Chapter 10
“Knock much, asshole?” Lucas said to Stick as he entered the apartment.
“I thought I’d wake up Andy,” Stick said in a soft voice matching Lucas’s. “Hey, Lily,” he said in my direction.
“Hi, Stick,” I replied as Lucas moved away from me, grabbing his T-shirt from the couch and, sadly, putting it back on.
“You couldn’t text that you were about to go all B&E on me?”
“It’s not exactly B&E if I have the keys,” Stick said, jingling his keychain before shoving it in his jeans pocket. “Besides, I needed to talk to you.”
I didn’t mention that talking to Lucas could be accomplished via phone. And then my suspicious mind took the turn that perhaps what Stick wanted to talk to Lucas about should not be done on a phone or with texts.
Was Lucas telling me the truth? Was he done with that life?
“There’s nothing that we have to talk about that can’t be said on a phone,” Lucas said, as if reading my thoughts. Or maybe my skeptical look.
“Let’s go into your room for a sec,” Stick said, starting down the hallway, not even stopping in the living room.
“No,” Lucas said, still sitting on the couch with me. Stick turned around and gave Lucas a pointed look. “I mean it, Stick. No. I just got done telling Lily that I wasn’t doing…anything I shouldn’t anymore.”
Stick looked at me with a look I couldn’t quite decipher. Partially pissed off, yes. But also with an almost grudging respect. “Do you think that was a good idea?” he asked Lucas. He made his way back to the living room, sitting in a beat-up chair to the side of the couch.
“I trust Lily,” Lucas said.
“Yes, but now I have to, too.”
“You can,” Lucas and I said at the same time.
I rose from the couch, hating to leave Lucas’s warm body beside me, but knowing that the whole vibe of the evening had completely changed—first with Lucas’s story, and now with Stick showing up. “I think I’m going to take off. It’s getting late.”
“So many frat boys with roofies to do, so little time,” Stick said, moving his legs so I could pass by him.
“Shut up, Stick,” Lucas and I both said at the same time.
Lucas rose and came after me. “Lily, you don’t have to leave.
” He gently held my arm, and I would have loved nothing more than to sink back into his hold, into him.
But instead I smiled and said, “I know I don’t have to, but it’s late, and umm, maybe it’s better to not have so much…
temptation with Andy in the next room and all. ”
“Right. Right.” Lucas nodded, glancing down the hallway to where Andy slept. “No Naked Big Brother. Got it.”
Stick wisely kept his mouth shut at this, and I just nodded and stepped into Lucas’s arms, which quickly encircled me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and went on my tiptoes to kiss him lightly. “Call me tomorrow,” I said. “If you want,” I added.
“Oh, I want,” he said. “I want very bad.”
I smiled. “Me too,” I whispered against his mouth, kissing him one last time.
Stepping away from him, I crossed to my backpack and pulled out my phone. “Do you have a number for a cab? Or is there a bus stand nearby?” I knew he couldn’t leave Andy there alone.
“You do not want to stand in this neighborhood for a bus this time of night,” Stick said, rising from the chair. “I’ll give you a ride to your dorm. Or wherever you’re going.”
“To my dorm. And I can take a cab. I’ll just find a number for one.” I started scrolling my phone when Lucas put a hand on mine, stilling my motions.
“No cab is going to come here, either. I can have Stick stay here with Andy and I can give you a ride.”
For some reason, I didn’t want Stick to be here when Lucas got home from dropping me off. Didn’t want Stick to have unlimited time to try and convince Lucas to do whatever plan Stick had come here with.
“That’s okay,” I said, and turned to Stick. “Your offer still stand?”
“Yeah, can you just give me a second alone with Lucas first?”
Lucas was about to object, but I laid a hand on his chest, the same chest that only moments ago was naked and I was caressing with my mouth. “Sure. I need to use the restroom anyway.”
I made my way down the hallway, feeling both sets of eyes on me. Lucas probably watching my ass. Stick probably waiting for me to close the door.
Not even waiting. “Dude, this is a no-brainer. Zero risk. And—” That was all I heard before I shut the bathroom door. I wished it wouldn’t have been so obvious with them both watching, or I would have left it open a crack.
And for a small apartment in a shitty part of town, the bathroom door was surprisingly, frustratingly, thick and soundproof.
Taking care of business as quickly as I could, I reentered the living room to see a pissed-off Stick and an at-ease Lucas, and the sight gave me a small rush of relief.
I cared what Lucas did before we met, of course. But what really mattered to me was the man he was now, and that man was taking a shitty job so he’d be able to keep his kid brother in a stable situation.
That was enough for me. For now.
Lucas gave me a goodnight kiss that had me silent for the first five minutes of the ride home with Stick.
Finally, as we made our way through town to campus, he said, “Are we really going to your dorm, or do you want to be dropped somewhere else?”
“My dorm. Like I said.”
He shrugged. “I don’t give a shit. And I won’t tell Lucas if you wanted to be dropped at whatever big bash the Bribury elite are gathering at tonight.”
I looked at him for a second as he stared at the road. “Are you asking me if Jane is at a party?”
His snort of disgust assured me I’d made a direct hit. “Yeah. Right. Like I give a shit what little Miss Silver Spoon is doing tonight.”
“You have her wrong, you know. She said the other night half a silver spoon, but what she didn’t say is that spoon was kept away from her, used like a bargaining chip her whole life.”
“Poor baby.” His voice was dripping with condescension.
“Some said so, yes.”
He looked over at me then. “What do you mean? Who the hell is Jane Winters anyway?”
I shrugged. “Not my story to tell.” I pulled my phone out and dialed, putting it on speaker.
“Where the hell are you?” Jane’s voice, slightly slurred, came through. Loud music played in the background. It sounded like some kind of EDM, not the usual folk-lite stuff that played at the smaller parties we’d gone to. “We’re having an amazing time, get your ass over here.”
“Where are you exactly?” I asked, now wishing I hadn’t put the speaker on. But it was a small car and Jane was speaking so loudly that Stick would have heard anyway.
“At that club in Chesney that Heather told us about.”
“How’d you get in?” I asked. Fake IDs weren’t unheard of, but if Jane had one and got busted, and I didn’t even know about it…I didn’t even want to imagine the shit storm that my father would rain down on me.
“Jane? How’d you get in?” I asked again.
“Pffft. Easy peasy. You have got to come, Lily, the dancing is hype.”
“Shit,” I said to myself. Stick gave me a questioning look. “Is Syd with you?”
“No. But Lily, you’ll never guess who’s here.
Montrose! Can you believe it? I am so going to hit that tonight.
He’s going to be late for class for sure on Monday—’cause he won’t be able to walk!
” She laughed loud and boisterously at that.
I loved Jane when she was “on” like this.
She was free and daring and brave, all things I wished I could be.
But being drunk and underage at a club was not a smart move. And with Montrose there too…
“Would you mind if—” I said to Stick, but he was already turning off the route to the dorm and away from town, toward Chesney, a wealthy town about twenty minutes from Schoolport. Most of the faculty from Bribury lived in Chesney, not deigning to live in the crappy town where they worked.
“I’m not sure I can get in,” I said when we’d reached Chesney and the club where Jane was partying.
“Don’t worry about it. Keep the motor running,” he said as he left the car double-parked in front of the club. “Christ, this is really fucking up my night,” I heard him say to himself as he shut the car door behind him.
The bouncer approached Stick, motioning to the car. Stick wasn’t as big and broad as Lucas, but he wasn’t tiny, either. But he was dwarfed by the huge bouncer, who towered over him. He placed a meaty finger in Stick’s chest and again motioned to the car where I sat.
I couldn’t hear them, even if I had rolled down the window—and I didn’t particularly want to. But I could see Stick chatting up the bouncer, waving a hand to me, then a hand at the club.
The bouncer looked pissed (do bouncers look any other way on a Saturday night?), but eventually stepped back and waved Stick into the club.
I sat, debating whether to call Jane again and let her know Stick was coming to get her. Not even knowing whom she was with, I figured a surprise attack from Stick might be the best approach.
It seemed to take forever, and the bouncer glared at me the whole time, while occasionally letting in new arrivals. I noticed everyone who went in was well into their late twenties or thirties, and dressed in expensive club clothes.
This was not a college club, even for those students over twenty-one.
Good God, if my father found out about this. Stick came out then with Jane in tow. Literally towing her, her arm firmly in his grasp.
She said something to the bouncer, and he stepped forward for a second, as if to answer Jane’s appeal, until Stick said something. The bouncer left Jane to Stick and sat back down on his stool.
“Lily,” she yelled in my ear, wrapping her arms around me as I stepped out of the car to let Jane get in the back seat.
“You need to come inside with me. The DJ is totally sick, and I’m soooo close to hooking up with Montrose.
” She looked across the hood at Stick, who was crossing over to the driver’s side.
“Until this asshole showed up.” She yanked on my arm. “C’mon, Lily. Come back inside with me.”
“We need to get home, Jane,” I said, trying to guide her unwilling body to the back seat.
She stumbled a bit and her whole body seemed to heave.
“Unh huh,” Stick said, now sitting behind the wheel. “She is not going to chuck in my car.”
“I don’t ‘chuck,’” Jane said.
“Yeah, sure you don’t. No college freshman getting hammered for the first time ever does,” he said, almost to himself.
“It’s not the first—”
“You’ll have to put her in the front seat, Lily,” Stick said to me, as if Jane was a bag of groceries. “Less chance of her getting sick than riding in the back.”
I was all for leaving the deadweight of Jane with Stick. I sat her in the front seat and Stick held on to her arm as I eased the seat forward as much as possible with her in it. I squeezed into the back, then put the front seat back into position, Jane flopping back with it.
I tried to reach through the opening, but couldn’t reach the door to shut it.
Noticing my inability to get us on our way, Stick softly swore, then moved across the bench front seat, reaching past Jane, and pulled the door close.
That perked the fading Jane back up. “Boob graze! Totally felt that boob graze, ya perv.”
“Yeah, highlight of my night,” Stick said with disgust. “Grazing your tits has totally made this shitty night worthwhile.”
“Well, they are very nice tits,” Jane said, letting her head fall back on the headrest and closing her eyes.
A tiny chuckle escaped Stick, almost unwillingly. “Keep your eyes open,” he said to Jane in an almost nice voice. “Less chance of getting sick. And buckle up so you don’t fall and crack your skull on my dash.”
Jane struggled with the seatbelt, needing several tries to make it click. Stick sighed with disgust.
I slid over behind Stick so I could keep a better watch on Jane. Remarkably, she listened to Stick and opened her eyes. Even managed to hold her head straight.
“Jane, how did you even get in there?” I asked. “Who were you with?”
She waved a hand in the air, like coming to be in a much-older club at eighteen was nothing. Maybe it was to Jane. I didn’t know a lot about her life before Bribury, though I was sure my father would have briefed me on anything…dangerous, if he’d been aware.
“Oh, my lovely Lily,” Jane said, not so much slurring her words as singing them. “You don’t get to know everything. Don’t want you reporting it back to Daddy, do we?”
I stiffened. “I thought we were good the night we did the True Confessions thing,” I said. “You know I wouldn’t—”
“Why the fuck would Lily tell her father you got drunk?” Stick interrupted as he drove us away from Chesney and back to Schoolport.
“I wouldn’t. I don’t…” But I let the words trail off. I didn’t want to lie to Jane, and I honestly wasn’t sure what I would say to my father about this night.
“Because Lily—poor, poor, beautiful Lily—has been sent to Bribury to be my keeper. An unofficial Secret Service agent, if you will.”
“I…I’m not…” Again, I couldn’t finish.
“‘S’okay,” she said. “We’re good. All is cool. No worries.”
She looked over her shoulder at me, her eyes glassy, but I could still see the brilliant intelligence behind them.
“You’re just a pawn in this game, Lily, and I get that.
” She reached her hand across the back seat and I instinctively reached for it.
She squeezed my hand, then released me, facing forward again.
“You probably didn’t even want to go to Bribury, did you, Lily? ”
I sat back in my seat, soaking in Jane’s words. “No,” I said softly. I had wanted to go to Maryland.
“Poor, beautiful Lily,” Jane said again.
I felt the beginnings of something stir in me.
I had tamped down all my anger about not being able to go to the college of my choice, about having to go to Bribury, room with Jane.
I told myself that I was just being a good daughter, that I was lucky to even have this opportunity that so many kids didn’t.
But I was pissed off. And I didn’t get pissed off. I was the good daughter, the peacemaker, the girl people pointed to and said, “What a great girl you have there, Grayson,” and I would bask in it.
But I wasn’t that girl anymore. I could feel a change in myself. Had it started with Lucas, or was totally inappropriate Lucas a by-product of it?
We drove in silence for a while, each digesting our own thoughts after Jane’s semi-confession. Finally, as we neared campus, Stick asked the same question he asked of me earlier. “Just who the fuck are you, Jane Winters?”
Jane had once again rested her head on the headrest, and she turned her head toward Stick, studying him. He met her eyes and it seemed like both of their guards dropped for just a second. Then Jane turned her head forward again, and closed her eyes.
“Nobody,” she said. Then she whispered, “God, I’m dying to be fucking nobody.”