“I’ve got the hint. I’m a big girl. You made a mistake. Clearly I made one too. So let’s forget about it and focus on what’s really important.” I hated saying that. I didn’t want to forget about it. I wanted to do it all over again but this time with even less clothes on and with about eight inches less space between us judging by the hard on he’d pressed against me. But I could see he was freaking out and I wasn’t going to push him on this. If he didn’t want to go there again, then fine. I could handle that. I’d handled far worse at this point.
“So?” I pushed and his eyes dipped to my mouth. My heart beat harder as his gaze lingered there, the desire in his dark blue eyes burning right into me.
“Back up,” he breathed, like he didn’t know what he might do if I remained there a moment longer. I wasn’t sure either, but I wanted to know.
I swallowed to try and dislodge the lump in my throat, but it only swelled. I was tempted by him in the most excruciating way. This off limits thing was getting old. Especially now we’d crossed that line. Couldn’t we just…cross it again?
Dammit, Tatum. No.
“Just text me when you’re ready to move on from this. I know you can’t risk your position here and jeopardise everything you’ve worked for. And I don’t want you to,” I whispered, claws gripping my heart as I accepted the weight of those words. We were doomed to fail before we’d even begun. Lusting for him had to stop. It was just so damn hard sometimes. It wasn’t even that he looked like a Viking warrior with muscles which made me pant and eyes that looked directly into my soul. It was that he’d become a true companion to me, someone I could rely on in my darkest moments. I didn’t want to lose that for anything. But I couldn’t deny how attractive that made him to me too.
He said nothing in response and my hope started to fracture. As hard as it was for me, I let my guard down and gave him the only thing I had left. My truth. “Please don’t leave me to face them alone.” I dropped my gaze to my feet, my heart squeezing like a fist in my chest. “I need you.”
“Tatum…” he sighed and I glanced up at him, finding an intensity in his eyes that cut through flesh and bone. “You’re not alone.”
Tears pinched my eyes as I held onto those words, needing them to be true. He said nothing more and neither did I. I hung in that parting moment between us for far too long, the energy crackling through the air making my skin tingle and my pulse race so fast I was about to lose my mind. Then I turned away and headed from the hall, my heart bloody and raw in my chest as I walked into the girls’ locker room and started stripping off for a shower.
I realised my crush on Monroe had grown roots that spread so far inside me that pulling them out would leave gaping wounds in the deepest recesses of my being. But I had to let him go. For his sake. For mine. We weren’t meant to be together as a couple. We were meant to fight this war side by side against the Night Keepers as warriors. And that’s how it had to stay.
“Did he whoop your ass?” Mila taunted as we dressed after our showers. “Spank it red?” She laughed and I summoned a breath of laughter, but my heart weighed too heavy to allow any more than that. “Oh shit, did he go full savage?”
“Yeah, he ripped some vital organs out and stomped on them,” I said through a vague smile.
We headed outside and said our goodbyes. It was the end of the school day and I envied Mila as she headed off with the football crowd, their light-hearted chatter calling back to me and making me crave the normalcy of their lives.
I sighed, walking back towards The Temple in the shade of the huge pines flanking the path. The lake lapped gently against the shore nearby and birds chirped and chattered in the trees. There weren’t many students heading this way as it was the opposite side of the lake to the accommodation. I sank into the quiet, wondering what it would have been like to live out my time here at Everlake without a pandemic, or the world hating me for it. Maybe I could have been happy.
***
I lay in an armchair, gazing up at the ceiling while pining for Monroe. I’d done all of my chores and was completely up to date on my assignments, which was a pity because I really needed something to distract me right now. The guys were all watching a football game which had been allowed to go on behind closed doors in one of the stadiums. Blake, Saint and Kyan were whooping and cheering as they sank beers until there was a whole pile of bottles stacked on the table. Every time their team scored a touchdown, they went crazy, dog piling on each other and throwing celebratory punches into each other’s sides. I might have found it amusing if they weren’t a bunch of dickwads. And I would have watched if it was the Redwood Rattlesnakes playing, but I was too zoned out tonight to even remember which teams were facing off.
As ten pm ticked around, I wondered if I could sneak off to Saint’s room early to have some alone time. My library hours hadn’t cut it today. Especially as the Unspeakables hadn’t made any progress and were refusing to let me call them by their real names again. Saint had been pulling rank on them this week and they were scared out of their minds. I didn’t see how I was ever going to make an army out of them. Especially after Saint had gotten Blake to string Bait up in a tree in front of them and blindfolded Kyan who’d then beaten him with a stick like he was a pinata which released screams instead of candy. Saint had warned the Unspeakables that they’d end up just like Bait if they didn’t behave. He’d held onto me, making me watch the whole show while my gut churned and I started to really pity Bait. And now my army were quaking in their boots again, I didn’t see how I was ever going to end the Night Keepers’ reign of terror.
I slipped out of my chair, looking to Saint as the others were too engrossed in the game to notice I was up. “I’m gonna have a shower then go to bed. I have a headache.”
He considered that for a moment then nodded and I breathed a sigh of relief as I hurried upstairs, walking into the bathroom and shutting the door behind me.
I showered, trying to scrub away the disquiet in my chest, but it wouldn’t budge. I felt alone today. I missed Jess and Dad with all my heart, wishing I could just slip away into one of my memories and disappear. I knew exactly which one I’d pick. The time Dad had rented a cabin on a beach in Georgia and we’d had a BBQ in the sand every night. We’d stayed there for a whole month; it was the most beautiful place I’d ever been. The water used to come right up to the front door when the tide was in and I used to sit on the porch with Jess and we’d dip our toes into the foamy tide. It was a bay so the waves never got too rough and we’d spend hours building sand castles and surfing during the day.
I missed the sea. The way the air was so fresh you could taste it in the depths of your lungs, the cry of gulls in the morning and the utter peace of waking to the sound of waves lapping outside your door.
I finally left the warmth of the shower behind, wrapping myself in a towel. My phone started ringing and I frowned as I grabbed it from my blazer pocket, surprised when I found an unknown number calling.
I considered not answering but then a terrifying, thrilling, heart-pounding possibility entered my mind and a breath got trapped in my lungs.
I lifted it to my ear and answered it as hope made me unable to move. “Hello?”
“Hey, kiddo,” Dad said heavily and I dropped to my knees on the tiles, his voice wrapping around me like a balm and drawing a heavy sob from my chest.
“Dad?” I choked out, needing him to confirm it just so I knew I wasn’t losing my mind.
“It’s me, baby girl. How are you?”
How am I? How am I?? How could I answer that? I was distraught, lost, abandoned. I’d been waiting for this call for so long and now it was here and I didn’t know what to say.
“Where are you?” I demanded, ignoring his question. “Are you safe? Please tell me they haven’t caught you.” The fear of that thought bound my limbs and made it hard to breathe.
“No one’s caught me. Look Tatum, I need you to listen real closely.”
“Okay,” I whispered, my heart beatin
g a mile a minute.
“I’m so sorry I left you behind, I didn’t know this was going to happen. I had to lay low for a while.”
I nodded though he couldn’t see it, tears streaming down my cheeks as I waited for him to go on and explain everything. I had so many questions, but there was an anxious undercurrent to his voice that I knew all too well. I had to stay quiet and hear what he had to say.
“I don’t want you to be scared, okay? I’ve been working with the Hades Virus for years. You’re immune, Tatty. You hear me? I gave you a vaccine, do you remember the week we lost Jess?” His voice cracked and another sob racked through my chest as I tried to absorb everything at once.
“Yes, I…I think I remember, but how can I be immune? There isn’t a vaccine. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“There was meant to be a vaccine. It was tested, I just didn’t realise it wasn’t ready. I…I’m so sorry. I thought it was ready, Tatum, do you hear me? But Jess…the virus attacked her body, she wasn’t supposed to get sick...”
A shaky breath staggered from my lungs as I realised what he was saying. “That’s why she died?”
“Yes,” he croaked, his grief clear and it unravelled me, making me fall apart. “But you didn’t…it worked for you. That scar on your arm, that’s what it’s from. I never wanted to remind you because after we loss Jess, oh sweetheart you were so broken and I just…I-”
“Dad, where are you?” I begged, cutting him off as more tears washed over my skin. “It’s hell here. Why did you leave me?”
“I’m sorry, I had to protect you. But we’ll be together soon. I can’t talk much longer, they’ll trace this call.”
“Who will?” I begged, clutching the phone so tight it was bruising my palm.
“I can’t say any more. I have to go. But do you remember the place with the fairies? Remember where you loved to catch them?”
“Y-yes,” I stuttered. “That’s where you are?”
“Not yet, can you make it there next month on the day we always went camping? You need to come alone. Can you do that for me, kiddo?”
I took a shaky breath, wondering how I would manage it, but I would. I just had to. “Yes, I’ll be there.”
“I can’t wait to see you.”
“You too,” I breathed. “But wait, just please tell me. Did you do it? Is what they’re saying about you true?”
“I have to go sweetie, I love you. I’ll explain everything soon. Don’t tell anyone that you’re immune.”
“Wait-” I gasped but he hung up, the words I love you too sticking in my throat. I placed the phone down on the floor, resting my hands on the tiles as I came apart. This virus had killed Jess. Dad had been responsible, even if he hadn’t meant it. And was I really immune? I ran my fingers over the rose-shaped scar on my arm, my throat constricting like a python was wrapped around it. The memory was a blur, distorted by the loss of Jess not long after. But I could almost remember the needle if I really focused…
My head started to throb.
It was too much. I couldn’t process it all at once. I longed for my dad’s embrace; I needed him to tell me this would all be okay. To explain all of this until it made sense. But he was gone. And reaching him was going to be hard, but not impossible. I could do it. I would find a way.
I rested my head against my hands, falling apart completely as I tried to understand everything he’d said. Jess, oh Jess…
The truth was crushing, debilitating. I came apart at the seams, crying as I mourned the loss of my sister all over again. This news was too much to bear on top of everything else that had happened. Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, then this. This crippling knowledge that my sister had died because of that virus. Because my father had tried to protect her and failed.
I curled in on myself, shaking and crying as the world fell away and I was lost to a sea of grief. I didn’t know how long I lay there, only that I was sinking deeper and deeper into a pit of despair that I didn’t think I’d ever surface from.
Hands were suddenly on me and I blinked up at Saint through a haze of tears. My heart jolted and I tried to push him away, but he pulled me closer. He surveyed me with fear and confusion in his eyes like he was out of his depth, swimming upriver in a deluge.
I pushed him away again, curling in on myself, but he wouldn’t leave. My towel started slipping, but I didn’t care to grab hold of it and as I looked up to tell Saint to go away, he pulled his long-sleeved button down off and pushed it over my head. Gently, he guided my arms into the sleeves, pushing it down to fall over my thighs as he pulled the towel away.
I gazed at him in surprise as he knelt before me, looking through strands of hair which had fallen over my face.
“You should go,” I said, my voice hoarse.
A moment of silence hung between us where he didn’t leave then I lunged toward him, wrapping my arms around his neck, desperate for the comfort, even if he wasn’t the right place to seek it. I just didn’t know what else to do and he was the only one here right now. There was no one else to turn to. He stiffened in surprise then his arms slowly closed around me and he held me as I sobbed, his hand starting to move up and down my back in soothing strokes.
“I can…get one of the others,” he said, his voice tight.
“No, don’t leave,” I begged, burying my face into his neck. His cool skin felt like a dream against my burning flesh. I just needed to stay here in his arms. It was making my racing heart begin to slow and I didn’t know why I kept clinging to him, but I couldn’t stop.
He gently scooped me into his arms and cradled me to his chest. I didn’t have the energy to struggle as he strode out of the bathroom, walking straight across his bedroom and striding into his closet.
He kicked the door shut and carried me to the far end of it, lowering to sit down in front of the mirror and laying me across his lap.
He hooked a metal box off of the lowest shelf, resting it against my bare knees and I gasped at the cold bite of it, managing to stop crying long enough to look at it.
“What’s that?” I croaked.
He pushed my hair out of my face, his mouth turned down at the corners and his eyes scrunched. He looked so out of his comfort zone, he might as well have been a bird in a bees’ nest.
He tapped a code onto the keypad on the box, flipping it open and I stopped breathing. Stopped blinking.
There, inside it were my letters to Jess and the worn edges of those she’d sent me in return.
“What?” I breathed in complete confusion. They couldn’t be there. I’d seen them burn, char, turn to ash.
“I forged the ones I burned,” Saint muttered, those words making a wave crash against my heart. “When we first brought you here, I found them in your bag. I borrowed them one at a time and made replicas.”
“Why?” My lower lip quivered, my heart thrashing as I reached into the box with trembling fingers, taking out the most precious things in the world to me. The letters I’d seen burn, lost forever. I gently thumbed through them, confirming they were mine. They were all mine. Pieces of me and my sister tangled up together in words. Parts of my heart which had been cast to the flames the same day I’d watched him destroy them. Or so I’d thought.
His hand rested on my knee, curling gently against my flesh and I turned to him in complete shock. There were no words, not a single one in the English dictionary that could encompass how this made me feel.
“I always planned to hurt you with them,” he said in a dark voice, his eyes dancing with shadows. “But I never would have truly destroyed them.”
Tears tracked silently down my cheeks and I didn’t know whether I was happy or sad, whole or broken. Saint lifted a hand to brush my tears away, observing me with what I could almost have mistaken for pain in his eyes.
I fell against him, wrapping my arms around him and squeezing tight. This changed something between us, something vital. But I didn’t want to face what that was. He’d still wanted to hurt me, still let
me believe my letters were gone. But he hadn’t really done it. What did that mean? What did that make him?
My tears washed over his bare chest, running across his dark skin in tiny rivers. He never pushed me away or gave any signs he was disgusted by my display even though that was exactly what I would have expected from him.
I leaned back again and cupped his cheek, making him look at me so I could study every inch of his handsome, too-perfect face, and I realised I didn’t know much about him at all. And as cruel and as black hearted as he was, there must have been something good lurking inside him for him to save those letters. For him to spend all that time forging them to hurt me, but not nearly as deeply as he could have hurt me by taking them away eternally.
“You always intended to give them back?” I asked in a whisper and he inhaled my breath like it was a drug in the air.
“I honestly…don’t know,” he said earnestly, unblinking as he absorbed the sight of my tears. He should have been bottling them in a jar, adding them to his collection of the broken pieces of my soul he kept. But instead he continued to wipe them away like he was willing them to stop. Like he took no pleasure in watching them fall.
I leaned in close, kissing the corner of his mouth as I found myself unsure of where to plant it. His cheek or his lips. So apparently I decided on somewhere between the two. His eyes blazed, his muscles hardening beneath my touch like he was restraining himself from pulling me in for a different kind of kiss. One that would change my entire world.
I released a breath, breaking his gaze, sure I wasn’t in any state of mind to make a reckless decision like that. Then I curled up against him and he held me tight, his thumb tracking up and down my spine in an endlessly fluid motion that made me want to sleep. After a minute or two, he started humming a song I knew. Baby Mine, a lullaby my dad had sung to me and Jess when we were kids. It was the most soothing song in the world to me and somehow Saint knew it too.
Kings of Lockdown: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep Book 2) Page 34
