She’s leaving, but it’s not the future distance which bothers me most. Not yet.
It’s something worse: I’d care about how she felt afterward.
I can’t do that anymore.
I think of the hotel.
The woman’s mouth under my palm, the crushing weight of me over top of her, the way she squirmed but didn’t scream.
It makes me feel sick.
I don’t know who she was.
There was so little of her to see.
The coffin nails though, they’ve been in my dreams. Sometimes I think I remember why, but other times I wonder if the memory is something I dreamed too.
“Did you still wanna know why I brought you here or are you good checking out the clouds?”
Sloane whips her head toward me so fast the end of her long ponytail switches shoulders. I wonder what it would feel like to twist her strands in my fingers and pull, but I force myself to hold her gaze instead of imagining fantasies I can’t have. Her eyes are a color I’ve never seen, green but mixed with a completely different shade of blue than mine, and they have a black ring around them that drives me insane.
Fuck.
She wrinkles her nose up like I pissed her off and takes a sip from her latte. A dot of whipped cream is on her upturned nose but I don’t dare say a word as she glares at me, then sets the drink down. She stacks her hands on top of each other and I glance at them. They’re veiny and beautiful and I remember how it felt when she grabbed mine as I led her off campus to the parking lot nearby.
“Why did you bring me here, Storm Leary?” She raises her brows. Hers are thin, light brown, and fit her diamond shaped face so well.
I tilt my head. “Did you end up fucking that guy?” The one she went on a date with. It’s been a few days between when she said she didn’t and now. She could’ve.
She narrows her eyes. “If I did, I don’t see how it would be any of your business.”
Everything about you is my fucking business now.“What does he do? Does he work? Or is he a pretty boy, surviving off Mom and Dad’s dime?”
Pops of color appear on the circles of her cheeks. “Go fuck yourself, Storm. Is this what you stalked me before sunrise for? To ask me about my sex life? I’m sure you’ve fucked your way through half the town and I don’t care about that so?—”
“You don’t?” I ask her, my tone low.God, she’s so wrong.
She swallows hard and glances down at her drink. When she cuts her eyes back my way, she doesn’t so much as flinch.
“No,” she says, her voice cold. “I don’t.”
We stare at one another for a heartbeat. The rain splatters against the window and thunder rumbles in the distance, long and low. I think about Remi and Lyle. Cortland is off today too so he’ll be with them but if this person keeps texting me, they’ll need to go up to West Virginia to visit his dad and Tristan, his brother.
And I need to go to the Hollows.
But first I had to make sure Sloane was safe.
She is. I can be done now. A coffin nail is a threat but it was meant to get to me. I guess it worked.
I glance at the whipped cream still on her nose.
She must notice my focus because she brushes it off with her index finger, then puts her finger in her mouth.
I breathe in sharp.
She sucks the sugar from herself before she pulls it out with a pop.
Her eyes don’t leave mine.
