“Okay, wow, what the hell happened?” Danielle was staring at me as I sat beside her, her expression torn between horror and disbelief. “Were they bothering you, Jess? That looked so creepy, I had to tell the guys to go check on you.”
“I’m fine,” I said sharply. I was painfully aware of everyone looking at me. Alex was glaring at me from the other side of the fire, Nate and Matthew were giving me major side-eye.
But beyond the fire, on the other side of the clearing between the trees, Manson, Lucas, Vincent, and Jason were staring too.
The subject was dropped, but my brain couldn’t let it go, not even after I’d finished my drink and gotten another. My gaze was continually drawn by those four men standing in my peripheral vision. They didn’t seem to give a damn I was there anymore, but that only irritated me more.
I kept catching brief pieces of their conversations even from a distance, their voices standing out to me. I desperately wanted to know what they were saying.
Were they talking about me? God, how pathetic was I to even wonder?
I shoved myself up from my chair, cutting Danielle off in the middle of whatever she was saying. “I have to go pee. I’ll be right back.”
I walked away from the fire, toward my parked car and then beyond it, looking for some privacy in the trees. At least it was quieter out here, save for the boom of the fireworks overhead. It gave me a chance to think.
What the hell did Manson mean, calling what we’d done a “mistake”? It shouldn’t have mattered, but what he’d said was getting under my skin. He was mad it hadn’t worked out, but so was every other guy I’d ever rejected. Why did I care?
I hurriedly did my business and cleaned up. I didn’t feel ready to go back to the bonfire and put on a fake give-no-fucks smile. I couldn’t do it. I leaned my back against one of the trees, taking a deep breath.
This was a temporary drama. I was only going to be in Wickeston for a few more months. Once Smith-Davies brought me on full time, I was out of here.
But that didn’t make me feel any better. It didn’t feel like solving the problem, only running away from it.
I tipped my head back in frustration, arms folded tightly. This was bullshit. Since when was I afraid of facing anyone and telling the truth?
Probably since Manson had made me realize that my truth was frightening and confusing.
There was a massive boom overhead as colorful sparks lit up the sky. The party was getting rowdy, people were shouting and there was a sound of breaking glass. Part of me wanted to sneak away and go home.
I peered around the tree as footsteps rapidly approached, gazing into the dark. It was Manson, but he hadn’t seen me yet. He stopped about ten yards away with his back to me. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed heavily as he gripped it.
He looked frustrated. Almost anxious. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one bothered by all this.
He took his knife out of his back pocket as he stood there, idly flipping it open and closed. It was an unusual weapon, or at least I thought so. It was a butterfly knife, so the blade tucked into the handles and had to be flipped open. But Manson made it look easy, like it was second nature.
He played with it for a while without much focus, staring off into the trees. But he must have made a mistake, because when he flipped the knife around again, the blade caught his finger and sliced it open.
He hissed, and I gasped, and he immediately turned around. He slowly bent down, picking up the knife from where he’d dropped it. Blood dripped down his finger as he looked at me, his expression guarded.
“What are you doing out here?” he said.
I shrugged. “Same thing as you, I guess. Except I didn’t cut myself.”
He made a sound that could have been a laugh, but he wasn’t smiling. He stroked the pad of his thumb over his bleeding finger thoughtfully. “That’s what happens when you play with knives. Eventually you’ll get cut.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t play with them, then.”
He nodded. As if to reassure himself he could do it, he flipped the knife again. His fingers were quick and light as the blade swung out. The metal appeared impossibly fluid as he manipulated it through the air and caught it in his opposite hand.
I was suddenly feeling a hell of a lot warmer.
“I’m a bit of a masochist, I suppose,” he said quietly, as if to himself more than me. “If there’s no risk, where’s the fun? It was my own fault. I didn’t handle it correctly. The knife did what it’s supposed to.”
I stepped out from behind the tree and moved closer to him without even realizing what I was doing. He looked down at his bleeding finger curiously, a frown on his face.
“Maybe dull the blade,” I said, and he scoffed.
“I knew what I was getting into when I bought it, Jess,” he said. “It’s supposed to be sharp, it’s meant to be dangerous. No matter how much I practice, if I get lax, then I’ll get cut.”
Why did it feel like he wasn’t talking about the knife anymore?
I didn’t know what to say. I knew a million things I should have said, but I had no idea how to begin.
His face was partially hidden in the shadows. “Are you scared of me?”
I should have been. Him standing there with a knife in his hand and blood on his fingers…perhaps I should have been terrified of him.
But I wasn’t. I shook my head.
He stepped closer until he was right in front of me. I fixed my eyes on his throat, saw it bob when he swallowed, traced my eyes over the goosebumps on his skin and the ink etched into his flesh.
“Jess.”
I looked up. His eyes were almost black in the night.
“What are you doing out here?” he repeated the question, but it was different this time. He meant something different.
What was I doing out here?
“Playing with things I shouldn’t,” I said softly.
He lunged forward so quickly I didn’t even have time to make a sound. He pressed me back against the tree and jabbed the knife’s blade into the trunk high above my head, his arm extended as he clung to the handle. The thud of it hitting the wood left my heart hammering, the thrill of danger leaving tingles all over my body.
He lifted his bloody hand and moved it close to my cheek, but not close enough to touch.
“You might get cut playing like that.” His voice was rough, and my stomach quivered. Things felt so different in the dark.
I reached up, carefully, to where his hand hovered near my face. It felt like a magnet locking into place when I put my fingers around his wrist. “I’m not afraid of a little blood.”
His hand cupped my cheek, and his lips crashed into mine. I was completely overcome within a split second, all the air snatched out of my lungs, my brain short-circuiting into chaos. He kissed me like he was trying to make a point, like he was punishing me. We parted, and his finger dragged across my mouth…
I licked my lip and tasted iron, and he shuddered as something feral came over his expression.
“God fucking damn it, Jessica.” His voice was desperately pained. He was so heavy against me, and I liked it too much. I liked the taste of him, how his blood was metallic and sweet on my tongue.
There was something wrong with me. Normal people didn’t do this shit, right? But no one could see us. No one had to know…
His next kiss was slow. His entire body moved with it. Surging against me, overtaking me, filling my brain with this vast empty space full of only sensation.
It was as good as I remembered. Better. I’d tried to convince myself that I’d romanticized it all in my mind, but no. He was everything I remembered. His taste, his scent, his body.
He tugged the knife out of the tree and grasped my hand. He held my palm up between the two of us, slowly rubbing his thumb over my fingers.
“You’re not afraid?” He watched my face carefully. He’d know if I lied.
I shook my head. “No.”
Delicately, he pressed the sharp tip of the blade against the pad of my middle finger. There was a subtle sting as my skin parted, blood welling up. He moved the knife in slow small lines and I was mesmerized by the sight.
What he left behind was a tiny heart, etched into my finger. The pain wasn’t even as bad as a papercut, so why did it feel like it sliced so deep?
He took my finger into his mouth and sucked it clean. I could hardly breathe. All I could hear was my own pounding heart in my ears. The feeling of his mouth enclosing me was so damn erotic I wanted to grab him, tear into him, rip that shirt off his body, and —
“You’re wearing my jacket,” he said. It was an accusation, like I’d done it on purpose.
None of this was on purpose. It just happened and then I didn’t know what to do.
I looked down at my finger, allowing the blood to well up again before I pressed it against the collar of his shirt. He looked confused until I said, “Now you’re wearing me too.”
“Uh…Jess? What’s going on?”
We both turned. Danielle stood a little ways away, looking between us in utter confusion as her flashlight illuminated us. Manson hurriedly put the knife away, and I hid my bleeding finger behind my back.
“I, um…I was on my way back,” I said.
I looked up at Manson. His expression was shuttered again, the desperation I’d seen on his face completely hidden. I had no idea what to say. Whatever had just happened — that moment of chaos, those brief minutes of losing control — seemed like it could have been only a dream.
But that dream left its mark in blood.
He turned away, giving neither of us any acknowledgment at all before he stalked off, hands shoved inside his pockets. I watched him go until he disappeared beyond the parked cars.
Danielle hurried over to me. “Are you okay? What happened?”
I slipped my hand into my back pocket, pressing the cut against the denim. I had no idea how much she’d seen, and the thought made my stomach clench up with worry. “I’m fine. It was…it was nothing.”
“Girl, that was not nothing. What were you —” She stopped suddenly. “Oh my God, wait. You did hook up with him a few years ago, didn’t you? Holy shit. I thought that was only a rumor.”
“Let’s keep it a rumor,” I said, my voice tight.
Luckily, she nodded hurriedly.
“Oh, yeah, obviously I wouldn’t tell anybody! That would, like…really make a rift in the friend group.” She lowered her voice. “Definitely don’t let Alex find out. You know he has a thing for you.”
I almost groaned. “Yeah. I guessed as much.”
“But I won’t tell him.” She smiled sweetly, looping her arm through mine. “It’s our little secret, babe.”
I crashed at Danielle and Nate’s place that night. She drove me back to pick up my car in the morning, bemoaning that she had to go into the office with a hangover.
She brought up again that she wouldn’t tell anyone about seeing me and Manson in the trees. But instead of being reassured, I felt more like she was holding it over my head.
“I’ll see you at the race next Friday!” she said, waving to me out her window as she drove away.
I was trying to avoid drama, not launch myself straight into the middle of it. Lucas and Alex’s grudge race was bound to go badly, regardless of who won. But I couldn’t deny how curious I was.
Every time I looked down at my hand and saw the scabbed heart cut into my finger, a strange feeling of guilt and anger flooded me. Would it scar? Was that moment in the trees going to be a part of me forever, another tie to bind me to the men I wasn’t supposed to want?
Another mark of my own indecision?
On Thursday, Danielle called to ask if I wanted to get dinner together before the race, insisting it wasn’t an event to miss.
“Alex is going to win, easy,” she said. “And you know he’d love for you to be there.”
I didn’t like the sly tone in her words. I’d told her I wasn’t interested in Alex, but she seemed dead set on pushing for it anyway. First my mom, and now Danielle too? Why the hell couldn’t people keep their noses out of my dating life?
“You, me, and Candace can sit back, relax, and get tipsy while the guys have their dick measuring contest,” she said. I couldn’t really think of a good reason to say no to a night out getting tipsy, so I agreed I would be there.
Candace was another friend from high school I hadn’t seen in a while. She was a little airheaded, but she loved to have a good time.
That was what I needed, a fun night out proving to myself that I could be around Manson and his friends without turning into a flustered fool.
Friday night, I met up with Danielle and Candace for dinner before we headed toward Ellis Road. It ran along the very edge of a town, a long straight road entirely devoid of streetlights with open farmland on either side. Everyone was meeting at the bridge, and there were about a dozen people already there as I pulled up behind Danielle and parked in the dirt.
The trickle of the creek and chirp of crickets filled the air as we walked together to where Alex, Nate, and Matthew were waiting beside the Hellcat.
“Damn, so you decided to come after all,” Alex said as he hugged me. He wore so much cologne that I swear it stuck to me as I pulled away.
“Of course I came,” I said, as if it should have been obvious. “Wouldn’t want to miss seeing what your baby can do, right?”
He gave me a strange look, one I couldn’t quite discern. His competition hadn’t arrived yet, so there was nothing else to do besides drink and wait. Danielle had brought wine coolers for us, and the three of us sat on a guardrail beside the bridge as we sipped.
“I’ve been telling Nate to put in a little tip to his dad that Lucas will be here tonight,” Danielle said, laughing as she watched her fiancé throw his glass bottle off the bridge to shatter on the rocks below. “The cops would jump at the chance to arrest him.”
“For what?” I said, my fingers tapping rabidly on my drink. “Drag racing? Alex would be screwed too.”
Danielle sighed. “Yeah, I think that’s why Nate didn’t go for it.”
“A guy like Lucas will end up in prison eventually anyway,” Candace said. “Runs in the family.”
I was about to ask what she meant, but a distant rumble caught my attention. As the sound grew closer, the crowd fell silent, staring across the bridge in anticipation. Alex leaned against his car, tipping back a beer as he watched the new arrivals.
Lucas’s El Camino sat low to the asphalt, covered in gleaming chrome and midnight black paint. The engine rumbled loudly as he cruised down the road to stop alongside Alex, but when he tapped the gas, the noise roared to an ear-shattering pitch. The familiar blue Subaru behind him parked on the opposite side of the road, and Vincent, Jason, and Manson emerged.
“Don’t you think it’s weird they’re always together?” Candace said. “Like, do they all go on dates together too?” She laughed and so did Danielle, but I couldn’t muster up the amusement.
It was smart of them to stick together. Coming here alone would have been asking for trouble, but so was showing up at all.
I guess trouble didn’t scare them. Manson had told me as much, hadn’t he? If there’s no risk, where’s the fun?
Lucas got out of the driver’s seat, stubbing out a cigarette on the asphalt. It took only a few seconds for his wandering eyes to fall on me. I’d always thought I could give a mean dismissive look, but Lucas proved he was fierce competition in that department. He gave me a once-over, then turned away as if I wasn’t even there.
So much for not getting flustered. I was instantly peeved.
“Gross, here comes Miss Drama,” Danielle muttered. I hadn’t even noticed anyone else arrive, too distracted watching the boys as they gathered on the far side of the El Camino. But I turned my head at Danielle’s announcement and groaned when I saw who was walking up, surrounded by a pack of friends.
Veronica Mills. The girl my ex had cheated on me with. Long dark hair, gorgeous curves, a confident smirk. She was the total hot girl package with an ego to match, and by the way she came strutting through the crowd, I knew nothing much had changed since I’d last seen her.
“Can’t stand her,” Danielle said.
“Total bitch,” Candace confirmed.
“If she and the devil were drowning and I could only save one, I’d walk away,” I said.
“She’s only here to cozy up to her new favorite bad boys,” said Danielle, winking as she looked at me.
Wait…she was here to do what?
That was when I realized where Veronica was heading. Certainly not toward our side of the road, not toward Alex.
She was here for Lucas.
Oh, hell no. Hell fucking no.
