“What about my dick?” Sylvan asks from somewhere behind me.
Ryles blows out a breath dramatically. “Okay. Got it. Stay away from the pretty blond girl?—”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Sylvan snarls, voice suddenly cold. “So I don’t slit your throat with my skate at practice”
Neve laughs so hard, she buries her face against my shoulder, and Ryles backs away slowly, like we’re a pack of rabid dragons.
For her, I think we’d both become killers.
FIFTY-SIX
NEVE
Iglance at my phone and clench my teeth as I sit with Faust in the living room, fire flickering warm heat over us, his hand parked on my hip. There’s a spread of food on the glossy black coffee table; turkey and sweet potato chili, sour cream in a white serving bowl, grated cheese, a bottle of wine, and a stack of black plates and iron-dark silverware, all waiting for Sylvan’s presence before we eat.
Faust cooked all evening, and the sun has slipped down and bowed out, night looming beyond the windowpanes of Castle Darling.
My heart is thudding fast and hard in my chest and I read the text once more, just to be sure I’m not overreacting.
This is what happens when you start to give pieces of your heart away. You care more about two boys than you do a murder investigation which apparently involves your own brother.
Cyn
Tasia was bragging she had a drink last night with Sylvan. Who knows if she’s just talking shit, but you might want to check your boy.
Last night Cynthia and I stayed at Darkmouth because the boys had late-night practice. It’s a bye week this week, and it’s been seven days since Sylvan clocked a boy on the ice for saying he wanted to fuck me.
If I thought last night was bad, me and Cynthia both sleeping together in the living room on a pile of blankets and pillows, jumping at every creak we heard in the night despite the fact Blackwell’s has a security alarm now and Faust personally paid to change the locks on our apartment, it’s nothing compared to how I feel now.
Fucking annoyed.
“You know Tasia will do anything to make you feel like this,” Faust says softly behind me.
I turn to him and feel my temper threaten to burst through the ice I tried to trap it under all these years. “What about Sylvan? How willhemake me feel?”
Faust stares at him in silence for long seconds, the fire crackling at our side, the scent of this haunted house and Faust’s cologne snaking through my nose, bringing to life my emotions.
“How does he make you feel?” he asks quietly.
“Why are you okay with sharing me with him?” The question I’ve been burning to ask. They’re jealous, territorial, but somehow this thing between the three of us has morphed and transformed and now I’m theirs, but it feels unanchored. Unhinged, somehow.
Faust’s eyes darken. It’s not just an expression; one heartbeat they’re deep brown, the next, he narrows his eyes and the irises seem black.
“You think I’mokaywith it?” he asks quietly. The softness with which he speaks always makes him seem like the lesser threat. That’s how I know he’s the bigger one.
“You do it, don’t you?”
“It’s like stabbing ourselves in the back each time we share you, but the thing is, we’re masochists. Haven’t you figured that out by now? Besides…” He exhales slow. “The truth is, he’s mine too.”
My chest squeezes with his words, but it makes me think of something else.
Something I was too caught up in them to even wonder about.
“Have you two… without me?” We haven’t slept together yet. They seem to be edging me or maybe guarding themselves. Since their first introduction to me was running from a man whose best friend I fucked, I don’t really fault them for it. But don’t they have needs? Even my own hand isn’t really cutting it anymore.
Faust doesn’t look away. “Once,” he whispers, and this time, I feel like the one with the knife in my spine.
“When?” I have to ask. I need to know.
