PROLOGUE
? All important meetings occur in the rain, with a clap of thunder.
~~~
“To be honest,” I whisper at the box of gleaming eyes beneath me, “this is not my best moment.”
Rain pounds against my back, drenching my clothes, and the only thing protecting the three tiny kittens flopping around in the cardboard box under me is my awkward roof of a body.
I’ve been hovering for five minutes in order to keep the pale orange, pure black, and little gray cats safe.
My legs are starting to cramp. I don’t know what to do.
Ever since I decided to leave the dorm and check out the Augustus campus at night (a bad decision, mind you, and one that wasn’t actually even technically allowed), things have gone poorly.
First, I sort of immediately got lost. This place is a town, and when you think you’ve left campus? Nope. You’re actually still here.
I swear.
It’s like a spiderweb of buildings and rolling scenery—very unlike Florida.
But I did sort of expect that North Carolina wouldn’t be like Florida.
The Appalachians don’t cut through the state for this place to be anything but hills on top of hills.
As a wee Floridian bookworm who’d rather curl up in bed all day, my legs are basically broken.
I’m never doing outside again.
To top off the fact I got myself lost and gave myself broken legs, five minutes ago I stumbled upon this box full of kittens that couldn’t be left alone.
Picking them up and wandering wasn’t a good idea.
The last thing I needed was to break my arms along with my legs.
But as I was contemplating solutions to this particular dilemma, the sky opened up and puked on me.
Books do not normally describe rain as puke, but forgive me for implying that the downpour hammering into my back and dirty blond hair isn’t exactly like the teardrops of angels or whatever a civilized author might delineate it as.
Civilized authors probably know better than to end up in such predicaments.
“Wanna know something funny?” I whisper to the cats, because if walking around with them while it wasn’t pouring was a bad idea, I’m basically stuck here now.
Their big eyes are barely paying attention. Their fuzzy, floppy bodies continue to tumble about without any concern for my sacrifice on their behalf. Cats hate water. I’m sparing them from so much distress. The least they can do is look at me while I slowly lose my sanity.
“When weather is used to depict the emotions of a character, it’s called ‘pathetic fallacy.’” In spite of the fact I’m soaked through and about to shiver myself sick (summer nights here are not summer nights in Florida), I let the corner of my mouth hook up.
“That’s right. Pathetic. The world mocks me two-fold, and all I can do is sit here and appreciate the poetic justice. ”
“What are you doing?”
I leap full out of my skin when not only does a deep, masculine voice hit me in the pitch darkness all around but also when the sudden absence of rain pounding against my back sends a chill coursing completely down my spine.
I squeak slightly and look up at the largest black umbrella I have ever seen attached to perhaps one of the most downright Slenderman-esque males I have ever witnessed.
He’s tall and pale and greasy in a horrifying “don’t find me alone in the woods at night” kind of way.
Thick black glasses cover his eyes, and long dark hair falls around his cheeks and across his forehead.
A thick brow lifts, and he’s got to at least have five to seven years on me.
There’s nothing teenager about him no matter how slim he is.
Heck, if he weren’t in a black and azure coat boasting the giant A logo of this campus, I’d assume he was a teacher.
Professor.
There aren’t paltry teachers in college.
“U-um,” I croak, and if I can thank embarrassment for anything it’s the fact the heat in my cheeks might be offsetting a case of pneumonia.
He notices the box under me, and both his dark brows rise. Keeping the umbrella over me, he steps to the side, angling his head to get a better look, then he makes a deep huh sound in his throat without so much as opening his mouth. “I take it you’re not the one abandoning them?”
My mouth drops open. “I would never. I’ve wanted a cat forever, but my parents are against animals that shed. And also joy.”
Once again, he makes a sound without opening his mouth—except this time it’s almost like a laugh. His eyes—impressively dark in this lighting—find me past those unflattering and thick glasses of his.
When authors describe guys with high cheekbones and chiseled features, they are probably talking about this dude. Except there’s a small problem with this dude and those noticeably sharp features.
He’s lanky.
He’s a college student.
The ramen diet leaves him on the painfully thin side.
So, obviously, all that nice bone structure is paired a bit too violently with hollow undernourishment.
If I wasn’t already calling him Slenderman Guy in my head, now that is his official title.
“You’ve been talking to yourself out here for a while,” he notes, casually, unlike a murderer, even if it sounds like he’s been creepily watching (and listening) to me?
The distress must show on my face because he clarifies, motioning toward a building behind us. “My dorm. My room window faces this way and I was sitting in front of it at my desk when I saw you, then when I saw it start to pour.”
“Oh,” I murmur. I quickly rewrite creepily watching me to gallantly making an effort to save me from the rain.
“Maybe you know where the dorm I’m supposed to be at is?
Wellington Hall? I’m doing a college tour thing with my junior class, and I wandered outside to…
get some fresh air.” Technically. Technically, I’m out here to “get some fresh air.” Not run away.
I wasn’t at all overwhelmed by my entirely female class being packed into the one big dorm room and left with little to no adult supervision.
My brain wasn’t at all spinning horrific possibilities into existence concerning bullying, popular girls, and me starring as the book nerd.
Slenderman Guy bristles, whispering a coarse swear. “You’re a junior? In high school?”
“Yeah?”
His attention slashes over me, and the heat beneath my skin that’s keeping me from frostbite ticks up a couple notches. Voice rougher than before, he murmurs, “Seventeen?”
“Yes?”
Another hissed curse, and then rain splashes against me as he fumbles with the umbrella and removing his coat.
Thrusting the black and blue thing toward me, as though he’s no longer comfortable looking at me, he clears his throat, opens his mouth, and closes it again.
Breath pours from his nose as he finally finds words.
“Your clothes are completely see-through.”
Oh. Wow. Um.
I take his coat and shoot upright, stammering, “I’m so sorry.” Clearly, I misjudged just how numb my legs had gone, because the second I’m up, I all but plummet into him.
Time freezes when I hit his chest.
The rain stops.
The soft mews of the kittens barely reach my ears. My eyes find his, and if this guy were actually Slenderman, I’d be dead.
His breath catches.
A streak of lightning illuminates a flash of his ocean blue eyes before a clap of thunder explodes in my head.
I echo a pathetic, “I’m so sorry. My legs are numb.”
“Yeah?” he asks, his gaze falling before yanking back up, off me, toward the silver prongs of his umbrella. “It’s fine.”
I think I now get what authors mean when they describe a man’s voice as gravelly. Up this close, he’s still horrifyingly unkempt with that overgrown hair of his, and he’s still way too thin to be conventionally attractive…but…he’s also kind of beautiful in the same way that somber classics are.
Whoa. Okay, Rose. Let’s not go there while we’re using him as much-needed support against his will.
Managing to find the feeling in my legs well enough to get his jacket on, I put a tiny bit of distance between us and chew my lip.
“I, um… I really appreciate the honesty. I always try to be honest. It gets me in a lot of bad and awkward situations, but I prefer knowing the truth, no matter what. Feelings can be dealt with after.”
“Agreed,” he says, still refusing to look at me.
I watch him for a couple seconds, surrounded in the body heat of his coat, which smells better than his too-long hair suggested it would. Something clicks inside my head, and my eyes widen. “Wait a second.”
He winces.
Yeah, he better wince. I frown and fold my arms in the oversize sleeves; I am wearing a tent. “Were you ogling me up until you discovered I was a minor?”
Slenderman Guy clears his throat. “Not my proudest moment.”
My face heats with a different kind of embarrassment, and a breath sticks in my chest as all the time-stopping magic undoes itself. It’s pouring again. It’s loud. The kittens are crying.
“Ogling you wasn’t my intention for coming down here. I couldn’t…” He blinks, and his gaze drags fingers across the canopy of his umbrella. “I couldn’t see the…details from my window. I just saw a girl crouched in the rain.”
Well, I appreciate the honesty. What in the world does he mean by details though?
Against perhaps all better judgment, I turn my back on him, open the coat, and look down at myself.
In another flash of lightning, I discover that while my bra is a modest white, the pink lace accents and bows are bleeding through my school uniform without a singular care in the world.
Oh. My. Word.
Curse my school for being all preppy and wear this super thin, super sleek dress shirt fancy. I whip the coat closed and exhale a horrified breath. Okay. Cool. A stranger saw that. A stranger was enjoying that before his morals kicked in. Lovely. Neat. Nice.
Help.
“Are you a bad person?” I whisper.
“Right now, probably.” The sharp intake of his breath cuts through the sound of the rain. “It’s not like I’m responsible for your modesty, though.”
He has a point. But also basically curse him.
“Rose Briars!” Mrs. Allen shouts from over in the direction of what might be my dorm.
My eyes go huge as I look that way, and the only thing I can think is that I may very well be in huge trouble. “Crap,” I whisper, looking at the kittens then at Slenderman Guy. “Crap.”
“Rose Briars?” he asks.
“Yeah, my parents are hilariously oblivious to the weight of the title they’ve rested upon my shoulders. I don’t need to hear it from an ephebophile.”
He snorts the start of a laugh and muffles it as fast as possible into a cough. The hint of a smile on his lips draws my attention a little more completely than I want to admit. “Is the pedophilia breakdown suddenly common knowledge for high school students?”
I huff. “I like words. And I like when my words are correct, thank you very much.”
The smile that remains teasingly in place is a little distracting. It makes me forget everything.
“Rose Briars!” Mrs. Allen screams, the urgency ticking it up a notch.
I wince, pulled from the trance. Looking down, I clutch his coat closer around myself and shoot him a desperate look.
“Keep it,” he says, like I haven’t seen inside the campus store and know for a fact this thing is like eighty dollars.
“I couldn’t…”
“Consider it my repentance. Also, it’ll spare you from giving shows to anyone else who doesn’t realize you’re a baby.”
My eyes roll. “I’m not a baby.”
“Uh-huh.”
He’s infuriating. In an electric way. Ugh.
I look at the cats as Mrs. Allen screeches my name again. I’m in enough trouble as it is. “Will you take care of them?” I ask Slenderman Guy.
All the touches of humor on his face disappear. “Wha—”
“Come on. You can’t just leave them here. You’re an adult. It’s your job to look out for the youth.”
His brows shoot high up over those ugly glasses of his. “The dorms don’t allow pets. It’s hard to even get an ESA in here.”
“Grownups are smart and figure things out.”
“I’ll admit I didn’t expect such immediate retribution for calling you a baby.”
“Rose. Briars!”
I jolt and dash out from under his umbrella, nearly skidding on a wet rock and falling on my face after that single step.
His hand latches onto my bicep like a vice, and, my word, ramen must be pure protein nowadays since he places me back onto my feet like I weigh nothing even though he looks like a horror story stick figure. The concern in his eyes is…sweet. Yeah. It’s sweet.
I clear my throat while water pours down my face.
He releases my arm and wets his lips, glances sidelong away.
“Take care of them,” I say, and before he can tell me yes or no, I’m flying across campus as fast as my broken legs will let me. I could swear I hear him say, “Take care of my coat,” in response, but a boom of thunder rips all possible words away.
And, before I know it, rain-filled nights with boxes of cats and slender men holding umbrellas are little more than a memory. Like a dream. Leaving nothing behind to prove it was real except one overprice and oversize coat that has long since stopped smelling like a stranger’s warmth.