Sloane Stevens gets around.
I don’t think of the rest of the text. It doesn’t matter, because she’s not fucking meandit’s clear she doesn’t really like me.
But her ass pressed to mine on her couch, holding her all night long, drifting into sleep with her in my arms, it felt like we liked each other.
Then again, she was tipsy or she’d never let me do that.
And I wasn’t thinking clearly because of those texts in the woods or I’d never show up at her place like that.
“You could’ve told me,” she mutters, stacking her hands again and looking at the table. I know she means the whipped cream.
I clear my throat but don’t say anything about it. I don’t tell her it was cute. That she’s so pristine and perfect, it’s hot when she’s messy.
I don’t say anything like that. Then I’ll start thinking about how I fucked the woman in the hotel and the memory makes me feel like I want to crawl out of my own skin.
And she saves me from having to speak at all when she looks up and asks, “What did you mean? About something on my doorstep?”
I inhale deep. If I tell her, she’ll be paranoid too, although I don’t really know if Sloane Stevens has a care in the world about anything. She lives in a lilac cloud and everything in her bubble feels too wholesome and good.
“Why did you ask where I was? Why did you come find me?” she presses, stubborn and gorgeous. She’s from North Carolina’s coast, near Wilmington I think, and I can see it. The ocean on her. Freckles and a tan even in fall like it never faded. The unique accent that’s different from the mountains, the way it’s soft anda little faster all at once, but lazy, too. Impossible to explain but it does something when I hear it.
“I’ve heard things about that guy you went out with,” I lie.
“What?”She scoffs. “Dax?”
I don’t mention the fact I didn’t know his name until this moment and she doesn’t catch the error as she rolls her eyes.
“He’s as honorable as they come.” She says it like it’s a bad thing. “I promise he won’t hurt me, Stormy, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She mocks me as she says it and it’s fucking hot. No one mocks me. No one teases me except Cortland on rare occasions. No one plays with me.
No one ever has.
Not my mom, and definitely not Dad.
The hotel room. The blood weighing down the carpets. The scent of it.
I almost gag and have to bite my back teeth to fight it.
“Besides…” She pulls her drink toward her and takes a sip, then sets it back down and stares at the rain lashing the glass. “I haven’t seen him since I saw you.” Her voice is quiet when she says it.
“Why?” I shouldn’t ask. It doesn’t matter. I need to get out of this booth, take her to her place, and go to the Hollows to find out who the fuck is texting me and why. But killing time with her is something I don’t hate.
She lifts one shoulder in a shrug, the material of her sweatshirt bunching up as she does. “He’s too good, remember?” She cuts her green eyes to me, like a challenge. Like she knows how bad I am and she wants me to offer myself up to her.
I’ve seen it play out. Good girl who wants to fuck a bad boy. She gets tired of it, though, always. It’s only glamorous when he’s making her come. Then she needs security, someone to pick up her pieces.
I can’t be stability for Sloane.
“So you’re not gonna fuck him?” I smile at her as I ask, even though if it’s any other answer butno,I might leap over this fucking table.
“I didn’t say all that,” she says, and she smiles back, evil and perfect, all at once.
I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. But for one single second, I think of her at West River. The morning after I saw things I shouldn’t, when I discovered what kind of people my parents really were—all along, I thought I’d known, but I hadn’t, not until then—and she was in the hall, taunting me with that heaven I was cast out of. Just like my own paradise lost. Because I knew then there would never be anyone on this planet who could deal with me the way my parents dealt with one another, and there would never be a world I wanted a thing like that anyway.
I brush my plate aside with my forearm, both on the table now, hands clasped together and rings clinking.
She glances down, then up, but her gaze lingers on the gold chain I still have around my neck. The same one she asked me about that morning all those years ago.
Is it real gold?
