Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
JESSICA
The following afternoon, I’m telling Kane off on the phone for hiring men to repair our roof.
I mean, it’s kind of sweet that he cares—don’t get me wrong—but now I’ve got three burly men on my property, one repairing the water-damaged ceiling, another up on the roof, and a third scratching his balls on the other side of my window while smoking his third cigarette since he arrived.
“Don’t worry.” Kane’s amused voice rumbles in my ear. “I’ve already warned them that if they so much as look at you, they’ll be buried by nightfall. They won’t cause any trouble.”
This man is so infuriating at times.
I rub the space between my brows. “I’ve already told you that you can’t keep paying for stuff.”
“And I told you I won’t let my girlfriend live in a house with a leaky roof. You refuse to move in with me, so let me pay to fix your roof.”
“Is that all?” I ask, pouring myself a glass of water and sipping it by the window now that the guy has gone to scratch his balls elsewhere.
“For now, sure.”
I hum, putting the glass back down. “Then how do you explain the obnoxious digger parked out front?”
“Multi-offer deal. Pay to have the roof fixed and get a new lawn for free. He might have thrown in a few other extras, too.”
My lips twitch, just barely. But I smother it just as fast.
The worker on the ladder asks for a spanner, and I reach for it on the table and hand it to him. Then I step out into the hallway for some privacy, or at least the illusion of it.
“You only asked me to move in with you last night, Kane.”
“So? I plan on asking you every day.” He’s chewing on something, speaking around a mouthful. “I’ll wear you down. Just wait and see.”
“My point is that we’ve only been back together for a few days. I’m not moving in with you anytime soon.”
“Well, in the past week, you’ve moved into my bed.”
I can almost hear the smug satisfaction in his voice, and I swear, I’d roll my eyes to high heaven if I weren’t smiling. “That’s not entirely true. I tried to leave the other night, but you tied me to your bed.”
“I should’ve never untied you. Worst mistake of my life.”
I’m about to reply when there’s a honk outside. Rain is waving at me from her car, half-hanging out the window.
What is she doing here?
“Rain is here,” I tell Kane as I go upstairs to let my brother know I’m heading out. He looks up from his guitar when I knock on his open bedroom door. It’s not often I see him play anymore. He only really does it when he’s feeling down.
I make a mental note to ask him about it later, but I doubt he’ll want to tell me. Chris rarely opens up about his feelings.
“Rain’s here,” I say to my brother. “I’m heading out for a couple of hours. Make sure the workers don’t steal anything.”
Kane scoffs in my ear. “They wouldn’t dare touch anything. I put the fear of God in them. Besides, I’m paying them a small fortune. They’d be stupid to jeopardize that.”
Ignoring him, I say goodbye to Chris, then jog back downstairs to put on my shoes.
“I’ll call you later,” I tell him as I tie my hair up with a spare tie around my wrist.
“I’m counting on it, little thief. My cock misses you already. I’ve told him to stand down, but he misses you too much. I might need to stroke him.”
I snicker as I shut the door behind me, the afternoon sun warming my back. “Bye, Kane.”
“That’s all? Bye, Kane?”
Ava’s already in the backseat when I slide in beside Rain.
“I miss you too,” I tell Kane, which makes Rain pretend to be sick and bat her lashes while mouthing, I miss you too. Then she sticks her tongue into her cheek and pretends to suck on a cock, moaning, while I smack her shoulder, laughing under my breath.
“I’ll call you later.”
“Who is that?” Kane asks suspiciously.
“It’s just Rain.” I smack her again. “Being her delightful self.”
She laughs and starts the engine, then leans in to speak near my mouthpiece. “Hi, handsome. Don’t worry yourself, we’ll take real good care of your girl.”
Kane grumbles in my ear about having a talk with Noah, claiming his girlfriend is a nuisance and that she steals me away from him.
“Bye, Kane,” Rain and Summer say in unison as I hang up and slip my phone into my pocket.
Rain gives me one of her famous, let’s get up to trouble looks and wiggles in her seat. I look over my shoulder, seeing Ava struggle to hold back her own smile.
I narrow my eyes. “What’s up with you two?”
“We’ve got a surprise for you.” Rain slides her sunglasses back on and waves bye to the guy with the itchy ballsack, whose cigarette slips from his lips when they part in surprise.
“What kind of surprise?” I ask suspiciously, glancing between them.
With Rain, it can be anything—an impromptu trip to Las Vegas, auto theft, or matching tattoos. You just never know.
It’s even more worrying that they didn’t invite Summer.
Rain’s eyes glitter. “One that you’ll like.”
O-okay.
I look to Ava for answers. She presses her lips together, as if it’s killing her not to tell me.
Have I ever mentioned that I hate surprises? They suck. Does anyone actually like them?
We drive for several hours into the countryside. The sun dips behind the trees, and Rain gossips the whole way while flipping through songs on the radio. Mostly it’s just static, except for the occasional commentator or ABBA song.
“Where are we going?” I ask when we turn down a side road, continuing down a bumpy, abandoned dirt track that’s barely visible through the weeds.
“We can’t spoil the surprise.”
What surprise?
The trees part to reveal a derelict cabin in a clearing. It’s old and neglected and totally haunted. No one can tell me otherwise. The old wood has rotted, the roof is sagging beneath a quilt of moss and broken tiles, and grass is growing thickly around the porch.
“What is this place?” I ask as we park next to a rusty old Volvo that looks like it’s stood abandoned here for decades.
The windshield has a huge hole in it, as though someone had put a brick through it.
The forest is slowly reclaiming the rusty metal, with tangled ivy crawling over the hood and into the hole.
Rain cuts the engine and peers at the cottage through the windshield. “This place is perfect. Just as miserable as it looked on the website.”
“What is this place?” I ask.
It’s probably just in my head, but this place feels creepy as hell. I’ve watched more than my fair share of horror movies, and they all start with an abandoned cottage like this one.
Rain opens the door, and the damp, earthy smell of pine trees and bark drifts in with the breeze. She hops out, then pops her head back into the car. “Promise not to be angry.”
Is she for real? I look to Ava for support, but she’s applying more lip gloss in her pocket mirror. By the looks of it, she’s not bothered in the slightest that we’ve visited Rain’s version of Camp Crystal Lake, minus, well, the lake.
“What have you done?” I ask Rain, dragging out the words.
She touches her tongue to her top lip, just as she does sometimes when she knows she’s in trouble. Then she blurts out, “So I found this place online and there might be a legend tied to it.”
“Wait? What legend?” I’m sure my eyes bug out. I can totally believe there’s a legend tied to this creepy place. It probably has a well, too, like in that movie The Ring. I mean, what the hell?
“Well, you know. It’s nothing too serious. Just three masked men coming out of the woods to kill you or something equally exciting.” She waves me off when I blink at her. Slowly.
Is she crazy? I look around. It really is Camp Crystal Lake. But if Jason had friends.
I scramble out of the car when she heads for the cottage. Tall grass tangles around my ankles, and the moss is squishy and wet, like marshland beneath my feet. What was I thinking? I should have worn better shoes for this.
I have a pair of rain boots tucked away somewhere in a random closet.
By now, they’re probably home to a family of spiders, and I’d probably freak out if I tried them on. I’d need to vacuum them first, maybe even hose them out.
“Rain,” I whine, then stop when I realize that Ava is still in the car. What is she doing?
I turn back and open the door. She’s applying mascara, working on the inner corner lashes.
“Ava,” I bark, and she almost jumps out of her skin, smearing mascara on her nose. “Are you coming?” I ask, gesturing impatiently to Rain, who has pulled over two spare tires from God knows where and stacked them in front of the grimy windows.
“Can you at least take off your heels?” I call out when she climbs onto the wobbly stack. She flips me off and then tries to peek inside. I swear she has a death wish, and I’m not taking her to the hospital if she breaks her ankle. Actually, scrap that.
I’d happily drive us out of here.
“What are we doing here, Ava?” I ask when she finally slips out, sinking into the wet moss as if she’s that horse in the movie with the quicksand. What’s it called again? I’d Google it, but something tells me there’s no internet connection out here.
Just then, I realize there’s a thud coming from the trunk. What the hell?
Ava giggles when it comes again, louder this time. My eyes widen, and I press my hands to my mouth. No fucking way. What have they done?
I leave Ava giggling and try to open the trunk, but it’s locked, so I stomp over to Rain, wrestle her off the tires, snatch the key from her hand, and storm back. I almost trip over a roof tile hidden in the grass.
The trunk groans like a tired old man when I lift it up. Next to me, Ava does jazz fingers and says, “Surprise.”
What the actual fuck?
I stare, horrified.
Rain stumbles over, her tall heels catching in a tangle of dead ivy. “I can explain.”
I slam the lid shut again, a little too hard. “Explain this, Rain. Why do you have the senator’s wife tied up and gagged in your trunk?”