Chapter 9
Quill
There’s a long pause as Piper searches my face, apparently looking for a sign that I’m joking.
She finds none, because I’m dead serious, but she doesn’t let that deter her from making one up.
“Stop teasing me,” she says, forcing her features into a more relaxed expression. “You’re not killing anyone. Are you, Quill?”
I don’t answer.
“You’ve never… you’ve never killed anyone before, have you?”
“No,” I allow.
“And you won’t this time either. You’re just saying that. You want to scare me, right? Right, Quill?”
I clench my jaw. “Answer my question, Piper. Tell me why the hell you decided to make an ass of yourself in front of the whole school.”
She folds her arms and huffs out in annoyance. “I did not make an ass of myself. I made an ass of—”
I snort loudly. “You absolutely did make an ass of yourself, cricket. Why exactly did you think Ray would care? He doesn’t give a shit about getting into college or not getting into college. Which, by the way, has nothing to do with the paper you found.”
She frowns, clearly puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you think to look up DS University online?
If you had, you’d have realized it doesn’t even exist. So you just went up before the whole student body and talked about some shit that you don’t even understand.
And you thought that you humiliated Ray Campbell.
For someone so obsessed with Nancy Drew, deduction skills are really not your strong suit, are they? ”
I’m not used to talking so much, but this girl has pissed me off. I watch her go through the whole gamut of emotions, from surprise, to anger, to… well, surprise again.
Remembering the way she snaps back at Cass when the latter insults her, or the way she spit in my face when I ducked her, I half-expect her to give me an angry retort. Instead, she asks, “How did you know?”
“Hmm?”
“How did you know that I like Nancy Drew?”
At that, my anger melts somewhat. I inch closer to her and breathe, “I know a whole lot of things about you, cricket.” Then I pull back again, continuing a bit more harshly, “But one thing I don’t know is why Ray Campbell pissed you off enough that you decided to make a fool of yourself in front of the whole school. ”
“Why do you care, anyway?” she questions, keeping her arms folded and staring at me rebelliously.
I click my tongue in annoyance. “I care because you’re mine, Piper. And if I have to lock you up in my room and never let you see the light of day again just so you stop sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, and—”
I interrupt myself as she squirms in my lap, and I realize my words are having the opposite effect on her than I’d meant for them to have. And suddenly, I’m not entirely unbothered either.
My cock is hard again, uncomfortably so because of the way I’ve been denying myself today. I’m tempted to take her up on her offer to pleasure me, but I’m worried I won’t be able to control myself. I don’t want to hurt her.
Forcing my mind back to the urgent matter at hand, I clasp her wrists so hard she gasps.
“Well? I’m waiting.”
“Why do you care so much now?” she insists, apparently set on winning this battle of wills. “What message did you receive that made you care now? You’re bringing up something from four days ago for the first time. That means something just happened. But what?”
I glance at my phone lying on the mattress. If she doesn’t believe that I have it in me to kill a man, she sure as fuck won’t believe the threatening text message that Ray Campbell just sent me, and which I deleted out of anger as soon as I’d read it.
Your shot hit Dad’s artery and he nearly bled out. Fuck you. Your girl is dead.
It’s just as impossible for me to understand Ray as it is for me to understand Piper. It’s like they both have a death wish.
Doesn’t Ray realize what I’m capable of? Does he have no sense of self-preservation? The idiot just wrote his own suicide note, because he’s clearly asking to die.
“You’re going to tell me,” I threaten Piper, “or I’m going to find you between classes, push you over a desk, and punish you so hard that—”
“Well then, I’m definitely not telling you.”
Goddammit, I want to wring her neck. She’s still taking the whole thing as a joke, still inexplicably refusing to answer my question.
I push her off me and stand up abruptly.
“Where are you going?” she gasps.
“Since you won’t tell me, I’m getting my answer from him. I’m leaving.”
“L-leaving?” She repeats the word in a shaky voice that tells me she’s giving it a meaning that I didn’t intend. But at least I’m getting to her, I decide, as she jumps up and timidly touches my arm. “Please don’t leave me, Quill.”
I grit my teeth to keep myself from reassuring her. “Well, go on, Piper. Tell me what happened. Okay?”
She nods quickly. “Please… please promise you won’t hurt him.”
“I’m not promising that,” I growl. “I already told you I’m going to kill him.”
“Right.” My words actually seem to reassure her, as if she doesn’t believe for a second I’m capable of such a thing. “It’s nothing, really. He was bullying me.”
My anger melts just as suddenly as it appeared. I take a step closer to her, wrapping my arms around her waist. “He has no right to bully you. No one does.”
“Well, that’s never stopped you,” she points out, even as she sighs, clearly relieved to be back in my arms.
“That’s different,” I breathe in her ear. “You belong to me. I’m allowed to do what I want to you.”
“Well, I didn’t belong to you for the three years you spent bullying me.”
I find her ass and pinch her hard. She squeaks, getting up on tiptoes to escape my grasp, but I keep a firm, punishing hold on her. “You’ve always belonged to me.”
“Yes, yes, okay!” she cries out, and I let go of the flesh I’ve been torturing between my fingers before rubbing away the burn.
She sags against me, panting hard.
“How did he bully you?” I question, willing myself to focus on Ray instead of on my hard-on. Which is no easy matter.
I’m stroking her ass now, and she moans against my chest, relaxing into my arms. “Just normal stuff… calling me names… making fun of me… hitting me…”
She lets out a little whimper of regret as I abruptly pull her off me. “Hitting you?”
“It’s nothing,” she says quickly. “Honestly, Quill, it’s nothing.”
“He hit you?”
“I actually prefer that to the insults,” she says in a pleading voice probably meant to mollify me. “I would rather get a punch to the face than be mocked and insulted and—”
“He punched you?”
“Really, Quill. It was nothing. I handled it! I went up in front of the school and humiliated him!”
I don’t even bother to remind her that she didn’t do a thing but make an idiot of herself. I also don’t add that she put herself in more danger than she could possibly realize. Instead, I let her go and start to pace around the room, fisting my hands at my sides.
I’ve never been so furious. My chest is tight with rage, I’m seeing white, I don’t know how to handle the surge of emotion rising up in me.
It takes every particle of self-control not to punch the wall, not to destroy every single thing in this room, not to shake her and ask her why she kept that to herself.
Unless she’s used to it. Unless she’s gotten bullied far worse, and she’s used to it.
It feels like I’m going to explode from the sheer rage coursing through my veins.
The thought that someone laid a hand on the girl I’m in love with makes me spiral worse than I had thought myself capable of spiraling.
It makes me spiral even worse than realizing that she’s the girl I’m in love with.
In fact, that last thought doesn’t make me spiral at all. I never thought I was capable of love, and yet, nothing has ever felt so obvious or so right.
I’m in love with the girl I spent my entire life trying not to kill.
I’m in love with Piper Day.
Have I always been?
“Please, Quill,” the object of my strange emotion stammers. “Please don’t be angry with me.”
I turn to her, too choked up to manage to speak. I can’t even reassure her. She looks freaked out, far more freaked out than when I said I was going to kill Ray.
If there was any doubt about that, it’s gone. I’m going to fucking end his life, and I’m going to make it hurt.
But Piper is shaking like a leaf, and I force myself to rein in my emotions for her. I still can’t say a word, but I can hold her to me, rubbing her back until she’s calmed down.
The first words I’m able to speak are, “When did it happen?”
“A week ago,” she whispers. “A whole week ago. Sunday. Not yesterday, the Sunday before that. My bruises are gone. See? It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
She misinterprets the look of sudden, violent relief on my face. “So we can just forget all about it, okay?” she continues. “My bruises are gone. I shouldn’t have gone up in front of the whole school and… and… made an ass of myself. Let’s just forget it happened. Okay? Can we forget about it?”
I kiss her to stop the flow of nervous words spilling out of her. Then I kiss her again, because it feels so fucking good.
“Does that mean I didn’t cause those bruises?”
She pulls back from me, startled. “Huh?”
“I didn’t cause those bruises,” I breathe into her hair, answering my own question. “Ray did. I didn’t hurt you.”
“Of course you didn’t cause the bruises,” she frowns in utter confusion. “Why would you think you did? I didn’t even see you that day.”
I don’t care that I’m revealing a lot more than I probably should. I’m just so relieved. “I blacked out. I thought I’d hurt you. Fuck me, I thought I’d hurt you. But I didn’t, did I?”
“You blacked out? Were you drinking?” Her voice is muffled from how hard I’m hugging her to me.
“Something like that.” I let out a loud breath. “No, nothing like that. Devil has been fucking with me. That’s why you need to stay away from them, okay? Stay away from Ray Campbell, from his father, from Devil Tower. All of it is bad news. Promise me you’ll stay away.”
She hesitates.
So I lift a hand up and smack her ass hard. She yelps, her reaction reminding me just how sore she is. But I’ll happily make her a lot more sore if that’s what I need to do to keep her safe. In fact, I’ll happily make her more sore, period.
“I promise,” she whimpers.
Something tells me that the concept of a promise isn’t as meaningful to her as it is to me. But I’ll just have to be satisfied with hers for the time being.
After all, I have an asshole to kill.