Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hollie
Friday night, Scotch & Smoke is buzzing, half full of bikers, half college undergrads.
Despite the weird mix, there’s a party vibe.
Echo dubbed it an eviction party, even though he has no plans to vacate, and it seems the recent raids by the sheriff’s office hasn’t put anyone off making the journey out from Canyon.
If anything, it feels like the entire Canyon U college faculty has made their way out to Rapture tonight.
I’m with AJ and Chase, taking turns to shoot pool. It’s so busy tonight that Balthazar has joined Nando and the team behind the bar. Nicole’s in her low-cut Only Rapture T-shirt and Daisy Dukes, making quick work of collecting empty glasses. Around nine o’clock, she comes running over to me.
‘Can I talk to you for a sec?’ she asks.
‘Is everything okay?’ I ask. ‘You look freaked out.’
She calls me away from the men. ‘I am freaked. This cute college sophomore just asked me to go out with him,’ she says, fanning her pink cheeks with her fingers, ‘and I turned him down.’
‘Okay,’ I respond with a confused frown.
‘I told him I had a boyfriend,’ she says, looking like she’s about to hyperventilate. ‘The words just came out.’
My lips twitch. ‘I don’t get it.’
Her eyes go wide. ‘I never referred to Reyes as my boyfriend before now. We’ve always just been friends with bens, you know? Hookup buddies. Nothing more than that.’
‘So…?’
‘So, why’d I just turn down the opportunity to have sex with a random hot stranger?’
‘Maybe because he was a random stranger?’
‘Hollie, I wasn’t supposed to catch feelings for Reyes. I mean, how do I know? We never say that shit to one another. We hang out. We have sex. That’s all it was ever meant to be.’
I wince. ‘Technically, that’s what I do with AJ. Hang out and have sex.’
‘Y’all aren’t looking to hook up with anyone else though, right?’
‘True. Did you ask Balthazar if he wants to hook up with anyone else?’
She looks horrified. ‘You think he wants to?’
‘Maybe it’s time you had the conversation? You know… how you feel about one another.’
‘Did you have a conversation with AJ?’
I bite my lip and nod my head. Nicole’s shoulders sag and she looks like she might melt. ‘You guys are too cute. Who all said it first?’
Warmth hits my cheeks. ‘He did. But I said it back.’
‘Never thought I’d see the day when AJ Callahan fell in love,’ she says with a wistful sigh. Though a moment later, the dreamy expression slides from her face. ‘But what if Reyes don’t love me?’
‘Do you love him?’
‘I mean… How do I know?’
‘I don’t know. Do you get butterflies when you think about him? Do you crave his presence when you’re not in the same room? Can you see yourself growing old with him?’
Nicole blinks at me, like I’ve said something revelatory.
‘I gotta get back to work,’ she says, as though in a daze. She picks up her crate and walks away from me robotically, picking up bottles and glasses from the tables as she pushes through the crowd.
When I push my way in the other direction through the crowd, back toward the pool table, I find AJ about to lose another game to Chase, a sour look on his face.
The moment I approach him, he holds out one arm, then snakes it around my waist, holding me close.
My chest swells when he brushes a tender kiss against my lips.
‘Where’d you go?’ he asks.
‘Nicole was freaking out.’
‘About what?’
I tilt my head. ‘Do you think Balthazar is in love with Nicole?’
‘I dunno. Guys don’t talk about that shit. Why? Did she say she’s in love with him?’
‘She doesn’t know. She told me a college guy asked her out and she turned him down.’
I hear Chase’s voice from behind AJ ‘Woah. Escribano turned down a frat boy? That’s wack. Somethin’s up with that. I win, by the way.’
I roll my eyes. AJ laughs, ignores Chase, and, putting his hands at my waist, lifts me up onto the edge of the table, so my legs are dangling down.
He positions himself between my thighs. At first, his kiss is restrained, until I kiss him back.
Barely a month ago, I wouldn’t have even dreamed of kissing a man in public.
Now I’m full-on making out with my boyfriend, in a semi-public place, in full view of a packed-out saloon bar, and not caring if anybody is watching.
Only, a minute later, when I open my eyes for a brief moment between kisses, it appears somebody is watching.
I break our kiss. ‘Jesus,’ I mutter, turning my head away.
‘What’s up?’ AJ asks.
He hasn’t noticed the college senior in a varsity jacket, holding up his phone and filming us in one hand, a beer bottle in the other, barely two meters from us, with an inane, borderline malicious, grin on his face.
His blond hair is slicked back, and he’s wearing a red and white Canyon U varsity jacket and jeans.
‘Well, well, lookie here, Hollie,’ Doug says.
‘What the fuck, man?’ AJ snaps when he sees him. ‘Get your fucking camera out our faces.’
‘It’s my stepbrother,’ I whisper to AJ. ‘He’s Evelyn’s son.’
AJ shifts position.
‘Little X-rated, wouldn’t you say, Hollie?’ Doug sneers, lowering his phone. ‘I mean, like, get a fucking room, huh?’
AJ flinches, goes to move. I pin him between my thighs. ‘Just ignore it,’ I say under my breath. ‘He’s really not worth the argument.’
AJ’s expression darkens. ‘Fuck off, man,’ he says to Doug.
Doug’s eyes are on me. ‘Does your Daddy know you’re out here?’
‘Does your mother know?’ I clap back.
‘I’ll tell her I came out here on a reconnaissance mission. Once I show her this video, I don’t think it’s me she’ll be worrying about.’
I shake my head. ‘Go ahead,’ I say. ‘I don’t care.’
The smile creeps back onto his face. ‘Lately, your daddy’s been cryin’ ’bout the fact you never visit. Guess I just figured out why.’
He switches off his phone and pockets it. I don’t move. Chase steps in front of me, and for the first time in my life, I’m grateful for his presence.
‘Yo. Frat punk. When my friend tells you to fuck off, it means you take your sorry ass out the building. I suggest you get the fuck outta this bar, before things get ugly.’
‘Ugly like your face?’ Doug claps back immaturely.
‘No. Ugly like your momma getting fucked in the ass by the county sheriff night after night.’
Doug’s eyes go wide. Chase bears down on him. He never was one to hold back. I bite my lip. Doug takes his beer and backs off.
Chase and AJ bump fists.
‘Want me to make sure he leaves Rapture?’ Chase asks me.
‘Forget him. I really don’t care.’
‘You worried ’bout the video?’ AJ asks.
I let out a shaky breath. Doug has disappeared into the crowd.
‘I never thought he’d come out here,’ I say.
‘Don’t worry,’ AJ adds, putting his arms back around me. ‘Any shit comes our way… we can handle it. Together.’
I squeeze his fingers. AJ goes back to kissing me. Chase groans in objection at yet another PDA.
‘Did you message Aubri yet?’ I ask him when I pull away.
Chase flushes pink. ‘Don’t really know what to say. Tryna change my douchey ways.’
AJ cracks up. I nudge him in the ribs.
‘Just ask her out for a drink,’ I encourage Chase.
‘Yeah, man, don’t leave her hanging,’ AJ adds.
Chase rubs the back of his head. ‘What if she says no?’
‘Why would she say no? She’s already said she thinks you’re cute.’ I shake my head. ‘My god, how my life has changed. I’m giving dating advice to Chase Brennan.’
While the boys laugh, I glance across into the crowd of bikers and college students. There’s a tightness in my chest. I can’t see Doug, and I wonder if he’s left the bar, or what he’s done with the video he recorded.
I know it’s a question of when – because it’s only a matter of time – he’ll show it to his mother.
I try not to care, but by Saturday afternoon, AJ has already picked up on my unease.
I know Doug. I know the way his mind works.
He’s vindictive. An asshole of the highest order.
Someone who always looks for an opportunity to put himself before all others.
Which is why I know he won’t show my father and stepmother the video of me kissing AJ immediately.
He won’t, because he knows me too, well enough.
He knows not showing them only prolongs my torture.
‘We’re a couple,’ AJ tells me in Rapture, rubbing my shoulders and attempting to ease the tension. ‘We tell ’em so. It’s no big deal. It’s not like they can break us up.’
On his bed, I lean into him. ‘I know that. I just wish he hadn’t caught us out like that. I should have just come clean before now. Having him video us makes it feel like we’re sneaking around.’
‘Technically, we have been.’
He smirks at me, when I give him a look over my shoulder.
‘Come on,’ he says, getting to his feet and holding out his hand. ‘We’re riding to Canyon. We’ll go to Boulder Creek so you can introduce your handsome biker boyfriend to your dad, and the bitch he went and married. Did I just say that out loud? I meant Evelyn Wallace.’
My lips curl into a smile as he hauls me up off the bed.
‘Then you can tell ’em to stick their apartment because you’re moving in with me.’
‘Now that just makes me sound ungrateful.’
He pulls me in closer for a kiss. ‘Did you change your mind already? About finding an apartment with me?’
‘Of course not.’
‘So, we kill two birds with one stone. Dad, Evelyn, this is AJ, who I’m madly in love with. He happens to be from Rapture, but we’re moving in together so he can make love to me every night of the week. Twice if I’m a good girl.’
His words have me giggling. ‘I might have to say the clean version of that statement.’
‘Whatever you’re comfortable with, baby. So long as you make it clear that you’re mine.’
He pulls me in for another kiss. Within a few seconds, it’s obvious that we have unfinished business in AJ’s bed.
It means it’s getting dark by the time AJ’s bike rolls up outside the closed gates of my father and Evelyn’s house in Boulder Creek.
Inside my backpack, I feel my phone begin to vibrate against my back.
Looking up at the house through my visor, my blood runs cold. Doug’s car is parked in the driveway. He must have come straight from college football training.
A sick feeling spools in my stomach.
If AJ and I wanted the opportunity to speak to my father before Doug did, then that opportunity has passed us by.
Because, by the looks of it, Doug has beaten us to it.