His light eyes lack all of the amusement I feel.
“Text me when you get home,” he says quietly. “If you don’t, you’ll see me.”
I’mdrunk as I sit beside Cynthia on the couch in our living room in Darkmouth, a water bottle she shoved my way between my fingers. Karter is crashing here tonight, and she’s perched on the black chair across from us. Tasia left Castle Morack after Sylvan left her, apparently, and Karter didn’t want to leave with her. She said Tasia feels as if she sided with “the enemy” but I don’t give a fuck how she feels. I let her have Ace and she threw him away for someone who clearly doesn’t actually care about her—or anyone.
I texted Ace I was with the girls to ensure he was good.
He never replied. I don’t think about him calling my name in the dark.
Cynthia had the private room for us because she said Faust paid for it, telling her it was a favor for us. But only the girls.
“But why?” I ask Cyn now as she goes over it all for the third time. “Why did he want us together, and neither one of them wrecked our party?” I think of the bottle of Crown Royal the waiter brought in, apparently paid for by Faust, too, because we sure as hell didn’t have a tab.
I squeeze the plastic cup between my fingers as The Weeknd plays from the portable speaker on the coffee table. Karter laughs, ducking her head as she drinks from her black plasticcup. There’s a bottle of Jameson beside the speaker, and I want to reach for it because I’m feelinggood,but I haven’t texted Sylvan yet like he wanted and I’m scared I might say something I’ll regret if I start talking to him now.
Cynthia rolls her eyes, then turns to me. We’re all in our comfy clothes now; me in a black set, Cyn in a white shirt tied at the hip, red shorts, and Karter in an oversized T-shirt that hits her knees with Grimace splashed across it.
“You really don’t know?”
I frown at her. “Spit it out.”
A smile curves her lips then. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s it.”
Karter starts losing it over the innuendo and I blush.
“What?” I ask, throwing my hands up, water sloshing from the side of my bottle.
“Two boys who currently play for the Dragons want to bone you, Neve.” Cynthia spells it all out for me. “And I don’t think they like that they both want you.”
“Definitely not,” Karter says through giggles. “They’re fighting now for everyone to see, because ofyou.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head in denial. The psychoanalysis starts to slip free. Exactly what I’ve thought but not yet said aloud. “Sylvan only wants to take me from Faust, to prove a point. To one up his captain, and, arguably, the better player.”
Cynthia considers, her head tilted. Between the three of us, she’s the most sober, and I trust her judgment. She won’t tell me what I want to hear; she’ll tell me how it is.
Then she just shrugs. “I don’t know. Sylvan left Tasia, and she would’ve been a guaranteed lay for tonight.He’s playing with fire if he only wants toprove a point,”she mimics me.
I take another drink of water, my phone in the pocket of my black pants, and I want to ask Sylvan straight up what he wants.
But I remember what he said in the dark of Castle Morack.
“Why are you still so afraid? Don’t you know I’ll kill for you?”
I think of him breaking Will’s nose in this very apartment.
“Shit,” Karter says under her breath, breaking me from my tangled thoughts.
I imagine it’s something with Tasia, which makes me feel annoyed, but Cyn turns to Karter and asks, “What is it?”
And when I see Karter’s face, her eyes lifting to ours from her phone in her hand, I know it’s important. Her complexion nearly matches her hair.
I squeeze my water bottle tighter and feel dread ball into a knot in my stomach, even though I couldn’t say why.
“There’s another body on campus.”
My pulse raises. It’s like there’s static in my ears.
Cynthia glances at me, and I know I have to tell her about Sylvan and Will. There’s something in the way my body feels—the hairs on my neck raised, every limb tense—that tells me I’m not going to like what Karter has to say, and it’s going to be connected to everything else I’m suddenly afraid of.
