Chapter Forty
“Thank you,” I whisper, my palms wrapping around the matte black mug Kali extends toward me.
I am onto my third cup of peppermint tea.
Chase and Harlen had disappeared hours ago, Skinner leaving not long after them.
The only person that had stayed behind was Rusty, though he had retreated to his office for some time now.
I heard him talking on the phone when I was in the bathroom earlier, but the most I’d caught was a breathy mumble, picking up on something about a ‘run.’ I didn’t know what that meant, didn't quite care to know either, however my guess was that it was why this cool brick building felt so empty.
I’m blowing steam from my mug when Kali places another chocolate chip cookie on the plastic plate beside me. And from behind the cup, a smile of gratitude tilts the corner of my mouth. After the day I’d had, it was exactly what I’d needed.
I wrap my lips around the edge and take a careful sip—I’d burned my tongue earlier, and the tiny little red bumps at the tip were still prickly and sensitive.
“I’m going to need the recipe for these.
” I reach for the lump of decadence, dunk it in the tea and moan as it disintegrates on my tongue.
“Everything I attempt cooking either becomes a rock, or I burn it,” talking with my mouth full.
I drag the back of my hand across my mouth to clean a rivulet of tea that drips down my chin.
Kali laughs, reaching for the stool beneath the scarred bar, its legs screeching against the flooring.
I turn to face her as she takes a seat, biting into her own mound of sugar. She brushes her hands together, ridding them of crumbs before sipping the hot tea.
“Do you use a recipe?” she asks, returning the mug to the bar with a thunk.
“Ahhh no, I just—”
She chuckles again, arching her back, dragging her fingers through her black curls and pulling them back from her face. Her black crop top sits just over her nipples, her underboob on full display.
“That’s where you’re going wrong, you cannot bake without a recipe…
” She pauses to bite the hair tie from her wrist, and I can’t help but notice how green her eyes are against the depth of her ebony hair and pale freckled skin.
“No matter how good you think you are.” She taps her shoulder to mine playfully, returning her hands to her mug and slouching over.
I smile, taking another sip of tea.
“So, you’re Chase’s girl, right?”
I spit the smoldering liquid back into the cup, coughing and splattering, choking.
“Oh, no…” I place the mug on the bar, not picking it up again.
“Chase and I, we, no—there’s no we,” I say, furrowing my brow, returning my eyes to the warm cup and watching my finger circle the opening of the ceramic.
She smiles at me, as if she knows exactly what I’m trying to tell her—though I don’t know what that is myself.
“Complicated, huh? I know everything about…complicated.” She rolls her eyes. “These men…fucking assholes, but they also have a fucked-up way of looking out for you, maybe that’s why I’ve stuck around.”
My stomach tightens and heat blooms to my cheeks. How many of them had she been with? Had she been with Chase? I brush the thought away quicker than it arrives; it’s none of my business.
I shuffle for the right words. “Chase and I…we aren’t…like that. He is my best friend's brother.”
Something settles over Kali’s face.
She takes a sip from her mug, the smile she had in her bright green eyes earlier had faded, replaced with a tenderness that had my stomach turning over itself.
I think she sees it, the way I look at her, because she shifts her sorrowful expression and changes the subject, “When you bake you have to make sure you follow the measurements…”
I swallow another mouthful of tea and let her trail off, because now I could only think about him.
I think about how it felt to be so close to him again, how our noses had almost brushed, how his heart slammed against my chest, and how his hands tightened on my wrists. Then, I think about how I wanted his touch buried beneath my skin even though he had hurt me in a way no one else could.
It was warped and fucked up, a little like the two of us.
When Jade was alive, me and Chase fought. Often, too. But back then, his flames kept me at a distance. Only today it was as if distance no longer existed, and the closer we got, the more terrifyingly we burned.
I swallow the rest of my tea, feeling a surge of warmth low in my stomach. I try to push it away, arching my back and stretching my arms above my head when the slam of the back door thuds behind us.
In a quick snap, I glance over my shoulder to see Chase and Harlen striding into the large room. Their ripped jeans hug their legs, Chase’s dark, Harlen’s light. The T-shirt hanging from Chase, bigger and more over-sized than Harlen’s.
I catch Chase’s eyes the moment they darken. He drills them into me, and I look away, toward Harlen, who jerks his chin at me in greeting and starts in my direction.
I look back and forth between the two, swallowing again.
The boys in front of me have always seen me as their sister, but I only ever saw one as my brother.
I turn away and return my elbows to the bar, jutting my ass out.
A hand pushes to the top of my back, right between my shoulder blades, and Harlen is curling around my shoulders, squeezing me into a hug.
I raise one hand and clench my fingers around his forearm that sits just below my chin. He untangles himself and falls onto the stool at my side.
Kali is already around the bar, popping a beer and placing it down in front of him.
“You know the way to my heart, Kal.” Harlen winks at her, and I almost want to snort because it is so grossly Harlen.
Rusty steps out of his office and is beside his son, Kali placing a beer in his hand.
“Did you take care of it?” Rusty whispers his question to Harlen low beneath his breath, and I know I’m not supposed to hear it, and yet my ears zero in.
I watch Harlen’s face turn serious and he nods. “Already all over it, but yeah, I said what I needed to.” He pushes the beer bottle to his lips, leaving it at that.
“You want one, too?” I don’t have to look to know that Kali's question is for Chase, and he must decline because Kali slips back around the counter, returning to the stool she had taken residence in beside me, bringing a third chocolate chip cookie to her mouth.
“Laiken,” Chase’s voice slices down the knobs of my spine. I lift my chin over my shoulder the moment he says, “Let’s go.”
Licking my dry lips, my heart leaps to my throat. “Where—” But Chase is already out the door, and my question is clipped with the slam of steel behind him.
The pallid glow piercing from Chase’s truck lights up the lilac purple of my trailer.
Night had fallen fast, the moon’s iridescence shining on the dark, fluffy clouds filled with the promise of rain.
The swarm of reporters and news anchors were long gone, at least for the night. But I had no doubt that they’d be out again tomorrow, and the day after that too, waiting for their moment to strike.
My bones tighten; my stomach aches.
Small towns had a way of sucking the life out of you. They also had a way of portraying you as someone you weren’t.
A survivor.
The girl that got away.
I was neither.
What I went through three years ago wasn’t survival, wasn’t a fight. My best friend was the only one that had fought that night.
I had been spared.
Why? I wasn’t too sure.
For how long? Only he knew.
“Our time is coming, Laiken.”
His words stick to the back of my throat, coated in foreboding, they curdle my stomach.
He was coming for me.
When? That was the question now, not if. If had died with the girl he had just mutilated and dropped off under the sign of the trailer park I lived in.
The thought sets my teeth on edge. The panic and terror I’d worked hard to suppress was resurfacing, and there was nothing I or anyone else could do to stop it.
My fingers quiver when they latch around the handle at my side. I pop the door and rotate my legs until they’re dangling over the edge of Chase’s passenger seat.
I glance over my shoulder to see him resting his elbow at the open window, his thumb and forefinger pinching at his bottom lip in question. He’s staring at the front of my trailer, not looking at me.
The engine is still running, the lights glaring ahead and I think about thanking him for the ride, then quickly force myself to swallow the words instead.
I had no gratitude for Chase Keller, or his actions.
Rocks crunch beneath my Reeboks when I get out, turning and slamming the door shut with a little more force than I’d intended.
I take one step, then another when I hear him cut the engine. He turns off the lights, opens his door, and slams it with the same force.
And I feel him on my heels when I scramble toward the trailer, working quickly to get the dingy door open, all while trying to clamp down my unease, my fear, in order for him not to see it.
I hold my breath, stepping inside, turning to shut the door when Chase jams himself into the small gap.
He sucks on the inside of his lip, shakes his head, and I contemplate pushing it into him, but quickly decide it’s not worth my time or the energy I’ll expend trying to keep him out.
It was Chase Keller, and he would find his way in if he really wanted to.
And if he didn’t want to? Well, I knew how good he was at disappearing.
Tonight, I’d be lying to myself if I wasn’t curious which he would choose. Turning around, I decide to pretend he’s not here, a soulless apparition I can no longer see.
I walk to the corner of the room, flicking the switch to my fluorescent pink lava lamp that sits beside the small couch wrapped in tufted black suede.
I reach for another switch, flicking on the star-shaped fairy lights that drape across the ceiling.
I had made my trailer my escape, but tonight, it didn’t matter how many switches I flicked, how many walls I illuminated, it still felt gray.