Page 66 of When Darkness Calls

Should’ve known the little goth chick would have a thing for tattoos.

And speaking of heat, the pretty, pink blush that coated the tops of her cheeks and danced along the bridge of her nose was so fucking cute. She was practically glowing in the light of the TV.

Sadly, I’m not on Dani Watch duty tonight. Cade’s home. I’m not needed and something about that has me twisted inside.

I want her to need me—to want me. I want her to be able to come to me. I want to be there for her. I want the discussions about super random crap, and the shit talking, and the way that only we seemed to get each other. I want what we used to have, and now, I guess I want so much more too.

A guy can dream, huh?

Here I am. A random ass Sunday night. And what am I doing? Developing photos for the local paper, after I spent hours editing pictures from the high school football team.

How exciting.

I scoff at the thought. Even better is having no one here to keep me company. Alex and Keegan are both on doubles, I think. Nick is…doing whatever the hell he normally does. Really not sure about that one.

And Cade is where I wish I could be, living in her presence.

Sighing, I dip another photo into the basin of chemicals. The paper floats around, swishing back and forth in the liquid, the red light gleaming off the surface.

Slowly, the image begins to appear. Grainy, light, over-cast and then darker and darker.

Staring back at me is East End’s finest. Mayor Cook. Or as the guys and I have taken to calling him, Mayor Crook.

You couldn’t name a bigger sleazeball. Been the mayor for close to a decade, and he does nothing but spout bullshit about how this town is thriving, doing better than ever before, but does nothing except turn a blind eye to the rot that has taken hold.

Outside the dark room, my phone pings faintly.

Thank God.

I rinse my hands, heading out of the room, sure to close the door quickly, before snatching the phone off the bench in my garage.

Dani

Maybe, I do…

My brows furrow. “Huh?”

The message comes through in a brand new message thread. I know because there’s no other texts above it, and that wouldn’t make sense because I know for a fact the last thing I had sent her was the picture of Alex dancing with Frank wearing a birthday hat and sunglasses on her birthday.

I stare at it long and hard before it clicks.

Ohhh.

Oh.

My eyes widened.

No. Nah. No way. She did not reply to that text.

Fuck, no. Not possible.

I scroll out of the message thread and open the app I had used to disguise my number, and what do you fucking know…

Do you enjoy making me suffer?

Holy shit. Fuck, why did I send that? What do I do?

I can’t reply, right? No, I definitely shouldn’t do that. But—but wouldn’t it be rude not to?