RIOT

ACT
CALLIE HART
 CONTENTS

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
50. ALSO BY CALLIE HART
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Copyright © 2021 RIOT ACT by Callie Hart

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 PROLOGUE

ONE MONTH AGO

PRES

Dreams are peculiar things.

Sometimes, it’s hard to differentiate between what’s real and what takes place when
you fall asleep at night. Take right now, for example. How many times have I dreamed of
hooking up with Pax Davis? How many times have I dreamed of his mouth on mine? His
tongue probing and exploring, tasting every inch of me? His hands fisting my hair and
groping my breasts through my dress? How many times have I pictured what it would feel
like to have his erection butting up against the inside of my thigh, as he grinds his hips
against mine?
“Goddamnit, Chase. You’re fucking killing me.”
An embarrassingly high number of times, that’s how many. Hundreds. Maybe even
thousands. Over the past three and a half years, ever since I came to Wolf Hall Academy
as a timid, friendless freshman, I’ve imagined this scene in infinite detail in my head.
Every facet of this moment has been created and recreated, played out and then
replayed, curated to suit my mood.
Sometimes, Pax is sweet. Broken and contrite. An inked god with a shaved head,
begging for my forgiveness on his knees, sorry for all of the trauma and discomfort he
and his friends have caused me.
Other times, he’s perfectly himself: angry, arrogant, withdrawn and smug. He brings
no apology to me like this. He storms into my bedroom, eyes flaring with annoyance, an
aura of anger buzzing around him, contaminating the room, causing my nerves to cinch
into a tight ball. He goes to work. No pleasantries. No small talk. Just seven words that
turn my bones to liquid beneath my skin:
On your knees, Chase. Right fucking now.
This experience right here—one I’m beginning to suspect might actually be real—is
unlike anything I’ve ever conjured in my head. For starters, I’m drunk as hell. Instead of
my warm, private, safe bedroom, we’re in the middle of the forest, cloaked in darkness,
while the party he and his roommates are throwing rages into the night.
The anarchist of Riot House leans into me, pinning me against the tree he slammed
me up against ten minutes ago, sinking his teeth into my neck like the savage that he is.
“Fuck. You smell amazing,” he groans.
My brain is so addled from the cosmopolitans Damiana plied me with earlier that I
can’t think straight. Not that I can ever think straight around Pax. I try to unpick the
complex scent coming off of him, so heady and addicting, but I can’t even remember the
names of the smells that present themselves to me. A picture of a fire flits through my
head, black smoke rolling off it up into a starry, cold night overhead. Mown grass, and a
carpet of mint swaying on a gentle breeze. Fresh cut limes, and wood shavings settling
onto a workshop floor.
He makes short work of the little black dress I wore to the party. It hits the forest
floor, and my bra follows after it. I’m so stunned, paralyzed in my shock, that I don’t do or
say anything as he strips me out of my panties, too, leaving me naked under the
moonlight.
For a brief second, Pax leans back and takes in my body. “Fuck. You are just…” He
shakes his head, his eyes feasting on my bare breasts, and my stomach, roving over my
hips, and down my legs. He doesn’t quit his inspection of me until his eyes, irises the
color of pooled, molten steel, settle on my hair, though.
“Incredible,” he breathes, looping a long, wavy length of it around his fingers. “So
beautiful. So…red.”
I’ve never hated my hair color, per se, but I have wanted to dye it on numerous
occasions. Having red hair guarantees persistent low-grade bullying from a wide variety
of people, no matter your age. In this very moment, I’m in love with my warm, rich
auburn waves, though. Pax looks awed by the color and the length of it, struck a little
dumb, and his raw appreciation of what so many other men might consider a flaw makes
my heart beat even faster.
Lord, I fucking want him.
I want him so bad I can taste it. I think he wants me, too. Unsteady on his feet, Pax
leans into me again, inhaling the scent of my hair. “Jesus Christ, Chase.” His face turns
into the crook of my neck. His mouth is hot on my overheated skin, and feels… it feels…
Breathe.
 Breathe.
Breathe, for pity’s sake!
Fuck, I think I’m going to pass out.
“You’re killing me,” he groans. Pax Davis—one of only three privileged students who
reside at Riot House—kisses me like his life depends on it.
Without exception, all of the Riot House boys enjoy a certain notoriety and reputation
that precedes them wherever they go. There isn’t a person alive in the small town of
Mountain Lakes, New Hampshire, who doesn’t know the names Wren Jacobi, Pax Davis,
and Lord Dashiell Lovett IV.
So wealthy. So Entitled. Arrogant and cruel.
Pax’s name has been branded into my soul for the past three years. I’ve been
obsessed with him since the moment I laid eyes on him, and now his naked body is
pressed up against mine, and none of this seems real.
I’m so wasted, the world pitches crazily like a seesaw. Pax braces against the tree,
keeping his weight from crushing me, and I cling to him, wanting him, needing him more
than I’ve ever needed anything in my entire fucking life. At the same time I can’t calm the
panic.
This isn’t happening.
This can’t be happening.
This is Pax.
How are his hands cupping and kneading my naked breasts?
It can’t be his tongue burning a hot trail up the curve of my neck.
It can’t be his extremely hard cock, sliding over the slickness between my thighs,
rubbing dizzyingly against my clit, applying a perfect amount of pressure, that feels so, so
good…
I moan when he rocks against me, letting my head fall back against the rough trunk of
the tree.
It is him. Any second now, he’ll be inside me, and I’ll be getting fucked by the only guy
I’ve ever loved. He lets out a tight, pained growl, rolling his hips against me again, again,
again, the head of his erection coming dangerously close to the entrance of my pussy,
and I let out a whimper—part fear, part anticipation.
He pulls back, though. Pulls back and rocks forward again and again, repeating the
motion, rubbing himself against me, his teeth gouging into the skin of my collar bone,
and I can’t breathe. I gasp and pant, only managing to pull down sips of the night air.
How do people do this? How do they process all of these emotions? The sensations? The
—
Pax slides a hand between our bodies and finds my clit, rolling the slippery, swollen
bundle of nerves in a small, perfect circle. “Damn it. You’re so wet,” he groans. “You’re
gonna feel fucking phenomenal on my dick.”
No.
No.
No, no, no.
Oh my god.
Nope.
I cannot fucking do this.
And just like that…
I’ve always been tall for a girl. I’ve never been particularly strong, though. How I
shove all one hundred and ninety-five pounds of Pax’s six-foot-three, muscle-packed
frame off of me, I’ll never know.
Pax grunts, staggering back, and I discover just how drunk I am when I can’t even
focus on his features. I can make out the shaved head, and the elaborate, twisting ink
that marks his skin. His pale grey eyes flash silver in the faint light given off by the moon.
Everything else about him is hazy, though. Just a blur of beautiful, tanned muscle.
He's silent as the grave.
“I—I don’t—I can’t—” The stammering isn’t new. I’ve never been able to get a
sentence out around this guy, but tonight I’m desperate to communicate. Pax is a lot of
things and kind is not one of them. If I don’t find a way to play this off, I’ll be paying for
this moment of weakness for the rest of our senior class. He’ll never let me live it down,
and neither will his friends. I’ll be the laughingstock of the entire academy by tomorrow
morning.
I didn’t even want to come to this stupid party in the first place, but the prospect of
seeing Pax, being inside Riot House, walking around and witnessing where he lives… I
was weak. I couldn’t resist, and now look at the mess I’ve gotten myself into.
“I’m sorry. I—”
Suddenly the very short black dress Pax peeled off me is back in his hands; he holds it
out to me. “No stress. No biggg deal.” His voice is rough, his words slurred. He comes
closer, and the casual tilt to his mouth is roguish—half a smile that looks very real and
very unbothered by what’s just happened. He blinks; his pupils are so dilated that the
silver of his irises is barely visible anymore. It’s as if he’s looking right through me. Like
he’s hardly seeing me at all.
A jarring, awful understanding takes root. Unlike the last party that was held at Riot
House, there were no giant bowls of ambiguous narcotics being passed around like candy
tonight. There was plenty of hard liquor, though. I watched Pax shoot a whole bunch of it.
I did the same, for fuck’s sake. He gave me two shots of whiskey himself. I’m definitely
far drunker than I should be, but Pax is absolutely annihilated. Bending down, he tries to
pick up his shirt and loses his balance. He nearly topples over into the leaf litter at our
feet, and I see my opportunity.
I take it.
I run.
Tree branches whip at my bare skin. My heels are long gone. The rough ground bites
into the soles of my feet. I can barely see six feet in front of my face, but I don’t stop. I
charge blindly into the night, panting hard, fists pumping, whimpering every time I roll my
ankle, knowing that I’m bleeding. Eventually, I stumble, sliding down an eight-foot-long
slope, landing on my ass in a deep ditch, and I’m so tired and sore that I lie still for a
second, blowing hard, staring up at a small panel of the night sky that’s visible through a
window in the forest’s canopy overhead.
“Presley Maria Witton Chase,” I whisper out loud. “You are so fucking fucked.”
It takes time to get my breath back. More time still to wriggle into the dress I
somehow had the sense to keep hold of when I bolted, the fabric fisted tightly in my
hand. Longer still to climb out of the ditch, which turns out to be a culvert beside the road
that leads up to the academy. It’s four in the morning when I finally stagger up Wolf
Hall’s front steps and into the main building.
My room is exactly how I left it—a bombsite, clothes everywhere, makeup
everywhere. Evidence of just how nervous I was, getting ready for the party earlier,
trying to make myself look good—but the mess is going to have to wait. I’m too
exhausted to deal with any of it, so I kick a pathway to my bed and sweep the mounds of
dresses and short skirts to the floor, not caring that my feet are caked with dirt and blood
as I climb beneath my sheets.
He’s still there when I close my eyes.
Kissing me.
Touching me.
Stripping me down.
His rigid cock between my legs.
Almost inside me.
Rubbing against my clit.
Almost.
Almost.
Almost.
Fuck.
I slide my hand between my legs and find my clit, mirroring the small circles Pax
rubbed against it earlier. Damn, I am still so wet. I slow down the motion, drawing it out,
shivering against the rising, hot, tight sensation that builds low in my stomach and
between my thighs. I’ve made myself come thinking about Pax Davis countless times, but
tonight it’s different. It’s not a dream. Not a fantasy. The images and the sensations that
play out in my head aren’t make believe. They’re memories, and that makes them far
more potent.
The climax hits me so hard that I cry out.
There’s no one at the academy to hear my release. The other girls from my floor are
all still at the party. My friends, Carrie and Elodie, will be wondering where I am.
I should text one of them and let them know that I’m safe.
Should…
I fall asleep with the electric buzz of my orgasm prickling over my skin, and once
again, Pax Davis invades my unconscious mind—the boy a dream and a nightmare rolled
into one. It isn’t until the morning that I find out that Mara Bancroft is dead.
 1

PAX

Tall.
Legs up to her armpits.
Sun-kissed, golden skin.
Perfect in every way.
That’s how she was this morning. Now, sobbing on the dock with rivers of black
mascara running down her cheeks, she’s not quite the radiant summer goddess she was
before I got my hands on her. Her name is Margarite, like the flower. And much like the
flower, she has a fancy name, but at the end of the day she’s nothing but a daisy. “You
are fucking insane!” Her thick French accent colors the accusation. “What kind of person
are you, anyway? Dive in and get it!”
I huff out a laugh, distracted by the rock and pitch of the wooden planks beneath my
feet as the dock bobs on the water.
During the day, the Adriatic Sea is a dazzling aquamarine, so crystal-clear and
beautiful that you can’t help but stare at it. At night, the vast expanse of water is black as
jet and looks like an oil slick. The lights from the tiny fishing village where I chose to
moor the yacht spill together as the surface of the water shifts. Crowds of locals cheers
each other, laughing and talking boisterously over their platters of calamari and
bruschetta, ignoring the arrogant American arguing with the French girl fifty feet away.
I stare at Margarite, regretting how hard I flirted with her back in Calvi. She’d made
me work for her attention; usually, I would have walked away from a girl who expected
me to earn her time, but she’d seemed sweet and coquettish back at that café. Oh, how
things have changed in the last twelve hours.
“I’m not jumping into the fucking harbor, in the dark, to retrieve a phone that you
threw in there. It’s fucked now, anyway. I think our evening’s over, Maggie.”
She turns a violent shade of purple. “I want my phone, asshole!”
There are a thousand ways to handle this situation. If Dashiell were here, he’d be able
to reel off at least five different approaches that would diffuse this mess quickly and
efficiently. Unfortunately for Margarite, I only know of one way to tackle this, and I’ve
learned from past experience that it’s not a very popular strategy.
I drive my hands into my pockets, setting my jaw. “Back on the boat, Maggie. Be a
good girl and I’ll have you back with your friends inside an hour.”
“I swear to god.” Fuck, her accent’s even sexier when she’s angry. “If you don’t get my
phone back for me, I will call the police.”
Yeahhhh, that’s an empty threat. She’s not calling the police. That ridiculous little red
purse hanging off her gorgeously tanned shoulder is full of blow. Earlier this afternoon,
when we were three miles off the coast in open water and I’d just got done fucking her
brains out, Margarite popped its little golden clasp open and racked up a line on my
stomach, for fuck’s sake. She hasn’t stopped funneling that shit up her nose ever since.
I’m no innocent little choir boy; I’ve had a few bumps myself, but Margarite is so high,
she’s probably still floating around the outer stratosphere. If she calls the cops, it’ll take
them five seconds to realize that she’s taken something, and the gendarmes do not
tolerate tourists abusing drugs on their beautiful island. Even French tourists. Her ass will
be thrown into jail so quick she won’t even have time to whip out that bedazzled phone
of hers to call her da—Well. She won’t be able to whip her phone out at all. It’s currently
seven feet below water, but you get the idea.
Margarite stumbles, groping hold of a mooring post to steady herself as the dock rocks
from side to side. “I mean it, Paxton. Do I look like I’m fucking joking?”
Automatically, my lips pull back. I was raised to be polite. Countless hours and an
exhaustive amount of money has been wasted on me, in an attempt to equip me with
‘proper’ manners. In well-heeled society, I know how to play the part: smile like a good
boy. Maintain my cool. Make sure I keep a civil tongue in my head. But rub me the wrong
way and I react like the savage, wild animal that I am beneath the expensive clothes and
my extensive education. I bare my teeth. I growl. I fucking bite. “Pax. Three letters. P. A.
X. It’s not difficult to remember, sweetheart.”
“Do not call me that,” Margarite spits. “I’m not your sweetheart. I’m just some girl you
fucked on a boat.”
She’s got that right.
“Get the phone back, you prick, or I am going to scream.”
I fold my arms over my chest. “What are you going to scream?”
“That you’re hurting me. That you’re trying to attack me. That you forced me to fuck
you.”
Poor girl. Her brain must be one dark, miserable, lonely place.
I offer her a bland, tight smile. “I’m standing eight feet away from you with my hands
jammed into my armpits. You start hollering that kind of shit and you’re gonna wind up
getting yourself in trouble.”
She narrows her eyes, her chin jutting out defiantly. “Are you threatening me?” she
hisses. “I don’t like the way you’re speaking to me, Paxto—”
Fuck.
This.
Bitch.
She’s screwing with me, purposefully trying to provoke me, and I do not tolerate that
kind of bullshit. She wants to do this the hard way? Fine. I’ll give her what she wants and
then some.
The girl squeals as I lunge for her, take hold of her by the hips, and throw her over my
shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She hammers her fists against my back, demanding that
I put her down. Suffice it to say, I decline her petition, using a few choice words of my
own.
“For someone who doesn’t speak English very well, you sure know all of the curse
words.” I cover the twenty feet back to the boat in record time, taking a calculated risk by
hopping the distance between the dock and The Contessa’s deck. Margarite snarls in
frustration, attempting to bite the back of my arm. Her teeth graze my tricep, warning me
of her intentions, and I tip her over my shoulder, ass-first onto the deck.
Outraged, she takes off her espadrilles and hurls them at my head. She’s a terrible
shot, though, so they go sailing over my head into the water, just like her phone did
fifteen minutes ago. I’d have thought she’d learned her lesson by now, but it looks like
beautiful Margarite is far too stubborn for that. Instead, she lets out a furious wail and
tries to scramble to her feet. Tries being the operative word. She’s like a beetle, stuck on
its back, wriggling and struggling to right itself and having no luck whatsoever. If she’d
only had the coke, she might have been able to manage it, but there’s the forty of vodka
she was carrying in her hand when I met her as well. She’d hit that thing like it was ice
cold water on a blistering-hot summer’s day. Honestly, I’ve been impressed this entire
time, admiring how well she’s handled her shit after putting away so much hard liquor.
Turns out my admiration was premature; the combination of alcohol and narcotics was
just taking its sweet time to hit home.
She’s a fucking train wreck.
With a practiced ease, I unfasten the rope securing The Contessa to the dock, and
shove off, gritting my teeth together. We’re only twelve miles from Calvi. The wind’s died
down now—the air’s so still, it feels like I’m breathing honey—but that’s no big deal. The
Contessa has an engine and a powerful one at that. I’ll have the girl back with her
giggling, drunk friends in about forty minutes. But Jesus, those forty minutes are going to
be pure hell.
“You…mother…fucking…asshole!” Margarite yells. “I hate you. I’m going to tell my—”
The rumble of The Contessa’s engines drowns her out. A part of me would have
happily left her standing on the dock in the dark, drunk and turned-around, with no way
of calling her friends to come and find her. Eighty percent of me would have been totally
fine with that. But that other twenty percent? Urgh, that part of me would never allow it.
Where that twenty percent came from, I’ll never know. And now’s not the time to be
analyzing my moral compass, anyway. It’s only ten p.m. If I hurry back to Calvi, I’ll still
have time to grab some food and a drink before the restaurants start to close. And maybe
even find myself a less inebriated, less crazy new friend to spend the night with if I’m
lucky.
The Contessa pitches as I navigate her out of the harbor and into open water. Fifteen
minutes later, I hear Margarite heaving over the side of the vessel and puking into the
water. For fuck’s sake. If she’s splattered vomit down the side of the yacht, I’m gonna be
pissed. That shit’ll be baked on by the time I wake up in the morning, which means I’ll
have to make sure I hose it off before I go to bed. Not how I was planning to spend my
evening.
The Contessa’s state of the art navigational systems takes care of piloting the ship.
The damn thing can practically moor itself, it’s that advanced, but I sullenly remain
seated behind the controls, refusing to venture up to the prow to check on Margarite. The
girl’s fucking twenty-one. Three years my senior. Should definitely have her shit together
by now. I’m not gonna baby her. No fucking way.
It doesn’t take long to get back to shore. I watch Margarite pull herself up the railings
as we approach the dock. She doesn’t even wait for The Contessa to come to a stop in
the slip before she’s clambering over the side of the handrail and jumping onto the much
studier dock. Her stupid little purse swings from her shoulder; she appears to walk in a
relatively straight line as she hurries off, barefoot, toward the row of bars where we saw
her friends last.
“Bye, then,” I mutter to myself as I watch her go. Do I give a shit that she doesn’t
look back once as she books it for civilization? That would be a hard no. I’m still livid at
the prospect of having to clean up her puke to give a flying fuck. Once I have the boat
anchored and properly secured, I hop down onto the dock and survey the damage. It’s
not as bad as I expected. Just a few bright orange streaks of…god only knows what the
girl ate to produce puke that color. I slosh a bucket of water at the side of the yacht,
pleased that I’m not gonna have to explain to Wren why his father’s pride and joy
managed to be defiled in such a way. Because, no. The Contessa is not mine. Sad but
true, and also the reason why Margarite started screaming at me back in Île Rousse.
Along with the fact that she’d just discovered I was only eighteen, the news that I was
only borrowing a boat as magnificent as The Contessa really didn’t seem to make the girl
happy at all.
Hardly matters now. I mean, I came out to Corsica to party, get fucked and have a
good time. I didn’t come here to meet my future fucking wife. And nice though it might
have been to spend another day dipping my cock into all of Margarite’s perfectly formed,
tight, pretty little holes, there are plenty of other attractive women on this island just
waiting for someone like me to come along and sweep them off their feet.
I don’t plan on disappointing them.
Once I’ve made sure The Contessa’s secure and I have my money and my passport on
me, I head out, on the hunt for food. I need carbs, good beer, and cheese, and some of
that delicious crusty bread. Olives, and sun-dried tomatoes, and—
Fuck!
Probably should have paid a little more attention to which direction Margarite headed
in when she left the boat. I round a corner, following my nose, daydreaming about all of
the local delicacies I’m going to devour, and boom. There she fucking is, crying on the
cobble-stoned street, her mascara streaked all the way down to her chin. Her hair’s a
mess. And she’s gesticulating wildly to the tallest, broadest, meanest looking
motherfucker I have ever seen in my life. He’s gotta be six foot five. No neck to speak of.
And there’s a jagged, ugly scar running from his left temple, across his mouth and down
his chin, too—the kind of scar any Bond villain would be proud of. His face is bright
fucking purple, his hands flexing into fists. No, not fists. His gargantuan arms end in meat
hammers.
Gingerly, I back the fuck up and duck around the corner, a cold sweat breaking out
across my shoulders despite the thick, humid Corsican night air. That was seriously
fucking close. If I’d stood there for one more second, that insane looking bastard would
have looked up and seen me—the unmistakably American looking dude with the shaved
head and the tattoos—and that would have been it. I would have been fucking dead.
I hear Wren’s voice in my head, as I backtrack the way I came and head in the
opposite direction, disappearing down a different, narrower side street. My friend was
very clear about this kind of thing before he gave me the security code to board the boat:
“Scratch the hull? I’ll hurt you.
Spill soda all over the seats? I will hurt you.
If you have more than four people on that boat at any one time, I will find out. I will
know, Pax, and I will hurt you.
If you do anything to cause trouble out there, I…will…hurt…you. We clear?”
Under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t be worried about a little tiff with a local
thug, but Wren was as serious as a heart attack when he swore this to me. The guy’s
never had a sense of humor. He won’t see the funny side if I wind up calling him to bail
me out of a Corsican jail. He’ll leave me to rot behind bars just to prove his point. Not to
mention, Wren’s been a total buzzkill ever since he got himself a girlfriend. He’s whipped.
His girl says jump and Wren isn’t just asking how high. He’s asking how many times, and
for how goddamn long. My friend’s balls are no longer hanging between his legs; they’re
dangling from Elodie Stillwater’s keychain. It’s a truly sorry state of affairs.
I find somewhere that’s not too crowded and, more importantly, is far enough away
from the marina that I’m not worried about Margarite and her meathead friend finding me
any time soon. From all the televisions mounted on the walls of the establishment, the
place is a sports bar, though tonight the screens are all on the same news channel. The
bartender, a tall, dark-eyed dude with the beginnings of a beard, gives me a perfunctory
nod as I plant myself at the bar and look over the menu.
Arguing with Margarite might have given me a stellar headache but fucking her
repeatedly for three hours on the deck of the boat earlier has also given me a monster
appetite. I could eat a horse right now and that’s the truth. The huge laminated menu
offers typical tourist fare. Plenty of burgers. Fried. God, everything is fucking fried. My
stomach twists as I scan down, down, down looking for some tapas or something fresh
that might have been prepared in the past seventy-two hours, but all I see are options
that will likely be pulled out of a freezer chest in the alley behind the restaurant.
“What can I get ya?” an American accent asks. I look up and the bartender’s standing
there, an eyebrow curved into a question. I’m surprised he’s not Corsican. With his olive
skin and his dark eyes, he sure looks like he could be.
“Huh.”
He lets out a deep, throaty laugh. “I know, right. Surprise! Angelino, born and bred.” A
smile that looks borderline friendly begins to spread across his face. “Anything look
appealing to you?”
The way he says this tells me a couple of things: he’s not mad about the fact that a
customer’s walked in twenty minutes before he was supposed to go home. And he
wouldn’t be opposed to taking me home with him when he goes.
I’m flattered. I’m also not interested. As far as I’m concerned, people can be attracted
to whoever the fuck they want. Guys. Girls. Sexually ambiguous individuals. Doors.
Lamps. Fucking spaceships. Cacti, if they’re brave or weird enough. I, on the other hand,
am attracted to girls, and I choose not to venture outside of that category.
 And the friendly smile? He’s just trying to be nice, but I’m far pickier over who I’m
friends with than who I fuck, and I don’t waste energy on being nice to people I don’t
know. “I’ll take the burger. Medium. Pickles. Tomato. No relish. Mayo on the side. And a
Peroni.”
The bartender’s expression hardens at my tone. He’s reading me loud and clear, which
means he’s good at his job. Probably rakes in the tips. A bartender who reads his
customer in the first few seconds knows if that person needs a shoulder to cry on,
someone to get the shots flowing and the party started, or someone to be respectful and
give them their space. Or, in my particular case, someone to get them a beer and burger,
and then fuck the hell off.
He looks disappointed. Sighing, he says, “Gotta card you, man. You got that sexier-
than-sin, shaved head and ink thing going on, but you’re young. And I’m not gonna lose
my job over a pretty face.”
Pretty?
Fuck him.
It wouldn’t grate so much if I hadn’t heard it a thousand times before. Would I be
modeling for most of the summer in Europe if I didn’t fit a certain criteria? Hell no. Would
girls trip over their own feet in the street if I didn’t look a certain way? Hard no. But this
guy’s treading a fine line. If he veers too far from it, this pretty boy’s gonna knock his
front fucking teeth out.
Balefully staring him down, I reach for my wallet and take my ID out. The bartender
takes it, chuckling under his breath. “New Hampshire, huh?”
“A thrill a second.”
“Live free or die, right?”
I just grunt.
He hands me back my driver’s license. “What? No surprise? Most tourists are
impressed when I reel off their state’s moto.”
“Your special talents are your own business, buddy.”
“All right. I hear you,” he says, shrugging a shoulder as he scoots down to grab my
beer from one of the fridges below the spirits rail behind him. He cracks the top off and
sets the bottle of Peroni down on a napkin in front of me.
“Hey, wasn’t there some kind of hullaballoo in New Hampshire recently? At some
fancy, private school? A teenaged girl found dead there or something?”
I glower at him, grinding a fine layer of enamel from my teeth. How is it that
everyone seems to know about that? I never liked Mara Bancroft when she was alive, and
she’s been even more of a nuisance since she showed up dead. It’s as though the entire
world and its dog has read about her or watched the footage of her desiccated corpse
being loaded into the back of that coroner’s van back in Mountain Lakes. The news
reports about the trial have tapered off a little back home, now that the guy who killed
Mara has fully admitted his crime. But the less said about him, the better.
I bare my teeth at the bartender, pointing to my beer. “What? No glass?” I’m just
baiting him now. It’s hard to stop once I’ve started.
He sighs. “Nope. You’re a real man, covered in tattoos, and real men don’t drink their
beers out of a glass. Right?”
I’ve got nothing to say to that. If he’d have offered me the glass right off the bat, I
would have said no for precisely that reason. My father would have given me a
concussion if he’d ever caught me sipping a beer out of a fancy, skinny Euro glass. Would
have, if he wasn’t dead, that is.
I know exactly who that bastard was, though.
I get sent to a fancy school: Fuckin’ pussy. Think you’re too good for us now, huh?
I earn a good grade: You want a fucking medal, boy? Goddamn, molly-coddled piece
of shit. You wanna earn yourself a medal, you join the goddamn army.
I dare to have a hope or a dream: You think you’re something special? You’re too
dumb to make anything of yourself. Give up while you’re ahead, asshole. Save yourself
the disappointment.
Funny how the complexes our fucked-up parents instill in us extend well beyond their
expiration dates. Pisses me off that this sassy bartender prick can see something like that
on me a mile away, too. I give him a tight-lipped, very unamused smile, which he laughs
at and then walks away.
The beer’s gone in three long swallows.
I should have ordered two.
Another would be great, but I don’t feel like summoning my passive aggressive server
again so soon, so I sit and stew, spinning the empty bottle around and around, watching
it wobble, almost falling over, and catching it before it has chance to topple.
Back in New Hampshire, my only friends in the world are both holed up at our house
on campus, doing god only knows fucking what. They wanted to come, actually, but…no.
Dash would have brought Carrie, Wren would have brought Elodie, and that was just not
fucking happening. It’s easier to come on trips like this alone. No one else to consider
that way, or take up space, to have opinions, or want things. I’m sure plenty of people
would be miserable, going on vacation by themselves, but I wouldn’t have it any other wa
—
I still the bottle in my hands, freezing when my cell phone vibrates in my pocket.
It isn’t a text message. I get those frequently enough. Just one extended, polite buzz
for a text. This is a much longer, more aggressive, sustained buzzing. Once it stops, it
starts up all over again. Someone’s calling me.
Who would have the audacity to actually call me?
Toying with the bottle some more, I let the phone keep ringing. What could be more
disgusting than having to actually talk to someone on the phone? I can’t think of anything
worse. My brain struggles to return to thoughts of solo travels, though. It’s poised and
quiet, waiting to see what happens next. I’m kind of entertained when my phone starts
buzzing again after a brief pause. I take the cell out and study the number, frowning at
the area code. Nine one seven? Nine one seven? A prestigious New York area code, but I
don’t recognize the rest of the number. Can’t place it.
I hit the green answer button and hold the speaker to my ear. “Yeah?”
“Good afternoon. Can I speak with Mr. Davis, please?” a cool female voice asks.
Mr. Davis. Christ. What am I, forty-eight? “Speaking.”
“Oh, good. I’m so glad I’ve caught you, Mr. Davis—”
I wince. “Pax. Please.”
“Uhh, oh. Okay, Pax. Thank you. Well, I’m so glad I caught you. I tried to reach you at
your school, but they told me you were overseas during mid-semester break. I hope you
don’t mind. I got your number from the school administrator, as it was a matter of
urgency.”
“I’m sorry, who is this?”
“Oh, god. I’m sorry. I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on straight. My name’s
Alicia Morrigan. I’m your mother’s primary care giver at St. Augustus’. I would have
waited to call until the morning, but she’s had a bad day and I wanted to give you as
much notice as possible before—”
Ever been in a car accident? It’s weird. There’s this moment, right as it’s happening
and metal meets metal, that you realize you’re in grave, imminent danger, and you know
there’s nothing you can do about it. You exist inside that weird moment, straining against
the surprise, desperate to just move! but you’re paralyzed, watching it all unfold, locked
in place…
Breathe.
Fucking breathe, you moron.
A piercing, sharp pain lances through my head, right between my eyes. It’s so sharp
and unexpected that I have to squint in order to brace against it. “I’m sorry. What? You’re
her…what?”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “Her primary care giver,” the voice
repeats. What was her name again? Alicia?
“Right. But…St. Augustus’? I don’t understand.”
“Meredith was admitted last week. I wanted to call you then, but your momma’s one
stubborn woman. She wouldn’t hear of it. Now that her condition is worsening—”
“Wait. Stop.” I hold up a hand like she can see me fucking doing it. “Stop, stop, stop.
STOP. Her condition? What are you talking about? What condition?”
Again, the line goes silent. Crackles. I think the call’s been disconnected, but then
Alicia says, “I see.” She’s lost that airy, floaty tone to her voice. Now she’s all business,
her words clipped. “You’ll have to forgive me, Mr. Davis, but your mother swore she’d told
you what was going on. Looks like she lied.”
My mother? Lie? Shocker. I can count on one hand how many times Meredith Davis
has told me the unembellished truth. I bite the tip of my tongue until I taste blood. “Her
condition?” I repeat.
“Right. Yes. It is not my place to be telling you this.” Alicia coughs. Or could be that
she chokes on the information that should have come from my mother. “There’s no real
way to soften the blow, so I’ll just come out and say it. Your mother’s been battling
cancer for the past eight months.”
She pauses, the void of sound hanging in the air between us—me sitting in a bar in
Corsica and her in some sterile, bleach-smelling room in New York—fizzing with awkward
anticipation. She’s waiting for the shock. The horror. The tears. The disbelief and the
bargaining.
No.
Oh god, no.
It’s not true.
It can’t be.
She’s so young.
So fit.
So healthy.
Why her?
She’s so good.
She doesn’t deserve this.
“What kind?” I ask.
“Pardon?”
“Of cancer. What kind of cancer?”
The bartender, who was on his way over, gesturing to my empty bottle of beer, pivots
and heads in the opposite direction.
“Leukemia. Her prognosis was good at first, but we’ve had a nightmare trying to find a
match for a bone marrow transplant. And since you weren’t a ma—”
Alicia cuts herself off. Swears angrily under her breath.
The headache that’s been steadily thumping behind my eyes spreads like wildfire,
rooting deep into my head, firing tendrils of pain down the back of my neck. “Finish…the…
sentence.”
“Christ,” Alicia mutters. “She told the doctors you were tested at your local hospital
and you weren’t a match.”
“And you’re in the habit of just letting your patients tell you this shit without checking
to see if it’s true?” Wow. So weird. In my head, my voice is high-pitched and full of rage.
When it comes out of my mouth, it’s devastatingly calm.
Alicia makes excuses. Feeds me apologies. I’m deaf to all of it. I sit at the bar, so, so
still, fending off a barrage of displaced thoughts. I wonder if Dash headed back to
England for the break. Man, these shoes are uncomfortable. Where the hell is my burger?
I need to get my eyes checked when I get home. My vision should not be this blurry.
“Are you hearing me? This is actually good news. If you haven’t been tested, there’s
still a chance you could be a match!”
Poor Alicia’s so excited. She was all doom and gloom when I picked up the phone, but
her sudden hope has me by the throat and it’s making my head spin. “I’m not getting
tested.” I say it softly, but the statement rattles the windows and shakes the earth
beneath my rickety bar stool; I’m the only one who feels the aftershock.
The nurse makes a confused, guttural sound. “Pah! What? No, honey, you’ve got to
get tested.”
“I’m on the other side of the world. I’m trying to enjoy my vaca—”
“No,” Alicia interrupts. “You don’t understand. Your mother’s very sick. She’s got a few
weeks left, the way she’s going. If you don’t come back to the States immediately, get
tested and start praying you’re a match, she will die. Is that what you want?”
Something insidious unfurls beneath my ribs—a hoarfrost creeping along the bone,
freezing me to my rotten core. Knock me right now and I’ll shatter like glass. “It’s not
about what I want, Alicia. It’s that…I just don’t care.”
I end the call, staring at the screen as I set the phone down on the bar. A cut-glass
tumbler with an inch of burnt golden liquid appears next to it as the light on the phone
dims and the display fades to black.
The bartender cracks his knuckles. “Sounded like you needed something stronger than
beer.”
Who the fuck am I to argue with the man? He’s a professional. It’s his job to know
what I need. I drain the tumbler in one go, pouring the tequila down my throat. The raw
burn from the liquor defrosts the slick, death-like cold that’s digging its fingers into my
guts. It exhumes me, dragging me from a premature grave.
“Everything okay, man? I wasn’t eavesdropping. I just heard you say cancer and saw
the look on your face, and…”
 If I weren’t such a total prick, I’d tell him it was nothing. It isn’t my job to put people
at ease, though. When I look up, I give him an assessing once over and my lip curls
upward of its own volition. The shape of this expression is familiar. I know it intimately.
Dash calls it my ‘move-or-die’ face. “I’ll take the check.”
He shakes his head. “Your burger hasn’t come out yet. People who order food usually
like to actually eat it before they bounce.”
“You want me to settle up before I leave or what?” I will leave if he doesn’t put the
check down in front of me in the next ten seconds.
The bartender places his hands on his hips. He lets his head hang for a second,
sighing deeply, then he looks up at me. “No, you stubborn fucker. I don’t want you to
settle up. Go on. Go.”
“What?”
“You’re white as a sheet, dude. You don’t look well. Just get your ass back to your
hotel and don’t worry about it.”
Saints and martyrs, this guy thinks I’m actually upset about the news I just got. What
a joke. Fucking moron. I get up and—
Whoa.
My vision darkens around the edges. I grip the bar to steady myself, but it doesn’t
help. The ground’s got a mind of its own. The bartender’s brows bank together, eyes
flashing with concern. “Here, man. Why don’t you let me help you?” He starts to make his
way around to me, but I back away, crashing into a table behind me in my haste to get
away from him.
“I’m fine. I’m…fine. I… just need to…”
Somehow, I find my feet, and I run. Out on the cobbled street, strains of music and
laughter float on the night air. Cicadas chirrup their chorus in the hills close by. I stagger
drunkenly in the direction that will lead me back to the marina, but I get myself turned
around and end up wasting twenty minutes walking the wrong way before I manage to
orient myself and figure out my mistake.
I’m exhausted and numb when I finally reach the dock where I left the boat.
The acrid tang of burning chemicals floods the back of my nose, blotting out the rich,
heady scent of basil, mint and cooking meat that laced the air when I set out to find a
restaurant. I ignore the stench. I ignore the push and shove of the crowd that’s formed on
the pier as well. I don’t even notice the press of bodies thickening and the roar of excited
conversation getting louder until I snap back into myself and realize that something isn’t
right.
“It’s gonna go down before we can get it out!” an English-accented voice hollers.
“Fuck, James, get back, for god’s sake. You’re gonna get yourself killed. What are you
thinking, boy?”
It’s then that I process the scene.
The orange, dancing flames.
The dirty black smoke curling off into the sky.
The charred hull of the boat, listing weirdly out of the water.
The Contessa…
On fire…
…sinking.
I watch dumbly as the yacht that I borrowed from my friend, the same one I swore I
wouldn’t set on fire, groans, a loud splintering sound fills the air, and then capsizes, its
mast crashing down onto the deck of the super yacht which is moored in the slip beside
it.
“Hey! Paxton!”
It takes a second to locate her: Margarite, the cute little French girl with the coke
habit. She sits on a painted railing fifteen feet away, kicking her feet as she licks happily
at an ice cream cone. She grins like a fiend when I lock eyes with her. “Sorry, Paxton,”
she shouts. “I saw it start. I would have called the fire department, but I seem to have
lost my phone.”
I can’t help it.
I burst out laughing.
I laugh until I double over and puke into the black waters of the Mediterranean.
 2

PAX

“Oh my god. I want—I want…”

She wants my cock inside her. She wants my teeth on her neck. She wants all of me.
Lord, I can smell how bad she fucking wants me. Her breath is laced with the expensive
whiskey I gave her back at the house. Her skin is fragrant, like gardenias, and green
spring growth, and coconut. Her pussy smells sweet, though, indescribably delectable—a
signature scent that must have been designed specifically to drive me out of my goddamn
mind. I can’t think around that scent. It’s turned me fucking feral. I lick, and suck, and
bite at the perfect alabaster pale skin of her shoulder, losing more and more of myself as
the seconds slip by.
My hands are full of fire. Her hair is so red and beautiful even in the moonlight. Her
lips are a delicate, pale pink—the color of exquisite coral. I can’t get enough of those,
either. That pouty, swollen, plump mouth will be the death of me. What I wouldn’t give to
have that perfect fucking mouth wrapped around my shaft right now.
“God. Pax. I…” Her words are little pants. Gasps, even. She struggles to force them
out, but the reverence in them is plain. I am her god, and she is worshipping me. As it
should be. As it will always be. This girl with the caramel-colored eyes, the heavy,
amazing teardrop breasts, and the most distracting dimple in her right cheek? She’s quite
easily the most stunning creature I’ve ever laid eyes on. I could happily pin her against
this tree trunk, and—
“HEY!”
I come to, slamming my knee into the seat in front of me, hissing at the bolt of pain
that shoots all the way up my leg.
Ow.
 “Hey, wake up! Damn, dude, are you okay? That looked like it hurt.”
Where the fuck am I?
What the fuck is that rushing, sucking, roaring sound?
For a second, I worry that my ears aren’t working properly. And then it all comes
together: the phone call from the hospital in New York. The nurse who let it slip that my
mother has cancer. The nine hours waiting on a hard-plastic bench, trying to get a flight.
The shitty airport food. Boarding the plane. The smell of smoke still clinging to my
clothes. The Contessa. Christ. The Contessa. I’m not a coward, but I’m not looking
forward to telling Wren Jacobi that I sank his boat with my dick.
If I hadn’t told that French chick that I was twenty-one just so I could get her naked,
she wouldn’t have torched the fucking thing. As it now stands, my obituary will be short:
PAX DAVIS, 18, former model and general asshole, succumbed to his injuries
almost immediately. If only he hadn’t fucked that crazy French bitch.
“Dude, I thought you were having a heart attack.”
To my left, the guy I’m sharing row thirty-six with is wide-eyed, his mouth hanging
open. His Bose headphones hang around his neck, aggressive rap music leaking from the
speakers. “You were moaning.” He laughs. “I thought that hot flight attendant was gonna
shit herself.”
I rub my eyes. “I have nightmares on planes.”
The guy puffs out his cheeks. “Nightmare? Sounded like you were three seconds away
from coming.”
I’m about to deny it again, but I shift my hips in my seat and realize that my dick is
harder than granite; I’m pitching wood so bad you can probably see my erection from
outer space. I actually must have been about to come, which is just…awesome. Wow.
Just fucking awesome. I smile tightly, shunting myself upright. I can’t hide my massive
boner without touching myself and I do not want to draw attention to it, so I just let it sit
there, glaringly obvious and impressively upright.
This far back on the plane—the very last damn row—the chairs don’t recline. I’ve been
drifting in and out of consciousness for hours, miserable and in pain, cursing the fact that
not only am I stuck in economy but in the most uncomfortable seat in the history of air
travel. My body hurts, and now my cock is hard enough that it hurts, too.
“Come on, then. Spill. Who were you getting hot and heavy with in your sleep?” the
guy next to me asks. He introduced himself when I sat down next to him during boarding.
Told me his name, but I forgot it right after. He’s had this fixed smile on his face since we
boarded that’s made me want to slap him; no one has the right to be this happy for no
goddamn reason.
“I told you. It was a nightmare. There was no hot and heavy.”
 He’s disappointed, it’s clear, but so fucking what? I don’t know this clown. He doesn’t
deserve personal information from me. And I don’t remember who I was about to bone in
my dream. It certainly wasn’t Crazy Margarite.
The guy swivels around, sitting straight in his seat again. “We’re only an hour from
New York. You missed breakfast. They said they’d bring one of the meals back and leave
it for you, but I think they forgot.”
“I’ll eat when we land.”
“I’m sure they’d bring you something if you—”
I slip my AirPods into my ears, shutting him out. He stops talking when he sees what
I’ve done. His smile finally fades; looks like I’ve hurt his feelings. At least he leaves me
alone for the rest of the flight.
The moment the plane’s wheels touch down and the seatbelt light goes off, I’m up out
of my seat, grabbing my bag from the overhead storage, and I’m shoving my way down
the aisle before the gangway can get clogged up by the other passengers. Thankfully, I
manage to tuck my dick—yeah, I’m still sporting the boner that will not quit—up into the
waistband of my jeans, neatly out of the way so that it’s less noticeable as I charge off
the plane. A hostess with braided blonde hair standing at the plane’s exit pales when she
sees me coming toward her.
“Have a nice day,” she mutters.
I bolt past her without a word.
“He’s the one who was growling,” I hear behind me. “He said he was gonna choke
someone with his—ahem—”
Cock.
Pretty sure it was my cock, but I could be wrong. The details of the dream have
already disintegrated into a haze of vague colors and shapes…
Ahh, shit. It’s fucking hot. Even in the airconditioned walkway that leads from the
plane into the main building of JFK, the heat and humidity slaps me in the face. The air is
cloying—a cocktail of smells that create an odor so unpleasant and unique to this airport
that I immediately know I’m home.
Four days. That’s how long I was in Corsica.
Four.
Fucking.
Days.
So much for mid-semester break.
I could have stayed, of course. Nothing stopping me. With three summers’ modeling
work under my belt, I have plenty of money and sweet fuck all to spend it on, trapped up
a mountain at a private boarding school in the middle of New Hampshire. I could have
put myself up at the most expensive hotel on the island and had a grand old time, but
the trip was soured for me once The Contessa disappeared below the surface of the
Mediterranean. As the boat listed in the water, her mast damaged the super yacht in the
next mooring, and when the super yacht’s owner showed up and started cursing in
Italian, I took that as my cue to get the fuck out of dodge. My return to the States has
nothing to do with my mother’s cancer diagnoses.
On autopilot, I navigate my way through customs and head to baggage claim. All of
my clothes went down with The Contessa, but I bought a stupid amount of stuff to
replace what I lost at the airport. I was on autopilot. I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t have
bothered, but I did. Now, a part of me just wants to walk away from huge suitcase full of
designer gear, but I just can’t seem to bring myself to do it.
I’m a million miles away, mental gears spinning, when I realize that I’m being
watched. Stared at, in fact. Two girls in their early twenties hover on my left, whispering
and giggling to one another as they look me over.
There was a time when I might have been flattered by their attention. Now, it just—
oh, Jesus Christ. That’s why they’re looking at me. I’ve inadvertently stood right next to
one of those digital advertising screens. It’s ten feet tall, almost as wide, and guess who’s
plastered all over the damn thing?
Yeah.
That would be me.
In nothing but a pair of very tight, white boxer briefs, I might add.
The girls both blush hotly when they realize that I’ve noticed them. They’re both
pretty. I’m flattered that they’ve turned crimson over the sight of my larger-than-life bare
chest. If I play my cards right, they’ll probably come over. They’ll stammer and flush even
redder, and I’ll flirt mercilessly, and before I know it all three of us will be checking into a
room at one of the airport hotels close by. My dick will thank me. I’m still hard as fuck
from that random sex dream on the plane. I have a relentless pulse in my cock, and
every time the tip of it rubs against my underwear, I have to fight the urge to go and jerk
off in the men’s room.
I wouldn’t even have to try—if I wanted these girls, I could have one of them bouncing
up and down on my dick and the other riding my face in under thirty minutes. All it would
take is a smile.
I don’t smile. I take out my Ray Ban Wayfarers from the breast pocket of my button-
down shirt and slide them on, aware that only an asshole wears sunglasses indoors. It’s
not like they’ll conceal who I am; it’s very obvious that I’m the guy on the billboard
behind me. The ink creeping up around my neck and cuffing my wrists makes me easy to
identify, as does my closely shaved head. No, the sunglasses aren’t going to fool anyone,
but they do make me feel protected. As if I’ve withdrawn into another room and I’m
observing the people around me through a two-way mirror.
Heat creeps up the back of my neck as another couple realize that I’m the model on
the goddamn billboard. I glare at the conveyor belt on carousel number 6, willing it to
start spitting out bags. This is a fucking nightmare. I’m going to kill Hilary. My agent
normally gives me a heads-up if one of the campaigns I’ve posed for goes live. I had no
idea the execs had even chosen an image for this ad, let alone that I’d be fucking
plastered all over JFK.
Just move, you fucking moron, I snap at myself. Can’t, though. It’ll look way worse if I
slink away now. It already looks like I made a conscious decision to come and stand here,
like some arrogant piece of shit with a god complex. I’ll only draw more attention to
myself if I—
“Excuse me? Um…”
Fuuuuuck no. The sunglasses weren’t enough to deter the two blondes. My dick throbs
again—a desperate plea for attention—which only irritates the hell out of me even more.
The girls stand shoulder-to-shoulder, volleying nervous sidelong looks at each other.
Jesus, where are the fucking bags?
“Sorry to bother you, but…are you…?”
The blonde on the left points to the display behind me. My lips are parted in the
image, my head tilted back, like I’m baring my neck. My eyes are half-closed, and I’m
looking right down the lens of the camera like I want to fuck the shit out of the person on
the other side of it. I’m morbidly embarrassed by the fact that my dick looks huge in
those boxer briefs. It’s probably just my perspective, standing right underneath the
display, but it looks like my monster cock is ready to rip through the fabric, like when that
Chest Burster exploded through John Hurt’s ribcage in Alien. Lord help me, I hope no one
checks out my actual cock right now. The boner I’m rocking will not help matters.
I clench my jaw. “Not me. Sorry.”
“But…” She looks at her friend, frowning, but the other girl is just as perplexed.
I can’t really blame her. The elaborate angel on my neck, behind my left ear? The one
who looks like she’s telling me a secret? She’s identical to the one you can see on the guy
in the photo. Only the curled tail of the devil behind my right ear is visible in the ad
campaign, but it’s an unmistakable tail. It couldn’t be confused for anything else. Neither
can the coiled snake wrapped around my left forearm (her name is Bathsheba), peeking
out from underneath the cuffed sleeve of my shirt, or the saints on my other arm. Saint
Sebastian, Saint Moses the Black, and Joan of Arc, sitting around a poker table, a blunt
hanging out of Joan’s mouth: a very specific tattoo by anyone’s standards. It’d be the
coincidence of a lifetime if my doppelganger on the screen behind me bore the very
same, bizarre ink, was identical to me in every other way, and was somehow not me.
The girl’s eyelids shutter. “Are you sure? ’Cause you…you do look just like the guy in
that—”
“Look. I’m in med school. I don’t prance around in my underwear for money.” I’ve told
some whoppers in the past and gotten away with my crimes, but this is such an
outrageous falsehood, there’s just no way I’m getting away with it. The girls don’t know
what to do with themselves. What can they do, though? Call me a liar to my face? Hah.
Awkwardly, they communicate through a series of exaggerated looks and head jerks. The
girl on the left is more insistent than the one on the right. She wants her friend to push
the issue…
“Uhh. Okay,” the timid one mutters. “Well, we’re sorry to bother you. We know you
must get approached by people all the time. We were just wondering if we could get a
photo with you in front of the screen or something?”
I rip the sunglasses from my face, setting my jaw. “Why? Why would you want a
photo with some random guy in front of some random billboard?”
The girls jump back, reaching for each other’s hands. “I don’t—we—we just thought—”
“I told you. I’m a med student. I have more self-respect than that.” I jab my finger at
the ad, throwing an angry look over my shoulder at the editorial, but it’s gone now. The
ad changed while I was talking, and now a doe-eyed brunette wearing the same doped,
pouty look on her face that I was wearing a moment ago is posing seductively with a
bottle of perfume, holding it up next to her face like it’s a dick that she’s about to deep
throat.
People are really looking now. I slip the Wayfarers back onto the bridge of my nose,
ducking my head. “Look. I had a shitty flight. I’m gonna get my bags and go the fuck
home so I can sleep. Excuse me.”
The bags are starting to come out on the belt, emerging from a hole in the wall that
looks like a yawning mouth. I skirt around the girls, moving to stand closer to the
carousel, bouncing on the balls of my feet while I wait for my large suitcase to appear. Of
course, it takes fucking forever; nearly everyone has cleared out and left by the time I
snatch the handle of my case and beeline for the exit.
I’m sticky with sweat; I fucking hate that feeling. Outside, I eventually hail a taxi and
climb onto the backseat.
“Where you going, kid?” the driver asks in a thick Bronx accent. I knuckle my
forehead, contemplating the journey back to the academy. A five-hour drive in a cab.
Four, if you have a lead foot and a knack for avoiding highway patrol. Either way, I can’t
handle sitting down for that long after the cramped, miserable flight I just endured.
“Corner of West 59 th and 5th. And I’ll tip you a hundred bucks if you get me there in
under forty-five minutes.”
The taxi driver snorts. Ten-thirty on a Monday morning? We’ll be lucky to make it in
twice that time. He knows he ain’t gonna see that money, so why bother bending over
backwards for the spoiled shit sitting on the backseat?
He drives, button lipped. After a while, he puts the radio on, trawling from station to
station, hunting for god only knows fucking what. Eventually he stops on an alt rock
station and lets the music play, which is just fine by me…until the music breaks for the
news.
“Detectives working the Bancroft murder case now believe that the man charged with
the murder of Mara Bancroft, sixteen, may be responsible for a string of other killings
across Texas, Connecticut, and New York State, spanning a timeframe of well over a
decade. Thirty-eight-year-old Wesley Fitzpatrick, a former English professor at Wolf Hall
Academy, an exclusive boarding school in the tiny town of Mountain Lakes, New
Hampshire, is accused with the brutal assault and murder of one of his young students—”
I close my eyes.
I try not to listen.
I try not to seethe inside my own skin.
I never liked Wesley Fitzpatrick. He was a smug piece of shit and I knew there was
something deeply wrong about him. I could do without seeing his face plastered all over
the news. Now that he’s in the running for serial killer status, he’s going to be national
headlines. There’ll be no escaping his ugly fucking mug for months.
It’s past midday when we reach our destination. I pay the guy and grab my own bags
from the trunk, then head for the entrance to the looming building constructed out of
glinting glass and steel that towers over the corner of 5th Ave and West 59th St.
The Excelsior was completed seven year
s ago with much pomp and celebration. The architects hoped it would dominate the
New York skyline as one of the city’s tallest buildings, and it did for almost a year, but
construction doesn’t rest in this town. It wasn’t long before the luxury apartment building
was ranked number fifteen in height. God knows where it stands these days. Doesn’t
really matter to me. I don’t give a shit. My mother owns the sprawling penthouse, and
from that vantage point I’d say the building’s plenty high enough, thanks very much. I
mean, what parent buys a penthouse apartment in a high rise when their son is deathly
afraid of heights? Meredith Davis, that’s who.
It takes twenty-three seconds to get from the ground floor to the penthouse. I
normally count them out. Not today, though. I blow down my nose, uncomfortable, too
spent to do anything but wait out the ride. Eventually, the car glides to a whooshing stop,
my ears popping right on cue as the doors peel back and my mother’s ostentatious-to-
the-point-of-ridiculous foyer appears.
High ceilings. Parquet flooring. Mirrors everywhere. Boujee framed works by some of
America’s most acclaimed contemporary artists. Dried flowers, and soft, off-white,
feminine furnishings. This penthouse is an accurate representation of who Meredith is as
a person—classy, subtle, effortless, well-heeled. Everything I’m not.
Meredith breaks out in hives if I dare sit on one of her precious white sofas. She shoos
me out of the living room more often than not. Never really got over the injustice of my
sex, I think. They told her I was a girl when she went for her gender scan. Imagine her
disappointment when I came out with a penis. As a boy, she assumes that I exude dirt
from my pores. No matter how recently I’ve showered, she’s convinced that her precious
white sofas are unsafe around me. The irony of a chair that can’t even be fucking sat on,
people. I fucking tell you.
I brace myself for the familiar smell of this place, readying myself for the delicate hint
of apricot—the smell of my mother’s expensive hand cream—that normally lingers in the
air. Only…the place doesn’t smell at all. I enter the hallway and look both ways, toward
the main living area and down the long hallway that leads off toward the bedrooms.
Nothing. No cleaning products. No perfume. The warm, animal scent of polished
leather that used to dominate the penthouse disappeared after my father died and
Meredith tossed his ancient briefcase down the garbage chute, but her smell…her smell
has always been here.
She really hasn’t been home in weeks.
“Just get to work, asshole,” I growl at myself under my breath. “Sooner you’re done,
sooner you can go to sleep.”
I leave my bags by the elevator and venture toward the panel of switches on the wall
beside the entryway to the kitchen, where the controls for the penthouse’s
temperature/lighting/audio system are located. I hit a series of buttons, and the blinds at
each of the huge floor-to-ceiling windows whirr, unfurling like sails, until the iconic view of
New York City’s skyscrapers is blotted out.
Thank fuck for that. The taut ball of tension in the center of my chest loosens.
There’s a stack of mail on the kitchen island. The vase on my mother’s favorite
console is empty. A few desiccated petals lie on the smooth surface of the mango wood,
telling a very distinct story—there were flowers in the vase, but my mother left and she
didn’t come back. The flowers rotted. The housekeeper, not knowing any better, threw
the bouquet away but didn’t replace them. They also neglected to sweep up the fallen
petals—something Meredith would never have done.
Out of habit, I brush the paper-dry petals off the console and into my hand, dumping
them in the trash can in the kitchen. In here at least, everything is as it should be. In
order. Shipshape.
Amongst many other things—lawyer; art collector; critic; orator; staunch and highly
superstitious Catholic—my mother’s a germaphobe. Even the smallest spot on a
tablecloth will send her into fits of hysteria. A fingerprint on the bowl of a wine glass? A
hair in the sink in her dressing room? Heaven fucking forbid. Of all the areas in the
penthouse, the kitchen is Meredith’s largest area of concern. Sometimes, her anxiety over
the cleanliness of the countertops is so great that she slams a couple of Xanax and puts
herself to bed for three days so she can calm the fuck down.
Today, the stainless-steel appliances are spotless. The subway tiles are immaculate.
No dirt or dust in sight. You could eat off the counter, but that would be a bad idea—
Meredith would know what you’d done and never forgive you for it.
I exit the kitchen, shuddering at the sterility of the place. Down the hall, at the very
end, on the right-hand side, the door to the room where I sleep is firmly closed, just like
all the others. Meredith calls this my room, but it isn’t. There are a few of my books in
here. Some clothes. Some old lenses and camera bodies, and a couple of my notebooks
squirreled away in the drawers, but even this room hasn’t escaped Meredith’s OCD. The
surfaces of the chest of drawers and the nightstands are free of clutter. The sheets on the
king-sized bed are crisp, clean and perfectly wrinkle free. Anything that belongs to me is
put away, hidden, secreted out of sight.
Even the stack of black and white prints that I developed last time I was here (that
she swore she would not touch) have either been disposed of or buried in a drawer
somewhere, out of sight. Color me surprised.
Corsican sand scatters across the polished hardwood when I pull off my shoes. I’m too
tired to take off my clothes, so I leave them on and crawl up the bed, grateful that the
blinds in the penthouse are excellent at blocking out not only the dizzying height but
nearly all daylight as well. I’m asleep before my head hits the pillow.
Tomorrow, I’m supposed to go and visit Meredith.
But fuck that.
Fuck her cancer diagnosis and fuck her for not telling me about it herself.
Tomorrow, I return to Wolf Hall.
 3

PAX

Nothing draws a crowd like a dead body.

And murder? A murder can capture the attention of an entire country, especially if it
was violent. As I navigate the long, winding road up the mountain toward Wolf Hall, not
one but two news vans burn past me, swinging over onto the wrong side of the road in
their hurry to get around my Charger. The police must have released new information
about my deceased classmate. Awesome. Now the vultures are circling, ready to risk their
lives in order to reach ground zero, the scene of the crime, ahead of the competition. As
an aspiring photojournalist, I know how important the public’s first reactions are. A dead
high school senior’s friend, though? Her teachers? Capturing their reaction to whatever
macabre tidbit the police have let slip is a fat payday if you can air it before anyone else.
You can bet your ass every reporter in a hundred-mile radius is booking it to Mountain
Lakes, New Hampshire right now. I must have seen five more news vans in town just
now, too—the place is literally crawling with press. They’re like flies swarming around a
steaming pile of shit.
And there I was thinking I was going to avoid all of this.
Now, not only do I have to find a way to explain to Wren Jacobi that I destroyed his
father’s fancy boat, but I also have to tolerate this bullshit too? Urgh.
Mara Bancroft was not my friend.
I didn’t even like the girl.
She fucked around with the wrong dude—the same dude who’s boat I just sank,
coincidentally—and one of our crazy teachers stabbed her thirty-eight times because of it.
Mara paid the ultimate price for her infatuation with Wren Jacobi. Now, nearly a full year
later, her body’s been discovered and none of us can get any peace because of it.
 Riot House, the beautiful three-story architectural masterpiece my friends and I live in
—just because we attend a boarding school doesn’t mean we’re lame enough to actually
board there—comes into view, but I don’t stop. I fly right past the turnoff, continuing on,
up toward the school. One second, I’m climbing, careening through switchbacks, drifting
through the corners, forty-foot trees crowding the road to my left and right, the dense
forest begrudgingly receding enough to allow for the narrowest sliver of blacktop, and
then there it is: Wolf Hall Academy.
I’m a stubborn, arrogant, grumpy motherfucker, but even I can appreciate just how
remarkable the place is. With its gothic turrets, pinnacles, and the crew of gargoyles
chilling above the flying buttresses to the east wing of the sprawling structure, there are
so many fascinating, unusual elements to the exclusive school. It certainly isn’t the kind
of building you’d expect to find at the top of a mountain in the wilds of New fucking
Hampshire.
The huge fountain at the bottom of the driveway sprays a light mist of water over the
Charger’s windshield as I hang a left and make the final ascent up to the entrance…only
to find the turning circle in front of the building choked by news vans. The place is a
goddamn circus.
KTY Smile News.
Brookston Beacon.
The Daily Report.
The Dawn Chronicle.
World Report.
Half of the senior class sits on the front steps, gathered in small groups, watching the
madness unfold. Two vans in particular—a Sprinter with the World Report logo
emblazoned down the side and a dinged-up Ford Transit belonging to The Brookston
Beacon—vie for the last open stretch of curbside right in front of a trimmed topiary. Well,
fuck those guys. While they’re arguing and flipping each other off out of their windows,
playing some weird game of chicken to see who’ll relinquish the spot first, I skip the low
curb, cross a small patch of grass, and claim it for myself.
One of the drivers is feeling brave. “Hey, asshole! Move the fucking car!”
I get out of said car and skirt around the front of it, ready to knock the fucker’s teeth
out—I will make this the worst day of his entire fucking life and I will fucking enjoy it, too
—but someone grabs hold of me by the scruff of the neck, nice and tight.
“Not even back for thirty seconds and already spoiling for war?” a voice asks in a
mocking English accent.
Dash.
Lord Dashiell Lovett the fourth, to be precise. One of my best friends and another
resident at Riot House. Instead of greeting him, I smirk viciously at the moron who yelled
out of his window, imbuing the look with as much malice as physically possible. The
middle-aged punk in the ratty white t-shirt pales a little when I silently mouth the word
“DIE.”
Dash lets me go. “Not that I’m unhappy to see you—”
“Naturally.”
“Naturally. But…why the fuck are you back so soon?”
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. His hair’s gotten even blonder in the short
amount of time that I’ve been gone; his coloring is so dependent on how much time he
spends out in the sun. I’d place money on the fact that he's been extending his morning
runs in my absence, trying to level up his cardio game so that he can casually smoke me
when I got home. I guess we’ll see about that.
“I sank the boat,” I say.
Dash recoils. “You did what?”
“You heard me.”
The horror on his face is borderline funny. It’d be hysterical if it wasn’t justified. “Jesus
wept,” he whispers.
“I know. He’s gonna kill me. Yada yada yada.” I’ve had plenty of time to imagine
Wren Jacobi’s wrath, and yes, it’s going to be impressive. I decided when I boarded the
plane to come home from Corsica that I wasn’t going to worry about it, though. It’s a
fucking boat. Correction: it was a fucking boat. I’ll buy him another one. Over the past
three summers, I’ve accrued enough money from my modeling gigs to buy him eight
super yachts, and that’s saying something. Those things are disgustingly expensive.
I doubt Wren will care about me replacing The Contessa, though. He’ll only care that I
promised that I wouldn’t sink the boat and then promptly sank it.
“At least you didn’t set it on fire,” Dash mutters under his breath.
“I did. But the fire went out when it sank. The sinking seemed like the most relevant
piece of information.”
Over the past three and a half years that I’ve spent living with Dash, there have been
innumerable times that I’ve wanted to throttle him, but none so much as I want to
throttle him now, when he says, “Can I be there when you tell him? I wanna see his face
when—”
“This is Amanda Jefferson for The Dawn Chronicle, reporting live from Wolf Hall
Academy in Mountain Lakes, New Hampshire—”
Dash whips around. A leggy brunette dressed in a flowy blouse and incredibly short
skirt stands on the front lawn, staring straight down the lens of a camera. She clings to
her microphone like she’s worried someone might confiscate it.
 “This should be good,” I growl.
“—where the body of Mara Bancroft was recently discovered in a cave. Miss Bancroft
was just sixteen when she went missing last year. Her friends and the teachers at Wolf
Hall thought she’d gone to Los Angeles to live with a friend, though her parents didn’t
believe this to be the case. James and Pamela Bancroft, Mara’s parents, were convinced
that a terrible fate had befallen their daughter. Despite having searched the thick forest
surrounding Wolf Hall Academy at the time, search teams found no evidence in the
woods or anywhere else on this highly exclusive school’s grounds to suggest foul play.
“All of that changed two weeks ago. Sweet Mara’s body was found in a random and
bizarre twist of fate by her friends, when the vicious sociopath responsible for Bancroft’s
brutal murder attempted to murder them, too—”
I huff out a breath of laughter, folding my arms across my chest. “Sweet Mara?
They’ve done no research on her, then.”
Beside me, Dash snorts, which earns him a filthy look from Damiana Lozano. “Don’t
be an asshole,” she hisses.
“Oh, please.” Dash rolls his eyes. “You didn’t even like Mara and now you’re out here,
dressed in black like you’re a Victorian widow going into fucking mourning. Such a
goddamn hypocrite.”
There’s no denying it: Damiana is beautiful—blonde-haired, blue-eyed—but she’s so
ugly on the inside that it’s hard to remember she’s pretty sometimes. Or at least
remember to care. “Go fuck yourselves. Both of you,” she snaps. “If you must know, I got
on really well with Mara.” She gets louder as she speaks, turning up the volume. Her
attention has shifted effortlessly from us to the news crews. “I was one of Mara’s best
friends. I loved her, and she loved me—”
Ha! So fucking transparent.
Dami didn’t give a shit about Mara. The only person Dami has ever or will ever give a
shit about is Dami. But will that stop her from using her murdered classmate to land
herself a spot on the local news? Hell no. Of course not. I cut her a scathing look, top lip
curled up, and—
“YOU’RE A FUCKING DEAD MAN, DAVIS!”
The news anchor, midway through her report, stops talking. The many students
gathered on the front steps of the school all quit their conversation, too. In a matter of a
few short seconds, all of the news casters and a good amount of our senior class have
stopped what they’re doing, turned, and located the origin of that angry shout—and low
and behold, what do you know? It came right out of the mouth of Wren Jacobi.
My friend is oblivious to the audience he’s drawn. He hurtles down the steps, out of
the school’s entrance, charging straight for me. I’m on my way to being concerned about
his temper, when he sees a short brunette girl standing off to the right, at the very
bottom of the stairs, and his pace slows.
He still looks pissed. He’s still coming straight for me. He’s still gonna hit me. But that
razor sharp, furious edge in his eyes, the one that said he was going to tear my head
right off my shoulders and dance around my bleeding corpse? That shit’s gone now.
His girlfriend, Elodie Stillwater, has that effect on him. She’s clipped his fucking balls is
what she’s done. I’d rather he came down here and straight knocked me the fuck out
than half-ass this, but he won’t now. He’ll rein himself in to avoid disappointing her.
Fucking bullshit.
“Before you say anything, it wasn’t actually my faul—” Wren’s fist connects with my
jaw and the inside of my head lights up like the fourth of July. The sick, broken part of
me, the monster who likes to suffer, crows at the burst of pain that turns my vision pure
white. For a second I’m blind, and then everything is scattering stars. I laugh, letting my
head kick back, amused by the slick, coppery taste of pennies on my tongue.
“You’re legitimately going to stand there and say it wasn’t actually your fault? God,
you’re a piece of work,” Wren fumes. “It was absolutely your fault. I read the police
report. You might not have sunk the thing with your own two hands, but you were
absolutely respons—”
“Boys? Amanda Jefferson. Dawn Chronicle. Are you fighting because of the news?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’ve forgotten all about the news anchor. She’s still brandishing the
microphone with the Dawn Chronicle’s logo on it, and she’s pointing it at us now,
doggedly climbing the steps. A dude with a camera is hot on her heels. I run my tongue
over my teeth, hoping to God that they’re coated in blood when I grin at her.
“What news?” Dash demands.
“You haven’t heard, then? I am so sorry to be the one to break this to you—” She is
not fucking sorry. She’s deliriously happy that she gets to be the one to break this to us
—“but the autopsy shows that Mara was with child when she was murdered. She was
going to have a baby.”
A ripple of shock travels through Wolf Hall’s students. Damiana fakes a stunned cry,
which makes me want to burst out fucking laughing, but even I know that wouldn’t be an
appropriate response right now. I bite the end of my tongue, watching the ridiculous
scene unfold. So many theatrics. So many people pretending to care about a girl that
most of them fucking hated. On the far side of the school’s steps, one person isn’t
reacting at all. Someone who actually was Mara Bancroft’s friend. The sunlight catches
her deep, burnished red hair, making her look like she’s on fire.
Presley Maria Witton Chase stares at the woman who just told us Mara was pregnant
with a flat, blank expression on her face. She looks like she’s bored by this entire bullshit
parade. Her pale face, full of tiny-pin prick freckles, is void of all emotion as she slowly
turns and leans against the low wall beside her.
Beside me, Dash turns to Wren and hisses under his breath. “Tell me it wasn’t fucking
yours.”
 4

PRES

It’s a cheap parlor trick.

It can’t be proven.
Mara wasn’t pregnant and I know that for a fact—she burst into my room three nights
before she was killed and borrowed an entire box of tampons, for fuck’s sake—but the
media don’t care about that. They only care about their ratings. And a pregnant murdered
sixteen-year-old is far more scandalous than a regular murdered sixteen-year-old.
I hate these monsters.
Thirty feet away, on the steps right next to Wren and Dashiell, Pax Davis’s mouth
pulls up into a cruel, dismissive approximation of a smile and my stomach takes a
nosedive off a cliff. He’s not supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be on the other side
of the world, sailing around on the Jacobi’s ostentatious yacht. So why, then, is he
standing like a proud Grecian statue with the late morning sun hitting him square in the
face, right here in New Hampshire?
His extensive tattoos take up so much real estate on his skin—two full sleeves, the
backs of his hands, his neck…I’ve seen him running without a shirt, and the intricate
artwork sprawls across his chest and all over his back, too. It’s magnificent—one
interconnected, flowing piece of art. He is magnificent. He’s also the cruelest, most
unbearable asshole I’ve ever come across.
Want something? Pax will take it from you.
Love something? Pax will destroy it.
Love him? Then Heaven help you. You’d have to be the stupidest person to walk the
face of the earth.
I’m so used to watching him now that I can read his body language like lines of text in
a book. Sometimes, it’s easy to know what’s going to come next. He shifts his shoulders,
transitioning his weight into his right foot, and I know he’s going to turn. I avert my gaze,
training my focus back on the despicable vultures squawking into the microphones on the
front drive, holding my breath. I’ve had practice at this—being still. Acting like I don’t
notice his cold, pale grey eyes roving over my body. I feel the weight of his attention like
a physical hand on my skin, though. It’s a dizzying, terrifying thing, the weight of that
hand. I never know if it will be a brief caress or if the pressure will intensify and turn into
something more sinister. With this boy, a mere look can signify complete and utter
disaster.
I’ve seen it happen: a girl pays too much attention to Pax, and the next thing you
know he’s making her life a living, breathing hell. Her online work miraculously vanishes
from the academy server. Her laptop disappears the night before a crucial assignment is
due. Compromising photos are fly posted all over the Mountain Lakes. Her friends
discover, true or not, that she’s slept with the guy they’re dating. Her room gets
vandalized, her car gets keyed, her tires get slashed, and eventually she can’t take it
anymore and breaks.
The torment is relentless.
Pax has a particular talent at recognizing the weakness in things. He sees the fault
line and knows exactly where and how hard to tap to bring the world crashing down
around someone’s ears. If he didn’t apply his skills to such diabolical ends, you’d be
forgiven for calling them gifts.
Yes, I’ve watched, and I’ve witnessed all of these things. And yes, of course I have
hated him for the way he’s razed people’s lives to the ground. There is no quiet,
redeeming quality that saves Pax from the harsh inevitability that he’s simply a terrible
person. So, why then, does my heart still ache for such a monster? Why does it bleed
from not having him?
“Pres?”
I crash land back to reality with a jolt. Next to me, one of my best friends, Carrie,
crosses her arms tightly over her chest. She scowls darkly at the vans parked on the
lawn, her gaze roving swiftly from one group of reporters to the next. “It’s a shame Mara
isn’t here for this,” she says. Her mouth has a grim downturn to it. “She’d have enjoyed
all of the attention.”
“She wasn’t pregnant,” I say.
“Of course she wasn’t.”
“I hate that they’re turning her into a spectacle.”
Carrie sighs heavily. “Why not? Let them do it. Let them turn her into the sweetheart
of the academy. Let them tell everyone she was pregnant. If they turn Mara into a
knocked-up media darling, the sentencing will be so much worse for that sick bastard
when this all goes to trial.”
The sick bastard in question, Dr. Wesley Fitzpatrick, is currently under lock and key in
a supermax prison, where he’s slowly but surely unraveling, demonstrating to the whole
world just how insane he is. He doesn’t need any help from the media; Wesley Fitzpatrick
is fast becoming a household name; the people of America hate him.
“Pax sank the boat,” Carrie offers flatly. It comes straight out of the blue.
I jerk, unable to hide my surprise. “What?”
“I know. Dash just texted me. Wren’s set on killing him by the sounds of things.”
So that’s why he’s back in the country.
“He’s a disaster,” Carrie mutters. Nudging me with her elbow, she gives me a coaxing
half-smile. “Look. I know, what with everything that’s happened, we haven’t gotten to
talk about what happened that night. Y’know. The night of the party. Between you and
him—”
I retreat, backing up a step, drawing in a sharp breath. She hasn’t mentioned anything
about me and Pax at all. How does she even know something happened? The blood
drains from my face. “Uhh—I don’t—I can’t—”
I’ve never been able to talk about Pax. Not to my friends. Not to anyone. Any time his
name comes up in conversation, I’m gripped by such a powerful, terrifying panic that I
can barely breathe let alone get words out.
Carina sees that panic now, as I trip up another step, wiping my palms against the
thighs of my jeans; she catches hold of my wrist before I can fully withdraw. “I’m not
saying that you have to talk about it. I’m just letting you know that you can,” she
explains. “And, I s’pose I just wanna make sure you’re okay. I mean, I just can’t imagine
that that situation ended well—”
She knows we nearly hooked up? She saw us? How can she possibly know? We were
out in the middle of the forest, far from the house. It was pitch black that night, too.
Does that mean…fuck, does that mean that he told Wren and Dash?
“It’s okay. I’m fine. He—I—”
Breathe, Presley. For God’s sake, just breathe.
“He didn’t do anything. I—I mean, we almost did. But I freaked and bailed. He wasn’t
mad…and he hasn’t said anything about it since.”
I’d certainly expected him to. I’d expected a campaign of terror to be launched against
me the very next day, but with everything that’s happened—the discovery of Mara’s body,
and mid-semester break, and life being turned upside down at the academy—I’ve gotten
lucky. Pax has been distracted. It appears as though he’s forgotten all about me and what
almost transpired between us the night of the infamous Riot House party, which can only
be for the best. Now, all I need to do is make it to graduation before I can catch his
attention again, and I’ll be in the clear.
Carrie studies my face closely; her concern radiates off her like heat from a fire. “You
can tell me, y’know. If he’s said something. Or done something. You shouldn’t let him get
away with it if—”
“He hasn’t. He won’t. He—” I screw my eyes shut, shaking my head. “He didn’t do
anything. There’s nothing to talk about.” A sharp, deep breath reduces the panic a little.
“Look. I have to go. My dad’s gonna be here soon and I haven’t even packed.”
Carina looks worried again, but for a whole new reason this time. “Don’t let him talk
you into anything, Pres. It doesn’t make sense for you to go and stay at the house when
all of your stuff is here.”
I shrug as I back away, running my hand along the rough stone balustrade just in case
I trip over my feet. “I know, I won’t. Don’t worry. He’s just sad, I think. It’ll only be for a
couple of days.”
Carina nods, as if she understands. She doesn’t know anything of the issues my family
has been dealing with over the past few months, though. My father’s suffering right now,
and I can’t let him down when he needs me the most.
Most of the students enrolled at Wolf Hall Academy are the sons and daughters of
politicians and military personnel. They’re sent here because their parents move around
so much or are so focused on their careers that keeping their children at home with them
is either impractical or impossible. I was sent to the academy for entirely different
reasons. Both my mother and my father were born in Mountain Lakes, New Hampshire.
They both attended the academy themselves. And while, yes, they both did join the
military, they could have kept me with them where they were stationed in California.
They chose to send me here because of their own experiences, walking the halls of this
gothic institution. They thought it would be good for me. A rite of passage.
Now that everything has fallen apart between them, my father has decided to come
home. He’s opening up my grandparent’s derelict old colonial mansion and pretending
like the move is a good thing.
I don’t see how it can be.
I don’t love Mountain Lakes the way he does. For me, the thick, loamy forests that
blanket the mountain sides are haunted. Sinister creatures stalk the hallways of this
school. And it’s only a matter of time before the darkest, most corrupted of all those
creatures comes to claim my soul.
 5

PRES

“You won’t be pulling that face when you see the kitchen. It’s been fully remodeled.”
My father drops the cardboard box he’s carrying in his arms, labeled
‘Ornithology/paraphernalia’ in chicken scratch Sharpie onto the tiled floor of the entryway,
and a loud boom echoes way up the stairwell, through all three stories of the house. I
cringe at the explosion of sound, trying not to outwardly flinch.
“You can’t say you don’t love the place,” Dad declares. “It’s old. It oozes character.
Just look at the architraving. The crown molding. It’s all original. This place is a real-
estate agent’s wet fucking dream.”
He forgets that I spent most of my summers here when I was younger. If my parents
were deployed (and they usually were), then they’d pack me off to spend the break with
Grandpa. I’ve spent so much time in this house that I know the bones of it inside out. I
have more memories here than Dad does. He didn’t grow up here, after all. Grandpa
bought this house after Dad enlisted, so he’s hardly even visited this place. He doesn’t
know about the way the pipes shudder and rattle in the middle of the night, or how the
back door sticks in the peak of summer when the heat makes the wood expand. He
doesn’t know that the sun makes the front living room unbearable after midday, or that
the old AC unit leaks and smells really weird when you first turn it on. But I do.
“Dad.”
My father rolls his eyes, shoving his sleeves up his arms. “If you tell me not to curse,
I’m only gonna do it more.”
“Mom doesn’t like it.”
He crosses the entryway and places his hands on top of my shoulders. “Your mother
isn’t here. She divorced me and moved to Germany. With a woman. I won’t be living my
life according to her demands any longer.”
Poor Dad. At some point, he’s going to meet someone who makes him happy; he
won’t feel like this forever. Clearly, he’s having a hard time remembering this, though.
Things have been tough for him since the divorce. “She didn’t move to Germany. She was
posted there,” I remind him.
Mom and Dad met here, in Mountain Lakes, when they were teenagers. Dad married
someone else in college, though. Fate brought them back together when they both
enlisted at the same time. Served together as Marines in the 1st Combat Engineer
Battalion in California. They were separated into different units when they declared their
relationship, but always managed to secure dual postings, so they were luckily never
parted by their careers. The cracks in their marriage started showing a couple of years
back. Things began to change. Dad didn’t want to re-enlist when his contract ended. Mom
did. Dad wanted to move back to New Hampshire to open a restaurant. Mom absolutely
did not. Dad was still attracted to Mom and wanted to stay married. Mom realized she
was attracted to women, and Dad’s penis was really beginning to cramp her style.
So.
The Great Unraveling.
The very fabric of life as I knew it came apart at the seams; I heard all about the
bitter war they waged against each other via email, from my room at the academy.
Mom seems really happy in Germany now. She and her girlfriend Claire have settled in
nicely, from what she’s mentioned in her most recent emails. Dad was a complete train
wreck at first. Ever since he decided to pull the trigger on his restaurant idea and move
back home, he’s seemed lighter, though. As if there might actually be hope for the future.
Occasionally, he dips back into the realms of self-pity, though. If flouting Mom’s hard and
fast no cursing rule makes him feel better, then who am I to stop him?
“Relax, kiddo.” He squeezes my shoulders. “No need to look so conflicted. We have a
lot of boxes to unpack, and I’m probably gonna swear my way through every second of it,
so…”
“I still don’t see why you couldn’t stay in San Diego and open up a restaurant there,” I
grumble.
It is nice to see Dad taking a more positive approach to his newly found bachelorhood,
but his decisions don’t just affect him. They have real-world ramifications for me, too. It
doesn’t make sense that I travel overseas, to a military base no less, for the holidays. It
makes sense that I stay with Dad. Staying with him in California would have meant
escape. Familiarity. Security. Old friends from middle school. Rock climbing, and, cliff
jumping, and swimming in the warm Pacific. Now, going to spend time away from the
academy with Dad means a ten-minute trip across Mountain Lakes. I’ll be stuck here
forever, while everyone else gets to leave.
My friends from the academy are all keeping themselves busy, trying to forget the
insanity that just exploded on our doorstep, trying to move on and heal from the loss of
our friend. Meanwhile, Dad dragged me here, back to Grandpa’s house, and has been
watching me like a hawk since he picked me up first thing this morning. He’s even made
some veiled suggestion that I might benefit from intensive, daily therapy sessions. He
hasn’t left me alone for one second. Mara Bancroft was one of my best friends. She was a
selfish asshole at times. More preoccupied with herself than anything or anyone else. But
I’d known her since I enrolled at Wolf Hall. She was sweet and kind when she wanted to
be. After she disappeared, both Carrie and I were angry with her. We thought she’d just
skipped out on the academy, and on us, without even so much as a goodbye, and that
had hurt like hell. Now, it turns out that she never left at all, and all of the anger and hurt
we felt was misplaced.
“You okay, sweetheart?” Dad gives me a sympathetic frown. I don’t need his
sympathy. I want to lug these boxes out of the back of his brand-new catering van and
get on with this. I want to get all of my yoga gear set up in my room. I want to lean out
of my bedroom window and smoke a joint so I can be relaxed during dinner. “You’re
gonna pull a muscle, carrying around all of that guilt,” I tell him. “Everything’s fine.”
Ever the worrier, Dad proceeds to worry even more. “How can you be fine,
sweetheart? You just lost a friend. And your mother’s upped and relocated to the other
side of the world—”
“I didn’t just lose Mara, Dad. She died months ago. That’s when she disappeared.
That’s when I lost her. I always had this feeling that she hadn’t just…”—I throw up my
hands—“moved away. Something felt really wrong about the whole situation. I think…in
my heart, I knew she was gone. Properly gone. I just couldn’t say that to Carrie. But
I’ve…I’ve had time. And please don’t take offence, but both you and Mom have been on
base, on the other side of the country, for the past three and a half years. I barely saw
you anyway. Mom getting posted to Germany isn’t going to make that much of a
difference. Honestly. And I’m probably going to see way more of you now, so…”
Jesus. I really want that joint now.
Dad looks down at his hands, picking at a fleck of white paint on his thumb. There’s
that guilt again. I hate making him feel bad—I know he always used to suffer with his
conscience over sending me away to a private boarding school in a different state. I can
reassure him that I’m fine and enjoying life at Wolf Hall a million times a day, but it never
makes much of a difference. Whenever I mention the academy, he always looks like he’s
about to throw up.
“Y’know. Now that I’m so close, it doesn’t really make sense for you to stay up th—”
 “Don’t even think about it,” I say. “I’m so close to graduation. I have friends at the
academy. I like living there. And…and I can come down the mountain and have dinner
with you any time. You know that. I don’t need to live here.”
“You wouldn’t have curfew,” he offers, like the curfew Principal Harcourt imposes
actually ever gets policed.
“Dad.”
He purses his lips. “All right, then. Fine. But the offer stands. You can take me up on it
anytime. Hell, you can even register at the public school instead if you like.”
This was an argument once upon a time. I’d so desperately wanted to stay in San
Diego with my old friends and go to a regular, public school. Dad had considered it for a
second, but not Mom. No, she nixed that idea in the blink of an eye, and when she made
that kind of decision, there was no moving her on it. That was a long time ago, though.
“I’m settled where I am, Dad. I want to stay at the academy.” Am I being stupid,
fighting him on this? If I did leave Wolf Hall and enroll at Edmondson, the local public
school, then I wouldn’t have to worry about Pax making life difficult for me. But I also
wouldn’t see him. Ever…
Dad’s brows bank together into a tight knot. “But if you change your mind…”
“I mean it, Dad.”
“All right, all right. Fine. I’ll shut up about it.”
“Thanks. Now how about you show me this amazing new kitchen, huh?”
His expression morphs. One second, he’s stressed out and pale, the next he’s beaming
like a kid on Christmas morning, color flushing his cheeks.
“You’re not gonna believe the amount of countertop space we have now. There’s a
pasta arm over the cooktop. A wine fridge.” He dashes down the hallway, abandoning his
boxes, calling back over his shoulder. “When Jonah gets here, I’m gonna cook you both
the best carbonara you’ve ever eaten.”
I was following behind him.
Was.
The moment I hear that name, I stumble to a halt. Dad’s disappeared into the bright,
sun-soaked kitchen at the end of the hall, so he doesn’t see my stricken expression.
“Jonah? He’s coming here?”
A loud clang comes from the kitchen. The sound of running water. “Of course. Won’t
be long now. He texted about an hour ago. I told him I could pick him up, but he insisted
on getting an Uber.”
Jonah, my half-brother. On his way here. I didn’t even consider that I might be seeing
him while I was on break from the academy. He’s been living in San Diego for the past
three years, working as a bartender while he finishes up his mechanical engineering
degree. Jesus. I haven’t…
“Can you actually grab that box in the hall please, sweetheart? I think my good pasta
pot’s in there.”
…seen him in three years.
“Presley?”
I stoop to grab the box, swallowing down the rising panic in my throat. “Sure thing,
Dad. I’ll be right there.”
If I’d known Jonah was coming here, I wouldn’t have just left Mountain Lakes.
I would have fled the entire state of New Hampshire.
 6

PRES

“Don’t kill me but where’s the Sriracha?”

Dad chokes on his mouthful of pasta. His cheeks turn purple, eyes bugging out of his
head. Once he’s managed to swallow, he fixes Jonah with a horrified scowl. “What the
hell is wrong with you? It’s a sin to drown everything in hot sauce.”
My half-brother grins. “Sriracha isn’t hot sauce. It’s—”
“I know what fucking Sriracha is! It’s blasphemy. You cannot put sriracha on spaghetti
carbonara, okay? That’s just—I’ve never heard anything so—that’s criminal,” he sputters.
“Criminal.”
Jonah’s hair used to be a warm dark brown, but it’s lightened during his time in
Southern California. He’s tanned, and his eyes dance like they swallowed the Pacific
Ocean. His teeth are a perfect, brilliant white. Dad doesn’t approve of the multicolored
tattoos that track up his arms. He does approve of the fact that the son he had with his
first wife, a marriage that lasted all of six months—not even long enough to see Jonah
born—has taken up surfing and become quite proficient at it, apparently.
My half-brother nudges me with his foot under the table. “Come on, Pres. Tell him.”
He tears off a hunk of garlic bread and tosses it into his mouth, talking around it as he
chews. “Sriracha makes everything better.”
I’ve been winding the same few lengths of pasta around my fork for the past ten
minutes. “I don’t like sriracha,” I mumble.
“Bullshit. You love hot sauce. Remember that summer we all went to Vancouver
Island and I talked you into dumping a load on your ice cream cone? I convinced you it
was raspberry sauce or something?” He laughs loud and long, cackling at his nine-year-
old prank. I don’t laugh. Dad is silent, too. Neither of us remind him that I threw up into a
trash can outside the old-fashioned ice cream shop because the huge amount of spicy
sauce made me choke.
In another world, in another plane of reality, Dad turns to Jonah right about now and
smacks him upside the head. He tells him he was a piece of shit for doing that to me
when I was only six, and he’s been a piece of shit a thousand times since then for all of
the other terrible things he’s done to me. In yet another parallel universe, my father
punished Jonah back there on the boardwalk in Vancouver Island, and the boy learned his
damn lesson and never bothered me again.
Trouble is, I live in this reality, and here Robert Witton has always felt too guilty that
he was only a part-time father to Jonah to ever reprimand him for his atrocious behavior.
And Jonah’s been jealous that Dad always has been around for me and has taken it out
on me accordingly.
“Ahh come on, Red. With hair that color, you gotta like hot stuff.” Jonah snorts.
“Should come and visit me after graduation. I’ll take you to all the best Mexican
restaurants. We can drive into Mexico and grab some there if you’re craving authenticity.
Not Tijuana, though. TJ’s a shit show. Nah, I’ll take you to Rosarito. Amazing food. Great
bars. Even better surfing.” He bounces his eyebrows, shoving a forkful of spaghetti into
his maw. The ridiculous amount of food prevents him from talking for a blessed moment.
But then he swallows and he’s right back to it. “They have yoga retreats. And you can go
digging up rocks down there, too. They let you keep whatever you find. Rose quartz,
and…and…” Having already exhausted his extensive knowledge of crystals and precious
stones, he waves a dismissive hand in the air. “You’re probably not into that shit
anymore, though, right. You’re almost grown up now.”
“Oh, she’s definitely still into the rocks, aren’t you, sweetheart? And tarot reading.
She’s got all kinds of witchy stuff in her room at the academy.”
Jonah finds this very funny. Dad smirks, happy that he’s amused his son; he doesn’t
really seem to realize that he’s done so at his daughter’s expense.
“Offering to take Pres on a road trip is really kind, though, Jonah,” Dad says, grinning
at him. He’s always been desperate to include Jonah in whatever he can. Always wanted
to make him feel like he’s a part of our family. It must be making him all warm and fuzzy
inside that Jonah would offer to take me on a cool road trip like that, as if he really does
consider me his sister. My father didn’t hear the weird twist in Jonah’s tone when he
called me Red though. Or he did and he chose to overlook it, as he has chosen to
overlook so many other snide remarks in the past. Mom used to notice. She’d stand up for
me when Jonah was being really nasty, but most of the time she’d simply give him a
warning look and keep her mouth shut, afraid of being that woman—the second wife,
who chides her husband’s other children when she has no real right.
 “Thanks, but I can’t,” I say quietly.
Jonah leans across the table, pointing his fork at me. “Why’s that? Don’t tell me you
have somewhere more important to be? Are you one of the popular girls now?”
“Haha! Come on. Presley’s far too low key for that,” Dad chips in. The betrayal cuts
even deeper this time. Since when has he ever joined in with Jonah’s toxic, low-grade
bullying? Carefully, I set my silverware down and pat my napkin to my mouth; the
gesture’s unnecessary, but it gives me a second to breathe.
“Actually, I’m going to be traveling through Europe with my friends.”
Dad leans back in his chair. “What?”
“Yeah. I’ll be leaving the day after graduation, so—”
“You haven’t mentioned this to me? How come this is the first time I’m hearing about
any of this?”
Jonah, the total fucking sociopath, mirrors Dad’s horrified expression. “Hell no. It’s
way too dangerous for you to be traipsing through Europe on your own.” He says this
matter-of-factly, like he has any authority over me.
“Like I said. I’m going with my friends. I won’t be on my own. There’ll be three of us.”
“Who?” Dad demands.
“Carina and Elodie.”
“Elodie? I don’t know any Elodie?”
“She just started at the academy in January. She’s really nice. She—”
“Three clueless girls, backpacking through Europe? Sounds like the beginning of a
horror movie,” Jonah says. “One of them’s bound to end up in a bath full of ice, missing a
kidney. Or straight up murdered. You’re too young.”
“You literally just said that I was an adult three seconds ago!”
Dad shivers at the mental picture Jonah just painted, though. “Your brother’s right,
sweetheart. I’m afraid I’m gonna have to do some serious thinking about this before I
agree to anything.”
“I wasn’t aware that I had to get your permission.”
He looks at me over the top of his wine glass, freezing in place. “Sorry?”
“I’ll be eighteen by then. A legal adult. I’ll be free to make my own decisions.” I word
it carefully, in a light, airy tone. Last thing I want to do is fight with Dad in front of Jonah,
and I don’t want to offend him, either. I love the clueless idiot more than anything, but I
shouldn’t have to say this to him. Jonah went off and traveled through Thailand and
Australia by himself after he graduated high school. Why shouldn’t I be afforded the same
opportunity?
Dad slowly sets the wine glass down without even sipping from it. “Uhh. Presley,
sweetheart. I understand what it’s like at your age. To feel like you’re completely grown
up. And I know that the prospect of making decisions like that for yourself must be really
exciting. But it’s…I hate to say it…” He cringes. “But it’s different for boys. And Jonah
does raise a good point. You’ll only be eighteen. And while that affords you some legal
rights, it doesn’t mean you can just go galivanting off and do whatever you like,
whenever you like.”
“I thought that was exactly what it meant.”
“Dude. Dad’s just looking out for you. You’re not street smart at all. And he can’t just
jump on a plane to come grab you when you get yourself in trouble now, can he? The
restaurant will be open by then.”
“That’s another good point. I’m gonna need you here. I was counting on your help to
get the business off the ground. That way I won’t have to hire a fulltime hostess until you
go off to colle—”
A cold, sinking feeling settles in my stomach, tugging at my insides like a lead weight.
“Wait. A minute ago, you were fine with me disappearing off to Mexico with him. Now I’m
going to be chained to a hostess’s desk for months?”
“That’s not the same thing, Pres,” Dad argues. “Ten days in San Diego is very
different to weeks and weeks bouncing around Europe. I won’t know where you are. I
won’t know if you’re safe—”
“Like you’d know where I was or if I was safe if I was with Jonah!”
“Of course I would!” Dad’s face is almost the same color as his Malbec. “He’s your
brother. He’ll look after you. Of course you’d be safe with Jonah!”
On the other side of the table, my half-brother smirks, knowing all-too-well that our
father can’t see the nasty little twist to his mouth. He’s loving this. He nearly ruined my
life three years ago. Now, he’s coming perilously close to ruining my graduation trip and I
will not let it happen.
My chair’s legs scrape on the hardwood as I push back from the table. “I’m sorry. I’ve
lost my appetite. Can I be excused?”
Dad reaches out and places his hand on top of mine. “Stay, sweetheart. I think it’s
best we talk and put this Europe idea to bed now, before you get your hopes up about
anything.”
“We can talk about it tomorrow. And…no. We’re not putting it to bed. I am going on
this trip. My friends are going off to different colleges. Different countries even. I won’t
see them again for god knows how long. I’m not missing out on the chance to spend
some real time with the—” Wow, I can hardly breathe. I pause, taking a second to calm
myself. It doesn’t work, though; my pulse is racing. I feel weirdly lightheaded. “I’m sorry.
I really…I actually don’t feel well. Excuse me.”
“Storming off only proves how immature you are,” Jonah calls after me.
 I’ve bolted from the kitchen, though. I’m halfway up to the second floor. As I take the
stairs two at a time, my father’s words ring in my ears.
Of course you’d be safe with Jonah.
But Dad doesn’t have a fucking clue what he’s talking about.
I’ve never been safe with my older brother.
If only he knew the truth.
Hours later, Jonah proves how little he’s changed. I wake up in the brand-new bed
Dad bought me, sweating.
He hasn’t made a sound, but I know he’s there.
In the shadows.
Waiting.
 7

PAX

It’s dark.
My pulse is racing so hard, I think I’m about to have a fucking heart attack. I jolt
upright, clawing at my shirt, only to find it soaking wet, plastered to my skin. It takes ten
solid deep breaths before my pulse slows and reaches an even rhythm. I peel the wet
shirt from my body and hurl it into the darkness, then bring my knees up so I can rest my
elbows on my thighs, holding my head in my hands.
What the hell was that about?
On the nightstand, my cellphone is lit up, casting brilliant white light up the wall
behind me. I normally turn it off when I go to sleep but I must have forgotten before I fell
asleep; a string of text message notifications monopolize the screen, and every single
one of them is from M.
M for Meredith.
M for Mom.
I groan, snatching the device angrily from the nightstand, unlocking it.

Message received 02.23

M: You were at the penthouse. You didn’t come and see me.

M: I don’t know why you need to be this difficult, Pax. You know I’m sick. You
 should have at least visited before blowing through town.

M: So once again, you’re forcing my hand. I’ve transferred myself to the rinky
dinky facility in ML. Now you don’t have a choice.

What? What the actual fuck is she talking about? Transferred to ML? Mountain Lakes?
She’s fucking here?
I tap out a reply.

Me: Stay in New York.

M: Charming. My only son finds out I’m dying. Won’t come and see me. And
then tells me to stay in New York.

Me: This town is NOT big enough for two members of the Davis family. Stay
where you are. I’ll come see you next weekend.

M: What if I’m dead by then?

Me: YOU WILL NOT BE DEAD BY NEXT WEEKEND!

M: How could you possibly know that? You haven’t even been to see me.

I groan, rubbing my eyes way too hard.

 Me: The nurse said you have some time. Just give me a second to figure my
shit out and I’ll come.

M: Too late. I’m already here.

She’s lying. She has to be. There’s no way she could have found out that I was back in
the country and already transferred herself to another hospital. Only…a second passes
and then a photo pings up on the screen: the view from a window, overlooking a half
empty parking lot. In the distance, I see a lit-up sign on a bar. A bar I recognize all too
well. It’s the huge sign bolted over the door to Cosgroves—the bar Wren owns. Which
means that…I do some triangulation, landing on a very unsettling conclusion.
She is at the hospital in Mountain Lakes.
What the hell is happening right now?
I do not want to do this but texting her is getting me nowhere. I brace, every muscle
in my body locking up as I hold the phone to my ear. She answers on the fifth ring.
“Y’know, I should have just given you a dose of your own medicine and not picked up.
See how you like it for once,” she purrs.
“Speaking of medicine, how the fuck are you gonna do your treatment here,
Meredith?”
“Oh, please, darling. I have everything I need in this cute little hospital.”
“Bullshit. Even their X-ray machine is nine million years old. You’re not getting treated
there. I know you.”
“All right. Fine. I brought my own medical team with me. Sue me. They’re letting us
use space at this facility. That good enough for you?”
Urgh. The woman has an answer for everything. Always. “Just. Please. Dear God in
Heaven. Just go back to New York, Mother—”
“You know how much I hate you calling me that, darling. Please, let’s just stick with
Meredith. And there’s absolutely no need to bring God into this. I’ll be seeing Him a little
sooner than I’d originally planned, and I’d like to know that my son hadn’t been using His
name in vain a mere matter of months before I have my final sit down with Him.”
“There’s absolutely no reason for you to be here right now—”
 “I had Freddy drop a package off at your house earlier. He left it on the doorstep. I’d
be grateful if you could bring it inside. Don’t open it until I’m dead, though, okay?”
A huge swell of pressure builds in my chest; I feel like I’m about to blow any second.
“Meredith—”
“I’m going to get some sleep now, darling. The drive was awful, and I get so tired
these days. It’s really quite thoughtless of you to call me at this time in the morning.”
“You messaged me!”
“Good night. I’m sure I’ll see you soon. If I don’t, I suppose I’ll just have to come up to
that school of yours and track you down instead. I’m sure neither of us want that.”
I’d argue with her, but the line has gone dead.
Everything is so painfully quiet all of a sudden that I feel like I’m on a space station.
The house is practically hermetically sealed and soundproofed. The low, atmospheric hum
of the air filtration unit is the only thing that disturbs the silence. I want to shout and
scream, to tear the thick silence in two, but the walls of Riot House were perfectly
designed to swallow and deaden noise, so my rage wouldn’t carry. Believe me. I’ve tried.
Meredith is in town.
Here, in Mountain Lakes.
No way I’m going to be able to get back to sleep with that knowledge kicking around
inside my head. I get up, groggy as fuck and unsteady on my feet, and I weave toward
the en-suite bathroom. I turn the tap on, scooping the flow of water into my hands. It’s
icy cold when it hits my face. The shock of it sets my lungs ablaze. Gasping, I throw my
head back, unhappy to find myself face-to-face with the all-too-familiar demon in the
mirror above the sink. He scowls back at me, top lip curled up in disgust, teeth bared and
angry. This demon and I have had some very bitter conversations between the glass of
this mirror. I scrub my hands over my head, wetting the short strands of hair I’ve
neglected to shear away from my scalp, and the demon does the same, like it was his
idea in the first place.
“Fuck you,” I tell him. I’d feel far more satisfied if the bastard didn’t mouth the words
right back at me.
Down the stairs I go, padding silently through the sleeping house. The front door
swings inward when I open it, and there, sitting on the doorstep, is the package Meredith
mentioned: A box. Black. The size of a shoe box, only fancier. On the front of it, in neat
silver scrollwork is my name: Pax.
I stand very still with my arms folded across my chest, glaring at it.
Dawn’s fast approaching. The sky has lightened from velvet black to a deep, bruised
blue, and the birds have already started in on their chaotic morning chorus. I work my
jaw, eyes narrowed at the box, trying to decide if I should just fucking leave it sitting
there on the step. Angrily, I snatch it up and head back inside, cursing between my teeth.
As soon as the door swings closed, the birdsong cuts off dead.
I was already angry from the phone call, but now I’m rage personified. Rather than
open the box, I yank open a series of drawers in my room, rummaging around inside until
I find what I’m looking for: a light t-shirt to throw on over a clean wife beater. A clean
pair of jeans. Underwear.
I shower, fuming under my breath. The water washes away the cold sweat from my
sleep, but it does nothing to stem the anger that’s brewing like a storm cloud over my
head.
A gift.
A fucking gift?
Seriously?
Who the fuck does she think she is? The woman left that box there—Black? So apt,
Meredith. Ten out of ten on the theatrics —for me to find. And then she tells me not to
open it until she’s gone? Because, yes, she is dying, and didn’t even think to fucking tell
me. I had to find out from some dumbass nurse who let it slip over the fucking phone?
While I was in another country?
Fucking insanity. All of this is fucking insanity.
This box is a death gift. One last parting fuck you from beyond the grave. Why
couldn’t she have had a lawyer deliver it after she was gone like everyone else? Why did
she have to have it delivered now, where I’d have no choice but to find it and wind up
feeling something?
“FUCK!” I smash my fist against the slate tiled wall of the shower, fizzing with rage.
The water swirling about at my feet turns pink, and then red, my knuckles stinging
brightly where I’ve split the skin, but neither the pain nor the loss of blood matter. I’ve
been bleeding out, one way or another, my entire fucking life. What’s another cut? What’s
another drop?
I get dry and I get dressed. I wasn’t going to see her, but it doesn’t look like she’s
giving me much choice now. And if this is the last chance I’ll ever get to tell her how
much I despise her, then I will take it. I’ll be damned if I let her pass from this life under
some illusion that she has anything in common with the martyred saints on my right arm.
 8

PAX

“Dude. I don’t know how else to say it. Visiting hours are from one to five.” The male
nurse who greeted me when I walked in through the tiny hospital’s emergency room
entrance throws his hands up in exasperation. He’s still being patient, but the guy has an
edge to him. I suspect he knows how to throw his fists. There’s a little voice in the back
of my head, urging me to push him just a little bit further. To see how well he does it.
I point my index finger at the clock on the wall behind his head. “It’s three-thirty,
motherfucker. Now tell me where I can find Meredith Davis.”
The nurse’s head jerks back. He raises his eyebrows. “Rethink the tone. I don’t get
paid enough to take shit from the likes of you. Listen up and listen good. Come back
tomorrow and visit your mother between the hours of one pm and five pm, and I’ll take
you to her with a smile on my face. Curse at me one more time and I’ll cut out your
tongue, and no one here will sew it back on for you. You feel me?”
“Oh, I feel you.” My blood is acid, eating away at my veins; my insides are being
corroded away into nothing. If I can bully this fucker into hitting me hard enough, it might
stop the burn long enough for me to get a handle on this delightful mood that’s taken
hold of me. I’m not sure if that’s what I want, though. I kind of want him to keep hitting
me until the burn is the least of my worries. The nurse narrows his eyes when I take a
step forward.
“Think, man,” he growls. “I don’t normally hand out second warnings, but you look like
you’re having a rough night. It’ll get infinitely worse if you don’t back the fuck up.”
This guy doesn’t understand anything about the night I’m having. If he did, he’d stop
trying to calm my ass down and put me on it as quick as humanly possible. I’m concocting
something truly egregious to spit at him when he jerks his head at someone over my
shoulder, to his left, and I get the feeling that someone’s creeping up on me. I turn just in
time to see a swathe of black material and flash of gold. Then there’s an ancient security
guard pulling a Taser out of its holster, and he’s aiming the business end of it at my
chest.
“That’s enough for tonight, kid,” he says. “I saw Meredith earlier. I know for a fact that
she’s asleep. Go on back home and then come back in the morning once you’ve slept it
off.”
Slept it off? What about me makes this fool think I’m drunk? Am I slurring my words?
No. Am I stumbling around all over the place? Nope. Am I behaving belligerently? Hell
yeah, but that’s my natural operating mode. I don’t have another setting. I give the
fucker my full attention. I’ve been hit with a Taser before and it’s no walk in the park. Not
like a good old-fashioned beating. There’s something respectable about getting hit in the
face a bunch of times. Being Tased is like getting struck by lightning—and it’s a fifty/fifty
whether you piss yourself or not. Fuck it, though, right? You only live once.
“Ooh, ho, ho, pops. Don’t threaten me with a good time. Come on. If you’re planning
on pulling the trigger, best just get it out of the wa—”
The blow comes from behind; I don’t see it coming. A sharp, lancing pain spears me
through the side, and I can’t help but lean into it, trying to make it stop. It fucking hurts.
A hand clamps around the back of my neck, and the next thing I know both of them are
on me, the nurse and the security guard, and they’re bodily carrying me out of the
hospital.
They get me just outside the sliding doors before the nurse loses whatever weird
Vulcan nerve grip he had me in and the blinding pain shuts off. I have him on the ground
in a heartbeat, and then I’m laying into him with both fists. The whole thing gets messy
from there. The security guard thumps me on the side of the head—not the most finessed
blow in the history of brawling—but the force behind it takes me by surprise. I spin on
him, snarling, and the nurse unseats me. I hit the ground hard, head spinning, and both
men pull back, swearing like sailors.
“Fucking psycho.” The nurse spits blood onto the ground. He bends over, bracing
against his knees, catching his breath, while the guard posts up by the wall, clutching at
his chest like he’s about to have a heart attack. “You okay, Pete?”
“Yeah,” the guard wheezes. “Just…not had that much excitement in a while.”
I start to laugh. At the stupidity of it all. At the fact that I was taken to the ground by
these two idiots. That I fucking let them lay hands on me. That I actually feel much
better than I did five minutes ago.
“Leave him, Remy. He’s not worth it,” Pete, the guard says. I open my eyes and Remy
is standing over me, scowling deeply.
 “Are you under someone’s care, man. You off your meds or something?” he asks.
“’Cause this is straight up crazy behavior.”
I stop laughing and let out a weary sigh. “What if I was crazy? You could have just
really hurt my feelings.”
“He’s fine,” Pete growls. “Come on. Let’s get back inside before someone notices. I
don’t wanna have to spend three hours writing this shit up. My shift ends in thirty
minutes.”
Remy assesses me, looking me over. Once he’s decided there’s nothing wrong with
me, he shakes his head and heads for the entrance. “Don’t try and come back in here
tonight,” he commands. “You do and I’m calling the cops. Understand?”
“Ohhhh, don’t you worry. I understand.”
The sliding door shushes closed behind them, and then I’m alone in the bleak night.
July in Mountain Lakes is a sticky affair. Humid. The air reeks of petrichor, even though
there’s no chance it’ll rain. The town is deathly quiet. Still, like it’s waiting, holding its
breath. I imagine this is what hell must be like. Not the very center of hell. An outer
circle, perhaps. I fucking hate this place.
Sitting up, I take a minute to inspect the damage to my elbows, palms and knuckles,
surprised to see the crude ooze of blood leaking from the minor scrapes I’ve acquired.
Honestly, I forget that I’m still human sometimes. Seems the yawning pit of nothingness
that exists right beneath my solar plexus should have consumed any biological, functional
part of me and rendered me null by now. But no. The marrow of my bones still produces
platelets. My lungs still load those platelets up with oxygen. I’m genuinely surprised.
Fuck, if only those fan girls from the airport could see me now. Would they still want
to grab a photo with the notorious Pax Davis? Or would they be snapping off shots of me,
sulking in my shame, to sell to some low-rent tabloid?
I laugh darkly under my breath as I drag myself to my feet and perch on the edge of
the low brick wall beside the hospital’s emergency entrance, patting myself down for my
smokes.
Back pocket.
Great.
The pack’s crushed.
Opening it, I find that only two of the cigarettes are ruined. The rest are flatter than
they should be but with a little roll, the one I draw from the pack is good as new.
The smoke hits my lungs and bleak satisfaction curls arounds my bones. The irony
isn’t lost on me—that the only thing that can make me feel alive most of the time is the
thing that will kill me if I don’t quit at some point.
I started smoking because the old man hated it. He was an advocate of the Wim Hoff
method. He believed that the body was a temple and expounded at great length on all of
the wonderful things he did to honor his on a daily basis: the workouts; the meditation;
the fasting; the endless salads and fucking smoothies. And then the fucker went and had
an embolism and died for no good reason, right there at the table in the middle of dinner.
Just goes to show. No good deed goes unpunished. The things the man missed out on
are too numerous to tally. He never knew just how fucking satisfying smoking a cigarette
could be. Never got high and felt himself float out of his body. Never experienced the
climbing rush of MDMA as it carried him off on a euphoric rollercoaster. Christ, the man
didn’t even eat red meat, for fuck’s sake. Pretty sure the last time he enjoyed a steak was
sometime around nineteen-eighty-five. He did everything right and look where it got him.
I drink. Heavily. I smoke. Heavily. I’ll throw whatever nondescript pill I find in my sock
drawer down my throat and wash it down with some Jack without batting an eyelid. I
enjoy a good ol’ morning game of Russian roulette. Upper. Downer. Who the fuck knows
what I’m gonna get; every day’s an adventure when you have no fucking clue what kind
of chemicals are about to hit your blood stream.
Somewhere close by, the plaintive wail of a siren cuts through the night. I wait—draw
on the cigarette. Hold the smoke in my lungs—to see if an ambulance rips around the
corner and screeches up the St. August’s emergency entrance, but it doesn’t. Must have
been a firetruck. Definitely not a cop car.
My t-shirt sticks to my back, my skin itchy with half-dried sweat. I finish the smoke
and light another one off its dying ember, not quite ready to head back toward the
Charger. It’s… I check my cell phone. Nearly five in the morning. If I were in New York
right now, I’d be able to find myself some trouble to get into, but I’m shit out of luck in
Mountain Lakes. Even the diner, Screamin’ Beans, doesn’t open until six, and all I could
hope to get there is some shitty coffee anyway. If I really wanted to find trouble, I could.
I could find trouble in a backwater Podunk one horse town in the middle of fucking Tibet
if I really wanted to, but my anger over the black box Meredith left for me has whittled
my bones down to points and is using them as toothpicks.
I’m pissed. I want to be level-headed when I confront my mother about the shit she’s
currently in the middle of pulling, and I, contrary to popular belief, am capable of showing
a little restraint when required.
Remy and his asshole buddy Pete are bound to tell whoever comes on shift all about
me before they hand off, and I won’t be allowed into the building if I don’t seem sober
and calm. So fine. I’ll sit here all fucking night and all morning until official visiting hours
roll around, mostly out of spite, and I’ll be nice as pie as I make my way to Meredith’s
room. And once I’m standing in front of the witch, I will implode. Wait and see if I don’t.
They can call the cops all they want, then. If I’ve said my piece and told the woman how
utterly wretched I think she is, then it won’t matter. I’ll have won.
I’m content sitting on the wall, chain-smoking and planning all of the things I’ll say to
eviscerate Meredith. Things are going really well, too—I have a list of vile things I want
to say to my mother committed to memory after about forty minutes—but the sound of
tires screeching down the block ruins my flow.
This has got to be an ambulance; a high-pitched mechanical shriek approaches,
drawing near at a frightening velocity, and then there it is, the vehicle, swerving into the
parking lot, heading straight for the emergency entrance…and the low brick wall I’m
sitting on. It isn’t an ambulance. It’s a murdered-out Mitsubishi Evo. And it doesn’t look
like it’s going to stop.
I’m against panicked leaps on principle—so undignified—but the situation demands
one as the car careens right for me. I drop my smoke, tripping over my own feet as I hurl
myself out of the way.
The Evo’s driver applies the brakes way, way, way too late. The street racer collides
with the brickwork, right where I was sitting a split second ago, the nose of the hood
crumpling horribly as it meets resistance. A part of me weeps to see such a beautiful car
destroyed. The rest of me is planning how I’ll demolish what remains of it, as I rush for
the driver’s side door.
I grab the door handle and yank on it. “Fucking asshole!” The door doesn’t budge. The
windows are heavily tinted, so I can’t make eye contact with the person who just nearly
fucking killed me, but I can feel them staring at me on the other side of the glass.
Whoever they are, they’ve got some fucking stones to—
The rear driver’s side door flies open. Before I get a chance to swing around it and
start yelling into the car, a huge heap of clothing tumbles out onto the ground. It lands at
my feet, blocking my path. I go to step over it, but the door wrenches shut again and the
Evo peels back, kicking up smoke from the baked blacktop. It slides through an
impressive three-point turn, and then burns out of the parking lot.
“Motherfucking—” I grit my teeth, nostrils flared, fury rolling through. When I find out
who the fuck that was, I’ll fucking flay them alive. There can’t be that many midnight-blue
Evos in Mountain Lakes. Those upgrades must have cost a small fortune. Super
specialized. I’m betting there are only a few local body shops that would carry out custom
work like that. I will find out who that was, and when I do—
A wet cough halts me mid-mental rant. I look down at my feet, and there…oh for
fuck’s sake. Are you fucking kidding me? The bundle of clothing that was shoved out of
the car isn’t clothing. A dirty blanket covers the mass, but the shape of it is unmistakable
—it’s a fucking body.
A pained moan seeps out from underneath the rough, woven fabric, followed by a
pitiable whimper, and something unpleasant coils around my insides. I’ve seen some
fucked up things in my time, but the dread shaking me by the shoulders tells me I don’t
want to see what’s underneath that blanket.
Who rolls up to a hospital and just dumps a body on the sidewalk? In New Hampshire.
What the fuck?
I need to get up the steps to the emergency room doors, need to get someone’s
attention, but…a near-black puddle of blood seeps out from underneath the blanket,
creeping across the concrete, pooling around the soles of my shoes.
Fuck.
Don’t do it.
Do not lift up that blanket.
Ahh, shit. When have I ever listened to the voice of warning in my head? I drop down
into a crouch and yank the blanket back. Even with the sinking sense of trepidation
clawing at me, I’m not ready for what lies beneath.
A girl.
A girl I know well.
I see her every day at school. The strangeness of her being here causes reality to
skip, though. This doesn’t make sense. How—how the fuck can Presley Chase be here?
Her skin is pale—a sickly, ashen pallor. Her eyes are wide open, glassy and unfocused,
the color of burning amber and molten gold. Her auburn waves are tangled and wet,
matted with blood. The tiny shorts and the thin cropped t-shirt she’s wearing look like the
kind of thing a girl would wear to bed. The deep, jagged-edged wounds at either of her
wrists look like something a girl would wear to end her life.
“What the fuck have you done, Chase?”
In response, a sigh slips out between her blood-flecked lips. Sounds like a death rattle
if ever I’ve heard one. Stunned, mind racing, I sit back on my heels, waiting for her chest
to rise again, waiting, waiting, waiting, only her ribcage doesn’t move. Not even a
millimeter.
Jesus fucking Christ, Pax, what the FUCK are you doing?
I snap back to reality with a jarring thump, shaking myself into action.
“HEEEEELLLP!” The shout explodes from my mouth. I turn the girl so that she’s lying
on her back—she looks like a porcelain doll. A manga character. The bloody victim of a
serial killer in a gore flick. And she is so dead.
I check her pulse—not there—and get to work. Hands stacked, fingers interlocked,
heel of my palm above her solar plexus, I start compressions.
I. Do. Not. Stop.
“HELP! SOMEBODY!” The cry rents the night air in two.
 I can’t leave her. If I stop pumping her blood for her, even for a second, she could
wind up with brain damage, and I’m not having that shit on my conscience. No fucking
way.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
Blood gloves my hands. There’s so much of it, all over her body, that my hands slip
and slide with each compression.
“REMY, YOU FUCKER! PETE!”
They’re inside, and the door’s less than fifty feet away. They can hear me. They’re too
busy ignoring me to come out and see what the hell I’m shouting about, though.
“Goddamnit, Chase. Do not die while I’ve got hands on you. I do not need your friends
blaming me for this shit.”
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
They say the compressions are more important than the rescue breaths these days.
That the blood holds enough oxygen in it to suffice while you’re performing CPR. I’m not
sure I’m doing it right, though, so I stop a second. I tilt her head back, quickly peer inside
to make sure she hasn’t swallowed her own tongue, and then I pinch her nose and plant
my mouth on hers. Two hasty breaths. That’s all I give her. Then I’m back to the
compressions.
“For fuck’s sake, HELP!” I taste blood and worry that I’ve torn up my throat, but then I
realize with no small amount of horror that the blood on my tongue belongs to my
classmate; her lips are smeared crimson red with it.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
“Come on. Come on. Come back. You can do it. You got this, Chase.It’s okay. It’s
okay. You got this.” The words spill out, tumbling one after the other, not making sense. I
should pray, but I don’t know how. I refused to pay attention all of those times Meredith
dragged me to church. All I’ve got is this meaningless, mumbled encouragement. Not that
it helps. Pres is lifeless, her head rocking left to right as I press down on her ribs.
Nothing.
No response whatsoever.
Which is not ideal, because I need this girl to fucking live.
“Come on, for fuck’s sake. Breathe. Breathe right fucking now!”
 As if on command, Presley’s eyelids flutter, and her consciousness comes flooding
back. She was gone, no trace of her left inside this bleeding, broken body, but I can feel
her rushing back in now. It’s the weirdest sensation. She opens her eyes…and blinks…
right as her ribs crack beneath my hands. Her pupils narrow to pinpricks. Her mouth
opens, and she unleashes a scream so loud it rattles the stars.
Holy god damn.
I can’t imagine the pain. The terrible wounds at her wrists are bad enough, but fuck. I
just broke at least two of her ribs. She must be in agony.
How many times have I seen Pres at the academy? Never in the foreground. Always
just off to one side, standing a couple of feet behind her friends, always blushing, always
tucking her hair back behind her ears, always staring down at her feet. Her freckles are
pretty. She squeaks like a mouse when I talk to her. I know of all this about her. It isn’t
until now, when she’s soaked in blood, her back arching away from the sidewalk, her eyes
wide and full of pain, that I feel like I’m truly seeing the real her, though.
And she’s kind of fucking beautiful.
The CPR exhausted me. That’s what I tell myself as I sink back onto my heels, away
from her, watching as she rolls her eyes, writhing on the ground. Breathing. Alive.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Wait here. I’ll get help.”
Fucking wait here? Where the hell is she gonna go, moron?
I scoot back, ready to make a run for the door, but her pale hand grabs me by the
wrist, holding me with surprising strength. It has to hurt, must be agonizing actually, to
hold onto me with such force, her wrists being as mangled as they are. But she holds me
tight.
Her amber eyes are alive with fear.
She doesn’t speak—can’t?—but she slowly shakes her head.
No.
Please don’t go.
“It’s okay. The door’s right there. I’ll only be a second.”
Again, she shakes her head. It’s all she can manage. Her fingers uncurl, releasing me,
but I hear her pleading in my head as loud as if she’d managed to get the words out.
No. Don’t go. Don’t leave me. I’m scared.
Blowing out an exasperated breath, I chew on the inside of my cheek. How the hell
am I supposed to do this? I shouldn’t move her, I know that much, but her wounds seem
to be limited to the slashes on the inside of her wrists. I don’t think she has internal
bleeding. And I can’t leave her here, I just can’t. Not when she’s looking at me like this.
“Damn it, dude. Okay. Fine. Have it your way. Just…don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She’s
light as a feather when I scoop her into my arms. Limp as a ragdoll. The only part of her
that bears the faintest scrap of life are her eyes, which stay doggedly locked onto my
face. I hurry toward the emergency entrance of St. August’s, and her watchful gaze burns
as I bolt for the door, holding her gingerly against my chest. The tang of copper coming
off her is so overpowering that it’s all I can smell. The reek of it turns my stomach.
What do I find when I reach the door but Remy, leaning against the desk, staring at
his phone, thumbs tapping quickfire against the screen.
I’m going to fucking kill him.
The automatic doors don’t slide open. He’s fucking locked them.
“REMY!” I roar so loud that the guy jumps, dropping his phone. His expression is all
annoyance, but it quickly turns to panic when he sees the girl in my arms, and the blood
that’s coating literally everything.
“OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT FUCKING NOW!”
A flurry of activity explodes on the other side of the door. Remy hits an alarm. A loud
alert sounds, blaring down the hallways. People come running. The doors slide open,
letting me in at last, and a slew of doctors and nurses arrive, pawing at Pres. They take
her from me, and then the questions begin.
What happened to her, son?
What did she take?
Were you there when this happened?
Did you do this to her?
Did she do it to herself?
Numb to my core, I observe the unfolding madness. A gurney appears and Presley’s
placed onto it. A doctor with thick dreadlocks tied into a knot on the back of his head
shines a light into her eyes. “Uh, she’s going. Yeahhh, she’s out. Someone call up to the
blood bank. We’re gonna need everything they’ve got for this one.” He shouts over his
shoulder at no one in particular. A female nurse rallies, though, taking off at a full run
toward a row of elevators.
People rush around, grabbing things, shouting for other things—a babbling stream of
information firing back and forth between them that makes my dizzy. Amidst the chaos,
the doctor with the dreads leads a charge, captaining the helm of the gurney, carting
Presley off toward the elevators, and then…
…then…
Suddenly, I’m alone.
Well.
I’m almost alone.
Pete’s still here.
He takes off his black ball cap and scratches his temple. “I tell ya. You never get used
to that,” he mutters.
I frown. Why can’t…I feel anything? Why can’t I feel…my hands?
“The blood?” I murmur.
Pete fixes his hat back onto his head. “No, kid. The hope. Every time those doors slide
closed, it gets you right here.” He places a hand in the center of his chest. “The hope that
they’re gonna make it. Even when they probably won’t.”
 9

PAX

The average human body holds approximately ten pints of blood.

I know this because I look it up outside, staring down at the lake of vital fluids that
leaked out of Presley Maria Witton Chase while I was performing CPR on her. Tough to
say how much is on the concrete, but it’s a lot. Plenty on my shirt and my jeans, too. On
my hands and my arms and splattered all over the tops of my white Stan Smiths. At
dawn, a custodian comes and pours a bucket of steaming water onto the mess along with
a quart of bleach and scrubs the sidewalk with a stiff brush until he’s wading in ankle-
deep pink foam. It takes three more buckets of scalding hot water to wash away the
evidence, and after that the sidewalk looks perfectly normal again. Except that it isn’t. I
can still see the blood. The outline of the macabre crimson pool is perfectly visible to me,
no matter how many times I try to blink it away.
At seven, a familiar face exits St. August’s; Remy sees me standing by the ruin of the
brick wall, broken pieces of brick scattered on the ground around my feet, and sighs,
shaking his head as he comes over. He sips from a takeaway coffee cup. There’s a dark
shadow developing on his jaw, courtesy of yours truly. “You’re still here,” he states.
“I am.”
“You’re covered in blood,” he points out.
I regard him with disdain. “Is this a game of point-out-the-obvious for one or can
anyone play?”
He grimaces. I think it’s supposed to be an amused smile, but he just looks pained.
I’ve seen the same expression on so many faces before. Interacting with Pax Davis: may
cause sudden bouts of frustration, annoyance, hurt feelings and anger. Proceed at own
peril. Most people choose to cut contact with me short—the ideal outcome, and my
preferred conclusion to social interactions with strangers—but Remy doesn’t know what’s
good for him. He squints at me out of one eye, pointing at me as he swallows.
“You’re a lot like her, y’know. Your mother.”
Oh, fuck that. “I’ll stop you right there, thanks.”
“What? You have something against being compared to a family member?” He laughs
coldly.
“Meredith isn’t a family member. She incubated me. That’s it.”
Remy angles his head to one side, watching me closely. “Incubating a child for nine
months is no mean feat, man. Don’t you think that alone means you owe—”
“No, I don’t. I don’t owe her anything. And just for the record, she only managed to
cook me for eight months. She had me taken out a month early because I was crushing
her sciatic nerve. My lungs weren’t even properly formed. I needed an actual incubator for
weeks. So, go on. Keep telling me what a stellar mother she is.”
He shrugs. “S’pose that is pretty fucked up. Looks like you turned out just fine,
though.”
I am spattered with blood, have more ink that your average prison inmate, I shave my
hair down to the root, and I haven’t smiled without a heavy dose of malice in the past
three years. Sounds like ‘turned out just fine’ is a subjective term to Remy. Then again,
he deals with sick people every day. All of my body parts function. I have all of my limbs.
I can breathe without assistance. When you see people come through the hospital in
literal and metaphorical pieces, a person in my state of being would be considered in
peak physical fitness.
“If you’ve come over here to tell me not to go yell at her, you can forget it. The
moment the clock strikes one, I’m heading straight up there. And you won’t be here to
fucking stop me.”
“It’s hard when someone you love is so sick, huh?”
I nearly choke on my own tongue. “I do not care about that woman.”
“Oh? Not many people I know will lurk outside a hospital for twelve hours, save
someone’s life, get covered in blood and not go home to change, because they don’t
care.”
“Ahh, fuck off, Remy.” I pull out my pack of smokes for the first time since the Evo
nearly ran me over. I pinch one between my lips, scowling as I light the thing, waiting for
him to take the hint and leave.
“I s’pose it’d be a waste of time to remind you that you’re poisoning yourself in front
of a hospital full of sick people, then?” he says.
I pull on the cigarette, relishing the burn as smoke pours into my lungs. “You would be
correct.”
 “And you’re not even going to ask about her?”
I side-eye him, picking an imaginary piece of tobacco from the tip of my tongue.
“Meredith?”
“No. The girl you saved.”
“You mean the girl who nearly died ’cause you were too busy fucking around on Grindr
to find out why I was screaming for help?”
Remy looks like he just bit into something foul. “Is that supposed to be offensive? By
implying that I was on Grindr, are you also implying that I’m gay? And expecting me to be
upset by that?”
“I’m not implying anything. I don’t give a shit if you’re gay, straight or sexually
ambivalent. You heard me yelling and you were too busy with your phone to find out
why. I’m calling you on that.”
I expect him to argue but he shrugs. “I should have come out. You were behaving like
a little bitch, but that’s no excuse. I should have come and checked what the fuck was
going on. Luckily, the girl didn’t die—”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Seriously? She didn’t?”
“Like I said. You saved her life. She’s got a long road ahead of her. Recovery won’t be
easy. But she’s breathing because of you.”
I process this silently for a second. I’m relieved, I think. I’ve been doing everything in
my power not to think about it, about Presley, since I came out here, but that was as
impossible as trying not to breathe. “Doubt I’ll be getting a thank you card in the mail any
time soon, but whatever,” I mumble.
“What does that mean?”
I roll my eyes. “You saw her wrists. She made her wishes pretty clear when she
opened up her veins like that. She didn’t want to be saved, man.”
Vertical. The wounds were vertical. My older cousin used to cut herself for show. Hers
were horizontal cuts. Cries for help, or attention, or release, depending on what day of
the week it was. Presley meant it when she took that blade to her skin. It's a fucking
miracle that she made it.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, working here over the years, it’s that you can never
make assumptions about someone else’s intentions, kid,” Remy says. “Fuck, why don’t
you spot me one of those.” He points at the pack of smokes.
I give him one, mainly because I’m so bemused that he would lecture me about
smoking in front of the hospital only to then do it himself. Still in his scrubs, no less. He
sparks up and passes me back my lighter. “It’s the worst at night. Depression. Anxiety.
Fear. Worry. People’s demons creep out of the shadows and run amok once the sun goes
down. She might have meant it when she did it, but who knows. She could have instantly
regretted it. Changed her mind. You won’t know until you ask her.”
I laugh sourly, flicking ash from the cherry of my cigarette. “What the fuck are you
talking about? I’m not asking her shit.”
“You’re not going to see her?”
“Why would I? It’s gonna be bad enough seeing her at school. I don’t need to—”
“Wait, you know her?”
I shrug. “Yeah, asshole. What did you think? We’re both at the academy.” I don’t need
to qualify which academy, of course. There is only the one around here: Wolf Hall is
notorious.
“Well, what’s her fucking name? We’ve been in there, trying to figure out who she is
for hours now, and you fucking know her. Jesus Christ, dude.”
“Presley Maria Witton Chase,” I say. “I don’t know her parents. You’re gonna have to
call the school for her next of kin information.”
“Presley? What kind of name is that?”
“How the fuck am I supposed to know, man? The one her parents gave her. I barely
know the girl. Call the school. Get whatever you need from them, okay? I don’t wanna get
involved.”
“I’d say it’s a little late for that.”
I pull extra hard on the cigarette, wincing against the burn in my throat.
“You said it yourself,” he continues. “You’re gonna have to see her at school. And it’s
an intense thing, saving someone’s life. It’ll change you just as much as all of this is going
to change her.”
“Wow. Spitting facts. You’re a regular Seneca. Can’t wait for you to release your book
on moral philosophy. I’m sure it’ll be an overnight New York Times bestseller. You don’t
know shit about me, dude. I’ll have forgotten all about this—” I wave a hand at the spot
on the ground where the mess of blood was less than an hour ago—“by lunchtime. By
tonight, I’ll have forgotten all about Meredith, too. I don’t waste energy on things that
don’t fucking matter.”
Remy smiles an infuriating smile. “Okay, man. If you say so.”
“I just did.”
He huffs out an amused breath when he checks the screen of his phone. “I love that
mindset for you, I really do, but I doubt it’s gonna stick. Looks like your Presley Maria
Witton Chase just woke up, my friend. And she’s already asked about you.”
She asked about me?
Why the fuck would she do that?
Remy smirks as he walks away. “Personally, I think you should go see her. You never
know. She could be pretty cool.”
 10

PAX

I go home and shower. I didn’t want to. I figured the blood spatter would add extra
theater to my performance when I burst into my mother’s room like wrath personified,
but after a while I realized that I was wearing Presley’s blood like it was an accessory. My
skin started to itch. It had dried and was beginning to flake off, anyway. Plus, I made a
small child cry, being carried out of the hospital in his father’s arms, and I felt weird after
that.
Once I’m clean and changed, I check the time and find that it’s only ten in the
morning. Another three hours before I can officially get in to see Meredith. I decide that a
couple of hours’ sleep are in order—my body’s still so fucked up from the jet lag—and I
pass out on the couch in the living room.
I wake up five hours later to find Wren sitting on the coffee table, eating a blood-red
apple, staring at me. His thick, dark hair is a mutiny of waves and half-formed curls,
pointing in every direction. If Timothée Chalamet bulked out a bit, I guess this is what
he’d look like. My friend is wearing a loose ACDC t-shirt and ratty, torn jeans; the thick
book wedged under his right arm completes his standard issue Wren Jacobi uniform.
Sinking his teeth into the apple, he regards me with eyes the color of washed-out jade.
“You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve forgiven you,” he announces.
I prop myself up on one elbow. “Will I now?”
Shrugging his shoulder, he takes another huge bite. “If you have any sense.”
Laughter itches at the back of my throat but I swallow it down. I tend to unnerve
people when I smile; a bout of full-blown laughter has the potential to terrify even the
dark lord of Riot House himself. “You and I both know that I don’t.”
He grunts—fair comment—and casually wipes a bead of apple juice from his lower lip
with the back of his hand. Thank Christ the female population of Wolf Hall didn’t just
witness him do it. They’d have collectively torn the clothes from their own backs and
engaged in Mortal Kombat to decide who gets to fuck the dude, and I don’t have the
energy to referee that kind of shit show right now.
I take the apple from him, shove it into my own mouth, and take a bite. Sugar
explodes across my tongue, making my mouth ache. “You know—” I swallow. “It’s creepy
to watch people while they’re sleeping.”
He laughs, one dark eyebrow arching suggestively. “Oh, I’ve done way, way worse.”
“I don’t even wanna know.” Groaning, I slump back into the couch, throwing my arm
over my face, covering my eyes. Wren grabs the apple back and continues to eat. Neither
of us says anything for a second, but then I’m speaking; I don’t even know that I’m going
to until my mouth is opening and the words are coming out. “I’m sorry. Y’know. About the
boat.”
“It’s fine.”
I raise my elbow and peek at him out of the corner of my eye. “What do you mean,
it’s fine?”
“You really think you’d have been allowed anywhere near that thing if it wasn’t
insured for twice it’s fucking value? You probably did my old man a favor. And when have
I ever resented an opportunity to piss him off, anyway? You should have seen his fucking
face.”
“So what you’re really trying to say is that you’re sorry for punching me on the steps
yesterday.”
“No,” he says dryly. “I’m not saying that. You deserved that fair and square. Where
were you this morning?”
I whip around to look at him. “Huh?”
“I heard you get up and burn out of here at three or something. Where the hell d’you
have to be in such a hurry?”
I haven’t breathed a word about my mother’s cancer diagnosis. I don’t know why, I
just haven’t. I’m not ready to talk about it now either. For some reason, talking about
what happened last night, especially what happened with Presley…I have zero interest in
rehashing any of it. I don’t lie to my boys, though. So I’m rude as fuck instead. “None of
your goddamn business.”
“Nice.” He isn’t fazed; the sarcasm’s only for show. “I’m gonna grab some sushi. You
want some?”
I don’t think Wren’s eaten as much sushi in Japan as I have. “Get the fuck out of here
with your disgusting Hicksville New Hampshire sushi. I’d rather starve.”
He gets up and drops something onto my chest. “Suit yourself.” It’s his apple core.
The fucker’s just dumped his gnawed on apple core right on top of me. Asshole. I grab it
by the stalk, ready to hurl it back at him, but he’s already countering—by holding his
ginormous book out at arm’s length. Right over my junk.
“Don’t you fucking dare, Jacobi.” I bare my teeth, just to let him know I mean it, but
he doesn’t appear to be taking the threat seriously. He arches that suggestive eyebrow
again.
“Tell me where you went last night.”
“No.”
He shrugs. “All right.” The book falls. I have just enough time to deflect it with my
knee, sending it crashing to the floor, before it can land directly on my balls.
I snarl, launching myself up off the sofa. “Good job I have the reflexes of a cat.” The
fucker vaults over the coffee table before I can grab him, though. I swear to God, when I
get my hands on the bastard—
“Let it go, Davis. You sank a one-point-three-million-dollar yacht and I forgave you.
We’re nowhere near even.”
“Oh, we’re fucking even!” I let him go, though. I don’t have time to start a fight with
him right now. I have a very pressing prior engagement to attend to. A way more
important fight that’s been brewing for fucking years.
 11

PRES

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

The heart monitor chimes with regularity even though my pulse feels like it’s dancing all
over the place. I’m swimming in sedatives and pain meds but I can still feel my anxiety,
crawling over my skin. When I woke up five hours ago, I already knew where I was. The
knowledge was a heavy weight pressing down on top of my chest, and I couldn’t get out
from underneath it.
Jonah, standing by the closet door, wreathed in night, waiting for me to wake up…
“Hey, Red. Did you miss me?”
I swallow down the rolling wave of nausea that rises from the pit of my stomach. I’m
not in any pain. Not now. That will change when the meds wear off. I keep willing that to
happen—for the miasma clouding my mind to lift. I’d give anything to be able to think
straight right now, but whenever I try, my thoughts slip away from me like smoke.
I’ve kept myself together. Even when the psychiatrist from upstairs came to assess my
mental state at the crack of dawn, I didn’t cry. But the moment the door to my room
opens and my father walks in, I’m done for. His face is the color of funeral pyre ash.
 “Presley! My god, sweetheart, what the hell have you done?” He rushes to me and
takes my hand. I barely even flinch—it’s not as if I can feel much of anything at all right
now—but Dad recoils when he sees the thick bandages at my wrists and gingerly places
my hand back down on top of the blankets. His hair is brown like Jonah’s. Darker than his
son’s. Even when he lived in California, Dad was never really one to sit out in the sun.
He’s definitely more of an indoor type; he’d spend his entire life locked away in a kitchen
if he could.
There are purple shadows under his eyes now, and a horrified set to his jaw that
makes me want to die. He shouldn’t have to see me like this. I wasn’t supposed to cause
him this much pain. This wasn’t the plan at all. But…there really wasn’t a plan, was
there? There was only the fear, and the pain, and the shame. And the knife.
“Presley,” Dad whispers. “What the hell happened?” He shakes his head, clearly trying
to imagine what could possibly have transpired for me to wind up in the hospital with slit
wrists. “I know you weren’t happy about the Europe trip, but I didn’t think for a second it
was this important to you—”
“It’s not, Dad.” Fuck, I am so tired. I sound so tired.
“Then…why? Was it because of the divorce? That…that Mara girl? Why, baby? Talk to
me. I couldn’t believe it when they called and told me what…what you’d done. I couldn’t
make sense of it. I still can’t make sense of it. I—Is this my fault? I don’t—” A sob leaps
from his mouth, and my heart shatters. I’ve never seen him come undone like this before.
Not even when Mom left. The pain in his eyes will haunt me for the rest of my days.
“Dad. Dad, it’s okay. It—” Sighing heavily down my nose, I compose myself. “It wasn’t
supposed to be this bad. I just wanted to feel something. I was so numb. And…I guess I
just took it a little too far this time.” I whisper the last part. The words arrive laden with
guilt. Enough to choke on.
Dad sets his jaw, his eyes flashing with hurt. He flares his nostrils, looking around the
room. When he sees the chair tucked away in the recess by the window, he drags it to
my bedside, and the scrape of the chair’s legs on the floor is like nails down a chalkboard.
When he’s perched himself on the very edge of the chair, elbows leaning on the mattress
beside me, he puts his head in his hands and just…breathes.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
He doesn’t look up. “You nearly died, Presley.”
“I know. I—” This is easier, talking to the top of his head, but it still isn’t easy. I want
to curl up into a ball and cry. I want to pull the covers over my head and teleport to
another fucking dimension. Anything so I don’t have to be here, witnessing my father in
such pain.
“I thought you just went back to your room at the academy. I thought—” He laughs
bitterly. “I thought you were sulking about that stupid European trip, and I just assumed
that you’d gone back up to the school. I didn’t even check. I should have checked. After
what happened to that girl—”
“Dr. Fitzpatrick’s behind bars, Dad.”
He sits up at last, and he looks hollowed out, as if a piece of him—the vibrant,
cheerful part of him that had finally begun to show itself again after Mom’s departure for
Germany—has been extinguished for good. “I don’t give a shit if he’s behind bars. There
are plenty more psychos out there, Pres. I can’t believe I didn’t check on you. I should
have—”
“Dad.”
“There’s no way you’re staying up at that school anymore. Not now, after this, and
with me living within spitting distance of the place. I’m going to look into transferring you
over to Edmondson—”
“DAD!”
“In the meantime, I’ll take you to the academy and I’ll pick you up—"
“You’re being insane!”
He stops short, jerking as he looks me dead in the eye. “I’m the one who’s insane?
Me? I am?”
“I just misjudged the situation. I cut harder than I should have—”
He grabs hold of the thin sheet that’s covering me, exposing my legs. “How long have
you been cutting yourself?” he demands. “How long?” His quick gaze travels up my bare
thighs, scanning my skin.
“What the hell are you doing?” I try to rip the sheet out of his hand and cover myself
again, but there’s no way he’s letting go.
“I’m not stupid. You think this is my first time dealing with this? Before this stupid
stunt, you haven’t had any other marks on your arms. That leaves your thighs.”
“I don’t cut my thighs!”
“I can see that. What about your stomach? Lift the gown, Presley.”
Ice sluices through my veins, at the same time a blisteringly hot spike of shame colors
my cheeks. I grab the hospital gown, bunching it firmly in my hands, pulling it down.
“You’re not going to lift it?” Dad’s breathing so hard, he looks like he’s just run a four-
minute mile.
I shake my head.
“All right. Fine. I don’t wanna do this, Pres, but if you can’t be honest with me—” He
lunges forward and grabs the gown, and a high-pitched screaming sound starts going off
in my head. I wrestle, writhing on the bed, refusing to let go of the gown no matter how
hard he pulls.
 “Show me, Pres,” my father grits out. “Just st—just stop fighting me and show me
what you’ve done!”
“MR. WITTON!”
Dad stops. His hands fall away, releasing me, but the screaming sound in my head
doesn’t end. It continues, climbing higher, becoming more frantic…until I realize that the
sound isn’t in my head. It’s coming out of my mouth, and my throat is so raw that I can
taste blood.
“Shh, it’s okay. It’s okay, Presley. Take a breath for me, there’s a good girl. It’s all
right. Come on, now. Shh.”
I open my eyes, and the psychiatrist from earlier, Dr. Raine, is standing over me. She
slowly strokes a hand down my arm, her contact light as a feather, but it shocks me out
of my blind panic. Abruptly, I stop screaming.
“Good girl. It’s okay, don’t worry. Everything’s okay.” Dr. Raine turns on Dad like a
feral wolf. “I have no idea what the hell you were just doing, sir, but your daughter is in
an extremely fragile state. The very last thing she needs right now is someone
manhandling her.”
Dad’s eyes are full of tears. He takes a step back, lifting one hand toward me, as if he
wants to stroke my other arm, to reassure and comfort me, too. But he lets the hand fall.
“I’m sorry.” His voice is a shattered, broken thing. “I didn’t mean to. I just…I just need to
know what’s happening. I don’t know what to do.”
“Go upstairs and wait for me in my office, please. Room two-oh-three.” Dr. Raine’s
eyes are still full of anger but there’s a pitying edge to her tone now, too. She feels bad
for him. She understands his confusion. I do, too. I have no idea why I reacted that way
just now. I just couldn’t bear the thought of him forcing me to show him my stomach,
and…
A fat tear streaks down Dad’s face. “Okay. I—I’m sorry, sweetheart. Um. I—” He
doesn’t know what to say. Dad, who always knows exactly what to say, is speechless.
Without uttering another word, he backs out of the room and disappears.
Dr. Raine squeezes my shoulder lightly. “I think it’s probably a good idea if we give
you another sedative, Presley. Just give me a minute and I can call on one of the nur—”
“No! No more sedatives.” I can finally feel my mind returning to itself properly. The
world doesn’t look quite so hazy anymore, and while the haziness blotted out the terror
from last night, I won’t let myself languish in the darkness anymore. It’s frightening, to
feel my own mind so fragmented and fractured and not be able to do anything about it.
“Please. No.” I swallow thickly. “No more sedatives. I’m fine. I will be fine. I just need a
moment.”
The doctor, who smells of coffee and cinnamon, gives me a tight-lipped half-smile.
“Okay. If you’re sure. But it’s nothing to be ashamed of, Presley. If you feel like all of this
is too much right now, it’s okay to accept a little help. Be that from me, or from
something that’ll relax you a little longer while we’re trying to work all of this out, okay?”
I nod woodenly, to give her the impression that I’m thinking about it. That I’ll take her
up on her offer if things get to be too much. I don’t need her help, though, and I do not
need her drugs. I only need to forget.
 12

PAX

I cross Mountain Lakes with Meredith’s black box tucked into my backpack like a ticking
time bomb. Its sharp corners dig into my back as I jog up the stairs toward the entrance,
and I can hear something rattling around in there. A childish satisfaction makes me smirk
as I bypass the front desk and head straight for the elevators. I hope it was some rare
work of art. A Faberge egg or some shit. Some priceless heirloom that she wanted to
hand down to me as part of my inheritance. I hope that, whatever it is, it’s in so many
pieces now that it’s worthless and my mother gets to see just how much her parting
gesture means to me.
Back in New York, Meredith’s donated so much money to so many different hospitals
that there are wards named after her across the city. Research labs. Entire wings of
clinics and care centers all dedicated to the name Davis. She could walk into any single
one of them and receive world class care. She’d be treated like a goddamn rock star, for
fuck’s sake. But no. She’s come here, to this tiny, ghetto ass facility halfway up a
mountain, where they can barely care for the most emergent cases successfully, and all
so she can terrorize me.
What the hell is wrong with the woman?
I’ve had the misfortune of spending quite a bit of time in this place over the past year.
I know where the private patient rooms are, and I know Meredith won’t be staying in any
of them. The view from her window clearly showed Cosgroves, which means the room
she’s in is west facing. Second floor. I hit the stairwell, head down, passing a nurse
carrying a clipboard, and she doesn’t say a word.
It doesn’t take long to find my mother. Her voice, deep and soft, resonant as a cat’s
purr, carries extraordinarily well in open spaces. In close quarters such as these, it’s
impossible to confuse her with anybody else.
“It’s quite all right. I know you’ll remember for next time. Just one cube of ice, in a
chilled glass, with double filtered water.”
Christ. She’s using that tone.
I go to enter the room on the left, at the end of a very unimpressive hallway that
smells like bleach, but a young nurse with flushed cheeks stumbles through the open
door. She looks like she’s about to burst into tears. I suspect her blonde, neat pigtail
braids are the reason why my mother was talking to her like she was an imbecile;
Meredith can’t stand grown women who style their hair like children. The nurse’s eyes
double in size when she sees me. “Oh, no. No, no, no, I’m sorry. You can’t go in there.”
“Oh? And why’s that?”
“This room’s being used for patient care at the moment. And this patient made it very
clear that she doesn’t want to see anybody.”
Oh, I bet she fucking did. She comes all the way out here on the basis that I didn’t go
and see her in New York, and then immediately tells everyone that she doesn’t want
visitors. She doesn’t want me to see her. It suits her down to the ground to act as if she’s
had to drag herself across three states just to fight for a scrap of her indolent son’s
attention, while she’s dying no less, and then make it as difficult as humanly possible for
me to actually get in and see her. Classic Meredith.
“Hmm.” I grimace at the nurse. “Tell her that her son’s here. And tell her not to bother
with the metric ton of makeup while you’re at it. I’ve seen her without ‘her face.’ She’s
just as terrifying with or without it.”
“I—” The nurse glances back over her shoulder, mouth open. To her, the prospect of
going back into that room and facing my mother is a fate worse than death. I know how
she feels. “I—”
“Never mind.” I step around her, barging into the room, smiling sourly at the situation
on the other side of it. “Hello, Meredith.” Sitting on the end of her crisply made bed, my
mother tucks a neatly curled wave of golden hair away from her face, though the action
doesn’t really do anything. She’s perfectly styled, her makeup is flawless, and the gesture
is all for show.
“There you are. I’ve starved myself half to death, waiting on you,” she says.
Lord above, help me survive this woman. “What are you talking about?”
She smooths her hands over her loose grey linen pants. With her elegant white blouse
and the little navy-blue scarf tied at her neck, she’s a picture of effortless grace, just like
she always is. Heaven forbid she might actually be caught still drawing breath and in a
hospital gown. “When poor Peter told me about what happened last night, I knew to
expect you. I thought we could go to lunch. Make the most out of the visit. I assumed
you’d show up promptly at one, so I refrained from breaking my fast. The nurses have
been fussing over me, trying to make me eat for the past hour and a half, but I told them
no. I had to wait. Aren’t they just darling girls, Pax? So thoughtful. So caring. Impossibly
friendly.”
To her, maybe. She must be paying the hospital handsomely to put her up like this.
I’m just an inked-up piece of shit with a perma-scowl who looks like he’s spoiling for a
fight. Meredith’s impossibly friendly girls will no doubt be suspicious and scathing when
they interact with me.
“I was thinking we’d go to that one place. What’s it called? Harry’s?” she says, getting
up and looking around the room for her purse. I try to remember the name of that
woman who called me in Corsica and told me that my mother was dying. Far as I can tell,
she was lying, because Meredith seems A-okay. A little thinner than usual, I guess. Her
skin looks a little…papery? But other than that, she’s sharp as a fucking tack, well enough
to wear four-inch heels, and her no-nonsense attitude is in perfect working order.
She finds her purse and loops the gold chain strap over her shoulder. Then she looks
at me. “Well? Are we going to go or not? I’d hate to have to repeat myself, but I really
am rather hungry, sweetheart.” She cups a devilishly cold hand to my cheek. “And while
Harry’s is hardly a New York standard eatery, I assume they’ll still be busy at this time of
day? I’d hate to inconvenience them by showing up right at the end of lunch service. I’m
sure they’ll want to give the servers time to set up for dinner service.”
See, this is the trouble with Meredith. The trouble with being angry with her
specifically. She does the shittiest, meanest, most careless things, and then acts entirely
like herself—charming, sweet, engaging, and innocent—and you forget why you’re mad at
her. I’m wise to her tricks, though. It took me years, but I finally figured out that the only
way to deal with Meredith without feeling like you’ve been cheated out of some very
justified emotions is to be direct as hell with her.
“We’re not gonna go and eat steaks, woman. You’re dying.”
She straightens like she’s just been hit with a fifty-thousand-volt charge. Her pale blue
eyes, as cold and distant as drifting icebergs, cut into my skin like scalpels. “I’m sorry. I
fail to see the problem. Do restaurants in Mountain Lakes discriminate against patrons
with terminal illnesses? Or can dying women not eat steak in particular? Because if that’s
the case, darling, I’ll just have the chicken.”
Of course she was going to act like this. Dying? No big deal. Don’t make a fuss,
darling. The staff are watching. I want to shake her, so that she drops the bullshit and
unleashes the river of emotion charging beneath her stoic façade. I want to see her sob
at the unfairness of it all. I want to see her bargain and plead. I want her to feel
something. Only thing I’ll accomplish by shaking her is getting tossed out of the building
again, though. There is no deep river of emotion crashing against the mile-high walls my
mother has so expertly constructed. If I dug down deep enough, I might discover a weak,
pathetic trickle of emotion, but nothing more. Meredith did a bang-up job of damming her
feelings away back in the late eighties. To elicit more than faint disapproval from my
mother, a person would need a degree in psychology, a degree in archeology, and the
proper excavation equipment to dig down that deep.
“All right. Fine. Have it your way. Let’s go to fucking Harry’s. Eat the steak. Eat
whatever you fucking feel like. I don’t even care.”
She steps closer, chucking me under the chin like I’m five years old. “Y’know. I might
even have a glass of wine, I think.”
Any normal parent might have chided me for the profanity, but not Meredith. She’s
never once curbed my language. I think it’s because she never really hears what I’m
saying; she’s far too busy thinking about what she’s going to say next.
Harry’s is despicably busy, even though it’s late in the afternoon. Meredith pecks at a
berry salad like a bird while slamming back three glasses of red in quick succession. I’m
impressed by her stamina given her prognosis. I order the most expensive steak on the
menu and order a hundred dollars’ worth of sides, and then I do not touch a single morsel
of the food. Couldn’t eat it if I tried. The slab of meat (extra bloody, I ordered it blue),
and the broccoli, potato gratin, mac and cheese, and the three different side salads are a
pagan offering to the witch sitting on the other side of the altar-like table. One I hope
that will satisfy her before she feels the need to ask me if I’ve developed an eating
disorder on my European shoots. I’m eighteen, for fuck’s sake. I’m a runner. I’m packed
muscle from head-to-toe. I’m about as far as a person can get from wasting away from
bulimia, but Meredith read an article in Holistic Healing for Empaths Magazine, and she’s
been obsessed with the idea that I have a negative relationship with food ever since.
We sit in silence. I mark the passing minutes by the steady lowering of the wine level
in Meredith’s glass. When she flags down the waiter, pointing to her glass, asking for yet
another, I snap. I give the waiter a foul look that perfectly communicates what will
happen if he dares bring another bottle of wine over to top off this mad woman’s glass.
“Oh, really, Pax. Do you have to be such a brute? I’m an adult. I can make my own
decisions.”
I thought she looked fine back in the hospital but out in the wild, without the warm,
expert lighting she probably curated back in her private room, the cracks are beginning to
show. She looks tired. Her skin is sallow grey, and the usually sharp edge to her gaze is
nowhere to be found. She’s a close approximation to the powerhouse woman I grew up
with, beautiful, but obviously weak in a way that’s tough to pinpoint.
“We’re going back to the hospital,” I snap. “Now.”
 She throws down her napkin on the table, looking away in disgust, and the hollows of
her cheeks make her look like a chic, well-dressed skeleton. “I never thought I’d see the
day when my own son turned against me,” she mutters.
“Oh, please. Stop being so dramatic. You’re sick. Drinking the bar dry isn’t going to
make you feel any better.”
“And how would you know? Have you had Leukemia before? Are you speaking from
your vast well of knowledge on the subject?” Her eyes glitter with a cold, detached anger.
“I’m sure you didn’t know a single thing about Leukemia before that stupid woman broke
patient confidentiality.”
“You’re right. I didn’t. I should have, though, shouldn’t I? Because you should have
told me what the fuck was going on.” The words rip out of me like bullets. They have
little effect on Meredith.
“Don’t be so silly. What would have been the point? You know, I had to watch my
mother die. Slowly. Painfully. It was awful. I would never want to wish that kind of pain
on anyone.” She lifts her empty glass to her lips and tips it back like she’ll be able to
manifest more wine by sheer force of will alone. Sadly, her plan doesn’t work out.
“Try the water,” I tell her. “Y’know. What Would Jesus Do. According to your book,
he’d wiggle his fingers over his sparkling Perrier and turn it into a nice Shiraz.” I know I’m
picking the wrong fight here, but I can’t stop myself. I want to irritate the shit out of her.
I want to fuck with her. If I can make her a fraction as angry as me, then I might be able
to breathe again. Maybe.
Just as I knew it would, the comment elicits a strong and immediate reaction. She
slams the glass down with a thud. “It’s not my book. The Bible belongs to every human
being who has ever or will ever live. Jesus turned water into wine as a demonstration
that he could perform miracles—”
“I seem to recall that he did it because he was at a wedding and they’d run out of
booze.” I tear apart a bread roll, ripping it into pieces, then I shove one of the mangled
quarters into my mouth. I chew with my mouth open, staring her down.
Meredith fumes. “I shouldn’t even be surprised by this kind of behavior, coming from
you. But you know how I feel when you disrespect our Lord and Savior. It upsets me—”
“Better get you back to your room before you blow out an aorta, then.” I jerk my head
at our waiter as he passes by our table. I must have terrified the shit out of him with my
dark look, because he already has our check printed and ready to go in a billfold in the
front of his apron. He drops it gingerly at the table, grimace-smiling and thanking us for
being such wonderful guests while hastily backing away like he’s afraid of losing a hand.
I’ve made more than one scene at Harry’s in the past.
Dumping a wad of cash into the billfold, I laugh menacingly when Meredith rolls her
eyes, snapping her AMEX back into her Louis Vuitton wallet. She’d only shoo me away if I
tried to help walk her out of the restaurant, so I don’t even bother offering. I grab my
backpack from the back of the seat next to me and head outside, taking the opportunity
to spark up while she goes through the rounds of saying goodbye to the bartenders and
the wait staff, the hostess and a whole slew of other people who are likely glad to see
the back of her.
I’m down to the filter when Meredith emerges from the restaurant, dabbing delicately
at the corner of her mouth with a paper napkin. Wafting her hand in front of her face, she
opens her mouth, about to launch into an anti-smoking diatribe, but I cut her off. “Don’t.
Just fucking don’t.”
We sit in silence in the car, and when we reach the hospital, we ride the elevator up
to the second floor in silence, too. Meredith stops to chat with every single doctor and
nurse we come across, and the fuckers fawn over her like she’s some kind of A-list
celebrity. The coppery tang of blood coats my mouth as I chew on the inside of my cheek,
bouncing on the balls of my feet, waiting for the gauche, never-ending parade to be over.
Meredith milks her micro-stardom for all its worth. She preens and falls over herself to
issue compliments. She even air-kisses a porter. I growl out loud in annoyance, which
earns me a stern lecture about how menial workers are people, too, and probably more
deserving of our time and notice because they’re not used to their betters acknowledging
them. Sadly, she doesn’t realize just how absolutely fucking hypocritical and
condescending that statement is.
Back in her room, she unravels her scarf from around her neck and loops it over the
arm of an antique coat rack that looks starkly out of place in Mountain Lakes’ tiny
hospital. “Well, let’s get this out of the way, then, shall we?” she says, her tone dripping
with frustration.
I throw the bag down on the bed and unzip it. The black box tumbles out onto paisley
bed sheets—definitely not standard hospital issue—and Meredith arches an eyebrow
coolly at it. “That’s what this is all about? The box?”
“You don’t get to leave me gifts for after you’re dead,” I spit.
She stifles a laugh, massaging the side of her neck. “Well, I’d hardly call it a gift.”
“What is it then, if not some sentimental gesture from the afterlife? That’s what it’s
supposed to be, right?”
“You came here to bitch at me and ruin my day because of this, and you haven’t even
looked inside?” She shakes her head. “Honestly, I don’t think you have the common sense
you were born with, Pax. That doesn’t make any sense.” She picks up the box, turning it
over until the script handwriting spelling out my name is facing the right way up. “The urn
containing your father’s ashes is in here. I got sick of staring at it at the penthouse, so I
packed it up for you to have once I was gone. What? Don’t look at me like that. What was
I supposed to? Just tip him down the waste disposal?”
She genuinely sounds annoyed that I’m reacting badly to this. But what the actual
fuck? “The urn containing my father’s ashes has been banging around in my backpack all
day? My dead father? You’ve lost your fucking mind!”
“Really, Pax. You need to find a way to self-regulate, you know. You respond to very
normal situations in truly bizarre ways.”
I grab my bag, gritting my teeth together and I jam my arms through its straps.
“When you’re gone, I’ll ride around the subway with your incinerated remains in a Ziplock,
then. Are you okay with that?”
“That depends. I know which neighborhoods you like to frequent, sweetheart.” She
studies me rather disappointedly. “So long as you don’t take me to Queens, I suppose I
wouldn’t really mind. But that’s a moot point. I’m not being cremated. I’m donating my
body to medical science.”
A prickling, angry heat climbs up my back and burns between my shoulder blades.
“Good. Maybe they can slice your brain open and figure out why the hell you were so
fucked up, Mom.” I turn and bolt from the room before she can get in the final word. I’m
not fast enough, though. I’m never fast enough.
“Meredith, darling! Meredith! You know I don’t like it when you call me that!”
 13

PAX

I’m in a foul mood. I want to break something.

I have no idea what I’m doing or where I’m going. I get off the elevator, following the
person in front of me, not seeing or hearing, or feeling anything. Suddenly, Pete the
security guard is standing in front of me, and he’s wearing a smile a mile wide. “Good
man! Remy said he thought you’d come but I admit, I was betting against you, kid.
“What?”
“There’s half an hour left before they kick everyone out. Come with me.”
I’m still reeling from my encounter with Meredith too badly to fully process what he’s
saying. I’m barely processing anything at all as I dumbly follow Pete toward a small gift
and snack store, where he heads for the back corner and begins operating a small icy
machine, dumping pale yellow gunk into a little plastic cup. “She looks like lemon’s her
favorite, doesn’t she? Personally, I like the bubblegum flavor. My daughter’s always giving
me grief for ordering the fake blue shit. And before you say it, I know it looks gross. Just
a whole heap of processed sugar. Nothing nutritious about it. Still. It makes me feel
better when I’m sick. I’m sure it’ll make her feel better, too.”
I’m itching for a cigarette. I wonder if anyone will notice if I light up in here. I don’t
think I can wait ’til I get outside; my blood is fucking boiling.
You need to find a way to self-regulate, you know. You respond to very normal
situations in truly bizarre ways.
Fucking. Unbelievable.
My hands are cold. Why are my hands so cold? I look down and I’m standing in front
of a register, holding a small cup of lemon gelato. Wait…what the fuck?
“Three-eighty for a small, thanks.” The cashier standing on the other side of the
register looks at me expectantly.
To my right, Pete nods. “I’m not allowed to carry a wallet while I’m on duty,” he says.
“But it’s better this way. Better that it comes from you.”
“Better that…what?”
“Sorry, man. If you’re not ready to pay, can you step to one side?” the cashier asks.
“There isn’t much room in here and there’s a line forming.”
Mechanically, I pull a twenty-dollar bill from my pocket and hand it to the cashier. He
gives me change, and the whole time the gelato burns the palm of my hand, it’s so cold.
“Great stuff. Now, when you go in there, don’t…y’know. Don’t mention anything
about…y’know.” Pete steers me by the shoulders out of the little store and left down the
hallway. “It can be really confronting for some patients if people talk about their injuries
right out of the gate. I think it might be prudent to hold off in this case, though. Her dad
was here earlier and caused quite the scene.”
My head is pounding. “I’m sorry, what the hell is happening? Why am I getting
frostbite from a cup of yellow dogshit? Where the fuck are you taking me, old man?”
He frowns. “Language hasn’t improved, then. Shame. Still. I suppose it’s normal for
kids your age to curse a lot. Here we go.” Pete twists me, hands still on my shoulders,
and before I can piece any of this together, I’m walking through a door into room 3e, and
low and behold…there’s Presley. The girl. The one with the auburn halo of hair, the
burned caramel eyes, and the open wrists. Her wrists aren’t open anymore, though.
Presumably, her wounds have been stitched back together beneath the thick bandages
she’s wearing. Unlike the early hours of this morning, outside on the blacktop, she’s no
longer covered in blood, either. And when she rolls her head across the mountain of huge
pillows propped behind her head and looks at me, her eyes focus instead of rolling back
into her skull.
She takes one look at me and her knees fly up underneath the blankets, like she
wants to form a barrier between us. “Uhhhh…no. No, no, no.” She’s a deer in headlights.
I feel like I’ve been Parent Trapped. That reference probably doesn’t work here but
fuck it. It’s how I feel. Pete’s sticking his nose in, and it doesn’t look like Presley
appreciates his meddling. I definitely don’t fucking appreciate it. “I’m tired. I was just
about to sleep,” she whimpers. “I can’t have any more visitors today.”
“One more won’t hurt,” Pete argues. “Your dad’s been gone two hours already. Stop
being so rude and say hello to your guest. He’s brought you something.”
The gelato has melted, and a river of sticky, neon liquid is running down the back of
my hand. Presley looks me over, quickly skipping over my face and torso, homing in on
the desert; her expression doesn’t change. If anything, she looks even more distraught.
“Is that…Lemon Sherbet?” she whispers.
 “Ask the meddling security guard.” I throw a pissed scowl over my shoulder, but would
you believe it—Pete has miraculously disappeared.
“I’ve only known him for six hours. He has a way of just…making himself comfortable,”
Pres says. “He brought me a magazine. Then a DVD. I didn’t expect him to bring me
you.”
Kind of pissed, kind of horrified that I allowed myself to be coerced into this without
realizing what was happening, I enter the room properly and place the sticky-ass gelato
down on the bedside table next to her.
She blinks up at me, very alert and very curious. Also, very pale and very tired. Dark
shadows bruise the skin beneath her eyes. She looks haunted. Irritated, I realize that
she’s interesting to look at. She has the air of a Victorian consumption patient—fragile,
the details of her fine and delicate as lace. In contrast to her deathly pale skin, her hair
looks like it’s ablaze.
I crack a thumb knuckle, staring blankly at her. “How are the ribs?” I ask.
“Sore. It hurts to move.”
“I didn’t mean to break them.”
“You didn’t. They’re just bruised.”
Huh. No rib cage should bow the way hers did under my hands. I thought for sure that
I’d broken them. Not that it matters. “Okay, well. Good luck with…everything. I gotta go.
Bye.”
She catches me before I can make for the exit. “Wait.”
Oh lord. Here it comes. The explanation. The why behind all of this mess. Tired to the
bone, I stare at her with steely irritation. “What?”
Her eyes shine brightly. At first, those eyes seem unremarkable. Up close, they’re far
from it—a deep and rich amber, like warm honey, mottled with flecks of brown that
transitions to a starburst of pale gold around her pupil. They’re actually stunning. She
blinks up at me, and I realize to my horror that I’ve been staring. “Don’t...please don’t say
anything,” she whispers.
“To who? About what?”
She lets out a sputter of laughter. “To your friends. About this. About me being here.
The way you found me. If you tell them, they’ll tell Elodie and Carina, and I don’t…I don’t
want them to…”
That tracks. A normal person might not want their friends to find out that they acted
so foolishly. I guess I can see that. And any other normal person, who’d experienced what
I experienced last night, might feel the desire to tell their friends about the crazy night
they had, literally saving one of their classmate’s lives. I’m not a chatty fucking Cathy,
though. Gossip is the last thing I care about. “Don’t worry. I have better things to do with
my time than recount this kinda shit.”
Her expression falters. She looks relieved, but also…torn? Christ. I don’t know how she
looks, or what she’s thinking. I have no clue what goes on inside girls’ heads. She
swallows, nodding slowly, though, and I can only assume that I’ve made her happy.
“Thanks,” she whispers.
“Are we done here?”
She nods.
“Great. I’ll see you at school. I hope you get better soon, or…whatever.”
“Wait. Pax?”
I will make it out of this hospital today. Even if it fucking kills me. “Yes, Presley?”
“I heard about your mom. She’s a patient here, right? The nurse said that was why
you were outside. Because she needs a bone marrow transplant, and you’re probably a
match? Are you going to save her, too?”
Oh, for pity’s sake. “Meredith doesn’t want me to save her,” I grind out. “If she did,
she would have asked me to get tested months ago, when she started getting really sick.
She hasn’t even asked me now. So, no. I’m not gonna fucking do it.”
Presley doesn’t say anything. She sags back against her pillows, looking down at her
hands, and I can feel the censure rolling off her. Who cares what Presley Chase thinks,
though. Fuck, I sure as hell don’t. So, why then, am I still standing here like a loser? I
should just turn and walk out of this room right here and now. Only, for some reason…I
can’t.
Presley picks up the gelato, stabbing at the melting yellow goop in the cup with a
plastic spoon. “So…she’s supposed to beg for your bone marrow then?”
“Y’know, I much preferred it when you couldn’t get a solid sentence out in front of
other people,” I snap. “You were far less annoying then.” The past three years, the girl
has blushed madly and run away every time I’ve even looked sideways at her. I would
have assumed she’d be even more shy around me given the circumstances, but she
doesn’t seem that bothered by my presence now. I’m mad because her statement stings
in a way that only the truth can. If she was wrong, I’d brush her off without breaking a
sweat, but I can feel myself getting hot under the collar. “I wouldn’t give it to her even if
she did beg for it,” I grit out.
“You hate her, then. You want her to die.” There’s no judgement attached to this
statement. She just looks at me curiously—a ghost girl with bandaged wrists, swirling her
spoon around in her gelato. It’s a miracle she can even use her hands considering how
deep her wounds were when I found her. She must have just missed her tendons.
“If I agree with you, will you let me go?” I growl.
She looks at me but can’t hold my gaze for long. She glances away, looking out of the
window instead. “Saving her would be better revenge than letting her die.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If you donate your bone marrow and save your mother’s life, she’ll owe you
everything. She’ll be forever indebted to you. No matter what she says or does, or how
awful she is, you’ll know that you’re the reason she still gets to walk the face of the
planet. There’s something poetic about that.”
I grind my teeth together, nostrils flared. Letting Meredith die is one thing. Forcing her
to live…that really is wicked. And yeah. The theatrical, melodramatic side of my mother is
enjoying her own slow and tragic demise. She probably thinks that fading away to
nothing in a comfortable hospital bed is terribly romantic. It’s not, though. It’s fucking
stupid. And I could destroy her macabre little fantasy like a soap bubble, if I just stick out
my finger and…pop it.
Food for thought.
“I s’pose you’re right. Thanks.”
She looks at me thoughtfully. “You’re welcome. Do you think you could do me a
favor?”
“’Cause saving your life wasn’t enough?”
She doesn’t smile. Doesn’t shrink away from me either, though. Her eyes fill with a
brand new, unfamiliar kind of resolve. “Will you do it or not?”
“Depends. Are you going to thank me for saving you?”
“No.”
Such a quick answer. Firm. Most girls would have turned bright red and stumbled over
a humiliated thank you, quick as you like. The Chase (her name’s too long to give her the
full title, even in my head) I know from school would be too anxious to even do that. But
this girl right here, who looks so much like Chase, and sounds so much like her, is
resolute when she issues her refusal.
Moderately amused, I fold my arms across my chest. “Why the hell would I do any
more favors for you if you’re this ungrateful, then?”
“I will be grateful for this one,” she replies.
“What is it?”
“I want you to kiss me.”
“What?”
“I have a theory.”
The girl is batshit crazy. She’s been cleaned up, yes, but they haven’t done a perfect
job. Her hair is still caked with dried blood, and there are flecks of it spackled across the
backs of her hands. She looks altogether too pale, and too sick. Ghastly, all around. “I’m
not fucking kissing you. Why the hell would I do that?”
 She shrugs. “To see what it feels like to kiss a half-dead girl? To see what if feels like
to kiss a girl who’s just as broken as you? Think of it as an experiment.”
“Ignoring the broken comment—rude, by the way—what am I hoping to accomplish by
participating in this ridiculous experiment? What the hell am I supposed to learn?”
Again, she bounces a shoulder, looking down at her hands, fingers tangled together in
her lap. “I don’t know. I suppose you’d find out.”
I have never heard anything so stupid or pointless in my entire life. There is
something intriguing about this pale, half-dead girl. She’d make a great ghost. But that
doesn’t mean I’m going to make out with her while she’s laid out in a hospital bed.
“What are you afraid of?” she asks. “Suicidal tendencies aren’t catching.”
“I didn’t think they were. I’m not afraid of anything—”
“Then prove it. Kiss me.”
This is just plain stupid. She’s trying to bait me into giving her what she wants by
implying that I’m a coward if I don’t? I’m not in kindergarten anymore, and even when I
was, I wasn’t that easy to manipulate. But the level, steady way that she’s looking at me
is different. Whenever I’ve bothered to look at her in the past, she’s always ducked her
head, or straight up turned around and bolted out of the room. I’ve never actually seen
her face properly before, and I’ll admit that she’s quite beautiful.
Maybe kissing her would make for an interesting experiment. Perhaps there is
something to be learned here. I’m just as amused as I am irritated as I cross the room
and stand beside her, next to the bed. After my disastrous run-in with Meredith, I’m not in
the mood to hang around and waste too much time on this, though.
She visibly flinches as I duck down, but the brief flicker of hesitation disappears when
I pause, three inches away from her mouth. “Change your mind?” I drawl.
“No. I just wasn’t ready. I am now.”
I bite back cold laughter. “Whatever, Chase. Stay still.” I brace one hand against the
wall behind her head and I lower my mouth down quickly to meet hers. Unlike last night
when I gave her two recovery breaths during CPR, her lips are firm this time. They have a
little pressure behind them, as, surprisingly, she kisses me back.
She smells strange, like cheap hospital soap and bleach. Beneath the astringent smell
of cleaning fluids and detergent, she still smells faintly of the same perfume she was
wearing last night, though. Something fresh and floral.
Cupping the back of her head in my hand, I apply more pressure, deepening the kiss.
Chase melts, her weight settling, her head becoming very heavy in my hand. She doesn’t
resist when I urge her lips apart and slide my tongue past her teeth. I do it mostly to
shock her, catch her off guard, sure that she won’t be expecting me to take this weird
experiment so far, but she only whimpers slightly, opening wider to give me better
access.
Well, well, well.
The girl’s got some balls, I’ll give her that. Her mouth is so sweet—a burst of citrus
across my taste buds courtesy of the lemon gelato I was tricked into bringing her. And
that little whimper? I’ll be damned if that little whimper hasn’t caused my dick to twitch in
my pants; I can feel myself getting hard. The whole experience is way more enjoyable
than I anticipated—the very reason I cut the whole thing off and straighten, pulling away
from her.
She doesn’t look so half-dead anymore. Her cheeks are pink, and her eyes have come
alive. “Well.” She clears her throat, fidgeting against her pillows, definitely a little
flustered.
“Happy now?” I rumble. “Did you get what you needed out of that?”
She nods. “I did actually.” She looks a little surprised.
“Goodbye, Presley.”
This time, I mean it.
 14

PAX

I’m a match.
I don’t get tested because Chase baited me into it. My strings aren’t that easily pulled.
Christ. But she did raise a very good point. Meredith wants to die, because dying makes
her a martyr. Oh, poor woman. She languished away in that hospital for months on end,
and that wretched son of hers didn’t even go and visit. She knew he was probably a
match, but she couldn’t bear him to suffer any pain, so she just let herself die. That’s the
love a mother bears her son right there. So beautiful. So sad.
I’ll be damned all the way to hades and back again three times over if I let her get
away with that shit. And yes. It’ll be a nice bonus that she will never, ever be able to give
me shit for anything ever a-freaking-gain. I will be the benevolent champion who enabled
her to carry on drawing breath, and I won’t ever let her forget it.
I refrain from visiting my mother again. The nurses tell her an anonymous donor has
been found, and she still tells them she needs to think about accepting the donation.
Think about it, like it’s not the most relieving news she’s ever fucking received. There are
people out there, clinging to life, waiting to get news that a donor has been found for
them. They’d sell everything they own for one more week, one day, one more second
with their families. But Meredith has to consider if she even wants a second shot at life.
As if the very idea of it is tedious to her.
Two days later, I check myself into the hospital, snapping and snarling at all of the
nurses who all come to tell me how brave and amazing they think I am. Some of them
are hot. A couple of them are tens. I thought modeling would always be the one thing
that scored me the most pussy but turns out providing a certain amount of the goop from
inside your bones will have women dropping their panties left, right and center. As I lie in
the lumpy hospital bed, waiting for the surgeon to come down and tell me exactly what
will happen and then take me into the operating room, I’m presented with at least four
opportunities to fuck. I deflect them all. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The idea that
I might get my cock sucked by a hot nurse while Chase is still recovering from her injuries
two floors below me is somehow unacceptable. I don’t care about the girl. I really fucking
don’t. But every time one of these smoke shows hits on me, my dick stays resolutely soft.
My doctor is professional, cold, and confident. She goes over the procedure, and I
pretend to pay attention. I can’t focus on anything other than my desperate need to get
this over with so I can get the fuck out of here and back to Riot House.
“Do you understand, Mr. Davis?” She looks sternly down the bridge of her nose at me.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Repeat back to me what I just told you.”
“No swimming during recovery. No alcohol. No sex. No strenuous activities of any kind.
I’m gonna be in pain. I’ll be bruised. If I notice any weird swelling or blood in my urine, I
have to get to a hospital at my earliest convenience—”
“Not at your earliest convenience.” The doctor shakes her head. “Immediately. If
there’s blood in your urine or you have a fever, something could be very wrong.
Depending on the cause, you could wind up dead. You do appreciate that this isn’t going
to be a walk in the park, Mr. Davis? There will be pain and discomfort involved. It’s going
to take some time before you’re back up and running and feeling entirely yourself.”
I admit, I thought they were going to be able to syphon off a load of blood and take
what they needed from me that way. It’s very common for people to donate peripheral
blood stem cells these days, but Dr. London thought that the traditional, more invasive
donation would be more effective in my mother’s case, so here I am, about to get a hole
drilled into the back of my fucking pelvis.
I look her dead in the eye. “I read all the dumb pamphlets. I did my research online.
I’ve spoken to eight of you guys about this. I know how fucked it’s gonna be. Can we
please just get on with it?”
She’s wearing the ‘I-don’t-appreciate-your-attitude-kid’ look on her face. It’s amazing
how many people I’ve seen wearing it over the years. She exhales slowly down her nose,
eyes boring into me, then scribbles on the clipboard she’s holding; she hands it off to the
cowering resident behind her.
In the operating room, a grumpy motherfucker with breath that reeks of stale coffee
tells me to count backwards from ten while he puts me under. I stare at him stubbornly,
glowering at him as the edges of my vision blur.
Then, all is black.
When I wake up, I have a second pulse in my left hip and it’s beating way too fast. It
fucking hurts. I’m in a hospital room now, and it’s dark outside. Mountain Lakes is silent
on the other side of the large, bare window in the room, but there’s a weird electric hum
in the air. Maybe the irritating buzz has something to do with the fact that someone just
drilled a hole into my fucking hip. Who can tell at this point?
I try to sit up and a bolt of lightning descends from the heavens and strikes me on the
dick. Horror pools in my gut as the fear creeps in. Why the fuck does my dick hurt?
Whythefuckdoesmydickhurt! Something went wrong. They injured my junk somehow. I’m
broken. They fucking maimed me. I tear back the bedsheet, bracing for the worst. And
there it is: a thin tube coming out of the end of my dick. It leads to a clear plastic bag,
attached to an IV pole next to the bed.
They gave me a catheter. A fucking catheter. No way. I’m not lying here with a hose
jammed down my dickhole. I look around, trying to find a call-button that I can use to get
someone’s attention. Eventually, I see the buttons on the inside arm of the gurney. I hit
the red button five times and the door crashes open moments later, banging loudly
against the wall. Who should charge in, looking frantic and ready for anything? Well, well,
well, if it isn’t my old buddy Remy. The bruise I gave him on his jaw looks terrible.
He runs to the bed. Runs. “What? What’s wrong? Can you breathe?”
I swat his hands away. “Yes, I can fucking breathe. Get this tube out of my dick right
now, or I’m ripping it out with my bare hands.”
Remy’s expression darkens. “That button is for emergencies only. Do you have any
idea how many alarms you just set off?”
“Eleven.”
“Don’t get smart, asshole.” He slaps a green panel on the wall above the bed, and out
in the hallways, a polite Ding Ding! Ding Ding! Ding Ding! stops. “The catheter isn’t
coming out until you’ve filled that bag.” Remy points to the gross plastic bag on the IV
pole. “You aren’t even a fifth of the way yet. Sip on some water. I might be able to take it
out in the morning.”
“You’re insane. I’m not having this thing in me over night. It’ll stretch out my fucking
urethra.”
Remy rolls his eyes. “For someone who can take a punch so well, you sure are a big
baby.”
“I’m not fucking around. Take it out, or I swear to God, I’ll rip it out.”
He laughs. “Go ahead. See what happens to your urethra then. Let me take a look at
your back.”
I seethe as he peels back the covers and stands there, waiting for me to roll over. “I’m
actually getting paid for this,” he points out. “Not very well, admittedly, but I’ve made my
peace with my paycheck. I can waste my entire afternoon here and I’ll still make rent at
the end of the month. It’s no skin off my nose.”
“You’re the fucking worst, you know that?”
Remy grins. “And you’re a miserable sack of shit. You’re lucky Pete told me you went
to visit Presley, or I’d be manhandling you so hard right now. You might normally wanna
throw fists at me, but trust. You don’t wanna tussle five minutes after waking up from a
bone marrow donation.”
I groan, biting back some very colorful language as I roll over just enough for him to
open my gown and check on my incision site. I don’t know if I should feel smug that he
has to stare at my bare ass, or if I’m supposed to feel ashamed that I have to expose
myself to him. He pokes and prods at me, gentle enough, grunts, then replaces my
dressing and tells me I can lie back down again. “Very neat. Very clean. Doctor London’s
the best.” Remy scribbles aggressively onto my chart.
“Where’s my bag? My clothes? My shoes?”
He doesn’t look up from the clipboard. “In a locked cabinet in the staff changing
rooms,” he says. “You’ll get it back in a couple of days, once Doctor London says you’re
well enough to leave.”
“Uhh. I don’t think so. I’m going home.”
Remy sighs, lowering the clipboard. “How did I know that you were gonna cause
trouble, huh? I must be fucking psychic.”
“Give me back my shit, Remy.”
“Nope.”
“I swear to fucking God—”
“Swear to whoever you like. It ain’t gonna make a difference. Your body just went
through trauma. You’re weak and vulnerable to infection. You need to rest and heal.”
“So, you’re keeping me prisoner?”
He huffs, adopting a tone that suggests I might be an imbecile. “I’m doing my job and
caring for my patient. Trust me, I enjoy your company a lot less than you enjoy mine. If it
were up to me, I’d let you hobble on out of here this second.”
 15

PAX

They want to keep me at the hospital for three days. Three. Fucking. Days. I’ve been on
shorter psych holds. I wait until they remove the catheter—Remy takes great pleasure in
making me wait until midday the next day—and then I’m fucking out of there. Doesn’t
take long to charm one of the nurses into grabbing my shit for me. I flirt with her a bit
and the next thing I know, my cell, my keys, and my clothes have been returned to me.
I bail without signing anything or telling anyone what I’m doing, and I don’t fucking
care. My throat hurts, which is super weird. And, of course, my hip and back hurt. Like,
really fucking hurt. My pain threshold’s high, but the sharp, stabbing knife of pain that hits
me with every beat of my heart makes the breath catch in my throat.
I jump in the Charger and peel out. Ten short minutes later, I pull up in front of Riot
House, and my entire back and left side is on fire, and my head is pounding. I grab my
cell and my keys, leave all of my other shit in the car, then stagger up the steps toward
the front door. It’s locked—the boys are out somewhere.
I walk through the foyer and hit the stairs without bothering to scope out the ground
floor. I need to be vertical, STAT. It’s all I can think about. My synapses strobe. A flight of
stairs stands between me and my bed, but I can handle that. What’s one flight of stairs,
anyway?
Step.
Step.
Step.
One foot in front of the other.
I hold my side, digging my fingers into my groin the whole way up, a little worried
that my insides might be unraveling. I make it up to my room. Just. Too tired to peel my
clothes off, I collapse on top of the king-sized mattress, hissing when the impact sends
pain rattling all the way up to the roots of my teeth.
Exhaustion claims me. When I wake up later, Wren’s standing at the end of my bed
with my cell phone in his hand. He scowls at me as he talks into it.
“Yeah. Thanks. I’ll make sure he takes them. Yeah. I’ll make sure he goes. Thanks.”
His vivid green eyes flash daggers at me as he hangs up the call. I think he might be
about to hurl himself onto the bed and wrap his hands around my throat. “I thought you
were on a shoot,” he growls. “Imagine my surprise when I heard your cellphone blowing
up in here.”
Uuuhhhh fuck. I did tell him I had a shoot in the city. I drag a pillow over my face,
blocking him out. At least if he does suffocate me, I won’t have to see how pissed off he
is.
“No explanation, then? Nothing?” I don’t need to see his face to feel his fury. “No,
sorry I lied to you guys? No, sorry I didn’t say anything about checking myself into the
perilously shit hospital down the road, for major fucking surgery?”
I tear the pillow away, eyeing him grumpily. “It wasn’t major surgery. And you would
have made it weird.”
“I would not.”
“What do you think you’re doing right now?”
“You know I’m gonna kick your ass, right? And when I’m done, Dash is gonna finish
you off.”
“Have at it, dude.” I groan. “Can you just, like, wait a couple of weeks, though? I feel
like hammered shit already.”
Evaluating my pathetic, curled up position on the bed, he arches an eyebrow.
Bemused doesn’t even begin to cover his expression. “You wanna tell me what this is all
about?” He nods to where my shirt has hitched up, exposing the gauze dressing on my
side—evidence of my evil, uncharacteristic act of benevolence. “And why I just spent ten
minutes on the phone, assuring someone called Remy that you’ll go to the hospital for a
checkup in a week’s time? He was rambling about all kinds of meds and stretches and
shit. What have you done to yourself? Are you fucking dying?”
I rub my hand against the top of my head, biting back another grin. “Would you be
sad if I was?”
He tosses my phone so that it lands next to me on the bed. “For at least a day.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
“Nothing personal. Funerals bring me out in hives. And school’s annoying enough
without all of the girls going into fucking mourning.”
I’d laugh if I didn’t already know just how much pain that would cause. “For me? I’m
pretty sure the female population of Wolf Hall would throw a kegger in honor of my
demise.”
“Bull.” He throws himself down into the chair by the window, not bothering to sweep
the pile of clothes off it first. “You’re like catnip to every girl in a fifty-mile radius.”
I yawn, risking the tiniest of stretches. “Impossible. I treat them all like trash.”
“That’s why they like you. I know of at least one girl who’d gladly sell her own soul for
a night with you. Wait—” Wren narrows his eyes. “Didn’t you already fuck Pres? At the
last party. Before…”
Before our psychotic English teacher tried to murder a bunch of us? Before either Wren
or Dash officially shackled themselves to their girlfriends? Ahh, the good old days. It just
goes to show how much time Wren has been spending with Elodie if he’s calling Presley
‘Pres’ instead of by her full, obnoxiously long title.
And surprise, surprise. Here the troublesome redhead is again, cropping up like a bad
penny. Why is the universe so dead set on bringing up Presley Maria Witton Chase every
opportunity it gets? Haven’t I had enough of her to last me a lifetime already? I should
fucking think so.
God? All-powerful, All-seeing Universal Being? Whoever’s fucking listening. No more
suicidal redheads, please. Thanks.
But…hold the fuck up a second. What the hell did Wren just say?
“I didn’t touch that girl at the party.”
My friend’s laughter is scathing. “You abso-fucking-lutely did. I saw you grinding up
against her. You had her pinned against a tree, naked as the day you were born.”
I sit bolt upri—ahh, ahh, ah, Fuck, fuck, fuck, that hurts. “I did not!”
“Dude. I know what your bare ass looks like and it was practically glowing in the
moonlight. If you didn’t fuck her, then you got damn well close.”
I groan, throwing myself back onto the mattress. What the fuck? Now that he
mentions it, I do remember making out very aggressively with someone at the party. I
have the faintest recollection of boobs. Great fucking boobs. I had no idea they belonged
to Chase, though. I fucking scraped the girl off the sidewalk less than a week ago. I gave
her CPR. I had a full-length, very annoying conversation with her at the hospital, right
before I kissed her. And now I have no clue if I slipped her my dick before any of that
happened? And she said nothing about it?
“Anyway.” Wren’s smirk wouldn’t look out of place plastered across the Cheshire Cat’s
face. “Presley’s besotted with you. Elodie told me. Carrie confirmed it. So there you go.
Presley…”
“Maria Witton Chase,” I grumble.
He gives me a dismissive flick of his hand. “…would mourn you if you died. There’s at
least one girl who’d care. So? Are you?
“What?”
“Dying!”
“No, I’m not fucking dying. Meredith. Meredith’s dying. She has cancer. I donated my
dumb bone marrow to her against her wishes.”
He goes silent.
Great. Just what I didn’t want: an awkward as fuck moment with a friend who doesn’t
know what to say about my sick mother. He doesn’t look super awkward when I flick a
quick glance his way. He looks…thoughtful.
“So, she might not die, then?”
“Can we actually just…not?” I fled from the hospital and came home so that life can
get back to normal, and seeing this pensive, somber look on Wren’s face is making me
feel fucking weird. “If you’re not gonna beat the shit out of me for lying about the shoot,
then maybe you could hand me that Xbox controller and leave me to murder things in the
dark. Thanks.”
Wren hesitates. He looks down at his feet, brow furrowed, thinking, but then he
chucks the controller onto the bed. Before he closes the bedroom door behind him, he
says, “Let me know if you need anything, yeah?” and a growl builds in the back of my
throat. Wren’s always been so fucking hard. His complete lack of empathy was one of the
things I liked most about him. Ever since he started seeing Elodie, something’s shifted in
him, though. He cares now. Cares way too much.
He should not care about me.
I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.
 16

THREE DAYS LATER

“Why do you do this? What does it even matter? No one knows. No one’s ever
going to find out. And even if they did…they couldn’t prove it…”

“It’s a shame Jonah had to go home. I’m glad he doesn’t know about any of this, though.
He’s a worrier. He would have canceled his flight and stayed indefinitely, and I couldn’t
do that to the guy. No sense in his summer being ruined because of any of this.”
Dad grabs my bag from the trunk of the car and sets off up the path toward the
house. He waits by the front door to make sure I’m following (I think he secretly thinks I’ll
bolt the moment he lets me out of his sight), and only when I arrive behind him does he
open the front door and let me inside.
There are still boxes everywhere. He hasn’t unpacked at all since I was admitted to
the hospital. After that first disastrous visit, he did come back and see me every day, but
he was much calmer. Much more even keeled. Whatever Dr. Raine said to him in her
office must have struck a chord with him, because he tried. I saw how hard he was trying,
which only made the guilt worse.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
None of it was supposed to happen.
“I’ll make a couple of calls later on tonight.” Dad sets his keys down in a dish on the
mail stand, turning slowly around in the hallway, as if he was about to do something but
can’t remember what. “I’ll speak to Principal Harcourt and have someone pack up your
bedroom. I can either drive up there tonight to grab everything, or we can do it tomorrow
morning on our way over to the restaurant—”
 I wrap my arms around myself, narrowing my eyes at him. “What are you talking
about?”
Exasperation colors his voice. “I told you, Presley. I’m not letting you out of my sight.
You’re going to live here from now on. I’ll pick you up and drop you off at school, and—”
“DAD!”
“Non-negotiable, Presley! I cannot handle the thought of you up there at that school,
doing god knows what to yourself because you need help, and I’m not there to give it to
you.”
Cold hard dread rakes its claws down my spine. I can’t stay here in this house. I can’t.
Not after…
“It’s no good crying about it, Pres. It’s for your own good. I know it might feel unfair to
you right now, but it’s in your best interests—”
I finally find my voice. “To be around my friends! To not feel like a criminal, kept
under constant lock and key. What, are you going to put cameras in my room now, too,
so you can spy on me in the middle of the night?”
Dad clenches his hands into fists. He looks so gaunt in his over-sized sweater. When I
think of him in my head, I still see him straight-backed in his uniform, proud and tall. I
barely even recognize this stranger standing in the hallway. Mom robbed him of twenty
pounds when she left. I think I’ve robbed him of another ten over the past week. “You’re
not going to like this, but… I did consider it,” he says.
“Dad!”
“I went for a less intrusive approach, though.”
“I can’t wait to hear what you consider less intrusive!”
A muscle feathers in his jaw; he sighs, working himself up to say whatever he needs
to say next, and I already know it’s going to be bad. “I took your bedroom door off at the
hinges,” he rushes out. “I figure…if you’re going to therapy and Dr. Raine thinks you’re
doing well, you can have it back after graduation. Maybe. We’ll have to play it by ear.”
Ever since I was admitted to the hospital, I’ve been eaten alive by guilt. My shame
has been truly crippling. But all of a sudden, I’m not feeling so guilty anymore. I’m
engulfed in a fiery ball of rage. “You can’t do that!”
“I already did.”
I gasp, struggling to find something to say that will defuse the situation and bring my
father back on-side, but there isn’t anything. I know that. So, instead I say, “Whatever.
Keep the door. It doesn’t matter. I’m not sleeping in that room ever again. I’m going to
sleep in my room at the academy.”
“You’re not.” It’s a rare event, witnessing Robert Witton provoked to anger. I’m seeing
it today, though; his cheeks are almost purple. “You’re going to do as you’re told, and
you’re going to behave yourself, Pres—”
“If you do this, the moment your back’s turned, I’m on a plane to Germany. Is that
what you want? You’ll drive me away. How do you think my mental state’s going to be if
you keep me here, locked up like an inmate!”
“Presley, be reasonable.”
“You be reasonable! I know Dr. Raine didn’t tell you to do this. She advised that I
should go back to normal life as soon as possible. That I should be around my friends!”
“Yeah, well, sometimes psychiatrists don’t always know what’s right for everybody,
okay? Sometimes a father knows what’s best for his daughter.”
I just stand there, gaping at him. He doesn’t seem like he’s going to move on this, and
the thought is frightening. I really can’t live in this house with him now. I can’t fall asleep
in that bedroom. I—I—
“Let’s just see how we go like this,” Dad says. “At least for a month or so. You never
know, you might prefer living here. I’ve got your yoga mat and all your other
paraphernalia set up in the sunroom. I’ve put the candles you like in there. It’s really
pretty. You’re gonna love it, I promise.”
I let my resolve make itself plain on my face. Slowly, quietly, in a very low voice, I
say, “I mean it, Dad. If you shut me away here and watch me like a hawk, twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week, I will find an opportunity to leave. And I won’t say
goodbye. I’ll just go. I’ll transfer to the school Mom found for me, and I’ll graduate over
there. I’ll get to spend the summer with my friends in Europe, and then I’ll go to a college
over there, too. It’ll be years before I can forgive you enough to even talk to you—”
“Okay, just stop it now. You’re being stupid. This is not how you should be handling
this at all. If Jonah were here—”’
NO.
Shut it down, Pres. Don’t do it. Don’t think about it.
Just breathe.
Juuuust breathe. It’s okay.
I pull down a steady, deep breath, working to compose myself.
I will not stand here and let him finish that sentence. I can’t fucking do it. Whirling
around, I snatch up his keys from the dish where he just put them, and I turn around,
wrenching open the front door again.
“Presley! Pres, where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“I’m borrowing the car. I need to clear my head. And don’t bother calling the cops,
Dad. I’m not going to try and kill myself again. You have my word.”
For a second, he looks like he’s going to come after me. I can see it flashing in his
eyes—he’s contemplating grabbing hold of me and restraining me so that I can’t go
anywhere. He has the sense to know how badly that will go, though. In the end, he
throws his hands into the air, resigning. “Please be back before nine, Presley. Please.
You’re gonna put me in an early grave if I have to come out looking for you.”

I need to forget.
I need to erase that house and everything that’s happened there.
If only.
It feels like I’m inhaling fine shards of glass when I breathe. It doesn’t seem so bad at
first, but over time the pain begins to build, and build, and build, until suddenly to
breathe at all is agony. At the hospital, the meds Dr. Raine kept shoveling down my
throat did stop me from feeling so overwhelmed and terrified, but they also stopped me
feeling anything at all. I was so sick of being numb that I quit taking them, which she
reluctantly agreed to, but I’ll have to go back on them if I don’t handle my shit.
And I will not be able to handle my shit if I have to stay in that house.
I drive without thinking. I end up on the road that leads up to the academy, which is
no surprise. I’m heading toward my friends. I couldn’t tell Carrie or Elodie what happened,
so I haven’t seen either of them in over a week. They’ve been blowing up my phone and
going crazy. It’s about time I showed my face and let them know I’m alive (without
letting slip that I did nearly die). It’ll be nice to sit in Carrie’s massive room and lounge
about with my friends.
Halfway up the mountain, I begin to brake, though. Incrementally, I slow the car.
Then slow it some more. I’m not going to take the turn off. I’m really not. I’m only going
t o look at Riot House as I pass. I see the large expanse of slate roof through the tree
canopy on the right, and my pulse begins to sing.
I’m passing the house.
I’m passing it.
I—
I’m wrenching the steering wheel to the right, and the tires on Dad’s old Camry are
squealing, and I am most definitely pulling off the mountain road and heading down the
dirt track that leads to the house where Pax lives.
What the fuck am I doing? What the hell am I hoping to accomplish here? What the
fuck, what the fuck, what the FUCK? I have to turn around and keep going up to the
academy. I can’t, though, because the road is so narrow, trees pressing in on both sides,
that I have to go forward until I reach the house if I want to turn around.
Naturally, it’s just my luck that when I emerge from the forest, entering the clearing in
front of the house, Wren Jacobi is already out front, about to get into his car. He stops
dead, staring at me through the windshield, obviously trying to figure out who’s just
pulled up in front of his house.
My hands lock around the steering wheel. I have a choice to make. I can either make
up some bullshit excuse about using their turnoff as a spot to turn around and head back
down the mountain. Or…
Or.
I can be honest.
Jacobi used to terrify me almost as much as Pax did. I barely even register a flutter of
nerves as he slams the car door and crosses the wood chipped driveway towards the
driver’s side window of Dad’s vehicle. He’s far less scary to me now that I’ve seen how he
is with Elodie. Any guy capable of loving another human being that much can’t be that
terrible. And ever since I woke up on the concrete outside of the hospital, Pax leaning
over me, soaked in my blood, I haven’t really been afraid of much.
He bends at the waist and smiles sinisterly at me through the window. “You gonna
buzz this thing down or shall we conduct our business through the glass?” he asks.
I buzz it down.
“Greetings,” he says. There’s something gothic and dark about Wren that makes me
think he’s a Victorian gentleman who slipped through time and is now doing his best to
try and fit in with today’s youth. “I can only guess why you’d be rolling up here in the
middle of the day while school isn’t in session.”
The whole statement sounds salacious as hell. The guy could read from the telephone
book and make it sound dirty. Taking a deep breath, I decide I’m going to own my shit.
No more hiding anymore, ever again. “I came to see Pax.”
He grins. “Of course you did. I didn’t know he’d told anyone about the surgery. He’s
been going out of his mind, he’s so bored. I’m sure he’ll appreciate the distraction.”
I frown. “Surgery?”
“Yeah, the—” He laughs softly. “He didn’t tell you about the surgery. All right. Well.
He’s in there, but he hasn’t been particularly friendly the past couple of days. Personally,
I’d give the whole Pax Davis experience a zero star, do not recommend rating. But who
knows? Pigs might fly. He might be nicer to you than he has been to me and Dash. The
door’s open.”
“Wait. You…you’re telling me to go inside?”
“You did just say you came to see him?”
“Yes?”
“You’ll need to go inside to do that. He’s still too fucked up to make it down the stairs
by himself. Now, I’m gonna need you to move this very average car so I can leave. I don’t
wanna be here when the fireworks start. Hope you know what you’re doing.”
 17

PRES

I haven’t spent a huge amount of time inside Riot House—just a few drunken nights when
they’ve thrown one of their notorious parties—but I do know where Pax’s bedroom is:
Second floor. Second door on the right.
I cross the vast entrance and head for the stairs, trying to quiet my very busy brain. It
has a lot of thoughts and feelings about me being here right now, and none of them are
particularly good. I can’t bring myself to care, or listen, or do anything other than
continue forward on this reckless path.
As I climb the stairs, loud, thrashing death metal meets my ears, coupled with the
harsh rattle of machine gun fire. The wall of sound is coming from Pax’s bedroom. I come
to stand in front of his door, pondering how hard I’m going to have to knock for him to
hear me. I try out a fairly loud, firm rap, still polite, laying my knuckles against the wood.
My wrists hurt. My ribs really fucking hurt, but I stand my ground. The aggressive music
and the blaring gun fire doesn’t stop. Time for more drastic measures.
Instead of using my knuckles this time, I make a fist and use the flat of it to hammer
against the door as hard as I can. Three loud, explosive knocks—DUM, DUM, DUM!—fill
the empty landing. Immediately, the music and the sound of heavily artillery cuts off
dead. There’s a loud crash on the other side of the door, a dull thump, and a lot of
muffled swearing. Then the door flies open, and Pax stands there, wearing nothing but a
pair of grey sweatpants, hanging low on his hips, and a foul expression on his face.
The expression does not improve when he sees who’s standing in front of his door.
“Jesus Christ. I thought it was the fucking police. What are you doing, knocking on
someone’s door like that?” He shakes his head. “Just…what the fuck are you doing here?”
I wait for the panic. If I’d found myself in this position a month ago, I would have
thrown up on myself and fled the scene like a common criminal. The panic doesn’t come.
“Are you going to invite me in?”
He crosses his arms, wearing a perplexed frown. I try not to look at all of the ink. Let’s
face it. I’ve never been able to study his tattoos in person before. I’ve always bolted
before I’ve had the chance. What I have done is flicked through google search images of
his ad campaigns a thousand and one times. I’ve studied the depictions of the angel and
the demon on his neck, just below either ear. The three saints getting high on his right
arm aren’t new to me. The snake coiled around his other arm. The intricately drawn
mandalas, and sacred geometry all across his chest. The crucifix above his right hip.
Every little scrap of ink on his torso is familiar, each piece pulling at my attention,
begging me to stare…
“Why’s your face so red?” Pax growls. “You run here or something?”
“No. I came in the car.”
“Cool. Well. Thanks for stopping by but I’m kind of busy.” He goes to close his
bedroom door. Actually does close it. I note the dressing taped to his back and over his
hip as he turns, squirreling away that detail. I’m not upset by his coldness, or by the way
he dismissed me. Best of all, I’m not even remotely embarrassed that I came here. I
wasn’t tongue tied in front of him at all.
Wow. Well, isn’t that a development.
Smiling to myself, I turn and head back down the stairs, back the way I came. I hit the
sixth step when Pax’s bedroom door swings open and he appears again, this time with a
vape pen in his hand. A cloud of smoke trickles down his nose, curling around his face.
Through the thickness of it, his eyes are intense, liquid as mercury. “Seriously, Chase.
What the fuck are you doing here? I have to know.”
“I just wanted to check something.”
He holds a hand up in the air. “And? What the fuck did you have to drive over here to
check?”
I contemplate a lie. I think I’d get away with lying to him now. He’d never be able to
tell. But this strange new courage in my chest urges me to tell him the truth. What would
be the harm in that now? “I wanted to see if I was still afraid of you,” I say. The
confession comes out easily. A couple of weeks ago, I’d never have been able to say this
to him. Never. I’d have been too petrified of facing him to manage actual, intelligible
words, but today I don’t seem to be having any trouble at all. This moment, right here,
might just be the most liberating, freeing moment of my entire life.
I am no longer afraid of Pax Davis. I realized that when I convinced him to kiss me
back in the hospital.
Am I still insanely attracted to him?
 Absolutely.
Am I still replaying that drunken night in the forest, when I almost fucked him, every
single time I close my eyes?
Hell yeah, I am.
But I can bear my attraction to him now. Those memories don’t make me want to run
and hide in a dark closet, whimpering into the crook of my own elbow anymore. I can
exist alongside them quite happily, and that feels like freedom to me.
Pax watches me for a second, then draws on his vape pen. He laughs as he blows out
another cloud of smoke, pointing the pen at me. “I take it by the naïve smile on your
face, you’ve decided that you’re not.”
“I have.”
Something cold and hard flashes in his eyes. Something not particularly friendly.
“Alright, Firebrand. You’d better be on your way, before I decide to test your theory.”
His words have no effect on me whatsoever. None.
Holy fucking shit.
Before, I would have cowered at the implications of his tone. Standing on the stairs
today, I’m nothing but calm. I’d go so far as to say I’m almost…entertained? My
confidence spills out of me when I say, “You could try, but I’m pretty sure my fear of you
has been permanently cured, Pax Davis.”
The words leave my mouth, and that toying look on Pax’s face evolves; his expression
loses its playfulness, sharpening until his smile is a weapon. A knife. A cutting blade with
an edge so sharp it could draw blood. “All right, then. If you’re so sure.” He hits the pen
again, turning his back to me and heading back inside his room.
This time, he doesn’t close the door behind him.
Uhh…
I glance down the stairs, toward the lower levels of Riot House. Then back up at Pax’s
open bedroom door. What the hell am I supposed to do now? Am I supposed to just
leave? Or…am I supposed to follow him into his bedroom? And to what end, once I have
followed him? Just because I’m not afraid of him anymore doesn’t mean that I’m immune
to general boy-related nerves. I’m also not impervious to the butterflies that came to life
in my stomach when Pax first opened the door a couple of minutes ago, and those
butterflies have begun to riot.
Nausea rolls through me like a wave.
Back on the second-floor landing, the heavy metal music Pax was playing before kicks
in again, raging even louder this time.
The door stays open.
Some sort of challenge.
 Some kind of threat?
A combination of both, I’m sure. I try to picture what will happen if I walk through that
bedroom door and my mind short circuits. I’m sober. I can’t imagine having the nerve to
go in there and just hang out with the guy. Am I going to sit on the edge of his bed and
make polite conversation with him while he plays video games? No. There’s just no way…
The music gets louder.
I steel myself, taking a deep breath.
I can do this.
I want to do this.
I’m going to do this.
It’s incredible how easy climbing back up the stairs and crossing the hallway is once
I’ve made my decision. As easy as breathing. I walk through the door, into the bedroom
of the boy I’ve been besotted with since I was fourteen years old, without even
hesitating.
On the other side, I’m greeted by a snap and a brilliant, blinding flash of white light.
“Ahh!”
I can’t see anything. For a second, my retinas are so burned that it’s impossible to
make anything out around the massive white streak across my vision. It gradually
dissipates, though, fading until I can make out Pax standing over by his unmade bed with
a camera gripped in his hands.
“You really see people in candid shots,” he says.
He took a photo of me? I wince, rubbing my eyes. “Generally, it’s polite to warn
someone before nearly blinding them with a flash.”
He laughs a cold, hard laugh. “I’m not polite. I’m never polite.” There’s an interesting,
rough rasp to his voice that has me shivering for some reason. Our eyes meet, and I give
him a disparaging look to mask the sudden wave of nerves that hits me square in the
chest.
“I should have known better, I suppose.”
He says nothing. He watches me as I enter his room properly, taking in everything as
I approach the bed—the large three-seater couch by the window on the far side of the
room. The acoustic guitar hanging on the wall. The heap of clothes on the floor by the
closet. The stacks of records on the shelf by the complicated sound system, and the
battered books on the floor by the side of his bed. Notebooks, scattered everywhere,
some of them open, and illegible handwriting scrawled across the lined pages in black
ink. Now that I’m looking properly, there are photographs everywhere, tacked to the
walls, too. Most of the images are of inanimate objects. Cars. Birds. Ruined buildings.
Some of them are of the forest that surrounds Wolf Hall. Some are of the academy itself,
captured expertly in all its gothic glory. Others, many others, are of Dash and Wren.
The other Riot House boys are everywhere in this room, laughing, sprawled out on
sofas, staring at their laptops, faces lit up in the dark. They’re reading, and working, and
eating, and running, and they look so normal and carefree that for a second I think of
them as real people. I forget the bitter, hostile façade all three of them face out toward
the world. I walk over and study the confusion of images overlapping one another there,
above Pax’s headboard, and they’re really, really beautiful.
The composition. The lighting. The content. It all pieces together so perfectly that
there’s no denying it: his work is art.
“Am I going to end up on your wall, Pax?” I ask.
“No.”
I face him. “Why bother taking the picture then?”
“I have a hard time developing color. You’re practice, Chase. Your hair’s loud as fuck.”
He means this to sting a little, I think. My hair color has been a topic of mockery my
entire life, though. There’s really nothing he can say about it that can make me feel bad.
I shrug, hovering my fingertips half an inch above a picture of him. The only one I can
find on the wall.
Black and white.
It’s of his side and back specifically. He’s facing away from the camera, half his face in
dark, shadowy profile, but mostly turned away, out of sight. The camera is visible, the
reflection of it displayed in the mirror that Pax is standing in front of. The Canon sits on
top of the shelf in front of his record collection, its lens black and ominous like a silent
void, swallowing up the image.
He must have set a timer on it to take the photo. He didn’t want to be in it, clearly. If
he did, he would have faced the lens instead of turning away from it. It’s still a beautiful
image of him, though. Shadows drape over the definition of the muscles in his shoulders
and arm like ink. The light from the window bathes his cheekbone and his hand in light,
casting them in white.
“Don’t,” he says.
“I wasn’t going to touch it.”
“I know. Just…don’t.”
He won’t say it, but he doesn’t like me even looking at this photo, I can tell. I give him
what he wants, moving away from the wall of photos entirely. “So. You had the surgery
then?” I say.
He scowls. “We’re not talking about that.”
“Why? You don’t want anyone knowing that you did something kind for once?”
“It wasn’t kind. It was revenge. You said it yourself, back in the hospital.”
 I leash the smirk that wants to form on my face, but it aches at the corners of my
mouth. “Oh, yeah. I did say that.” I was very high from the pain killers I was on at the
time. My mind had been sharp enough to find a way to make the bone marrow donation
acceptable to Pax, though. If he knew how badly I played him, I doubt I’d be standing
here in his room. He wouldn’t be entertaining my presence at all. “I’m sure you’re a little
relieved that you were able to help your mom, though, right?”
He glares at me—straight through me—a series of tiny muscles flexing in his jaw. He
releases a frustrated blast of air down his nose, nostrils flared, and then lifts the camera
to his face. He snaps off another photo of me, his eyebrows banking together as he
lowers the Canon from his face again.
“Why don’t we talk about why you tried to off yourself instead?” he snaps.
It feels like he just dumped a bucket of ice-cold water over my head. Suddenly,
teasing him over the surgery doesn’t seem like such a good idea anymore. “All right. Fair
point,” I concede. “Those topics are off limits. What are we talking about, then?”
“We’re not talking at all. You’re showing me how I don’t scare the shit out of you.
Walk over to the window.” He jerks the lens of the old camera at me, then to the window
like he’s holding a gun and not a really expensive piece of equipment. He wants to shoot
me, either way. I feel like I’m lining up for a firing squad as I cross his room and position
myself as he commanded me to, in front of the large bay window opposite his bed.
“Now what?” The nervous electric current vibrating under my skin intensifies when he
looks me over, picking me apart with a detached, distant gaze.
“Now you take your clothes off,” he states. Simple, emotionless words that come out
flat, as if he just told me to angle my head a little further to the right. Nothing about him
changes. His expression remains stoic and impassive. His shoulders are relaxed. His eyes
are the same cool, pale grey. But something does change. I can’t put my finger on it.
Can’t pin down what exactly. But Pax is toying with me, and he’s enjoying it immensely.
He’s waiting for me to refuse his demand and run frightened from the room. This is
typical Pax Davis behavior. He knows he’s asking too much, but he asks anyway, to see
which buttons he can press before the other person breaks.
He isn’t a perilous shoreline that I will break against, though. Another version of me
would have shattered into pieces at the mere thought of stripping down in front of him,
but that version of me died on a sidewalk, drenched in blood. It’ll take more than baring
my flesh in front of a Riot House boy to affect me, now.
Pax huffs sardonically; he thinks he’s already won this weird game of chicken, but he
hasn’t. He hasn’t even come close. Without breaking eye contact with him, I take hold of
the bottom of my long-sleeved shirt and I slowly draw it up, over my head.
I toe off my sneakers next, then shimmy my jeans over my hips, sliding them down
my legs without blinking. Pax freezes, still as a corpse, watching me as I slip my bra
straps down over my shoulders, then reach back to unfasten the clasps at the back.
It isn’t dark.
We aren’t in the forest.
I’m sober as a judge, and so is Pax. At least…I think he is.
This is nothing like the night he pinned me up against that tree and nearly slipped
himself inside me. And I face him with a vague sense of pride now, rather than being torn
in two by my sheer panic and how badly I want him.
My bra hits the floor.
My panties join the rest of my clothes.
I don’t care that my underwear doesn’t match. So what if my bra is black and my
panties are pink? It hardly matters now that they’re on the floor. It doesn’t matter that
I’m covered in bruises, either. The tops of my arms are covered in them. My thighs are
mottled with a variety of marks. My ribcage is black and blue; a lot of those bruises, Pax
himself gave to me. I don’t care that my wrists are still bandaged, either.
None of it fucking matters.
I stand with my back to the window, rolling my shoulders back, tilting my head and
raising my chin…and I meet Pax’s blank stare with a burning defiance that originates
somewhere deep down in the very center of me.
I’m naked. I can still feel those butterflies—they have a mind of their own, slamming
around inside my chest—but I can separate myself from them now. My anxiety doesn’t
get the better of me.
In fairness to him, Pax doesn’t even bat an eyelid. He either has an extremely
convincing poker face or he’s so used to women randomly shedding their clothes for him
when he tells them to. Whichever option might be true, I can tell that he does like what
he sees. It’s plain as day. Even though I look like I just went five rounds with a UFC
fighter, Pax is still fascinated by my body. His gaze dips down, lingering over my chest,
and I see his pupils dilate from across the room; they blow out completely when they
roam further down, settling on the spot at the apex of my bruised thighs, between my
legs.
“Didn’t have you pegged as the fully shaved type, Chase.” His voice is rough as
sandpaper.
Okay, so that comment does bring a little color to my cheeks. I keep my cool, though.
“I’m sure there are plenty of things about me that you have incorrectly pegged.”
Pax arches an eyebrow at this. “Perhaps. Admittedly, you here, naked, does seem
very un-Chase-like. Then again, I don’t think I was wrong about you. I think, perhaps,
that you’ve changed.” Before I can confirm his suspicions, he lifts the camera and fires off
another shot, capturing another photo.
Surprise shakes me. He just took a photo of me. Naked. That surprise quickly fades
away, though. He takes a step closer, holding the camera up in one hand. “Well?” he
says. “Aren’t you gonna tell me to delete that?”
“How can I?” I resist the urge to cover my breasts with my arms. That will make me
look weak, and I don’t want to appear that way to him. “That camera isn’t digital. And I’m
sure you’re not going to ruin every shot on the roll by opening the back and bleaching the
film.”
What is that look he’s wearing? I’ve never seen it on him before. “I’m surprised you
noticed,” he says. “And no. I’m not gonna do that. Go sit on top of the chest of drawers
over there.”
Oh, god. This is not what I pictured happening when I decided to show up at Riot
House. I’m intrigued by my own new-found bravery, though, and there’s no way I can just
walk out of here now. So I do it. The smooth, polished wood is cool against my skin as I
boost myself up to perch on the very edge of the chest of drawers.
A brief flicker of approval flashes in Pax’s eyes. He waits for me to be settled on the
chest of drawers and then he prowls forward, the very picture of a predator hunting its
prey.
His sweatpants are scandalously low on his hips. Low enough that I can tell he’s not
wearing any underwear. But I already knew that he wasn’t, didn’t I? I’ve been pretending
not to notice the growing bulge in his pants, but there’s no denying it anymore because I
can see the outline of his dick. See it. Like, the detailed outline, and the fucking head of
it, and it’s getting bigger by the passing second.
Shit.
He’s literally the hottest thing I have ever seen. His head looks freshly shaved. He
smells like rain and stormy summer nights. His features are so fiercely masculine, his
cheekbones proud, his jawline so sharp you could cut yourself on it, and I can’t look
away. I’ve never been able to look away from him. This lingering obsession I’ve had with
him has been my blessing and my curse. The sweetest heaven and the bitterest hell.
He smiles, his lips parting suggestively, and a violent tremor runs the length of my
body. Why is a smile like that so dangerous? Does he know he can end entire civilizations
with that cruel mouth of his? “Okay, Firebrand. Open your legs for me.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a camera in my hand and you’re my muse. What’s the big deal?”
Has he done this before with other girls from the academy? Is there a stack of photos
in a drawer somewhere, from other muses who happily spread their legs for him? I’d ask,
but honestly, I don’t want to know the answer to that question.
 “What are you gonna do with these photos if I do?” I ask.
He looks positively evil. “Does it matter? If you’re not afraid of me, why would you be
afraid of what I might do with some photos?”
Such a backwards argument. Of course I should be afraid of what he plans on doing
with them. I’d be out of my damn mind not to be concerned. But the worst-case scenario
flashes before my eyes: he posts them around school. Everyone sees them. Principal
Harcourt sees them. She shows them to my father. The Riot House boys have pulled this
shit before. It wouldn’t be completely unimaginable that Pax would make a million copies
of these pictures and plaster them all over Mountain Lakes by tomorrow morning. But…
somehow…I don’t fucking care.
I open my legs.
Pax hisses between his teeth. “Jesus fucking Christ.” He steps back, eyes boring into
the most private area of my body, a strange rush of color creeping up his neck, and I feel
so alive. Even more alive than the time I woke up from the dead to find him panting over
me, covered in my blood, right before he bruised my ribs. “Don’t move,” he growls.
Raising the camera, he holds it to his face and looks through the viewfinder. I’ve never
found myself in this position before; I’m not sure what to do with myself. Hiding myself
seems like a good option, but fuck that. I’ve come this far. I might as well see this thing
through. I look directly down the lens of the camera, refusing to even blink.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
The sound of the shutter snapping open and closed can be heard even over the
thrashing heavy metal. He fires off another three shots, stepping closer, and then
dropping into a crouch to get another shot at a lower angle.
And then he does something that will be burned into my memory until the end of
fucking days: He puts down the camera. Then, he steps into me, right in between my
legs, places his palms on my thighs, trailing them inward, and pushes my legs open as far
as they’ll go. My heart races away from me as he bows his head, ducking the tiniest bit,
purses his lips, and releases a trail of saliva from his mouth…that lands right on my
pussy.
He grunts, satisfied, staring down at the spit that he just deposited onto me, where
it’s slowly running down my pussy lips, warm and wet, and…holy fucking shit, what is
happening right now?
He looks up at me from under hooded, half closed eyelids, watching me closely as he
slides his hand up, up, up the inside of my thigh, then presses the pads of his middle and
ring finger against me, rubbing the wetness he left there all over my flesh.
Holy…
…fucking…
 Oh…
…my…
God…
Not content with his work yet, he parts me, pressing his fingers into me, rubbing his
wetness into my wetness…
Fuck. I didn’t even realize I was wet until now.
And I am. I really am.
“Looks like you don’t need any help from me,” Pax rasps out.
Stunned, absolutely staggered by what’s happening, I can only shake my head. I dig
my fingernails into the lip of the chest of drawers when he finds my clit, smirking
wickedly, and begins to rub it.
“Ahhh! Oh my god!”
Pax ducks down even lower, curving himself over me, so much bigger, taller, stronger
than me, until his lips are dangerously close to brushing mine. “You come here to fuck,
Firebrand?” he whispers. “Is that what you did? You think one kiss in a hospital bed
entitles you this?” His hand finds mine. He guides it to his dick, forcing me to take hold of
him, closing my fingers around the rigid, hard length of him.
A startled gasp flies out of my mouth. I touched him at the party, in the forest. I think
I did. Everything from that night is such a blur. There won’t be any forgetting this,
though. My fingers don’t need any further encouragement. I tighten my hold around him,
squeezing hard, and I catch the little shudder that ripples through his body. “That kiss
didn’t earn me anything,” I pant. “But I have a feeling you want to give this to me
anyway.” I dig my nails into him, through the fabric of his sweats, and Pax bares his
teeth. He doesn’t pull my hand away, though.
“Careful, Firebrand. You have any idea what you’re doing?”
Nope. I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. I’ll figure it out if I have to, though. I’ve
been waiting way too long for this. And here, in Pax’s bedroom, with his calloused fingers
probing the most intimate parts of my body, expertly waking me up, making me come
alive…I do feel like I’m alive. I don’t feel like I’m dying. I don’t want to die, and the relief
I feel because of that is insane.
I squeeze harder, and Pax gives me a worryingly pleased open-mouthed smile. “This
is your out, Chase. You know where the door is. If you wanna leave, let go of my cock,
grab your shit and walk out of here right now.”
“No.”
He flicks my top lip with his tongue. “No?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“All right, then.” His hands are on me in a heartbeat. He lifts me from the chest of
drawers, snatching me up into his arms, and my legs have nowhere else to go but around
his waist. My breasts smash up against his chest, and the slick wet heat between my legs
presses up against his rock-hard stomach.
My hair falls in a curtain around his face as he hikes me higher, folding me into his
arms, and he snarls as he tips his head back to claim my mouth. “Kiss me like you fucking
mean it,” he orders. “Kiss me the way you want me to fuck you.”
I react. I’m higher up than him, the way he’s holding onto me, and I bring my mouth
down on his with a desperate need. Nearly four years’ worth of pent-up desire surges out
of me like a tsunami; I force his mouth open and drive my tongue past his lips, and Pax
grunts, maybe a little thrown off by my response. I lick and I taste him, kissing him so
deeply and desperately that it actually takes him a second to catch up.
When he does, he’s an avalanche. A riptide. An unstoppable force of nature that I
can’t reckon with. His right hand digs into my hair, his fingers closing to fist a handful of
my thick waves, and the next thing I know, he’s throwing me down onto the bed, onto my
back, and he’s ripping his sweats down his legs. My ribs are still sore, my chest fucking
screams at the rough treatment, but I don’t care. I barely even notice the pain.
Pax’s cock springs free, standing proud, and my breath catches in my throat. It’s not
the length. Don’t get me wrong, he has a solid six and a half inches to work with. Nothing
to complain about at all. It’s the girth of it that has me swallowing hard. I’ve never seen a
dick this thick before. No way could I close my hand around it properly. No way I’ll be
able to fit it into my mouth, for God’s sake. What the hell am I going to do with it?
Pax is out of breath; his shoulders hitch up and down as he leans against the end of
the bed, resting his thighs against the mattress. “On your front. Right now. I wanna see
your ass.”
My cheeks flame. Heat explodes in my stomach, spreading down between my legs
and rising up the back of my throat. I feel like I’ve just spontaneously combusted and any
second now the bed is going to go up in flames.
Pax gives me an impatient look—he’s not used to waiting for what he wants. I’ve
never just presented my ass to someone for their inspection, though. None of this is
familiar to me. I’m a fish out of water, and it’s taking a monumental effort of will to keep
my shit together right now. Slowly, I roll over onto my stomach. Pax makes a guttural
sound of appreciation when I hop up onto my knees. “You’re being such a good fucking
girl. You wanna make me happy. That’s very good.”
Warmth spreads across my chest at his praise. I’ve never experienced anything like it
before. I want more of that praise. I’ll give him whatever he wants if he’ll lace his voice
with more of that soothing approval. I’ll do whatever he tells me. I’ll degrade and debase
myself in every possible manner if he’ll just—
 “Knees wide. Spread them as far as they’ll go. I wanna see every part of that pretty
little asshole.”
I leap at the command, sucking my bottom lip into my mouth.
“So fucking needy,” Pax purrs. He caresses the curve of my ass in his palm, barely
grazing my flesh with his touch, and I start to tremble. I can’t stop. The more I try to still
myself, the harder I shake.
He grips me hard out of nowhere, both hands closing around my hips, his fingers
digging into my skin, and I let out a surprised gasp.
“The house is empty right now, so I’ll allow that.” His fingers gouge deeper. “If you do
that when one of the boys are home, though, you won’t like the consequences. If you’re
here and I’m fucking you, you’re silent, Chase. You understand?”
I bite down on my lip, holding my breath, nodding quickly. I can be quiet as a church
mouse. He won’t even hear me breathe. In my head, I’m not quiet. I’m the furthest thing
from it. I’m crowing, victorious, practically screaming, because what he just said implies
that this won’t be a one-time thing. It sounds as if he intends for there to be more of this
between us, and that is music to my ears.
He jerks my hips, pulling me back down the bed toward him. His stomach presses
against the backs of my thighs, the head of his erect cock trapped between our bodies,
rubbing firmly against my pussy, and I damn near lose all control. I want to push back
against him, to rub myself against him, rolling my hips, but I’m too overwhelmed by the
intensity of the situation to do anything other than shake.
I jump when I feel wetness between my legs again. I cast a look over my shoulder,
only to witness him run hands over my ass cheeks, spreading them further apart, looking
up at me from under those drawn dark brows again. His eyes are twin flickering silver
flames full of malice as he bows his head and spits again. I try not to move when he
moves his right hand back and begins to rub the pad of his thumb against me, spreading
his saliva all over my ass, and down, down, deep inside the folds of me, over my clit. I
nearly collapse onto the bed, unable to hold myself up, when he slides his thumb inside
of me and slowly begins to fuck me with it. “You on birth control, Chase?”
I try to swallow but my mouth has fallen open and I can’t. “N-Not right now.” I was
before break. I agreed to take it after Mom read some emails I’d sent to a friend back in
California—emails that contained some very racy content about the very man standing in
front of me. I stopped soon after, though. Didn’t seem necessary.
Pax says nothing. He lets go of me, though, and walks around the bed to one of the
small nightstands. Quickly, he opens the top drawer, takes out a small foil packet, and
rips it open with his teeth.
He doesn’t even look down at himself as he rolls the condom onto his erection with
the confident, smooth movements of someone who’s had a lot of practice at this
particular task. Once he’s done, he takes my chin in one hand, grip firm, almost bordering
on painful, and he forces my head back so that I have to look up at him. “If I tell you to
do something, are you gonna do it?” he asks.
“Yes.” No hesitation. No need to even think about it.
He seems pleased. Rather, I think this is what he looks like when he’s pleased. “When
I tell you to move, you move. When I tell you to stay still, you stay still. And when I tell
you to come, Chase, you’d better fucking do it, or there’ll be trouble.”
What kind of consequences? What kind of torture will he inflict upon me if I don’t
comply? The part of my brain that deals in self-preservation wants me to clarify this, but
I’m determined to keep my mouth shut for fear that I’ll say something stupid and he
won’t follow through on this. I need it. I need him, and I’m not going to do anything to
jeopardize whatever’s about to happen.
“I’m gonna fuck you now. Do you consent?” he growls.
Holy hell. That question. It’s hot as hell that he’d ask, but I don’t think he’s trying to
be politically correct. He’s asking because he wants me to understand what I’m getting
into and he’s giving me one more chance to back out before things get wild.
I nod.
“Say the words,” he commands.
“Yes. I consent.”
Quickly his hand slides around to the back of my neck. He holds me in his grasp as he
moves around so that he’s back between my legs again. My heart hammers, adrenalin
flooding my system so fast that I can’t even breathe.
There’s no foreplay. No warning. Pax sinks himself into me with one powerful thrust,
and he shows no mercy.
There’s no pain, but I tense at the surprise of him inside me—the sheer size of him,
filling me up, taking up so much space, the heat and the hardness of him demanding
every scrap of my attention. Pax must feel me tense around him. He slaps my ass hard
enough that I yelp, and then roughly grabs hold of my hip, shaking me a little. “Relax,” he
orders. “Breathe, for fuck’s sake. You’re acting like this is your first time.”
He pauses, then. Sucks in a sharp breath.
“Wait. This better not be your first fucking time.”
I shake my head.
“Chase. Tell me you’ve been fucked before,” he snarls.
“Yes. Yeah, I have. I have. I’m not a virgin.”
“And you want to fuck me now. Right?”
“Yes! Please. Please…”
 He growls at the back of his throat, slowly sliding himself out of me. “Okay, then.
Loosen up. Convince me we’re on the same page.”
“I’m fine, I swear I’m fine. Please. Please don’t stop.” I force the muscles in my legs
and my shoulders to relax. I unclench my jaw. A long, deep breath helps me calm my
soaring pulse. My efforts have their desired effect, because Pax blows a long deep
exhalation down his nose and begins to move.
And, fuck, does it feel good.
He works himself into me slowly at first, but each stroke is deep and forceful all the
same; he drives himself into me up to the hilt, until he can go no further, and the feel of
him moving inside me, rocking his hips against me, his hands on my ass, and my hips…
and then on my breasts, when he curves himself over me, kneeling on the edge of the
bed, and reaches around to knead my flesh, is addictive as hell. Here is the progression
of my addiction, the next step, my first actual taste. I am in so much fucking trouble.
My brain lights up like a completed circuit board when he nuzzles his face into the
crook of my neck and he bites down hard on my shoulder. The pain is a salve that
deadens every other aching, wounded part of me. My entire being is focused on the small
area of my body where his teeth almost break my skin and I burn.
“Fuck, Chase. You’re tight as hell. You feel fucking incredible,” he pants. His breath is
hot in my ear, sending a waterfall of sensation down the back of my neck, prickling over
my buttocks and down the back of my thighs.
A building wall of pressure starts to mount inside me. It feels…oh God, it feels good. I
push back against him, angling my hips, letting my head hang, as Pax picks up speed,
plunging himself into me faster and faster. “That good?” he growls.
“Yes. Fuck, yes.” I can hardly get the words out.
“What about now?” He runs his hand down my side, then slips it in between my legs,
finding and quickly working my clit from the front, and my head damn near explodes at
the contact.
He knows what he’s doing all right. He knows exactly how to touch me, to coax me
toward the edge. I barely need any encouragement at all before I can feel myself
tumbling…
“Good girl. My good little slut. Come for me now. Come all over my dick. Give me what
I want. Shhh. That’s it. That’s it. Good girl.”
He croons into my ear as he fucks me, and I’m helpless. All I can do is buck and writhe
against his cock and his hand as I break into pieces. It’s never felt like this before. My
orgasms have always been shameful, horrible things that I’ve tried to escape. This is
nothing like that, though. This climax is beautiful and staggering and surrendering to it is
a relief. As if a weight I’ve been clinging onto has finally been lifted from my shoulders,
after being strapped to my back for years.
“Ahh! Oh my god. Pax! Pax, I’m coming!”
“Good girl. Harder.” Suddenly, his hand’s locked around my throat, and he’s cutting off
my air supply. “Come harder for me, Chase. Soak my cock.”
He gets what he wants. The surge of wetness feels like a release, a key turning in a
lock and a door swinging open. Something unfurling inside of me and escaping. Pax purrs
his approval into my ear. Instead of slowing now that I’ve come, he quickens his pace. He
straightens up, grabbing me by the hips again and begins to thrust faster and faster,
harder and harder, and I feel the orgasm renewing, resurfacing, building again out of
nowhere.
“Fuck! Pax! You’re gonna make—I’m gonna—oh shit!
I come again. Even harder. The secondary climax is a bomb going off in my head.
Before I can recover from the explosion of sensation that’s just simultaneously detonated
between my legs and inside my head, Pax flips me over onto my back. He grabs me by
my hips and drags me to the very edge of the bed.
In one swift, quick movement, he rips the condom off of his dick and closes his hand
around his raging erection, stroking himself aggressively. His eyes are burning, his jaw
clenched, nostrils flared. I take one look at him in all his raw, savage beauty and I almost
come for a third time on the spot.
“Open your mouth, Chase.” His words are clipped, forced out through clenched teeth.
I open my mouth.
“Stick out your tongue.”
I do.
“Further. As far as it’ll go.”
I do.
“Good.” He locks eyes with me and doesn’t look away. I stare back at him, determined
to witness the moment when he comes. When he does, I watch him mesmerized. His
eyelids shutter, his mouth falling open, and the world stops fucking spinning. He
explodes, and his come erupts over the flat of my tongue, over my chin, my neck…
I expect the taste of musk, and salt, and general unpleasantness, but he hardly tastes
of anything at all. I lie very still, breathing hard down my nose as Pax catches his bottom
lip in between his teeth and uses his fingers to rub his come all over my tongue and my
lips.
“Fuck, Firebrand.” His voice is so hoarse. He seems fascinated by the sight of me,
painted in his semen. I can feel it running down the column of my neck, pooling in the
hollow of my throat. “Close your mouth,” he rasps out. “Fucking swallow me.”
I swallow him, and a look of deep, deep satisfaction spreads across his face. He holds
me by the jaw again, studying me. “There, pretty girl. You like my come?”
I nod. I’d speak, but he’s holding onto me so tightly that his fingers are digging into
my cheeks, forcing my mouth open, and I physically can’t.
“Good. I’m gonna shoot inside your pussy next time. If you show up here again, your
ass better be on birth control,” he grits out. “I won’t fuck you wearing one of those things
again.”
He lets me go and sits back on his heels, observing the mess he’s made of me.
“You want me to come back again?” I ask quietly. Try not to sound fazed by the fact
that I’m lying on top of his bed, naked, still buzzing from the orgasms that he ripped out
of me.
Pax’s eyes harden. “Doesn’t make a difference to me. So long as you do exactly as
you’re told, I’ll fuck the living shit out of you as much as you like. But the second you
wanna talk about this…” His eyes narrow. “The second you bring up any of this shit
outside of this bedroom, we’re fucking done. Understand?”
“I understand.”
“Then we’re good. You can clean yourself up in the bathroom down the hall on your
way out.”
 18

PAX

Worth it.
Chase will never know how fucking painful railing her was, but let me tell you, it was
fucking worth it. I’d swallow glass to sample that perfect little pussy again.
I spend what remains of the break laid up in bed, playing Call Of Duty and eating junk
food. Lord Dashiell Lovett himself graces me with his presence most days. If not him,
then Wren. One of them hangs out with me in the afternoons, playing video games and
not talking about anything, which is appreciated, even if incessant fussing is not. Dash
gripes at me enough to coerce me into the shower every day.
During one of the rare moments I’m alone, I develop the film on the Canon and tack
the photos I took of Chase up on the wall inside my converted closet/makeshift dark
room. I find myself dipping in there at least three times a day to frown at the images,
hands jammed aggressively into my pockets, trying to figure out where the other day
came from.
I know how to fucking read people.
I know for a stone-cold fact that Presley Maria Witton Chase was terrified of me at one
point. I guess I’m kind of remembering that night in the forest, now, too. I’d gotten
sufficiently drunk that I decided it was finally time to screw with her. She’d been
sufficiently drunk that she hadn’t run away from me. She was still petrified of me, though.
I have this vague, hazy recollection of her whimpering, snatching her dress out of my
hands, and then running off into the forest without a backward glance. I had been about
to fuck her. Probably a good thing I didn’t, though. I was so wasted, I would have either
come immediately or gone limp after three pumps.
The photos I took of her are fucking incredible. Her body? Jesus fucking Christ, her
body. She is pure perfection. I had my fill of rail thin supermodels a long time ago. They
have no flesh on their bones. Fucking them actually hurt. Chase has tits. Fucking
spectacular tits. And her ass… I’d weep to lay hands on that ass again.
I would have savored the experience of fucking her a little more under normal
circumstances, but my hip and back had been strobing with fucking pain—I’d almost been
blind with it—and I probably would have passed out if I hadn’t come when I did.
It was still good, though.
So fucking good.
Her pussy was like a glove around me, gripping and gripping when she came. I’ve
thought about that every night when I’ve gotten into bed and stroked my cock, teasing
myself, drawing out the enjoyment, delaying the critical moment when I finally let myself
spill all over my own stomach. Not because I’ve been waiting to see if she’ll show up or
anything. No. I’m not that fucking lame. Sure, I’m open to exploring the rest of Chase’s
hot little holes, but I can live without them. It’s not as if I couldn’t simply walk into
Cosgroves and find something wet and tight to sink my dick into if I really wanted to.
I’m just a masochist like that. Torturing myself with the memory of that quick bout
with Chase will sustain me for weeks and then some.
The Friday before school starts back up, my pain becomes manageable enough that I
drive back to New York and drop my father’s remains back at Meredith’s penthouse. I
come all the way back the same day. By the time we have to go back to school, I’m
actually glad that I have to do something, to go somewhere, and my friends aren’t
watching over me like fussy fucking hens.
I even manage a short run the morning we go back to Wolf Hall. My back and hip feel
fine most of the time. I only experience a lightning bolt of pain a couple of times, but it’s
not bad enough to make me stop. Showered and dressed, I wait in the driver’s seat of the
Charger for Wren and Dash to make an appearance. After fifteen minutes, I lean on the
horn, laughing darkly to myself as the ear-piercingly loud noise shatters the early morning
quiet. The boys finally hurry out of the house and get into the car, bitching loudly about
the din.
On the short ride up the mountain to the academy, everything is back to normal. We
bait each other and rile each other up, pushing as many of each other’s buttons as
possible before we hit the school’s extra-long, narrow driveway. Once we pull up in front
of the grand, gothic masterpiece of a building, everything changes.
Elodie and Carrie are waiting for us at the top of the school’s steps. Both of them.
They look so happy to see my friends that a body-wide shudder travels from the soles of
my feet to the crown of my head. I’ve never seen anything so pathetic in all of my life.
Wren smiles when he gets out of the backseat and Elodie jumps into his arms. Sitting
next to me in the front passenger seat, Dash has the sense not to do or say anything that
might make me puke all over myself…until he gets out of the car and Carrie folds herself
neatly into his arms. He kisses the top of her head, and I have officially had enough. I
vault up the stairs, cursing very loudly, very angrily, keen on putting space between
myself and the vile harpies who have stolen my friends’ hearts.
“Morning, Pax! Great to see you, too!” Elodie shouts after me. Naturally, I feign
deafness. I’ve forgiven the girl for putting me on my ass out in the woods that one time,
but I will never forgive her for what she’s done to our house. Carrie caused the first cracks
to appear in our daily status quo, but it wasn’t until Elodie showed up that the entire
thing was razed to its foundations.
I bail on English.
Great way to kick off our return to school, but better to bear the brunt of an ass-
chewing for missing class than having to sit through an hour of Wrelodie and Cash
swooning all over one another; I just don’t have the stomach for it.
Instead, I head to the labs.
The place is deserted, in total darkness. No students. No Ananya. I wouldn’t have
minded if she was here, though. Ananya Laghari, Wolf Hall’s photography teacher, is
relatively cool, all things considered. She’s an amazing photographer. Honestly, I’m
surprised Harcourt hired her, having seen some of her shots. They’re controversial. Her
commentary on vice, capitalism, and racism doesn’t pull any punches, and Wolf Hall’s
board of directors aren’t exactly known for their liberal political views.
I set to work, developing some film. Some other film, that doesn’t have naked Chase
on it. Once my images have emerged onto the photo paper, I hang them to dry and settle
in for the wait, finally checking my schedule. Next class is Econ. My housemates aren’t in
that class, and neither is Carrie. Elodie is. We don’t speak unless Wren’s around, and even
then I do everything I can to avoid communicating with her. I probably won’t even know
that she’s in the class.
Once the glossy photo paper is dry and set, I pack up all of my gear and make my way
over to my scheduled class. As I hoped, when Elodie arrives, she sits herself on the other
side of the room, closer to the door, and doesn’t even spare me a sideways look.
The class fills up. Students take their seats. Professor Radley shows up, flustered as
usual and with a splat of toothpaste on his tie. And then something wholly weird
happens. The classroom door opens…and in walks Chase.

Her hair is tied back into little space buns on top of her head, and she’s wearing a long-
sleeved maroon sweater and black, torn jeans. Her features are unmistakable to me now:
bright, alert, warm eyes. A fine, perfectly straight nose with the tiniest upturn at the end.
High cheekbones, and an elfin, pointed chin. Her cheeks are flushed red, like she’s been
out in the cold, even though it’s hotter than Satan’s ball sack outside. She’s wearing black
eyeliner, and a gold chain around her neck that hangs over her sweater.
I do a double take, and then a triple take, but reality doesn’t right itself; the girl
remains right where she’s standing, in the doorway of my Econ class, the image of her
solidifying somehow, becoming more and more real even as I try to blink her away.
What the hell is she doing here?
“Ahhh, Presley. Good. Take your seat and let’s get started.”
Chase does sit down. One row ahead of me, one chair over to the right. No one
complains that she’s stealing their friend’s seat. No one reacts to her sitting there at all.
I stare stupidly at Professor Radley, awash with the strange sensation of betrayal. He
isn’t acting surprised at all, and he should be because Presley is not in this class.
I liked when she showed up at Riot House and I fucked her. I like being able to look at
that raw, vulnerable, borderline pornographic photos of her, hanging in my closet. But
now she’s here, in my class?
Professor Radley notices the big white smear of toothpaste on his tie at last and huffs,
dabbing at it ineffectively with a paper napkin. “Uhhh, where did we leave off, guys?” he
mutters. “A Red Vine to the first person who can refresh my memory.”
“Aggregate demand. And…fiscal policy,” Chase says, absently flipping through her
textbook.
She doesn’t stutter. Doesn’t flinch.
I think about launching out of my chair and yelling, “INTRUDER!” at the top of my
lungs. I resist, but the accusation bounces around inside my head like a shotgun blast.
This girl is an intruder. She doesn’t belong here. She’s invading my personal space. She’s
stealing my fucking peace. And she looks so unlike herself. There is definitely something
different about her. I knew there was the other day when she came over, but the change
is highlighted in her now a million-fold. She’s normally so stiff. So quiet. So small. When
she walked into the room just now, she carried herself upright. There was a cool
confidence about her that she didn’t possess before. It’s still there, buzzing around her
like some weird energy field, as she gazes thoughtfully down at her textbook.
She hasn’t even looked in my direction.
On the other side of the room, Elodie Stillwater frowns at the redhead, too. Obviously,
she’s noticed the change in her friend as well and is just as confused as I am.
I bore twin holes into the back of Chase’s head, willing her to turn around and look at
me so I can mouth a series of obscenities at her. She faces the front, unpacking a
notepad and a selection of pens from her bag, as if she can’t feel the furious heat that’s
burning into her skull.
My mind races away from me. Could she seriously not have noticed me just now? Can
she have transferred to my Econ class by accident?
No. Highly unlikely.
No, she’s fucking with me.
This is what I get for saving a girl’s life, not to mention those two bone rattling
orgasms? Fucking unbelievable. Professor Radley begins today’s lesson, droning on about
aggregate demand, and the whole time Chase studiously takes notes. She listens intently
to every word that comes out of the fucker’s mouth. Halfway through class, she even puts
her hand up and answers one of Radley’s questions. She smiles a tiny, secret smile to
herself, bowing her head when he tells her that her answer was not only correct but
insightful.
I am literally dumbfounded by her presence here.
What sane person stalks the person who resuscitated them and enrolls in all of their
classes? I mean…that’s just weird, right? It occurs to me that she might not be sane,
though. After all, what person in their right mind slashes their wrists up and tries to kill
themselves that emphatically? In the very least, she must be all kinds of depressed to
have done what she did. I should have thought about that before I fucked her brains out.
But sitting there, scribbling her notes down in her notebook, so alert and fixed on
what Professor Radley is saying, Chase doesn’t seem depressed. She seems quite content
to have invaded my little bubble and doesn’t appear to be suffering any ill consequence
from the amount of hate I’m sending her way.
“Mr. Davis? Mr. Davis, why are you holding your hand up? I haven’t asked a question.”
“Where did she come from?” I demand.
“I’m sorry? What?”
“Chase.” I point a finger at her, where she’s sitting in the chair two feet away from
me.
Professor Radley rolls his eyes. All of the other students, including Presley, turn to face
me. She looks a little startled now, but her expression’s off. She doesn’t look worried that
I’m about to tell everyone that she’s stalking me. She looks like she’s embarrassed and
doesn’t want any attention drawn to her. Well tough luck, bitch. You don’t get to play
games with me and expect me not to play right fucking back. That is not how this shit
works.
“What do you mean?” the treacherous little witch whispers.
“Don’t you think this is a little desperate? Don’t you think I know what you’re doing?
Why don’t you go back to whichever class you’re supposed to be—”
 “Mr. Davis, I’m aware that you aren’t Wolf Hall’s friendliest student, but this behavior’s
unacceptable. Give Presley a break. She only walked through the door fifteen minutes
ago and you’re already making life difficult. Jesus.” Professor Radley folds his arms over
his chest, shaking his head. I have no particular feelings about the man, one way or
another. He’s never given me any shit, and I’ve been mostly silent during his classes in
return. But this comment from him has me rethinking my whole attitude toward Econ and
him in general.
I stare at him murderously. “She’s not supposed to be here. She’s got no interest in
economics.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Radley looks at me like I’m crazy. “Presley’s
been in this class a hell of a lot longer than you. And her grades are considerably better.
The last time I spoke with Presley, she told me that she has a very real interest in
majoring in Econ at college. Is that still the plan, Presley?”
Last semester, she would have wilted like a hot house flower left out in a snowstorm.
She barely even pales under Professor Radley’s attention today. Her eyes dart from me to
Radley. “Yeah. Well, I’m considering majoring in Econ and English, but…”
She’s always been in this class?
She wants to major in Econ and English? Both of which are my subjects?
How can I not have noticed her here before?
It’s not true. This is some mass conspiracy. It has to be. “I really don’t think she’s—”
Professor Radley cuts me off. “Enough, Pax. I don’t know what kind of diversionary
tactics you’re trying to pull right now, or why you’d even bother, but this nonsense stops
now. You can either sit quietly, pay attention and let me finish the lesson, or I’ll drag you
over to Principal Harcourt’s office and you can spend the remainder of the period with
her. It’s totally up to you.”
Hah! I’d pay good money to see him try and force me out of this classroom. The man’s
as thin as a reed and can’t weigh more than a buck forty soaking wet. If he so much as
thinks about laying a finger on me, I’ll have his face smashed into his precious whiteboard
and his shoulder out of its joint before he can say, ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry, I don’t know what
the hell came over me!’’
Professor Radley’s face turns an off, grey shade, like he can picture the scene I’m
painting in my head with vivid clarity. He looks like he’s already rethinking his threat.
Still. I go easy on the guy. This is his first infraction. “I’ll stay,” I growl. Not an agreement
that I’ll behave myself. More of a fact. Ahead of me, Chase clears her throat, her
attention returning to her textbook like nothing even happened. Four chairs over, sitting
by the door, Elodie Stillwater glowers at me with the ferocity of a thousand burning suns.
She shakes her head, and I know I’m going to hear about this later. I suppose it’s a good
thing I don’t fucking care what she thinks.
The rest of the class drags by; every second feels like a minute, every minute an hour.
I refrain from looking at Chase again, though it takes a monumental effort not to jump
out of my seat, grab her and drag her out of here so I can find out what the fuck she’s
playing at.
As soon as the deep tolling of Wolf Hall’s bell reverberates through the hallway, I grab
my shit, sling it all in my bag, and I head calmly from the room. Chase stays. Chase
waits. She’s waiting for me to disappear and move on to my next class, but I’m not going
anywhere. I slip around the corner and post up against the wall, waiting for her.
Elodie finds me first, and she’s as mad as a cat on a hot tin roof. “What the fuck is
wrong with you, dude? Why do you have to be so vile to everyone you cross paths with?
It must be exhausting.”
I stare over the top of her head, watching the door to Econ like a hawk. “You have no
idea.”
“Can’t you just be nice for once? Can’t you just allow one person some peace, without
targeting them in some vicious game?”
I make eye contact with Wren’s girl. I flare my nostrils, eyes blazing. “I’m not the one
playing games. I’m not targeting her for shit. She’s the one messing with me. Just…fuck
off and mind your business.”
Elodie’s eyes flash. She prods me, hard, in the center of my chest. “You’re acting
crazy. Presley isn’t ‘messing with you.’ She’s scared shitless of you—”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“And even if she was, have you considered that you might deserve it?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
She laughs. “Have you ever thought about all of the people you’ve hurt here, and
wondered if you’re a massive piece of shit because of it?”
This girl. I swear to God, this girl. She has a fucking death wish. I push away from the
wall, looming over her. “I don’t really give a shit about the people I’ve fucked with in the
past, Little E.” I use Wren’s nickname for her in a mocking tone. “I don’t agonize over
every single one of my actions because I’m hoping to win any popularity contests. I do
whatever I like, and fuck what anyone else thinks. That includes you. I do not care what
you think. Now back the fuck off.”
Elodie doesn’t budge an inch, which is kind of commendable, I guess. I go around her,
heading to the doorway of the classroom, but the room is empty now. Not a student in
sight. Only Professor Radley remains, rubbing a little wool brush over the spot on his tie.
He sees me and his lips thin. “Mr. Davis. Something I can help you with?”
“Absolutely not.”
 19

PAX

Wolf Hall’s a drafty, massive old bitch of a place with countless secret alcoves. There’s
only so long a person can hide, however, before they need to go to class. Or go take a
leak. Or buy food. I find her, tucked away in a corner of the dining hall, eating by herself.
I slap my burrito down on the table and sit down on the chair opposite her. She pulls her
tray toward her chest…and away from me. “Sorry. I—uh—” Delicate lines form between
her eyebrows. “Are you all right?”
I lunge for her before she can draw back. Grabbing her by the forearm, I rip back the
long sleeve of her sweater. There, just as I knew it would be, is a thin hospital-grade
gauze dressing, covering her mending wrists. She hisses, ripping her arm free, hurriedly
pulling the sweater sleeve down. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“No. What the fuck are you doing? You think this is funny or something?”
“I’m just trying to eat my lunch.”
“You transferred into Econ.”
“I did not!”
“You’re seriously trying to tell me that you’ve been in that class all along, and I was
just so oblivious that I never noticed you?”
“YES!”
I shake my head. “Not true.”
Two tiny little red spots bloom on Chase’s cheeks. I can’t stop staring at them. “Why?”
she hisses. “Why isn’t it true? Why is it so impossible to believe that we’ve been in the
same class for so long? You’ve never noticed me before, Pax. I’m in nearly all of your
classes. We’ve been living in close proximity of one another for almost four years and I
can count on one hand how many times you’ve looked at me and acknowledged my
existence.”
“That’s so fucking hyperbolic—”
“No! It’s not!” The pitch of her voice climbs higher. “Four years, Pax. Four years!
We’ve eaten in this dining hall together. Walked the same hallways. Sat in the same
classrooms. We’ve breathed the same air, for fuck’s sake, and you’ve hardly noticed my
existence. So no, it’s not a hyperbolic statement. It’s the truth!”
“Jesus. Why are you so mad at me?”
Her eyes double in size. “Really?” She throws down the paper napkin she’s been
holding onto her plate. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
The words Wren said to me in my bedroom echo back to me, making me feel…whoa. I
actually feel a little uncomfortable right now. That hasn’t happened in, well…ever. I cant
my head over to one side, arching an eyebrow at her. “Is this because I didn’t remember
nearly fucking you in the forest? Because whiskey does really bad shit to my—”
“Oh my God, Pax! Just fucking leave me alone!” She rockets out of her chair so fast
that the thing falls back and crashes to the floor with a loud bang. Every single student in
the dining hall stops what they’re doing and spins around to look at her. And me.
Chase stands, rooted to the spot, breathing hard, her chest rising and falling. Looking
up at her, I don’t see the quiet girl who was always hiding anymore. I don’t even see the
blood splattered girl who tried to end her own life. I see something come to life.
Something new, and fierce, and feral. Back this new version of Chase into a corner and
she won’t curl up and die. She’ll claw your fucking face off.
I laugh softly under my breath.
Her hands ball into tight fists at her sides. “What?” she snaps.
I pick up my burrito and slowly stand. “What changed?”
Her jaw works, and works some more, her eyes flashing with tempered steel. She
doesn’t ask me to expand on the question; she already knows what I’m referring to, and
right now she’s figuring out if she wants to justify the question with an answer. Half of
the students in the dining hall turn back to their meals and their conversations, likely
bored. The other half remain glued to the situation, waiting with bated breath to see
what comes of this tense Mexican stand-off.
After too long, Chase’s nostrils flare. “I was falling,” she said. “Always. I was falling,
and the fear of it happening, while it was happening, crushed me.”
“And then?”
She looks me dead in the eye. “I hit rock bottom. There was nowhere else to fall.”
“So now you’re fearless.”
She shakes her head. “No. Now I just don’t care.”
I glare at her, riding out the storm of electricity snapping between us. “I take back
what I said. I don’t want you coming to the house again.”
She gives me the strangest, blankest look. “You sure about that?”
“Yes, I’m sure. You’re a psycho. Why would I wanna screw someone who might hurl
herself out of the bedroom window if I say I don’t wanna fuck her anymore? Better to nip
this in the bud now. What would your friends say if they knew the truth? I’m assuming
you still haven’t told them yet?”
Her face blanks out even harder. I think, no, I know I’ve struck a nerve with her. I see
her detaching even further from the situation. I see the resolve she was speaking with
just now falter and crack a little. I could absolutely scare this girl if I wanted to. I could
make her care about the fall again and she knows it.
“You swore you wouldn’t say anything.”
“And I haven’t. Yet.”
With the fire dwindling in her eyes, she steps away from the table. “You’re the one
who fucked me in the first place, Pax.”
She’s right. I was the one who provoked her into coming into my room. And I was the
one who instigated sex between us. That doesn’t mean she gets to sass me like this. She
doesn’t get to think she’s invincible, just because I resuscitated her and then stuck my
dick in her afterwards. I flare my nostrils, eyes drilling into her as she backs away. “Do
not fucking test me, Chase.”
 20

PAX

“Heard you had a run-in with Presley today.”

Dash is cooking eggs. The kitchen smells like butter, chives, and toast. Somewhere
upstairs, Wren is painting his next masterpiece. I figured, since he fell in love with Elodie
and got all fucking happy on us (or as happy as Wren Jacobi ever gets), his work would
change to reflect the shift in his life. His art is still as turbulent and dark as ever, though.
The moody blues, black, white and greys still slash and swirl together to create what I’ve
always thought to be depictions of the end of the fucking world.
I dig my thumbnail into the side of my index finger, pressing until the pain registers.
“You know me. I could get into a fight with a brick wall.”
Once upon a time, Dash used to concoct the most reprehensible plans to fuck with the
girls at the academy. He could look at a girl across a hallway and make her shrink down
to half her size with nothing more than a cold, assessing glare and a narrowing of his
eyes. As a distant member of the English royal family, he was born with the God-given
ability to look at someone and make them feel worthless. Now that he’s with Carina, after
a long stint of pining and denying his feelings, he doesn’t even have the time to look
anymore. He only sees Mendoza.
Raising his eyebrows, he stirs his eggs; there’s something just plain wrong about Lord
Dashiell Lovett IV being so domesticated. “She pissed you off?” he asks.
“Hell yes, she pissed me off.”
“I assume you’ll be planning on fucking with her until the end of the year, then?” he
says, matter-of-factly.
“Haven’t decided yet.”
Dash nods.
 There’s something judgmental about the nod that makes me want to give him a good
hiding. “Let me guess. You think I should change my ways and be nice to her instead?
Invite her to hang out in the courtyard and make fucking daisy chains together?”
He cracks a grin. “I’m smarter than that, man.”
“But you do think I shouldn’t fuck with her.”
He shrugs. Crossing the kitchen, he pulls some plates out of the cabinet, sets them
down and begins serving up the food he’s made. “I think you’re gonna do whatever you’re
gonna do, and me having an opinion about it won’t change anything. So…” When he turns
around, he sets one of the plates in front of me on the marble kitchen island: scrambled
eggs; thick pancake; candied bacon; buttered toast; avocado. A far better meal than the
average fare we usually pick up from Screamin’ Beans.
“You mean to say,” I say, staring at the food, “that you can cook, and we’ve been
living off top ramen this whole time?”
Dash slaps my shoulder. “Like I said. Not stupid. Being your live-in chef didn’t sound
like a fun gig. Enjoy.”
He carries away two other plates—presumably one for him and one for Wren—
heading for the stairs.
“Hey, dude,” I call after him.
He turns. “Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
The fucker staggers, his back hitting the wall behind him. “Holy shit. Did Pax Davis
just thank me?”
“Pushing your luck, asshole,” I growl.
He laughs all the way up the stairs.

******

Shooting with a DSLR camera is a complicated process but shooting with film is an
entirely different beast altogether. There’s no display to check your work. You can’t just
fire off a dozen shots and make a series of adjustments until you get the lighting and the
mood right. Trial and error with film is a bittersweet process. You have to evaluate the
light by eye. You have to know your camera inside and out, and really use your mind’s
eye to frame out the shot you want first. Only then can you look through the viewfinder,
let out a steady, slow breath, and snap off the trigger.
Once you’ve taken the image, you have to wait until you’ve finished the roll before
you can develop it. And the process of developing the film is a whole separate art form,
too. There are so many steps. So many points during the process where something can
go wrong.
The ritual of shooting and developing film is very calming, though. When I’m shooting,
it’s as if I’m seeing my surroundings properly for the first time. Really taking in the lines
and the structure of things. The beauty. The architecture of a hand, or a face, or a bird,
or a sky. An object or person becomes new, discovered for the very first time, when I look
at it through a viewfinder. Watching an image develop on a piece of photo paper is much
like a window into another reality, emerging right before my eyes. A kind of magic.
I sit on a wheelie stool in the walk-in closet of my bedroom, holding my breath as I
always do, watching the photos I’ve set in the first chemical bath develop. The cemetery
down by the lake appears first—a series of crooked headstones listing drunkenly, leaning
up against one another. A small bird sitting on the oldest, most worn slab of stone. Fog
curls over the tops of the trees in the background—teased out wisps of smoke, breath of
the gods.
The next image to surface is of Wren. I don’t like shooting people I know as a rule. A
contract exists between you and someone you know. There are expectations involved. He
expects me to behave or be a certain way, and I expect the same of him. If Wren were to
look down the lens of my camera, he’d be thinking things about me. Remembering things.
Replaying scenarios, where we interacted, or turning over the things he knows about me
in his head.
I’d be doing the same from the other side of the camera, thinking things, knowing
things about him. I need there to be a disconnect between me and the subject of a
photograph. My role is to witness, not think, and it’s their job to just be.
I am the observer. I want nothing more than to see. Connections complicate things.
Muddy the water. Distort the image. This particular shot, I took…shit, it must be over a
year ago now, though. He was sprawled out on the back seat of the Charger, as usual,
his head thrown back, eyes closed. One arm was resting on the back of the seat, his hand
hanging loosely, fingers curled around an imaginary paintbrush. I remember the moment
perfectly.
We were driving to Boston for the weekend, bored of being stuck up on the mountain.
Dash had run into the store to buy road snacks, and Wren and I had been bickering. He
was frowning at something I’d just said, and when I looked at him in the rearview mirror,
the sunlight had slanted through the rear window of the car in such a way that all of the
dust motes floating on the air were lit and golden, as if they were hovering in a thick
syrup. His features were almost blurred out by the light; only the bridge of his nose and
the crest of his chin had been thrown into highlight by the sun. His dark curls were wild
and crazy, washed in gold.
Before I could stop myself, the camera was already in my hand, I’d already adjusted
the white balance and the aperture, and my finger was hitting the button. I didn’t shoot
straight back at him. I took the picture of the image that I saw—the snapshot of him in
the rearview mirror, the background blurred and washed out, his reflection the only thing
in focus. I remember thinking, in that split second, that I was jealous of him. Not of his
looks, or his confidence, or the way he was so at ease, collapsed across the back seat. I
was jealous of him purely because he wasn’t me.
I’d forgotten all about the image until now but watching the structure of it darken and
take shape—perhaps a little too dark, actually, to be considered a perfect shot—the same
acute pang of envy hits me right in the center of my chest. This is the way of it, isn’t it?
We are observers. We look out at the world and we feel. We want what we don’t have.
To be Wren, to be anyone else for that matter, even for a few short seconds, seems like
it would be such a release. Because, for those brief and fleeting moments, I wouldn’t
have to be me.
A rusting car arrives next, weeds tumbling out of its wheel arches.
A hawk—a red-brown missile arched against a bleached winter sky.
A cop, leaning against the hood of his car in the city, arms folded across his chest. He
looks like he’s about to cry.
A self-portrait begins to appear on the piece of photo in the bath at the end of the
line; I get up from the stool and pull it, dripping, from the plastic tray before the shape of
my face can reveal itself. It’s one of the stupidest things. Some of the world’s best, most
renowned photographers have taken pictures of me. I’ve seen their images splashed all
over billboards and on the front of magazine covers. It reached a point last year that I
couldn’t go anywhere outside of Mountain Lakes without people frowning at me, that
same familiar look on each and every one of their faces. The, ‘I know you, but I can’t
think from where’ look. I am used to seeing myself in photos. But when I take an image
of myself, something changes.
If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. Nietzsche
said that. And that’s what it feels like when I look at a picture I’ve taken of myself.
There’s a wall between me and the camera when I’m doing fashion or studio work. I use
it to defend myself. When I look down the lens of my own camera, there’s no wall.
There’s nothing. There is only a question, one I can’t answer, and I can’t handle seeing it
on my face right now.
I screw the piece of photo paper into a ball, the developer from the wet paper wicking
from my fingers. The scrunched-up image lands in the wastepaper basket. I return to my
stool, the red safelight overhead casting a sinister, bloody glow over my hands and arms.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, alerting me of a text, and then another, and then
another, but I leave it where it is. I still have to wash the paper in the stop baths, and
then in the fixer. They’ll need to be hung after that. All of this takes time.
I sit on the stool, waiting for the alarm on the analogue alarm clock I’ve set to ring.
Five more minutes. Two. One. Thirty seconds. I’m screaming in my head, clawing at the
walls like a caged animal by the time the alarm reaches zero and the bell goes off. I
scramble with the door handle, struggling to turn it properly once, twice, before
wrenching it open on the third attempt.
Sunlight floods through the windows by my bed, illuminating just how fucking messy
things have gotten in here lately. My clothes are everywhere (this is the problem with
using your only closet as a dark room). There are books and shoes scattered all over the
floor. My Xbox controllers, and game cases, and camera equipment, and my notebooks—
everything in chaos. I rub my hands over the top of my head, surveying the destruction
I’ve created, and a roiling anger grumbles in my belly. How the fuck am I supposed to
figure anything out or find anything in this mess?
My cell vibrates against my hip again, reminding me of the messages that came
through just now. I slide the device out of my pocket and check the screen, and a
headache instantly forms, pounding away at my temples. Thum. Thum. THUM!

New Message from Meredith 2

New Message from Hilary

Great. Just what I need right now.

I open the message from Hilary first. My agent rarely hits me up. When she does, it’s
usually important.

Hilary: Huge American Eagle job coming up. They’re interested, but they want
a different look. Wondering if you’ll let your hair grow out.

Oh, Hilary. Hilary, Hilary, Hilary. She’s sitting in her office on the forty-eighth floor of the
Chrysler Building right now, laughing dryly into her fifth coffee of the day. How many
times has she asked me this? I’ve lost fucking count. She knows what my answer’s going
to be. Regardless, she feels she has to ask. She’ll say it’s because she doesn’t want me to
miss out on the opportunity, but her twenty percent commission plays a huge part in her
asking, I’m sure.

Me: NO

She replies right away. Knowing her, she already had her response typed out and waiting.

Hilary: Sure? It’s 35k.

Whew. All right. That is a lot of money. Doesn’t change anything, though. I’m not hurting
for cash. Far from it. I could take a couple of years off and still have more than I need.
But yeah. Damn.

ME: I gave you my answer.

HILARY: Can’t blame a girl for trying. See you at the end of the month.

ME: End of the month?

ILARY: Headshot update and Ralph Lauren shoot. Tell me you didn’t forget.

ME: I didn’t forget.

I so fucking did. I groan at the prospect of heading back into New York, but I’ve already
been paid for this gig, and I like the guy who’s doing this shoot. Plus, I typically walk out
of there with a fuck load of free shit that isn’t even available to buy yet. I can do it in
twenty-four hours: leave Friday night, shoot Saturday, and then head back to the house
as soon as I’m done. The further I am from Meredith, the better.
Speaking of which…
I open her messages, already prepared to be pissed off.

MEREDITH: I don’t know what I ever did to spawn such a cruel child.

MEREDITH: I found your little present. I don’t think I’ve ever been this hurt
before, Pax. Really, what were you thinking?

She’s home, then. No message to tell me that she’s feeling a bit better. No message to
even let me know she received a transplant, or left Mountain Lakes. Nothing remotely
close. No, the only text message she sends through is to let me know that she’s pissed at
me because of something I’ve done. Fair play to her, I thought her reaction to the mess I
made before I left the penthouse would be much more explosive. All things considered,
I’d say she’s taking it pretty well.

ME: He hated small spaces.

MEREDITH: Do you have any idea how much cleaning this is going to require?
You know how I feel about the countertops. You poured HUMAN REMAINS all
over the Carrara marble.

I sure did. Daddy dearest made quite a big pile on the counter by the kitchen sink. I was
surprised by just how much ash there was inside the brass urn Meredith packed away
inside that little black box.

MEREDITH: The AC blew him all over the penthouse. It took me an hour to
figure out where all the dust had come from. I breathed him in, Pax. FOR AN
HOUR.

Ohhhhkay, that’s actually pretty fucked up. I completely spaced. The AC runs on a timer.
Meredith likes the place kept cool and vents that turn on three times a day to pump cold
air into the apartment are fierce as hell. God, my father’s ashes must have spread literally
everywhere. I can imagine just how badly she freaked. I’m almost tempted to apologize.
But then I remember just how fucking terrible a mother she is, and I decide against it.

ME: That’s romantic. Now he’s a part of you. Don’t worry. You’ll shit him out
tomorrow.

A second after I hit send, the phone comes to life in my hand. Her name lights up the
display, flashing urgently. It takes a lot to provoke Meredith into a pique of rage, but I
think I might just have managed it with that last comment. I hit the decline button, which
will only incense her further. And so begins our next war. She’ll call me again and again
over the next few days, growing angrier and angrier. I’ll avoid her like the plague.
Eventually, she’ll call in her shaman to cleanse her and the penthouse, and then she’ll
send me a long, passive aggressive email about how she’s sorry that I’m so broken inside
and I can’t handle my own emotions well enough to interact with the outside world in a
kind manner.
Which I will also ignore.
For now, I’m content in the knowledge that she’s standing in her precious penthouse,
scrubbing the grim patina of my father’s ashes from every surface, cursing the very name
that she gave to me. Karma’s a bitch, Mom.
I’m so pleased with myself that I actually clean my room. My clothes get folded and
put away into drawers. All of the random objects, books, games, and junk that was
scattered all over my floor get either put back where they belong or thrown in the trash.
A lot of it gets thrown in the trash. When I’m done, the polished floorboards are swept
clean. The rug at the foot of my bed has been vacuumed. I can actually see the sofa by
the windows, instead of just a mound of unfolded clean laundry. I put clean sheets on my
bed, feeling equal parts accomplished and frustrated.
I should feel better now. The nagging voice in the back of my head that hasn’t shut up
all day should be quiet, now that my environment is so clean and organized. At least,
that’s what I assumed would happen. Turns out the nagging voice had nothing to do with
the mess in my room; it’s still there, and it won’t shut the fuck up.
Because of the girl.
Chase.
She was the reason why I couldn’t sit still in the dark room.
Every time I shove her out of my head, she slips in through a side door, or cracks a
window and lets herself back in. She’s fucking insidious. I was absolutely vile to her
today. I hurt her, I know I did. I should have walked away from the situation feeling
better about myself, but that’s not what happened, is it? No, I’ve felt all wound up and
contorted inside, and I still fucking do. I thought she’d fade from the forefront of my mind
if I gave her a talking to in public, but I was wrong. And one thing I do not like is being
wrong.
 21

PRES

“I’m not happy about this.” Dad peers up at the academy wearing an unhappy frown. “I
hope you can at least acknowledge how fucked up this is, Presley.”
Being at the house has been pure torture. Most nights, I’ve waited for him to go to
bed and then I’ve crept downstairs to sleep on the couch. He started locking all the doors
and windows, as if he really did expect me to bolt in the middle of the night and make a
run for Germany. I told him in all seriousness that I’d do that because I was desperate,
and I didn’t know what else to say to make him understand how badly I didn’t want to
sleep in the house anymore. I would never have done it. I shouldn’t have even said it, but
yeah. Like I’ve already mentioned. Desperate.
He's been hovering over me ever since I got out of the hospital, trying to cheer me up,
trying to ‘make me feel better,’ but he’s seen how abjectly miserable I’ve been. How I’ve
jumped at every loud sound in the house. How I can’t sit still, can’t relax, can’t eat…
And so he’s caving, under duress, anxious as hell, and letting me move back into the
academy on the proviso that I either see him face-to-face or FaceTime him every day, no
matter what, so he can see with his own two eyes that I’m okay.
I’ve agreed to his rules. And I do feel terrible that I’ve kind of forced his hand like this.
But I already feel less panicked at the prospect of being far, far away from Grandpa’s old
place. So many happy childhood memories, torched and burned to the ground because of
one night. I’ll never be able to step foot back in that place now, without feeling the need
to run. Scream. Hide.
Don’t think about it, Presley.
Don’t think about it.
As a consequence of Dad moving my stuff out of my room at the academy, I’ve lost
my old room on the same floor as Elodie and Carrie to another student who wanted to
move, which really sucks. I’ll now be two floors down from them, on a floor without any of
my close friends, but I don’t mind. My new room is pretty cool, actually. A corner room,
with huge bay windows. Taking my overnight duffel bag from Dad, I loop the strap over
my arm, looking up at him. He’s so tired. It’s not just the huge shadows under his eyes.
It’s the way he’s stooped over, curled in on himself, as if he can barely hold himself up
anymore. I’m responsible for this. He’s suffering because of me. I’m not the only one
who’ll benefit from me being out of that house; he’d never admit it, but Dad’s going to be
better off with me gone, too. At least he'll be able to focus on the restaurant’s
approaching grand opening and not on whether I’m trying to break out of the house.
I pop up onto my tiptoes and kiss him quickly on the cheek. “I’ll call you tonight, I
promise,” I tell him.
“You’d better. You miss one call—”
“I know, I know. I’ll be heading back down the mountain quicker than I can blink. I got
it, Dad.”
His eyes have taken on a glossy, glazed over look. “I love you, kiddo.”
“I love you, too.”
“All right, then.” He sniffs. “Go and kick some ass in class. Show ‘em who’s boss.”
“You know I will.”
As I walk up what’s left of the gravel driveway that leads to the academy’s entrance, I
heave a sigh of relief. I doubt I’ll be kicking ass any time soon. But at least I’ll be able to
breathe.
At the bottom of the steps, I happen to look over to my left, toward Wolf Hall’s tiny
Victorian cemetery and the lake, and there stands Pax. I can’t see his face for the camera
that he’s holding up in front of it, but it’s clearly him—the jerk who made me feel like shit
at lunch yesterday. The guy who promised to deliver more pain and misery with the last
words that he spoke to me.
Turns out he doesn’t just want to take pictures of me when I’m naked; it would seem
I’m fair game when I’m fully dressed, too.
Asshole.

They say redheads are a dying breed. It’s a recessive genetic trait, after all. Even if both
parents have the gene for red hair, statistically only one in four of their children will come
out with red hair. Apart from me, there’s only one other girl at the academy who has said
red hair, and she’s more auburn than red. That makes spotting me in a crowd pretty
fucking easy. I’ve gone all morning without catching sight of a certain, shaved-headed,
belligerent photographer, but my luck can only last so long. After lunch, I catch sight of
Pax walking down the hall at the exact same moment he sees me, and there’s a moment
where we both fire daggers at each other. But then his jaw sets and he powers forward,
coming right for me, forging a path through the sea of students making their way to class.
He doesn’t really need to work hard for that pathway; our classmates part like the Red
Sea for him like he’s Moses himself.
Moses would never have worn a Dillinger Escape Plan t-shirt that emphasized how
broad his shoulders were or ripped black jeans that hung perilously low on his hips, but
still. I duck around him, avoiding a head-on collision, when he pitches up in front of me.
“If you’re going to be a shit again, you can leave me alone,” I say, marching past him.
We don’t have lockers at Wolf Hall—the banks of ugly metal boxes would really spoil
the academy’s gothic chic, and the halls are too narrow besides. We do have sporadically
placed cubbies, randomly slotted into the old building’s alcoves, though. They’re used for
assignment drop-offs. Most teachers prefer us to submit our work electronically on the
academy’s student portal, but there are still a few professors who want us to supply a
physical copy of our work as well. Unfortunately, I have to drop off my latest biology
paper in Dr. Killiman’s cubby right now, or it’s going to be late, and I refuse to drop a
grade just so I can avoid one of Pax Davis’ pissy moods. I stop in front of the cubby and
swing my bag around to the front of my body, focused on finding my paper, but I know
Pax has pulled up, too, and is standing behind me.
“That was your Dad this morning?” he states.
“The one and only Robert Witton.”
“You brought a bag inside. You moved back into the girls’ wing?”
I cast a sharp sidelong glance at him, hands still feeling around inside my bag. “Yeah.
I did.”
God, he’s so close. I can smell him. I can feel the heat wicking off his body. He towers
over me, an inked and bellicose god; it looks like he’s trying to decide if he wants to
smite me or kiss me. His top lip curls upward, his cool eyes flitting away to skip
disinterestedly over the faces of the students who pass us by. “I figured you’d be under
suicide watch,” he says.
My hands still inside my bag. That snide little remark he made about me throwing
myself out of a window yesterday made me feel physically sick. And now this? He
deserves far worse than the withering look I serve up to him. I should kick the bastard in
the balls or something. “Fuck you, Pax.”
A quick grin flashes across his face. He pushes away from the wall where he was
leaning, moving to stand so that he’s right behind me, his chest brushing up against my
back. Bracing one hand against the wall above my head, his breath stirs my hair as he
whispers into my ear, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”
Fact. No question in his voice.
“Just stop, okay. You made yourself perfectly clear yesterday in the dining hall.” A
white-hot shiver rushes from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head. I try to push
away and slip past him, but he’s too quick. He places his other hand against the wall, too,
this time lower, right beside my hip. I’m trapped within the cage of his arms and there’s
nothing I can do about it.
“Did I?”
God, how can I still crave his nearness after how shitty he was to me yesterday? What
kind of crazy am I to still need him, when he made me feel so worthless? His presence is
magnetic. If I’m within five feet of the guy, I can’t help but be drawn into his orbit. And
I’m much, much closer to him than five feet now. His chest isn’t the only thing in contact
with my body. I can feel him pressing up against my butt now, too, the beginnings of an
erection swelling against my ass cheeks, and a bolt of unexpected fury rolls through me.
“Stop, Pax. Just—urgh!” I whir around inside the cage. “Stop.”
He’s deadly serious when he says, “I’m not doing anything.”
“You are! You know exactly what you’re doing, and it isn’t fair. Just…back off, okay?”
Being with him at Riot House the other day helped. He took my mind off all of the
poisonous memories I’ve been shoving down, forcing out of my head. But that only works
when he’s not bringing up what happened all of the time. If being around him makes me
feel even worse, then what’s the fucking point?
He hums in my ear, and the vibration of the air leaving his lungs, passing over his
vocal cords, carries through his chest into mine. I vibrate with him. I hate myself for the
way that makes me feel. “I do want you to come to the house again. Tonight,” he tells
me.
His voice is a hand in a leather glove, tightening around my throat. I can’t breathe
around it, but the pressure of it, the feel of it on my skin…it drives me crazy. I close my
eyes, finally pulling the stapled assignment out of my bag. I drop it quickly into Dr.
Killiman’s cubby, so Pax won’t see how badly I’m trembling. “I’m not gonna do that.”
“You want to,” he purrs.
His dick is getting harder; I can feel it through my shorts. I can’t think. I can’t see
straight. I won’t be able to hold myself upright much longer. “I…don’t.” My whispered
words aren’t fooling anyone. They’re weak. I’m weak. God, this is torture. Around us, I
can feel the watchful eyes of our classmates, spying on what’s happening in the recessed
alcove. We’re almost hidden from the main flow of traffic down the hallway, but almost is
very different from completely. People are watching. This little encounter is going to be
all over the academy by the end of the day.
“You’re a filthy liar, Firebrand. This isn’t the way I want you to be filthy with me. I’d
prefer you to be filthy with your mouth. With your cunt. With that tight little ass of yours.”
His hand rests on my hip. I try not to gasp, but I’m shocked by the contact. I’d never
expect him to touch me in public. The hand slides around the front of my body, resting on
my belly in an almost possessive fashion. His fingers dig into my shirt. “On your knees for
me… Hands tied behind your back… Like a good girl,” he whispers.
Oh shit.
Another rush rips through me—an explosion of sensation and heat that prickles like a
blooming firework. What the hell is he playing at? I can’t figure him out. The intense
desire he’s igniting in me is producing some very noticeable physical effects, though: I’m
so turned on that I can feel how wet I am, between my legs. It’s impossible not to press
my thighs together…
Screwing my eyes shut even tighter, I ask, “Aren’t there a million other girls you could
be fucking with right now?”
I feel him nod behind me. “Yes.”
“Then…why are you doing this? Why bother?”
His fingers find the hem of my shirt and lift it up, slipping beneath the material. He
begins to rub lazy circles right above the button that fastens my shorts. Suggestive,
torturous, dangerous circles, that, applied to my anatomy four inches lower, would have
me whimpering and begging for him to let me come.
“I’m doing it because it’s my prerogative,” he tells me. “Because I like to do it.”
I’m coming apart. The tension in my body is too much to handle. I let my head rock
back. It rests on Pax’s chest, which seems to please him greatly. Using his other hand, he
sweeps my hair over my shoulder, out of the way, and then slowly dips down, grazing the
base of my neck with his mouth. “Fuck, Pax. Please…”
I feel his treacherous smile against my skin. “Fine. Since you asked so nicely, I’ll tell
you the truth. I’m doing it because you’re a parasite, Presley Maria Witton Chase. You’ve
set up shop inside my head and I can’t get rid of you. I tried forcing you out, but you just
won’t leave, so I’m prepared to try another tactic. I’m gonna fuck you out of my system.
And once I’ve accomplished that, I plan on forgetting your obnoxiously long name as
quickly as humanly possible.”
“So this is just a temporary—”
“Very temporary.”
I don’t even bother to finish the sentence. I have the information I need from him
now. He’ll never see me as girlfriend material. He just wants to fuck me until he’s had his
fill of me, and then he’ll disappear from my life. And…isn’t that kind of perfect? We’ll
graduate soon. He’ll keep my mind occupied enough that I’m not thinking about…about
anything else, and then I’ll be at Sarah Lawrence. He’ll be in Boston. The chances of us
running into each other are practically nil.
“You’ll come tonight…” He runs his tongue over my skin, producing a sharp inhalation
out of me. Fuck, that feels so good. The wet heat of his mouth, coupled with those words,
suggests his head between my legs and me screaming out his name. And, holy shit, does
that suggestion sound good right now. But…
My eyes snap open. “No.”
Pax chuckles into my ear. “No?”
“What the hell, Davis?”
I whip around, searching for the source of that voice. Pax merely smirks as he steps
away from me, turning to face the full-blown anger of Carina Mendoza. In her bright
purple overalls and the garishly yellow shirt she’s wearing underneath, she looks far too
bright to pull off furious. But you’d be surprised. She stalks forward, ignoring me, and
stabs Pax right in the solar plexus with her index finger.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she hisses. “No. Wait. Forget it. Whatever
it is you think you’re doing, it stops. Now.”
A gunshot of panic ricochets around the inside of my ribcage. Carrie should not be
talking to Pax like that. I love her so much for wanting to protect me. No matter what she
thinks is going on here, though, she should not come at Pax like that. He will eat her
alive. As if to prove that point, he closes his hand around Carries wrist and physically
removes her finger from his chest. When he drops hold of her, he runs his tongue over his
teeth, regarding her with utter disdain.
“You’re probably thinking that the fact you’re Lovett’s girlfriend buys you some grace
with me, Carina,” he seethes. “And you’d be right. I respect my brother’s decision to date
you. I don’t understand or agree with it, but I respect it because I respect him. The grace
your association with Dashiell buys you is limited, though. You get one opportunity to
disrespect me, and you just cashed it in.” He leans forward, whispering so only she—and
I—can hear him. “Pull that shit again and I’ll rip your fucking finger right off your hand,
you hear me?”
“Go fuck yourself,” Carrie spits.
He grins. “I’m gonna take that as a yes. I’ll see you later, Chase.”
He stalks off down the hallway, casually rubbing a hand over the back of his head as
he goes.
“What the fuck was that about?” Carrie’s tone is a combination of amazement and
horror.
“I don’t know.” The answer’s weak. An obvious lie.
 She looks at me, mouth hanging open. “Why don’t you try that again, and this time try
and remember that I’m not completely blind.”
I try not to shrink in on myself, but it’s difficult to face her horror when I can still feel
how embarrassingly wet my underwear is. “Sorry. I just... It’s Pax.” It’s the only
explanation I can think of that will make any sense to her. She shakes her head, rubbing
at her temple with one hand. “God help you, girl,” she says.
“What, so it’s okay for you to date Dashiell, and for Elodie to date Wren? But I
shouldn’t date Pax?”
Her eyes double in size. “No! if you haven’t noticed, Dash and Wren aren’t pulling the
stunts they used to pull. They’ve changed.”
“No, they haven’t!”
She snaps her mouth shut. Thinks. “All right. Fine. They haven’t changed, but they’ve
modified their behavior for us, which is almost the same. Do you really see Pax Davis
modifying his behavior for you, babe?”
I can’t answer that question. I know him well enough to know that he probably isn’t
even capable of modifying his behavior. But…a part of me doesn’t even care. I don’t need
him to be someone else for me. I need him to be every inch himself if he’s going to make
me forget everything that went down during break. “Look, I…”
Carrie sighs, placing her hands on the tops of my shoulders. “I’d shake you if I thought
it’d do any good,” she says. “Just…for god’s sake, be as careful as you can be, okay? I’d
hate to see you get chewed up and spat out by the likes of that boy.”
She doesn’t have to say it out loud. She knows that’s what’s going to happen, and in
all honesty, I know it will, too. I’m not stupid. But being destroyed by Pax is way better
than being eaten alive by the dark memories that threaten to claim me whenever I’m not
around him.
 22

PAX

She doesn’t show up.

And there I was, so sure she would, too.
“You had a choice. When you decided to live down the hill and not here, you gave up
your rights to wander the academy after hours, Mr. Davis. I don’t know what to tell you.
You have to go.”
I look at Jarvis Reid very closely. There’s no two ways about it: the new English
teacher is hot as fuck. I wanted to screw the shit out of her the first day she showed up
at Wolf Hall, but she turned out to be even more unstable than the last one. She has
cats. Seven of them. She thinks she can communicate with them. Or she thinks they’re
telepathic? Something like that. I’m not sure of the specifics. All I know is that a healthy
dose of crazy can quickly turn a ten into a one, and Ms. Reid is bordering on negative
numbers right now. She’s only been here five minutes but she’s already memorized Wolf
Hall’s code of conduct and student rule book and she lives by the damn thing.
I bounce on the balls of my feet, shoving my hands into my pockets. “Chill, okay. It
isn’t even seven yet. I just want to see a friend.”
She lets out an exasperated breath. “I’ve decided that you can’t call me Jarvis.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you make my name sound like a dirty word, Pax. At the end of the day, I’m
your teacher. We don’t have a personal relationship—”
“Damn right we don’t.”
She huffs. “I was too quick to tell you guys you could use my first name. It’s been
shown that students who refer to their teachers by their first names do not hold them in
high regard, and often do not respect their author—”
 “I don’t conform to hierarchical ideology, Jarvis. I’m a human being. You’re a human
being. We’re equals. I’m not going to bow in deference to you just because you’ve been a
human being longer than I have, and you chose to pursue a path in life whereby you’re
financially rewarded for sharing knowledge with me. That doesn’t make you any better
than me. Respect is earned. Me calling you by your first name has nothing to do with that
in any way.”
She opens her mouth, staring up at me. Closes it. Opens it again. I think she’s having
a hard time figuring out what to say. After a beat, she frowns, shaking her head. “You
know your problem?”
Oh, this should be good. “I wasn’t aware that I had one.”
“You’re smart. Too smart for your own good. And you waste your intellect, because
you’re too busy rebelling against a system that’s trying to help you learn.”
I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it would be to
realize that the system that’s ‘trying to help me’ is actually trying to brainwash me with
behaviors and thought processes that eliminate free thought or choice, so that when they
tell me to jump, I won’t question the command. I’ll just do it. No point explaining this to
Jarvis, though. It’s too late for her. Her synapses are already hardwired in place. She’s
stuck. “There is nothing you can teach me that I can’t learn out of a book or from the
internet,” I tell her. “I don’t have to comply with a system or mold myself into any
particular kind of shape to please someone if I want to learn that way. I’ll be damned if I
do it here, either.”
She sighs wearily, throwing her hands up. “I haven’t had enough coffee to deal with
you right now. Tonight’s my night to play chaperone to you guys. I’m responsible for what
goes on here, and I’m not gonna let you traipse around, doing whatever the hell you like
—”
“I’m not trying to instigate an orgy. I just wanna go up to the fourth floor and say hi to
a friend.”
Her face pales, apart from two small patches of crimson that blossom right over her
cheekbones. Her pupils are twin giant black holes. “That’s…not an appropriate…thing
to…” She shakes her head again. “Look. Who do you want to see? I’ll go and get her, and
the two of you can sit down here with me. I can’t let you up these stairs, though. Boys
aren’t allowed up into the girls’ wing, regardless of the time. This isn’t a co-ed living
arrangement.”
I heave out a sigh, rolling my eyes. “Presley. Maria. Witton. Chase.” Each word is like
a bullet striking me right between the eyes. When will I get to stop saying that
interminable name?
“The redhead?”
 “Yeah. The redhead.”
She eyes me suspiciously. “You made friends with the redhead?”
I give her a tight-lipped smile. “I just said so, didn’t I?”
“Forgive me if I’m having a hard time believing you. You’ve never shown an interest in
being friendly with anyone outside of your roommates. Anyway. Presley’s on the second
floor now, in the old storage room. She isn’t even on the fourth floor. Wait here. I’ll go
find her and ask her if she wants to hang out with y—”
“Hell’s teeth, woman! Forget it. Talking to you is like voluntarily smashing my own
face into a wall!” I turn and head for the exit. Behind me, the English teacher makes a
cute little growly noise that I think is supposed to represent frustration.
“Damn it, Pax! You know you’re not allowed to curse in front of me. I’m supposed to
write you up now. And do not call me woman!”
“Fine. I’ll stick to Jarvis.”
She squawks, extra angry now. I chuckle under my breath as I shove the door open
and head out into the budding dusk. My work here is done. I got the information I came
for, and poor Ms. Reid doesn’t even realize that she’s the one who gave it to me.

The night air sings with crushed pine needles and cooling sap. I hang my clothes over the
lowest branch of a red oak, relishing the kiss of the water vapor misting my bare skin.
Before me, Guinevere’s Waterfall thunders—gallons and gallons of water roaring over the
edge of the slick slab of stone. During the day, the rush of water scatters rainbows into
the air as it descends to the deep plunge pool forty feet below, but tonight, with a thick
bank of clouds blotting out the moon and the stars’ light, the water disappears into
nothingness.
I found this place a few months after I came to Wolf Hall. While Wren was painting,
and Dash was hammering away at his piano, before I picked up my camera, I ventured
out into the thick forest that blankets the mountain we live on and I bonded with it. The
nest of angry vipers, constantly seething and writhing in the pit of my stomach, stilled
when I surrounded myself with the trees. I became still. I learned how to breathe.
Outside of the forest, it’s very hard to remember how. The moment the soles of my shoes
hit dirt here, though, the tension that grips me every other waking hour of the day
releases its hold, and briefly I am free.
I don’t jump very often at night. Even I know how dangerous it is to hurl myself off a
ledge into the void when I can’t even see the body of water below, but I trust myself
enough. I’ve jumped plenty of times during the day, when I’ve gauged how far I need to
launch myself away from the cliff face in order to avoid the outcrop of jagged rocks
below. I stored that information in my muscles a long time ago—the body remembers. It
knows that kind of thing—and I’m very calm as I step back from the cold, smooth edge of
the stone.
I take the run up, and I hurl myself into the dark.
Cold wind rushes over my goose-bumped skin as I fly, first forward and then down as
gravity takes hold and I begin to fall. My stomach drops. I let out a loud whoop, bringing
my legs together, ankles crossed, toes pointed, and then the shock of the cold water hits
me. I knife through the surface, sinking down, down, down, and even with my eyes open
I can see nothing at all. Not even the faintest glimmer of light to lead me back up to the
surface.
I let physics do its work.
The human body floats, especially when its chest cavity has a lung full of air trapped
inside it. Instead of trying to kick my way up, I surrender myself to the crushing cold,
waiting for my body to rise. It goes against every instinct I have, to wait like this. After
the adrenalin of the drop, my body is alive with energy and desperate to move, but I
force it to obey. Slowly, I float to the surface, my lungs prickling with need as I give in
and let myself gulp down a fresh breath of air.
Everything rushes toward and away from me at the same time. That fucking French
girl I screwed in Corsica. The Contessa, listing over in its mooring like a toy boat, slowly
disappearing below the water; my mother, sick and dying; the moment at the hospital,
just before the anesthesia took me, where I wondered if I was actually going to wake up
again. And Presley, her face splattered with her own life blood, so, so fucking beautiful in
her near-death.
I tread water, thrilled by how dark and thick the water is around me, black as oil.
Thrilled, also, by the fact that I have no idea how deep it goes beneath me, or what
might be lurking in the plunge pool’s depths, ready to take a bite out of me.
I'm not worried about potential monsters, crouched beneath the rocks below, waiting
to drown me, though. I'm concerned (not worried. I could never be worried) by Chase. I
make plans. I do weird shit that confuses other people because I have an ulterior motive.
It is not okay for someone like Presley, someone from outside my secure little bubble
here at the academy, to infiltrate my brain and distract me in any way, shape or form. It’s
not okay for her to disobey my wishes, either. I told her to come to the house, and she
didn’t.
For that, there will be consequences.
Gradually, I rise to the surface of the water with a renewed sense of purpose.
The path down into the plunge pool took all of five seconds. The way up takes much
longer. I know the route, though, even without any light to guide me. There's a well-
defined goat track up the side of the cliff-face that's relatively safe to navigate. I clamber
up, my bare feet used to the coarse, rough rock and the slippery sections where slick
moss has claimed the handholds.
I'm dry when I reach the tree where I hung my clothes. Boxers first. Then socks. Then
my t-shirt and jeans. Hunting down my pack of smokes, I light up as I shove my feet into
my sneakers and fasten the laces, and then I sit and listen to the waterfall roar as I drag
and pull, the smoke thick in my lungs, until I hit the filter.
My trip into the thick of the midnight forest has served its purpose; I'm grounded and
focused as I set a course back up toward Wolf Hall. Parts of the trek are steep and rocky,
but I've done this more times than I can count. Even with the odd twinge from my hip, I
set a decent pace, practically running through the trees. It isn't long before the dark,
ominous shape of the academy looms out of the forest, its twin towers with their slate
rooves punching up out of the tree-line, forming a distinctive outline that I’d recognize
anywhere.
The place stands in darkness. Even the lights in the entryway downstairs have been
extinguished, which tells me that Jarvis has probably passed out in the tiny little room off
the main hallway where the night warden sleeps. That room used to be a storage closet
for the English department. Textbooks. Notebooks. Pens. Chalk. Other stationery and
supplies. Then a series of events occurred, shit spiraled out of control, and Harcourt
changed up the way things are done around the school. Now, a member of the faculty
sleeps in a glorified closet during the week in order to 'keep an eye on us,' though how
they're supposed to do that when they're fucking sleeping, I don't have a clue.
They lock the main entrance into the building now, too. As if that would stop any of us
from coming or going if we felt like it. There are a hundred different ways into this old
building, and you don't even need to jimmy a lock or climb under or through anything to
utilize most of them. Tonight, I skirt around the perimeter of the building and let myself
in through the air vent by the student laundry room, careful not to come into contact with
any of the undergrowth that obscures the panel from view. Last time I used this access, I
wound up covered in poison oak, and I am not keen on reliving that bullshit, let me tell
you.
The academy walls observe me silently as I make my way to the other end of the
building, and then up the stairs to the fourth floor of the girl's wing. I pass the first door
on the left, and then the second, and then three more doors. Presley’s is the room on the
end. It used to be full of new mattresses still in the plastic, and furniture that other
students left behind when they graduated or transferred to another school. It must have
been cleared out, though, because Jarvis was very sure of herself when she said that
Chase was in the old storage room.
I could break in; it'd be easy as fuck to pick the lock. I doubt the girl will be very
receptive to that, though, and I want her listening, not hysterically screaming. So, like the
good, polite, friendly young man that I'm not, I knock.
It's one in the morning. There's no light eking out from under the door. Normal people
are asleep at this time, but I get the feeling that Chase will be awake. We're alike, me
and this girl. I look at her now and I feel the same way that I felt this afternoon, looking
at that self-portrait that half developed in my makeshift dark room. I feel like I'm looking
into the void, and people in possession of souls like ours don't sleep easily, I've found.
Not at night. We prefer to sleep during the day, when the darkness can’t seep into our
dreams.
I count out a couple of seconds, then raise my hand, ready to knock again, but then a
soft voice on the other side of the door reaches my ears. “For fuck's sake, Pax. Come in
already.”
Huh. She was expecting me. Of course she was. I enter, and instead of letting myself
look at her, I make a point of inspecting the room first. The window’s open, and a cool
breeze blows back the thin, voile curtains at the window. The gossamer fabric billows,
causing a tiny wind chime with little dangling cut crystals hanging from it to sing
musically. Presley’s room is decked out like a boho witch's apartment.
Books lay in stacks on top of wall mounted shelves. There are potted plants
everywhere; they occupy every available flat surface. Two are even suspended in
macrame hangers from the ceiling by the window. There are posters stuck to the wall
depicting the moon's phases, and evil eyes, and Hamsa hands with weird geometric
designs around them.
A yoga mat is spread out at the foot of the bed. A tiny little table in the corner, on the
other side of a very cluttered desk, has an array of crystals and rocks arranged on it, as
well as a series of candles, which are all lit, their flames guttering in the breeze.
“Go on, then. Say it. Mock me.”
I finally turn my attention to her. Chase sits in the middle of her bed, legs crossed,
fully dressed, her blaze of red hair loose and wavy from the little buns she was wearing
earlier. She shuffles a deck of oversized cards in her hands, her head tipped to one side.
“What should I say?” I ask her. “Oh, you're one of those? A hippy-dippy, new age loser
who probably doesn't shave her legs?”
A tiny smile plays over the corners of her mouth. She sets down her cards and tugs
the leg of her jeans up a couple of inches, revealing smooth skin. “Expertly shaved,” she
says. “The rest?” She holds her hands up. “Guilty as charged. You can sit on that chair. I
won't bite.”
 Oh, that's fucking rich. I show up to her door in the middle of the night, and she thinks
I'm the one who should be worried about biting. Smirking to myself, I walk to the window
instead and look out of it, surprised to find that this room overlooks a small roof, which
belongs to one of the private study rooms downstairs, if I've oriented myself correctly.
“Lucky. You have your own private smoking spot,” I say. “There are guys on the other
side of the academy who'd kill for this room.” I face her, smiling sarcastically. “But let me
guess. You don't smoke.”
She curves a bemused eyebrow at me, pushing herself forward so she can slide off the
edge of the mattress. A second later, she produces a joint from the little nightstand by
the bed. “I prefer to smoke this.” She holds it up, the offer implicit as she passes me,
throws one leg over the windowsill, then the other, and drops down onto the small
rooftop below.
A cloud of weed smoke wafts in through the window, curling up my nose. I stand very
still, watching her as she pulls on the joint and the burning ember at its end flares bright
red. “Come out or close the window. This stuff’s strong. Miriam’s uptight as hell. She
won’t be cool if she smells this coming out from underneath my door.”
“Who the fuck is Miriam?”
“She’s the floor monitor. She private tutored you for six months, sophomore year.”
“Big butt? Glasses?”
“Nope.”
“Whatever.” I huff out a bewildered breath and boost myself out after her, acutely
aware that this is already not going according to plan. I was supposed to confront her.
Make it clear to her that, when I tell her to do something, she’s supposed to do it. But
now that I’m here and I’ve seen her bedroom, I’m beginning to suspect that she’s
infiltrating my brain via fucking witchcraft, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to combat
that. My music tastes and my generally foul demeanor are deceptive; I’m not a master of
the dark arts myself.
Not to mention the fact I’ve barely had chance to say more than five words and she's
already ordering me about and passing me a fucking joint. Seriously. I’m getting whiplash
with this girl. I hit the joint, because fuck it, it's a joint, and it does smell like good shit.
The burn's pleasant, and the high is quick as hell. I'm feeling it before I've even finished
drawing on it a second time. I pass it back to her, holding the smoke in my lungs. I blow
it down my nose, a looseness settling over me, close to the same sensation I felt jumping
into the plunge pool earlier.
Chase wets her lips with a sweep of her tongue, sparing me sideways glance. Once
again it hits me—how different she is. How fucking transformed. This is who she’s always
been, her personality hidden away beneath a cloak of anxiety. Now that cloak has been
ripped from her, she’s finally here, unveiled and frankly fucking fascinating. I hate that. I
absolutely hate the feeling of fascination that tugs at me, urging me to studier her closer.
She—
“You're cool with H, right? Sometimes I like to lace my spliffs.”
I glare at her.
She smirks, taking another drag. Smoke plumes out of her mouth when she talks.
“What? It's not like shooting it. It just deepens the buzz.”
“You're fucking kidding, right?”
“Yes.” The smirk becomes a grin. “I am. But you should see your face. You look like
you're about to have a heart attack.”
Oh, ho ho ho. Not smart. “I was about to wrap my hands around your throat and
throttle the living shit out of you,” I growl.
“Wow.” She spins the joint around and puts the end of it in my mouth, between my
lips, instead of offering it for me to take. I accept it—no sense in wasting good weed—but
a good part of me wants to flick it off into the rose bushes below, just to spite her.
“That's pretty forward. Throttle me? You kissed me first—”
I stare at her in horror. “I didn’t kiss you first. You begged me to do you a favor!”
“You kissed me way before that.”
“What?”
“You did. Right before you nearly cracked my ribs.”
“Are you fucking insane? That wasn’t a kiss. That was mouth-to-mouth. You weren't
breathing.”
“Tomato. Tomahhhto.” She exaggerates the difference between the pronunciations,
trying to drive her erroneous point home. “You say mouth-to-mouth. I say first base. Let's
call a spade a spade.”
I pull savagely on the joint and then send it flipping end over end into the flower beds
below. Chase rests her chin on her fist, watching it disappear into the dark. “Of course.
You’re one of those.” She sighs, and the sound of it is the tip of a feather running all the
way down my bare spine. “A spoiled little brat who throws other people's toys.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “What the hell’s gotten into you? You were all uptight and
pissy this afternoon. Now you’re giving me lip?”
She smiles a little loosely. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s not the first joint I’ve smoked
this evening.”
“You’re baked, then.”
She shakes her head. “Just comfortable. I knew you’d show up eventually.”
“You did, huh?”
“You aren’t the type of guy who takes being stood up well.”
 “Stood—” Holy shit, this girl is infuriating. How did I not know this about her? She
doesn't seem even remotely annoyed by the fact that I just ditched her drugs. She smiles
up at the night sky as if there's something interesting to observe there and not just a
thick mantle of clouds. I crouch down, so that I'm hovering right beside her, and I blow
the smoke I've been holding in my chest—there’s barely any of it left really—right into her
face. It's supposed to be an insult, of course, but quick as lightning Chase grabs the back
of my head and pulls me close, bringing her mouth so that it's an inch away from mine,
and sucks the smoke into her lungs.
Clever bitch.
She stares right at me, smiling, then releases the back of my neck, shrugging as she
blows out. “Next time you wanna shotgun me, give me some warning. A girl needs to
prepare herself mentally if she's gonna be in such close quarters with the infamous Pax
Davis.”
“Fuck you,” I snap. She really is high as fuck. She's playing with me, and she should
know fucking better. She’s on very thin ice. If she were smart, she’d be placing her feet a
little more carefully. “This isn't a social visit, Chase.”
Her eyes grow round, emphasizing the fact that her pupils are larger than they should
be thanks to the weed. She feigns intrigue when she says, “No? What is it then?”
“I came here to explain the rules to you.”
She snorts. Actually snorts. “Rules. Hah! I’m not playing any game that requires rules
with you, Pax. I’m just not. I don’t have time for that shit.”
Beneath my skin, my blood sizzles. “Don’t be catty, Firebrand. It doesn’t suit you. Let’s
not be coy, either. We both know you’ve had a crush on me since the dawn of time. You
can’t deny that you’ve mooned after me and followed me around for years.” The venom
in my voice makes my throat burn. Chase’s beautiful little smirk fades away until it’s
gone.
“Y’know. You’re right,” she murmurs. “I have had a crush on you since our very first
day here. I spent years fawning over you and nursing an aching heart because I wanted
you so bad. But my perspective on life has shifted pretty dramatically of late. I’m seeing
the world in focus for the very first time. You are spiteful and you’re cruel, and you didn’t
deserve a single second of my attention. Yeah, you’re hot. There’s no denying that, but
you’re like…” She thinks. “You’re like the world’s most beautiful apple. Bright, and shiny,
and glossy. Everyone wants to take a bite out of you. But the moment you break the
surface of that appealing exterior, there’s only rot and decay inside. You’re foul, Pax
Davis. The pretty, appealing façade is nowhere near enough to temper the bad taste you
leave in people’s mouths.”
Holy.
 Mother.
Of.
God.
This girl really does want to die. I already knew this—didn't I find her with her life
spilling out of her wrists? But this blatant provocation really draws a line under her
perverse wish to check out of her own existence. Is she wrong? Were any of the things
she just said untrue? They were not. I am rotten to my core, and I’ve always known it.
It’s an irrefutable fact. But for her to just come out and say it like that, to have the nerve
to call me on my shit so simply, without trembling in fear? I don’t care if she’s high out of
her mind. I won’t have it. I won’t let it stand.
Gently, I stroke the back of my fingers over her cheekbone, searching her face. “You
don’t think you’d sink to your knees for me if I didn’t demand it? You don’t think you’d
give yourself to me the second I told you to?”
Her eyelids shutter. At the base of her throat, I catch the flutter of her pulse there,
quickening, betraying her. Still, she swallows, regaining herself, as she says, “I know that
I wouldn’t.”
Lies, lies, lies. I hear the falseness in her unsteady voice. I smile, flashing my teeth at
her—half victory, half threat. “You don't think I'm capable of making your life miserable,
Chase?” I whisper.
I wait for her to quail. Only…she places her hand over my own, capturing it, then turns
it over, holding my palm to her cheek “I'm sure you could try.” She leans into the contact,
closing her eyes. “But that's the thing, Pax. When all a person has ever known is
misery...it's what they come to expect. Soon, they feed on it, because it's the only
sustenance they know. Eventually, their misery becomes their strength. They can endure
so much more than anyone else. You'll be surprised by what I can endure now. And once
the surprise has worn off, you'll see that you're powerless to hurt me. I told you the truth
in the dining hall. There really is nothing left of me to hurt.” She opens her eyes, and the
clarity of her irises cuts me deep. They're beautiful—the color of strong black tea and
dark sage honey. I can't fucking look away.
“I just want to finish up the year and graduate, okay? I don't think that's too much to
ask. Why don’t we just try and navigate the next few months as friends? Y’know. Friends
with benefits.”
“Friends with benefits?” The incredulity in my own tone rattles my bones. “You’re out
of your goddamn mind.”
“The Mountain Lakes Hospital Psych department would agree with you. They think I’m
bat shit.”
I almost laugh. I come so damn close.
 In my palm, her skin feels like silk. She smells like jasmine and fresh, clean cotton.
Her mouth...fuck. I rip both my hand and my eyes away from her face, growling angrily.
“Why the fuck would I want to be friends with you?”
If she’s surprised by my retreat or the disgust coloring my words, she hides it well.
She shifts, hugging her knees to her chest. She then turns her face and rests her head on
the top of her knees, facing me. “Because you’re lonely?” she says.
“I’m not lonely.”
“You’re by yourself all of the time.”
“That’s because I hate everyone.”
She dismisses the comment with a tiny huff of breath. “Even when you’re with Wren
and Dash, you’re alone. I can see it in your eyes. And you don’t hate them.”
“I do actually.”
“Bullshit.”
“I do. I just happen to also love them, so it all cancels out.” Why am I telling her this?
Why am I justifying anything she’s saying with a response? She doesn’t deserve the truth,
and I sure as fuck don’t owe it to her.
Chase laughs softly, stirring the piece of hair that’s fallen across her face. My right
hand twitches, wanting to reach up and sweep it out of the way, but I catch myself before
I can do anything of the sort. “Whatever you say,” she mutters. “I know how you feel,
though. I always felt the same way. Surrounded by people. Engaged. Laughing.
Connected.” She pauses. “But always set apart. Always different. Always on the outside.”
I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t ditched that joint off the roof now. The way she’s
speaking doesn’t brook any argument. She’s speaking facts and she knows she is, and the
whole thing is too raw and too uncomfortable for my liking. Time to make her feel
uncomfortable, I think.
“Fine. You know what? We can be friends. We can be best buds just as soon as you
tell me why you tried to kill yourself.”
Her whole body goes still.
Her breath catches in her throat.
Yeah, that’s what I thought, asshole.
With exaggerated care, she sits up, unfolds herself, and lets her legs hang over the
edge of the roof. “I’m not telling you that,” she says quietly.
“Why not? I thought you were fearless. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of simply explaining
why you did something so fuck—”
Facing forward, eyes piercing the dark, she grips the edge of the roof. “What are your
conditions, Pax? To this whole thing. Tell me what they are, and I’ll give you mine.”
“You don’t get to have conditions.”
 “Just shut up and tell me.”
I can’t remember the last time someone told me to shut up and didn’t earn
themselves a black eye for their audacity. Her bravery is somewhat entertaining, though.
I suppose I’ll let the infraction slide. “Firstly, we are not dating.”
A bark of laughter splits the night air in two. She claps her hand over her mouth,
holding back another one. “I—I didn’t think we were,” she says, chuckling.
Asshole.
“Secondly, you don’t tell Carrie or Stillwater about anything we do together.”
“Why? Are you worried about what they think?”
“I don’t give a shit what they think. I just don’t like them. And it’s none of their fucking
business.”
She pulls a face at that. “Fair enough. They don’t like you either. And I doubt they’ll
want the gory details anyway.”
“Of course they will. They’re both nosy as fuck. Thirdly, like I said in my bedroom, we
don’t talk about this. We don’t need to have any deep-and-meaningfuls about our
emotions, or what we’re thinking about. We don’t even talk about the sex. We meet. We
fuck. We peace out. You good?”
“Oh. I am so good.” She’s trying not to smile. I can’t tell if it’s because she’s wasted
and just naturally fighting off the giggles, or because she thinks I’m being ridiculous.
Whatever the case, this act of insubordination is not okay.
“Are you done?” she asks.
“No, we are not done. Last one. When I tell you to come to the house, you come to
the house.”
She chews on the inside of her cheek. “What if I need to study?”
“You come to the house. Study in the afternoons after class, before dinner. Your
evenings are mine when I want them.”
“Fine. What if…I’m on my period?” She says this like she’s gonna have me stumped.
As if she’s finally got one over on me.
“You. Come. To. The. House.”
“Seriously?”
“I’ve already knelt in a lake of your blood, Chase. I’ve already had it on my tongue. I
don’t fucking care if it comes out of your wrists or your pussy. Ain’t gonna faze me one
bit.”
She looks both horrified and turned on; a warm sensation floods my chest at the sight
of her expression. Oh, she has no idea how fucking dirty I’m gonna get with her. The
depraved, filthy things I have planned for her are going to ruin her for all other men. Her
fucking period isn’t gonna stop me in my tracks. “So? Can you deal with those
conditions?” I demand.
Right away, she answers. “Yes. I’ll adhere to them. But I have two of my own. And
they’re non-negotiable.”
“I already told you. You don’t get conditions.”
“Firstly, you stop being so openly hateful to my friends.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I’m not saying you have to be nice to them. I’m just saying…stop being such a raging
dick to them. And definitely don’t threaten them if they do or say something you don’t
like.”
“I make no promises.”
“Secondly,” she says, carrying on regardless. The small smile that was tugging at the
corners of her mouth fades away. “Secondly, you can never ask me why I tried to kill
myself again. Or bring it up. Or mention it. In public, or in private. Not ever.”
Wow. So that’s why she suddenly wanted to hear my conditions. Because she wanted
to slip this one in and take that topic of conversation off the table for good. Well…I
originally didn’t give a shit why she tried to kill herself. As time has passed I’ve found
myself wondering, though. She just doesn’t seem like the type to try and off herself. She’s
too…stubborn. Still, who the hell am I to demand that kind of personal information from
her. I don’t want to know what kind of baggage she’s carrying around with her. I want to
fuck her repeatedly until I don’t want to fuck her anymore. End of story.
“Fine,” I tell her.
“On both conditions. You have to agree to both.”
“All right. I said fine, didn’t I?”
“Good. Then we have an accord.” She holds out her hand for me to shake.
I look at it with mild disgust. “We’re not at a used car dealership. I’m going to blow
your back out, Chase. That kind of arrangement does not qualify for a fucking
handshake.”
“Yes, it does.” She doesn’t look like she’s going to change her mind.
“Urgh. Whatever.” I shake her hand, rolling my eyes. Once the deal has been made
official in Chase’s eyes, I say, “Right. I’m out of here.”
“You aren’t gonna fuck me tonight, then?”
“Hell no. I’m not putting my dick inside you when you’re high, Chase. Ever. Remember
that when you’re thinking about burning one down before you come and see me. I will
not be happy.”
“What does it matter?”
I enjoy it far too much when I take her by the chin, holding her in place as I look at
her. Her eyes look like warm honey. Her irises are crystal clear…but her focus is not. “I
want you to feel it when I fuck you. I want your mental faculties fully intact when you
agree to all of the messed up shit I’m gonna do to you.”
Her cheeks color. Her breath quickens, lips part beautifully, just begging to be kissed.
And I want to fucking kiss her, which is why I let her go. If I start, I probably won’t stop.
Rather than climb back through her window, I grip the edge of the roof and I lower
myself down the side of the building, hanging there for a second before I let go and drop
down the remaining twelve feet, landing in amongst the rose bushes.
“Very impressive.” I look up and she’s there, peering over the edge of the roof, smiling
at me.
“Oh, I know.”
“I guess I’ll see you in A.P. English, then.”
The taunt nearly stops me dead in my tracks. “Wait. You’re not in A.P. English.”
“Aren’t I?”
God. Is she? Have I just not noticed her there, this whole fucking time? She was in
Econ, after all. Is it possible that I’ve been that checked out for so long?
She says nothing. Just laughs.
I flip her off as I run across the academy's front lawn, but by the time I hit the dirt
road that cuts through the forest—the one that will lead me down the mountain and back
to Riot House—the profound sense of satisfaction I felt at insulting Chase has gone.
 23

PAX

“But what has she actually done?”

I repeatedly bang the back of my skull against Wren's headboard, gritting my teeth. I
realize, all of a sudden that this—his headboard banging against his bedroom wall—is the
source of the rhythmic, irritating noise I've been hearing late at night recently. I grab the
book lying on his bedside table and hurl the thing at his head.
Wren ducks. The book collides with the wall but my friend glowers at me like the
projectile hit its mark. “That is a first edition,” he seethes.
“Good. I hope it's fucking ruined. You've been up here, pounding away on that girl like
a jackhammer, haven't you? Urgh!”
“While 'that girl' is better than the name you used to call Elodie, I’m gonna need you
to use her name from here on out, man. Otherwise, things are gonna get unpleasant
around here.”
You pick your battles with Wren. I take great pride in fucking with Dash. He's a slow
burn. He'll tolerate a lot of poking and prodding before he reaches the point where he's
had enough and clocks you. Conversely, Wren has no grey area. No middle ground. He
has a very sensitive on/off switch. Once it’s flipped, it's notoriously hard to turn back the
other way. Sitting up properly, I roll my shoulders back, closing my eyes. “Fine. Elodie.
You've been up here fucking Elodie night and day.”
“Damn right I have. Has sex wound up on the exhaustive 'Things Pax Hates' list now?
I don't know a single other eighteen-year-old guy who gets laid less than you. Especially
an eighteen-year-old guy who looks like you. Jesus, dude. Go and get your dick wet and
stop getting so fired up over a girl you never even cared existed until now. Soon, none of
this is gonna matter. Once we’ve graduated, you’ll be in Massachusetts, and she’ll be
in…?”
“Who fucking cares where she'll be.”
“Exactly.”
“Only, she'll probably show up in Massachusetts. She'll wind up going to Harvard, too,
dude. Enrolled in the same classes. I'll probably join a frat, and she'll pledge to the same
house, and everyone'll be too scared of getting canceled in today’s climate to tell her she
needs to join a sorority instead.”
Wren directs a contemptuous glance my way. He crosses the room to his closet,
pulling his black t-shirt off over his head. The three of us work out and run every day, but
Wren's filled out quite a bit recently. Must be all the testosterone flooding his system,
now that he’s fucking eleven million times a day. He emerges from his walk-in with
another black t-shirt in his hand. This one has a white print logo that says ‘House
Atreides’ on the front of it. “Have you considered that you might be overreacting a little?”
He shoves the shirt over his head.
“Have you considered that you've completely fucking changed in the last few months,
and that you would have thought it was super fucking suspicious that a girl who has
been, according to you and all of her friends, madly in love with me for the past four
years, has completely changed as a human being and is now everywhere I fucking look?
And won’t get the fuck out of my head?”
He cracks a shit-eating grin. “I think that's the most I've ever heard you say in one
go.”
“Fuck you, man.” I'm growing tired of this. Not too long ago, Wren would have seen
just how fucked up this whole thing is. He would have been leading the charge in the
mission to find out what’s going on with Chase and how to make her leave me alone.
Now that his balls have been clipped, all he seems to wanna do is irritate me.
As if he realizes this himself, he finally sits his ass down in the chair at his desk and
sighs. “All right, Fine. Christ. I'll help you, but only because I don't want to share a house
with your petulant ass. You act like a kid when you're all bent out of shape. You still
haven't told me what she’s actually done.”
“She’s just…there. Every time I turn around, she’s there.”
“And?”
“And when she’s not there, she’s inside my head like some treacherous little worm,
polluting my thoughts.”
Wren frowns. “And that’s her fault…how?”
“How the fuck am I supposed to know! But it certainly has nothing to do with me!”
He looks down, flicking through the book I hurled at him just now, an annoying smirk
twisting his mouth up at one side. “What?” I snarl.
 “Nothing, man. Nothing at all.”
“No, tell me why you’re trying to hide that stupid fucking grin.”
He clears his throat, raising the book a little higher. “ A bastard’s touch, the thought of
you. Aye, a waking curse upon my days, I endure you like sun and rain, and both the heat
and the cold you feel the same. I crawl atop the shattered panes that fell from the
windows of the house you did destroy. And I relish the blood that seeps from me, even as
I hate you, because it flows only through my wretched veins for you.”
I scowl at him with the dark lividity of all of the bruises I’m about to give him. “And
what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
He tosses the book back to me. “The Watchman’s Curse. Read it back.”
“You call that help?”
“It’s all the help you’re getting. Figure it out, dude. I’m outta here. I’m late to meet
Little E.”
 24

PAX

“Mr. Davis! Nice of you to join us. Since you're so late, why don't you come sit at the front
here. Oh, and look. Right next to Presley. That’s perfect, since you were so desperate to
see her last night.”
I rarely question my life choices. I signed up for Advanced Creative Writing because I
like how malleable and powerful words are. You can create and destroy empires with a
few carefully worded sentences. I've always loved this class, even though Jarvis is a total
fucking drag most days. But seeing Chase sitting there on the front row, with her shock of
red hair tied into loose pigtails, her lips painted with a slash of red lipstick and a spark of
laughter in her eyes, I wish I'd never tried my hand at writing. I swear to God, if she
comes after photography next, I will do something drastic and I will not fucking regret
that.
Red and white shirt. Thinner this time. A ball-tee. The sleeves aren’t long enough to
cover her wrists. The dressings are gone, but she’s wearing an oversized rose gold watch
on her left wrist, and a stack of bangles cover her right, doing an excellent job of hiding
her injuries. It's been a while, now, since that night outside the hospital. She's probably
all healed up by this point, but she's still hiding the evidence. I wonder if that means that
she regrets what she did, or if it's just the shame of having such ugly scars forming in
such a visible place.
Shame the whole topic of her attempted suicide is off the table. I can’t seem to stop
growing more and more curious about what she did and why.
She beams at me, tapping the end of her pen against her notebook as I slowly cross
the room and sit down next to her at her table. No single desks in AP Creative Writing.
The students in this class have to share with one of their fellow classmates. I've always
been lucky in that the other nerds in this class find me terrifying, and there were enough
spots to make sure I always get a whole table to myself. Our class has apparently
expanded by one, though—she definitely did transfer into this class—and low and behold,
here I am having to share with Presley.
“Desperate to see me, huh?” Chase mutters under her breath. “I'm flattered.”
“Don't be.”
Jarvis claps her hands together, interlacing her fingers as she grins, taking in her
class. “Okay, now that our personal statements are done—some of you got really creative
with those, by the way—we have officially come to the end of our syllabus. You know
what that means, right?”
“Early parole?” I offer. A man can dream.
She purses her lips, brow furrowing. “There are still four weeks left until graduation,
Mr. Davis, and I wouldn't let you just skip out on this class. Now take out a notebook,
'cause you're stuck with me for the next hour and I want some words out of you.”
“I got two you can have right now,” I tell her. Since we both know what those two
words are, she scowls at me darkly.
“I think you're actually going to like the exercise I have planned for you guys, so why
don't you just get out a pen and paper and be quiet, huh?”
I equip myself with a ballpoint and my battered Moleskin with a loose, vagabond smile
tugging one corner of my mouth up, and Jarvis waits for me to get ready in silence. Once
I'm still and looking up at her like a good little boy, she nods. Continues. “I'm not sure
what your last English teacher would have done with you guys—”
“Probably try to fuck or kill one of us,” Damiana interjects. The blonde, who usually
annoys the shit out of me with her dumb commentary, actually elicits laughter out of me
at this. Her statement wouldn't have been so amusing if it wasn't fucking true. I'm not the
only one who laughs.
“All right. All right. Yes, okay, okay, okay. That was a stupid thing to say. I should
have thought that through a little better. Come on, guys. Let's focus.”
The students settle.
“Thank you. Now. I was going to say. This is a little out of the ordinary, but I thought
it might be cool for you guys. I figured that, with so little of the school year left, there's
just enough time for us to change things up and engage in a fun writing exercise. How
many of you have ever thought about writing a book?”
A couple of people put their hands up. My palm stays glued to the tabletop, even
though I've done more than think about writing a book. I know I'll write one. I already
have the thing started. Eight chapters might not seem like much, but it's a start. Plus, I'm
not in a rush. I don't plan on publishing it for a long time. I might never have it published.
The stubborn part of me has considered slaving away on it, carefully weighing and
measuring every single word, agonizing over sentence structure and story arc, whittling
and reshaping it, polishing it until it shines...and then dumping the manuscript in the
bottom of a drawer somewhere and forgetting about it.
Next to me, Presley draws a circle, then traces over it, and again, and again, pressing
harder each time until she's created a scribbled mess in the top corner of her notebook.
“Sweet. A good amount of you. That's awesome.” Jarvis likes to use 'cool' language,
like sweet and awesome, because it makes her feel more relatable. I'd put money on this
being the case. You don’t need to be a budding armchair psychologist to read Jarvis. She
wants us to like her. She wants to be we our Keating, and we, her Dead Poet's Society.
She wants to impact us to the point that, when we've all become famous writers and
novelists and we're being interviewed about our latest masterpiece, we'll look back and
attribute all of our success to dear Ms. Reid, the special English teacher who touched and
inspired parts of us that would never have been reached otherwise. The only part of me
that Jarvis has ever inspired is my dick. She can touch that if she likes.
“You'll be pleased to know that you guys are all about to write a book. Over the next
four weeks, you and your partner are going to co-write a novella. You can choose the
genre. You can choose whether it's going to be based on a true story, or a new, original
work based on your own ideas that you come up with together. There are literally no
rules to this assignment.”
Good. Fucking. God.
She expects us to write a book, a month before graduation. We're being cut loose so
fucking soon, and she wants us to expend the effort of writing a book now when we're so
close to the finish line? The woman's lost her fucking mind. I look around the class, and
no one else seems to have realized just how absolutely insane this idea of hers is. My
fellow classmates are all looking at each other, chattering at a rate of knots; they have
the audacity to actually appear excited.
I’m surrounded by lunatics.
It hits me like a bolt to the temple, then. I'm sitting next to Chase. Jarvis expects me
to write a fucking book with her.
“Ms. Jarvis? How long does the book have to be?” Alison Boycraft asks.
“Typically, anything over fifty thousand words constitutes a novel. That might sound
like an enormous amount of writing to you, but you'd be surprised how quickly those
words show up on the paper. Plus, you're splitting the work with your partner, so you're
splitting the word count, too. Twenty-five thousand words each over a four-week period is
very manageable, guys.”
“Some people take years to finish a book,” someone else says. James Noble. I've
never liked the fucker—his hair is too perfect—but I find myself warming to him now. He
raises a good point.
“I'm not looking for a perfect manuscript,” Jarvis replies. “It doesn't need to be edited.
It doesn't even need to be proofread. This isn't about writing the world's next bestseller.
It's simply about a beginning, a middle, and an end. This project's about starting
something difficult, seeing it through, and getting to be a little creative with it along the
way. I promise, if you put your heart and soul into this and you work as a team, it's going
to be so much fun.”
I know better than to ask this, but I pose the question anyway. “And if we wanna fly
solo? Can we complete this bullshit assignment on our own?”
Jarvis smiles. “No, Pax, you may not. This is a joint project. I expect both students to
participate and contribute fully and equally. With a writing style as unique and bold as
yours, I'll know if you’re not playing by the rules, too.” She leans her back against the
wall at the front of the classroom, folding her arms across her chest. “What's the matter?
I thought you and Presley were the best of friends. Presley, is that not true?”
Next to me, Chase sets down her pen and shifts in her seat. “Oh, no. Pax and I are
friends. Great friends.” The smile she flashes me could split the world in two; I feel like
I've just been kicked square in the gut. “He just doesn't like to collaborate. He likes to
have everything his own way. Isn't that right?”
I wrap my hands around her throat, and I squeeze. Even in the mental image I paint
in my head, she doesn't react the way she's supposed to, though. She fucking laughs. I
don't say anything in response. I give her a tight, unhappy smile that isn't fooling anyone.
“Well. I suppose you're just gonna have to learn how to be a team player, Pax,” Jarvis
says. “We'll be spending our time in class working on this from here on out. And I'm
expecting at least four hours of your time dedicated to writing outside of class, too. I
suggest you do this in the library if you can. Being together so you can plot and ask each
other questions will really help—”
She prattles on about how this disastrous idea of hers is going to work. I don't pay a
lick of attention. I'm far too busy listing all of the ways I can get out of this bullshit
assignment.
Soon, she sets us to work, telling us to brainstorm the basic premise of our stories as
well as break ground on the story arc. Around us, everyone explodes into action, talking
frantically about what they're going to write. I glare at the pen in my hands, chewing on
the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood. Copper coats my tongue.
“I vote murder mystery,” Presley mutters. “Calvin Klein model travels to Singapore for
a shoot, only to be brutally killed and hacked to pieces in his locked hotel room.”
An underhanded dig about a Calvin Klein model. How fucking clever. “Sounds more
like fantasy to me,” I growl. “You can write whatever you want. I'm not doing this with
you.”
“Jarvis didn't sound like she was giving you much of a choice. I could be way off base
here, but I don’t think she likes you very much.”
“No one likes me very much. That's the whole point. I'm not here to be liked. I'm not
here to creatively castrate myself by working with other people, either. Our writing styles
won't be compatible.” I whirl on her, narrowing my eyes. “Do you even know how to
write, or did you sign up for this just to fuck with me? ’Cause I'm not wasting time writing
with you if you don't have a fucking clue what you're doing.”
“This is advanced creative writing. I had to submit two different pieces before Jarvis
would let me join the class. She described my work as dynamic, with a unique and
mature voice. I know I'm good.”
I curl my top lip. “I can't wait to check out the trite bullshit you fed her to earn a
compliment like that.”
“Great. I'll email it to you.” She grins. “P Davis at Wolf Hall dot E D U, right? First
initial, last name.”
“I was joking,” I hiss. “I don't wanna read your poem about a poor little city girl who
always dreamed of having a pony. I want you to transfer out of this class. This wasn’t
part of the deal.”
Her playful smile dims a little. She shakes her head. “I think I’m gonna stay, actually.
I'm gonna complete this project to the best of my abilities. I always wanted to join this
class and I didn’t. Because I was scared of you. And now that I’m not scared of you—”
“We’ve been over this. You fucking should be.”
She laughs softly. “I’ve aced all of my English assignments. I’ve already been accepted
to Sarah Lawrence. All I want to do is earn some extra credits to make next year as easy
as possible, and then get the hell off this mountain. My signing up for what little is left of
this class has nothing to do with you. Or you and me—”
“There is no you and me.”
She laughs again, louder this time, coupling the sound with a shrug of her left
shoulder. She doesn’t even seem to care that I’m giving her my very best I-will-skin-your-
cat-and-shit-in-your-mailbox glare. “I’m only here for the grade, Pax. Outside of our little
agreement we made last night, I don’t need you to like me. I don’t need you to be nice to
me. I don’t even need you to talk to me.”
“And how the fuck are we supposed to write an entire book together if we’re not
talking to each other?”
She drums her fingers against the top of her textbook, narrowing her eyes at me
slightly. “I’ll pick the genre. I’ll write the first chapter. I’ll hand it off to you at the end of
class and you can just pick it up and run with it.”
“That’ll be a disaster.”
“If you’re half the writer you think you are, it should be easy, no?”
Jesus wept. How can she be this…this…insufferable? “You really think I’d let you pick
the genre and write the first chapter? You’re out of your mind. The first chapter’s the
most important chapter in the book—”
“Debatable.”
“Whatever.” I brush off her casual little smirk. “I am not getting stuck writing a
goddamn romance novel, Chase. No fucking way.”
“Fine then.” She beams. “You pick the genre, and you write the first chapter. I’ll pick
up and run with whatever you concoct without complaint.”
“You're serious. You actually want to do this?”
She bobs her head to one side, smiling as she looks off out of the window. “Well, I'm
sure Alison Boycraft's World of Warcraft fanfiction piece is going to be thrilling, but I get
the feeling that co-writing a project with you might be more my speed,” she says.
She's sure making a lot of assumptions. She has no idea what writing with me would
be like. She's clearly painted some sort of picture in her head that, guaranteed, will not
be even remotely close to reality. I'll make sure of that.
“You can’t complain about any of it, then.”
“I won’t.”
“And I’m not giving you any character breakdowns. We’re not plotting this thing out.”
“Perfect. I don’t work that way, anyway.”
Urgh. She’s being so agreeable. She’s also acting like she’s written fifteen novels
already and has any fucking clue what this process is going to be like. Grumbling, I open
up my laptop. “Fine. I'll write the first chapter right now then. At least that way I won’t
have to actually speak to you for the rest of class.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Two days each per chapter. I don't give a shit what Jarvis says. If you don't keep up,
I'll write it myself and that'll be that. You got it?”
“Loud and clear.”
“And let me be completely transparent. If you try and twist my work into some kind of
garbage, bullshit romance, I will rewrite every single word and erase you from the
project.”
“Don't worry, Davis. I don't do romance.” She's as serious as the grave.
I immediately begin hammering away on my laptop. For the next forty minutes, I
write like the wind. Occasionally, I shoot Chase a sidelong glance; she just sits there at
first, reading a book that she pulled out of her bag, but after a while she rummages
around and pulls something else out of her bag—a small Ziplock, filled with…what the hell
is that? I have to turn my head properly to look at what she’s got in her hands. Takes me
a moment to realize that the Ziplock is full of strands of colorful thread. She takes out red
first, then, orange, then yellow. My fingers slow, the rhythmic tapping against my
keyboard betraying the fact that I’m watching her. She notices and smiles. Fucking
smiles.
I’m not having her sit there, smug as hell, knowing that she’s distracting me. Not.
Fucking. Happening. I renew my focus, lasering in on the words spilling out of me and
appearing on the screen, determined not to give her the satisfaction.
Five minutes before the bell, Chase starts to pack up her stuff. She shoves the book
she was reading, her textbooks, her Ziplock of colored thread, all of it, back into her bag
—which, upon further, very brief inspection, turns out to be a battered military bag. Not
an army surplus kind of deal, either. This bag has been used excessively. I see the name
patch sewn onto the top of it: WITTON, ROBERT, K . It belonged to her father. Must have
done. So she’s a military brat, then, just like Stillwater.
Given that the bell hasn’t actually gone, I keep typing, feigning disinterest in this
small, new detail I’m learning about Chase. However, I have no choice but to stop when
she reaches out and curls her hand around my wrist.
She curls her hand around my wrist.
I stop dead, frozen, rooted to my chair, so taken aback that I all I can do is turn my
head to the right and stare at her, open-mouthed.
She’s touching me.
Why is she touching me?
And why am I so fucking shivery?
“Stay still,” she whispers.
“The fuck are you doing?” I don’t move. I can’t. I’m so shocked by the brass balls of
her that my entire nervous system has shorted out.
“Just relax.” She arches an eyebrow at me in a very Jacobi-esque kind of way, and
that, too, takes me by surprise. There are very few people who can pull off an arched
brow like Wren.
Looking down, her hands work quickly around my wrist. I put two and two together,
but it’s already too late by then. The colorful knotted bracelet has already been tied
firmly before I can wrench my hand away. I glower at her, running her through with an
incredulous stare. “You are out of your fucking mind.”
“You don’t like it? I was going to use blues and greens, but fiery colors seemed more
appropriate.”
“What are we, fourteen-year-old girls? Are you at your first fucking slumber party? Do
I look like I just got my first fucking period?” The questions volley out of my mouth a little
louder than they should. The students sitting at the other tables all cease their inane
chatter and look over at us. Worse, Jarvis looks up from the stack of papers she’s grading
and frowns.
“If you’re planning on kicking off again, Pax, think again. There are three minutes left
of this period and I’ll be damned if I have to march you to see the principal on my time.
Settle down.”
I shoot daggers at the witch, tugging furiously on the bracelet underneath the desk,
dead set on ripping it off my body. Only it won’t fucking come off. “What, did you weld it
on?”
Next to me, Presley chuckles softly. “I knotted it. You’re making it tighter by pulling on
it.”
“What the hell is it?”
“Come on, Pax. You know exactly what it is. It’s a friendship bracelet.”
Friendship bracelet. How does she come out with those words without bursting into
flames? It makes no sense. She shouldn’t be able to utter such blasphemy in front of me
without combusting on the spot. Horrified, I pull even harder on the woven braid around
my wrist, but it just ain’t budging.
“Give me your scissors,” I command.
She laughs. “I don’t have scissors. Why would I? We’re not ten. We don’t cut pictures
out of magazines anymore.”
My cheeks feel really hot. “You know I’m cutting this thing off my body the moment I
lay my hands on something sharp, right?”
Chase makes a show of pouting. She’s acting, but there’s something serious in her
eyes. I see pain there, which doesn’t make sense. I also see a flicker of something else,
too, and that something else looks suspiciously like fear. She should be fucking afraid. I
mean, what the hell was she thinking, tying something as dumb and childish as a
friendship bracelet around my wrist? I’ve ruined lives for lesser crimes. But there’s
something weird about that flash of fear I just saw. Something off. It’s gone too quickly
for me to analyze properly—Chase plasters a very fake looking smile on her face—but I
can still see a hint of it lingering…
“Go ahead, then. Be my guest. I can always make you another one,” she says.
“Why the fuck would you bother?”
Annoying, irritating, asshole of a girl that she is, she shrugs. “I’m a glutton for
punishment.”
The bell shrieks out in the hall, and a wall of sounds erupts around us. Chair legs
scrape against the floor. Someone drops their books, and a rowdy group of nerds cheer.
Jarvis Reid claps her hands like the softball coach she was born to be, trying fruitlessly to
get our attention.
“Remember what I said, guys. Four extra hours of writing between now and our next
class. I want at least three complete chapters by this time next week. Work together in
the library as and when you need to. And feel free to email me, but don’t expect a
response outside of school hours. Despite the rumors, I do have a life, people!”
“Liar,” I snipe.
“Presley, can you actually stay behind for a second? I wanted to speak to you about
something.”
She stiffens next to me, wild-eyed like a doe. “Uh…sure.” She has no idea what Jarvis
could want to talk to her about. If she did, she wouldn’t look so perplexed. The English
teacher probably just wants to give her a run-down of everything we’ve done in this class
since the beginning of the academic year. It’s patently ridiculous to let a student join an
AP program so close to graduation. Presley probably has a fuck ton of work to do now
that she’s chained herself to this program, and not a lot of time to do it in. I don’t think
this has crossed Chase’s mind, though. She’s staring at Jarvis, her eyes shining brightly,
like she’s about to burst into tears.
Everyone files out of the classroom in knots of three and four, talking heatedly about
their projects, arguing over what should happen and who should write what. I get up and
snatch my shit off the desk, nearly boiling over when I catch sight of the stupid fucking
friendship bracelet tied tightly around my wrist again.
“Email me what you got down,” Chase says softly. “I’ll work on it tonight.”
I grunt in response. There are too many weird thoughts bouncing around inside my
head for me to construct an intelligible response. I want to be a dick and fire back some
sort of shitty retort, but all my brain comes up with is the command:
“You’re not working on shit tonight. You’re coming to the house.”
She just blinks.
“Did you hear me?”
She nods.
“Eight-thirty. Come in and straight up the stairs. Do not pass go. Do not collect two
hundred dollars. Say yes if you understand.”
Whatever anxiety gripped her when Jarvis told her to stay back releases her. I watch
her shoulders relax as she looks up at me, eyes clear as refined honey, and then says,
“Yes.”
 25

PAX

I sit in my dark room to finish off the chapter. I have a perfectly good desk, but it seems
only right to shut myself away when I want to create. Both my photography and my
words are personal, private things. It’s safer to open myself and bleed out my art in a
small space like this, controlled, secreted away from the world, where no one can witness
the fucked-up mess that seeps out of me.
I don’t think about the fact that Chase will be reading my words soon. I only think
about the sentence that I’m working on, and then the one that follows, and the one that
comes after that. Soon, the first chapter’s finished. Two and a half thousand words. The
main protagonist is Leo. Twenty-three years old. Murderer. His victims range from
innocent, sweet blondes with pretty smiles to grumpy old men. His motives aren’t clear
until the end of the chapter, when he shares a secret with the reader: his victims are
simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Leo sits at a specific bench on a specific
street, every Tuesday, and he waits, staring at his watch. The moment the watch’s hands
reach 12.27 pm, Leo looks up. Occasionally, he has to wait. The street he sits on is
residential, and sometimes no one comes along for hours. It’s a Tuesday, after all, in the
middle of the day. People are at work, or running errands, or having lunch with their
friends. But Leo is patient. Leo waits. And eventually, someone comes along. They
always come. The first person he sees once the hands on his watch strike 12.27 is
doomed to die.
The chapter ends with Leo panting over the body of the runner he’s just killed, the
stranger’s blood sticky and drying on his skin, and I wonder if I’ve described the gore in
enough detail to fuck with Chase’s head. She’s not squeamish, I don’t think. She didn’t
seem to be grossed out by her own injuries at the hospital.
 I want to horrify her. I wanna creep her out. I want to make her think twice about
doing this stupid writing challenge with me. But reading over what I've written, the
content doesn't seem that bad anymore. Leo’s depraved urge to kill is messed up and
dark, sure. The front row seat I've given the reader seems like it would make most
people uncomfortable, but Chase tried to kill herself, for fuck's sake. How dark is her
mind, to contemplate doing that?
Sighing, I open up a new document and start over. This time, I don't even think about
the words that I'm putting down on the paper. I just write. Horror scales my spine as I
realize which story I'm unleashing onto the world. It’s the dream I used to have as a kid.
A night terror. The words flow out of me, fingers flying across the keyboard, as I describe
the maze I used to find myself trapped in. I note the cold, and the rolling nausea in the
pit of my stomach, and the pounding of my heart in my ears as I run. I paint a vivid,
hopeless picture of my never-ending panic to escape the damp, dark, and shadowy
construct. The looming creatures that lurk around every corner. The fear and the
explosion of adrenalin when one of them captures me and rips a little piece of my soul
away with their jagged claws before I pull myself free from their grasp.
I don't explain that this was once a horror show that plagued me every night. I write it
down like it's the beginning of a story. The main character knows the maze intimately
and knows precisely which turns he needs to take in order to get out. When he rounds a
corner and is faced with one of his demons, he evades it and continues on unscathed. At
the end of the chapter, he sees the mouth of the maze directly ahead of him, fast
approaching as he runs, and then he does something that the childhood version of me
never did: he actually gets out.
This first chapter isn't as long as the introduction to the serial killer story. It's just shy
of two thousand words, but I like the language. I like that, even though the unnamed boy
gets out, the piece is suspenseful and full of dread. And so fucking what if it doesn't scare
Chase? I've given her very little clue as to where she's supposed to take the story from
here. I haven't given her any indication about what kind of story this should be, now that
the guy without a name is safe from danger. Honestly, I'm intrigued to see what direction
she'll take it in next.
I fire it over to her email before I can second guess myself and send the serial killer
chapter instead. I've never told anyone about the dream. Like Theseus, that maze used
to be my own personal hell. I was stalked down its dank, winding pathways every night,
chased and captured by hellish monsters, each of which were more terrifying than the
last. They would always catch me. They would steal a piece of me and swallow it down,
eating away at me night after night.
They did it until there was nothing of me left.
Then, and only then, did the night terrors stop.
 26

PRES

“He didn’t do it to upset you. He was just looking after your best interests. It’s best that
we’re aware of this kind of thing, Presley. We can’t give you the help you need if we have
no idea that you’re struggling.”
I’d looked Jarvis dead in the eye and grimaced. “I’m not struggling. I’m fine. The
whole thing was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt myself like that. I don’t even cut
myself normally. I just…I had one bad night, and I wanted a release. That bad day ended
weeks ago and I’m totally fine now. You don’t…you don’t need to baby me. I’m totally
fine, I promise.”
My promise wasn’t worth shit with Jarvis, though. I could tell. She was dubious at
best, and thought I was an outright liar at worst. Her expression had said it all.
“Even so. I’ll pop by later, around eight, before you should be getting ready for bed.
It’ll be quick. I’ll just see how you’re doing and if you need anything, and that’ll be that.
I’ll know I’ve done my duty. I can confirm with your dad that you’re okay, and everyone
will be happy.”
“No, they won’t. I won’t be happy. I’ll be seriously pissed that my privacy is being
invaded, yet again.”
She’d given me a sorry look, like she sympathized but there wasn’t really much she
could do, under the circumstances. “I’m sure it’ll only be for a week or so. Once your dad’s
gotten used to you being back here, this kind of thing won’t be necessary. Just give him
time to get used to it and everything will be fine, Presley. In the meantime, I’ll see you at
eight, okay?”
And she’d come by my bedroom at eight, just as promised. I’d borne the humiliation of
her stepping into my room, surreptitiously glancing around, probably looking for sharp
objects that don’t belong in the room of a teenager who was recently admitted into
hospital with slit wrists. She’d made polite conversation for ten minutes, awkwardly asked
me if I was planning on going to sleep soon, to which I replied of course, look, I’m in my
PJs, and then she’d left.
Took me ten minutes to get changed, throw on a little eyeliner, mascara, lip gloss,
and then I was clambering out on my window and onto the roof. Losing my room on the
same floor as Carrie and Elodie was a blow, but now that I have cause to sneak out of
the academy, I’m suddenly not too mad anymore. The drop from the roof outside my
bedroom window is manageable. I barely even register the dart of pain in my ankles
when I land. Still, I make a mental note to myself that I need to bend my knees more
when I let myself drop in future. Then I’m away.
It’s too dangerous to skirt around the building and grab the car Dad left for me—I’ll
definitely get busted if I do that—so I flit across the front lawn, clinging to the shadows,
until I reach the end of the building, and then I duck down low, racing for a bank of trees.
I’m not seen.
No one comes tearing out of the academy, screaming at me to get back inside.
I’m in the wind, and the freedom that hits me with that knowledge is a heady and
powerful thing. Once I can no longer see Wolf Hall, I emerge from the trees and opt for
the road instead, walking alongside the blacktop, the night singing all around me. The
roar from the cicadas is almost deafening in my ears as I hurry down the mountain. When
I reach Riot House’s front door, it’s eight-forty-five and I’m sticky with sweat. My hair is
plastered to the back of my neck, and I do not feel as fresh as I did when I jumped out of
my bedroom window.
Pax was very clear about what I should do when I got to the house. He said come in
and go straight to his room, which is a far better option than knocking: I don’t want to
deal with the indignity of Wren or Dash answering the door, that’s for sure. But I half
expect the front door to be locked when I place my palm against the warmed metal
handle and depress the latch.
It isn’t locked. It isn’t even properly closed, now that I’m up this close. It’s held ajar by
a tiny ceramic bird, wedged between the door and the frame. Weird. When I pick it up, I
see that it’s actually covered in a spiderweb of tiny cracks, the fissures in its surface
painted gold. It’s beautiful. There’s something vaguely familiar about it…
When I push the door open and step inside, I come face-to-face with someone I was
not expecting to see here tonight.
Elodie.
My friend stands in the hallway, wearing the shortest skirt imaginable, her dark hair
tied back into Harlequin-style pig tails. Her t-shirt is utterly see-thru. When she sees me,
her face turns bright red. “Pres? Wai—wha—what are you doing here?”
I’m a horrible liar. Truly horrible. Or…I guess I used to be? Without missing a beat, I
say, “Pax and I are working on a project. We’re studying.”
No sense in asking her what she’s doing here. I’d say that was pretty obvious. She
doesn’t look like she buys my explanation at all, but she’s far too embarrassed that her
nipples are visible through her shirt to question me at length. “Oh. Oh, cool.” She casually
folds her arms over her chest, covering herself. “Well. I hope he’s not gonna be an
asshole,” she mutters.
I shrug. “When isn’t he?”
“That is very true. I, uhh…I’m just waiting for Wren. He dipped out to get some—”
“Ice cream,” a voice behind me says. It’s Wren, of course, holding a brown paper bag
of groceries in his arms. I didn’t even hear him pull up. He slips through the doorway,
kicking it closed behind himself, effortlessly relieving me of the little ceramic bird as he
passes me and heads across the foyer. Dressed head-to-toe in black, his hair wet, flicking
into his eyes, he drops a kiss on the top of Elodie’s head, placing the little bird into her
hands. She looks up at him, suddenly no longer embarrassed. I’m the one who’s
embarrassed, in fact, as they trade a long look at each other, staring into each other’s
eyes. A lot passes through them in that look. Whole civilizations rise and fall, and
universes crumble to ash in the time that passes while they silently smile at each other. I
feel wrong just witnessing the intensity of it.
Wren’s the one to break the moment. He gently runs the pad of one thumb over
Elodie’s cheekbone; the action couldn’t be any more intimate if he’d lifted up her skirt and
thrust himself inside of her. He doesn’t make a single comment about me being here as
he heads into the kitchen with his bag of groceries. Doesn’t even look back at me. Elodie
does, though. Her cheeks are flushed bright red, eyes dancing.
“I—” She shakes her head, screwing her eyes closed, laughing breathlessly. “Sorry. I
knew Dash was out. Pax doesn’t come out of his room very often. I…I figured I was safe.
I’ll let you go up and get on with your assignment, I guess.”
“Yeah. No worries.” I head for the stairs.
“The library. Tomorrow,” Elodie calls after me. “You, me, and Carrie. We’re gonna
study. We’ve all been so distracted, we’ve hardly spent any time together. What do you
say?”
“I say yes.” I give her a smile over my shoulder, warmed by the idea of spending the
afternoon with my friends. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but when you’re trapped at
the same school, at the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, that’s an age to not
spend any time with your friends. This little bit of distance between us all has worked in
my favor, though. If Elodie and Carina weren’t so wrapped up in their boyfriends, they
might have noticed just how pale and distracted I’ve been. They might have noticed the
bandages. They might have started asking unwelcome questions…
Above me, a swell of loud, thrashing music erupts as a door opens and Pax leans out
over the side of the bannister. He’s shirtless, tattoos blacker than black, taking up most of
his skin. The look on his face is ominous to say the least. “You’re late.”
I glance back down the stairs, and Elodie has gone.
A pop of brilliant white light bleaches the walls. Pax took another photo of me? Sure
enough, the body of his Canon is in his hand when I look back up at him. “I said eight-
thirty. It’s nearly nine.” His brows are drawn together, eyes narrowed, his jaw set. Even
with a shitty expression on his face, he’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. My
pulse ratchets up, changing gear as I climb up to the stairs. He watches me intently as I
come, scowling the entire time.
When I get to the second-floor landing, he heads straight for me, camera still in hand,
and sweeps me up with one arm. I’m so shocked that I don’t even have time to yelp. One
moment I’m standing on my own two feet. The next, my legs are wrapped around his
waist and he’s pinning me to his chest with what feels like one solid, strong band of steel.
Panic flutters beneath my solar plexus. He’s so much stronger than me. Picking me up
like this was nothing to him. If he wanted to, it would be nothing for him to hurt me. To
pin me down and take whatever he feels like.
If you make a sound, I’ll cut out your fucking tongue, Presley. Is that what you want,
huh? You think I won’t do it?
Horror climbs my body like a ladder. It starts as a numbness in my feet. A prickling. A
tingling. By the time it reaches my chest, I feel like I’m about to split out and my insides
will rupture out of me like sand. Only…Pax boots his bedroom door closed and drops his
hold of me. Not for long. Only for enough time to set down his camera and to walk across
his room, stalking like a predator with the muscles bunching and shifting in his back, over
to where his stereo system is blasting Rage Against the Machine. Assuming that he’s
going to turn the music down so I can hear when he gives me shit for being late, I’m
surprised all over again when he cranks it up even louder.
He faces me with dark determination written into the lines of his face. He doesn’t
speak. Instead, he points to the empty, polished floorboards in front of him. The demand
is clear: get your fucking ass over here.
I’m not afraid.
I’m not afraid.
I’m not afraid.
This has been true ever since the night Dad moved into Grandpa’s place. It isn’t true
now. The first stirrings of fear have ignited within me. It’s as if a stone has been cast into
the still, flat waters of my calm, disturbing the surface, and instead of the ripples
decreasing, they’re building, becoming greater and greater, more violent with every step
I take toward the point on the floor where Pax is pointing.
I can hardly breathe when I reach him.
His eyes are wild—the pale filaments of blue and white-grey twisting together until his
irises look like they’re made of beaten silver. Over my racing heart and the blood roaring
in my ears, I can just about make out the sound of ‘Bulls on Parade’ blaring from the
speakers mounted on Pax’s bedroom wall. Strangely, I can hear Pax perfectly when he
whispers to me, though.
“You disobeyed me, Chase.”
I shake my head. “Jarvis came to my room. My father told the school…told them what
happened. She’s has to check in on me—” Pax’s right eye twitches. Less than a millimeter
of movement, but I see the command in the action.
Be still.
Be quiet.
“Take off your clothes.”
I swallow thickly. “I sweat so much on the way down here. It’s hot as hell out there.
Maybe I should get cleaned up first?”
His right eye twitches again. A muscle feathers in his jaw. His nostrils flare, too. He
leans in closer to me, turning his head, angling himself in toward my neck. The whole
time, he doesn’t break eye contact. It takes a second for me to realize that he’s smelling
me. Slowly, deliberately, his eyes fall shut. “Take off your clothes…” he repeats. “Right.
Fucking. Now.”
Am I really doing this?
Did I come down here, fully aware and perfectly fine with the knowledge that I was
showing up at Riot House for the sole purpose of getting fucked?
I did. I know I did, and I didn’t think twice about it. Pax encompasses me. He always
has. Every dark, angry, ugly part of him, wrapped up in such a devilishly beautiful
package. He’s hostile and he’s hateful, and he wields his anger like a blade. There is
nothing good about him. But when I’m with him, I can let go. I don’t think anymore. I
don’t rage against my own inner pain. The waking nightmares that plague me every
second of the day have no power over me in his presence. I used to crave him because of
how he looked. Because of how he made me feel. Now, I crave him because, around him,
I can surrender. I can feel nothing at all.
I move automatically, undressing myself. It isn’t some kind of sexy, sultry strip tease
designed to turn him on. I remove my clothes, focusing on his face as I slip out of each
item. He watches me back, and I feel the weight of his attention fixed and locked around
my throat like a goddamn choke hold. I want him. I want him more than I want to keep
on living. I want him more than I want to die. And isn’t that the crux of this whole thing?
Isn’t the wanting of him the only thing keeping me sane? Driven mad and held together
by the one person who has the power to destroy everything.
Pax runs his tongue over his bottom lip, tilting his head back. His hands contract at his
sides. “Turn around,” he tells me.
Turning away from him feels like turning away from the warmth of the sun—a fierce
and volatile sun that might explode and wipe out humankind at any moment.
“Walk over to the desk.”
The skin across the back of my neck and over my shoulders reacts to the heat of his
breath, making me break out in goosebumps. I somehow make it over to the desk on the
far side of the room, which is set in front of a huge floor-to-ceiling window, looking out
over the forest.
“Bend over it,” Pax commands.
The lights are on in his room. Anyone standing out there in the dark can see in here.
They’ll be able to see me bending over his desk, too, my tits crushed against the wood,
my face three inches from the glass. Nothing in me cares.
I give him what he wants.
I expect his hands. I even expect his cock. What I don’t expect is his tongue. He falls
on me like a creature possessed, spreading my ass cheeks. The next thing I know, he’s
on his knees behind me and his face is buried. His tongue…Jesus, his tongue is inside me.
Somewhere it should not be. I gasp, and the gasp turns into a groan as I sink into the
sensation of it, amazed that it could feel fucking good. Pax’s fingers are inside me next.
I’ve never experienced anything as overwhelming as someone eating my ass and
fingering me at the same time. It’s…it’s fucking…GOD! I grip hold of the edge of the desk,
my mouth falling open. “Pax! Holy fuck!”
He pulls back and bites my ass cheek, showing no mercy whatsoever. The pain rips
through me like a lightning bolt. “What?” he snarls. “You expect to walk around the
academy wearing skintight jeans and fucking get away with it? You think I’m gonna let
you flaunt this ass to anyone who cares to see it and not punish you for it later?”
“I—”
He lays the flat of his tongue against my asshole again, forcing the tip of it inside me,
and my whole head lights up.
“You think,” he growls, “that a little sweat is gonna put me off, Chase? I want your
sweat. I want you filthy. I want you out in the beating sun for seven hours straight, and
then I want your pussy on my face. You dare shower before coming here and I’ll make
you fucking regret it.” He bites me again—the other ass cheek this time—and a scream
rips out of my mouth before I can cut it off.
“Stop.”
I can’t. I really can’t. Fuck. The pain…
It intensifies as he digs in again, deeper, and the scream turns silent. I’m so paralyzed
by the wash of sensation that even my vocal cords won’t work.
He pulls back, getting to his feet, and I slump against the desk, breathing hard.
“Is this what you want, Firebrand? Is this what makes you come?” I can see his
reflection in the window now. His expression is savage. Would he look down at me, the
way he’s looking at me right now, so possessively, if he knew I could see him? That
question is answered very clearly when his head snaps up and he makes eye contact with
me in the glass. He knew I was watching him. He could feel it. And yes. That dark,
possessive spark is still there in his eyes. He does nothing to hide it. “Did you think…” He
places one hand on my lower back, leaning his weight against me. The muscles and
tendons stand proud in his neck as he lowers his jeans over his hips, pushing them down
with his other hand. “Did you think that this wasn’t coming? Did you think I’d forget how
good you were last time? Did you think I wasn’t going to make you submit to me again?”
He kicks out of his jeans, hurling them across the other side of the room. The sheer
heat rolling off his body makes me want to weep. It feels incredible.
His hands move to my hips, his fingers pressing wickedly into my flesh. “You know
you’re my toy, right? My pretty little fuck toy. My good girl. If you behave nicely for me,
I’ll make sure I give you what you need.”
What do I need? I don’t even know myself. I feel like he does, though. I know that, if I
trust him in this, even though I absolutely shouldn’t, I will feel better. As toxic as this
whole thing is, I know that it will take the pain away. Not the pain in my body. The
deeper pain. The one that will eat me alive given half a chance.
His grip tightens. I angle my hips back, trying to press myself against him, to gain a
little friction between my body and his. I want to feel how hard he is, butting up against
my pussy, but he rocks his hips back, tutting disapprovingly under his breath. “Nuh uh uh.
Doesn’t work like that. You don’t just get to take what you want.”
“Please. God, please.” He curves himself over me, his skin meeting mine, chest
against my back, sending an explosion of warmth through my body. His teeth find my
shoulder and clamp down. I arch against him, my breath stuttering out of me in
desperate gasps. “Pl…fuck, please!”
He traces his fingers down my spine, parting my ass cheeks again. This time, it’s his
thumb that presses up against my asshole. My mouth falls open again. I wait for what I
know is coming. His teeth release me…
“Brace.”
 The sensation is sharp and immediate. My spine bows away from the desk, but there’s
nowhere for me to go. The front of my hips scream as I lean into the wood and Pax slides
his thumb inside me.
The oxygen streams up out of my lungs, rushing past my lips. I have no choice but to
allow him in. And, fuck, it feels amazing.
“Good,” Pax whispers into my ear. “Relax so you can take it. Good girl. This is only the
beginning.”
I whimper at the promise in his voice. I have no idea what he has planned for me, but
I know I won’t be able to walk away from it. No matter how shitty he is to me, I won’t be
able to say no to him. He’s the only thing keeping me afloat right now.
“Fuck, Chase. You have the prettiest little pussy.” He ducks down and licks me from
behind, and I relax even more, melting into the desk. His tongue sweeps and circles my
clit, sending wave after wave of pleasure through me. When he starts slowly sliding his
thumb out of my ass and gradually pushing it back in again, I start to fall apart. I need
him so freaking bad. He could tell me to do anything at this point and I’d do it without
question. I’m his puppet, and he doesn’t even realize it.
“Pax. Omg…fuck, that feels so good.”
“I know,” he rumbles. “I’m gonna make you squirt like this. I want your come all over
my tongue.”
“Oh my God.”
“He can’t help you now. For the next hour, you’re fucking mine.”
He uses his free hand to stroke and roll my clit, working it in tight, small circles again
while he slides his tongue inside me. The combination of all three areas between my legs
being stimulated is cataclysmic. I have no control over my own body as he licks, and
sucks and teases me with both hands.
When I come, it isn’t a gradual build up. It’s a lightning bolt out of the blue, striking
swift and deep. My eyes roll back into my head, and I moan so loud it could wake the
dead. Pax doesn’t stop to reprimand me, though. He continues fucking me with his mouth
and his fingers, working me into a frenzy, taking me higher and higher until it’s as though
I’m rising up out of my own body.
“Fuck! Fuck, Pax! Oh my god, I—I’m co—coming so hard.”
“Good.” He drives his fingers inside me, rocking them back and forth, stroking me
inside in a come here kind of motion, and the orgasm deepens.
How? Fucking…how is…he…doing that?
I can’t breathe. My legs can’t hold me up. I’m limp, completely out of control and
sliding off the edge of the desk. Pax catches me up in his arms just before I sag to the
ground. His hands are sticky with me. So is his face. I can smell myself all over him as he
carries me to his bed…and dumps me down on top of it.
Looking down at me, his face is a thunderstorm. He looks angry, yes, but that’s
nothing new. I expect him to look that way. It’s the seriousness in his eyes, the intense,
fierce focus that takes me by surprise. The way he looks at me, like he can’t actually look
away, as if he’s obsessed with what he’s seeing…I would never have expected to see
that.
His chest, shoulders and stomach are pure, carved muscle wrapped in ink. He’s a
masterpiece. There’s a reason the top fashion houses in the world fight for him to model
for them. With his high cheekbones, his savagely cut jawline, piercing eyes, and rudely
full mouth, he’s one of the most beautiful, feral creatures I’ve ever seen. So why, then, is
he looking at me like I’m the trophy right now?
His top lip curls up, displaying clenched teeth. “My turn now, Firebrand.”
Four small words. They send a wash of adrenalin firing through me. There’s no time to
ready myself. He falls on me like a lion feasting on a fresh kill. That’s precisely what I am
to him in this moment: prey. And I don’t mind one little bit.
I had grand plans before I came here tonight. I planned that I was going to shove the
asshole onto his back and climb on top of him. I wanted to pin him to the bed and ride
him until he came, taking back some more control for myself, but the second that I try to
flip over, Pax grabs me by the ankle and drags me down to the edge of the bed. “Where
the fuck do you think you’re going?” he demands. “Lift your ass up. Now.”
There’s no arguing with him when he issues an order like this. To disobey would be to
displease him, and that would be disastrous. I boost my hips up, and the second I do, Pax
slides two of his pillows underneath me so that my ass is raised. “Feet together. Knees
open,” he commands.
A part of me feels ashamed by how vulnerable the position makes me. I’m totally
bared to him; there isn’t a part of me that he can’t see like this. But I also feel liberated,
and incredibly turned on. He’s heavy-lidded, clearly turned on, as he looks down at my
pussy.
“Fuck, Chase. Fuck.” He runs his fingers down the center of me, parting me, hissing
when he feels how wet I am. “You want my cock, don’t you?” he says.
“Yes.”
He nods. “Good. Always tell me the truth. You can lie to me with your words, but I’ll
know. Your body’s always gonna give you away.”
I shiver as he slowly, slowly, slowly pushes a finger inside me; he watches my
reaction, his expression raw, the wall between him and the outside world that’s usually so
firmly locked in place lowered for the briefest of seconds.
Does he know? Does he realize how fucking magnificent he is when he lowers his
guard? My chest pinches tightly at the sheer sight of him. His eyes are wide, his cheeks
flushed, the muscles in his neck working as he stares right back at me, and I feel myself
begin to slide down a perilous slope.
The moment’s broken when he blinks, looking back down at his own body. His
erection stands free and proud, hard as hell and bobbing at his waist. He takes hold of
himself, and even he can’t close his hand around the thick shaft.
I’m hypnotized by the sight of him working his hand up and down his own cock. “You
like watching me do this?” he asks.
I nod. “Yes. God, yes. It’s…so fucking hot.” And it is. I’ve never watched a guy touch
himself before. Maybe in porn, but not in real life. Not like this. Pax teases himself the
same way he’s teasing his fingers in and out of me—slowly, torturously, with movements
designed to incite madness.
“When I fuck you in a second...” He closes his hand around the tip of his cock,
squeezing the head of it, and a fleeting, dazed expression forms on his face. “I’m gonna
wrap my hand around your throat. I’m gonna control how much you can breathe. I’m
going to be the one to decide if you live or die. And the whole time, I’m going to push you
closer and closer to the edge. Isn’t that what you want, Chase?”
My senses mutiny. My vision sharpens. My hearing is amplified. My skin is electric. I
can taste the fear and the anticipation on my tongue. My head is full of the scent of him,
here in his room, on his bed, where his sheets are covered in him. It’s too much and not
enough. My heart is a piston, galloping away from me. Because what he’s just said to
me…it’s everything that I want and need from him. I don’t want to be in control, not even
of myself. I don’t want to have to be the one to make the decision if I continue to live or
if I die anymore. The prospect of handing that responsibility over to him is such a blessed
relief that I feel like I might burst into tears at any moment.
But how can he read me so well? Is it really that obvious? Have I been walking around
for weeks now, looking like someone who wants to relinquish control over her own
existence? I don’t think I have. I know I haven’t. So, then, how does he know?
“You’re not going to answer me?” he asks.
Uncertainty tugs at me as I slowly shake my head.
“But you want it? You want my hand around your throat, don’t you?”
I swallow; my throat is so dry. The light overhead is way too bright. How am I
supposed to admit to this without making myself look weak? I can’t let myself do it. I just
can’t.
Pax huffs, laughing quietly. “That’s what I thought.”
“Ahhh! Fu—!” He grabs me quickly, so roughly, that I don’t even have time to react
before he’s shutting off my airway. His naked body roils with heat on top of me. I want to
reach out and touch him, but I can’t let myself do that either, so I snatch up handfuls of
the bedsheets instead, fisting them and pulling…
“You’re my plaything, aren’t you, Chase?” His lips are so close that they brush against
my mouth when he speaks.
One croaked, strangled word. “Ye—yes.”
His eyes are glittering daggers. “And all of this bravado, all of the backtalking and the
sass when we’re at the academy? It’s all a show, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t inhale even if I wanted to, but I still find myself holding my breath.
Impatience grips the insanely sexy, tattooed boy lying on top of me. His hand
tightens. “Isn’t it?”
I nod, fighting to hold myself still beneath him. For some reason, my eyes are wetter
than they should be. I’m not going to cry.
His grasp loosens a little, allowing a tiny trickle of oxygen down the back of my throat,
into my lungs. “All right, then,” he says. “Now that you’ve admitted it, we can move on.”
In one smooth motion, Pax thrusts himself into me. No warning. No indication that
he’s about to impale me on his dick. There’s only the upward movement, and the sudden,
shocking sensation of him filling me up. We both gasp at the same time, and I can see his
truth in his eyes: this feels as good for him as it does for me.
He’s attracted to me.
He’s as turned on by this as I am.
He’s way more stubborn than I am. If I were to confront him the way he just
confronted me, he’d never own up to his feelings. That kind of honesty just isn’t a part of
his genetic programming.
“God, you’re tight as hell,” he hisses.
And he’s so thick, it’s a strain to accept him into my body at all. His hand withdraws
from my neck as he slides his palms down my chest, over my breasts with their peaked,
painful nipples, and he comes to a stop at my hips. The pillows under my ass lift me up to
such an angle that he is beyond deep; he’s all the way to the fucking hilt.
“Fuck. Fuck, Pax. That’s…that’s so goddamn intense.”
“Breathe,” he commands.
I suck down a giant breath—and he curls his hand around my neck again, fingers
digging into my skin, and I shudder against him, my eyes rolling back into my head.
He starts to fuck me, slow at first, withdrawing himself all the way out before pushing
himself back into me at a taunting pace. He gradually picks up speed.
This feels…
Overwhelming.
Frightening.
 Incredible.
Freeing.
Dangerous.
Stupid.
Perfect.
It’s everything all at once, and I’m so overawed. I hold onto his bed sheets for dear
life, watching the muscles in his chest and stomach flex, shift, contract as he starts to
slam himself home.
“What’s that look?” he asks. “You like when I’m rough with you, Firebrand?”
Nodding, my eyes fall closed; I can’t fucking look at him. He’s too hot to take. In the
darkness behind my eyelids, huge pops and flares of light go off like fireworks. My hands
and feet are tingling, but I can’t tell if that’s from the sensations building in between my
legs, rippling out from my core, or from the lack of air in my lungs.
“You want my handprints all over your body, Chase?”
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
The word pulses through me louder than the pounding of my heart.
“You want me to spank you so hard that you can’t fucking sit down?”
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
His teeth fasten around my bottom lip. The pressure he applies makes me want to cry
out in pain, but I can’t. His hand is too tight to allow even the faintest whimper out of
me. I snap my eyes open, and the spots and bursts of light are still there, dancing and
strobing in my vision.
Pax flicks my mouth with his tongue, driving himself into me deeper, harder. “Do you
want me to hurt you, Presley?” he growls. “Is that it? Is that what you want?”
He can see the answer in my eyes.
Out of nowhere, he lets go of my throat. My body prickles with the rush of oxygen that
surges down into my lungs. For a moment, I think I’m going to pass out. Only, the
rushing, tidal wave of sensation takes a turn, and before I can comprehend what’s
happening, I’m coming.
“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! PAX!” I arch, feet planted on the mattress, butt lifting up from
the pillows, and Pax snarls out his approval.
“That’s right. That’s my good little slut. Let it all out.” He fucks me like a freight train
as my orgasm sweeps me away on a treacherous tide. This, right here, is how people
lose themselves.
“Did you do what I asked you?” he demands. “Are you on birth control now?”
“Yes,” I pant. “I—I got—”
His hand cuts me off. I think he’s going to choke me again, but no. This time, he
pushes his fingers into my mouth, roughly probing my tongue and my cheeks as he slams
himself into me, over and over again. “Good. Good girl,” he mutters. “That’s it. It’s okay.
I’m gonna give you my come. Shh. It’s okay. Keep coming for me.”
Like I could even stop.
The muscles in his neck and shoulders stand proud as he thrusts himself into me again
and again. He fucks me like a demon. Like some dark, heavily inked, angry god. A fallen
angel with an axe to grind. I’m floating on a blissful cloud when he comes, and all I can
do is watch.
I saw a tornado touch ground once. It was the most raw, powerful, impressive and
intimidating thing I’d ever seen. Until now. With his teeth clenched, his body stiff as a
drawn bow, he comes inside of me, and my head spins at the sight of him coming
undone.
He’s fucking magnificent.
When he’s done, he makes eye contact with me and I feel his energy shift. Whatever
trance he was in as he climaxed ends, and that fierce trademark Pax Davis intensity
comes rushing back with a vengeance. He smiles, rubbing his fingers over my lips, as if
he’s satisfied with a job well done. “Wait here.”
He pulls out and heads straight for the bedroom door, completely naked. I have just
enough time to cover myself before he opens the door and heads out into the hall…
What the hell? He hasn’t even wiped himself down. And he didn’t even hesitate before
strolling into the communal areas of the house. Wren or Dash could be out there. Fuck.
Elodie is up in Wren’s room, and I told her we were studying in here. That lie isn’t going
to hold water if she catches Pax wandering around, looking like…fuck, looking like…
He reappears in the doorway, holding a face cloth in his hands. “Spread your legs,” he
orders.
“I’ll make a mess—”
He arches an eyebrow at me, chastening. “You think I’m worried about a little come
on my bedsheets, Chase? Do as you’re told.”
I fight back a cringe as I lower the blanket I used to cover myself and let my legs fall
open. I can feel the slick wetness of him running out of me, and a sharp heat sends blood
rushing to my cheeks. Pax really doesn’t seem to give a shit, though. If anything, he
seems mesmerized. Dropping to his knees at the end of the bed, he takes the wet
washcloth in his hands and carefully cleans me while sucking on his bottom lip.
 “You’re so fucking pretty,” he rumbles. “I wanna eat this pussy all over again.”
I attempt to close my legs, thinking he’s about to try it, but he quickly shoves my legs
apart again, tutting at me. “Why do you insist on testing my patience?”
“I’m not clean.”
He holds up the washcloth. “Yeah, you fucking are. Come on.” He holds out his hand.
“Where?”
“What, you think I’m gonna drag you down into the basement and murder you or
something?”
“I didn’t know Riot House even had a basement.”
“I’m sure there’s plenty you don’t know about this place. Come on. Are you coming or
what?”
I regard his outstretched hand with suspicion. “Okaaay.”
He sighs when I yank the sheet off the bed and wrap myself up in it before I’ll let him
guide me out of the bedroom. It’s still risky as hell, being in the hallway in nothing but a
sheet. It’d still be really obvious what we were just doing in his bedroom if Elodie or Wren
appeared, given that Pax is still fucking naked, and he hasn’t cleaned himself up yet. I
need not worry, though. In five short steps, he’s pulling me into a huge bathroom and
closing the door behind us.
I’m amazed when I realize that there’s water thundering out of the faucets, filling the
giant claw foot tub on the other side of room. The bathroom smells like lavender and
thyme. Pax scrubs his hands over his shaved head, shrugging when he sees the look I’m
giving him. “What?”
“Nothing. I just…wasn’t exactly expecting…this.”
He scowls. “Don’t make a big deal out of it. I’m not gonna make you walk back up to
the academy in the dark with my semen running down your legs, asshole. And I wasn’t
exactly easy on you. You need to soak so you don’t seize up.”
I really don’t know what to say.
“There are towels there. Fuck it. When you’re done, come get me and I’ll drive you
back up.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I’m not gonna be responsible if you end up like Mara fucking Bancroft,” he grumbles.
With that, he stalks out of the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him.
I bathe, and I soak, and the whole time my head is spinning.
He drives me home like he said he would. Admittedly, he’s deadly silent on the
journey back up to Wolf Hall, but there are no sharp edges to the silence. He doesn’t say
goodnight, and neither do I. The tires of the Charger spit up gravel as he peels out of the
turning loop and burns away, down the driveway.
 It isn’t until I’m climbing into my own bed, deliciously sore, my muscles melting off my
bones, that I realize something:
At no point did he wash me off of him.
And he was still wearing the friendship bracelet.
 27

PRES

“We both know you’re not going to use that.” Laughter ripples across my skin
in the dark. “Put down the knife. Let’s stop fucking around and be honest
about what we want here.”

Rain hammers against the windowpanes of the library, casting the world on the other
side of the glass into a streaky green and blue blur. The sky is an ominous gunmetal
grey, suggesting a full-blown storm might be rolling in soon. On the beaten leather
couches in front of the wall of windows, I watch my friends leaf through the heavy
textbooks in their hands. We’ve been studying for hours, but I haven’t been able to
concentrate. My mind has been split in two, pulling itself in opposite directions. One
second, I’m thinking about Pax. About his hands on my naked body. How it felt to have
him kiss me last night, and to slowly come undone with his breath hot on my skin. The
next, I’m back in my bedroom down in Mountain Lakes, and I’m scared, and I can’t
fucking breathe…
I’m trapped on such a rollercoaster, in heaven one second, cast down into hell the
next, and I can’t regulate my emotions. This is how it’s been for weeks now. I’m used to
the internal whiplash. I’m not okay with it. I am not okay. But I’m so accustomed to these
memory reels playing on a constant loop, the channel jumping without warning from one
event to the other, that I’ve gotten very good at hiding the maelstrom of emotion
churning within me.
So good, in fact, that neither of my friends have noticed that there’s anything wrong
with me at all. They’re not completely blind, though. “I like this new obsession with Doc
Martin’s.” Elodie chews on the end of a pen, her gaze lasered in on my footwear. “They
suit you,” she says. “Though, don’t you think it’s a little warm for all of those long-sleeved
shirts you’ve been wearing recently?”
“Hmm?” I pretend to be engrossed in my physics textbook, but I’ve broken out in a
prickling, cold sweat, waiting to see what other observations my friend has made. Did she
notice the dressings on my wrists? They’ve been off for a while now. Remy and Dr. Raine
have been really pleased with my progress, and the jagged wounds on the insides of my
wrists are healing nicely. They’re still fresh as hell, though. Red and purple and angry. It’s
taken a lot to keep them hidden away from the other students at Wolf Hall.
“The long sleeves. I know it’s raining but it isn’t cold, Pres. Aren’t you just dying to put
a camisole on or something? I’m running with sweat over here. It’s so humid. I hope we
do have a storm. This heat needs to break.”
On the other end of the couch, Carrie grins impishly down at her phone, which can
only mean one thing: a new text from Dash. Not too long ago, things were very different.
Elodie hadn’t even transferred to the academy. It was Carrie, and Mara, and me. We
were all single. Carrie and I were both in love with Riot House boys but barely spoke
about the feelings we were harboring. Dash was unobtainable, and Pax was fucking
terrifying. Mara was obsessed with the idea of fucking Wren, but it was nothing more
than that. She just wanted to say that she’d done it, brag a little, then move on. Her
interest in boys was never an interest in them as people. Not until our English teacher, of
course.
Now, Carrie is with her Riot House boy, Mara is dead, Elodie’s arrival completely
changed Wren Jacobi. And me… I don’t even know what’s happened to me anymore. The
walls that kept me safe, the ones I built to protect myself, they all came crashing down
when I nearly bled out and died in front of the hospital. I came screaming back into my
own body, blinded by pain, and there was Pax, kneeling over me with a look of pure
fascination on his face. I was still me, my sense of self was still intact, if a little battered.
But something had intrinsically changed. Parts of me were gone. I was reborn.
So now, here I am. Both me and not me.
“I’m fine actually,” I tell Elodie.
“You’re not about to pass out? They need to crank the AC in here or something.”
Out of the window, in the distance, a flare of white light rips through the sky in the
distance. No rumble of thunder follows—the storm must still be too far away for that—but
Elodie’s head sinks back on the couch, relief spreading across her face. “Oh, thank God.”
“Dash is on his way up here.” Carrie says this around a shit-eating grin. If I were
smiling that hard, I doubt I’d be able to speak at all. I love seeing her this happy. She’s so
good and sweet. She deserves to be at peace and with the guy she loves after all of the
ups and downs of the past few months. And, surprisingly, I never thought I’d say this, but
I do like having Dash around. He’s nothing like I expected him to be. He’s actually funny,
and he loves Carina so much. I can see it pouring out of him, quietly, in small ways I
would have overlooked before I knew him. He’s understated, but when you begin to
understand him, the way he touches Carina, and the way he looks at her, and talks to
her, the way he just is around her, you realize just how much he worships her.
Elodie pouts at her phone. “Wren’s helping Pax with something back at the house.
He’s not coming.”
My ears prick up at this. Pax is doing something at the house that requires Wren’s
help? What could he be doing that he needs Jacobi’s help? Could be anything. They could
be working out; Wren could be spotting him. He could be building something. Moving
furniture? I don’t fucking know. The point is that I hate not knowing. It feels as though I
should know. There’s a taut line of connection between Pax and I now, much like the
friendship bracelet I made for him, only stronger. And just like that friendship bracelet,
he’s pulling at it, trying to get it to break, but with every tug he’s only making it tighter.
Why can’t he see that?
When I look up, I find both Elodie and Carina are staring at me. “What? What is it? Is
there something on my face?”
“You’re just a million miles away,” Carrie says. “You’ve been a little off-kilter since we
came back from break. You okay?”
Shit. Maybe I spoke too soon. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, totally fine. I’m great.”
Carrie isn’t convinced. “Sure? If your dad’s still pressuring you to move into the house
now that he lives in town, don’t let him do it. You’re not allowed to go anywhere, you
hear?” She pretends to pout. “We have so little time left, all three of us living at the
academy. I don’t want to miss a second of it.”
I smile ruefully, shaking my head. If they had any idea how hard Dad’s still been
pushing for me to move home, they’d be mobilizing to some sort of war room to make
contingency plans. “He’s been fine actually,” I lie. “I’m just not sleeping that well.
Assignment stress, I suppose.”
“Study session tonight?” Carina suggests.
“Sure.”
Elodie nods, too. “But I’m bringing snacks. I can’t concentrate on anything unless I
have popcorn and Junior Mints in front of me.” Her phone, resting on top of her knee,
dings. On the other side of the library, an irritated cough lets us know the ding was heard
and we’d better watch our asses. Elodie checks her phone and cracks a smile.
“Jesus, if you’re gonna grin like that, you might as well tell us why.” Carina snaps her
book closed.
 “Trust me. You do not want to know.”
“Urgh. Gross.”
She turns her phone sideways, eyes glued to the screen, brows slowly rising. “I
happen to think it’s sexy as hell.”
Carina shudders, but it’s all for show. I’m sure whatever wicked delight Jacobi sent to
Elodie would pique most people’s interest. The man is undeniably attractive, if a little
insane. Carrie’s fake disgust disappears when she sees Dash weaving his way through the
stacks toward us. “I’d put that away if I were you. We have incoming.”
Lord Dashiell Lovett IV arrives in a whirlwind of wet dirty blond hair and ozone. He
brings the storm from outside in with him. He shakes his hair all over Carina, wearing a
full Hollywood smile as he does so. Water droplets pelt Carrie, and a couple hit Elodie in
the process. Both girls swat at him, growling and making threats, but neither of them are
really angry. I watch the scene with melancholy detachment.
Alone.
Other.
Outside.
Apart from.
Dash throws himself down onto the couch in between Elodie and Carrie. He pulls his
girlfriend into his side, throwing an arm around her, and my heart aches.
“You’re getting me all wet,” Carrie grouses.
“You say that like it’s an unusual occurrence.” He lays a swoon-worthy kiss on her that
wouldn’t look out of place in an old black and white movie from the nineteen-twenties.
When they’re done, Dash turns and gives me a broad, genuine smile.
“What’s up, Pres. I hear you got landed writing a whole book with my most belligerent
roommate. How are you holding up?”
I read Pax’s first chapter last night after I got back. I read it, and then I laid in bed
and I replayed the whole dark maze-nightmare over and over in my head until my heart
was racing and I could feel the claustrophobia of those cold, dripping, ancient stone walls
as they pressed in on all sides. The writing was excellent. The chapter itself made such
an impact that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.
Out of the blue, without even processing the words, I open my mouth and make a
dangerous request. “Dash, can you give me Pax’s number?”
My two best friends and the Sun God of Riot House stare at me like I’ve just started
speaking in tongues. All three of them look so shocked that I repeat the request. “His cell
phone number. So I can text him. I, uh…want to text him.”
Elodie leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. A knot of worry has formed
between her brows. “Seriously, Pres. Are you okay?”
 “Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Carrie makes a choked sound. “You just directly referred to Pax Davis without your
voice cracking. You said his name very clearly. Out loud. And you asked for his phone
number.”
“What?” I shrug. “I want to talk to him about the project. Dash just reminded me. And
Pax doesn’t seem like he checks his email very often.”
“You’d be right there,” Dash says. He’s already reaching into his pocket and pulling
out his phone. “Normally I’d check to see if he was cool with me giving out his info, but
this time I’m gonna throw caution to the wind and say fuck it. I am far too curious to see
how this pans out.”
Carrie thumps him in the arm. “If he does anything to hurt Presley, because you gave
her his phone number and gave him access to her, I will literally murder you.”
He laughs. “I doubt me giving Pres his number will be the root cause of any of the
madness that’s about to ensue.” His fingers fly over his cell phone screen. A second later,
my phone buzzes in my hand.

AirDrop
New Contact: Pax Davis.

“What are you talking about, madness?” Carrie demands.

Dash doesn’t look at his girlfriend. He looks right at me when he says, “Presley knows
exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t you, Presley?”
And I do. I really do.
 28

PAX

Unknown Contact

Clean content. Excellent description/world building. Some of the language was

a little divisive. Can’t wait to see what you can do when you actually try.
6.8/10

I saw this documentary about volcanoes on the National Geographic channel last year.
History’s most catastrophic eruptions or some shit. A lot of it was dramatizations—scenes
constructed from reports of the people who survived these devastating events. The most
horrific dramatizations, from eruptions like Pompeii, were not created from firsthand
reports, though. There were no firsthand witness reports of those events, because there
were no survivors.
Right now, I am a volcano. The largest ever known to man.
I am about to erupt, and when I do, there will be no survivors left to paint a picture of
what happened here. They’ll have to rely on satellite images from space to piece
together what happened in Mountain Lakes, New Hampshire on this fateful, beautiful
summer morning, and even then, scientists will be left to wonder how a random
eighteen-year-old guy somehow became so incensed that he went fucking nuclear and
wiped out an entire state.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Dash stops me as I’m thundering down the stairs. “Where the
fuck are you going with a face like that?”
 “To avenge myself,” I snarl.
“I assume this has something to do wi—”
“Yes, it’s to do with fucking Chase. And I know I have you to thank for giving her my
number, so you can stop standing there grinning like that. I’m tempted to bitch slap that
smirk right off your fucking face.”
“Have you ever considered that if you got laid…you might be less angry all the time?”
His voice goes very high at the end. It takes a monumental effort not to beat his ass
black and blue right here on the stairs. He doesn’t know that I’ve been fucking Chase. I
haven’t said a word, and he wasn’t even home last night. “How will ejaculating inside
some random girl make me less angry with Chase?”
“You could just come inside Chase. Get an STD test first, though. Make sure she’s on
birth control. Do away with the rubber altogether. I hate those fucking things.”
Okay. This is getting too close to the mark. I glower at him, working my jaw. “We all
hate those things, asshole. No one likes them.”
“Now you’re furious about rubbers?”
“Yes. I’m furious about everything. And it’s all your fucking fault.” I blow an angry
blast of air out of my nose, squinting at him while I consider planting my fist in his face
again, and then I turn and continue my charge down to the ground floor.
Dash follows me. “Hey, what the hell do you have tied around your wrist?”
“What?”
He points. “You are wearing a friendship bracelet.”
“I am not.”
“What’s that, then?”
I shove my whole arm behind my back. “None of your damn business is what it is.”
If he fucking laughs, I will kill him. If he fucking laughs, I swear to God…
Dash is a smart guy. He sees my inner monologue expressing itself on my face, and
he does not laugh.
Color me disappointed.
“If you want a ride up the hill, your ass better be in the car in the next fifteen seconds
or I’m going without you.”

No English class today. No Econ, either, which means no Chase. Every Wolf Hall student’s
schedule is available on the academy portal—I didn’t even need Wren to hack into the
school’s systems for that information—and I already know I don’t have another class with
Chase until Friday morning. I should be happy about that fact. I should be able to forget
about her altogether—that was the whole point of this being just sex—but I’m still so livid
over that message that I actually want to run into her. I look for her everywhere I go.
From Math to History, I scan every face I pass, waiting for it to be hers. History to
Photography. Photography to the parking lot. I even scope out Screamin’ Beans at
lunchtime to see if she’s sitting at one of the booths with Elodie or Carrie, but she’s
nowhere to be seen.
All afternoon, I barely pay attention to my surroundings, waiting for the burst of
adrenalin to hit me when I finally set eyes on Chase. Only, she’s a ghost. I finally see her
at the end of the day, as I’m pulling out of the parking lot, Dash sitting to my left, Wren
in the backseat.
I apply the brakes a little more enthusiastically than usual and Wren nearly skids
forward into the footwell. “What the fuck, man! Are you insane?”
I apply the hand brake and get out of the car.
Dash rolls down his window and leans out, calling after me. “Where the fuck are you
going? I’m starving!”
“Left the keys in the ignition, didn’t I?”
He checks. Frowns at me incredulously. “Yes?”
“Then fucking drive yourselves home.” I don’t hang around to witness the look on his
face, though I’m sure it’s priceless. Dash knows that any warning he expects from me is
implicit: if he so much as fucking scratches that car, he’ll be eating through a straw for
the rest of his miserable life.
Quickly, I jog across the parking lot and around the other side of the academy,
heading in the direction Chase was walking when I caught that glimpse of her out of the
corner of my eye. I half expect her to have vanished into thin air, but no. I round the
corner and she’s there, heading down the steep slope that leads towards Wolf Hall’s
maze.
Her battered old canvas military bag hangs off her shoulder, bouncing off the backs of
her legs when she walks. The thick red waves of her hair sway from side-to-side as she
walks. It’s warm today, like really warm, and an uncomfortable snapshot of a bead of
sweat running down the curve of the back of her neck fills my head.
A memory, not my imagination.
I can almost taste the faint hint of salt on the tip of my tongue as I run down the
slope after her. God knows how she got so far ahead of me. By the time I catch up with
her, she’s already at the mouth of the maze. She has plenty of time to head inside, but
she just stands there, looking up at the high hedge walls, clasping hold of her bag strap…
She doesn’t so much as give me a sideways glance when I pitch up next to her.
She squints, shielding her eyes against the sun. I follow her gaze, though I can’t tell
what the fuck she’s looking at. All I see is blue sky.
She breaks the silence first. “Is this it, then?”
I blow out a long breath. “Is what what?”
“Is this the maze? The maze.”
Oh. Right. I interlace my fingers behind my head, cradling my skull as I consider the
splintering pathways that lie ahead of us. “No. This is just a maze.”
“Are you afraid of it?”
“Why the fuck would I be afraid of it?”
Now she looks at me, her expression unimpressed. “I read your chapter, dumbass.
You were terrified in it.”
“Are you drunk?” I laugh coldly.
She pops her bottom lip into her mouth, squinting up at me now. I do not like the way
she’s looking at me—like she can see through my bullshit and I should just give up
already. “What, you think you’re qualified to psychoanalyze me because you read
something that I wrote, and it scared you a little?”
Swish, swish, swish. The ends of her hair brush her back, almost at her waist, as she
slowly shakes her head. “The fear leaping out of those pages wasn’t mine,” she says
matter-of-factly.
“What does that mean?”
She mulls on her response. And then comes out with something so unsatisfactory and
frustrating that I want to shake her. “Nothing. Forget it, Pax. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Coward.”
She drops her bag to the floor and throws her head back, unleashing a howl of
laughter that surprises the shit out of me. “Ohhh, that’s good. I don’t think I’m the coward
here, am I, friend?”
“Lord. Not this again.”
“What, you still don’t think we’re friends?” She loops her finger through the colorful
bracelet that’s still looping my wrist, giving it a playful little tug. “Just accept it. It’s
obvious.”
“You’re delusional.”
“We’ve been hanging out. We’ve had sex—”
“Careful.
She disregards the cold warning in my voice. “If we’re not friends, then we’re
something else. If you’re not careful, I’ll start to think that you actually like me.”
“Christ, you really don’t know when to stop talking, do you?”
She pokes her tongue out—a childish, playful gesture designed to provoke. But I see
the wetness, the pinkness of her tongue, and the only thing she provokes is a wall of
heat. God fucking damn it, why does my body hate me? Why does my mind immediately
show me what it would feel like to grab her by the back of her neck and suck that little,
delicate pink tongue into my own mouth?
What fucking purpose does that serve?
“We’re a little more than casual acquaintances, Pax,” she says softly.
“What I wouldn’t give to be total fucking strangers.”
“If you wanted to be strangers, you wouldn’t have fucked me last night. You definitely
wouldn’t be diving out of your car and chasing me across two hundred feet of lawn.”
“We had an agreement. Stop talking about the sex. And I did not come down here to
have a chat because we’re pals.”
“Then why did you come down here?” She’s genuinely curious.
“I wanna know what the hell you meant by that text message. Divisive? Divisive??
You’re fucking high again.”
“I’m not. But I will be in a minute. Here, hold this a second.” She gives me no choice. I
accept her bag, holding onto the base of it for her while she uses both hands to rummage
around inside it.
What the FUCK.
She finds and takes out a small tin with a painted Victorian lady on it carrying a
parasol, takes her bag back from me like she didn’t just use me as a fucking countertop,
and then slumps into the grass at my feet, sitting Indian style. She opens the tin, takes
out a small glass pipe, and begins to pack an enormous amount of pre-ground weed into
the bowl.
“You realize they’re going to smell that on you when you go back inside. Your eyes
are gonna be red as hell.”
Silently, she dives back into her bag, pulling out a bottle of perfume, a tiny bottle of
eye drops, and a pair of over-sized black sunglasses. She sets the items down one at a
time in the grass, pulling a face at me as she does so.
“All right, then. Well I guess you’ve got this all figured out, haven’t you.”
She rolls her eyes up at me. “More than you do, I’d venture.”
This is the perfect moment for me to let rip. She insulted my writing. She’s been so
fucking annoying for so fucking long now that I have plenty of ammunition in my belt, and
a couple of real harsh comments in the chamber, locked, cocked and ready to rock. But
then she looks up at me, and the soft mid-afternoon sun caresses the side of her face,
and all I can do is clench my teeth as I sink down into the grass next to her.
“You’d have had better luck just texting something sharp and hateful back, y’know?
Instead of coming to have it out with me face-to-face.” Holding a lighter to the bowl, she
sucks, dragging a plume of smoke into her lungs. Her eyes water as she holds it in her
lungs like a fucking champ. She doesn’t even cough when she releases, which I quietly
admire. Very quietly. My admiration presents itself in a swift pinch of her calf through her
jeans.
She kicks me in return.
She’ll probably leave a bruise. She doesn’t hurt me, though. She could never hurt me.
“What are you talking about? Why the fuck would I ever bother texting you something
sharp and hateful?”
“Because you’re butt hurt about the divisive comment, and I said you could do better.
You came after me to tell me off. I can see it on your face. You should have just texted
me back and saved yourself the trouble.” Like bottomless drowning pools, her pupils have
eaten her irises again. The burned sage and caramel of her eyes gone, replaced with a
dark void.
“I don’t give a shit what you think about my writing. I know it’s good.” I take the pipe
from her, hating the fact that she’s the one encouraging me to sin and not the other way
around.
“If you say so.” She does that thing, where a girl will casually hitch a shoulder and
angle their head to look off at something that isn’t there on the horizon—a low key,
bullshit maneuver, the sole purpose of which is to tell you that she doesn’t believe
whatever just came out of your mouth but has no plans to argue with you about it.
Fuck killing her; I’m ready to kill myself at this point. Anything to end this weird cycle
I’ve found myself caught up in. I keep waiting for myself to snap back to reality and lash
out at this person. If I were in my right mind, my usual, regular, take-no-shit self, I would
have canned this nonsense a long time ago and done or said something terrifying enough
to make sure Presley Maria Witton Chase stayed the hell away from me for forever and a
day.
And then an extra day on top of that.
But she’s done something to me. She’s warped my mind and twisted my insides up,
and now my soul has been pretzelled into some jacked up, nonsense knot of alien
emotion, and I don’t have a clue what the fuck I’m doing anymore. When did this even
happen? I used to make sense to myself. Now, I don’t have a clue how to make heads
nor tails of my own existence. I’m a stranger in my own skin and it sucks balls.
To the right of us, beyond the tiny ornamental cemetery, three geese begin to
squabble on the lake, honking and kicking up a fuss. Chase watches them, and I watch
her, fighting the urge to grab hold of her. If I knew myself better right now, and I could
trust myself, I’d give myself free rein. Normally I’d do something deplorable. Pin her down
and show her just how powerless she is in this whole situation. But honestly, the idea of
doing that seems laughable. Holding her down and degrading her will backfire in the
worst way. I know in my heart that she’d enjoy it, and anyway, there’s every chance that
I’ll kiss her instead. Bury my face into her hair so I can inhale the essence of her, crushing
her to my chest, trying to absorb her into me somehow.
Is this how other people feel? Is this fucking normal? I don’t see how it can be.
“I made you something,” she says.
I hit the bowl hard, pulling with all my might, holding the flame of the lighter she
passed me over the weed as long as I can bear it before the burn becomes too much and
my throat starts to scream.
I don’t want any more gifts from you.
I don’t want my mind to be fixed on you when the sun comes up and when it goes
down.
I don’t want to be sitting here, getting randomly high with you in the middle of the
afternoon, when I could literally be anywhere else.
These are the churlish retorts I fire off in my head, while I hold the smoke in my
lungs. They’ve all vanished when I exhale. “Great. Enlighten me. What did you make me,
Chase?”
The left-hand corner of her mouth pulls up—she’s pleased. Skipping over an
explanation, she dips her hand into the pocket of her jeans and pulls something out: yet
another length of woven thread. It’s all black this time. There’s a very small orange stone
woven into the very center of it. “It’s Citrine,” she says. “Good for lots of things.”
I give her a hard look, eyes full of steel. “I won’t wear it.”
“Why not? You’re still wearing the other one.”
“I haven’t found my scissors yet.”
“You are absolutely ridiculous. Take it.” She thrusts the bracelet at me, taking the
pipe away as soon as I’ve inadvertently accepted her trite gift. She dumps out the
charred remains of the weed we just smoked and begins packing the bowl afresh from
her tin.
I’m going to hurl her bullshit gift into the lake.
When I get up and we move away from the maze, I’m going to do it.
Just watch and see if I don’t.
I set the bracelet down on top of my knee, feeling the cells of my body vibrate as the
weed begins to take effect.
“I don’t think your writing’s divisive,” Chase says. “You’re just so blunt. There’s no
subtly to the way you set words down. It’s like you’re laying bricks, trying to build a
house, but you’re not using any grout to hold those bricks together.”
I don’t know what’s worse—her original criticism, or this new, equally offensive
statement. “I use grout. I use plenty of grout.”
 “Barely. A stiff wind would have everything tumbling down.”
I snatch the pipe from her before she lights it and takes a hit for herself. “Your
metaphor is dumb. I have a concise, economic writing style. I don’t need flowery
language to get my point across. My work is sleek and effortless, like a shark. Like a
knife. I told you back in class what you could do if you tried to change my writing.
Complete…the project…on your own.”
The thick stream of smoke buzzes around my head as I inhale. Chase moves fast as
light. I barely have time to exhale before she’s grabbing the pipe back, tossing it into the
grass, and she’s throwing her leg over my waist and pushing me back into the grass, too.
Flat on my back, I stare up at her, stunned yet again by something I’d never expect
her to do. Her hair hangs down, a red curtain filling my vision, almost blocking out the
sky. What I can see of the sky takes my breath away. To the west, the sun dips below
the tree line. It’s golden rays bathe everything in a warm, honeyed glow. My chest
tightens until I can’t breathe around the knot forming beneath my breastbone.
“Get off me, Chase.”
“I’m hardly restraining you. Make me.”
“I’m not gonna put my hands on you,” I growl.
“You could.” She thinks for a moment, a coy smile lifting up her mouth at one side.
“You should.”
“I mean it, Presley. Someone might fucking see.”
“Do you really care?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the problem? I weigh a hundred and twenty pounds. Are you telling me
that you couldn’t just lift me up and off of you if you didn’t want me straddling you right
now?”
“I’m saying that I don’t want to just lift you up—”
“God, are you really this broken, Pax? Put your fucking hands on me.”
I can’t take it: Her casual laughter; the way she repositions her weight, applying an
indecent amount of pressure where our bodies line up; the way the sun catches at her
hair and turns it to burnished gold. The smell of her, like jasmine and lemons. I can’t
fucking take any of it.
I put my hands on her, clamping them around her hips, set on dragging her off me
and dumping her onto her ass. But the moment I feel her hip bones against the heels of
my hands, and my fingertips feel a little give in her flesh under her shirt, I find I can’t do
anything at all. My lungs seize, and my heart contracts, and I wish with every fiber of my
being that I was back in my dark bedroom back in New York, with the blinds drawn and
the view blocked out, because right now I feel so fucking dizzy. I feel like I’m seconds
away from losing my balance and toppling over, which makes absolutely no sense
because I’m lying down.
Chase freezes on top of me. “Why are you doing this, Pax? This whole thing? With
me?”
The words are quick out of my mouth. “Because I’m bored.”
She works her jaw. “That’s all it is? You’re bored?”
“Yes.”
“So…you don’t find me attractive, then?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. “I’m not an idiot. I don’t fuck girls I’m not attracted to.”
She thinks about this. “Okay.”
“Cool. Now. Are you gonna get off of me?”
“No.”
“All right. If you’re so intent on straddling me in public, then make it worth my while.
Put me inside you.” It’s a dare. One I know she won’t follow through on.
Just as I expect her to, she falters. “School’s over. There are people everywhere, Pax.”
“Who fucking cares. Back up your shit or quit grinding up against my dick. You sat
yourself right on top of it for a reason, right?”
Her cheeks have turned the sweetest shade of pink. She’s going to climb off me. I’m
going to win. Her hand slides down my chest as she leans herself back, and I prepare all
of the shitty, arrogant things I’m going to say to her—I am not a humble victor—when
she scoots further back a couple of inches and finds the button that fastens my jeans. Her
eyes meet mine, and I see hesitation there, but she powers through.
She fucking powers through.
With nimble fingers, she has my pants undone and my dick out in record time. I
haven’t really given much thought to whether I have an erection or not until she fucking
whips me out, but hell yeah, I’m hard as steel and rigid in her hands. The second she
closes her fingers around me, I realize that I’ve made a mistake. The girl has brass balls
on her the size of watermelons. It takes her no time at all to shift her hips forward, lift
her skirt, pull her panties to one side, and fucking sink herself down onto my dick.
Whoa. Wha….
Her eyes shutter closed. Her lips part, her head rocking back, and the sight of her,
fully clothed still, skirt now concealing the point where our bodies are joined, is the
hottest thing I have ever fucking seen. “Shit, Pax. Oh God, that feels…you feel so fucking
good.”
It's broad ass daylight.
She has me on my back on the fucking green, fifty meters from the lake.
My dick is inside her, and I can see Damiana Lozano, up by the rear entrance to the
building, pacing back and forth on her phone. Shadows move across the windows on the
academy’s second floor. Back up the hill, where I jumped out of the car and followed
Chase down here, a group of students congregate in a little knot, chatting away,
completely oblivious. And we’re here, by the mouth of the maze, visible for all to see, and
I repeat…my dick is inside Presley Maria Witton Chase. She slowly grinds against me and
I hiss, grabbing hold of her by her hips. “What the fuck!”
Her eyes open. She looks down at me, studying me coolly. I see it now. I see how
powerful she is like this, and I realize that she’s always had this power. I’ve just been
reluctant to admit it until now, when I have no other choice but to acknowledge it…
“You told me to do it,” she says, shrugging. “You shouldn’t expect me to run away
from you anymore, Pax. Those days are over.”
“I can fucking see that.”
She angles her hips forward, the tiniest of degrees, and the wet, delicious warmth of
her intensifies. Jesus fucking Christ! “Just…stay fucking still.”
A coquettish little smile plays over her lips. “Are you still bored, Pax?”
“No. No, I am not. But fuck!”
She dips her head, laughing out loud. Such a distinctive sound—one I can’t say I’ve
ever heard before. It makes my chest strangely tight. “What? Don’t you want to come
inside me in front of the entire senior class?” she teases.
“You’re playing with fire,” I growl.
“Aren’t you forgetting?” She points to her hair. “I’m a redhead. We’re a very fiery
people.” With that, she rolls her hips again, this time her body arching with the motion,
and I damn near come on the motherfucking spot. What the hell is she doing?
“Chase.” A warning. A promise that there will be repercussions for this madness.
She doesn’t look like she cares. She stares me down as she does it again, and I can
feel my resolve splintering. She feels fucking amazing, and seeing her like this, taking
charge, knowing we’re more than likely going to get caught? It’s fucking doing something
to me.
“You think you’re so damn clever, don’t you?” I grit out.
Her open-mouthed smile is divine. “Uh huh. Yeah, I kinda do.”
“Fine. I can play this game, too, y’know.” I slip my hand under her skirt, immediately
finding her clit. Her panties are shoved all the way to the side, and she is so fucking wet
—so wet, in fact, that she’s soaked through the front of my t-shirt, which was trapped
between our bodies until a second ago.
I’m unforgiving when I begin to slowly rub her with the pad of my thumb. She gasps,
jerking against me, which doesn’t do much for how dangerously close I am to coming.
Taking a deep, calming breath, I rein myself in, managing to get a hold of myself. I feel
myself retreating from the edge, mastering my shit, and a steady calm settles over me.
Boy, is she in fucking trouble now.
Chase lets out a tiny little moan as I tilt back, withdrawing myself from inside her a
little, then press forward again, upward, spearing her deeper on the end of my cock.
“Holy shit.” She shudders, placing both of her hands flat against my chest, her nails
digging in through the thin material of my shirt.
I let her sink her claws in, not minding the pain one little bit. I’m busy inflicting my
own kind of damage. Faster and faster, I rub my thumb over the slick, swollen bundle of
nerves at the apex of her thighs, feeling particularly wicked when she arches her back
again, letting out a too-loud moan that disturbs the geese on the lake.
She’ll come before me. That’s the way it should be. I’m going to make her gush all
over my dick, in public, no less, and I will have won this round, too. It is a competition. All
of this feels like some kind of strategy game, where we’re both constantly trying to one-
up the other person, and—
“Can you fucking believe it? I’ve been on hold for thirty minutes, and those assholes
still won’t tell me if Mercy’s even enrolled at their dumb school.”
I freeze.
Chase freezes.
We stare each other down, our expressions identical depictions of the same thought:
OH, FUCK.
“I mean, it’s not like it’s a difficult question. Is Mercy Jacobi a student at your tiny,
redneck school for illiterate morons or not?” Damiana Lozano slumps down next to us in a
cloud of Marc Jacobs perfume, her long blonde hair arranged on top of her head in a braid
crown. She mutters something under her breath as she yanks her purse into her lap and
hunts around inside it for something. She pulls out a tube of lip gloss and begins applying
it.
“What the hell, Dami?” I am going to deadass murder her.
She looks up at me, finally, pulling a bored face. “What? You can’t tell me you haven’t
wondered where she went, asshole.”
My hand’s still hidden under Chase’s skirt. I dig my fingers into her thigh, silently
warning her not to move. “The fuck are you talking about?”
“Mercy!” Damiana looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Your roommate’s twin sister? Have
you forgotten all about her?”
“Yes! I fucking have!” Mercy Jacobi is an asshole—a creature I tolerated because she
came with Wren as part of the Jacobi package. She’s flitted in and out of our lives more
times than I can count since I moved into Riot House. I was far from surprised when she
disappeared after Mara’s death, deciding to finish up her high school career elsewhere.
 Damiana gives an unpleasant, tight smile to Chase. She doesn’t seem to have noticed
the compromising position we’re in right now. She thinks Chase is just randomly
straddling me. Forgivable, I guess, since we are both fully clothed. “You knew Mercy a
little, didn’t you?” Damiana says. “Have you heard from her?”
“Ahhh! I—” Chase closes her eyes. Composes herself. “Uhh, I didn’t know her that well
at all actually. She wouldn’t call me.”
“Great.” Dami rolls her eyes. “Why is everyone so socially inept around here?”
An evil, evil thought occurs to me, watching Chase struggle to marshal herself. Should
I? It’d be really fucking cruel, and will probably end in disaster, but I don’t really care at
this point. I slide my hand up the inside of Chase’s thigh again, locating her clit in one
smooth movement that Damiana definitely doesn’t notice. “Why fucking bother?” I say.
On top of me, Chase’s eyes are the size of silver dollars. She glares at me so hard, I want
to burst out laughing.
“What’s that supposed to mean, why fucking bother?” Dami gripes. “She’s my friend.
Of course I’m going to bother. If I’ve learned anything from this whole Mara Bancroft
debacle, it’s that we all need to take better care of each other. People can’t just go
disappearing off anymore. We can’t let that stand. Mercy could be dead, too. She could—”
“If she actually was your friend, she would have told you where she was going,” I say.
I’m amazed I get the words out in a calm voice. I’m circling Chase’s clit, applying a decent
amount of pressure, not moving enough for my actions to be obvious to the blonde viper
sitting three feet away…but they’re definitely obvious to Chase. Chase, who clenches her
jaw, digging her fingers into my chest again, giving me a warning of her own. One I
promptly ignore.
“You’re such a bastard, you know that? Mercy and I were close. I don’t give a shit
what you say.”
“Bullshit.” I huff out a sharp breath when Chase tightens around me, her pussy
gripping at my dick. I’d have expected to lose my erection, but nope. It’s still raging hard
and only getting harder as I watch Chase’s eyes glaze over. She looks so fucking
beautiful, so dazed and turned on, her breath coming in quicker and quicker, that it’s no
wonder I haven’t gone soft.
“If Mercy and I weren’t friends, then how do you explain this?” Damiana leans over
me, shoving her cleavage in my face as she shows me the gaudy gold necklace hanging
around her neck. It’s one half of a heart. On it, the letters ST END have been engraved.
The other half of the heart, which Damiana clearly believes is hanging around Wren’s
sister’s neck, must have the BE FRI part etched into it.
I quicken the pace, rubbing Chase’s clit a little faster. She can do nothing but sit still
and take it. Not if she wants our situation to remain a secret. She spasms arounds me
again, though, her pussy clenching around me, massaging me from the inside, and my
eyes nearly roll back into my head. She’s so fucking tight.
“Christ, how old are you? You’re such a child, Dami,” I mutter.
If Chase keeps doing that…
I must have a look on my face. My nostrils must have flared, or my pupils must have
blown. Whatever. I’ve done something to clue Chase into how good her clenching around
me feels, because she does it again, tighter this time, for longer, with a knowing look on
her face. A two-can-play-this-game look that spells disaster for me. I have to fight back
the urge to spin her around and throw her into the grass so I can fuck the living shit out
of her as punishment for her insolence.
“God.” Dami grimaces, looking from me to Chase and back again, as if she’s suddenly
realized who she’s sitting with. “Since when have you two been a thing, anyway?”
“We’re not a thing,” Chase says breathlessly. “We’re just…hanging out.”
“Oh, totally. I can see that. I always sit cowgirl the guys I hang out with, too.”
Sarcasm drips from her every word.
I speed up even more, switching between the small circles and rubbing up and down
over Chase’s clit. She’s so fucking wet now, I can feel her slick heat all over my lower
belly. She jerks, gasps—and tries to cover both with a sneeze that even Damiana spots
as fake a mile off.
Dami narrows her eyes at Chase. “You are so weird, Presley.”
I develop a shit-eating grin. “She has allergies.”
Chase does not look impressed. She looks vengeful, in fact. Leaning her weight back,
she angles her hips forward, giving me better access to her. From Dami’s perspective, it
probably looks like she’s just shifting her weight, getting comfortable, but I know the
truth of it. She’s telling me to have at it and do my worst… because she’s about to do the
same. I have to bite the inside of my cheek when she tenses the first time. The second
time she does it, I bite so hard I taste blood.
Fuck.
Maybe I shouldn’t have laughed.
“You’re both fucking weird. I’ve never seen you even so much as look twice at a Wolf
Hall girl, and now you’re out here, canoodling with this one?”
I glance over at Dami sharply, venom rising up the back of my throat. I’m gonna
remember that nasty, snide little remark. “Give me eight separate examples of your
friendship with Mercy Jacobi and I’ll tell you exactly where she is,” I say.
“Yeah, right. Like you know where she is.”
“I live with her brother. She calls him all the time. Of course I fucking know where she
is.”
 Dami doesn’t question the weirdness of my request. She isn’t exactly Wolf Hall’s
deepest thinker. I’m a little astonished when she actually starts to rattle off examples of
her friendship with Mercy, though. “Okay. Well, first things first, there was the time Mercy
and I were flirting with the same guy at an Edmondson party, and we decided the only
fair thing to do would be for the both of us to take him home. I—”
Fucking no chance whatsoever that I want to hear that story. I tune Damiana out,
focusing all of my attention on Chase. She’s stunning, washed in the afternoon sunlight.
Her pale skin is cast with a warm glow. Her cheeks are the color of rose petals, for god’s
sake. She looks like a painting of some kind. One of those elegant, slightly diffused
romantic pieces from the turn of the last century. Out of nowhere, I realize that she looks
like the woman from Gustaz Klimt’s ‘The Kiss,’ dripping in gold.
She’s fucking beautiful.
And she’s about to come all over my cock. I can tell. I can feel how close she is. She
has her facial expression under tight control now, but I can see how close she is in her
eyes, too, and that alone is enough to drag me closer toward my own orgasm.
She can’t help herself. She jerks against me as it starts, her hips rocking once, twice,
before she manages to stop herself. Her eyes snap closed. Her head falls to one side and
down, away from Damiana. Her jaw clenches. Her hands fist the front of my t-shirt, and I
feel the rolling wave of her orgasm as her pussy tightens around my dick like a fist.
Holy…fucking…SHIT.
I start to spill inside her like some fucking fourteen-year-old who can’t control his shit.
I can’t control my shit, though.
I fucking can’t.
My ears roar. My blood pounds through my veins. It takes a monumental effort of will,
but I keep my eyes open. I watch her, unable to look away, unable to save myself from
the weird, dramatic sensation of falling as I witness her silently coming apart on top of
me.
She’s breathtaking.
“And you can’t tell me you’re not friends with a girl after you’ve sucked a dick that was
inside her pussy three seconds earlier. That’s the very definition of friendship.” The sound
of Damiana’s grating voice hits my ears again, and my annoyance peaks.
“Washington State,” I growl.
Chase’s eyes gently flutter open.
“What?” Dami says.
“Washington fucking State. Some small town. Raleigh or some shit. That’s where
Mercy is. Now for the love of God, please fuck off and leave us alone.”
Slowly, Chase turns back to look at me, skin flushed, eyes bright, a look of small
wonder on her face. She knows I just came inside of her. She felt me, just like I felt her.
“Never heard of it,” Dami says. She rustles next to me, gathering up her shit, but I
don’t even look at her as she gets to her feet. Neither does Chase. We’re so fixed on each
other that neither of us are seeing much of anything else at all.
Damiana lets out a little peeved hmph, and then says, “Well. Just for the record. I
don’t really see this working out for you two. You’re not exactly sane, Davis.”
“I swear to god, I will fucking end you if you don’t piss off,” I snarl.
She goes, grumbling bitterly. For a second, Chase and I stay exactly where we are,
still watching each other guardedly. Then she climbs off me, blushing like mad as she
presses her thighs together, presumably attempting to keep the come I just shot inside of
her from running down her legs.
I put my dick away and fasten my jeans back up probably a little slower than I should.
“That…that was…” Chase whispers.
I reach behind my head and tug my t-shirt off in with one hand. “Here.” Before she
can stop me, I shove the balled-up shirt between her legs, pressing it firmly against her
pussy. She must still be really fucking sensitive because she hisses, her eyes losing a little
of their focus.
“Push me out,” I order. “All of me. Let me clean you.”
Her shoulders hitch up around her ears. She looks around, the reality of what just
happened hitting her hard, I think. She takes the t-shirt from me and uses it herself,
quickly, methodically, and I watch her with my pulse churning in my ears.
I want…fuck, I want more.
What the fuck is going on with me right now?
“You’re coming to the house tonight,” I tell her.
“I can’t. Not tonight. I have to go right now.”
“Nope.”
“Yes,” she emphasizes. “My dad’s coming to pick me up right now. Do you think he’d
get a great first impression of you if he finds us naked on the ornamental lawn?”
I really couldn’t give a shit about what her father thinks. I’ve taken his daughter. She
no longer belongs to him. In the small, dark corner of my soul that still wants things, I
recognize that I’ve claimed her and she’s mine now. It’ll be a long fucking time before I’m
ready to admit that out loud, but...I reject those thoughts even now, unable to even think
them.
I’m silent as Chase puts on her perfume, administers her eye drops, and packs all of
her other shit back into her military bag. She smooths her hair, tucking it behind her ears.
and looks down on me where I’m still sitting in the grass, shirtless, with my arms loosely
wrapped around my knees.
 “I’m really not coming over tonight,” she says.
“Yes. You are.”
“I’m staying at my dad’s place in town for the weekend. He wants to spend some time
with me, and we don’t have class tomorrow. I can’t say no.”
“All right, then.”
“All right, then?”
I work my jaw, torn straight down the middle. Years of animosity and violence have
made their mark on me. It’s hard to tamp down the drive to wrap myself in sharp barbs,
to protect myself from this…this…whatever this is. I’m so drawn to her at the same time,
magnetized to her, hands itching to reach out and touch her again, that I feel like I’m
losing my mind. “Yeah. All right, then. Go spend the night at your dad’s place.”
She stews on this. Over on the shore of the lake, the geese squawk and holler. One of
them takes flight, followed by the others, the sound of their wings snapping and rustling
in the approaching evening’s air.
“I’ll see you on Monday, Pax,” Chase says.
I chew on the inside of my cheek, watching her walk away. That stupid military bag of
hers bounces against the backs of her legs as she goes.
Just before she disappears over the prow of the hill, up by the academy’s circular
driveway, I’m struck by an illogical, pointless thought. One that hasn’t occurred to me
until now. She nearly died a few weeks ago. My mind floods with images of Chase lying
on the sidewalk outside the hospital, dressed in blood, sticky and gruesome with it, her
eyes full of terror, locked onto me like I was the only thing anchoring her to life, and it
dawns on me just how close I came to never really knowing her.
Damn.
I’m not even mad when I look down and see the black friendship bracelet she gave
me earlier, tied around my wrist right next to the orange, yellow and red one.
I don’t even tug on it this time.
 29

PAX

I get her email at midnight.

On the dot.
Like she fucking timed it or something.
The message contains her chapter of the story.
She was probably sitting on her bed, toying with those Tarot cards of hers, biding her
time until the witching hour struck to send it. I’ve decided that’s what Chase is now: a
witch. I don’t believe in magic, or the power of crystals, or energy vampires—that’s more
Meredith’s vibe—but I’m willing to make a concession and admit that all of that mumbo
jumbo, hocus pocus bullshit is real for a second, if it means that I can also name Chase
Satan’s handmaid. She addled my brain this afternoon on the grass outside the maze.
That’s the only explanation for the trippy haze I was in when I walked all three miles
back to Riot House with my own come-soaked t-shirt in my hand.
I print off the attachment she sent and then rip through her words, so ready to tear
her work apart. The pen in my hand, poised and ready to start scribbling a slew of vicious
criticism down in the margins, remains pressed into the paper, not moving a millimeter as
I devour line after line of her work.
When I reach the end, I set the pen down and sit back in my chair, pinching the bridge
really goddamn hard.
If it was just good, I’d be pissed.
But it’s more than good.
It’s fucking excellent, and I am too furious for words.
There’s a girl waiting for the boy at the mouth of the maze. She’s naked, covered in
bruises. Her lip’s split open, the wound oozing blood down her chin. She doesn’t say
anything. She takes the boy by the hand and leads him through a dark, impenetrable
forest. He thinks many times that the girl has lost her way and lured him into the woods
in order to hurt him. Soon, the trees thin out, though, and the dark becomes less
ominous. Eventually, the loamy, springy moss beneath their feet turns to sand. The girl
leads the boy out of the forest and onto a pristine, beautiful beach. They’re alone. In the
blossoming dawn, the boy and the girl sit on top of a dune, listening to the waves crash.
The chapter ends with the girl holding her hand out to the boy again and saying, “I am
Genesis, the beginning. You are Omega, the end.”
I don’t know what I’m supposed to make of that.
Most annoying of all, her writing is beautiful. Her wordplay had me groaning under my
breath and jealousy knifing me in the back. Every word she utilized served a purpose,
every line masterfully constructed to elicit an emotion or some kind of response. And it
worked. It fucking worked. I felt the trees pressing in. I smelled the night air laced with
smoke and the whisper of snow. Worst of all, I felt the hope when our characters stepped
out onto that beach and watched the sun rise together.
So, now I absolutely hate her. I hate Chase, because she was supposed to be bad at
this. I was supposed to embarrass her with my superior writing skills, and she was
supposed to run away with her tail between her legs, but that isn’t what happened. She’s
fucking shown up, and, holy hell, am I pissed about it.
Where the hell is this story supposed to go now? What the hell is it? Her chapter was
excellent, but it was definitely a pointed message to me, and not the continuation of a
novel. I’m going to have to make it one, and that pisses me off even more.
I dive straight into my next chapter, hammering heatedly at the keys of my laptop,
griping all the while like a sour little bitch under my breath about having to pick up the
lion’s share of the work. Thing is, continuing the story isn’t hard. The words come easily,
flowing like the grains of sand through an hourglass, word after word, sentence after
sentence, paragraph after paragraph.
The boy rejects the girl’s help. A vengeful god—the same god who trapped him in the
maze in my first chapter, it transpires—turns the beach to glass with his fiery wrath. He
captures the girl and whisks her away, telling the boy that he must complete four
challenges in order to save her. First: a challenge of physical strength and determination.
He heads out into the world, ready to face the obstacles that he must overcome alone.
The way it’s supposed to be.
I re-read the piece three times, checking for typos and ensuring that everything flows,
thoroughly pleased with myself when I go over the section where the god takes the girl
and she sobs like a little bitch. Chase painted herself as a pillar of strength and light in
her chapter, and me like some lost little boy in need of rescuing. Hopefully, my response
puts her firmly in her place.
Suddenly, it’s four in the morning and I can barely keep my eyes open. My bed looks
mighty comfortable, but I don’t want to be comfortable. I dream when I’m too
comfortable. I lie on the couch in the corner instead, knowing that I’m going to wake up
with a numb arm and a crick in my neck, but it doesn’t matter. I can run off that pain
when I chase the boys up the mountain in three hours. And having to run up the
mountain in pain is far better than accidentally dreaming of Presley Maria Witton Chase.
 30

PAX

“What do you mean, you’re not fucking coming?”

Wren hurls a pillow at me; if I’m not mistaken, he was aiming it at my head. I bat it
away before it can make contact. “Out!” he hollers.
“If you’re not bleeding from your fucking eyeballs, you’re coming,” I growl. “We run in
the mornings. It’s what we do.”
The duvet next to him shifts, something squirming beneath the covers, and a streak of
white-hot rage flashes across my eyes. Wren knows I’ve seen the movement, because he
reaches over and places his hand protectively over the left side of his bed, his dark brows
snapping together. “I disowned my father because I didn’t wanna go to military school,
asshole. And now you’re busting into my room like a fucking drill sergeant? I don’t fucking
think so, dude. Get out.”
I laser in on his hand. The incriminating one, sitting on top of the cover. “I thought we
weren’t having sleepovers?”
“Do I look like I’m fucking playing around right now?” His voice has hit that low, flat,
emotionless tone that preempts an explosive Wren Jacobi trademark outburst. If I don’t
turn around and head out of the door, he’s going to come at me, fists flying. I’d welcome
the tussle—it’s been an age since Wren and I have gone toe-to-toe—but I suspect that
he’s naked under that duvet and his girlfriend’s mouth might be wrapped around his cock,
from the way he keeps jerking, and I do not want to see that.
I back up, ready to make a sharp exit. “Let the record show that I object to this. I
object very fucking much.”
“There is no record, dude. Object away. I can have whoever I want in my room, and I
can choose to leave it whenever I like. Now fuck off.”
 “Bullshit. Fucking bullshit, man.” I slam his bedroom door so hard that the walls
shudder. Down the stairs I go, seething all the way. I nearly collide with Dash as he
comes out of his bedroom, kitted out in his running gear. “My head’s killing me,” he says.
“Come on. Let’s get this shit out of the way. Where’s Jacobi?”
“Slacking. Why don’t you see if you can get him out of his pit? He just threatened to
murder me.”
Dash grumbles, shaking his head as he slips his AirPods into his ears, heading up the
stairs. Three seconds later…
“AHHH! JESUS CHRIST! WHAT THE FUCK, MAN! GOD!”
Lord Lovett hurtles down the stairs, face awash with horror. He finds me waiting for
him by the front door. “The fuck is wrong with you? You purposefully had me walk in on—
on—urgh!” He shakes his head, trying to dislodge whatever he just saw from his memory.
“That was so fucked, man. I just saw parts of Jacobi that should never be seen. By
anyone. Not even a proctologist.”
I smirk into my pre-workout electrolytes. “Did you see Stillwater’s tits, though? That’s
what really matters.”
Dash nails me in the upper arm with his fist. “I have a girlfriend. I wasn’t looking at
Elodie. And I wouldn’t let Wren hear you saying shit like that. Not if you want to live to
graduate.”
I shrug, heading out of the door. “I’m not married to the idea of graduating.”
I say all of this. I did it to see how the words would feel, coming out of my mouth. I
already knew, though. I knew they were going to taste rank on my tongue. As we leave
the house, my head is filled with dangerous thoughts of Chase.
I run until it feels like my lungs are bleeding, and then I run some more. Dash keeps
up, which only encourages me to drive harder. The two of us are gasping and covered in
sweat by the time we reach the foot of the mountain.
Doubled over, panting, I brace my hands on my thighs. “How’s that headache?”
Dash raises a finger—please hold. A second later, he hurls into a prickly bush with
little white flowers on it. He coughs and spits, and I, being the great friend that I am,
fight not to laugh as I slap him on the back.
“Urgggh. Fuck,” he groans. “You’re insane.”
“Me?” I’m a picture of counterfeit confusion.
The color of cold ash, my friend straightens. “You just had me sprint up that fucker.”
He throws up a hand in the direction of the trail we just completed. “I ate a bagel before
we left the house. A bagel. Do you know how hard it is to bring that shit up? Like…a
fucking…wad of dough,” he says, still spitting.
“You didn’t need to keep pace.” I grin. “Could have just let me win.”
 With a withering look, he bares his teeth at me. “Yeah. Right. Like that was gonna
happen.”
His color has returned by the time we reach Riot House; he stuffs another bagel into
his face on the short drive up the mountain. We’re already settled into our regular spots
in English class when Wren and Elodie peel through the door together, looking
disheveled.
Jarvis is just as stern in this class as she is in Creative Writing; she tuts disapprovingly
at the almost latecomers. “I’m going to choose to believe that you came down from the
girls’ wing and Mr. Jacobi was just waiting on you outside, Elodie. Come on. Get to your
seats. We’re ready to begin.”
Wren hurls daggers at me as he throws himself down on the leather couch under the
window. “The fuck? Why didn’t you come get us?”
I arch an eyebrow. “I’m your friend, not your drill sergeant, man. Far be it from me to
order you around.”
“Mature. Really fucking mature.”
Also, I’m cool with carting my friends around, but I’m not Elodie Stillwater’s personal
fucking chauffeur. I hope the two of them had to walk.
Chase is nowhere to be seen. On the other side of the room, Elodie sits besides
Carina. I catch her grinning at Dash, who’s glowing next to me like some lovestruck
moron, and something inside me snaps. I’ve had enough and then some. I snatch up my
bag and get to my feet.
“Yes, Mr. Davis. What can I do for you?”
Jarvis looks at me with the same tired what the fuck now expression that all of the
other teachers at the academy wear around me. “I’m gonna hurl,” I say flatly. “I’m going
home.”
She sighs. “You can’t just go home.”
“And you can’t just keep me here if I don’t feel well.”
“If you’re sick, you know what you have to do. You have to go and see the nurse.”
“Fine. I’ll take a thermometer up the ass if it means I can get the fuck out of here.”
 31

PRES

Happy.
I wake up, and I’m actually happy.
The strangest thing.
I can’t remember the last time I was happy.
It was another lifetime, before that night at the hospital. Before Mara went missing,
too? Damn, maybe it really has been that long. And even though I had to spend the
weekend at the house, sleeping on the lumpy sofa in the sweltering hot living room, with
Dad hovering over me, I was happy the entire time. Because the memory of being with
Pax at Riot House, and then that crazy experience with him on the lawn, while Damiana
Lozano bitched and moaned about Mercy…it was enough to sustain me. Without a
shadow of a doubt, there will be more of that. I know Pax well enough to see how much
he enjoyed our extremely public encounter. He wanted more. He wanted me to go over
that night, for God’s sake. There’s hope that he’ll want to continue this little arrangement
we have until graduation, and that is all I care about. Once I’m away from this
godforsaken town, I won’t need such a dangerous distraction from my demons anymore.
I’ll leave the nightmares and the hideous memories behind, and I’ll be able to start a
whole new life.
Besides. Maybe…
Maybe there’s a chance that Pax might still want to see me after graduation. I don’t
let myself dwell on that thought. Wouldn’t be wise. I have to keep this whole thing
straight in my head. It’s just sex for him. He’ll go away to college and start fucking girls at
Harvard, and I’ll be nothing but a distant memory. And that’s okay. I’ll have to make it
okay.
 Dad kisses me on the top of the head before I get into the car. He attempts, for the
fiftieth time since Friday evening, to get me to move back into the house, but only half-
heartedly this time. He knows what my answer will be before I even open my mouth.
I am running seriously late for first class by the time I hit the road that leads up to the
academy. I’m still smiling, though, as I blast some music, singing at the top of my lungs
when I pull into the long, sweeping driveway. I’m still smiling when I loop around into the
parking lot at the rear of the academy. I’m still smiling when I grab my bag and run
toward the entrance. And, when I see the familiar figure standing on the steps, my smile
still doesn’t falter. Because he’s so out of place, so unexpected, waiting there by the door
for me, that I don’t piece it together at first.
It's only when Jonah jogs down the steps and meets me halfway, closing a firm hand
around the top of my arm, that reality hits home and I realize that this is real.
He’s here.
Now.
“Hey there, Red. Nice to see you looking so cheerful for once.” His smile is magnetic.
The words sound so charming when he says them. “Come on. Come with me. I think we
need to have a little chat, don’t you?”
“What the—” My heart stops beating in my chest. “What are you doing here?”
He grins, and my vision begins to narrow. But not before the memories I’ve done such
a good job of holding back all come rushing in, crowding me, demanding my attention.

The ominous presence, crouching, waiting for me in the dark.

The bed.

The blood.

The knife.
 32

PRES

THE NIGHT OF…

“You should go. If Dad finds you in here—”

“Don’t be fucking stupid, Presley. You saw how much he drank at dinner. He’s already
snoring in his bed. And even if he did find me in here, what? He’s gonna think his children
are hanging out, spending some time together? Oh no.”
Jonah turns on the tiny lamp on my nightstand, then sits himself down on the bed
next to me. He reaches out and winds a lock of my loose hair around his index finger,
scowling at it, and a bolt of nausea makes my stomach roil. He never did like my hair. He
always said it reminded him of my mother. My mother, who he despises, almost as much
as he despises me.
He catches me flinching and laughs under his breath. “Ahh come on, Pres. Don’t act all
coy now. You’ve never shied away from my touch before.”
I have. He knows I have. The first time he came into my room when I was thirteen, I
kicked and screamed so loud that he shoved a filthy rag into my mouth and pinched my
nose until I couldn’t breathe, and I passed out. When I’d woken up an unknown amount
of time later, he’d already been inside me. The pain had been a bright sting. He’d grunted
as he’d fucked me, grinding away on top of me, leaning his forearm across my throat to
make sure I couldn’t scream again.
He’d forced a Plan B pill down my throat the next morning, while Mom and Dad had
been arguing in the kitchen. I’d thrown it up an hour later, but it hadn’t mattered. I hadn’t
even started my period then. The next time he came to my room, I’d actually been on my
period. He hadn’t cared. The two times after that, he’d dragged me down into the
basement of the Airbnb we were staying at Palm springs and he’d fucked me in the ass
“to avoid any unnecessary complications,” he’d said.
I was sent away to Wolf Hall after that, and he went off to college. I haven’t seen hm
for three years…until tonight.
I slap his hand away. “I’m not some skinny kid you can push around anymore, Jonah.
Get the fuck out of my room.”
He has the audacity to look hurt. “What is your deal, Presley? We always have fun
together, you and me. I don’t get why you’re being so salty.”
My senses are spiraling. I can’t see, hear, think straight. I’m about to explode. “Get
out of my room, Jonah. I fucking mean it. I’m not gonna let you touch me again.”
He laughs. “You are something else, little sister. You’re the one who always came
onto me, strutting around in your little shorts and those skimpy little t-shirts. You wanted
me just as much as I wanted you.”
“Bullshit! You fucking raped me!”
He grabs me by the throat, slamming me back so hard that my skull hits the
headboard behind me, and for a second I can’t see.
“Shut your mouth,” he hisses. “You girls are all the fucking same. You taunt a guy and
flash your body at us, and the moment we give you what you want, you use the ugliest
word you can think of to make yourselves feel better. Well, you’re not pulling that shit
with me, Red. I know you. You can’t lie to me. You were making eyes at me all fucking
night across the dinner table. So guess what? Now you’re gonna reap what you sow.”
When I came to bed earlier, I’d hoped this wasn’t going to happen. I’d taken
precautions in case it did, though. Groping around behind me, I reach under the pillow
and find what I’m looking for: the six-inch-long knife that I took from Dad’s chef set. The
blade is two inches wide and honed to an unbelievably sharp edge. Dad told me once
that it could cut through bone. The second Jonah sees the flash of the steel in the dark,
he releases me and leaps back from the bed.
“Whoa ho ho! What the fuck is this?” he says, laughing. “You decided to bring
weapons to the party? I gotta say, I never thought you had it in you.”
I thrust the knife at him, baring my teeth. “Get out, Jonah.”
He holds his hands up. “I wish I could, I really do. But I’m super fired up, and I came
all the way from California to see you. I’m not leaving until you give me what I came for.”
“I’m not having sex with you. You’re my brother. You’re sick. There’s something very
wrong with you.”
He isn’t bothered by my accusations one bit. “Don’t you think,” he says, narrowing his
eyes to slits. “That there’s something wrong with you? If this wasn’t what you wanted,
then answer me this. Why have you never told anyone that I attacked you?”
The nausea returns. I do my best to swallow it down, to keep it at bay so that I can
handle this situation, but my mouth is sweating, and my head’s reeling. “You threatened
me,” I whisper. “You told me that you’d kill me if I ever breathed a word of it. You said
that Dad wouldn’t love me, because he loved you more, and he’d never believe me over
you.”
Jonah rubs at his jaw, smiling broadly. He flashes his perfect teeth at me, and a
horrible tightness forms in my chest. That smile is so deceptive. He’s handsome; it makes
me sick to admit it, but he’s a very attractive guy. Girls must throw themselves at him all
the time. How many of those girls has he assaulted and then threatened with violence to
make them keep their mouths shut? I don’t even want to know…
“I guess I did say all of that, didn’t I?” He shrugs. “We both know you’re not going to
use that. Put down the knife. Let’s stop fucking around and be honest about what we
want here.”
No way I am putting down this knife. “I have been honest. I want you to fucking
leave!” I lunge for him, which is my mistake. I’m too distraught to handle what’s going
on, and Jonah is utterly calm. In a heartbeat, he has the knife out of my hand and I’m
pinned to the mattress, flat on my back. He’s on top of me, his breath reeking of stale red
wine, his weight crushing me.
“You’re gonna regret giving me such a hard time, Red,” he snarls. The weapon I’d
brought in here to defend myself is now at my throat, the wicked tip pressing into the
hollow at the base of my neck. “Do you have any idea how long it takes to bleed out if
your carotid is cut, Presley? Hmm?” He shakes me, and my whole life flashes before my
eyes. I want to cry out, to beg for help, but who am I going to call? Once Dad’s asleep,
he’s dead to the world, and this old house swallows sound. Screaming and shouting will
get me nowhere. I have to…I have to think.
Be calm, Presley. Figure this out. What can you do to get out of this?
“It takes seconds,” Jonah says, leering at me. “And while I don’t honestly care if you
live or die, I don’t really feel like fucking a corpse tonight.” He shoves away from me.
“Stand up.” My entire body is shaking. He gets off me, climbing down from the bed and
moving back to give me room. “Stand up, or I’ll actually give you something to fucking
scream about.”
I do it. I have no idea how, but I manage. He isn’t bluffing. I can tell from the wild,
unhinged look in his eyes. He’s never seemed this crazy before.
“Strip. Take your fucking clothes off. Do it quickly. We don’t have all night.”
I’m trembling like a leaf as I undress. I stand before him, naked, shaking, fearing what
comes next.
Jonah’s eyes travel the length of my body, pausing to drink in the sight of me. “Fuck,”
he says. “You’ve become a woman since the last time we hung out like this. I gotta say, I
preferred you the way you were to be honest. But hell. It was bound to happen, wasn’t it?
With a whore of a mother like yours. She had massive tits, too. No wonder she turned
Dad’s head. He left my mom before I was even born. Did you know that? Came back here
for some bullshit high school reunion and ran into his old high school sweetheart. Decided
to abandon all of his responsibilities and start up a whole new life—”
“That’s not what happened, Jonah. Your mom was an alcoholic. She wouldn’t stop
drinking when she was pregnant with you, and he couldn’t watch her do it anymore. He
didn’t meet my mom again until you were already three!”
“FUCKING LIAR!” He comes at me, grabbing me by the hair. Blinding pain shoots
through me as he pushes me to the ground. “You’re just like her, aren’t you? Such a
fucking liar. I know she contacted him. Tricked him into leaving my mom. And then she
acts like the innocent party, like she’s done nothing wrong. She tries to be nice to me
when I have no choice but to come spend the summers with your fucked up little family.”
“You had to come spend the summers with…” I stop myself. I stop fucking talking.
Jonah leans down, spit flying when he says, “Go on. Finish what you were gonna say. I
wanna hear her lies come out of your mouth.”
“You had to come to us because she was always in rehab!”
God, what is wrong with me? I should have made something up. I should not have
said that, though. It’s the truth. His mom was a train wreck when we were little, and she
still is now. Some idiotic desire to defend my mother made me start the sentence, but I
should not have finished it.
Jonah is a nightmare given form. “You don’t know my mother. You’ve never even
fucking met her. Don’t you fucking talk about her like you know anything.”
I see the madness in his eyes, and I know that I’m lost.
Jonah rips at the belt buckle at his waist, unfastening it and pulling the length of
leather from his pants. I try to get away, to scramble across the floor, to put some
distance between us, but it’s futile. The room is too small, and I have nowhere to go. My
back hits the wall and I know that it’s all over.
He falls on me.
His hands tear my thighs.
“Make as much noise as you like, Red. It really doesn’t matter to me. I slipped
something into Dad’s last glass anyway.”
He hits me. The blow sends me reeling, my consciousness slipping away. He hits me
again and again, all over my chest, my stomach…everywhere. When he forces himself
inside me, my mind goes blank. I disappear into a fog of nothingness.
I only emerge from that fog when I feel the agony of pain at my wrists.
I snap back into my body, and panic takes its hold. Naked and covered in blood, Jonah
kneels over me with the knife in his hands, and my wrists…
Oh god! My wrists! Blood flows like a crimson river down my arms as I hold my hands
up to my face. Too much blood. There’s way too much blood. “Jonah, what have you
done?”
“You shouldn’t have said that about my mother,” he snarls.
“Fuck. I’m—I’m going to die, Jonah.”
His ashen, blood spattered face registers the faintest amount of shock. Between his
legs, his dick hangs flaccid and spent. He staggers back, dropping his hold on the knife,
and the sound of it hitting the hardwood clangs inside my head. “You…shouldn’t have…
said that about…my mom,” he whispers.
Panic makes me come alive, even as I can feel myself fading. My heart’s beating hard,
thumping against my ribs, pounding out a desperate rhythm as it tries to process the
shock…
“Jonah. Jonah, listen to me. If you leave me like this, they’re gonna know it was you.
If you let me die, they’ll know that you attacked me.”
He shakes his head. “They won’t.”
“They will! They’ll do an autopsy. Oh, god, they’ll…” The room pitches. I’m so
lightheaded, I can’t even see straight. Too much blood. So much blood. “They’ll know
you…raped me. The bruises…”
“FUCK!” Jonah tears at his hair, doubling over. “This is all your fault. Why the fuck did
you have to say that shit!”
Like a flip being switched, he drops like a stone to the ground, cradling his head in his
own hands. He starts to cry.
“Take me…to the hospital, Jonah. Take me and…it’ll all be okay.”
“No! No, no, no! I can’t!”
“Take me!”
He whips around to face me, his face red and blotchy, his eyes manic as hell. “You’ll
tell them what I did!”
“I won’t. I swear I won’t. I’ll say…I did it myself. They’ll never even…know.”
Jonah stops crying. He sniffs, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. he looks like a
little boy—a child recovering from a temper tantrum. “You swear? If I take you, you’ll tell
them you did this? Not me?”
“I swear.”
He thinks for a second. A second I don’t have. And then… “Okay. But if you breathe a
word of this, I will fucking come back for you, Red. Just see if I fucking don’t. And I’ll
make it hurt so much more next time. I’ll find your fucking mom and I’ll kill her, too.”
I don’t care about his threats.
He picks me up and starts to dress me. I feel like a limp ragdoll in his arms. I’m fading
so fast.
“I mean it, Presley. I swear to God. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you. I’ll come back and I’ll kill
you.”
It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.
I want to live.
I want to live.
I want to live.
 33

PAX

“You’re not particularly warm. No fever to speak of. You said you felt sick?”
Wolf Hall has changed a lot in the past couple of weeks. The nurse’s office used to be
glorified broom closet near Harcourt’s office, but now the academy has its very own
medical bay. How very U.S.S. Enterprise of the school board. One of the lesser used
classrooms was converted during break, and now the place is decked out with medical
equipment that’s more advanced than anything you’ll find at Mountain Lakes’ hospital.
I’ve heard they’re running advanced biology classes out of here now, for the students who
are interested in going into pre-med. This is also where I had my check up after the bone
marrow donation—being poked and prodded here instead of down the hill seemed like
the better option than potentially running into Meredith.
I glare balefully at the guy holding the back of his hand to my forehead, letting him
know precisely what I think of his arcane temperature-gauging methods. It’s not as if I
wanted a thermometer in my ass. One in the mouth would probably be appropriate,
though.
“I still feel sick. I have an upset stomach, too. Happy to provide a fecal sample if you
need one.”
The guy, Danny, laughs. He taps some notes into his iPad, documenting my phony
visit, and then sets the tablet down. “Thanks, but that won’t be necessary. Here. Take
this to reception and then head home. Get some rest. I’d hate for you to have to sit
through a full day of classes if you felt sick.” He hands me a printout that looks like a
receipt, his tone dripping with sarcasm. He knows I’m fine, but what’s he supposed to do?
Tell me to stop being a little shit and head back to English? I’m eighteen years old. I can
walk right out of the academy and there’s nothing he can do to stop me. Plus, he weighs
next to nothing; I could bench three of him, easy. I’d like to see him try and keep me
here against my will. He would not like the consequences.
I take the stupid receipt to the school receptionist, who blanches, hand shaking when
she takes it from me, like I’m about to hop over the desk and assault her or something.
Then I realize that I’ve left my cell on the chair in the med bay, which is just fucking
great. I head all the way back over to the other side of the building, only to witness
Chase being carried through the door to one of the computer labs in the arms of a guy
who most definitely is not a Wolf Hall student.
Tall, with almost blond hair, he’s sporting a whole bunch of ink—the bad kind that you
get in a low rent back alley shop off the Vegas strip when you’re fucked out of your mind.
The kind of ink that identifies a guy as a straight up asshole loser. I think he sees me, but
I can’t be sure. If he does, then he’s got some brass balls, ’cause he clearly doesn’t give a
flying fuck that someone’s clocked him.
It's not that I’m intrigued. No. That’s definitely not it. I couldn’t care less if Chase has
gotten herself into shit; it was bound to happen, her mouth being as colossally smart as it
recently is. The vibe I get from the guy who manhandled her through the doorway,
though…he looked like a piece of work. Arrogant. Nasty. He didn’t even blink when he
saw me, as if there was no way I might pose a problem to him. I don’t like that. It
smacks of next level arrogance. On any given day, I’d gladly burn this place down to the
ground and wouldn’t even break my stride, but that doesn’t mean that rando strangers
can just show up here and just wonder around like they own the goddamn place. Yeah,
that’s just not fucking happening.
I move quickly, beelining for the computer lab. The academy is hundreds of years old,
so there are no windows in the antique mahogany doors. I can’t spy on them that way, so
I toe the heavy weight of the wood back, shoving it open just enough to peek through the
gap into the room.
The stranger is setting Chase down on the floor by the window on the far side of the
room. She comes to—fuck, she was unconscious?— just as I slip inside the classroom.
Chase starts, real fucking jump, when she sees the dude. They’re glowering at each
other, neither one of them paying any attention to the fact that they’re not alone. I dip
into one of the old Gothic recesses that form an alcove in the in the stonework. The
perfect place to loiter and eavesdrop on a conversation.
“You really are the dumbest bitch I’ve ever come across,” the guy snarls. His tone is
acid, rough from cigarette smoke. “You thought I wouldn’t figure it out? You thought I
wouldn’t know?”
“Know what, Jonah? I haven’t said anything!”
“Dad’s been calling and messaging me non-stop. He knows something’s up. He asked
me if anything weird happened that night. He wanted to know if we had a fight.”
Chase lets her head hang. She rubs at her temples, shrinking away from this Jonah
character like he’s the fucking devil himself. “Just…back off, okay. I haven’t said a word to
him. He’s just being overprotective.”
“I don’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth.”
Chase gets to her feet. It doesn’t look like she should be standing whatsoever. She
looks even more unsteady on her feet when the asshole grabs her by the tops of her
arms and shakes her. “Jonah, let me go,” she hisses.
My blood starts to sing in my veins. A red-hot wall of anger comes crashing down on
me, a red veil clouding my vision. The next thing I know, some idiot hisses out two short
sentences that bring the whole mess to a standstill.
“You heard her. Let her fucking go.”
The idiot…is me.
It wasn’t a conscious decision. As far as my brain is concerned, it issued no orders to
move out from the alcove, but somehow, for some reason, I’m standing in the middle of
the computer lab now with my bag at my feet and my hands turned into fists. What the
fucking fuck?
The stranger’s perturbed expression matches my confusion. “Who the fuck are you?”
he asks.
“He’s…no one. Just a guy from my creative writing class,” Chase says quickly.
What in the actual fuck?
Just a guy from my creative writing class? Nice. You save a girl’s life and give her
some of the best orgasms she’s ever likely to experience, and this is the thanks you get.
Honest to God.
Jonah assesses me darkly. “All right. Well, move your ass, Creative Writing Guy. This
doesn’t concern you.”
“Oh, but it does, though.”
He frowns. “How could this possibly be any of your fucking business, bro?”
“Because I’ve decided that it’s my business. That’s all you need to be worried about.”
“Hah.” His bark of laughter drips with derision. “I’m not in the habit of worrying about
—”
Chase chooses now to break free from the guy’s hold. She attempts to wrench herself
out of his grasp, but this Jonah tightens his grip. “Ahhh, Jonah! That hurts!”
Nope.
No…fucking…way.
I react.
I blink and my hand is locked around homeboy’s throat, and his back is shoved up
against the projector screen at the front of the classroom. I have a vague awareness that
Chase is safe and standing on her own two feet, out of this guy’s reach, but I honestly
have no fucking clue how she just got there. None of it is making sense.
“Back…the fuck…off,” I snarl. “She doesn’t wanna go with you. She’s made that
abundantly clear. It’s time for you to leave. Unless you’d like to check out our new clinic.
It’s state of the art.”
Jonah tries to dislodge my hand from his throat and fails. I’m lucky. He’s a big fucking
guy; he must work out. If he wanted to throw down—and he most definitely does—and
I’d given him any warning, I’d have had a real fight on my hands. Thankfully I caught him
off guard, and I’ve got a mean fucking grip on his esophagus.
Scowling, he tries to wrench my hand free, which only causes me to tighten my hold
on him. “All right, all right, man. You’ve made your point,” he wheezes.
“The point is that you pass out.”
“Wha—?” The word squelches in his throat, cut off by the pressure I apply against his
esophagus. The blood begins to rise to the surface of his skin, turning first his neck a
deep shade of purple, and then his jaw, and then his cheeks. Clawing, he attempts to
tear my arm away, but my legs are spread, feet planted, and this ain’t my first fucking
rodeo. His eyelids flutter, eyes rolling back into his head.
“Pax? Stop! Enough. He’s not worth it. That’s enough, Pax! Hey, I SAID THAT’S
ENOUGH!”
Chase shoves me. I hardly move an inch, but I’m very aware of her hands touching my
arm and my side, and it’s as though the fierce tension inside of me, a rubber band being
stretched and stretched and stretched, snaps. I release my grip and turn around, taking
three giant steps away from the fucker. I need to put some space between us. I can’t
guarantee that I won’t still launch my fist into his jaw.
“Christ!” Jonah hacks, spitting onto the carpeted floor of the computer lab. “What the
fuck is your deal, man?”
“I’ve heard from numerous sources that girls don’t like it when you make them do
things against their will.” Irony bites at me. Oh, don’t I sound like such a good guy right
now, making my good guy speech? I’ve hazed and fucked with girls beyond the bounds of
what other people consider right. I’ve caused plenty of pain and suffering. I haven’t given
a single shit about a girl’s feelings. Fact of the matter is, I’ve relished being the source of
countless girls’ unhappiness in the past. But one thing I’ve never done is laid a finger on a
girl without her permission. I’ve never used my greater strength or weight to incapacitate
a girl and force her to do something she doesn’t want to do.
I am a monster. No two ways about it. A monster with one hard limit.
Whipping around, I face Jonah, lancing him through with a narrow stare. “Go. Now.
Before your day gets really bad.”
“What, you gonna call the cops on me?” Jonah winces, rubbing his throat. “You really
think I give a shit?” He turns to Chase. “It’s too late for you to go spreading lies about me
now, Red. I was smart. I waited until…” His eyes rake up and down her body. “Don’t think
you can go back on our deal, now. That’s all I’m saying, okay? They’ll never believe you
without any evidence. The cops won’t do shit to help you now.”
My skin prickles. Adrenalin rolls through me, pushing, pushing, pushing me to do
something reckless. I manage to swallow down my rising need to kill this motherfucker.
But only just. I laugh. “You see any cops here, asshole? Worry about the threat that’s
standing right in front of you. There’s no fucking due process with me. Get the fuck out of
here right now before I rip your fucking tongue out of your head.”
Toe-to-toe, eye-to-eye, there really isn’t much between me and this guy. He’s big. He
works out. I can tell he just lifts to look good in a t-shirt, though. All of that muscle is for
show. It isn’t functional muscle, whereas mine most definitely is. I could shatter every
bone in his fucking face if I wanted to. Just as I’ve got a good measure of him, Jonah
knows this about me, too. He blinks, and I see the faintest flicker of reason take hold in
his eyes. He looks at me, fully focusing on me for the first time, not constantly shifting his
attention over to Chase, and I see nothing in him but madness.
“What’s your name?” he asks quietly. “And don’t bother refusing to give it to me. I can
fi—”
“Pax Davis. I live in the house off the mountain road, halfway down the hill. Come find
me whenever. I’ll always have time to talk to you, motherfucker.”
Jonah blinks again. Too slow. Processing. He glances over to Chase, something nasty
and hungry flashing across his face. “Just remember our agreement, Presley. I wouldn’t
want t—”
I grab him by the face, wrenching his gaze away from her. “You don’t look at her. You
look at me. You don’t talk to her. You talk to me.”
Angrily, he pushes my hand away. I only let him go because he begins walking
backwards out of the computer lab. “That’s all well and good for right now, Pax Davis. But
I’m her brother. I’ll know that bitch for the rest of her life. Are you always gonna be
around to play bodyguard?” He smiles extra wide, and a sick sense of foreboding makes a
knot of my insides. “I don’t fucking think so.”
 34

PRES

“Wanna tell me what that was all about?”

I hurry along the hallway, a monster headache pounding in my temples.
“You can start by telling me why you were unconscious when that fucker carried you
inside the building, Chase.”
Pax is a furious whirlwind of questions. His Joy Division t-shirt is straining across his
chest; he’s still so wound up that he looks like he’s about to hulk out of the damn thing.
His pale grey eyes flash murder.
I’m so alarmed by what just happened that I keep stumbling over my own feet in my
haste to get away from him. I need to be alone. “I got lightheaded. I wasn’t feeling well
for a second. I fainted.”
“Do you do that a lot around that guy?”
I stop quickly, facing him. “No! I—” I close my eyes. Take a deep breath. Open them
again. “Look. I didn’t have breakfast this morning, and I was late, and I guess I just
pushed myself a little harder than I should have. I passed out. It’s totally normal for girls.
We—”
“Fuck that.” Pax folds his arms across his chest, glaring at me.
“What? What do you mean, fuck that?”
“I’m not some neanderthal jock who thinks girls are weak. You guys literally push ten-
pound babies out of your vaginas. Feed me another line. A missed breakfast isn’t going to
make you pass out.”
“Pax! I really don’t want to do this with you right now.”
He sets his jaw. “What was he so worried about in there? Why was he talking about
you calling the cops? And evidence? And what agreement?”
 Christ, I was really hoping he hadn’t paid attention to any of that. Exhaustion sweeps
over me as I move again, heading for the exit. “It’s really nothing for you to worry about,
okay. I don’t want to talk about it. I just…” The sun beats down on me when I step
outside, but the heat doesn’t penetrate my skin. Inside, I’m frozen, my insides choked
with ice. I feel like, if I try and breathe too deep, all of my vital organs are going to
fracture.
Pax hurries ahead of me, turning to face me at the top of the steps, blocking my way.
“Where are you going? You forget you live here or something?”
“Pax.” I skirt around him, jogging down the steps.
“You’re running back to your dad’s place, then? Where that asshole is probably waiting
for you?”
Oh, God. He’s right. Jonah probably is at Dad’s place. I swallow thickly. “I’m hungry. I
already told you. I didn’t eat this morning. I’m going to the diner.”
He moves in front of me, blocking my way again. “No, you’re fucking not.”
My panic mixes with anger, combining to create a volatile cocktail of emotion in my
bloodstream. “Were you full of shit back there? Because I swear I just heard you saying
that girls don’t like it when they’re forced to do things against their will. And now you’re
here, telling me what I am and am not going to do. It’s the same fucking thing.” I feel
sick as I say it. This is not the same thing Jonah was trying to do to me, has done to me
in the past. It’s not even close. I’m ready to say anything to get out of here, though.
Pax flares his nostrils angrily, looking away. He’s so fucking tense. I can tell he wants
to argue with me. He’s fighting with himself, trying not to say something that will make
this even worse, and it’s costing him big. He looks down at his feet for a second, blowing
out a long, unhappy breath. “Come with me to the house. I’ll get you something to eat.”
“No, Pax. I’m not doing that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re gonna poke and poke at this until I give you the answers you want,
and I can’t deal with that right now.”
He runs his tongue over his teeth, considering. A frown forms on his face.
“Come to the house. I’ll make sure you eat. I will not ask you a single question.”
Is he being serious? I don’t know if I can believe that. “You promise?”
He looks right into my soul when his eyes meet mine. So intense. This kind of eye
contact is terrifying with him. He places his hand on his chest, directly in the center, right
over his heart, and I don’t even need to hear him say the words.
I sigh, giving in. It’s all I can do. “All right, then. Let’s go.”
Watching Pax try to navigate a kitchen is interesting. He’s so sure of himself, and
confident in everything that he does. Turns out that’s because he only usually does things
he can do well. Put him in an unfamiliar situation and things are a little different. He
curses as he yanks open all of the kitchen cupboards. A lot.
Eggs.
Cheese.
Salsa.
Milk.
Avocado.
The items all get slammed down on the marble counter with unbridled aggression.
Pax’s mood is black to say the least, but he keeps his promise. He doesn’t ask a single
question.
He grabs a bag of tater tots out of the freezer, dumps them onto a baking tray, then
hurls the tray into the oven.
“I think…you need to turn it on,” I offer.
“I know what the fuck I’m doing,” he snaps. Then he turns the oven on to three-
seventy-five, grumbling angrily. Taking a glass bowl out of a cupboard, he cracks an
unholy amount of eggs into it, adds a bunch of milk, a slab of butter, and whisks the
living shit out the mixture with a fork, glowing with rage. Once he’s done with that, he
adds a heap of salt, some pepper and starts whisking all over again.
He doesn’t utter another word until he’s poured the eggs into a hot pan and he’s
scrambling them. “When I was eight, I caught my dad fucking a woman in the elevator of
our building. He was so angry with me, he dragged me back to our apartment and shoved
me inside. When he pushed me, he pushed me hard. I fell down these three steps that
lead into our kitchen, and I broke my wrist. I ran and hid from him in the stairwell. Our
neighbor found me and took me to the hospital. When Meredith came to get me, she was
so mad. She said I’d embarrassed our family by airing our dirty laundry in public. Slapped
me across the face in the parking lot.”
I sit still on the stool at the breakfast counter. “And Meredith is…?”
“The woman you baited me into saving,” he says tightly.
His mother. Meredith is his mother, and she hit him in a parking lot for being upset.
Wow. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Don’t be.” Pax grabs the avocado and slams it down on a chopping board, cutting it
open. He digs the pit out and throws it in the trash so forcefully that the hard stone
makes a loud clang against the side of the metal trash can. “Also when I was seven,
Meredith drove me all the way up to Syracuse to visit my aunt. I pissed her off on the
drive up there, and so she refused to speak to me the entire time we were at my aunt’s
place. On the way home, I told her I needed to go to the restroom. But she was still
ignoring me and wouldn’t pull over. So I pissed myself. She was so furious at me that
time that she stopped the car, wrenched me out of the backseat, dumped me on my ass
in the snow, took my jacket off me—this was in December, by the way—and then drove
off. I was so scared that I hid right there, in a culvert on the side of the freeway, for three
hours before I got so cold that I decided I had to walk and find someone who could take
me home. She was waiting for me at a gas station a mile or so down the road, livid that
it had taken me so long to drag my ass along the side of the freeway. She made me take
off my pants and my underwear and sit up front, next to her, naked from the waist down,
because I was a ‘disgusting little pissy pig’ for having wet myself.”
He sticks his hand in the bag of shredded cheese, grabs a fistful, and dumps it into the
eggs. He pauses for a moment, breathing angrily as he just stares at the contents of the
pan. “When I was eight, I got meningitis. Three of us from my elementary school caught
it at the same time. One of the kids died. My friend David. I was so fucked up, I was in
this weird fever dream for four fucking days. My dad sat by the bedside, but Meredith was
in the middle of a high-profile trial, so she stayed away. Didn’t visit me once. When my
father brought me home, I was weak and exhausted, so he made me up a bed on the
couch in the living room so I could watch T.V. Meredith was so enraged when she got
home and found me bundled up on one of her precious white couches that she made my
father carry me into my bedroom. She left me there in silence, in the dark, by myself for a
whole week so I could ‘properly convalesce.’ She didn’t speak to me once. A house maid
who didn’t even speak English came in and force fed me when she deemed it
appropriate.”
I am reeling from this horrific download. I’ve never heard Pax speak this much all in
one go for a start. And the things he’s telling me—they’re fucking horrifying. My heart is
breaking for him. “Pax?”
He ignores me, going to the fridge and taking out a pack of tortillas. He opens it and
holds one over an open flame on the cooktop, spinning it slowly as he warms it. “When I
was nine, I started having these night terrors.” He exhales loudly. “I was stuck in this
maze, and I couldn’t get out. I was being chased by these demons. Monsters. They were
trying to eat my fucking soul. Night after night, I’d scream and scream and scream.
Meredith moved me to the bedroom furthest away from theirs at first, so I wouldn’t
disturb her sleep. When that didn’t work, she’d pour a bucket of freezing cold water over
my head while I was still asleep to try and ‘condition me out of it.’ I’d have to sleep in a
soaking wet bed every night as punishment. And when that didn’t work, she sent me
away to a child psychiatry treatment center in Connecticut, where they actually used
shock therapy to treat m—”
 “Oh my God, Pax! Stop!” I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe.
He gets the tater tots out of the oven and drops the tray down on the counter with
another loud clang. He stops with the stories, but I can still feel the anger fizzing off him
like a dangerous electric charge. He constructs a burrito silently, jaw working all the time,
and then crosses the kitchen and sets a plate down in front of me on the counter.
“Want any hot sauce?” he asks mechanically.
I gape at him, still reeling from all of the awful things he just dumped on me. “No!”
He shrugs. “Suit yourself.”
He shuts his mouth again, returning to the cooktop to warm another tortilla. He
makes another burrito, for himself this time, and when he’s finished, he faces me, leaning
against the counter on the opposite wall, and he begins to eat.
“Well?” he says around a mouthful of food.
“Well what?”
“Eat. It’s getting cold.”
“I don’t think I can eat now. Funnily enough, my appetite appears to have died on its
ass.”
He chews. “Don’t overreact. You passed out because you were so hungry, remember.
Eat.”
Ohhh, I am going to hurt this guy. Frustrated beyond belief, I grab the burrito up off
the plate and take a bite out of it. Surprisingly, it’s really good.
“She left me there until I was eleven,” Pax says quietly. “Nearly two years in a facility
for mentally disturbed children. They eventually kicked me out when I set my therapist’s
office on fire. They told Meredith that there was nothing wrong with me. I wasn’t sick. I
was just an asshole. And shit, did Meredith not like that. She tried to check me into three
other places, in New York this time, but they wouldn’t take me based on that final
diagnosis. They said it was unethical.” He takes another bite of his food. I watch him
chew, and he watches me back.
Eventually, he swallows and says, “That was when she shipped me off to boarding
school instead. First a prep school in Wyoming. Then here. She’s had me committed three
separate times, to institutions with fewer scruples since then, though. Usually when I’ve
displeased her. They keep me on a psych hold for a couple of days, or a week. The last
one was actually for two weeks. Now that I’m a legal adult, she can’t pull that shit
anymore, though. She wouldn’t fucking dare. So instead, she fucks with me in other ways.
Whatever she can think of to get a rise out of me or control me.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” I whisper.
He pops the last of his burrito into his mouth and picks up his plate, taking it over to
the kitchen sink. I’m left to stare at his broad back while he washes the dish and places it
in the drying wrack. He comes and stands in front of me, on the other side of the
breakfast counter, when he’s done, leaning, palms flat on top of the marble. “I’m hoping,”
he says, “that you’ll listen to all of my fucked-up shit and realize that your fucked-up shit
isn’t anywhere near as bad. I figured that way you might be okay with just telling me
what’s going on and I won’t have to break the promise I made.”
“For fuck’s sake, Pax! Was any of that even true!”
He doesn’t react to my anger. “All of it.”
“I don’t appreciate being manipulated like this.”
“How am I manipulating you? I just told you my entire plan. I’m not coercing you into
doing anything. It’s still your choice to make.”
I rocket to my feet. “And I’m not going to! I—I have to go, Pax.”
He shakes his head. “No, you don’t.” I can tell he’s still angry, but he’s keeping his
temper well under control. He speaks calmly, and the effect is strangely grounding. I
haven’t met this version of him before. This steady, solid Pax, who can control his
hostility if it serves a higher purpose. “Come upstairs.” He holds out his hand.
“I don’t think I’m down for sex right now.” I never thought I’d be saying those words
to him, of all people, but I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin. I can still feel
Jonah’s hands on me, and I can still see the bitter madness in his eyes, and no amount of
fucking Pax will shake that. I need time. I need to work on shoving all of those terrible
memories back behind that steel reinforced door inside my mind.
“I’m not trying to fuck you,” Pax says stiffly.
“Then…why…”
He huffs. “Can you please just take my hand and come with me? You’re making this
way harder than it needs to be, and I’m—I’m not fucking good at this, okay?”
He’s so earnest, entirely not himself, that I take his hand. He guides me up the stairs
and into his room, then over to his bed. “Wait here.”
He heads to his chest of drawers—the very same one he sat me on and told me to
spread my legs, the first time I came into this room—and pulls out a t-shirt from the
second drawer down. He gives it to me, rubbing the back of his neck. “Change into that.
You’ll be more comfortable. You can get into the bed, or you can sit by the window or
read or whatever. I’m gonna go grab Dash. He needs a ride. When I get back, I’ll make
sure not to disturb you.”
I stare at the t-shirt in my hands, a little dumbfounded.
Who is this guy?
I don’t recognize a single part of him.
That isn’t to say that I don’t like him. I like this version of Pax way more than I should.
“Okay. So…” Pax looks awkwardly around his room. “Yeah.”
And he goes.
 35

PAX

Dash doesn’t need a ride.

I just can’t be in the house. Not when I’m this close to going nuclear. I head down the
mountain, and I drive around town, hoping. There’s a chance. A possibility. Mountain
Lakes is small, after all. It’s not unimaginable that I’ll run into the guy, and heaven
fucking help him if I do. My little storytelling ploy didn’t work on Chase. I intend on
honoring the promise I made to her back at the academy, but that doesn’t mean I won’t
beat the truth out of that Jonah piece of shit if I run into him on the street.
Realistically, there are only three places a guy like Chase’s brother—fuck, I didn’t even
know she had a brother—would be in a town like Mountain Lakes. There’s the diner,
Screamin’ Beans, then there’s the bowling alley, and then Cosgroves. I burn past the
diner and the place looks deserted. No one sitting in the booths by the windows. The
bowling alley’s on the other side of town, so I head for Cosgrove’s to check the bar on the
way. Shit, if this fucker’s at Cosgroves, he has no idea how much trouble he’s in. He’s
going to rue the day he was born. Wren’s been low key grumbling about giving the bar a
makeover. Most of the furniture is older than Patterson, the ancient bartender who’s
worked at Cosgroves for the last thirty years. If I break every stick of furniture in the
place over that motherfucker’s head, I’ll actually be doing Jacobi a favor.
I’m about to turn left and burn down Main Street until I hit the parking lot across from
the hospital, but then I see something that makes every hair on my body stand on end.
What the…
I say it out loud.
“What the FUCK?”
No.
 Fucking.
Way.
My eyes are playing fucking tricks on me. Only they aren’t. There, behind the seven-
foot-tall chain link fence that surrounds Moody’s Autobody and Collision Center, is a
murdered-out midnight blue Mitsubishi Evo. And the driver’s side nose of the car is totally
fucking destroyed. I turn into Moody’s before I can even properly process what I’m seeing.
I’ve only had one encounter with Old Man Moody. The guy fixed something on the
Charger and did a good job of it, but he charged me a small fortune. The locals around
here always gouge academy students ’cause they know most of us come from money.
I’ve made sure to fix the car myself ever since. It’s his son that steps out of the shop,
wiping oil from his hands with a rag when I screech to a halt.
“Whoa!” he says, laughing. “Where’s the fire, man?”
“Who…owns…that?” I stab a finger at the Evo. I already know who owns it. I don’t
need to ask. I don’t believe in coincidences, and seeing this heavily damaged, extremely
familiar vehicle the same day I meet Chase’s asshole brother is just too much of a fucking
fluke.
Moody’s son stutters. “Uhh…I don’t…so…I think…that…”
“Spit it out!”
“I don’t think I’m supposed to just give out that information.
Customer…confidentiality?”
“You fix cars. You’re not a fucking doctor. Who owns the Evo?”
Flustered, he shakes his head. “I dunno. I mean…some kid? I can’t remember his
name. He was just in here. His old man’s setting up some Italian restaurant at the end of
street. He dropped the car off a month ago and just disappeared. This is the first time
he’s been back since.”
I parse this information, and everything snaps into place. Yeahhh, this car belongs to
Jonah. Jonah was the asshole who dumped Chase’s half dead ass out of the car, the night
she nearly died. Jonah was the one who nearly fucking killed me when he took out that
wall. His outlook on life just got even bleaker, and it was looking pretty bad to begin
with.
“That Charger’s a sweet ride, man. You thinking about selling?” Moody’s son asks. He
asks another question as I storm back to the car and hurl myself into the driver’s seat,
too, but I’m not listening. My mind is working a mile a minute.
Main Street streaks past me in a blur. I hit the brakes when I see the building at the
end of the street—the truck parked outside, delivering tablecloths. The other guy wearing
a plaid shirt standing out on the street with his hands on his hips, staring up at the sign
above the front door.
 I park very badly across the street, get out, and cross over to him. The guy, who
definitely looks ex-military—you can tell by the way a man holds himself a lot of the time
—doesn’t even look at me as I come to a halt next to him. His frown deepens. “Hey. Do
you think that looks a little…lopsided?” he asks.
The sign, which says Love Me Tender, Love Me True , is absolutely lopsided, but the
text is in cursive and at an angle, anyway. I fold my arms across my chest. “Yeah. It
does.”
The guy sighs deeply. “Okay. Well. Fuck it. It’s up there now.”
This is Chase’s Dad. Naturally. I’ve never met him before, but they have the same
nose, and chin, though Chase’s is a little elfin than her father’s. His hair is mostly brown,
but auburn flashes in it when the sun breaks through the clouds and lights him up.
He grumbles as he heads back inside the building. He doesn’t say a word until he
realizes that I’m right behind him. “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry. We’re actually not open yet.” He
gestures around at the chairs, still in their plastic. There are boxes everywhere. The place
smells like fresh paint and newly planed wood. The décor is clean, and white, and
modern, but the upholstered, padded seats in the booths are sumptuous and look
comfortable as hell. It kind of reminds me of my mother’s pristine living room, only these
couches are supposed to be sat on.
“What kind of food are you gonna serve here?” I ask.
Chase’s dad brightens a little. “Oh, Italian food. Y’know. Hearty stuff. Comfort food. A
lot of pasta. Steaks. All of the stuff I love to c—”
“Your son gonna help you out here?”
He frowns. For the first time, he looks a little suspicious of this stranger who’s
randomly just followed him into his restaurant. “My son?” he says. “You know Jonah?”
“Not really. We’ve met a couple of times. I thought I saw him in the street earlier. He
has that ’Subi Evo, right?”
Chase’s dad looks me up and down, tipping his head to one side. “Yeah. It used to be
mine, but I gave it to him so he has something to drive here when he visits. It’s in
storage right now. As far as I know, Jonah’s back in San Diego. He would have told me if
he was planning on coming. Must have been someone else.”
“Yeah.” I smile at him, tight-lipped. “Must have been.” I make a show of looking
around the half-finished restaurant. “Good luck with the grand opening. I’m sure it’s
gonna be an awesome place.”
The exit’s only ten feet away. I’m nearly out of the door and in the clear, but then—
“Hey. I know this is gonna sound weird, but…I think I saw you on the back of a bus
yesterday.”
I close my eyes, violently cursing the day I ever became a model, then I turn around,
faking yet another smile. “Hmm?”
“Yeah. I think it was an ad for jeans. The guy looked just like you. Same—” He points
at the angel and the demon on my neck. “Same tattoos and everything. Am I going crazy
or was that…?” He points at me.
Urgh.
This is not the way this conversation was supposed to go.
“It’s an old campaign. The driver, Jim…he thinks it’s funny to leave it on the back of
the number 69.”
“Oh, yeah, I know Jim.” Chase’s dad laughs. “He drove the school bus when I went to
elementary school down the road. He’s a grumpy old shit.”
I force out a dry laugh, and it feels like I’m chewing rocks. “Listen. If, by any chance,
you do see Jonah today, can you let him know that I dropped by to say hello? It’d make
me really happy if he knew I was thinking about him.”
Thinking about ripping his fingernails off one at a time.
Thinking about smashing his kneecaps.
Thinking about slitting his fucking throat.
Chase’s dad smiles in a pleased, genuine way. He looks like a kind man. A tired man,
with too many problems resting on his shoulders. Bastard looks like he needs a vacation.
“That’s really nice. I honestly didn’t know he knew anyone here. I’ve only just moved
back to town, and—” He trails off, his thoughts clear on his face as he thinks about this.
“Wait. How do you know Jonah? He’s barely spent any time at all here over the years.”
Stiff as a board, I nod, reluctant to say these next words. “I know him through Presley
actually. She’s my…well, we’re…” I blow deep down my nose, “…friends.”
Mr. Witton frowns. “ You’re friends with Presley?” He doesn’t sound disapproving, per
se. Perhaps a little shocked?
“Yeah.” God, Chase would love this—to be here and witness me admitting this out
loud? That I do think of her as a friend? She’d die laughing. The truth is that she’s way
more than a friend to me and the both of us know it. Knowing something and being ready
to own it are very different things, though.
Mr. Witton doesn’t know what to do with himself. He takes out his cell phone,
checking the screen, then sets it down. He puts his hands on his hips, shifting from one
foot to the other, staring at his shoes as he thinks. After what feels like an age, he looks
up at me, deadly serious when he says, “You mean it? You’re really her friend?”
I nod, silent.
“She…has she told you about…being in the hospital?”
Fuck. This is getting way too heavy. “I know that she was sick, and they kept her in
for a week or so.”
 “Do you know…” His forehead creases. “…why?”
“No.” I’m glad I don’t have to lie about this to him; I really don’t know why Chase did
what she did. I didn’t even care in the beginning. I tried to make myself not care, but
that’s become hard. As of this morning, my efforts in that area have officially been
rendered useless. I do fucking care, and I am dead set on finding out why she hurt herself
now. There’s something wrong about the situation, the whole thing fucking stinks, and I
don’t like it one bit.
Mr. Witton nods sadly. “Well. I’ve been worried sick about her. If you could just…” He
sighs, like he’s just given up.
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “I’ll look after her. I promise.”
 36

PAX

She’s sleeping when I get back, curled up into a little ball. I take a photo of her,
suspending the lens directly over her where she lies, tucked into the fetal position, and I
know innately that it will be my favorite photo of all time; it could come out blurry as hell
and super under exposed and I’ll never take a better one.
I turn on the TV and load up Call of Duty; I connect the sound to my headphones, so
the rattle of gunfire won’t wake Chase, but then I sit on the sofa underneath the window
with the headphones hanging around my neck, just…watching her.
I told Jacobi recently that there’s nothing creepier than watching someone while they
sleep, and there really isn’t. I feel like a grade A asshole loser as I perch on the edge of
my seat, elbows on my knees, chin in my palms, hands covering my mouth…fucking
panicking.
I saw this happening.
I fucking felt it.
I told myself it wasn’t real. That I could outrun it. Escape it.
I told myself that I wouldn’t fall victim to the same bullshit human condition as my
friends, but damn.
I’ve been such a stupid cunt.
Arrogant.
To think I was bigger than this.
FUCK.
Chase stirs in my bed, and I jump, grabbing up the controller next to me, hammering
at the buttons like I’ve been playing the entire time. When Chase sits up, her cheeks turn
a bright shade of crimson at the sight of me. “Shit. I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to
pass out.”
I make a show of taking off the headphones, even though I heard her perfectly fine.
I’m such a prick. “Huh?”
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” she repeats.
“I told you to.” I shrug it off, like it’s no big deal that she just slept in my bed, where
no other girl has ever slept. “Want a ride back up to the academy?” I am the very picture
of nonchalance.
She yawns. “Please.”
While she’s getting changed back into her own clothes, I wrap the burrito I made for
her earlier—the one she took one bite out of—in a piece of kitchen paper and put it in the
microwave. She doesn’t say anything when I gruffly hand it to her by the front door. She
eats it in silence as I her drive her up the mountain. Chase has the sense not to say
anything about the weird tension that hangs between us now, but I know she can feel it.
I can fucking feel it. Something has changed between us, and I’m not ready for it. I don’t
want it. I’d do anything to make things go back to the way they were before break, when
I didn’t even remember nearly fucking her in the forest the night of the last Riot House
party. But this isn’t something that can be undone. Something you can give back. Bombs
don’t unexplode.
I don’t even know what the hell I’m supposed to do now. I’ve seen how other people
act around the people they purportedly have feelings for, but the idea of reaching out and
taking hold of Chase’s hand just feels fucking humiliating. So, I don’t.
She gets out of the Charger, and I chew on my thumbnail when I know she’s not
looking, watching to make sure she’s safely through the doors of the academy before I
peel back down the driveway at a truly dangerous speed. My heart is beating so hard
when I arrive back at the house. I have to sit in the car for five minutes, breathing,
thinking, breathing, thinking before I’m ready to go back to my room. And when I do,
what’s the first thing I notice? A single red hair on top of my pillow, curled around on
itself like an ouroboros, the symbol for eternity, the snake eating its own tail.
Snakes are symbols of transformation.
Change.
Hahaha holy fuck, I am reading way too much into this. I sweep the hair off the pillow
and throw myself down onto my bed, digging the heels of my palms into my eye sockets
until I cause bursts of color to erupt behind my eyelids.
Fuck.
Fuck this fucking shit.
Seriously.
Fuck.
 I take out my cell and text Jacobi.

ME: Need your help with something.

He replies right away.

Wren: ???

ME: Dig up everything you can find on an asshole called Jonah Witton.
 37

PRES

I have to end it. Whatever this thing with Pax is, I have to end it now, before he really
starts asking questions. The irony of this situation is far from lost on me. How long did I
love Pax Davis before he noticed me? I broke my own heart over him for years, pining
over him, unable to do anything but eat, sleep, breathe him. And then the world ended.
Something happened, so ugly and terrible, that my all-consuming feelings for him were
completely overshadowed by suffering. My feelings for him didn’t cripple me anymore
because I was crippled by something far greater. Only then did the universe conspire to
give him to me. Only then did some higher power decide I could have him, in order to
temper the bright pain that steals my breath every waking hour of the day.
And now I have to choose to walk away from him, because he’s getting too close.
He can’t know about what Jonah did. For starters, Jonah’s resourceful as hell. He’ll find
a way to carry out his threat against me and Mom. He’d take great pleasure in hurting
both of us, and I can’t let that happen. Secondly, my own shame simply won’t allow it. I
can picture the pity and disgust on Pax’s face already. How weak he’ll think me, if he
finds out how quickly I was overpowered. How dirty he’ll think me, once he discovers how
tainted I am.
My heart hurts when I get a text from Pax before I fall asleep.
This is the first time he’s messaged me.
I’m no fool. I know that he’s simply checking in on me, in his own weird way, after I
passed out this morning. He’s made himself perfectly clear, and I already was under no
illusions—I’ve known Pax for too many years now to believe that he’s actually
romantically interested in me—but I still have to give myself a reality check when I read
his text.
 Pax: Next chapter’s due. You’re behind. We can meet and write in the library
together tomorrow. If you think it might help you get it done.

It’s hardly a friendly text. It’s typically passive aggressive, but as far as communications
with Pax go, it’s practically an invitation to go on a date. I know it’s not . I know. I’m still
miserable when I tap out my response to him.

ME: All good. I write best in my room anyway. I’ll have the next chapter to you
before midnight tomorrow.

What fucking planet are we on? I’m turning down the chance to hang out with Pax, alone,
in the library. I used to fantasize about having to work with him. I used to touch myself at
night, working myself into a frenzy, thinking about how he’d lean across the table and
kiss me when he just couldn’t help himself any longer and he just had to have me. Now I
have been kissed by Pax, I’ve been taken by him, and it was even better than I could
have imagined. But I’m calling it quits, even though contact with him has been the only
thing to keep me sane, because I’m trying to protect my half-brother’s vile secret? I know
how it sounds. It’s fucking insane, but there are only a few weeks left until graduation.
Such a small amount of time until our little arrangement will come to an end and I’ll have
to say goodbye to him anyway. Maybe it’s better that it happens now, before graduation,
so I have some time to get used to the idea. I can wean myself off him instead, still see
him around the academy, instead of cutting myself and going cold turkey.
Pax doesn’t reply.
In the morning, he’s waiting for me by the entrance to Econ. I realize for the first time
that his hair is a little longer than normal. It’s still shorn super close, but the shadow of
his hair is much darker than usual. Almost black. It must have been at least a couple of
weeks since he’s shaved it. Leaning against the wall, one foot planted against the
paintwork, covered in ink, clothes blacker than black, eyes made up of compact, glacial
ice, he is the stuff seventeen-year-old girl’s father’s nightmares are made of.
My heart skips a beat when he looks up, sees me, and sweeps his tongue over his
bottom lip, wetting it.
“You’re coming to the house tonight,” he tells me as I walk past him.
“I can’t. I have a chapter to write, as you well know.”
“And as you well know, I told you to get your work done after class so your evenings
are free.”
My cheeks are suddenly hot. “I have to help my father with his restaurant. He’s
opening this weekend. He’s nowhere near ready. The walls haven’t even been painted.” I
dump my stuff onto my desk, opening my bag to retrieve my textbooks.
“Looked pretty painted to me. From what I could tell, all he needed to do was take
the plastic off the furniture. And straighten the sign.”
My head snaps up. Pax stands by his desk, taking his books out of his bag.
“What the hell are you talking about? How do you know what state the restaurant’s
in?”
He pouts. “I may have swung by there. Mountain Lakes is small as hell. A new place
to eat is bound to garner some attention from the locals.”
“You are not a local. You are a Riot House boy, who doesn’t deign to eat with the
mere mortals of Mountain Lakes.” My mind’s going a mile a minute. A cold panic climbs
up my spine. “Wait. So. You saw my dad?”
“I did indeed.”
Oh fuck. Fuck, shit, fuck. I try to sound calm when I hiss, “What did you say to him?”
He grins wickedly. “I was polite, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Of course I’m worried about—”
“All right, guys. Butts in seats, please. We have a stupid amount of ground to cover
today!” Professor Radley hovers at the front of the class, wiping the lenses of his glasses
with a small black cloth, which he tucks into his pocket. “Presley, why are you still
standing there, gaping like a fish out of water. Sit down so we can get started.”
I am gaping. At Pax. He went to the restaurant? He spoke to my dad? “You shouldn’t
have done that. Why? What were you thinking?”
“Presley, I’ve literally never had to say this before...” Professor Radley looks bemused.
“But please stop harassing Mr. Davis. For once, he is in his chair and his mouth is shut.
Let’s move this along quickly before that changes, shall we?”
The entire class snickers.
Pax has the audacity to smirk at me as I sit my ass down. The gall of the guy! I can’t
believe him. Econ drags worse than Christmas Eve for a five-year-old. I keep waiting for
the bell to go, distracted as hell, countless scenarios running through my head.
Pax, being absolutely evil to my father.
Pax saying something he really shouldn’t to my father.
 Pax mentioning that we’ve been hanging out together. Or…fucking? There’s no way
he’d tell my father that we’ve been fucking. Surely? No one in their right mind…
Even as I think this, I realize my mistake.
Since when has Pax Davis been in his right mind?
“Okay, gang. Assignments are due by the end of next week. I know we’re really close
to the finish line, but let’s not get lazy now. The race isn’t over until you cross the finish
line—” Professor Radley pretends to slow motion run, right as the bell goes, and I’ve
never wanted to scream so badly in my entire life. I need to get the hell out of here.
Pax is up and out of the door before anyone else. I foolishly think that I’ve been
spared any further baiting from him, but I’m wrong; he’s waiting in the hallway, tapping
on his phone screen, frowning. I attempt to scoot past without him knowing but he steps
forward, still looking down at his phone, blocking my path.
“If you’re trying to sneak around, maybe try wearing a hat?” he suggests. “Something
that hides all of your hair. It’s kinda hard to miss.”
“What the hell are you doing? Get out of the way.” I step to the right but Pax steps
forward, blocking me at the same time. He’s still frowning down at his infernal phone.
My temper gets the better of me. I snatch the device out of his hands. “If you’re
gonna screw with me, you might as well give me your full attention,” I snap.
Murder flashes in Pax’s beautiful, terrifying eyes. “Give it back, Chase. We’re not in
fucking kindergarten.”
I arch an eyebrow at him. “The way you’re behaving, you’d think we were.”
He holds out his hand. Still. Firm. Expectant. “Now.”
I have to take a deep breath before I can speak. “This is all fun and games when it’s
on your terms. The second I fuck with you, you don’t like it. Well, life doesn’t always go
your way, pal.” I duck around him, dropping his phone into the trash can by the old stone
water fountain as I pass it. Luckily for him, unluckily for me, Pax has the reflexes of an
angry cat; he snatches it out of the air before it can actually disappear into the trash can.
Slipping the phone into his pocket, he falls into step alongside me. “That wasn’t very
nice,” he growls.
“Yeah, well. I’m not feeling particularly nice.”
“Why not?”
I glower at him out of the corner of my eye. “You went and spoke to my dad? What
the hell, dude?”
“Dude and pal are not names you use for someone who’s ejaculated inside of you,” he
says matter-of-factly.
“Jesus, Pax!” I look around to see if anyone heard him.
He has the nerve to look entertained. “What? You care about people knowing that
we’ve fucked now? You didn’t seem to care so much on the lawn the other day.”
“That was before you went and saw my father,” I spit. “Don’t do that again. Just…stay
away from my family, okay? You’re not supposed to be anywhere near them.”
“You want me to stay away from that brother of yours, too?”
I stop dead, turning to face him. My skin is clammy, covered in a cold sweat. Pax
stops, too, and other students grumble and mutter as they have to sidle past us. “Yes. I
absolutely want you to stay away from Jonah,” I say. My voice is cold. Flat and hard. Fear
makes it so. “He’s probably gone back to California, so you won’t run into him anyway.” I
don’t know if that’s true or not. It’s not as if Jonah’s texted me to let me know his plans.
He wouldn’t. As far as I’m concerned, he wasn’t supposed to be here at all. Dad didn’t
mention a visit from him to me. I’ve been hoping against hope that he’s bailed back to
the west coast already.
“If he’s gone back to California, then you’ve got nothing to worry about, have you?”
Pax says this too easily. It’s as if he knows something I don’t. The weird sharp edge to his
expression is making me really worried.
I don’t even know what to say.
Pax reaches out and curls a section of my hair around his finger thoughtfully. People
really are looking now. I can’t believe he’s doing it. When the tip of his index finger skates
along the line of my cheekbone, my breath catches in my throat.
“Don’t kiss me,” I whisper.
“Now, why on earth would you say that?” He arches an eyebrow suggestively.
“Because you’re looking at me like you’re going to kiss me, and—”
He grabs me by the back of the neck, pulling me to him. I have no fight in me. I
should stop him, plant my hands against his chest and push him away, but I’m too floored
by the fact that he’s actually doing it, here, in front of so many people, to act.
I forget everything I told myself earlier. All thoughts of ending my arrangement with
him go flying out of the window the second he brings his lips crashing down on mine.
The kiss sears my fucking soul.
His lips are firm, demanding. He urges my mouth open, sliding his tongue past my
teeth, tasting me, stealing my breath, and I melt into him. I’m aware of the scene we’re
creating. People are stopping, staring, holding up their cell phones…and Pax doesn’t seem
to give a single flying fuck.
It’s over before I know it. When I open my eyes, he’s staring at me. Only seeing me.
He sucks on his bottom lip, as if savoring the taste of me, and my heart pounds in my
chest.
“What the fuck was that?” I whisper, pressing my fingertips to my mouth.
“That was a preview of what’s gonna happen later.” He offers me a raw-edged smile
when he steps back. “See you tonight, Chase.”
“I told you. I’m not coming to the house!”
 38

PAX

Wren: Found his info on a flight back to San Diego. Leaves tomorrow morning.
He’ll be back in a week, though. This is Pres’ brother?

Luckily Chase didn’t see Wren’s message when she snaked my phone. She would have
flipped her shit, one hundred percent. Looks like Jonah Witton is flying back to the west
coast tomorrow, bright and early, which means I only have to watch over Chase tonight.
Once the fucker is back in California, she won’t have to worry about him messing with her
for a while. And neither will I. I admit that I would be worried about her. I don’t like doing
it, but it’s time to face reality now, I think. After that kiss, there’s very little point in lying
to myself anymore, when the truth is making itself so painfully obvious. I have feelings
for Chase. Big ones. Scary ones. Run-away-and-hide-in-a-dark-closet feelings. If I don’t
get my head around them soon, I’m gonna wind up doing or saying something that will
not only hurt her but fuck up my chances of making things work with her.
Now all I have to do is figure out what that even looks like. Do I have to talk to her
about it? Do I ask her to be my fucking girlfriend?
I let out a bark of laughter as I jog across the parking lot, heading for the Charger—a
bark of laughter so loud and random that two guys standing by a flashy brand-new
Mercedes (I think they’re in my English class) jump at the sound, staring at me nervously,
as if they expect me to charge at them and start swinging.
I shoot them a sour grin. “As you were.”
This freaks them out even more. They scramble inside the car, slamming the doors,
and I shake my head.
I’m not that volatile.
I don’t just attack people in parking lots for no reason.
I can be normal. I can talk to my fellow classmates without it meaning that I’m about
to knock out their front teeth. Dash and Wren might say otherwise. And my mother. And
anyone else who knows me even faintly well. Maybe they’re right. I suppose I’ll be a
reformed character, then. Starting from now, no hitting people for no reason in parking
lots.
I sit in the driver’s seat of the Charger, staring blankly out of the windshield as I think
all of this through. I’m shocked when I realize that I’m absently twisting the two
friendship bracelets around my wrist, toying with the braided threads. Aside from the
weighty silver signet ring on my right index finger, I don’t wear jewelry. Necklaces annoy
the fuck out of me. I don’t even wear a watch. Stuff like that has always irritated me
beyond belief. But these two woven strands of cotton around my right wrist aren’t
annoying to me at all anymore.
The car door opens, jarring me back to reality. Wren hurls himself across the back
seat, adjusting his dick in his pants as he makes himself comfortable. “That girl will be
the death of me,” he groans. “One kiss and my cock is hard as fuck. I swear it’s gonna fall
off soon. Penises were not designed to take this kind of constant abuse.”
“Urgh! Stop.” I make a face at him in the rearview.
“Please.” Wren rolls his eyes. “I don’t wanna hear any more of that shit out of you.
You don’t have a leg to stand on.”
“The fuck are you talking about, Jacobi?”
Before he can answer, Dash opens the passenger side door and gets into the car; he
looks at me with a stunned smirk on his face.
“What?”
“I just heard from three different sources that you kissed Presley in the hallway in
front of the entire senior class.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Wren says, affecting a bored yawn.
I start the car, and my unhappy growl is almost louder than the snarl of the engine.
“Don’t people have better things to talk about?”
Wren shoves his phone through the gap, into the front of the car. There I am, on his
phone’s screen, cradling the back of Chase’s head and laying one on her. I see the
identical looks of shock on all of the students’ faces and my ire builds.
“That’s a Gone with the Wind kiss right there, my friend. I’d give it a nine out of ten,”
Wren says. “Would have gotten full marks if you’d just dipped her a little.”
“Fuck off.”
 Dash takes Wren’s phone. “Let’s see.” The sound of people gasping fills the Charger
again.
“I swear to God, if you don’t stop that I’m gonna hurl that damn thing out of the
window.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Wren says.
“How do you figure?”
Jacobi sits up and leans through the gap himself. He scrubs his hand over the back of
my head annoyingly. “Because I haven’t breathed a single word about how much shit
you’ve given me and Lord Lovett ever since we started seeing our girls. If you gripe one
more time about us enjoying this moment, we’re both gonna make you apologize for your
behavior. You dumbass fucking hypocrite.”
“That sounds fair.” I chew on the inside of my cheek as Dash restarts the video for a
third time.

She doesn’t come to the house.

Again.
I knew she wouldn’t, which is why I’m the one scaling the drainpipe that leads up to
her bedroom window at precisely eight o’clock on the dot. She isn’t in her room when I
drag my ass up onto the small roof outside her window. There are no lights on inside, and
I can’t see any movement to speak of. When I attempt to open the window, I find that
she’s drawn the latch across and locked it.
Silly, silly Chase. Does she really think that an old sash window is gonna stop me? I
take a suitably flexible card from my wallet and wedge it into the gap between the frame
and the window, and then I work it through, wiggling it from side to side until it catches
on the latch and flips it up. Fucking cakewalk.
Once I’m inside, I make myself very comfortable on her bed and I wait.
She shows up half an hour later, carrying her laptop and a stack of books in her hands.
She lets out a yelp when she flicks on the light switch and finds me stretched out on top
of her comforter.
“I knew it. I knew you were gonna be in here,” she hisses, slamming the door closed
behind her.
“If you knew then why did you squeal like a frightened little mouse?”
“Because it’s still a surprise when you turn on the lights in your room and find that
someone’s been lurking there, waiting for you in the dark.” Her voice brims over with
reproach. I almost feel bad for scaring her. But not quite.
 I point at the laptop and books in her arms. “I take it you were in the library, writing
your little heart out?”
“What’s it to you, where I was?”
“You and I are creating a story together, sweetheart. It matters if you were writing
your chapter because I need it before I can write mine. I’m being held up because you’re
not delivering on your end of the bargain.”
“You came here and waited for me in the dark because you wanted to personally
come and get my chapter?” She crosses the room and sets her things down on the desk.
“I said I’d email it to you.”
“No. I came here to have sex with you.”
She whirls around, leaning against the desk. Her eyes are alive, bright and sharp.
Fuck, every time I look into them now, all I can see is the moment when she woke up on
the concrete outside the hospital, gasping for that first life-saving breath. She was so
beautiful and so terrible in that moment, and I knew it then. I knew I was in trouble, but I
buried it down.
“We’re not supposed to mention the sex, remember,” she says. Her cheeks are high
with color. Her pale, pale skin and her Celtic hair refuse to let her hide her emotions. It’d
be a crime to hide the kind of beauty that blossoms on her face. “What?” she whispers.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I sit up, positioning myself on the edge of her bed, facing her. “I’m tired,” I say.
“Then you should probably go home and sleep.” She gestures to the window.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here with you,” I tell her softly.
Her brow furrows. She shakes her head. “I don’t—what? First, that kiss in the hall.
Now this? You’re being weird, Pax.”
How do I explain that the tight, angry, sharp-edged pieces of me are unfolding? That
she has done this to me, and I’m as confused about it all as she is. I can only say, “I’m
being…me.” She has no idea how monumental that is. How long I’ve done everything in
my power to not be me.
“You’re scaring me.”
I can’t help but laugh at this. For the past month, she’s adamantly refused that she’s
afraid of me. She’s faced the chaos and the madness of me with her shoulders back and
her chin defiantly raised, and she hasn’t backed down. Now that I’m done raging and the
storm within me is dying, I am calm. I am still. Now she is afraid.
Oh, the irony.
“Wouldn’t you rather be playing video games or something?” she asks nervously.
“I play video games ’cause I have intrusive thoughts when my mind isn’t constantly
engaged.” I’ve never told this to anyone. “I start thinking about all of these different
things. I start…fixating on things that are out of my control.”
She thinks for a moment. “What do you mean?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I fixate on fucking climate change, and how shit the world’s
gonna be in thirty years. I start thinking about kids starving in Africa, and how my friends
don’t need me the way I need them, and how I’m probably going to be a terrible father,
and how I’ll probably never be able to open up to anyone the way I’m opening up to you
right now.”
Her eyes lock onto mine, her throat working. “Why are you opening up to me right
now? If this is another ploy to get me to—”
“When I’m around you. I don’t need the distraction of a video game or a camera in my
hand. My head is quiet.” I try to say more and can’t. This is as much as I can tell her right
now. I haven’t worked out how to put into words what I’m thinking or feeling. I’m not
strong enough to tell her what I want yet.
She looks astonished. “Pax—”
“Do you give a shit about me, Chase? Do you care enough about me to take this
further than we have?”
I’ve never cared about anyone enough to pose this question even in my head. It’s just
not a consideration that has ever crossed my mind. I’ve treated people like shit. I’ve hurt
people on purpose, for fun, because it was entertaining to me. I’ve done all kinds of shitty
things to people, and I’ve never calculated the cost or considered the consequences,
because I never, not for one split second, thought I’d care enough about anyone to worry
about them assessing me as a good and decent human being.
Now that I’m sitting on the edge of Chase’s bed, I find that I care very much what she
thinks of me. I’m being weighed in the balance of my past deeds, and that’s a frightening
prospect indeed, knowing what I know about myself. I’m about to be found wanting.
Chase looks like she wants to climb out of the window, shimmy down the drainpipe
and flee across the lawn, into the forest. “I don’t—”
I hold out my hand to her. “Come here?” This is the first time I’ve asked her to do
something instead of telling her to do it. She hears the question in my voice, and her
eyes grow round. I’m suddenly not ready for her to answer the question I just posed to
her. If she’s going to say no, she doesn’t care about me, doesn’t want more from me than
my dick, then I suddenly don’t want to hear that after all. I figured I was brave enough to
hear it, but now I realize that I’m not.
Tomorrow.
I’ll hear her say those words tomorrow.
Her shitty half-brother’s still kicking around in Mountain Lakes tonight, and I’ll be
damned if I’m going to leave her alone in her room, where there’s a chance he might be
able to get to her; he’s already waltzed onto academy grounds like he owns the place
once. I don’t doubt he’d do it again, late at night, when he knows there’s less chance of
him being stopped by a member of faculty or one of Chase’s friends.
Tomorrow, she’ll be safe from whatever sibling bullying he’s been subjecting her to,
and I’ll have a week to unravel the weird mystery surrounding their relationship. She can
tell me she wants nothing to do with me, and I’ll fucking take it. But tonight, I’m staying
with her. I’m not letting her out of my fucking sight.
Chase looks down at my hand.
She takes a deep breath.
She steps forward and takes it.

PRES

In all of the wild fantasies I concocted in my head, Pax was never like this. He was never
earnest. He never looked at me without some form of malice in his eyes. Right now, he
looks vulnerable. The hardness that he wears like an armor is gone, no trace of it left at
all, and my heart can’t fucking take it. Where is this going? What pathway is he leading
me down?
And, most importantly, can I trust this?
Because wouldn’t that just be a kicker?
I’ve been waiting for him to fuck with me. Every day, I’ve been watching, looking out
for the signs of his great play, where he tries to humiliate and break me in front of the
entire academy. That’s Pax’s modus operandi. It’s who he is. He feeds off that kind of
chaos and relishes causing that kind of pain.
I accepted that when I decided to sleep with him. Over time, I’ve begun to think that
he’s simply not going to bother, though. I’ve grown comfortable.
So, yes. Wouldn’t this just be the perfect trick, if he managed to lull me into a false
sense of security, made me trust him, made me believe that he really does care about
me…and then he burns everything to the ground?
I’m shaking as I step forward and take his hand.
Pax interlaces his fingers with mine, doing the same with our other hands, too. He
looks up at me, half his face thrown into shadow by the light on the other side of the
room, and my blood roars in my ears. He doesn’t look like he’s hiding anything. There’s
nothing in his eyes to tell me that I need to protect myself from…whatever this is.
But…how does that quote go? The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing
the world he didn’t exist. I should be careful. No matter how honest I think he’s being in
this moment, I can’t trust that he’s being genuine. I just can’t. It wouldn’t be safe.
“Stop,” Pax whispers.
“Stop what?”
“You’re thinking way too fucking much. You’re gonna give yourself a migraine.”
I’ve never been very good at keeping my concerns from my face. I thought I’d gotten
better at it recently, but it turns out I was wrong. My chest squeezes when Pax tips his
head back even further, pulling me closer, so that I’m standing in between his legs. He
rests his chin on my solar plexus, staring up at me, and the sight of him is too much to
take.
He’s fucking beautiful.
Raw masculine energy, unguarded and open for the first time.
I don’t know what to do with him like this.
I’m always flinching away from him, ready to bolt or throw up a shield to protect
myself. It feels as if he’s laying down his weapons now, though, silently offering some
kind of truce, and I don’t know how to stop bracing for the worst.
“I don’t understand any of this,” I say quietly. “If you’re playing some kind of game—”
He stands quickly, letting go of my hands. He sweeps my hair over my shoulders, his
fierce gaze moving from my mouth, to my eyes, to my cheeks, back to my lips again. He’s
drinking me in, memorizing my features. My eyes prick weirdly, and I get the sneaking
suspicion that I’m about to cry.
No boy has ever looked at me like this. And for Pax to be looking at me like this? I’m
ill-equipped to deal with the surge of emotion that barrels through me; My body is telling
me to run. Such a strange, conflicting feeling—when you’re so drawn to something at the
same time as desperately trying to pull away. I feel like I’m standing on a beach, and the
tide is pulling out, out, out. I see the wave building. I know it will destroy me if it crashes
over me, but I can’t pull my feet out of the wash. It tugs at me, sucking me in. There is
no escape.
“No games. No plotting. No bullshit,” Pax murmurs. He exhales a slow, steady breath
down his nose. “I’m tired, Chase. Really fucking tired. This…you are the path of least
resistance.”
Wow.
The path of least resistance?
The words are a slap in the face.
I was so fascinated by this rare softness to him that I almost let myself believe he was
capable of feeling something for me. But…fuck. The path of least resistance? What a
shitty thing to call someone—the thing that requires the least effort? The easy option?
The guaranteed fuck? I step back, away from him, out of his arms, trying to swallow the
ache in my throat. “I’m glad to hear you think so highly of me,” I say. That ache hasn’t
gone away. If anything, it’s gotten worse, and so my words feel like razor blades as I
speak them.
I look away from Pax, staring at my tarot deck on the nightstand, and my little green
dream catcher on the wall by the bed, but Pax takes me by the chin and turns my face
back to him. “The fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m honestly a little tired, Pax. If you want to fuck me, then we should hurry this
along. I still have some work to do, and I plan on proofreading my chapter before I send
it to you. So.”
The softness in his eyes hardens right in front of me. I watch it creep across the pale
silver of his irises like ice over a bottomless lake. “Cool,” he says. And the word is apt,
because everything about him is suddenly very cool indeed. His hands work quickly,
tearing at my clothes. The muscles in his jaw work overtime as he strips me naked. In
three seconds flat, he has me pinned against my bedroom wall with his hand around my
throat, and I’m squirming against him, panting, hating myself, because no matter how
much that dumb, off-the-cuff comment stung, and how utterly worthless I felt in that
moment, I am a fucking slave to this man.
He owns me.
One word from him and my heart races.
One flick of his tongue and I am liquid.
One jerk of his head and I’m on my goddamn knees…
He kisses me, and I can feel his anger. His teeth are sharper than usual, his lips
harder, crueler. His fury spills into me as he forces my mouth open and deepens the kiss.
His breath is hot and makes my head spin, and for a solid minute it’s all I can do to keep
my feet underneath me. He grunts, satisfied and belligerent, when he works his fingers
between my legs, pushing the folds of my pussy apart, and discovers how wet I am.
His hold around my neck tightens. Leaning back a little, he narrows his eyes as he
assesses me. “Tell me something. Is it me you hate? Or yourself? I’m having a really
fucking hard time working that out.”
Ouch.
That stings just as much as his other comment. More, actually. Because the way he’s
looking at me now is very different to the borderline sweet way he was looking at me
back on the bed. He looks disgusted. Shame nips at me when he brings his fingers to his
mouth and he sucks on them, tasting me. His eyes are locked onto mine. He doesn’t look
away…
Vrrrnnn. Vrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnn.
Pax’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He takes it out and reads the message that just
came through with a bored look on his face.
Sighing, he puts the phone back into his pocket and steps away from me, releasing his
hold on my neck. “Looks like we’re gonna have to solve that little conundrum another
time, Chase. I have somewhere I need to be. Night.”
He walks over to the window, opens it, and climbs through without so much as
glancing back at me. I watch him drop down onto the rooftop, and then disappear out of
view, with my pulse thundering all over my body. I can feel it in my ears, in my lips, in
the roof of my mouth, in my fingertips. Deep inside me, between my legs, where I need
him fucking most.
What the fuck just happened?
My breath comes in short, sharp bursts as I stare out of the window after him, into the
dark. I’m so sad, and relieved, and tense, and turned on that I lie down on top of my bed
and I stroke my clit until I come really hard, violently shaking as my orgasm rips through
me. And then I turn onto my side and I cry into my pillow, because all of that was fucked.
The way he confused the hell out of me.
The way he looked at me.
Spoke to me.
Manhandled me.
The way he made me feel.
All of it.
Fucked.
 39

PAX

Wren: Jonah Witton, confirmed boarding flight AAL1 to Los Angeles from New
York. He went home early.

It’s all I needed to hear. Clearly, Chase didn’t want me in her room. Her body did; she
wanted me to fuck her, but she didn’t want to pick up any of the other shit I was putting
down, and that fucking sucked.
So I bailed.
The moment I arrive at Riot House, I storm into the kitchen, snatch the bottle of
whiskey Dash is holding right out of his fucking hand, and then I charge upstairs and lock
myself away in my room.
I do not come out for twenty-four hours.
Occasionally, I hear knocking over the ear-splittingly loud death metal I’m playing, but
I ignore whoever has the nerve to stand on the other side of my bedroom door.
I run by myself on Sunday. All fucking day. I take a pack with plenty of water and ton
of protein bars, and I run a total of forty-three miles in the blistering heat, tearing up and
down mountains until I make myself sick. Only when I slip on a patch of scree and slide a
hundred feet down a steep slope, scraping open my right side, do I lope back home,
nursing my foul mood.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Chase and I fire chapters back and forth at each
other, but we do not talk. The story is taking decent shape. It’s turning into an epic saga
that would have made the Greeks proud. My character is still competing with Chase’s
character. They bicker and squabble, constantly at odds, but the bones of the book, the
challenges and the physical trials they face to accomplish their goals, are solid. I’m
increasingly more and more impressed with Chase’s writing, as well as her ability to
match me in tone, and to carry the story forward in a logical way every time she sends
me back the next part of the story. I hate her for it.
Thursday, I purposefully bolt out of Econ as soon as the bell goes to avoid interacting
with Chase.
Friday, she texts and flat out asks me what the fuck is wrong with me, and I ignore
her message like a child.
Saturday, I develop film in my closet, and I almost drive my fist through the drywall
when the image of Chase, curled up and fast asleep in my bed, develops on the photo
paper. Her hair is a streak of fire across my pillow. She is the most beautiful, peaceful
thing I have ever seen, and I fucking hate myself for not climbing onto the bed behind her
and fucking holding her. My arms ache for the weight of her. A weight I’ve never even
fucking known.
On Sunday, I refuse to get out of bed. I’m perfectly happy with my decision to stew in
my own misery, listening to some seriously vile scream-core while staring blankly up at
the ceiling, when something absolutely insane happens.
Elodie fucking Stillwater waltzes into my room like she owns the goddamn place.
I sit up in my bed, glowering at her. “What the fuck are you doing?” I snarl.
She folds her arms across her chest. “I came in here to ask you the exact same thing.”
She’s small. Like, pocket-sized. Her hair used to be blonde, but it’s brown now, nearly
black, and hangs in twin braids down to her waist. She’s wearing one of Wren’s old t-
shirts—a ratty, washed out grey thing that comes down to her knees, almost hiding the
fact that she’s wearing shorts.
I throw myself back onto the pillows. “Get the fuck out.”
She does not get the fuck out. She sighs dramatically and crosses the room, opening
up the wall of blinds, letting in a bath of brilliant sunlight.
“Agghh! What the fuck, Stillwater? Get out of my fucking room, before I put you out.”
She pulls a face at me, kicking at a pile of clothes I’ve left in a heap on the floor as
she crosses to the other bank of windows and opens those blinds, too. Then, she snaps
off the stereo, killing the music, and turns to glower at me. “This isn’t my house—”
“Fucking straight it isn’t!”
“—so I can’t tell you what to do. Wren and Dash don’t seem bothered by your bullshit,
but I’ve had enough al-fucking-ready. What the hell is wrong with you?”
I throw an arm across my face, blocking out the sunlight. “How about you mind your
business and go suck Jacobi’s dick or something?”
 Stillwater still doesn’t leave. The pernicious little pest. She comes closer, moving to
stand at the foot of the bed. “I’m not leaving until you tell me. Presley’s been completely
shut down for weeks now. She won’t tell me what’s wrong, but I know that she’s told you
for some reason.”
“She hasn’t told me shit.”
“So, there is something wrong with her, then?” she asks sharply.
Fuck this. Seriously. Fuck this. I rip the covers back and sit up, glaring at her. “Look. If
your friend doesn’t wanna fucking talk to you about something, then that’s your problem.
And hers. Not mine. Now, please. I’ll ask nicely. Vacate my bedroom as quickly as
humanly possible, before I lose my fucking mind.”
She looks me dead in the eye and says, “No.”
“Oh my god! WREN! COME AND GET YOUR FUCKING GIRLFRIEND!”
“He’s not here.”
“Then why are you? Are you just randomly loitering around the house now? What the
fuck?”
Elodie shakes her head, ignoring me. “I see you, y’know. I know that this is all for
show.”
“The hell are you talking about?” I swear to everything holy, if she doesn’t get the hell
out of my room in the next three seconds, I’m going to drag her out by her fucking
pigtails.
“You shut everyone out. You build up high walls to keep people away, but you can’t
fool me. You want to be close to people.”
“I have no idea what I’ve ever done to give you the impression that I want to be this
close to you, but I’d like to clarify right now by telling you that I definitely, categorically,
do not.”
“If you didn’t want to be close to people, you wouldn’t live here in this house. You’d
have your own place. Or your own room at the academy. You wouldn’t have chosen to
live specifically with Dash and Wren. You wouldn’t drive them everywhere. You wouldn’t
be so bent out of shape because they got girlfriends. You wouldn’t be so pissed that
you’re not all going to the same college—”
“There’s still time for them to see sense and stick to the original plan,” I say icily.
“See.” Elodie throws up her hands. “My point exactly. You want connection with
people. It’s important to you. You just don’t know how to handle it.”
“Your argument’s fucking stupid. Dash and Wren are my brothers. Of course I wanna
be around them. I just don’t wanna be around their girlfriends.”
“Because you’re worried that Carrie and I are gonna take them away from you.”
I let out a frustrated groan, hurling back the bedsheets the rest of the way. I’m
wearing nothing but a pair of boxers; I usually sleep naked, so Stillwater’s lucky I’m even
wearing those. She does a commendable job of maintaining eye contact as I stalk toward
her around the bed. With what little patience I have left, I turn her as gently as I can
manage and shove her toward the door.
“I could just put you on your ass again, y’know,” she gripes. She probably could, too.
The little terror is frighteningly good at Krav Maga.
“Go for your life. But do me a favor and knock me the fuck out this time. Put me out of
my misery. At least that way I won’t have to listen to you spout this inane bullshit.”
She spins on me in the doorway, stabbing me in the chest with a painted black
fingernail. “We’re not gonna take them away from you, Pax. If you weren’t being such a
stubborn butthead, you’d see that. And if you could stop being so scared for five seconds
and just talk to me, you might realize that you like me, and that we can be friends, too.”
I can feel the scathing laughter bubbling up the back of my throat. I tamp it down,
holding it back, though I let the sour smirk forming on my face have full rein. “I’m done
making friends with silly Wolf Hall girls, Elodie. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m working on
developing a severe case of tinnitus. Have a wonderful day.” I slam the door closed in her
face. I lock it this time.
 40

PRES

“What if no one comes?”

Dad stands in front of the mirror, frowning at his reflection. He’s wearing a brand-new
black tailored shirt and a pair of new black jeans that he bought in Boston four days ago.
The white sneakers (also brand new) contrast with his all-black outfit. I warned him not
to wear them—they’re way too cool for him—telling him to go for a pair of black leather
dress shoes instead, but he rejected my unsolicited advice out of hand. And he was right
to. He’s my father. I always assume he should wear old man clothes to match his old man
state of mind, but the truth is that he’s not that old at all.
He can still pull off this kind of wardrobe. He looks great, and I tell him so. “And
you’ve got nothing to worry about. People are gonna come. Everyone’s been talking
about this place opening for weeks. Even some of the faculty have been asking about it.
And all of my friends are coming. It’s gonna be a massive hit.”
Dad pulls a doubtful face at himself in the mirror. “Don’t get me wrong, sweetheart.
I’m incredibly grateful that you’ve asked all of your friends to come, but a sea of rowdy
eighteen-year-olds isn’t really the crowd I was hoping for on my opening night.”
I scowl at him, spinning him around so I can unfasten the top button of his shirt; he
looks like he can hardly breathe. “Why? You hate money or something?” I ask
sarcastically. “One of those rowdy eighteen-year-olds coming here tonight will probably
have more disposable income that five of the local families. You shouldn’t be so quick to
turn up your nose.”
He sticks out his tongue at me. “All right, all right. Fair point. I suppose a big night on
takings is better than empty seats. And all of the academy students will be leaving soon.
I’ll hit the locals then.”
 I wish he hadn’t reminded me. There’s one week left of school now. One. Week. In
seven days exactly, graduation will be over and done with and everyone will leave Wolf
Hall. Everyone will pack up their rooms, and a line of Lincoln Town Cars will block the
road that leads up the mountain, and one by one, the people I have spent the last four
years of my life with will slowly disappear out into the world. I’ll see Elodie and Carrie
again, of course. I might not be going to Europe with them, but there will be holidays and
plenty of other opportunities for us to hang out.
Pax, though.
Pax will be leaving, and I probably won’t see him again. That shouldn’t sting as
brightly as it does. I’ve barely communicated with him at all over the past two weeks. I’ve
seen him in class, of course, but there have been no texts. He hasn’t shown up in my
room again. I haven’t gone to the house. We’ve traded chapter for chapter, working
surprisingly quickly on our novel project, but apart from that, he’s been a ghost.
The restaurant opening goes off without a hitch. The place is packed to the rafters.
Dad checks his phone every ten minutes, fussing over the screen in between greeting his
customers and explaining the menu he’s curated for the night’s celebrations. I help seat
people, a smile plastered to my face that doesn’t even slip when I see Elodie walk in on
the arm of Wren Jacobi—I should have known that Wren would be here tonight. Where
Elodie goes, so does he. Carrie and Dash walk in right behind them. My heart seizes in
my chest, waiting for Pax to stroll in after them. But he doesn’t.
“Oh my god, this place looks amazing!” Carrie spins around, taking the place in, as I
show them over to a table for four.
“ I t smells amazing,” Elodie adds. I’m so grateful to them for showing up and
supporting my dad that I could weep. But that doesn’t stop me from glancing back at the
door again, asking as casually as possible, “Will this table be big enough or…?”
“He’s not coming,” Dash groans, sitting himself down. “He’s at home, sulking. I don’t
know what’s happening between you two, but I hope you sort it out soon. He’s making
our lives miserable, slamming around the house like a fucking child.”
“What are you talking about? Everything’s fine.” I laugh a little, trying to brush off the
comment, but I know Dash is right. Pax is pissed with me over something. I just don’t
know what. He sits as stiff as a board in Econ and English, stabbing the tip of his pen into
his notepad, staring off into space. No hostile quips. No threats. No dirty sidelong looks.
No curled lips or angry comments. No friendship bracelets around his wrist anymore.
The knowledge that he cut them off hurts. And the fact that he’s cutting me off hurts,
too. Being the subject of Pax’s attention was a heady and terrifying thing. Being ignored
by him is fucking soul destroying.
At around eight thirty, Dad pulls me aside, rubbing at his brow. “I wanted this to be a
surprise, but Jonah was supposed to be here tonight. I bought him a plane ticket and
everything. He was meant to show up six hours ago, and he isn’t answering his phone.
You haven’t heard from him, have you?”
My blood freezes. I suddenly feel sick to my stomach. Jonah’s supposed to be here.
There’s a chance that he’s going to show up and walk through the doors to the restaurant
any second? I’m a fool for thinking Dad wouldn’t want his son here for his grand
restaurant opening, but the idea of Jonah showing up for this never really occurred to me.
I can’t handle Jonah being here. I fucking can’t.
I live in a state of high anxiety, my head reeling as I rush around the restaurant,
trying to pretend that I’m okay, but I’m not. I haven’t had Pax to distract me from my
monsters for nearly two weeks. I thought I’d be okay, I really did. But without Pax to
chase away the memories, they’ve been pressing in close of late. It’s getting harder and
harder to imagine that I’m going to be okay when I leave Mountain Lakes. The lie I’ve
been telling myself is getting harder and harder to believe.
The night eventually comes to an end, the final party of guests leaving the restaurant
well after midnight. Dad’s so exhausted and concerned over the fact that Jonah still
hasn’t shown up that he doesn’t put up a fight when I tell him I want to go and sleep in
my bed at the academy rather than at the house, like I was supposed to. It’s Monday
tomorrow and I have to be in class first thing, so he lets me drive myself back up the
mountain.
My anxiety doesn’t quit when I let myself into my bedroom, though. I barely sleep. It’s
still there, choking me in the morning when I hurry into Jarvis’ AP English class, and only
heightens when I see Pax’s empty chair at the desk we share.
I need to see him.
I need to talk to him.
I just…I fucking need him. I can’t take this anymore.
“Is everything okay, Presley?” Jarvis asks when she sees my face. “You’re looking very
pale. Are you having a panic attack?” Ever since my father told her about my supposed
suicide attempt, her constant scrutiny has been unbearable.
I brush off her questions, shaking my head. “Where’s Pax?”
“Oh. He had to go to New York last night apparently. Some sort of family emergency.”
Jarvis doesn’t seem all that concerned about what she’s just told me, but does she know
about Pax’s mom’s health issues? No. I doubt Pax told any of the academy faculty that he
donated bone marrow to his sick mother. If he’s had to rush back home for some kind of
emergency, then something must have happened. His mom must have taken a turn for
the worse.
I can think of nothing else as the English class ticks by impossibly slowly.
 By the time the bell goes, signaling the end to my torture, I’ve made up my mind.
I don’t care if Pax is mad at me. I don’t care if he doesn’t want anything to do with me
anymore.
I’m going to New York.
I’m going to go there, and I’m going to make sure he’s okay.

“What are you talking about? I fucking love road trips.” Wren stuffs the duffel bag into the
trunk of the car. “Plus, he left in the middle of the night and he didn’t say a word about
leaving. He knows how much I love visiting the city. I’m looking forward to seeing
Meredith, too.”
I asked Elodie to get an address out of Wren—one where I might find Pax. She
showed up at my room an hour later and informed me that Wren was going to drive all
three of us into the city himself, and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Now that
I’m standing in front of Riot House with my overnight bag at my feet, I can see that she’s
right; he’s adamant that he’s coming. He picks up my bag and throws it into the trunk,
too.
“Don’t say anything to Dash or Carrie, though. I can’t handle chauffeuring five people
around in one car. It’s not fucking happening.”
We get on the road just after three.
At six, Wren smirks, quickly reading a message that’s come through on his phone.
“He’s fine. Meredith’s fine. He has a photo shoot with some high-profile photographer.
Ohhh, Ralph Lauren? Fancy. He just said there was an emergency so he could disappear
for a couple of days.”
My heart sinks a little in my chest. I’ve sent Pax a total of four text messages since
this morning, asking if he’s all right, and he hasn’t replied to a single one of them. I
should have known he’d reply to Wren, him being one of his best friends and all, but it
still stings a little. “Oh. Glad he got back to you at last,” I mutter.
“Pssh. Please. Like that boy ever replies to texts when he’s in a bad mood. His mom
just told me that she’s fine herself. And I just got into his email. There’s a calendar
reminder for a Ralph Lauren shoot this afternoon and tomorrow morning.”
“You hacked his email?” Elodie doesn’t look surprised but I sure as hell am. “How?”
Wren briefly looks at me in the rearview mirror. “I have my ways.” I’m so used to the
fact that Elodie is dating him now, that I seem to have forgotten that he is still Wren
Jacobi, the dark lord of Riot House. He still exists in a morally grey world, where breaking
into your friends’ email accounts is a totally acceptable thing to do.
 Christ. If he’s okay with invading the privacy of one of his best friends…what if he’s
hacked my email account? There are messages from my doctors in there. Therapy
appointments. Links to all kinds of suicide prevention support groups, and…
I try to shiver out of these thoughts but freeing myself of them is like trying to pull my
feet out of wet mud. It takes real effort. Why would Wren hack my email? He’d have no
reason whatsoever. But when I look up, I see that he’s looking at me again in the
rearview, his dark eyebrows knitted together in the middle. Like he has hacked my
account, and he knows.
I turn away, looking out of the window as the landscape flying past the window
changes from Massachusetts forest to Connecticut forest when we burn through state
lines. “Maybe we should go back, then,” I say quietly. “If he’s fine, and his mom isn’t sick.
He obviously doesn’t want to talk to any of us.”
Wren just laughs. “Oh, we’re not going back. We’re already halfway there now. And
besides. That son of a bitch has never known what’s good for him. He’s going to talk to
us, whether he likes it or not.”
 41

PAX

“I’m telling you. If you want to stay on my books, you’re gonna grow out your hair.”
POP!
The interior of the warehouse, with its filthy windows and its peeling walls, flares
bright white for a second as the photographer’s flash fills the space.
Over by fruit platters, stacks of pastries and the vats of mediocre coffee, my agent
shovels a mini croissant into her mouth. I’ve never seen someone eat so much and yet
never seem to gain any weight; I’ve watched her over the past couple of years, waiting
for any telltale sign that she’s dashing off to the bathrooms to purge the contents of her
stomach, but I’ve never witnessed anything that would suggest bulimia. Seems as though
the woman lucked out with a crazy metabolism. Could be diet pills, I guess.
She points a finger at me, one of her perfectly full, dark eyebrows hiking up a little as
she speaks. “This isn’t the job that you lose because you’re being stubborn. This is a
career making shoot. You can’t afford to reject this offer, and I can’t afford to let you.
There’s way too much money on the table. This is the first time in five years that
American Eagle has enquired about you. You’re taking that job. You’re gonna be making
residuals until the end of time.”
“Right. I’m sure you’re thinking about my residuals.”
She slaps the half-eaten croissant down on the buffet table, stalking across the dusty,
cracked concrete floor in her high heels. “You’re damn straight I’m thinking about my
royalties, too. You think I put up with your ass for free, Pax? Is that it? I get paid, and I
get paid well for the contracts that I broker. I wouldn’t have any clients if I wasn’t hungry.
My question is, what the hell’s going on with you, asshole? You seem to have lost your
appetite.”
 POP!
Another flash of light bleaches the warehouse, turning the grey morning brilliant
white. The photographer, Callan Cross—a guy I’ve wanted to work with for an age now—
steps away from his camera and folds his arms across his chest. He’s young for the
number of awards and prizes he’s won. Maybe thirty-five. He looks like a stern school
principal when he flicks a look between Hilary and me, though.
“I have no problem with you being here,” he tells Hilary. “But you’re distracting the
shit out of the guy, and while I think he looks best with a frown on his face, I’m supposed
to be capturing mysterious, alluring, seductive stranger, not pissed off loudmouth. You
guys can discuss how much hair he has on his head when we break for lunch. In the
meantime, maybe you should step outside and make some calls or something. Broker
some more of those deals. What d’you reckon?”
Hilary’s highly respected in her field. She’s a shark. A gatekeeper that stands between
monolithic brands and some of the world’s most popular and highly sought-after models.
If a photographer wants to shoot someone, say, like me, they have to go through Hilary,
and most of them would have better luck getting through a foot of reinforced concrete
and inch-thick steel plate.
In this industry, people are careful when they speak to Hilary. I don’t have to be,
because I’m a commodity that she doesn’t want to lose. Callan Cross doesn’t have to
watch his tongue either, because he’s Callan fucking Cross. He was booked for this shoot
a year ago, way, way, way before I was even considered for the project. As far as this
shoot goes, Hilary is Cross’s bitch for the next two days, and frankly so am I.
Just because Hilary admires Callan’s work, doesn’t mean that she has to like deferring
to him, mind you. She mirrors his pose, crossing her arms over her chest. “Yes. Fine.
You’re right. There are a number of pressing issues that I should be taking care of right
now. If you need anything, Mr. Cross, please send one of your PAs to find me.”
She walks out, swinging her hips, her loose, linen pants billowing as she disappears
through the door. As soon as she’s gone, another snap of sound fills the warehouse. No
flash this time. Cross fired off another shot of me on a different camera—an old medium
format film thing by the looks of things. Not the kind of camera someone would use for a
professional editorial shot. It's practically an antique. He pulls the winder across, the
sound of the zipping mechanism inside the body drawing the film taut extremely loud in
the echoing, drafty space. “One for my private collection. Hope you don't mind. The look
on your face just then? Pure murder. I had to get it.”
I let my top lip curl briefly into the ghost of a smile. “Doesn't bother me. If Hilary finds
out you're developing unsolicited images of me, she'll have a field day, though.”
Callan smiles. “Like I said. It's for my personal collection. I won't show it anywhere.
Maybe you'll sign a release at the end of the session for me, though. Just in case.”
“Maybe I will.”
He nods after Hilary “Quite the spitfire, that one.”
“Pretty sure she's single,” I tell him.
He's back behind his big commercial camera now. “Oh, I'm not interested. Lift your
head a little bit. Angle to the—yeah, perfect.”
POP!
“I'm happily married,” he says. “And even if I wasn't, I wouldn't go near your agent
with a ten-foot pole, my friend.”
I change my position, shifting my weight and re-angling myself to give him a different
stance. “Not into powerful, independent women?” I ask. My voice is thick with sarcasm,
which makes Cross laugh.
“I love powerful, independent women. Hilary Weston’s just a bitch.”

I'm tired. There's a perfectly good bedroom waiting for me at The Excelsior, free of
charge, and I wouldn't mind grabbing some weed from doorman Roger, but Meredith's
not on death's door anymore. She's home from the hospital. I've checked in with Roger a
couple of times over the past few weeks, and my mother's condition is vastly improved by
the sounds of things. She's been going out to dinner nearly every night of the week with
friends and threw a fucking cocktail party last weekend. If the very thought of making the
call didn't bring me out in full-body hives, I'd check in with her doctor to find out how
she's really doing, but yeah. Hives. I'm sure they'll hit me up for more of my bone marrow
if things look like they're taking a turn for the worse. In the interim, I booked myself in at
The Carlyle instead.
Great location.
Comfortable rooms.
Plenty of space.
Excellent room service.
And, best of all, I'm charging all of it back to the agency, so I don't have to part with a
dime—the benefits of being one of Van Kaiser's most exclusive models.
I'm basically worth my weight in gold. Everybody wants me on their magazine cover,
or wearing their watches, or their underwear, or driving their car, but Hilary is, to be fair,
very good at her job. When a product or service is popular, you need to create a scarcity
for it. Make it extremely hard to come by. This is why Hilary turns down nearly ninety
percent of the jobs I'm offered through the agency, and why she can charge stupendously
large amounts of money for me when she deems a contract beneficial. Van Kaiser are
therefore more than happy to pick up the tab whenever I'm out on a job.
It's dark when I step out of the stairwell and onto the thirtieth floor of The Carlyle. I'm
exhausted from being on my feet all day—those tiny micro-adjustments and slight shifts
in weight barely count as movement at all, but they take their toll after twelve fucking
hours, let me tell ya—and climbing up thirty floors of stairs hasn't helped matters. But
braving the elevator up to Meredith's penthouse is the only time I'll trap myself in such a
small and confined space. The elevator that goes up to The Excelsior's penthouse is
private. I can sweat my way all the way from the ground floor to her living room in
complete privacy. Not so at The Carlyle. Any number of people could get off and on as
the car goes up, dragging out the length of time I have to be trapped inside the car,
rubbing shoulders with unknown entities. I won't fucking do it.
I let myself into the corner suite Hilary arranged for me, already planning on draining
the minibar dry, but when I step into the living room, I see Elodie fucking Stillwater
sitting on my couch and my brain damn near explodes.
I am fucking HALLUCINATING.
A hand claps on my shoulder, stopping me dead in my tracks. “There you are. If you
shower up real quick and get dressed, we'll make it to Le Bernardin just in time for our
reservation.”
Wren tosses a handful of peanuts into his mouth, bouncing his eyebrows as he heads
over to the couch and throws himself down next to his girlfriend.
Fuck's sake. I left without telling anyone where I was going or what I was doing. I
knew better than to think Wren wouldn't be able to find me—without fail, he'll obtain any
piece of information he desires once he sets his mind to it—but I figured he'd have better
things to do. I assumed he'd be so busy fucking Elodie that he wouldn't even realize I was
gone until I was already back again. Wrong on all counts. He's here, in my goddamn hotel
room, and he's made himself cozy.
“Are those my sweatpants?” I snarl.
Wren looks down at himself, surveying the pants with the air of a man who assumes
that everything belongs to him. “Uhhh... I don't know. Could be. I got them from in
there.” He points.
“The bedroom? My bedroom?”
“Yeah.”
“You get them from a suitcase? The Dakine one, with my name printed on the label?”
He throws more peanuts back, shrugging. “I don’t fucking know. A bag. They were in a
fucking bag. Jesus, dude, relax already. They’re sweatpants.”
This is just fucking perfect. No, seriously. Fucking perfect. Exactly what I need after a
long day being bossed about by Hilary and a demanding, (admittedly pretty cool)
photographer. “What are you doing here?” I imbue the words with every ounce of
malevolence I can muster. Both of these motherfuckers are impervious to my tone,
though. Clearly, they are fundamentally broken inside. Wren grinds his peanuts between
his molars, observing me blankly. Elodie doesn’t even do that; she stares at the
television, flicking through the channels, hopping from one station to the next like I didn’t
just threaten to eat her fucking soul with my hatred.
“Your girl Chase needed a ride. I like her, y’know. She’s told me to go fuck myself
when we were going over the Brooklyn Bridge. She said it with so much venom that my
balls retracted a bit.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Chase needed a ride?”
Elodie drags her gaze away from the television at long last. On the screen, Arnold
Schwarzenegger is disappearing into a pit of molten lava, one hand raised above his
head, giving a thumbs up. “Jarvis Reid told her you went home because of a family
emergency,” Elodie says. “Pres was worried about you.”
There are no words. I throw my hands up, eyes rolling extra hard as I struggle to
concoct a string of curse words vile enough to convey just how unhappy I am.
These guys cannot be here.
Not now.
Not tonight.
Chase most definitely can’t be here.
This is really fucking bad.
The balcony door slides open, letting a wash of sirens and car horns flood into the
room, along with Chase herself, who’s wearing one of my…god fucking damn it. My
hoody. She’s wearing one of my plain black hoodies. Two emotions spark in concert with
one another, roaring through me all at once. The first—pure rage—has my blood singing
in my veins and a dull roar building in the back of my throat. The second—a completely
unidentifiable emotion—has my stomach churning and this weird, prickling heat climbing
up my spine. I want… I want to…
Fuck this. I want her to take off the hoody right fucking now, but I can’t trust myself to
bark the command without something weird happening. The thing’s so big on her, it’s
halfway down to her knees. She’s pushed the sleeves back to her elbows, the fabric
bunching up ridiculously around her upper arms. The collar’s skewed, hanging off her
shoulder. My stomach clenches again, a bizarre tightening that makes my breath catch.
She sees me, her eyes going round, and her cheeks turn bright crimson. She wasn’t ready
for me to show up. Not yet. Was she going to take it off before I arrived? Was she
planning on bailing? She looks like she’s about to have a heart attack. Her eyes, luminous
and crystal clear, shine so bright that she looks like some kind of cartoon. A manga
character come to life and invading my personal, private fucking space.
“Sorry,” she whispers.
I arch an eyebrow at her, very, very confused. “Sorry?”
“Yeah.”
“Hah!” Wren kicks his feet up onto the coffee table, throwing his arm around Elodie;
she nestles into his side, resting her head on his chest, and seeing them like this, so easy
and natural and perfect together, makes my throat ache. I ignore them, looking back at
Chase, lasering in on her startled, doe-eyed expression.
“I didn’t even need to guess where you were staying,” Wren says. “You’ve stayed here
one too many times by now. I barely had to bribe the front desk for the room key,
either.”
“I’ll make sure to pick somewhere else next time,” I mutter.
“Seriously, man. Go and get changed. I’m gonna be pissed if we miss our spot at Le
Bernardin. Unlike obtaining your room key, scoring that table was hard. I had to jump
through hoops. Hoops. Your mom hooked us up in the end. She called them and had a
window res—”
My head snaps around so quick, I pinch a fucking nerve. “You told Meredith we were
here?”
“Don’t get weird, dude. I spoke to her for, like, thirty seconds.” Wren makes a show of
rolling his eyes. “She was more than happy to help. She said to tell you to stop by The
Excelsior tomorrow evening for dinner. She said we should all go.”
Holy…fucking…
I’ve gotta…get…
I charge for the bedroom and slam the door closed behind me before I can do
anything rash.
Dum, dum, dum.
My heart surges, my blood rushing in my ears. I can’t breathe.
It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. Just…breathe, man. Breathe.
My temper has a mind of its own. It doesn’t listen to reason at the best of times. I
want to fly back out of the door and launch myself at that bastard Jacobi. I can already
feel his bones breaking beneath my fists. His throat collapsing, crushed beneath my iron
grip. I can’t kill the fucker right now, though. There are too many witnesses. And besides,
I’m gonna calm down any second now, I’m sure of it.
Aaaaannnnyyyyyy second now.
This is fixable.
I can manage this.
 I don’t know how, considering what I have planned for later on tonight, but…
I close my eyes and breathe.
Chase shouldn’t have been wearing that hoody.
Why didn’t I…couldn’t I…just tell her to take it off?
Cross didn’t have his PA slather me in baby oil all like most photographers do, so
showering is a quick, efficient affair. I get dressed, my nerves jangling at the slightest
sound from out in the living room. Wren laughs. Elodie squeals. She shouts, pleading with
my roommate to put her down, and my chest gets tighter and tighter. There isn’t a single
sound out of Chase. She’s silent, not a peep, which makes me unspeakably anxious. Has
she left? Is she still out there? Why the fuck would she come here with Elodie and Wren,
for fuck’s sake? It doesn’t make a lick of sense.
My mood is blacker than the deepest pits of hell when I throw open the door and
emerge from the bedroom, ready to bitch slap the first person to make any kind of
comment on the clothes I’ve chosen to wear. They match my mood. Torn black jeans.
Black long-sleeved t-shirt. Black Yankees ball cap, flipped backwards. I caught myself in
the mirror just now and I looked positively demonic, but that had more to do with the
grim expression on my face than the clothes I’m wearing. Wren, dressed very similarly
now, only without the hat, smiles and gives me a curt, “I approve.”
Elodie’s wearing a tight black dress.
Chase…
I sweep the room, looking for her.
“She’s still in the bathroom,” Elodie supplies. “She didn’t bring any going out clothes,
so I loaned her a dress and some heels.”
“Did I somehow give you the impression that I give a fuck?” I rumble.
This earns me a tsk from Wren, and a sly, teasing smile from Stillwater. She leans
forward on the couch, resting her elbows on her knees. “When are you gonna start being
nice to me?” she purrs.
“I’m not.”
“You’re my friend. Elodie’s my girlfriend. That makes you friends by default.” Jacobi
cuts me a sharp-edged smile that harbors the suggestion of a threat. “Figure it out.”
I open my mouth, but the disgusting word I was about to spit out dissolves on the tip
of my tongue; the bathroom door cracks open, and then slowly swings inward, revealing
an expanse of pale leg, a flowy black dress with lacy sleeves, four-inch heels, and a wary-
looking Chase amongst it all. Her hair is a shock of perfect auburn waves. Her dark eyes
are rimmed with smoke—grey shadow and black liner that make her look older.
Impossibly, painfully sexy. Her lips bear only clear gloss, but it makes them look plump
and juicy, ready to be bitten. Sucked. Licked.
 Urgh.
I rip my gaze away from her and stalk to the window, bracing myself against the
frame with my hands high over my head. “I can’t get fucked up tonight,” I mutter. “I’ll eat
and then I’m out. I have to be back at the studio by seven tomorrow morning.”
“Don’t worry, princess. You’ll get your beauty sleep,” Wren says. But I can hear it in
his voice—the high jinx. He has nefarious plans for the night, and I know the fucker. He
won’t let me get out of them that easily.
 42

PRES

Strange how you can link a person with a setting so strongly. I’ve never seen Pax out of
Mountain Lakes. Seeing him here, in New York, is very, very weird. He’s perfectly at home
in this huge, sprawling city. His clothes, his attitude, his ink. All of it makes way more
sense here than it ever has at the academy. Here, it also finally hits home that he’s kind
of fucking famous. People recognize him in the street. They nudge each other with
elbows and point at him non-too-subtly with their jaws on the floor. Someone asks him
for a photograph, a guy with a beer-stained t-shirt and a bunch of professional camera
gear hanging around his neck—'paparazzi,’ Elodie mouths, pretending to throw up—and
Pax threatens to break his fucking jaw.
Elodie and Wren go ahead of us, jostling each other and laughing, stopping briefly to
make out, then running off down the street, weaving around the other people heading
north along the outskirts of Central Park. That leaves Pax and I walking kind of together,
alone. He’s a half a step ahead of me, his hands buried deep in his pockets, the peak of
his ball cap covering the back of his neck, covering up his tattoos. He doesn’t say a word.
His lips are pressed together so tight that they’ve turned white, in fact.
For every step he takes, I take three, battling to retain my balance in the ridiculous
heels Elodie loaned me. I duck around some scaffolding in front of a building that looks
like it’s about to fall down any second and I nearly eat shit. One second, I think I’ve got
it, I think I’m going to be able to save myself from toppling over. The next, my heel
buckles, I go over on it, and I’m spilling sideways, off the edge of the curb.
“ShiITT!”
A vise-like grip closes around my upper arm, grabbing hold of me before I can hit the
deck. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Pax mutters. “You done, Bambi?” He pulls me upright, not
gently, but not particularly roughly, either. I look up at him, trying not to be startled by
the heat of his hand burning through the sleeve of the leather jacket Elodie also loaned
to me. His jaw is set, a muscle feathering in his cheek. His nostrils flare. He blows down
his nose like a spooked wild horse, ready to bolt at any second. When our eyes meet, his
steel silver irises flash mercurially.
I wait for him to let me go. Only he doesn’t. He casts a quick look up the road,
searching out Wren and Elodie, then turns back to me, tugging me closer to him. “What is
this, Chase? I don’t have the time or the energy for this shit.”
My chest pinches, lungs seizing, begging for air that won’t come. “What do you mean?
I’m not—”
“You come all the way to the city? To check on me? Because you’re worried about
me?”
“Yes!”
“But you didn’t give a flying fuck about me in your bedroom a couple of weeks ago,”
he says, his voice all hard edges.
“What?”
“You made it pretty clear that I was just a fuck to you, and you didn’t need anything
else from me. So why bother chasing me all the way to New York now, huh?”
“I didn’t—” I shake my head. “I never said that, Pax. I was just really confused. You
were acting so differently. I couldn’t figure you out. And then you said you were tired, and
I was the path of least resistance for you, and yeah! Okay!” I throw my hands up,
exasperated. “That made me feel like shit. So, I was a little pissy—”
He huffs, cutting me off. “Why the fuck would that make you feel like shit?”
“Why do you think? Are you so completely clueless that you think telling a girl you’re
nothing but the easiest option is going to make her feel good?”
He narrows his eyes to slits. Even angry, he’s the most insanely attractive guy I’ve
ever fucking seen. Foolish teenaged hormones. Foolish, romantic brain. Foolish fucking
heart. What a mess you’ve gotten me into. I catch the flash of his teeth—a briefest
suggestion of a snarl. “You are so fucking off base,” he grits out.
“Come on! Quit squabbling in the street, children. We’ll lose the table if we’re late. I
will not be happy,” Wren hollers.
“You want me. You’re addicted to fucking me,” Pax states. When I don’t say anything
in response, he lifts an eyebrow in challenge.
God. Is he really doing this now? “What? Am I supposed to curl up in my shame and
deny it?” I hiss.
He wets his lips. “Well?”
“Yes.” I say it without emotion. Certainly without embarrassment. I don’t have the
energy for either anymore.
Pax’s eyes harden. He lets go of me and sets off after Wren and Elodie. “You should
have just texted me tonight.”
Oh my god! Is he seriously changing the subject?
“ I did text you. I messaged you four times. You ignored me and carried on with
whatever the hell you were doing—”
“Working.”
“And you left me to assume your mother was dying. Or you were bleeding out off of
the New Jersey Turnpike or something.”
“What the fuck does the New Jersey Turnpike have to do with anything?” he says. “Do
you have any idea how far away that is?”
“I don’t fucking care where the New Jersey Turnpike is, Pax! The New Jersey Turnpike
doesn’t fucking matter!”
Pax grunts. He doesn’t say another word until we reach the restaurant, where Wren
and Elodie are waiting outside for us. Where they’re pressed up against the wall around
the corner, draped in shadows, to be more precise. Wren has his hand up Elodie’s dress. I
know from the way his hand is moving between her legs, and the soft, whimpering
sounds that are coming out of her mouth that his fingers are inside her.
Pax hisses. “Hell’s fucking teeth. You’ve gotta be kidding me.” He rips his ballcap off
and runs a hand over his scalp, shaking his head—the embodiment of pure frustration.
“Put her down, Jacobi. You’re gonna get your ass arrested, and I am not posting fucking
bail.”
“Go in. We’ll be there in a second!”
Steely, silver eyes flash murderously. “I swear to god, I’m gonna kill him.”
“Relax. They’re just…having fun?”
The muscles in Pax’s jaw work overtime. “You’re okay with hanging ’round on a street
corner in New York while one of your friends gets fingered?”
“No. I—”
“You into that? You wanna watch?”
He’s furious now. Boiling over. Why the hell is he so angry all of a sudden? He grabs
me again, this time very roughly, spinning me around and yanking me to him, that my
back is pressed up against his chest. I try to pull away, but his arm locks around my
ribcage—a solid steel bar, holding me in place. “Let go of me, Pax.”
He doesn’t. He takes me by the chin, fingers gripping my jaw, fixing my face toward
the alleyway and the dark shape of our friends. I can’t look away. “Does that make your
heart beat faster, Chase? Does spying on them turn you on? Is…” He pants between
gritted teeth. “Is that what you want me to do to you?”
 My attempts to wriggle free are futile. I still try, though. I strain against him,
shockwave after shockwave of adrenalin exploding like bombs in my head, coursing
through every cell and nerve ending of my body. I’m hot. Way, way, way too hot. “ Let me
go, Pax.”
“Stop,” he snarls, shaking me. “Fucking quit it. Look at them and tell me the fucking
truth. Is that what you want me to do to you?”
I go still in his arms. Utterly limp, like a ragdoll. In the dim alleyway, less than twenty
feet away, Elodie moans, the sound of her breathless pleasure echoing off the crumbling
brick walls. Her eyes are closed. Her head rocks back, her lips parting, and a look of pure
bliss settles on her face. The muscles in Wren’s shoulders and back tense, shifting with
his movements. He buries his face in the crook of Elodie’s neck, growling loud enough
that I can hear him. The sound of it sends a shiver through me. He grazes his teeth over
the skin at the base of her neck, over her collar bone, and my breath hitches in my
throat.
Behind me, I can feel Pax’s heart slamming beneath his ribcage. His chest is rising and
falling just as fast as mine, all of a sudden. I realize that he’s loosened his grip on my
jaw. His hand slides down the column of my throat, and for a moment he simply holds it
there, his palm resting over my windpipe, his fingers pressing lightly into my skin. And
then…
God…
And then, he very carefully, very lightly trails his thumb over my skin, running from my
earlobe down to the hollow of my throat. His warm breath stirs my hair, skating over my
neck, and I break out in goosebumps over every square inch of my body. “Say the word
and I’ll do it,” he whispers. “I’ll pin you up against that wall right next to them. You can
get down on your knees right there in the piss-soaked trash and I’ll shove my dick
halfway down your throat until you choke on it. Is that what you want from me?”
A hot wall of fury slams into my chest. I wrench myself away from him, and the band
of steel across my chest that was trapping me disappears. He doesn’t try to stop me this
time. His cold, arrogant laughter fills my ears, turning the heat that was just blooming
inside of me ice-cold; I feel like I’ve just had a bucket of freezing water dumped over my
head.
“You’re a fucking asshole,” I mutter, straightening my jacket. “What the hell is wrong
with you? Why can’t you just be normal?”
His wretched smile fades. A look of curiosity takes its place. Tipping his head to one
side, he pulls a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his jeans and lights one, then
narrows his eyes at me. “What’s normal for you, Chase? Do guys simp over you day and
night? Do they bust in their tightey-whiteys the moment you look sideways at ’em. That
what you’re used to?” He blows out a breath of smoke, the twin plumes of it billowing out
of his nose, and for a second his face is hidden amongst it. Enough time for me to drag in
a deep breath and recover myself.
“Just shut the fuck up, dude.” I turn away from him, wrapping my arms around myself.
In the alleyway, Elodie’s muffled cries are getting louder and louder. Thankfully, it’s
the front entrance of Le Bernadin that’s busy and not the rear of the building. For once,
there isn’t a single person in sight. No one around to hear Elodie’s rising pleasure except
for me and Pax. Her pants are cut off, just as it seems she’s about to start screaming at
the top her lungs, and I can’t help but look. Wren has his hand clamped over her mouth,
blunting the one last final cry that comes out of her. His forehead is pressed against hers,
his mouth moving quickly; he’s saying something to her, some whispered sweet nothing
as she bucks against his hand, her back arched away from the wall, but I can’t hear what
he’s saying.
“It is kinda hot,” Pax’s voice purrs in my ear. I haven’t noticed him drawing nearer
again. Now, he’s standing right next to me, close enough that his chest brushes my arm
again when I spin to look up at him. He sucks on his bottom lip, one eyebrow arched as
he gazes back at me. “If I told you my dick was hard right now, would you judge me for
it?”
I roll my eyes, hating the heat that explodes across my cheeks. “Yes.”
He lets out a bark of laughter, pulling on his smoke again. He holds it out, not to me,
but to Elodie, who emerges from the alleyway, straightening her dress, followed closely
by Wren at her heels. “There you go, Stillwater. From the sounds of things, you need this
more than I do.”
Wren smirks like a fiend. “What about me?”
“You need to wash your hands before we sit down to dinner, ya dirty fuck.”
 43

PAX

Le Bernadin is one of the fanciest restaurants in all of NYC. Most people have to wait
months to get a reservation, but my mother’s well known here. Wren played a serious
card when he had Meredith call and ask for a table—she’s got so much pull here that the
sour-faced asshole host manning the front desk doesn’t even say a word about our attire
when Jacobi gives him my mother’s name. They don’t card us when he orders a bottle of
wine, either.
I drain my glass in seconds, glad of the nice little buzz that hits me, while the others
umm and ahh over the menu, trying to decide which obscenely priced entrée they’re
going to order. Wren gets surf and turf. Elodie asks for some kind of pasta. Chase gets
the chicken special. I don’t even bother to look at the menu. When the waiter asks me
what I want, I only have one question.
“What’s the most expensive item you guys sell?”
He looks confused. “I’m sorry? The most expensive meal, or…?”
“The most expensive thing that you sell here.”
“That would be our nineteen forty-six House Montreux Champagne, sir. It was bottled
in celebration, after the of World War Two.”
“How much?”
The waiter shifts uncomfortably. “Sixteen hundred dollars for the bottle, sir.”
“Great. I’ll have that.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I—” He laughs nervously. “I can’t serve you a bottle of champagne in
place of meal.”
“Why not?”
“I’m bound by state law not to over-serve alcohol. You’d be drunk if you consumed an
entire bottle of champagne without eating anything. There’s also the fact that you’re…
ahh…”
“Underage?”
He flinches. Clearly, he’s been told to give us whatever we want, even though we’re
under twenty-one, but his conscience is giving a hard time over this one. “If you leave
here drunk and find yourself in any trouble with the authorities, we’ll lose our license. I
will also lose my job and be personally fined—”
“Fuck’s sake,” Wren hisses. “He’ll have the surf and turf, too. Medium rare. And bring
four flutes. We’ll share the bottle. Problem solved.”
The waiter scurries off before I can shut down Wren’s resolution. My friend points a
finger at me across the table. “Don’t look at me like that, dumbass. We’ll share the
fucking champagne, since I’m paying for it. I assume that’s why you ordered the most
expensive thing in the entire restaurant.”
“It is,” I admit.
“You’re a fucking brat.”
“No one asked you to drive out here and fuck up my weekend.”
“All right. What do you need? Weed? Molly? Fentanyl? A fucking pacifier? You’re
beginning to get on my nerves, dude. We came. We’re here. We’re off the mountain, in
the city, at a really nice fucking restaurant. We are going to have a good time. Get with
the program, or you won’t be the only one in a bad fucking mood, okay?”
I glare at him.
He glares at me.
The waiter arrives with the champagne. He pops the cork with a fucking sabre, and
the tables around us all clap and cheer as the cork flies up toward the ceiling. Wren
doesn’t blink, and neither do I. Our tense staring match ends when the waiter pours a
small amount of the pale, bubbling golden liquid into a flute and offers it to me. I smile
tightly, taking it from him, tasting it with enough pomp and ceremony to make my
mother proud. For a second, I consider being a dick and telling him it’s bad, but…ahh for
fuck’s sake. What’s the point? “It’s great. Thank you.”
The waiter breathes a sigh of relief. So does my friend. I give him a salty half-smile,
not even meaning it a little, tiny bit, but he accepts it for what it’s meant to be: my full
and complete resignation. Brawling with Wren’s always fun, and I wouldn’t normally turn
down the opportunity for a tussle, but Hilary will literally have me murdered and dumped
in the Hudson if I show up for tomorrow’s shoot with a black eye and a busted lip.
And anyway, this level of bellicosity is hard to maintain, even for a professional
asshole such as myself. We eat. Elodie chats freely with Chase, not even remotely
embarrassed over the fact that we just watched her come. Chase is reserved at first, but
as the champagne and the wine begins to kick in, she loosens up a little bit.
Wren couldn’t give a shit about Chase. He makes a good show of looking back and
forth between the two girls, but I know my boy and his true focus is locked on Elodie like
she’s the only living, breathing creature in the universe.
I pretend not to give two shits about the conversation that takes place around me,
and I’m pretty sure I do a decent job of affecting some serious boredom, but the truth is
I’m kind of rapt.
“Is your mom coming back here for graduation?” Elodie asks.
Chase shakes her head. “She only just got posted. I won’t see her until Christmas.”
Posted. So her mother’s military, too.
“Where’s she stationed?” Wren asks. The suck-up.
Chase does her best not to look at me. “Germany.”
Elodie takes another bite of her pasta. “I’d ask if you’re missing her a lot, but I know
how little you saw her before anyway.” Elodie’s an army brat. She knows about military
life. Her father, an army general, is currently hooked up to a life support machine in the
outskirts of Tel Aviv. But the less said about that, the better.
Chase pokes at her chicken with her fork. “Yeah. I wanted to go and visit her after
graduation, but…” She trails off, shrugging.
“Your dad still doesn’t want you to come to Europe?”
“No. He doesn’t think it’s safe.”
I’m sure the fact that Chase’s father knows his daughter was recently in the hospital
with two slit wrists has nothing to do with his reluctance to let her travel through Europe.
No, nothing at all.
“Maybe he’d change his mind if he knew Pax was going to be there to protect you.”
Elodie looks directly at me as she says this.
Wren laughs. “Hah! Pax is banned from most of Germany. They won’t let him back
into the entire eastern side of the country.”
Chase chuckles, like this might be some kind of joke. Elodie’s eyes double in size,
though. “What did you do?”
“That’s still a mystery,” Wren sighs. “And the bastard isn’t telling.”
The girls both look at me, as if they’re waiting for me to cave under the pressure of
their expectant gazes and spill the whole story from start to finish. Of course, I do not. I
don’t fritter away my secrets that easily.
The waiter delivers the desert we’ve ordered. I grab an Old Fashioned, as does Wren,
while the girls settle on some more wine. By the time Wren’s footed the astronomical bill
and we leave Le Bernadin, my mild buzz has developed quite nicely. I feel numb. Loose in
my joints. Happy, almost.
 It's ten twenty. I should be getting back to the hotel. I have a very pressing
engagement at midnight. One I will not miss. But just as I predicted, Wren has other
plans. “Come on. You’re going the wrong way.” He goes behind me and plants his palms
against my shoulder blades, turning me and pushing me in the opposite direction. Both
physically and vocally, I dig my heels in.
“No. No, no, no, no, no. I told you—”
“And I ignored you. Come on. Are you seriously going to go back to the hotel and pass
out before eleven o’clock? What the fuck’s wrong with you? Don’t be a bitch.”
I’ve copped a lot of goading from Jacobi since I moved into Riot House. If he thinks a
stupid comment like that is going to make me change my mind, he has another thing
coming.
“I don’t want to go back just yet,” Elodie says. “I bet Chase doesn’t want to either.”
“None of you are sleeping in my fucking room, so it doesn’t matter what any of you
do. You, Jacobi and Chase can stay up until dawn for all I fucking care.”
Wren gives me another shove, toward the direction of the river. “Come on. I got us on
the list to this club. It’s supposed to be a lot of fun. If you ruin my night any more than
you already have, I’ll never let you borrow The Contessa again. Oh wait, that’s right, you
sank my father’s boat, and you owe me massively since I didn’t fucking kill you when I
found out what you did. Hurray. It’s decided. Let’s do this.”
“How many times? It wasn’t my fault!”
But it’s too late. He’s got some momentum behind him and he’s managed to get me
moving. I shoot off a text as I’m led toward the mystery club.

Me: Change of plan. We need to meet in the city.

Msg rcvd 10:36 pm

310 648 1010: Send me the address. I’ll be there.

The club isn’t some under twenty-ones bullshit venue. It’s a full-blown nightclub,
complete with bouncers who look like they’d rip your face off as soon as look at you.
Wren leads us past the huge line of people waiting to get in, straight up to said bouncers.
The largest of the three men holds a hand up, already shaking his head, but then Wren
shows him a black card that he pulls from his wallet, he unclips the velvet rope in front of
the doorway and we’re being ushered quickly past them, down a steep flight of stairs and
into a cavernous underground…warehouse?
Music pulses, bouncing off the walls. A huge dance floor packed with writhing bodies
greets us, and Elodie claps her hands together. “Holy shit! I’ve been wanting to dance
forever!” she shouts over the driving bass line.
Next to me, Chase surveys the knot of people before us, swallowing hard. “I’m going
to get a drink.”
One of the bouncers fastened bright orange paper bracelets around our wrists before
cutting us loose. The bands read, ‘ID VERIFIED – OVER 21’, which means we shouldn’t
have any issue at all getting served. Chase takes off, beelining for the closest bar, and I
follow after her. I need alcohol more than I need to be a dick and avoid her right now.
And anyway, I’ve recently discovered that being a dick and hanging around her is far
more entertaining. When she looks up and finds me right there, by her shoulder, she
scowls darkly, sighing out a massive breath of air. “What do you want, Pax?”
“Rum and coke. Double’d be nice.”
“No. What do you want? You get mad at me for coming here and checking in on you,
and yet I turn around and you’re right freaking behind me. There are plenty of other bars
in this club. Go and get a drink at one of them.”
“True.” I look around, making a show of squinting at the other bars. At the people
working behind them. “This chick’s got the nicest tits, though. I was thinking about
getting her number.”

PRES

Oh, my fucking god. He is such a dick. The worst part is, the bartender with the giant,
perky tits has already noticed him and she’s making a beeline straight for him. “You’re a
fucking prick, you know that? Don’t worry. I’ll go to another bar. Maybe the guy with the
ink over there will give me his number.”
I shove away from the bar, forging ahead into the crowd, leaving him to flirt to his
heart’s content. Crossing the dance floor isn’t so easy, though. It takes too long to
navigate the welter of sweaty, writhing bodies, and I’m exhausted by the time I reach the
other side of the club. The bartender looks up and sees me, grins, flashing a row of
perfect white teeth, but then his smile fades. He pivots and disappears down the other
end of the bar before I can even order. What the hell?
“That fucker’s ink is even lamer than your brother’s.” Pax leans against the bar next to
me, elbows resting on top of the sticky, lacquered wood.
I glare at him, open-mouthed. “What…why are you doing this?” The question comes
out exasperated, and rightly so.
He looks up, as if he’s pondering his response to the question. And then: “I’m here
against my will, and I have nothing better to do.”
“You guys know what you want?” The bartender is back, though looking a little wary
of Pax.
“Margarita, please. Patron if you have it. Salt rim. And don’t worry about him. He
doesn’t want anything.”
“Double rum and coke,” Pax barks, scowling sideways at me. Once the bartender’s
gone to make our drinks, Pax rounds on me, stooping down so that our eyes are at the
same level for once. “The path of least resistance doesn’t just mean the easiest route.
Butthead.”
“Hah! Butthead? What are you, five?”
“Sometimes you have to simplify things when talking to dumbasses.”
“Look. I’m used to dealing with you being prickly, Pax, but this is beyond the pale. Can
we just call a truce for the night? I’m sorry I was worried about you. I’m sorry I came to
find you. Fuck, I’m sorry for all of it. I promise you, I’ll go back to the academy in the
morning and I won’t bother you again.”
He works his jaw, glowering at me. “All right. Fine. Have fun with the bartender.”
“I will.”
Speaking of the bartender—he returns with our drinks just in time. Pax snatches his
rum and coke up and downs it in one go, slams the empty glass back down on the bar
top, gives me one last disgusted look and then bails into the crowd.
“Yeesh. Lover’s tiff?”
I look at the bartender. “What do you call an enemy’s tiff?” I ask him wearily.
“I think that’s just an argument, sweetheart.”

Wren and Elodie are on the dance-floor when I find them. I wouldn’t have pegged Wren
as a dancer—he seems way too serious for that—but the guy can actually move. I get
Elodie’s attention and yell into her ear, letting her know that I’m going to post up and find
somewhere to sit down while they dance. She tells me to stay and dance with them, but
there is literally nothing worse than trying to bop to music while the couple you’re with
are grinding on each other so suggestively that they could charge people to watch.
Heading down a level, I find a sunken seating area close to another bar and order
myself another drink. I can see Elodie and Wren from my vantage point, just about, so I
sit and watch them, sipping aggressively on my third margarita.
“This seat taken, beautiful?”
I look up at the guy gesturing to the spot next to me, doing everything in my power
not to groan at the absurdity of his question. “Yeah, it’s taken.” I’m curt as hell. I bite on
the end of my straw, looking off into the crowd of people on the dance floor, trying to find
Elodie again.
“Really? ’Cause…” Rando dude chuckles in a way that other girls must find charming.
“It doesn’t look taken to me.”
I quit gnawing on my straw and shove it back into my margarita. “It doesn’t?”
“No. I mean…there’s no one sitting there right now.”
“That you can see.”
“What?” Bless his little cotton socks, he looks so confused.
“There’s no one sitting there right now that you can see. My grandmother was my
best friend. I take her with me everywhere now. She’s non-corporeal, but in today’s age
that’s not really an issue. Unless…” I jerk back, placing a shocked hand on my chest.
“Wait. You’re not prejudice against the dead, are you?”
“Uhhh…” He looks around, first left and then right, but whoever he’s looking for
(maybe my fake dead grandma?) is nowhere to be seen. “Are you serious?”
“Of course. Can you actually move a little to the left? Please? Yeah, that’s right. You’re
blocking her view. She likes to watch people dance. It’s one of her things.”
“Okay. You’re fucking with me.” He sounds a little irritated now. Also, a little drunk,
which I’ve only just noticed. Not ideal. Drunk people’s brains work slower than those of
sober people. “It’s not nice to mess with people, dude.”
“I’m not your dude. Look, can you please just go? I’m having a pretty shitty night, and
you’re upsetting Grandma.”
“Will you at least let me buy you a drink?”
Wow. He really isn’t getting the picture. Throwing myself back into my seat, I let out a
frustrated, “Urgh! No! No, thank you. I don’t want you to buy me a drink!”
“Huh.” The guy hawks like he might spit. “No wonder you’re sitting by yourself. Has
anyone ever told you that you’re a raging bitch?”
He hurls this insult like it might be the worst thing anyone’s ever said to me. Like
drunk guys haven’t been calling the girls who reject them bitches since the dawn of time.
Perhaps flat-out laughing at him isn’t the best response I can muster, but it’s all this
motherfucker is getting.
I drain my margarita and grab another drink, returning to the same spot on the
sunken couch. From time to time, I catch sight of Wren and Elodie on the dance floor,
their bodies swaying and moving in unison.
An hour passes. I decide to cut out the middleman and ditch the margarita mix, opting
for straight tequila instead. When I get up to go to the bathroom, the warehouse pitches,
seesawing wildly, and the alcohol hits me all at once.
Whoa ho ho! Jesus. I am drunk.
It’s a weird kind of drunk, though. I’m body drunk. My heart pumps like a piston,
keeping beat with the thumping music, and my arms and legs feel numb. But my head
feels oddly clear. My thoughts flow smoothly. Sharp. I observe myself, weaving to the
women’s restrooms, bumping my hips on the corners of tables and tripping over my own
feet, with a detached, indifferent amusement. Man, it’s been a while since I’ve been this
tipsy. A grim truth settles over me, as I shove the bathroom door open too hard, sending
it crashing into the wall: I am going to be hungover as fuck tomorrow.
Nothing to be done about it now. Peering into the streaked, filthy mirror above the
sinks, I glower at the girl with the tousled red hair staring back at me, irritated as fuck
with her.
Hey eyeliner’s smudged. Her cheeks are flushed red, and her pupils are twin black
holes, unfocused and massive.
“This is all your fault, y’know?” I tell her. “You’re smarter than this. You should have
shut this down a long time ago.”
She blinks slowly, too wasted to come up with a fitting response. The dress Elodie
loaned me hugs my form tightly. The sheer panel at the front hints at my stomach and
hips. It’s very short, the fabric grazing the tops of my thighs. It’s a far cry from what I
would have chosen to wear tonight, had I packed knowing we’d be going out, but I’ll
admit that it does look good. I look good. The bangles at my wrists, hiding my scars,
clatter together as I sweep my hair back from my forehead, puffing out my cheeks.
“You’re fucking great, Presley. Fucking great. Really hot, too. He’s mad for not wanting
you—”
A stall door behind me swings open, and a tall girl with flawless brown skin and long
braids steps out, snapping open her purse. In a black body suit and sky-high heels, she’s
absolutely stunning. “Now that’s the fucking truth,” she says, looking me up and down.
“You’re gorgeous, sweetheart. Tell me you’re not about to cry over some dumbass boy.
Please. I cannot handle another beautiful girl crying in a nightclub bathroom over a guy
who doesn’t deserve her.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not gonna cry.” I laugh shakily, but when I flick my gaze back to my
reflection, I see how wet and shiny my eyes are and realize that I just lied to a perfect
stranger. “Oh fuck. I am, aren’t I?”
The girl chuckles under her breath as she stands next to me, rooting through her
purse. “Whatever he’s done…or not done,” she says. “It doesn’t matter. You’re in charge
of your happiness. You decide what fills you with joy or what makes your heart hurt. You
give him power when you let his actions cause you pain.”
Damn. She’s right. “He’s not just some guy, though.” God, admitting this out loud is so
tragic and depressing. “He’s the guy. The only guy. And…he’s awful.” I laugh again,
shaking my head, trying to paint a smile on my face, but I must look pretty terrible,
because the girl steps in, hugging me hard.
“No. Nuh-uh.” Pulling back, she strokes a hand over my hair. “What did I say? No
crying. Especially if he’s awful. He is the dirt beneath your feet, my friend. Even if he is
the one. Best thing you can do is go out there with your head held high. Find some
smoking hot dude to dance with and forget about him for an hour or two. Hiding in here
isn’t gonna help.”
“I know. I just—” I sniff, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. “God, I should
probably fix my eyeliner. I’m a fucking mess.”
“No, you’re not.” She points at my reflection in the filthy mirror. “Tell me that shit
doesn’t look sexy,” she says, raising her eyebrows. “Smokey eyes will bring a dude to his
knees every time. Throw your shoulders back and walk out of here with confidence.”
She reapplies her lip gloss and goes, wishing me luck while at the same time telling
me that I don’t need it. I exit the restroom, chanting to myself on repeat: I don’t need
luck. I’m confident. I’m beautiful. I don’t need Pax’s approval. I could have any guy here if
I wanted.
I’m ready to face him again now. I—
The blow barely registers at first. My head snaps sideways, my body rocking with the
impact. Then I’m falling. I put my hand out a split second before my forehead bounces off
the floor.
The walkway’s dark already, but the flashing blue and white lights at the end of the
hall dim to a low pulse, becoming a flickering shadow in my peripherals.
Hands, too rough, grab me by the shoulder, spinning me around, lying me out flat on
my back. Thank god. Thank god, someone’s come to help.
“Whoa! Whoa, is she okay, man?”
My eyes roll back into my skull. My head…fuck, my head is killing me.
Soft, apologetic laughter fills the walkway. “Yeah, sorry. She always does this. Has too
much to drink and makes a fool of herself. I tried to tell her to slow down earlier, but…
urgh…”
 What?
I know the voice. It’s so familiar. I hear it all the time. It makes my chest too, too
tight. What…? what the hell’s going on? Thoughts fracture and break apart in my head. I
struggle to force them back together. To make sense. No matter how hard I try, I can’t
grasp hold of the ends of them. My mind scatters in all directions.
“You need a hand getting her up?” the second person asks.
Fingers dig into my flesh as the person, the guy looming over me, drags me up into a
seated position. “Ahh, thanks, man. I appreciate it, but she’s my girlfriend, y’know. I got
her. She’s my responsibility.”
He makes me sound like a mischievous dog that slipped its leash.
“All right, well…” The other person sounds a little unsure. “Whoa! Is that blood?
Damn, her head’s bleeding all over the place. You should get someone to look at that—”
“Fuck,” the guy says, his fingers gouging into my arm and my side, pulling me to him.
“You’re right. Hey, maybe moving her isn’t the best idea. Would you mind going and
grabbing someone? One of the bartenders? I bet they have first aid kits behind the bars.”
“Of course. Use this. Hold it to her head. Keep pressure on that. It looks bad.”
“Thanks. You’re a life saver, man.” Something rough and warm presses to the side of
my head—some kind of fabric. Denim?
My vision begins to clear—a good and a bad thing, because the light from the strobes
out on the dance floor that were dull shadows just now are suddenly too bright. Even
with my eyes closed, the light feels like it’s about to split my head apart.
Hot, whiskey-soaked breath hits me in the face. I try to turn away from it, but another
explosion of pain detonates inside my head and I can’t move. I’m being pressed against
the wall. My ribs groan, protesting under a phenomenal pressure as something heavy and
solid slams into me. “God, Red. You are so fucking stupid.”
I try to catch my breath, but it’s impossible.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here. Just me and you. We’ll have ourselves a good time.”

PAX

“Quick! There’s a girl bleeding by the bathrooms. I think someone hit her.”
It’s Chase. The second I hear the breathless guy lean across the bar and shout this at
the bartender, I know that it’s Chase.
 I bailed and left her to her own devices after our little spat, but I have been watching
her like a hawk. I saw her shut down that asshole when Jacobi and Stillwater were
dancing. I would have intervened, but it looked like she had her shit handled and I didn’t
want to give her more ammunition for yet another fight. I followed her from a distance as
she made her way to the bathroom. I was hardly gonna follow her inside, though, so I
decided to get another drink…
And now here I am, charging across the dance floor, fury blazing in my chest, ready to
tear that preppy fucker’s head from his shoulders if he’s done anything to hurt Chase…
I reach the hall leading to the women’s bathroom before the bartender, and there’s no
one there. There’s only a tiny puddle of blood on the floor, and a bright red streak of it up
the wall.
Fuck.
FUCK!
Spinning around, I’m lost for what I’m supposed to do next…but then I see him,
standing there on the outskirts of the dance floor, swaying drunkenly as he talks to
another girl in a bright blue dress. The guy with the preppy polo shirt and the slicked back
hair yelps like a kicked dog when I grab hold of him. His eyes bug out of his head. “Whoa!
What the fuck, dude!”
“Where the hell is she?” I will hurt this motherfucker. I will cause him so much pain,
he’s gonna wish he’d hurry up and die already.
The guy who tried to hit on Chase looks like he’s just shit himself. “Wha—what are
you talking about, man? Where’s who?”
He smells like cheap, stale beer. “The smoking hot redhead you pissed off earlier. The
one you hurt outside the bathrooms,” I snarl.
“Wait—what? I—I didn’t hurt anyone! That girl was rude as fuck. I—”
Blood explodes out of his mouth when I hit him. “Try again, motherfucker.”
“I swear!” the guy moans. “I didn’t touch her!” His eyes roll back into his head, and I
believe him. No one can be this drunk, reeling from a right hook, and still manage to lie
convincingly.
I let the bastard go.
“WHO SAW THE REDHEAD BY THE BATHROOMS?” I roar. Stunned groups of people
stop talking, and dancing, and laughing, all turning to look at me. One girl with braids,
wearing a skintight body suit steps forward. “I spoke to her in the restrooms,” she says. “I
left my phone in there. When I went back to get it, I saw someone carrying her toward
the emergency exit. She was upset over her boyfriend. I figured he’d apologized and…I
don’t know.” She looks confused. “Swept her off her feet or something. I thought it was
romantic.”
 Chase was upset because of me.
I am the boyfriend.
Whoever carried her off in their arms was not performing some romantic gesture.
“What did he look like?” I rage.
“Tall. Sandy blond hair. Handsome. But…really shitty tattoos,” the girl says.
I don’t need to hear this description to confirm my suspicions. I already know perfectly
well who took Chase. Because I brought him here. I arranged to meet him here, for fuck’s
sake. He wasn’t supposed to show for another two hours, though. Chase was supposed to
be long gone by then.
The bastard came early.
 44

PRES

“Wakey wakey eggs and bakey…”

Something cold and sharp presses against my cheek, shocking me back to
consciousness. The ground is icy and rough underneath me, and my head…ah, shit, my
head is pounding. I wince, trying to open my eyes, but it hurts too bad to contemplate.
“That friend of yours is a real piece of work. He threatened me, y’know. Told me I
couldn’t even come to my own father’s restaurant opening. I gotta say, that made me
pretty mad, Red. You shouldn’t have had him do that.”
Jonah is close. Too close. His breath fans across my face, and I gag involuntarily,
nausea making my mouth sweat. He’s here. In New York. He found me outside the
bathrooms and hit me over the head with…something…
The pieces slowly fit together.
They don’t make much sense, though.
God, I’m going to throw up.
Groaning, I roll onto my side just in time as I retch, the contents of my stomach
rushing up my throat.
“Jesus. You’re fucking disgusting. I knew you were a mess but look at you.”
Cold seeps into my bones. I’m shaking. I feel like death. Slowly, I make my eyes open,
even though my thumping head protests. Where the hell are we? There are cars, lined up
in rows, stretching on forever and ever. The walls are close, the ceiling low…
A parking garage?
Oh, God...
“I assumed you’d broken your promise to me at first. I thought you’d told that dumb
meathead what happened back at the house, but then I get a text from him and I
realized you’d kept that pretty little mouth shut after all.” Jonah’s deranged laughter
bounces off the concrete walls. I drag myself up into a sitting position, trying not to vomit
again when my stomach rolls, and there he is, crouching a couple of feet away, turning a
knife over in his hands.
It's the same knife I took into my bedroom that night—the one from Dad’s chef’s set.
The same one he used to slice my wrists open. Fear jangles through my nerve endings
when I see the blade catch the light and glint wickedly. It looks even sharper now. Even
more deadly.
“That moron said that he’d stave my face in with a fire extinguisher if I came back to
Mountain Lakes for Dad’s party.” Jonah says, smiling. “I’ll give him ten out of ten for
creativity. A fire extinguisher? That would have fucking hurt, Pres.”
My vision doubles, then merges again as I try to breathe through the pain. “For god’s
sake, Jonah. Why can’t you just…leave me alone?”
“I don’t like your friend,” he says, ignoring me. “He threatened to call the cops if I
didn’t hang out here in New York and wait for him. Said he’d tell them that my car
dropped you off at the hospital the other night when we had our fun. Said he’d sic his
little friend on me and find out all of my dirty secrets. That’s how I knew you hadn’t told
him the truth.” Jonah shifts forward. I feel his leering gaze on my skin like a thousand
crawling bugs. I feel dirty. Filthy. Sick. “If he knew that I’d fucked you ragged that night,”
he croons, tracing his fingers along the line of my jaw, “I don’t think he’d have been
making threats. If he knew I’d cut your wrists, he would have come to find me. I could tell
he liked you from the way he spoke to me at your stupid fucking school…”
“Stop, Jonah. Just…fucking stop!”
He doesn’t, though.
“He’s a bully, your Pax Davis. He thinks he can just jab at me and get me to do what
he likes? He’s got another thing coming, little sister. Did you know I was meeting him
tonight? Did he tell you that?”
“No!” It makes sense now, though—how angry Pax was when we showed up at his
hotel. How he kept trying to bait me, to make me go home. He’s been talking to Jonah,
trying to figure out what’s been going on between us, because I made him promise never
to ask me again. Why couldn’t he just leave it alone?
Jonah holds the knife tight in one hand, chewing on his thumb nail thoughtfully.
“When we’re done here, I’m gonna deal with him next, y’know. I’m gonna gut the piece of
shit and pull his insides out. He doesn’t get to threaten me. No one does.”
“There are cameras everywhere,” I say wearily. “Your face has been recorded on all of
them. They’re gonna know it was you.”
Jonah lunges forward, grabbing me by the throat. “I’ll be in fucking Mexico before they
figure out who I am, you dumb cunt. I have a whole life set up there, waiting for me.
Rosarito, baby. I don’t care if I never come back. So long as I finish what I started with
you, and I make that fucker pay for his arrogance, I’ll be happy as a pig in shit.”
“And what about…Dad?” I rasp. “He’ll know what you…did.”
“I don’t care anymore. Our father is a weak, sorry excuse of a man. Pathetic. I’m glad
that he’ll know it was me.”
“Jonah—”
He shakes me, raising his hand and holding the knife to my eye. The point hovers a
millimeter above my pupil. If I so much as blink, he’ll drive the steel straight into my
brain. I know there’s no talking him down this time. No sense in bargaining.
“I think I’ll fuck you again, Presley,” Jonah sneers. “For old time’s sake. I’m gonna
leave you conscious this time. You can kick and scream all you like. I wanna see the fear
in your eyes when I—”
He comes out of nowhere, a roaring streak of black fury. One moment, Jonah’s pinning
me to the ground, wielding the blade perilously close to my eye, and the next he’s
tumbling off me, slamming hard into the dusty bare concrete next to me.
Pax is living, breathing rage.
He stands over me, his jacket gone, his hat gone. His knuckles are bloody. His
normally cold eyes are full of fire. I don’t even recognize him. He looks like he’s about to
explode when he turns to me and says, “You’re hurt?”
“No. No, I—” I flinch, sucking in a sharp breath. “Well. My head…”
Pax focuses his attention on Jonah, who’s scrambling to his feet, still clutching the
knife in his hand. “You are a fucking dead man,” he says. I can hear the ice in his voice.
He speaks calmly, very clearly, but I can tell he’s about to lose control of himself. “Put
down the knife.”
“You really are fucking stupid, aren’t you?” Jonah spits. “Why the fuck would I do
that?”
“You don’t put it down and I’m gonna wind up using it on you, you fucking psycho. And
I won’t slit your wrists—”
“The hell are you talking about?” Jonah sputters.
“—I’ll shove that thing up your fucking ass and make sure to twist it good.”
Cold shock hits me. He knows. He knows Jonah cut my wrists, not me. Why would he
say that otherwise? Pax flares his nostrils as he stalks forward toward Jonah. “Crazy how
sound travels in places like this. You’d be amazed at what I just fucking heard,” he spits.
“You don’t know shit,” Jonah laughs. “And you can’t prove anything. I just came down
here to make sure Presley was okay. That’s all.” He cackles, and the sound ricochets
around the parking garage.
 “So you weren’t about to rape your own sister?” Pure, unadulterated hatred drips from
Pax’s words. “You weren’t about to force yourself on her and then fucking kill her?”
I thought I’d seen Pax angry before. I haven’t. The veins in his neck, and his arms,
and his hands stand proud as he steps toward Jonah. He is something lethal and deadly,
something to be feared.
Jonah doesn’t see the brutal desire to kill in Pax’s eyes, though. He darts forward,
willing to risk capture to try and skirt around Pax…to get to me. It’s the worst move he
could possibly make.
Pax roars as he slams into Jonah. They’re the same build, the same height, but it
doesn’t matter. Pax is possessed. He hurls Jonah to the ground, and the two of them
tangle into a confusion of arms and legs as they wrestle. Jonah lands a series of blows
that look like they hurt, but Pax doesn’t even flinch. He’s a terrifying sight as he shakes
off each hit and keeps coming for Jonah. Amongst the chaos, I don’t see the knife.
Eventually, I hear it clatter to the ground, and I rush forward, kicking it out of the way so
neither of them can use it.
It would be terrible if Jonah used it on Pax.
It would be just as bad if Pax used it on my brother. Jonah would be dead, but Pax is
no good to me, locked behind bars. I can’t let him kill him. I can’t.
“Pax! God, stop! Let him up! Let the police handle it.”
Pax has no intention of letting Jonah up. He pins my brother beneath him, kneeling on
his chest, while he winds back and brings his fist crashing down onto Jonah’s face.
Again.
Again.
Again.
I hear the crack of bone.
Blood sprays everywhere, spattering all over Pax’s face, his bare arms and the front of
his chest with every blow. The sounds that come out of Jonah aren’t even human. They’re
weak, desperate noises—the kind of keening, feral sounds an animal makes when it’s
stuck in a trap. I have no sympathy for Jonah as Pax destroys his face, but with each
strike, my wild Riot House boy becomes more and more lost. There’ll be no stopping him
soon. He’ll keep on hitting Jonah, raining devastating blows down one after the other,
until there’s nothing left of my half-brother but a bloody smear of bone and pulp on the
concrete.
“Pax!” I move in front of him, crouching down to sit on my heels, covering my mouth
with both hands.
See me.
See me.
 Come on.
Look at me.
But he’s too far gone to answer my silent pleas.
“Pax! STOP!”
Finally, my cry reaches him. He stops his frenzied attack, sniffing as he rocks back. He
falls heavily onto his ass as he looks up, eyes unfocused, to find me. I watch as he comes
back into himself, the violence that claimed him slowly slipping away. “You should have
told me,” he whispers. “I would never have let him near you again. Never.”
I can’t see through my tears.
Pax’s face is a mess; his bottom lip is split open, blood running down his chin, and his
right eye is already swelling shut. A large gash runs from his temple down to the top of
his right ear, but the cut looks shallow. His knuckles are split open on both hands. He’s
covered in so much blood that he looks like an extra in a horror movie.
I want to go to him, to make sure he’s all right, but suddenly the truth hits me. Pax
knows what happened. Pax knows. He forced Jonah to come here. He was going to make
him explain what took place the night I nearly died. He stopped him from hurting me. He
hurt him.
I look to Jonah—a crumpled, bleeding ruin on the floor, barely breathing, his fingers
twitching—and I let out a strangled choking sound. Is this it? Is this the end? Pax heard
what Jonah said. He heard him confess. It won’t be my word against his anymore.
I moan, and the sound is a mournful, pitiable sound, reverberating around the parking
garage. It’s a release, in a way. I’ve been holding onto this pain, this fear, for so long now
that I don’t even know how to process the fact that I might be free of it.
Pax takes me in his arms, picking me up from the ground. “Shhh. Don’t worry. You’re
safe, Firebrand. Don’t worry. I promise. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
I wouldn’t have been able to believe him a week ago. If he’d scooped me up and held
me to him then, I wouldn’t have been able to trust it. But I’ve seen the lengths that he’ll
go to in order to protect me, now. I know that he’ll happily kill to keep his word.
As he carries me up the stairs and out of an emergency exit, into the humid, sticky
night, I bury my face into his blood-splattered t-shirt, and I sob tears of relief.
 45

PAX

She’s brave as fuck when she gives her report to the cops at the hospital. I sit beside her,
twitching in my seat, ready to ruin someone’s day the second they suggest that she might
be making any of this up. But no one does. The female officer who takes her statement is
kind. Gives her sweet, hot tea to help with the remnants of her shock. For the first time in
my entire life, I wind up half-liking a police officer. She’s even friendly with me when she
takes my statement. There’s something in her eyes—some kind of gratitude? I think she’s
glad I kicked the shit out of that fucker. I reckon she would have done it herself if she
could have.
The doctors give Chase the all-clear. They dose her up with a mild sedative, which
helps with the desolate look in her eyes, and then the cops take us down to the station to
wait for Chase’s dad. They tell us that Jonah Witton is in the ICU. His injuries warrant it.
Fucker would be in the morgue if I’d had my way, but I suppose a part of me is glad that
he isn’t. I wouldn’t be able to look after Chase if I’d killed the bastard. I’d definitely have
been arrested for manslaughter. As it is, Rufus, Meredith’s business partner at her law
firm arrives and gets me out on bail. He promises he’ll take care of the assault charge in
less than twenty-four hours, and I believe him. Rufus isn’t a fucking amateur; there’s a
reason why his retainer is two hundred thousand and he bills three thousand dollars an
hour.
I sit with Chase and wait for her father with her. She falls asleep on a hard plastic
chair, which I can’t stomach to see. I gingerly lift her into my lap and hold her as she
sleeps, and my heart strains to keep beating around the pain in my chest.
Her own brother.
Her blood.
 He raped her. More than once. He cut her wrists, and then he fucked with her head so
badly that she was too scared to tell anyone the truth.
I should have fucking stopped him in his car, the night he dumped Chase in front of
the hospital. I should have known something was seriously, seriously wrong. I should
have fucking killed him there and then. I should have known how I was going to feel
about her and done something.
These are all pointless, futile thoughts. I couldn’t have known who was behind the
wheel of that car, and I couldn’t have known to murder his ass. I had no idea how I was
going to wind up feeling about the beautiful redhead curled up into a ball in my arms…
She doesn’t even stir when her father races into the police station wearing basketball
shorts and a rumpled t-shirt that he’d obviously been sleeping in before he got the call
from the cops. He’s unshaven, the stubble peppered with grey around his chin. The
shadows under his eyes are so dark they look like bruises. He ignores me at first, his
focus entirely on his daughter.
“Presley! Oh my god, Presley, what the hell’s going on?”
She wakes, blinking blearily as he drops down onto his knees in front of us, his hands
shaking as she sweeps her hair out of her eyes. Chase flinches when she sees her dad.
She flinches even harder when she realizes that she’s being cradled in my arms. I won’t
let her go, though. Not yet. I fucking can’t.
“Dad,” she whispers.
“They told me what happened. The policewoman on the phone. They—” His brow
creases into a million lines. “They’ve gotten everything mixed up, sweetheart. They told
me Jonah attacked you. I told them there’d been some kind of mistake, but—”
“No mistake,” I grind out. “That fucker’s twisted in the head. He raped her.”
In my arms, Presley whimpers, screwing her eyes shut. She’s shaking so hard, I can
feel her trembling like a leaf. She can’t bear to see the look of horror on her father’s face,
and my heart fucking breaks for her. My firebrand. So strong. So fierce. She shouldn’t
have had to be. She should have been able to tell this man what his evil, sick son had
done to her, and she should have known he’d have her back. I hate him a little bit, but
not as much as I hate myself. She should have been able to tell me what had happened
to her. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with protecting myself, keeping her at arm’s
length, then she might have done just that.
Chase’s father looks at me finally. Recognition flashes across his face—he remembers
me from the restaurant. I’d promised to look after his daughter. I’d sworn I would, and
now here we are, five hours away from Mountain Lakes, and Chase was attacked because
I blackmailed Jonah into staying in the city, all so I could satisfy my own stupid curiosity.
I expect to see recrimination in Robert Witton’s eyes, but all I see is confusion and hurt.
“You’re sure?” he asks quietly. “You’re one hundred percent sure it was him? There wasn’t
a chance—”
“He did it, Dad,” Chase whispers. “He’s been doing it for…a while.”
I’ve never seen a man so desolate and harrowed until now. It’s as if Chase’s father
ages twenty years right before my eyes. He looks like he’s about to throw up. He covers
his mouth with one hand, staring at his daughter.
Chase pulls in a deep breath, ribcage expanding beneath my hands. She looks at her
old man, steeling herself, and then she says, “He cut my wrists. He wanted me to die. He
made me swear I’d lie about it or he’d hurt Mom.”
A smothered cry slips out from between Robert’s fingers. Twin, fat tears streak down
his face as he processes this information. He can’t seem to get his head around it, but he
takes Chase by the hand and squeezes. That’s not enough for him; he takes her from me,
pulling her into his arms and crushing her to him. “God, I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry. I don’t even…I don’t know what to say.”
I can’t blame him for that. Maybe he ought to have seen the signs. I mean, it’s almost
impossible not to notice Jonah’s insanity, but people like his son are master manipulators.
They’re very good at hiding their darkness. And what father expects this kind of evil
behavior from their child?
Chase starts to cry again in her father’s arms. No, she doesn’t just cry. She breaks,
and it’s too much for me to bear. I clear my throat, getting to my feet. “I suppose I’ll
head back,” I say softly. “I think it’s time for me to go.”
It causes me physical pain to turn and walk away from Chase. It feels fucking wrong. I
don’t want to do it, but I have no place here with them right now.
“Pax, wait!”
Chase’s choked voice stops me in my tracks. She stands, walking toward me on
unsteady legs. When she reaches me, she throws her arms around my neck and leans
into me, still shaking, still crying. I hold her to me, closing my eyes, trying to breathe…
“Tomorrow. I’ll come to the house tomorrow. I’ll be there at eight.”
I nod.
I won’t be seeing her tomorrow, though.
I’ll be lucky if her father ever lets her out of his sight again.
 46

PAX

I can’t go back to the hotel. I can’t go back to Mountain Lakes. I’m sick to my stomach,
exhausted and in considerable pain. All I can do is walk.
I have no idea how it happens, but I somehow show up at the warehouse in Soho,
where Callan Cross and Hilary are waiting to commence day two of our shoot. When
Hilary sees me, she blanches, the color draining from her face. “Whaa…?”
I’ve never seen her lost for words before. “Don’t start,” I snap.
“Hammered shit, Pax. That’s what you look like. Hammered. Shit.”
“Why thank you.”
“I wasn’t paying you a complement, you facetious little prick. Have you looked at
yourself in the mirror this morning?”
“I have not.”
“You’re covered in blood!”
Hilary looks like she’s about to have an embolism, which makes sense. She fought
tooth and nail for this gig. I think she might have bartered away the first-born child she’ll
never make time to have. And here I am, showing up for the second day of a shoot,
looking like I got smoked by the A train.
“God, did you even shower? You smell like shit.”
I pour a huge amount of coffee into my mouth and swallow. “No. I came straight from
the cop shop, and they don’t have a med spa on site.”
Hilary gapes at me. “The police?”
“I kicked the shit out of someone.”
“Pax!”
“I’m sure you’ll be able to read all about it in the paper later. But yeah, it’s as bad as
you’re imagining.”
“Just…Christ! What the hell were you thinking?” Hilary asks. So disappointed. Always
so, so disappointed. I am the physical embodiment of Hilary’s living regret. You’d think
she’d be used to this by now. She opens her mouth, ready to launch into another tirade
about how fucked up I am, I’ll bet, but I cut her off before she can start.
“No. Just…no. A girl was about to get pinned to the ground and raped. Was I
supposed to kindly ask the motherfucker if he’d mind not doing it?”
She tries to speak again, but she’s not listening. Doesn’t care. I can see it on her face.
I hold up a hand; my patience isn’t wearing thin. It’s non-existent. “Fuck off, Hilary. I’m
going to finish this coffee, and then I’m gonna pour myself another one. The moment
Cross sees me, he’s gonna send me home. Nothing to be done about it. So let’s just
postpone all of the screeching until a later date, yeah? My head’s pounding.”
“Cross has already seen you,” a voice behind me says. The photographer’s sprawled
out on one of the huge windowsills on the other side of the warehouse with an open
laptop resting on his stomach. He snaps the lid closed and gets up, sauntering over to us.
He laughs when he gets a close up look and sees the state of me.
“Split lip. Beginnings of a black eye. Scraped up knuckles.” He pouts. “What else you
got?”
“What else do you need?”
“Couple of stab wounds and a broken arm would be nice, but I doubt you’d be
standing here, sassing your agent if you were that fucked up.”
“You obviously don’t know him well enough.” Hilary rolls her eyes. “He could be
moments away from death and still find the energy to give me attitude.”
“She’s not wrong,” I confirm. Slipping out of my jacket, I dump the denim over the
back of the velvet chaise longue next to me, and carefully, oh-so-carefully wriggle my
way out of my t-shirt—lifting my arms over my head fucking hurts.
We’re all on a journey of discovery together; I haven’t seen the damage Jonah
inflicted on me before I knocked his ass out, so the black and blue bruises blooming like
death flowers across my ribcage are a treat for us all. Pulitzer prize winning photographer
Callan Cross circles me like I’m the best Christmas gift he’s never received. “Sorry, kid.
You’re not going anywhere,” he says.
“Ralph Lauren is not going to be okay with this!” Hilary looks like her head might
explode. “They have a very clear aesthetic for this campaign, and that does not include
—”
“Fuck Ralph Lauren.”
Even I do a double take at that.
Hilary does this thing when she’s very, incredibly stressed. She gets very quiet.
Extends her pointer finger, ramrod straight, and, as my mother would say, winds her neck
out. This is precisely what she does when she faces Cross and says, “With all due
respect…have you—” She stabs with her taloned pointer, “—lost your fucking mind? ‘Fuck
Ralph Lauren’ is not a sentiment I can endorse. Ralph Lauren is one of our biggest clients.
Do you have any idea how many dicks most agents have to suck to land a sweet deal
campaign like this? There is no way in hell that—” This is right where she hits boiling
point, “—Fuck Ralph Lauren should ever be spoken out loud in my presence—”
Hilary’s caught some steam now. Left unchecked, she could rant for a solid thirty
minutes, but Cross nips that in the bud.
Turning to me, he says, “What are they paying you?”
“I beg your pardon?” Hilary cries.
“Thirty-five grand,” I tell him.
Cross laughs. “Fuck. Okay. That’s a lot of money. I’ll give you forty if you do a private
shoot with me. Today. Right now.”
“This is absurd,” Hilary says. “He’s not gonna do that. He’s contractually bound to this
campaign. To us. The Van Kaiser Agency owns him.”
Two seconds is not enough time to process what’s going on. My mind’s working way
slower than usual given all of the ridiculous shit that’s happened in the past twelve hours.
But this is the one thing Hilary should not have said. Through the miasma of exhaustion
clouding my head and the dull, persistent thrum of pain from…everywhere…those words
cut through everything and hit me fucking hard.
Van Kaiser doesn’t own me. Hilary sure as shit doesn’t own me; I’ll be damned all the
way to fucking hell and back if I let that shit slide. I narrow my eyes at Cross. “I’m gonna
need more than the money.”
“Areyounotlisteningtothewordsthatarecomingoutofmymouth?” Hilary runs all of the
words together, saying them quickly but enunciating very clearly at the same time—the
way you might talk to an irritating child who just won’t do as they’re told. “Van Kaiser will
fire you if we don’t get this shoot down and have some preliminary shots to send off to
the rep by the end of the day. If you pick up a private shoot, halfway through one you’re
being paid an awful lot of money to model on, then they will fire your ass so quick your
head’ll still be spinning a week from Friday. No one will hire you again, Pax. We’ll still
have exclusivity over your images and likeness until the end of the legally binding
contract you signed with us. That means you can kiss goodbye to modelling for anyone
else for the next two years. Two years , Pax. You really want to throw away the best
years of your career for—for one day shoot with a photographer whose work, I personally
think, is grossly overrated?”
Neither me nor Cross look at Hilary. Hilary, who’s always gone straight for the jugular
when feeling threatened instead of trying to be fucking reasonable. Cross curves an
eyebrow again. “What else do you want?”
“I’m done with this shit,” I tell him. “I don’t want my face plastered across a billboard
every time I’m in an airport. I’m a photographer. I’m decent, but I don’t wanna be decent.
I wanna be fucking great.”
“Oh, please. Everyone and their dog is a photographer these days,” Hilary seethes.
“Scroll through your Insta feed. How many people—”
Cross smirks. “You wanna be my PA, then?”
“Fuck no. I’m no one’s assistant. I want you as my mentor. My teacher.”
He shakes his head. “You want that, you start out as a PA first. And I don’t do
distance learning. You wanna learn something from me, you’ll have to move to Virginia
and live out in the sticks, halfway up a mountain. You think you can handle that?”
Hah! He really has no idea who he’s talking to. “I already live in the sticks, halfway up
a mountain. You’re not gonna dissuade me. But the PA thing—”
“Is non-negotiable.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, glaring at him. His eyes are piercing. Unblinking.
Evidently, he’s not the type of guy to back down. “Fine. I’ll be your PA. And when you see
what I can do, you’ll let me shoot with you instead and find yourself another lacky.”
“Maybe.” He seems amused by this negotiation we’re engaged in. I’m deadly serious,
though. He won’t be so amused when he sees my work and understands what I’m
capable of.
Hilary throws her hands in the air. “What, am I invisible now? Jesus fucking Christ,
working with the guys was supposed to be easier than the girls. Can someone please
regain an ounce of sense so we can get back on track here? Callan, we can cover most of
the damage to his face in make-up. The split lip can be taken care of in post. The light’s
great right now. If one of the guys can get—”
Callan composes himself and faces my agent. “That’s a wrap for today, Miss Weston.
Pax and I have a busy day ahead of us, and I’m sure you want to get back to your
agency. You’re gonna be fielding some urgent calls by the sounds of things.”
Man, if only I could collect this moment up and bottle it, I’d be sipping on Hilary’s
devastation for years to come; the look on her face is fucking priceless. This is one of
those situations where any normal person with a functioning conscience would feel sorry
for someone. This could end Hilary’s career. Me being me, I can’t seem to bring myself to
care, though. All I can think about is Chase, falling apart in her father’s arms, and I let my
cruelty take me.
Hilary swings her attention from Cross to me, her whole attitude shifting right before
my eyes. “Pax. Be reasonable. I know you’re not this reckless. This…this
irresponsible. When your mother finds out about—”
I level her with a cool, distant detachment. “This has nothing to do with Meredith.”
Hilary has more to say. More wheedling and manipulations to try. Our eyes meet and I
watch the realization finally hitting her: there’s nothing she can say to change what’s
happening and she knows it now. As she snatches up her purse and storms out of the
warehouse, I can’t help but crack a villain’s smile.
Callan sees it and laughs. “I wouldn’t look so smug if I were you. Working for me is
not gonna be a walk in the park.”
 47

PAX

GRADUATION

Flushed pink cheeks.

Bright, clear blue eyes.
Standing up ramrod straight, hair falling in loose curls that rest on top of her
shoulders, Meredith looks better than she has done in years. The shadow of death that
loomed over her last time I saw her in the hospital is gone. “Why are you looking at me
like that?” she asks, as she reaches into her Birkin and takes out a pack of Winchesters.
She slides a cigarette out of the carton and lights it, offering me the packet.
“You go into remission and immediately start cooking up some lung cancer?” I grouse.
“Real nice, mother.”
“Oh, please don’t call me that, darling. You know it makes me feel old.”
“You are old.” I light the smoke I have gripped between my teeth. “Old and stupid.
You shouldn’t have come here. It’s a five-hour drive from New York to New Hampshire. A
simple phone call would have sufficed.”
“Today’s your graduation ceremony, Pax. You think I’d miss this?”
“Yes. Absolutely, yes.”
She pulls a face as she fiddles with the ridiculous black gown I’m wearing. She asked
me to don the graduation cap for a photo earlier, but I snapped at her so viciously that
she immediately gave up and hasn’t asked again since.
Flicking her cigarette, she blows smoke down her nose. “Oh, right, yes. Because I am
the worst mother in the world, aren’t I?”
I say nothing. She’s waiting for me to fawn over her, to tell her no, of course she’s not
the worst mother in the world, why on earth would I think that? But I’m not one of her
paid lackeys. I don’t have to tell her what she wants to hear. I’m under no obligation to
make this woman feel better after what she’s done to me over the years.
She seems to silently accept this as she looks off into the distance. After a while, she
says, “You’re still covered in bruises.”
She tries to touch her fingers to the unsightly green shadow underneath my right eye,
but I swat her hand away. “I’m fine.”
“I know.” She smokes some more. “You’ve always been strong. Stronger than you
needed to be. I want you to know that…”
I wait, and then wait some more. I laugh under my breath, allowing the quiet space
between us where Meredith’s apology remains unspoken to stretch out. She’ll never be
able to say it. I will never hear my mother say that she’s sorry. I don’t need to hear her
say it. A part of me knows she wouldn’t mean it anyway. She’s too broken to ever admit
that she did anything wrong by me.
“The assault charges have been dropped. And that terrible boy is going to prison for a
very long time, by the sounds of things,” she says.
I pull very hard on my cigarette, killing it. I flick the butt into the rose bushes. “I know.
Rufus told me.” He said Jonah was looking at twenty-five years for what he did to Chase.
Twenty-five years doesn’t seem like enough. But I have a long memory. I won’t forget. I’ll
be waiting outside the prison gates for Jonah Witton the day his sentence comes to an
end.
Meredith looks out over the sweeping swathe of lawn that stretches down to the
academy’s lake. She ponders for a moment, and then says, “They should really put some
Cypress trees along the road down there. The one leading up to the main entrance. I’ve
always thought Cypress trees look terribly romantic. I’m not sure that they’d thrive in this
kind of climate, though. I’ve heard it rains an awful lot around here.”
No word of a lie, this is Meredith’s second time in New Hampshire. She bundled me off
to Wolf Hall on the strength of a brochure that her girlfriend from Connecticut sent her in
the mail one time, because her friend thought Wolf Hall looked like the kind of place that
would ‘kick a boy like me into touch.’
“I don’t give a shit about Cypress trees. Look, if you leave now, you should be able to
make it back to the city before nightfall.”
She gestures into the distance with her free hand, standing a little straighter, as if
something’s just occurred to her. “They could always do a white picket fence instead.
Something to draw the eye toward those mountains over there. It just feels like the
view’s missing something. Don’t you think?”
I mean, she’s right. With a photographer’s eye, I can look at the vista before us and
see that, if I were to take a picture of the gently sloping lawn, and the lake, the stand of
trees beyond it and the range of mountains in the far distance, there is definitely
something missing, visually in the far-left hand side of the image. But I am not getting
into the rule of fucking thirds with my mother right now. Sighing, I watch a flock of birds
scatter from a tree down by the water, attempting to summon up some patience.
“Meredith—”
“When was the last time you went to church?”
My frustration levels spike. “I don’t know how many times I have to say this to you,
but I do not believe in God.”
She scoffs. “Well, that’s not really got anything to do with anything.”
“Mother—”
“I’m proud of you, y’know?” She turns her head to face me, the sun catching at her
hair and making it glow like spun gold. I used to love her hair when I was little. Loved
stroking my hands over the thickness of it, wrapping her curls around my fingers. I
thought she was so beautiful, like a fairy. I was sure she was made of magic when I was
five. People’s flaws are much easier to overlook when you’re that age, though. It’s easy to
look at someone and only see magic. It wasn’t until I was older that I started to realize
that my mother wasn’t like the other kids’ moms. She wasn’t affectionate like they were.
She was as cold and as distant as a glittering wall of ice, and no matter how hard I
pushed forward and strived for her attention, I would never reach her. I would never melt
her heart.
So this…this thing she’s just said to me? Wholly out of character. “Why? Because I
hospitalized a guy who did something vile?”
“No. Well, I suppose so, yes. I’m very glad that you protected your friend, Pax. But I’m
proud because…” I watch her brow crease and realize that communicating like this with
me isn’t easy for her in the slightest. “You’re letting that girl in,” she says eventually.
“You’re very much like me, darling, and that isn’t something I wanted for you. I’ve done
the best I can. I’ve protected myself more than I’ve ever protected anyone else, and
selfishly it’s been easy for me to pretend that I’ve always done the right thing by you. But
all I’ve really ever done is shown you how to shut yourself off from the world. How…how
to be alone.” Her hands shake as she lifts the smoke to her lips and takes a drag. “Being
alone isn’t fun, darling. Not in the long run. Life loses its color. All you’re left with is a
manageable, controllable, dull, grey perspective on the world. It’s good that you’re letting
this girl in. I’m glad you’re not going to end up like me.”
Meredith’s said what she needed to say. She leaves before the actual ceremony.
On the other side of the academy, on the green that stretches between the old
English block and the beginning of the forest, hundreds of chairs have been set out for
Wolf Hall’s students and their families in front of a huge stage. A sea of familiar and
unfamiliar faces stare back at me from the foot of the stairs that lead up to that stage.
Unsurprisingly, Chase didn’t come back to the academy for the last week of school.
I’ve given her space and I haven’t messaged. She probably hates me for bribing Jonah to
come and meet me in New York. If I hadn’t, she would never have found herself
unconscious in that parking garage. It’s a miracle I even found her when I did. I’ve barely
slept at night, considering all of the terrible things that could have happened if I hadn’t. I
did, though. If Chase never speaks to me again, I can rest easy in the knowledge that
Jonah won’t be able to hurt her ever again. I find some solace in that.
“Are you ready?”
Next to me, Wren and Dash stand in their gowns, fidgeting like little boys in church.
Neither of them is happy about the stupid outfits we have to wear, but at least all three
of us are making them look good. I fiddle with the cap I refused to wear for my mother,
considering putting it on, but Dash snatches it out of my hand and slaps my ballcap on
my heads instead. Backwards. I didn’t even see him carrying it in his hands.
“That’s better.” He laughs when I pull a face at him. “No point in conforming at the
very last second,” he says, shrugging. “Go on, killer. Knock ‘em dead.”
“Fuck you,” I snap.
“Fuck you right back.”
My heart’s in my throat as I climb the steps. I am not valedictorian. Gareth Foster of
the chess club claimed that honor, surprise surprise, but when Jarvis Reid asked me to do
a reading for our graduation ceremony, I was weirdly compelled to agree. Now, I’m not
so sure it was a good idea.
I wait to one side of the stage as Principal Harcourt finishes her speech. She talks of
community pride, and how far we’ve all come in the four short years we’ve been students
at Wolf Hall. Ever the politician attempting to maintain a good impression, she doesn’t
say a single word about the news crews that the police have had to cordon off at the
bottom of the road that leads up the mountain. She doesn’t breathe a fucking word about
the fact that our old English professor, who murdered one of our classmates, was
sentenced to death in the state of Texas this morning, for murdering three other girls at
separate schools there.
This whole ceremony is a farce. But it does mark an end to a journey that none of us
will forget, and for that I am wholly grateful.
After ten mind-numbing minutes, Harcourt finally relinquishes her spot at the podium
and hands it over to little old me. The look on the sour bitch’s face as she passes me is
classic: ‘Do not fuck this up, Davis. Do not make a scene.’
It’s like she knows me or something.
I haven’t memorized the speech I’ve prepared, so I read it directly off the crumpled
sheet of paper in front of me. I’m not shy in front of large crowds of people. I’ve walked
runways all over the world. I’m used to people staring at me. I’m not accustomed to
speaking, though, and I’ll admit to being nervous.
The microphone buzzes, blasting feedback out of the PA speakers mounted on either
side of the stage when I clear my throat.
Great.
I clear it again, a little further from the mic this time. And then I begin. “Today marks
the end of a nightmare that felt like it would never fucking end.”
“PAX!” Harcourt looks like she’s about to die right where she stands. Amongst the
gathered crowd, I hear surprised, sharp inhalations mixed with barely suppressed
laughter.
I ignore Principal Harcourt’s frantic flapping and plough on. “Our parents dumped us at
the top of this mountain and expected us to thrive. Most of us have. We’ve completed the
tasks that were required of us while we were here.” I look up for this next part, searching
out the older faces in the crowd—the people dressed in full military regalia and stiff suits,
all sitting ramrod straight like they fucking own the place. “I want you to know that we
also did a metric ton of drugs and fucked our brains out while we were at it. We found a
million ways to break the law and not get caught for it. And one of us also got murdered.
Yeah, I’m sure we’ve all heard about the death sentence that was passed this morning in
Texas. I think I can speak for my entire graduating class when I say that none of us will
be sad to leave Wolf Hall in our rear-view mirrors.” I pause, plastering a smile across my
face that can’t look sincere in any way, shape or form. “I hated pretty much every class
here, and I couldn’t wait for the end of each day so I could get the hell out of here. I
count myself lucky that I didn’t have to actually board here, or I probably would have set
the place on fire.”
Principal Harcourt cups her hand around her mouth and calls out, “He’s joking! Haha,
of course he’s joking!”
Which I quickly follow up with, “I’m totally not joking. Dumping your children in a
boarding school in the middle of nowhere, at the top of a mountain, might seem like a
great idea when you can’t be fucked to raise them, but it’s a sure-fire way of winding up
with a bunch of sociopaths on your hands. So.” I shrug. “Bad fucking form, you guys. Do
better.”
Jarvis is the one who asked me to give this speech. When I see her sitting amongst
the faculty, off to the right, I expect a look of horror on her face. At least a little
professional shame. She’s openly laughing, though. Fucking laughing.
“I was supposed to find something motivational and inspiring to read to you guys this
morning, but honestly I couldn’t be bothered. I know how boring all this is to my friends
as well, so I figured I’d keep it short and sweet. As of today, we’re free. We stand on the
precipice of our future, waiting for our lives to begin, ready to face the challenges that
await us. We are told by parents who don’t even know us and professors who don’t give a
shit about us to strive for greatness. To push and push for betterment. To kill ourselves,
and make sacrifices to accomplish lofty goals to make you fuckers proud. We’re told that
the path of least resistance is the way of the weak, and we should do anything and
everything in our power to avoid it at all costs. And I’m standing here today to say fuck all
of that, guys. You’re free now. Do whatever makes your soul sing. Oh, and by the way…”
I shove my ‘speech’ into my pocket, rubbing at the back of my neck. “The path of least
resistance doesn’t always mean taking the easiest option. Sometimes…it means that your
soul finds its way home, toward something it loves, after you’ve held it back for too
fucking long. So…do with that what you will, I guess.”
No one claps.
No one utters a word.
That’s okay. I wasn’t expecting a standing ovation.
But the students of Wolf Hall smirk into the sleeves of their gowns, and I can see
Wren and Dash busting their asses, passing a joint between each other off to the side of
the stage, and that’s all that fucking matters.
It’s all that matters…until I catch the flash of red hair glinting in the sun at the back of
the crowd, and I realize that she’s here. I see Presley Maria Witton Chase sitting in her
graduation gown, next to her stunned-looking father, and everything is fucking perfect,
because I know that she heard what I just said.
 48

PRES

“The path of least resistance doesn’t always mean taking the easiest option. Sometimes
it means your soul finding its way home, toward something it loves, after you’ve held it
back for too fucking long.”
The words ring in my ears as we head down the mountain. Dad remains resolutely
silent in the driver’s seat next to me. It’s not ideal that he caught Pax’s little fuck you to
the academy faculty and our classmates’ parents, but…honestly, I’m too tired to care
what Dad thinks of Pax. The past week has been horrible. Police report after police
report. Endless questions from so many different sides. Mom, sobbing on the phone,
riddled with guilt that she had no idea what I’d been going through. The silence in
between all of that has needled at my ear drums, too loud, too obvious, making me want
to scream. Dad’s been stumbling through life like a zombie, not saying anything, too
shocked to react to the news that his son has been sexually assaulting his daughter for
years. I was amazed this morning, when he announced that I had to get ready and
attend graduation. He said it was a rite of passage I’d regret missing out on down the
line, and it was about time we tried to get back on track.
It’s going to take Dad a long time to ‘get back on track’ after this. A lot longer than it’s
taken me. I’ve been dealing with this madness for years, though. This is an open wound
for him that won’t just close overnight. He thinks I can’t hear him rushing to the bathroom
to throw up three or four times a day. But I can.
“The path of least resistance doesn’t always mean taking the easiest option.
Sometimes it means your soul finding its way home, toward something it loves, after
you’ve held it back for too fucking long.”
Pax didn’t use that phrase by accident. I know he didn’t. What he said into that
microphone right before he stormed off the stage made the hairs on the back of my neck
stand on end. They were meant for me.
“Are you in love with that mouthy reprobate, then?” Dad mutters, as he steers the car
down the road.
I nearly jump out of my skin. I’ve been so lost in my own thoughts, and Dad’s been so
quiet in general of late, that hearing him speak surprises the shit out of me. “What?”
“Pax.” He says his name warily. We haven’t really spoken about him much, but Dad
knows there’s something between us now. Pax was with me at the police station in New
York. Dad knows from the multitude of statements I’ve had to give that Pax saved me,
too. Not just in New York, but that night outside the hospital as well. No one thought to
mention to my father that I was dumped from a moving vehicle, or that I’d been so close
to death, my blood pouring out of me, when a boy smoking a cigarette came to my
rescue and saved me from dying.
Dad diligently stares straight ahead, out of the windshield, but he repeats his question
for a second time. “Are you in love with him?”
This not a question I ever foresaw my father asking me. To my surprise, I’m not
uncomfortable answering him, though. “Yeah. I have been for a while now.”
He nods. After a second, he says, “All right, then.”
Before I get a chance to ask him what that means, he slams on the brakes, slowing
down, and then begins to perform a tight U-turn on the hairpin road. “Whoa! Dad! What
the hell are you doing?”
“I did my research. I know where he and those friends of his live. All three of them are
trouble, but…if you love him…”
He barely has enough room to turn the car; the guardrail is frighteningly close. “Dad!”
“Please, sweetheart.” He rolls his eyes. “I was in the military for a long time. I know
how to drive a car through a tight turn.”
Barely thirty seconds later, he’s taking the turn off that leads to Riot House.
I have no idea what’s going on. I’m too stunned to comprehend what he’s doing. I’m
still trying to figure it out when he pulls up in front of the house made of glass,
surrounded by trees, and nods towards the building. “Go on. Go. I know you want to see
him. Just be home by midnight. And tell him he’s to come to the house tomorrow. I want
to meet him. Officially.”
Is he being serious? The look on his face says that he is, but surely he’s joking.
“Go on, Presley Maria. Before I change my mind. He’s rough around the edges, but I
know he’s gonna look after you, at least.”
I grin for the first time in a week. Quickly, I plant a kiss on his cheek, then squeeze
him tight. I know how hard this is for him; he’d rather swaddle me up in cotton wool than
let me go hang out with a boy at this precise moment, but I think he knows this is what I
need to keep my soul alive.
“Thanks, Dad. I love you.”

No one’s home.
Luckily, the front door isn’t locked. The boys must have forgotten to secure the house
on their way to graduation this morning. I let myself in, kind of creeped out by how silent
the place is, and I head straight upstairs to Pax’s room. Unlike the other times I’ve been
here, it’s as neat as a pin in his bedroom. There are no clothes on the floor. His bed is
made. The surfaces are spotless. Everything is neat and tidy.
I should text him and find out where he is—he could have gone out with Dash and
Wren to celebrate graduation—but I wouldn’t even know what to say to him in a text
message. I’d rather wait and speak to him face-to-face. So that’s what I do. I lie down on
his bed, and I wait.
An hour passes, by which point I’m fighting to stay awake. The weird, low hum of the
air filtration system was strange at first, but soon I find it’s soothing me to sleep. When I
wake later, it’s dusk, and a soft, bruised purple light is washing shadows up the walls.
Pax sits in the leather chair by the window, six feet from the bed, watching me. His
face is still a little bruised from his run-in with Jonah. He’s wearing a black button-down
shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His jeans are black, as always. His feet are
bare. Dressed in shadows, his head resting on the back of the chair, his expression so
very serious, he looks like…he looks perfectly like himself.
He doesn’t say anything, though I am very obviously awake now. He traces a circle on
the arm of the leather chair with his fingertips as he watches me watching him.
“Sorry. I was supposed to be awake and alert when you got back. I just…”
“I don’t mind,” he says quietly. The tiniest of smiles plays at the corner of his mouth.
“I thought I’d walked into some Brother’s Grimm Fairytale when I came through that
door. There was a beautiful, fiery-haired angel sleeping peacefully in my bed.”
My cheeks burn. I’m suddenly very shy.
“You want anything?” Pax whispers. “Water, or…?”
I shake my head. “I’m okay. Unless you happen to have a random chocolate
milkshake in your fridge downstairs.”
He laughs very gently down his nose, taking his phone out of his pocket. The screen
lights up as he taps on it briefly, then puts it back in his pocket. “One chocolate
milkshake. Coming right up.” There’s no death metal blazing from the speaker system. No
violent video game raging on the TV. His room is silent as he continues to just…look at
me.
“You nearly gave Harcourt an aneurysm today,” I say.
Inhaling, he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I don’t wanna talk about
that.”
“What do you want to talk about, then?”
“I’m sorry for going behind your back. I shouldn’t have interfered in your shit with
Jonah.”
“Ahh. Well.” I give him a sad smile, looking down at my hands. “You’re gonna have to
give me a minute. I’m having trouble processing the fact that the great Pax Davis is
apologizing for something.”
I figured he’d appreciate me making light of the situation, easing some of the tension
that just flooded the room, but he doesn’t smile. “I mean it,” he says. “I’m so fucking
sorry. If I hadn’t stuck my nose in, he would never have even been in New York.”
Slowly, I shake my head. “It’s okay—”
“But I’m also mad as fuck at you, Chase.”
There we go. That’s more like it. I sigh, knowing what’s coming.
“You should have told me what the psycho did. You should have told someone—”
“I know. What with my dad, and Elodie and Carrie, and three different therapists, and
the cops all saying this to me, believe me, I know. I can’t begin to explain how badly he
got under my skin, though. He always could. And I knew how unstable he was. He would
have killed me.”
“If you’d have told me—”
“Why would I have done that, Pax? You weren’t my boyfriend. You were just a guy I
was sleeping with. A very angry, aggressive guy I was sleeping with, I might add. I had
no reason to say anythi—”
“Look at me,” he whispers. “I’ve handled this entire thing really fucking badly. I have.
From the very beginning. I don’t—” He huffs, frustrated. “I don’t have any experience with
this shit. I’ve never been nice to a girl a day in my life. I don’t know how to do any of this.
But I fucking hate myself for not making it painfully fucking clear to you in your bedroom
that day that I wanted you. Not to fuck you. Not to carry on with some stupid, pointless
arrangement that made no sense. I should have told you that I wanted you. If I had, you
probably would have told me everything.”
“I wouldn’t,” I say. “Even if you’d said all that to me, I still would have been too
ashamed.”
“Ashamed?”
I duck my head, hiding from the look of shock on his face. “I felt…I feel dirty, Pax.
What he did to me…”
“Wasn’t your fault!”
“I know. I know. But that doesn’t stop this disgusting feeling, crawling under my skin.
I can’t just erase it now that he’s behind bars.”
I can feel Pax stewing on this, his anger rising and rising. “I’m so fucking sorry,
Chase.”
“Stop. Don’t apologize anymore. None of this was your doing. What are we going to
accomplish, trying to wrestle blame from each other? Neither of us are at fault. Let’s both
just…” I sigh, shaking my head.
“Forget about it?” Pax’s eyes shine brightly. “Move on? Go back to hating each other?
Fucking each other? Fighting, and clawing, and tearing each other down?”
A solid lump forms in my throat. “Is that what you want?”
He studies his hands, flexing and then curling his fingers, open, closed, open, closed.
He blinks, and I can see every fine detail of his eyelashes captured in silhouette against
the light flowing in from the window behind him. Silently, he gets to his feet and crosses
the room, coming to sit on the edge of the bed next to me. God, the very nearness of him
makes my heart hammer.
“No,” he says. “That’s not what I want.”
He is adamant. His voice doesn’t falter. My heart plummets in my chest, considering
the resolution in his tone. He doesn’t want to continue our contentious, aggressive non-
relationship. It makes sense, now that graduation’s out of the way. He’s sick and tired of
all of this, and I can’t say that I blame him. In his shoes, I’d probably make the same
decision. Who needs this kind of chaos disrupting their lives on a daily basis? Only a
lunatic would choose to continue down this path. But it hurts—the knowledge that this
brief, bizarre thing between us can’t continue.
Pax bows his head, and I can’t help myself: I reach up and gently trail my fingers over
the freshly buzzed, prickly hair at the nape of his neck, relishing the feel of it one last
time. Pax’s eyelids flutter closed. “I want…” he says, startling me. “I want…things to be
easier. Less confusing. I want… more. I just…” A muscle in his jaw feathers, marking his
discomfort. Pulling in a breath, he twists to look at me, moving quickly, as if he’s ripping
off some sort of Band-Aid. “Like I said. I just don’t know how to do it.”
The words coming out of Pax’s mouth aren’t words I ever thought I’d hear him utter.
What is he even admitting here? I shake my head, cutting off the litany of questions.
“Wait. Are you saying that you want more…from me? With me?”
During all of the times we’ve kissed, and fucked, and fought like cat and dog, he’s
never held my gaze the way he holds it now. It’s as if he’s letting me see him for the first
time. Showing himself to me. Opening up a crack in an impenetrable wall—just enough
for me to peer beyond at the man on the other side.
“Yes,” he says. “Both. I want to fight with you and get mad at you. I want to finish our
fucking book together, and I want to fall out with you over it. And then I want to make up
afterwards. I want to hold you. I want to protect you. I want to feel your head on my
chest every night when we fall asleep. And I’m cut up on the inside because of that. I’m
not supposed to want any of that. I don’t know how to fucking deal with wanting that.
But…is any of that what you want? If I put down my weapons here, do you think you can
put down yours?” He throws his hands up in the air. “Fuck, Chase. I have no fucking idea
what I’m saying. Am I supposed to go down on one knee or something? Write a formal
letter of invitation? Some kind of document with a tear-off section at the bottom—” He
rockets to his feet. “This is stressful. Why the hell is everyone always so keen to do this
shit? It’s a goddamn nightmare.”
Interlacing his hands behind his head, he cradles the back of his skull and sets to
pacing up and down at the foot of the bed. The poor bastard looks like he’s about to have
a nervous breakdown. “Well? Aren’t you gonna say anything?” He glances at me quickly
out of the corner of his eye, then quickly looks away again, as if maintaining eye contact
is too much.
The wall’s back up; Lord only knows when he’ll crack it open for me again. I’ll probably
need a grappling hook to scale the damn thing if I don’t claim this opportunity and fast. I
reach for him, catching hold of his wrist the next time he stalks past me. He stops, jaw
working, eyes blazing, chest rising and falling. “I do want all of that. And I only armed
myself in the first place because you’re so fucking…you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I huff out a breathless laugh. “Angry. Terrifying. Unapproachable. Volatile. Aggressive.
Sarcast—”
He grimaces. “All right. All right. That was a stupid question.”
“I can and I will stop fighting you. But it’s no good me just surrendering to you. You
need to stop fighting for control all the time.”
“I don’t need to control anything.”
“Pax, you need to control everything. Your entire experience at Wolf Hall. The
teachers. The administrative staff. Your friends. Me. You’d control when the sun rises and
sets if you could.”
He says nothing. Just stands there, waging some internal battle that I can see is
causing him a great deal of discomfort. At long last, he rubs a hand across his jaw,
nodding. “Fair enough. I’ll stop.”
Just like that. He says it so easily, like it’s going to be as simple as throwing a switch
and becoming a fundamentally different person in the blink of an eye. He has no idea
how hard it is to alter the base compulsions that define us as people. A transformation
like that is the work of a lifetime—there’ll be no end to it. And he just shrugged and
accepted the task, as if it was some small undertaking that wasn’t going to plague him
forever.
“You’re hardheaded and stubborn,” he says. “You make me question my sanity so
frequently that I’ve resigned myself to the fact that you will drive me out of my mind. And
you know what?” He moves smoothly, leonine, climbing up onto the bed so that he’s
kneeling in front of me.
My breath catches in my throat. “What?”
He falls forward, muscles in his arms flexing as he braces himself over me, one hand
planted amongst the rumpled sheets on either side of my legs. Beautiful. He’s so
goddamn beautiful, I can’t bear it. His pale, pale eyes shine as he looks up at me from
under banked, dark brows. “I welcome the day I lose my mind, Chase. At least then,
when I’ve truly lost it, I’ll be oblivious to the fact. I’ll just be crazy. Nothing in the world
will matter anymore. I want you to be mine. I—I’m fucking in love with you, Chase. I
want to learn how to show you that. I want to make you fucking believe it. ”
I’m fucking in love with you.
Did I really just hear him say that, or have I reverted back to fantasizing about this
man?
I’m fucking in love with you.
Suddenly, I’m blinking back tears.
He can’t have said it.
I’m fucking dreaming.
Pax cups my cheek, blowing out a shaky breath. “Can you deal with that, Chase? Do
you think you can handle being loved by me? ’Cause I don’t think I can handle being
without you anymore.”
“Yes! Yes, oh my god, yes!”
He looks so beautifully relieved as he closes his eyes, silently nodding to himself. He
holds himself over me, waiting patiently. There are no points of contact between our
bodies at all. And I want contact. Not just at hips, and hands, and mouth. I want to feel
the full weight of him pressing down on me. I want our legs tangled together and his
hipbones jutting into the insides of my thighs, and the hollow of his belly filling and
emptying against mine when his breath quickens. I want the hardness of him pressing
against my entrance, the tip of his cock slick with pre-cum, pushing into me, millimeter by
millimeter, the rising wash of pleasure robbing me of all thought. I want his teeth on my
skin, and his fingers in my hair, and his tongue at the shallow dip of my throat.
I yield to him, utterly unafraid, because the words he just said to me took courage.
I’ve always known that his explosive outbursts and his hard words were a coping
mechanism. He was protecting himself. The best form of defense for Pax has always been
attack. Which is why him being this way with me now, tender and careful, honest and
open…fuck, it means something. It means everything.
He's trusting me.
And, for better or for worse, I trust him.
“I love you, too. I am yours,” I whisper. “I have been since the second I woke up on
that sidewalk outside the hospital and I saw you looking down at me. From that moment
on, you’ve held my entire existence in the palm of your hand.”
He rumbles, possessive, like a savage dog, his lips parting so that his teeth are
exposed. When he kisses me, it’s like being touched by the sun. His lips, full and
generous, brush lightly over mine at first, and a white-hot kernel of heat kindles in my
chest. It grows as the kiss deepens, the heat spreading, wrapping itself around the bones
of my rib cage, liquid light licking at my insides as he coaxes my mouth open and slips his
tongue past my teeth.
Our other kisses have always been a confrontation. A dare. A challenge. A taunt. This
kiss is like nothing we’ve ever shared before. There’s no anger, this time. He’s far from
gentle—he catches my lower lip between his front teeth, tugging on it, the way he has in
the past, but there’s no power struggle. The cold, hard flash in his eyes? The defiant,
silent mockery, where he waits for me to tap out and back down because the pain is too
great? All of that is absent.
The scrape of his teeth eases before it turns to real pain, and he sucks on my swollen
lip instead. Lowering himself to his elbows, he cups my jaw in his palms and cradles my
face, firm and gentle at the same time, as he intensifies the kiss. His tongue probes and
explores my mouth, tangling with my own, until we’re both panting, sharing breath, our
movements becoming desperate.
I can’t take the need building up inside of me. I need more contact. I need him.
Arching my back, I curve my spine up, away from the bed, my chest meeting Pax’s, our
stomachs and hips suddenly in alignment, and he freezes, sucking in a ragged inhalation
when the hardest parts of him meet the softest, wettest parts of me. We’re still fully
dressed, which will hide just how turned on I am for the time being, but there’s no
concealing Pax’s arousal. His erection is massive, straining at the front of his jeans. When
his cock, rigid like galvanized steel, presses up against my clit, my body reacts wildly,
lightning erupting through my veins. I gasp, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, my
legs around his waist, clinging to him, pulling him down to me, trying to get closer any
way that I can.
“Fuck, Chase.” Pax goes stiff as a board. I think he’s trying to resist the urge to melt
into me, maybe to pace what’s about to go down between us out a little, but I’m in no
mood to wait. Locking my ankles behind his back, I squeeze, giving him no choice but to
rest his weight between my legs, and for one sweet, heavenly moment, I am pure light.
Pure pleasure. The dizzying sensation that ignites between my legs is instant and
paralyzing.
“Holy…shit,” I rasp out. “That…oh my god, that feels so good.”
On top of me, still fighting valiantly to keep his upper body weight off me, Pax lets out
a snarl. “Unless you’re intending on making me come in my pants, do not fucking move.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, whimpering. He is always firmly in control at school and
with his friends. He’s always been in control in the bedroom, too. To hear how affected
he is by this, to feel exactly how turned on he is and to know that the smallest, slightest
movement from me could send him hurtling over the edge and spilling all over himself in
his underwear…lord have mercy, but that is fucking hot. I don’t want this to end just yet,
though, so I obey his growled command and go perfectly still.
Pax frowns, his brow furrowing in concentration. Two deep breaths. Three. Four. Five.
He’s on his tenth very deep breath when the tension in his arms, legs and across his back
sloughs away. Sighing heavily down his nose, he opens his eyes, and that penetrating,
sharp gaze of his cuts right through me, down to the core. “I want your come all over my
tongue before you pull that shit again,” he says. “I want that sweet pussy all over my
fucking face.”
My blood rushes to my cheeks at such a bold, sexual statement. I would once have
assumed that surge of heat and color was caused by shame, but I know better now. It
was caused by desperation. I would never have been able to give him what he just asked
for three months ago. I would have been too mortified by the words he’d used, too
horrified by the vulnerability they would demand. The time we’ve spent licking, and
sucking, and fucking each other recently have stripped away any sense of
embarrassment, though. The guy’s had his tongue in my asshole, for fuck’s sake. There’s
nothing left to be embarrassed about.
“Off,” I pant. “Take it off.” I fist the bottom of his shirt, urging him to start there, but I
mean all of it. Pants. Boxers. The works. I want him naked and inside of me right fucking
now. If I have to wait another second, I’m going to lose my mind.
Pax laughs, his hands resting over mine as he stills my frantic tugging. “Steady. I like
this shirt. You’re about to rip the buttons off.”
“Too many words. Not enough stripping.”
Pax laughs again, the amused, wonderful sound lighting me up like signal flare, while
working quickly to unfasten his precious buttons.
“Fuck,” I whisper. My head spins at the sight of him—packed slabs of muscle, marked
with swirling, intricate swathes of ink. The elaborate designs covering his pecs and his
abs flow like a beautiful river down, down, down further still, curling over his hip bones,
leading right down to the cut vee that dips below the waistband of his jeans.
Holy mother of Mary.
A low, animal rumble works its way up Pax’s throat; I glance back up at him, and his
quicksilver eyes have darkened to molten steel. “You wanna be careful, looking at me like
that. I’ll have no choice but to punish you for your audacity…and I don’t think you can
take that level of attention.”
“You’d be surprised,” I mutter. “I’ll take whatever you can give.”
His lips curve, a devastatingly suggestive smile spreading like sin across his handsome
face. The next thing I know, his hands are sliding underneath me, lifting me up away
from the bed, and he’s sitting up, settling me into his lap. My legs are still wrapped
around his waist, his cock still butting up against me—even harder now, stiff as reinforced
steel, and it feels…
Pax’s hands clamp over my hips, locking me in place. “Nuh-uh, naughty girl. Stay still.
You don’t get to rub yourself on me ’til I say so.” The gleam in his eye only becomes
more wicked when I let out a frustrated moan. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” He strokes my hair
away, out of my face. “If you’re good, I’ll give you what you need. Open your mouth.”
I obey him, anticipation coiling around my insides. When he slides his thumb into my
mouth, I close my lips around it without having to be told, swirling my tongue around it,
gently grazing the pad of it with my teeth.
Pax hisses, giving me a loose, open-mouthed grin. “You want my dick in your mouth,
Firebrand?” I nod, sucking hard enough to show him how good it’ll feel if he lets it
happen. “Jesus. Ahh, fuck.” He draws his thumb free from my mouth, pulling it free with a
pop, and then rubs the pad of it over my lips, wetting them.
Not quite satisfied, he flicks my top lip with the very tip of his tongue, wetting me with
that instead. Meanwhile, his hands go to the hem of the black, formal dress I wore for
graduation. He rips the thing off in one go, purring when my tits spring free—but he falls
deathly silent, going very still when he looks down at my body.
Unlike him, I don’t have black ink covering most of my upper body. The damage that
Jonah inflicted on me when he dragged me down into that basement is still very visible.
“Jesus wept.” He stares down at my ribs. The loose, cocky grin he was wearing is long
gone. “I’m gonna murder that motherfucker.”
I avoid looking down at the black and blue fingerprints on my ribs. I don’t want to see
them. I hate the fact that I let that monster mark my body; in time, the bruises will
disappear, but that doesn’t make it okay that they’re there right now. I’ll have to watch
them turn green and yellow while they fade, like the bruises that are already fading on
Pax’s face. I do not want to think about that right now.
I want to feel good, not afraid. I want to have sex with Pax because I’m wildly in love
with him and I need him inside me. What I do not want is to feel like a victim.
“No.” I curl my index finger, using it to lift Pax’s head. Even with his head raised, he
doesn’t look at me. He glares at the damage to my ribs, hate flickering openly in his eyes
like a raging wildfire. I duck down, moving into his line of sight so that he has no choice
but to look at me. It takes a second for his pupils to refocus; I wait until I can tell that
he’s really seeing me, and then I say, “Don’t. Please, Pax. Not now. This is just for you
and me.”
He opens his mouth, a thousand furious curse words likely on the tip of his tongue,
but he must see the pleading look on my face, because he closes his mouth shut again,
clenching his jaw. He doesn’t like it, but he won’t head any further down that path.
Taking a deep breath, I do something he told me not to and I roll my hips against his
erection, rubbing myself against him. A reminder of what we started. Of how good it felt
before he took my dress off and saw my injuries. His eyes shutter, his shoulders shaking
as he releases the tension in his body.
“That’s a dirty fucking trick,” he says roughly.
“One I’ll employ as many times as I need to if it’ll bring you back from the edge.” I
crook a lopsided smile at him. To make my point, I roll my hips again, this time
exaggerating the movement, stretching it out and deepening the contact so that I
shudder against him.
Six millimeters of fabric: the thickness of his boxers. His jeans. My panties. That’s all
that stands between the silk-wrapped steel of his cock and the wet, glossy heat of my
pussy. I resent those six millimeters of fabric like I’ve never resented anything before in
my life. Digging my fingers into his ass, I tremble against him as, for a moment, he
allows his full weight to rest on top of me, right there, where our hips meet.
“I swear to God, I’m going to destroy every last scrap of clothing on your body if you
don’t get naked right fucking now,” I pant.
He huffs, grinning like a fiend as he peppers my mouth, my jaw, and my neck with
rough, searing kisses.
“Please. Please. God… please.” I chant the plea like a prayer, undulating beneath him,
and his teeth nip aggressively at the sensitive skin of my neck.
“I’d find a way to rip the goddamn moon right out of the sky if you begged me for it,”
he rumbles, and my toes curl so hard, the soles of my feet ache. Closing one hand around
my throat, he inches back until his eyes lock with mine, and the hotel, the horrific events
of last week, all of it falls away. There is nothing else. There is only Pax, and the fierce
look of possession in his eyes.
 “I thought I could walk away from you. God, what a fucking idiot.” He shakes his
head, wonder flicking across his handsome face. “I knew it when you opened your eyes
on the floor outside the hospital and you looked at me for the first time. It was like part
of me snapped. I thought you’d broken something inside of me. I hated you for it. And
then I realized that you hadn’t broken anything. You’d—you’d fixed it.”
“And you hated me even more for that?” I whisper.
Slowly, setting his jaw, he nods. “Change is hard, Chase.” His fingers flex around the
column of my throat, reminding me of the hold he has on me there. Like I could ever
forget. He smiles a little ruefully. “And being a lowlife piece of shit who hurts people and
doesn’t give a shit about the consequences is a lot fucking easier than trying to be good.
It fucking sucks, actually. Because now I have to face all of the bullshit I’ve done in the
past. I’m going to have to make amends and apologize to all of the people I’ve shit on
before I’ll ever be worthy of you.” The muscles in his throat work, as if he’s having trouble
swallowing all of a sudden. He casts his eyes down for a moment, his gaze resting on his
own hand, and the sharp, hostile energy that’s always flowed out of him ebbs. Just a
little. Knowing Pax, that ‘knives out’ energy will never disappear for good. But witnessing
him like this now offers hope that it’ll wane enough for him to let me love him.
“You don’t need to do anything to be worthy of me. I’ll take you as you are, Pax Davis.
I’ve always been willing to take you exactly as you are. Caustic remarks, sharpened
teeth, claws and all. I know who you are. I see you. I accept you.”
A cold, wicked fire dances in Pax’s eyes. He drags his bottom lip through his teeth,
exhaling sharply down his nose, and then he lets himself go. Like a tightly coiled spring,
primed to release for way too long, he falls on me, his hot mouth finding mine and he
consumes me. His hand slides around the side of my throat so that he’s cradling the side
of my head, fingers in my hair, his thumb stroking over my cheek. His other hand mirrors
the first, cradling the other side of my face, and he deepens the kiss.
I’m drowning.
I’m floating.
I’m dizzy.
The world is burning, the fire Pax kindled inside my chest spilling out of me and
flooding into the room, singing the carpets, devouring the curtains, rolling like liquid
napalm across the ceiling. The inferno will burn us alive, and I don’t do a thing to stop it.
Let it have me.
Let it take me now, on my terms, and I’ll embrace the pain of this blissful death with a
glad heart. I feel everything all at once, and the symphony of emotion and sensation
wrecks me.
He strips out of the rest of his clothes quickly, and then it’s my turn. I’m already trying
to work my way out of my panties, but Pax’s patience has left him. He tears them from
my body, ripping holes in the lace as he does so.
Then he’s on top of me, the heat of his skin burning into mine.
His hands on my breasts, pinching and rolling my nipples.
His knee guiding my legs apart…
The hardness of him thrusting inside me.
“God! Fuck, oh my god!”
He’s very, very still. Our eyes lock, and something settles between us. Some deep
calm that we’ve both been missing for a very long time.
“Fuck,” Pax whispers. He rests his forehead against mine, unblinking, as if he’s too
scared to blink for fear that I might disappear or something. “You’re so fucking beautiful,
Presley.”
Presley.
I have never heard him say my first name before. Not like this, his voice laced with
affection. I’m already addicted to the sound of it.
When he begins to move again, he doesn’t slam himself into me the way he always
has before. He’s firm and determined, but there’s something more measured about him
now, too. The friction between our bodies is one single wave of pleasure that keeps
coming, keeps rolling, increasing in size until neither one of us can take it anymore.
It crashes over us at the same time.
We’re about to…
FUCK!
We go together, me moaning his name, him roaring mine. I’m enveloped in Pax. He
crushes me to him, holding me tight, the muscles in his back working beneath my hands
as he spills himself inside me. The blistering fireworks display popping all over my vision
gradually begins to fade, and with it the tension falls out of Pax’s body. Eventually, he
goes limp, letting his full weight rest on top of me, panting heavily, and it feels so right
and so perfect that I bury my face into his shoulder and try to capture the moment in my
mind’s eye as best I can. I want to save it forever. I don’t want it to end.
We lay tangled up in each other, slick with sweat and panting for a long time, until our
skin cools and our breath comes a little easier. Eventually, Pax peels himself off me and
rolls off to one side. He doesn’t let me go, though; his hold remains locked around me so
that I have to roll with him, and I end up lying in his arms, my head resting on his chest.
“Well,” he says, gently brushing my hair away, so that it’s no longer plastered to my
forehead.
“Well,” I whisper back. And that’s all either of us say, in the hushed quiet of the room,
because that’s all that needs to be said.
 49

PRES

THE END

The book comes to an end, as all books do.

Our story is too late for Jarvis’ writing challenge, but we finish it anyway. I’m
melancholy as I write the last word of the final chapter. The project symbolizes
something far more significant than an end to the warfare I engaged in with Pax, or our
time at Wolf Hall. After graduation, it transitioned into our story. The characters became
us, and they fell for each other, even as Pax and I fell harder and harder. The book also
turned into a way for the hard, aggressive boy who saved my life to break down the
barriers in his own mind, as he found ways for his character to be soft and tender. To put
down his armor and to speak of love. Some of the things he’s written over the past few
weeks have been so poetic and beautiful that I’ve curled into a ball in my bed at night,
the white glow of my laptop screen casting off the shadows, and I’ve cried, knowing that
those words aren’t for my character. They are for me, like the ones he spoke in his
graduation day speech.
It's still very hard for him to vocalize his emotions. Often, he shows me how he feels
instead: a single, lone wildflower waiting for me on my pillow. A shared meatball sub. A
hand on my leg under the table, fingers drawing small circles on my skin; threatening
grimaces whenever Wren or Dash say something I might not like when I’m in their
presence. That is, after all, the biggest way that he’s shown me what I mean to him—he
spends as much time with me and his friends as possible. It’s as if he’s proving to me that
I’m important to him. That he isn’t ashamed of me.
At first, he couldn’t even sit still on the couch next to me. He’d thump the pillow and
grumble excessively about not being able to get comfortable. And that was with me
sitting on the other end of the couch. After a while, he started to inch closer, though.
Then, he’d touched my leg. Hold my hand. Soon enough, he’d have his arm around me,
drawing me close, arranging me possessively so that my head rested on his chest. Every
time he traces his fingers along my side now, not even thinking about it, I marvel at how
far he’s come and how affectionate he can be.
The academy closes its doors to its students not long after graduation, and the
teachers and the students all leave the mountain. Everyone apart from us. Elodie, Carrie
and I all move into Riot House. There’s no Europe trip. We have so little time left
together that we decide to stay in Mountain Lakes a little longer, savoring what remains
of the summer before we all have to go our separate ways.
Dash and Carrie, off to London,
Wren and Elodie, off to Harvard.
Me, to Sarah Lawrence.
And Pax?
Well…
Pax has made other plans.

PAX

“Wake the fuck up, douche bag!”

I crack an eye open, wincing at the morning light flooding through the blinds. Next to
me, Chase stirs, scrunching her nose, wriggling into my side like a creature burrowing for
warmth. I swear to God, if Lord Dashiell Lovett the Fourth wakes her up all the way, I’m
going to castrate his pompous ass and remove the possibility that there will ever be a
Lord Dashiell Lovett the Fifth. “Fuck off, man!” I growl. “It’s Saturday!”
“Trust me. You’re gonna want to see this. Now.”
“The only thing I wanna see are the backs of my eyelids.”
Chase lightly pinches my nipple. “Go and see what he wants,” she groans. “He’s
ruining a perfectly good dream.”
He’s also ruined the perfectly good morning wood I was planning on saving until I felt
like waking Chase up. My erection dies a sad death as I fling back the covers and launch
myself from the bed, ready to raise some hell. On the other side of the bedroom door,
Dash is perfectly turned out, bright blond hair styled and swept back, wearing a button-
down shirt and some pressed pants—the kind of clothes he hasn’t worn in a very long
time. “What? What is it? The fuck’s the matter with you? Why do you look like that?”
He shakes his head, brushing aside every single question. “Come down to the kitchen.
And put some pants on. I can see the entire outline of your dick through those boxers, for
fuck’s sake.
I’m not fucking happy about this—not even close to happy—but the prick is already
running down the stairs. I pull on a pair of sweatpants and clean t-shirt, imagining all of
the different ways I could punish Dash for ruining my morning. A second before I’m about
to leave the room, I have a thought.
Quickly, I check to make sure Chase isn’t watching me—she’s fallen back to sleep, her
hair a crimson halo around her head against the white pillow—and then I tiptoe into my
makeshift dark room. Having grabbed what I went in there for, I sneak stealthily out of
the room and then thunder down the stairs, where I find both Dash and Wren sitting on
the outdoor sectionals on the patio.
It's a little cold this morning, a chilly wind teasing through the trees. Give it a couple
of weeks and fall will be in full effect in New Hampshire. A pity all of us will be gone by
then. Wren sits on the arm of one of the patio chairs, his bare feet on the cushions, his
hair an unruly mass of waves. His takes a sip from the coffee cup in his hands, passing it
to me as I throw myself down in the chair next to his.
The coffee is black, bitter, and strong as all hell.
Perfect.
“Well? Explain,” I say, addressing Dash.
He holds up a magazine—one I recognize. My Kingston’s Photography Journal. Looks
like the latest edition of my subscription has arrived. And I’m on the front fucking cover of
it. “What the hell is this?”
I snatch it out of his hands, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing: me. Busted up.
Bruised. Black eye. Split lip. Naked. I’d like to say that you can’t see much of my junk, but
you fucking can. I hadn’t blinked when Cross had asked me if I’d pose nude. There aren’t
many places that’ll plaster a guy’s cock and balls right across their front fucking page. I
wouldn’t have thought the Kingston Journal would have either, but it looks that I was
wrong.
“I see why the girls can’t leave you the hell alone now. Even after they’ve gotten to
know you.” Dash bounces his eyebrows. “I knew you were packing, but that…” He pulls
an impressed face, slapping a hand down on my bare shoulder. “I am secure enough in
my sexuality to admit that that is one fine cock, Davis. Congratu-fucking-lations.”
Savage Love.
Raw and Powerful, Callan Cross’s epic Art Wins Again.
This time, America’s most controversial Photographer scoops himself the Hasselblad.
“The Hasselblad?” I whisper.
Dash props himself against my doorjamb. “You’re gonna have to forgive my complete
ignorance when it comes to photography, but what the hell is a Hasselblad when it’s at
home?”
“It’s the most prestigious award a photographer can ever attain. A lifetime
achievement award,” Wren says, yawning. I’m surprised he knows this. “But it’s never
been awarded off the back of one fucking photo before.” Squinting, at my naked form on
the cover—all ink, bruises, and attitude—he continues. “And he won it off the back of
Pax’s flaccid dick.”
I hear him speak. I keep my mouth shut about the dick comment, though. I’m reading.
“Callan Cross began his career with a photo of violence. His then-high school sweetheart,
Coralie, posed in private after being severely beaten by her father. The photograph
depicted Coralie with a number of horrific injuries. Cross submitted the image to
competitions, not expecting anything to come from it, but the image immediately swept
the nation, featuring on the cover of a number of publications, as well as heavily
dominating the Art and Culture sections of nearly every prominent newspaper at the
time. Since then, Cross has made a name for himself as a photographer with an axe to
grind. Many of his exhibitions have featured stirring political statement pieces that have
caused controversy and polarized the art community…”
It goes on and on. I drop the magazine, reeling a little. “Who’s got a cigarette?”
Wren gives me one. I smoke it, finishing his coffee, staring at the sight of myself,
naked on the front of the Kingston’s Photography Journal.
“This is the same guy you’re going to work for, right?” Dash says.
“Yeah.”
“The one you’re moving to Virginia for?”
I nod.
“People are definitely going to recognize you when you show up to shoot with him
now,” Wren says.
They were going to recognize me, anyway. What with so many advertising campaigns
under my belt, and my face being plastered all over the papers in New York for thrashing
Jonah, I have a very recognizable face at the moment. Now, I’ll have a very recognizable
dick, too.
“Goddamnit.” I groan, rubbing my fingers into my eyes.
 “What?” Wren bites back a smirk. “I thought you’d be kinda stoked about the front
cover of a photography journal. And I know you don’t care about the whole world seeing
your shit. You strut around with your dick swinging free all the time.”
Typical timing. Seriously. I breathe, trying to convince myself that this isn’t a complete
nightmare, but it’s no good. It is a complete nightmare. I let my hands drop, taking
another look at the journal, hoping it won’t be as bad the second time, but there’s no
denying it. My dick and balls are right there for everyone to see. They even layered the
image, so I’m standing in front of the journal’s title and the strapline and none of my junk
would be obscured by text.
“Chase’s dad is gonna see this today,” I sigh.
“And?” Dash doesn’t understand: I’ve never been the kind of guy who’d give a shit
about a girl’s parents. His confusion is justified. But today, I need to make a good
impression. I really need for Robert Witton not to hate me today. Warily reaching into my
pocket, I take out the small black velvet box that I snuck into the dark room to retrieve,
setting it down on the glass top table in front of me next to the copy of Kingston’s.
Dash and Wren go very, very still. Wren inhales sharply through his nose. “What the
hell is that, Pax Davis?”
“You know damn well what it is,” I grumble. “And I asked her dad to meet me this
afternoon, so I could—”
“You’re gonna ask him for permission?” Dash crows.
“Urgh. Don’t.” I will legit kill him if he makes this any more uncomfortable than it
already is.
Wren’s still staring at the box like it’s a snake that might bite him. “Open it,” he
commands.
“No.”
“Fuck that.” Dash lunges, snatching the little jewelry box before I can stop him.
“You’re not slapping that thing down on the table and then not showing us what’s inside.”
I want to bare my teeth and snarl at him, but…fuck it. It’s too late now. He has the
damn box open and he’s frowning, showing the contents inside to Wren. Both of them
look perplexed. “Uhhh…d’you need to borrow some money, dude?” Dash asks.
“Yeah. What the fuck is this supposed to be?” Wren takes the little woven gold band
out of the box, holding it up disdainfully. “I hate to break it to you, but most girls like
diamonds. And this piece of ratty thread has glue on it.”
I grab it from him, putting it back in the box. “Fuck off, asshole.”
“For real, dude. Do you need help? If we get in the car now, we can be in Boston by
lunchtime. We can pick out something flashy and—”
“I don’t need to borrow money, and I don’t need anything flashy. Not yet. I’ll—” I huff,
shoving the box back in my pocket. “Look, I’m not fucking stupid. I’ll get her something
nice later. But I’m asking her with this and that’s all there is to it, okay. Don’t ask
questions.”
They pull faces at each other, trying not to laugh, I think, but they know I’m being
deadly fucking serious and so they don’t push me.
“Y’know, out of the three of us, I always thought Wren would be the first to propose,”
Dash says, sinking back into his chair. “I figured you’d be at least fifty before you
softened enough to get hitched. And here you are, barely eighteen—”
“I don’t wanna marry her tomorrow, asshole. We’ll do it when she graduates. I just
want her to know that this is happening. That…she fucking has me, okay. She’s going
away to college. I’m going to be bouncing around all over the place. I swear to god, if
either of you laugh, I will end your miserable lives.”
They don’t laugh.
Wren stands up and holds out his hand, his face a blank mask. When I place my own
hand in his, expecting him to shake it, he jerks me to my feet and into the tightest
fucking hug I’ve ever experienced. “You are good, Pax Davis. The fucking best of us. No
point in denying it. And I cannot wait until the day that I get to roll up and look hotter
than you at your wedding.”
I grit my teeth, trying to brush him off, to thump him in his stomach for being so soft,
but he only holds me tighter. He won’t let go. I’m crushed even tighter when Dash throws
his arms around me and Wren, hugging both of us, too. “Congratulations, you miserable
bastard,” he says.
I feel…weird. Tight. Hot. My throat aches. I use every bit of strength I have to push
them away, forcing a laugh as I turn away from them for a second, facing the forest. I
have to blink a whole bunch of times before I can see properly. I don’t know what the
fuck’s come over me. “Don’t congratulate me yet.” My voice sounds oddly broken. “Her
dad has to say yes first, and my cock’s going to be plastered across town in an hour. That
fucking bus driver, Jim—”
“Don’t worry. We got you.” Wren slaps a hand on my shoulder. Thankfully he doesn’t
force me to turn around. I haven’t quite mastered myself yet. “Operation: best men is
about to go into full effect. Dash and I will hit every convenience store and news stand in
this backwater town and burn every copy of that magazine. Chase’s dad isn’t gonna see
shit.”
“Uhhh, best men?” Dash asks, laughing.
“Of course. How is he supposed to choose between us?”
They go together, leaving me by the perimeter of the forest, still picking apart the sea
of emotions that I’m still drifting in. I’m so overwhelmed for a moment that I almost
surrender to the frightening feeling that hit so hard when the boys hugged me. I nearly
let the tears come. But there’s no room for tears in the end. My excitement won’t allow
them.
This afternoon, I’m going to request permission to ask Presley Maria Witton Chase a
really big question. And I’m not afraid. I take out the little black velvet box again and
open it, taking out the woven ring inside. It is a sorry looking thing to be sure. I made it
out of gold thread. The knots are uneven and it’s lumpy as hell. It took me three
attempts, watching the how-to video on YouTube, before I figured out what I was doing.
The friendship bracelets that Chase made me were solid, beautiful things. She poured
her strength and her heart into them. The ring I’ve made my firebrand is ugly in
comparison, but I poured myself into it, too. It isn’t perfect. It’s flawed, and she deserves
so much better, but I made it for her.
And it’s strong enough that it won’t break.
50
 ALSO BY CALLIE HART

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