosses it into the gravel, and jerks his chin at the ladder bolted to the side of a freight car.
“Race you.”
I don’t wait for him to say go. I just bolt, boots clattering on the rungs, skirt riding scandalously high. My thighs scream, my lungs burn, and it feels like heaven. Below me Skully curses, then laughs, low and wicked, as he scrambles after me.
The metal is slick with dew, but adrenaline makes me sure-footed. I haul myself up, crouching on top of the car with the night wide-open around me. The yard stretches endless: rusted hulks, busted tracks, moonlight cutting silver stripes through the dark.
Skully hoists himself up after me, breathing hard, hair mussed from the climb. His leather jacket gleams faintly under the glow sticks, his grin sharp enough to slice. “You cheat like a child,” he accuses.
“Children don’t cheat,” I pant, inching backward just enough to make him chase me across the steel. “They improvise.”
He prowls after me, the space between us buzzing, my heartbeat stuttering every time the metal groans under our weight. For a second it feels like we’re the last two people alive—feral silhouettes racing across a graveyard of trains.
I trip on a bolt, stumble, and he’s there—catching my wrist, steadying me with a firm grip. His thumb presses into my pulse, and his smirk falters. Just for a breath.
“You’re too bright for a place like this,” he mutters, almost to himself.
It sinks into me like the paint fumes, heady and dangerous. My mouth opens, a joke already loading, but the words tangle in my throat. I laugh anyway, hard and sharp. “Good thing I brought glow sticks, huh?”
His gaze lingers a second too long, and then he lets go. “Idiot,” he says, but it comes out soft.