“Fuck.” The word escapes in a cloud of white steam, and I tighten my grip on the emergency blanket that’s not doing nearly enough to live up to either part of its name. I don’twantto have to think sixteen steps ahead. This is why I avoid the Old Ones.
Except this time, avoiding wasn’t enough and I’m not the one who paid the price.
The memory of Lennie picking me up last night plays through in slow motion, zoomed in on all the detail. She throws her head back in throaty laughter, delighted at her own “joke.” The interior of her SUV is dark around us, except for the quiet intimate glow of the dashboard lights.
How could that have been just last night?
Now, she’s cold and empty. A shell.
I can feel my grip on my emotions slipping. A mix of rage and grief ready to spew forth at any second. To keep control, I focus instead on a woman wandering the parking area off to the left of the police station. She’s sort of meandering among the aisles, her keys in hand, glancing up every once in a while at the front doors.
She catches me watching her and ducks her head in embarrassment into the pulled-up collar of her dark raincoat. Yeah, a little rough if you’ve lost your caratthe police station.
Carter’s shiny blue Honda Civic pulls up a few moments later, way quicker than his estimated twenty minutes. He must have been closer than he thought—or driving faster. Either way, I’m grateful.
I make myself walk down the steps slowly, not rushing. Toward him or away from law enforcement. I refuse to give Morales anything else to use against me.
But Carter blows a hole through all of that, jerking the car into Park and striding around the car to reach me before I even hit the sidewalk, his face tight with worry and anger. His normally stylishly rumpled hair is just sleep rumpled and the stubble on his chin is heavier than usual.
“Are you all right?” he demands, his gaze searching my face. “What happened?” He sounds horrified.
It’s only then that I realize what I must look like: dried blood still smudged around my nose and mouth, red-eyed from trying not to cry, dirt and dead grass on the side of my face and in my hair from when the police had me lie on the ground before pulling me up. Also, I’m fairly sure the stinging rough patch on my chin is a decent-sized scrape I acquired somewhere, though I can’t be sure without a mirror.
His hands clasp either side of my face gently, shocking in their warmth as much as in the gesture in public.
“You’re freezing,” he murmurs, brow furrowed. His thumbs move lightly over my cheekbones.
And suddenly the tears I’ve fought back are battling their way out again. Why is it only when someone cares, when someone is kind, that my strength just sputters and dies?
“I’m fine,” I manage thickly, tugging at his wrists to move his hands from me, even though I’d like nothing more than to stay right there, surrounded by his warmth.
His mouth thins. “Try that when your lips aren’t blue, Jocasta.”
Before I can argue, he turns and opens the passenger side door, urging me forward and into the car.
I move carefully across the rough, salt-strewn sidewalk to climb inside, and a strangled curse emerges from Carter when he looks down at my bare feet. His whole body tenses, and for a second it looks like he’s going to spin around and charge into the police station to tear into someone—in that searingly sharp but polite tone he has, the one that makes it clear he thinks you’re an idiot but he’s too civil to comment on it.
I don’t remember the last time someone spoke up in my defense. My heart aches with an echo of former longing, but I force myself to ignore it.
“I’m fine,” I say again, settling into the passenger seat, mindful to keep my feet—filthy now as well as bare, gross—on the otherwise pristine floor mat. An embarrassed heat rises in my tingling cheeks. “I chose to wait outside.” An explanation that sounds insane unless you understand the rationale, which I’m not able to give.
Fuck, I hate this.
Carter closes my door firmly with a sound that might best be described as taut exasperation.
He circles the front of the car once more at a clip and climbs back behind the wheel. But he leans over to adjust the heater and the vents until they’re blowing directly on me before he does anything else. “Do you always have to make things harder, Jocasta?”
I’m shivering too much to answer, either with a serious response or the more automatic one (“Seems to work for you, so yeah?”) to aggravate him. Somehow being warmer is only making me more aware of my previous chill.
With another frustrated noise, he tugs his sweater over his head, further ruffling his already mussed hair.
That’s when I realize: It’s the blue pullover he was wearing last night, with the same blue-and-white striped button-down beneath, though the pointed collar is certainly more wrinkled and less pristine this morning.
I might throw on yesterday’s clothes without thinking twice about it, but not Carter. Other TAs upgrade to a slightly nicer T-shirt or real shoes instead of Crocs or flip-flops, but Carter dresses better than most professors. Ironed shirts, ironed jeans that cling to those muscled thighs, shoes with actual laces—all from expensive but classic brands. He always looks unruffled, untouchable, wearing authority like armor.
Control.That’s what it told me. Control is important to him. Which I already knew. But I suspect it means more. At Beecher, the wealthiest students dress like they’re three steps away from being indigent. They might have thousand-dollar shoes, but they’re battered and mud-soaked like they’re cheap knock-offs.
Carter takes care of his shit. Which signals, to me, that he likely, at some point, hadn’t had much of it.
