24. June
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
JUNE
By evening we’re all settled in the living room, except Tyler, who is MIA.
Carter is stretched across the far end of the sectional, scrolling through his phone and nursing a beer.
Cinna and Aubrey are sitting cross-legged on the floor, and Cinna is asking Aubrey questions like she’s administering some kind of personality quiz.
“Would you rather know when you’re going to die or how you’re going to die?” Cinna asks.
Aubrey is laughing and answering like it’s a game, and I guess to her it is. But I know Cinna, and I shoot her a look across the room. She catches it and gives me an innocent smile.
I send Aeron a message: You’d love the lighting here! If you change your mind, I’m sure Mom will let you borrow her car.
I send him some pics I took of the property as extra incentive.
Honestly, I’m worried. He passed on coming at the last minute.
Normally, I’d think it was my same-old brooding brother, but he’s been more withdrawn lately, quieter at home, skipping dinners.
I keep telling myself it’s because I caught him with the weed a few weeks ago and he’s still embarrassed, and that he just needs space.
I’m giving him space because that’s what you do.
You give people space and they come back when they’re ready.
Still, he seems a bit extra broody.
Carter lets out a loud “hah” but doesn’t share whatever made him laugh on his phone.
“Every person on Earth is in a room with two buttons. Red and blue,” Cinna says to Aubrey.
“No one can communicate. The rules are, if 50% of the world picks blue, everyone lives. But if the 50% goal isn’t met, only people who pressed red live and all the blue-button people die.
What button would you pick?” Cinna glances at me and I roll my eyes at her.
“Um, do I have to?” Aubrey asks. “I’d like to pass on that whole experience.”
I smile because that’s a great answer.
Zoning out their conversation, I check the time. Tyler has been gone for hours. We ate dinner without him. Dorien disappeared into his room after we ate, claiming he needed an “evening nap.”
I message Tyler: Where r u?
Tyler: ur psychic! I was just texting. Come outside?
I leave Cinna to her investigation and exit through a sliding glass door. I find Tyler on the deck. His cheeks are flushed and he’s swaying a little, and I can smell beer on him from three feet away.
“Where have you been?” I ask. The outside chill seeps through my thin long-sleeved top.
His eyes light up. “Okay, so. I went walking, right? There’s this huge cabin like a mile up the road, full of people from frats and sororities at Syracuse.
They’re already in their Halloween costumes and they’re wearing different ones all weekend.
Everyone, different every day. Cool, huh?
They invited us to come stay there. They’ve got a pool.
” He’s practically bouncing. “I came back to grab my cop costume because they’ll think it’s hilarious. And to get you. Let’s go.”
I cross my arms. “What’s wrong with my friends? You don’t even know them.”
“No, no, it’s not that. I’m sure they’re cool, but there’s way more people over there. Way more to do. And a heated pool. It’ll be fun.”
The word “fun” makes it sound like my people are lame.
Like this, me, my friends, the cabin I love already, the weekend me and Cinna planned, isn’t enough.
I look at him and feel the distance between what I wanted this weekend to be and what Tyler is offering me instead, and the distance is a canyon.
“No,” I say. “I’m happy here.”
He looks conflicted, his mouth opening and closing. He glances in the direction of the other cabin, then back at me, and I can see the struggle behind his eyes: the girl he likes versus the party full of strangers in costumes.
I sigh. “You should just go.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Bet.” He squeezes my shoulder, jogs inside, grabs his bag and his police costume, and is gone in under three minutes. I stand on the deck and listen to his footsteps crunching down the gravel until they fade.
The sliding door opens behind me. “What was that about?” Cinna says.
“Don’t ask.”
At midnight I’m standing in front of the open fridge, my feet bare on the pale wooden floor, looking for the cake Carter brought.
I hear the creak of a floorboard near the dining room. Then the scuff of socks on wood.
Don’t be him. Don’t be him.
I glance over my shoulder just as Dorien rounds the corner and stops.
Dammit.
I keep my head in the fridge and try to ignore my racing pulse.
I pretend to search for the cake I’ve already located.
He comes up behind me and leans over, his chest brushing my shoulder, close enough that I feel his heat through my sleep shirt, and says, “Excuse me,” while reaching past me for a can of soda.
My entire body goes incandescent. Every nerve from my scalp to my toes fires at once. I grip the fridge shelf and focus on the cold air pouring over my face.
He leans against the counter and cracks the soda. From the corner of my eye, I watch the line of his throat as he drinks, the way his Adam’s apple moves, and I want to paint him like this. Midnight in a kitchen, warm wood behind him, the fridge light cutting his profile in half.
“Where’s your guy?” he asks. “Haven’t seen him.”
“Well, you were napping,” I shoot back. “He’s in my room, obviously.” I pull the cake out, put two slices on separate plates, return the rest of the cake to the fridge, then carry both plates out of the kitchen without looking back.
Dorien needs to think Tyler is still here, and I will maintain this lie as long as I can.
I close the bedroom door and sit on the bed with two plates of cake and a body that feels like I’ve been standing next to a furnace. My skin won’t cool down. I eat one slice. Then I eat the other because waste is a sin and also because I’m stress-eating.
Why is Dorien doing this? After years of maintaining distance, of complete antagonism, he’s suddenly in my space at every turn. We have one honest conversation at the cemetery and he decides the rules don’t apply anymore?
I hear his door close through the wall. He’s back in his room.
An idea pops into my head. It’s a terrible idea. The worst idea.
I wait five minutes. Then I grab the headboard with both hands and slam it into the wall.
Once. Twice. I let out a loud moan. Another slam.
I vary the rhythm like I’m a one-woman show and this is my Broadway debut.
I make it convincing. Or at least I try, pressing my face into the pillow between moans so I don’t start laughing, because this is absurd.
I’m absurd. I’m a twenty-year-old woman banging a headboard into a wall to make a man I’m not sleeping with think I’m sleeping with a different man who left hours ago.
But if Dorien thinks Tyler is in here, if Dorien hears this and believes it, then maybe he’ll back off tomorrow. Maybe he’ll stop leaning over and saying flirty things like he’s already decided we’d be good together and he’s just waiting for me to catch up.
I give it one more headboard slam for good measure, and an orgasm-worthy moan, and then lie in the dark, flushed and out of breath for all the wrong reasons.
In the morning I shuffle into the kitchen in an oversized Alaria sweater and shorts, hair in a messy bun, hoping for coffee before human interaction.
Carter is at the counter buttering toast. Dorien is sitting on the countertop next to the stove, legs hanging, eating cereal out of the box. He’s in sweats and… shirtless.
Screw him! He can’t walk around here half naked!
“Morning,” Carter says.
“Morning.” I beeline for the coffee maker and ignore Dorien as if I’ll go blind if I even think of looking at his sculpted chest.
Dorien crunches a handful of cereal, and I feel his gaze on me. “Sleep well?” he asks.
There’s a little curl of amusement in his tone, barely there but enough to send ice down my spine and fire up my neck.
“Fine,” I manage.
“Good.” He eats another handful. “Sounded like you had a workout.”
Carter is trying not to laugh. I can see it in his shoulders, the way he’s pressing his lips together while aggressively buttering the same piece of toast.
I straighten my spine and turn to face Dorien, sipping my coffee. I give him my best unbothered gaze. “A very satisfying one.”
The bastard smirks. “Good. Wouldn’t want you unsatisfied.”
Carter finally cracks up, unable to hold in his laughter. “Sorry, cuz,” he says. “I might’ve mentioned that your guy left.”
My first urge is to smack that toast right out of Carter’s hands. My second urge is to flee the kitchen—no. Drive away from this place to escape Dorien’s smug, amused look.
Whatever. I refuse to let him see me squirm.
I sip more coffee, keeping my expression neutral. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, which is the lamest possible response and we all know it.
Carter laughs more. Dorien just looks at me with that half-smile, like he can see every thought in my head.
As calm as ever, I walk to the fridge, open it, grab the can of whipped cream, then walk straight to Carter. I shake it, press the nozzle, and pile a spiral of white cream directly on top of his head.
He jumps away, dropping his buttered toast. “What the hell!” But he’s laughing, whipped cream sliding down his forehead.
Dorien only grins. “Can I get some of that?”
I squirt a generous mound into my palm, walk up to him, and smear it across his cheek. His skin is warm. His stubble catches the cream. And for one second I feel victorious.
Then his hand closes around my wrist.
He holds me there, my hand against his face, cream between my fingers and his skin. His eyes lock on mine. Slowly, deliberately, he brings my hand to his mouth and sucks the whipped cream off my thumb.
Every thought in my head vanishes and I’m just a woman wanting a man to do very naughty things to me. His lips are soft and his tongue is warm and I might actually die in this kitchen.
Carter howls with laughter.
I yank my hand away and flee to my room. I close the door, press my back against it, and my skin feels so hot I could heat the entire cabin.