76. Summer
Chapter Seventy-Six
Summer
A lice pops her head around my door. “Oh, hey. I thought you were at Max’s.”
“Why would I be?” I ask, looking up from my textbook.
Alice shrugs, stepping into my room. “You’ve not been to the gym in a couple of days, and I figured you were there now.”
I shake my head. I’ve not seen Max since the day he was an asshole. The stranger has disappeared again. I’ve not seen or heard from him. In fact, I’ve gone from sometimes having three training sessions a day to having one. The headmaster is the only one I’ve been seeing.
Alice sits on my bed. “I know I’ve been preoccupied with All Souls prep, but what’s going on?” she asks.
She has been busy, though I have to admit I am grateful for her distraction for the time being while I figure out my fucked-up mind.
Not that I’ve managed it. I have typed out messages to the stranger a couple of times, but I always end up deleting them.
None of the words I come up with seem good enough, and there is some part of me holding me back, though those voices seem to grow quieter day by day.
“Well, Max is a dick, and it’s over for good.”
Alice shifts, getting comfortable. “Tell me everything.”
I close my textbook and relax into the conversation. Talking about Max is infinitely easier than the discussion I’m avoiding. I know that if we do talk about the stranger, Alice will see right through my bullshit, and she will tell me truths I am still desperately avoiding .
“I was at his place. We had just fucked, and I ordered a pizza. The pizza had barely arrived, and then he told me he had a date.”
“Okay?” Alice says, her brows furrowed.
“Like a date right then. That he was late meeting. Like fucking me had inconvenienced him. Even though he was the one who initiated the hookup.”
Alice lifts her eyebrows. “Excuse the fuck out of me?”
“So he invited me around for sex, and I bought pizza. Meanwhile, he’s thinking about his date, and he goes to dinner with his dick still wet from me. I felt like a cheap whore. But also, I felt disrespected as a friend, like my time wasn’t worth anything to him.”
“Want me to kill him?”
“No, forget him.” Forget the stranger. “We leave for All Souls tomorrow, and I’m going completely unburdened by masculine bullshit,” I say.
Though I’m not quite sure how to unburden myself of the emotions and feelings surrounding the stranger.
It’s my fault. Sometimes I talk myself into anger over the fact that he hasn’t reached out to me.
He says he knows me, but he doesn’t know me well enough to know that I didn’t mean it.
That it was a horrible lie wrapped in malice.
But in the end, I always bring myself back down, knowing I got exactly what I thought I wanted.
I told him I wanted him to leave me alone again and again, and this was obviously his last straw.
“Let’s burn them to the ground and make necklaces from the ashes,” Alice says, and my gaze sharpens on her when she says them . Damn her, somehow she knows, and I’ve not even mentioned him.
I exhale, looking down at the halo that has been so silent since my fight with the stranger.
“I was so lucky with Connor.” I brush my fingers over it, but my touch meets only the cool softness of the brushed gold. I take a deep breath, brushing it off. “Did our costumes come in?”
“All of them, so we have a bunch of choices.” Alice jumps up and hurries out.
She returns with her arms full of dress bags, laying them out on the floor.
“Okay, so, most slutty,” she says, pointing to the dress on the farthest right.
“To least slutty, but still slutty,” she says, moving her pointer finger along the twelve dress bags on the floor and finishing at the farthest on the left.
She then places the remaining three bags on the edge of the bed. “These are Rafe’s choices. ”
I stand up and stand beside her, looking down at the dress bags. “Okay, so slutty, sluttier, sluttier-er and sluttiest?” I ask.
Alice nods. She has been talking nonstop about the main event of All Souls, which sounds like the biggest party of the year. While the entire weekend is the event, the party on the last night is the most scandalous and salacious part.
“Am I allowed to open them?”
Alice gives me a catlike smile. “Only when you’ve chosen your level of slutty, and you can pick three.” I think for a moment and choose two from the middle and one closer to the sluttiest side.
“So this is for a costume party, right?”
“Yes, it’s a masquerade,” she says, grinning and shifting from foot to foot in excitement. “Okay, open your bags.”
I laugh and open them one by one. The two tamer ones are a witch outfit and a slutty prisoner, but the third one, the sluttiest option, is a stunning white lingerie set.
The bra and barely there panties have a beautiful lace detail, and there is a tiny skirt that will barely cover half of my ass.
Included with the set are a pair of fluffy white wings and a halo.
It’s not an actual halo like the one locked around my wrist, but like the one from the stories, that would hover over my head.
I give Alice a look, and her smile widens.
“I had to represent our birdbrain,” she says.
My lips twitch, and I look at the outfit. “This is definitely the one.”
Alice squeals. “Okay, perfect. Then I have the perfect couple’s costume!” She grabs the bag that would have been right next to the angel one and opens it, revealing a red baby-doll dress with a tail and horns. “It’s a devil!”
“In our current climate, Al?” I say dryly, quirking a brow.
Alice waves a dismissive hand. “Pfft. Please, it’s obviously the fantasy version of him.
Plus, he wishes he were as hot as me.” She pulls the costume from the bag and gazes at it fondly.
“Besides, I’m thinking of doing a whole devil at the crossroads thing.
You know? Sell their soul for a night to enjoy the pleasures of my box. ”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll just be an angel.”
Alice smirks. “An angel of sin.” She throws her red lingerie down on the bed and then looks at the three bags next to it. “Now what should we dress Rafe in?”
“I’m not dressing up,” Rafe says from the doorway .
Alice doesn’t even look at him. “Yes you are.”
My lips twitch as Rafe walks into my room and starts to open the bags, looking more and more horrified with every outfit reveal.
“These are barely crotch coverings, Alice!”
I sigh and close my eyes, rubbing my forehead, really not wanting to see my brother in any of these outfits. “Okay, well, you have until tomorrow morning to find another costume, Rafe. But we’ll pack one of these just in case.”
“Summer!” Rafe protests, and I open my eyes to look at him.
Alice squeals again. “Okay, good idea!” She snatches them all and hurries out.
I continue to stare at Rafe as I listen to her chatter to herself as she makes her way to her room. Rafe just blinks at me.
“I’m going to get an early night. I’ll see you losers in the morning,” I say, walking to the door and holding it open for him.
Rafe groans and storms through, striding to Alice’s room to continue the argument.
I sigh again and close the door before heading to the bathroom. After my shower, I’m lying in my bed, still thinking about the stranger as I stare at my phone. Eventually I pick it up and open my messages with the stranger.
I type a message, then delete it. Again and again and again. But then my phone pings and a message from him appears at the bottom of the thread. It’s two words. Two simple words, yet my heart starts to race.
Unknown
Soon, princess.
I read it over and over, my heart pounding inside my chest, and there’s that truly awful feeling of dread in my stomach.
The feeling of missing him. The feeling of guilt that has been smothering me not only since I said it, but worse since I heard Jessica talking about Damien.
When she mentioned Damien had gone missing in pursuit of finding his brother in arms, who had been running for the last year from an invisible force, I started to hope even though I tried not to.
Should I respond? What would I say? An apology? But every word that comes to mind feels too weak. I curse and lock my phone, staring at the -ceiling .
He’ll see me soon? What does that mean? We won’t even be here. We leave tomorrow for?.?.?. No. Does he mean he will see me at All Souls? He’s going to be there. Fuck.
Nerves flutter through my insides, and my skin feels like it’s tingling in anticipation of his touch, but the heaviness of loss and regret I have been carrying seems a little lighter. I’m not sure how or when, but I eventually fall asleep to thoughts of seeing him again.
“Today is the day!” Alice says, her voice invading my peace.
I groan, rolling over to bury my face in my pillow. “Alice?.?.?. It’s not even five a.m.,” I mumble.
Alice jumps onto the bed and straddles me. “Time to wake up! It’s All Souls!” she screeches and shakes me.
I swat at her blindly. “If you want me to get up, you’re going to need to get off me.”
Alice shakes me again. “Now! Now! Now!” She jumps off me, shaking the bed. “Move!”
“You’re a pain in my ass, Legosi,” I growl.
Completely unfazed by my mood, she twirls in my room, excitement radiating from her. “I’ll wake Rafe! If you’re not downstairs in ten, I’ll be back!”
I sigh and roll out of bed, trudging to the bathroom still half-asleep, to get ready.
I’m downstairs nine minutes and fifty-seven seconds later, and I pour myself some coffee from the pot Alice has lovingly brewed.
In fact, there is a full spread on the table, and I wonder if she’s slept at all.
I sip my coffee, watching Alice still buzz about.
“Hey, Al, you good?”
“I am so good! It’s All Souls Day!”
“Sure, sure. Have you slept at all?”
Alice gawks at me. “Who can sleep the night before All Souls?”
“Well, me. Until you woke me up.”
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t know you.”
I lift an eyebrow and sip my coffee. “Okay, well, give me an hour and I’ll be excited.”
“No! Now! ”