19. Nothing Lasts Forever
NOTHING LASTS FOREVER
PRESENT
Hours later, I still feel an invisible taint from where Patrick had been touching me.
Hell, just having Trent’s eyes on my body was enough to leave its mark.
As soon as we got home from the country club, I practically rubbed my skin raw in the shower, trying to wash it away, but even as I lie in bed at two in the morning, that violation is still there.
Thank God the temperature dropped, because a gorgeous lakefront breeze comes right through my window.
Sadly, though, it also emphasizes the crackling and scuffles coming from outside.
A raccoon had recently taken up residency in the tree next to the house, and I spotted the critter lurking in a lofty branch the other night, screeching and shrieking for no other apparent reason than to be a nuisance.
Thankfully, it’s not up to those same antics tonight, but the recurring bumps and thumps sound awfully loud for a relatively small animal.
Even with my earbuds in, I can hear it over the Korean horror movie I’m watching on my laptop.
I also realize the genre probably isn’t the best choice given the current situation, not to mention my overactive imagination.
A harsh thud hits the side of the house a few feet below my window, forcing me to sit upright and yank the earbuds out. Unless I’m dealing with a suicidal raccoon that decided to end it all by jumping from the tree and throwing itself into the side of the house, something’s wrong.
Surveying the room, I look around for something I can use for protection. I frown at the tennis racket propped up against the front of the nightstand beside my mattress, realizing it’s my best line of defense. I really need to invest in a baseball bat or something. Maybe a samurai sword.
Yes, I know I’m overreacting. It’s likely just a tree branch that snapped and struck the siding of the house.
Hell, it could even be a bird. Grabbing the handle of the racket, I can’t help but feel like an idiot.
The raven in my bedroom wasn’t my only bird-related fright fest. When I was eight, an owl had flown smack-dab into my locked window during the night.
Its impact had broken the glass, not to mention scarred me from ever watching Hitchcock’s The Birds again.
Sure, a bloodied-knife-wielding psychopath always comes to mind when things go bump in the night, but I tell myself to implement a little logic.
There hasn’t been a break-in on Royal Boulevard for well over a decade, and I can’t ever remember somebody being attacked, let alone murdered. What are the odds now?
That reassurance is obliterated, however, when a masculine set of fingers suddenly grapples at the ledge of the windowsill, and the bottom half of the glass eases up completely with the help of another hand.
The fullest of my scream gets caught in my throat, resulting in something between a gasp and a shriek.
Practically falling out of my bed, I scramble to my feet and race for the door when Jase announces, “It’s just me. ”
Sure enough, I whirl around to see a head of thick dark hair toppled in front of his eyes, the rest of his features veiled in the limited light as he pulls himself up and in through my window.
My heart threatens to explode in my chest, and my legs have been reduced to trembling gelatin, so it’s a miracle I’m still on my feet. “What the hell are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” he growls, brushing himself off and pushing the bottom of the window back down.
“It looks like you’re trying to give me a heart attack!” I whisper-slash-sneer.
“Sorry, I just wanted to get in the house.”
“Funny, it’s too bad there aren’t these large rectangular cutouts in the wall you could use to head in and out of places.
Oh, wait, that’s right, there is! It’s called a door!
” His statement replays in my head, and I want to kick myself at the weird satisfaction of hearing him actually saying the word, ‘sorry.’
“Someone locked both the front and back doors with the dead latch,” he huffs, brushing himself off. “My only options were to either sleep on the front porch for the next five hours or come through your window.”
“There are also these things called cell phones,” I say dryly. “Perhaps you’ve heard of them. A simple call or text message to me, and I could have unlocked the dead latch.”
“Wow, really?” he mocks. “That never occurred to me. Oh, wait, that’s right, I did.
About a dozen times. You didn’t answer. And I tried getting your attention by throwing acorns below your window, but you still didn’t respond.
I figured after the country club that you’d probably sneak out for the night. ”
I roll my eyes, despite knowing he can’t see the gesture. The only source of light comes from the distant streetlight and the pale glow of my laptop screen. “I haven’t snuck out in years.”
The second I say it, I want to kick myself for admitting to that. No, Jase. Since you left, I haven’t done anything remotely fun or thrilling or reckless.
At least it seems Jase hasn’t been snooping around my room while I’ve been out of the house, because he’s looking around the space like maybe he stepped inside the wrong room.
There’s just enough light to make out the furniture and vague shapes of knickknacks, all of which are foreign.
Any discernible evidence that this is actually my room is still packed away in the basement.
The lines of my stuffed penguins are gone, and it’s the first thing he notices.
All that’s left is Swaddle, sitting alone on the otherwise bare dresser.
Jase plucks him up, twisting the plushy at multiple angles as if to get a better look at the bandages on top of its head. The action certainly gives me a better look at his hands, which are smudged with what I can only imagine to be grime from the lattice and window ledge.
I instantly snatch the penguin away, hugging Swaddle to my chest. “You’re getting him dirty.”
Jase doesn’t move, his hands frozen in place, as if he’s still holding the stuffed animal.
“What?” I finally hiss when he just continues to stand there.
When he still doesn’t say anything, I start to pull open my bedroom door, ready to usher him out, only to find light flooding the hallway.
The only things illuminating the upstairs after dark should be the night lights plugged in along the length of the hall, but the bright overhead lamp fixture five feet from my door is on.
It pours into my room, highlighting more than just my furniture.
I gasp at the sight of black and blue surrounding Jase’s left eye, not to mention the gash ripped across the top of his cheekbone.
Not only that, but the grime on his hands isn’t grime at all.
It’s dried blood.
A million and ten questions come to mind, but I don’t get to voice any of them as the floorboards in the hall creak. “Ali?”
Jase barely manages to duck behind the door as my dad nudges it open far enough for him to peek inside.
“Everything okay in here? It sounded like you screamed.”
“No. I mean yes. I’m totally fine. Why wouldn’t I be?” I blurt, far too tensely and way too quickly.
Smooth .
But can you blame me? I’m scantily clad in nothing but a tank top and boy briefs, there’s a guy in my bedroom, in the middle of the night, and my dad just heard what would best be described as a gasping scream… Yeah, this doesn’t look bad or anything, right?
“I just…had a bad dream, is all,” I recover just as clumsily. “You know, the usual. Pandas…were trying to kill me.”
My dad eyes me like I might be high, but he eventually just shakes his head. “Ooookay. Well…”
“Sorry, I’ll try to keep the noise down.” I force out a laugh in an attempt to sound lighthearted, but it’s pitchy and stiff, making me sound all the more crazy, but Dad seems as satisfied with the answer as he can be.
Heaving out a breath, he finally notices the penguin I’ve still got pinned to my chest. “Aren’t you a little old to still be sleeping with stuffed animals?”
I want to glare at Jase but instead smile like an idiot. “You would think so.”
Only once Dad leaves and the light in the hall switches back off do I dare to exhale. I hear a certain someone do the same from the shadows beside me, but I’m not letting him off that easy. “What the fuck, Jase?”
He has the audacity to try skirting around me, forcing me to pin my back to the door. Thankfully, I’m sockless, so my feet have some traction when he tries to heave the door open and slide me aside. Instead, he can only pry me forward about half a foot or so, placing me squarely in front of him.
“What happened to your face?” I demand.
Jase tries reaching around me to pull the door open further, but I lean against the frame, blocking him from the knob entirely.
“Who did that to you?”
“It was an accident,” he says flatly.
“What? Someone’s fist unintentionally pummeled you in the eye five times?” I snort. “You may not think highly of me, but you know I’m not an idiot. What happened?”
“Why do you care?”
“You just scared the shit out of me and put me into a compromising position. I don’t think I’m asking too much for simply wanting to know why.”
In the dark, I can’t see his eyes, but the way his head lowers ever so slightly makes it clear he’s not looking at my face.”You kept it.”
Jase says this like it might be a question, only annoying me further as he motions to the stuffed animal secured against my chest.
“Why wouldn’t I? It’s the last one Derek ever bought me, from my time in the hospital.” Well, the time before last, but there’s no way in hell I’m getting into that mess.
Something about his demeanor shifts, and he looks back to the empty space where Swaddle had been sitting on the dresser. “Where is everything?”
“Why do you care?” I know it’s childish to mimic his own words back at him, but if he’s not answering my questions, why should I?
He looks across the room, at my desk, my barren bookshelves, the bland gray comforter on my bed. “It’s like you’re not even here.”
There’s something…mournful in his voice, and it only pisses me off more.
“Easy there, Rivers. That almost sounds like you might care,” I taunt, my tone dry and every bit mocking.
Now his eyes are on me, and I don’t need to see them to know he, too, is currently pissed. “What makes you think that I don’t?”
“Apart from experience?”
“And what precisely have I done since we met again that would put me back on your shit list? I’ve tried being nice—”
I laugh. There’s nothing else I can do to dignify such an answer.
“That’s rich. Firstly, you’re not ‘back on’ my shit list, because you never left it.
I already know what you being ‘nice’ will get me, so why the fuck would I trust you for even a second?
And you know better than anyone what Trent and Patrick are capable of, yet you’re all too willing to rub shoulders with them again and yuck it up to get back on good terms with those fuckers.
You’re just as much of a chicken shit as you were when we were younger, always ready to please and unwilling to rock the boat to—God forbid—actually stand up to them.
Oh, and let’s not forget about your little stunt from this morning with my car. ”
Even in the dark, I can make out the faint etchings to see he’s making a face.
“The situation with Trent and Patrick is…complicated, and I’m not the one who took your car—”
“No, you just allowed me to come to the obvious conclusion and make myself look like an irrational bitch in the process.”
“It was a joke—”
“Did it look like anyone else was laughing? Because all you did was provide my dad with more proof that my stepmom is right about my ‘misplaced temper and paranoia’. So thank you for that. I bet that’ll really help make things a lot easier around here for me.
But that’s what you want, right? To get back at me for ditching you the other night? ”
Jase looks like he might say something but seems to think better of it.
“You want to know why I left the country club after I recognized who you were?” I challenge.
“Maybe because the realization that I kissed you made me so nauseated that I couldn’t stand having to look at your face.
Maybe because you deserved to know what it’s like waiting for someone who blew you off.
Maybe because after what you did to me, I fucking hate you! ”
I can’t keep my voice lowered at that last part, and now I don’t care. I don’t care if everyone in the house hears me. I don’t care about what he has to say. I don’t care what happened to his face. I don’t care that he’s looking at me like I’m the one who just punched him.
If anything, I wish I was.
“Climbing out of that window with you was the biggest fucking mistake of my life.” Tears burn my eyes, and it only makes me angrier having to acknowledge that he’s gotten under my skin, that he never truly left.
They say ignorance is bliss for a reason.
I didn’t know what I was missing out on until Jase came along.
He opened the door, let me see what was on the other side, let me get a taste for it, only to slam the door back in my face.
But that isn’t what hurts the most. “Not only are you spineless, but you tainted every last corner of this town and showed me just how ugly everybody else truly is.”
Before Jase, I didn’t realize just how toxic my stepmother was.
I didn’t realize how much that poison had infected my family.
As fucked up as it may have been, I preferred believing that my perceived flaws were what made it so hard for others to love me, because I could work on those things.
It was easier to think I was the one who was wrong rather than face the horrible truth that the people I loved just couldn’t be bothered to protect me.
“Get out.” I’m practically growling at him, and he has enough self-preservation to move towards the door as I yank it open. Jase looks like he might say something, but the second he clears the threshold, I slam the door in his face.