She’s so fucking lucky I would never hit a girl.
“Anastasia is not to be touched, Torsten. If I find out you went anywhere near her, I will destroy you—and you know exactly what I’m capable of. Do not fucking test me.” Her lips mash together, and I know she can hear the truth behind my not-so-veiled threat. Shrieking once in frustration, Hali spins on her stiletto Louboutin heels and stomps from the cafeteria.
Turning to head back to our table, I see Raff off to the side with Anastasia and her friends who are giggling and grinning at him in awe. I shake my head and roll my eyes with a laugh as he laps it up.
Just as I’m about to sit back down to finish eating, my name rings out over the PA system, along with a request to present myself in the Headmistress’ office. The five of us at the table look at each other, surprise on all of our faces.
What the hell is going on now?
Giving up on the rest of my food with a sigh, I dump it in one of the composting bins set up at the back of the room and turn to leave. Payne falls in beside me, with Heller, Roxy, and Aylie bringing up the rear. As we reach the cafeteria entrance, Raff appears on my other side. The six of us move as a unit to the lavish main office at the front of the school, and the voice I hear as we approach fills me with nervous curiosity.
“Dad?”
“Poe. I’m sorry to show up out of the blue like this.” Taking in the protective and concerned faces around me, he chuckles. “Stand down, guys. I’m not here bearing bad news.” He offers smiles all around. “Son, I need you to grab your stuff and meet me at home. I’ve already signed you out. You too, Payne. I’ve spoken to your father, and he okayed it with the school.”
His words are met with a surprised silence, and I can feel Payne startle at being included.
“Give us five minutes, and we’ll be on our way,” I answer. When Holt Halliday makes a request, people don’t say no. My father has earned the respect of all of the Founding Families and the Heirs.
Nodding at the group of us, he strides off toward the visitor parking lot, Payne and I watching with twin confused expressions until the exit door closes behind him. Swinging into action, Heller and Raff promise to watch out for Roxy and Aylie, and the four of them head off to their next classes after we reassure them that, whatever this is, it’ll be okay. We grab our keys and phones from our lockers and head to the student lot.
“So, uh, should I be worried?” Payne asks with a small grimace as he shoulders the heavy door open.
“Fuck if I know. He cleared you leaving school with your dad though, so I’m pretty sure he’s not about to disappear you or anything.” Giving him a laugh, I punch him jokingly in the shoulder. Payne slides into his silver McLaren 540C, I slip behind the wheel of my black Vantage AMR, and we both peel out of the lot.
As soon as we pull up to the front of my house, my curiosity kicks in full force. Hendrick, my father’s valet, is standing at the entryway. A small bag is in each of his hands, and a third rests at his feet. Climbing out of our cars, we saunter toward the house.
“What the hell? Luggage?” I ask nobody in particular.
“Dude. One of those bags is mine.” Payne points toward the one sitting on the ground in front of Hendrick. “I stuck that Dinosaur Pile-Up sticker on the side of it after we saw them in LA last year. You know how much I hate figuring out which black bag is my black bag at the baggage claim. It’s like trying to find a needle in a stack of needles.”
“Sometimes you’re such a girl, Emerson. Hey, if he does disappear you, maybe we can use your little band sticker to find you,” I joke. He punches me in the shoulder, obviously not appreciating my humor.
Just then, my father walks out the front door, and after speaking briefly with his valet, sees the two of us standing in the driveway and heads in our direction.
“We going somewhere, Dad?” I ask, my chest tight in anticipation of his answer.
“We are. This has gone on long enough now. Cecily wants Stella back at Tweedvale, where she belongs. You two are drinking the town out of beer with them gone. And I have my own reasons for wanting Stella back in Folkestone.” At my father’s words, Payne’s eyes narrow slightly, and I hold my breath. “Let’s go see if we can convince the ladies to come back. The jet is waiting for us. We leave in an hour.”
The relief I feel in the depths of my soul is raunchily, but accurately, reflected in Payne’s loud and exuberant ‘fuck yeah!’. My father chuckles as he reaches out and claps my best friend solidly on the back.
“Wait. What?” I shake my head in confusion. “You know where they are?”
“Cecily and I have known since the night they left. We wanted to give them some space and hoped they would’ve come home on their own by now.” My father rubs his hand over his face and sighs tiredly. “Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened, and the best place for them is here with us, with their family.”
“So, where are they? Where are we going?” Payne asks with a happy, shit-eating grin.
“Well, you’ve both always wanted to see New York.”
Chapter Two
The nightmares have gotten almost unbearable. The echoes of that last night in Folkestone have become tangled with all of the other monsters under my bed, and I’m lucky if I get three hours of sleep at a time now. I’ve always had issues sleeping through the night, but staying at my aunt’s seemed to help keep the darkest of my shadows at bay. Until everything went to shit, I was starting to sleep like a normal person for once in my life. Most nights now, I end up on the couch, flipping through social media, or just staring into space listening to music.
“Another one?” My best friend walks across the tiny living room, stretching her tanned arms above her halo of mussed silvery blond hair and yawning widely. “What are we going to do with you?” Dropping onto the worn and sagging tan couch beside me, she crosses her legs up over the threadbare cushions on the back and rests her head in my lap.
Staring up at me like she is, the concern shining from her tawny hazel eyes is unnerving, and I can’t hold her gaze. Looking away quickly, I hit pause on ‘Lay’ by The Blue Stones and attempt to keep her from reading the smudges shading the hollows beneath my eyes for what they are.
Horror.
Sorrow.
Rage.
Let her think they’re just from exhaustion. It’s easier that way. Cleaner.
“Nah. I just couldn’t sleep. No big deal.” The lies fall from my lips like ashes, and the words are flat even to my ears. It’s like everything that happened that night stripped the inflection from my voice and bled the color from my soul. No matter what I do, I can’t seem to get back to myself. Yeah, I was royally fucked up and dragging around some pretty intense anxiety-flavored baggage before I went to Folkestone, but at least I was me.
This cold version of myself that seems to have taken over in the name of self-preservation prefers to keep happiness and joy locked up tight. The last time I remember the taste of laughter in my mouth was the night on the boat that stitched bits of my heart permanently to Poe’s. The same night toxic secrets oozed out of a psychotic and twisted sneer, poisoning everything around me.
Something cold and dank and blacker than anything I’ve ever known settled in my bones while standing in that room listening to that thing tell the story of what he did. And try as she might, all of my friend’s natural light and warmth hasn’t been able to so much as pierce it in the two weeks we’ve been back here in small-town upstate New York.
Sighing in frustration and resignation, Sunday swings her legs down and sits up, perching on the edge of the couch like an exotic bird. An angel amid the desperation permeating my small studio apartment.
“You need sleep, Stell. It’s three o’clock in the morning. C’mon.” Grabbing my wrist firmly, she gets to her feet and waits for me to follow suit. Knowing she’ll just stand there and glare at me until I give in, I unfold my legs from beneath me. Ignoring the pins and needles in my feet, I let her tug me over to the familiar swaybacked bed. With
a gentle push on my shoulders, she forces me onto the mattress, and I curl on my left side, slipping my cold hands under the lumpy pillow. Sunday clucks her tongue like a mother hen and tucks the thin blanket around me.
Switching off the small lamp that stands guard on the wobbly nightstand, she moves by the glow of the streetlights outside to the other side of the bed. The bedframe shakes and then settles as she climbs in beside me and presses her back to mine in a show of silent comfort.
Long after she’s asleep, I lie awake, unmoving, haunted by secrets and possibilities, and the words of a man too evil to be real. Except he was real. It all was. A tear traces it’s lazy, crooked path from the corner of my eye across the bridge of my nose and down my cheek. I feel it dry in a salty streak before it can drip on to the white pillowcase cradling my weary head.
No tears, Bradleigh. If that dam breaks, we’ll all drown in the sea of my shattered heart, and I won’t give that vile man the satisfaction.
My eyes finally close, and I drift off into a fragmented half-sleep. In my dreams, a beautiful tattooed boy waits on the other side of a chasm that grows wider by the day, its depths full of razor-sharp words and shards of broken hope.
“Ow! Shit! Fuck! Shitfuck!” The expletives firing from the tiny bathroom can only mean one thing. My ass sits cross-legged in the center of my bed, sinking into the small permanent dip in the mattress as I sip what passes for my coffee and wait patiently.
“Seriously, Stell. That bathroom is a hazard. Who the hell crams all that shit into a room that small?” Sunday emerges wrapped in a towel that’s seen better days, her long hair dripping on the carpet as she hops on one foot and holds the other in her hands.
She has a shower every day, and every day she misjudges how close the toilet is to the edge of the tub. When she gets out, she ends up kicking the side of the dingey white porcelain toilet. Hard. Putting her foot down, she gingerly hobbles over to the bed and presents her freshly bashed toes for my inspection. I make a show of leaning over and getting a good look at them, hemming and hawing, then sit back to deliver my diagnosis with the most serious face I can muster.
“Miss Easton, I’m sorry, but it seems we have only one option here. We’ll have to amputate at the neck.” I hide a half-smile in my coffee mug. Huffing with mock indignation and trying not to laugh, she throws herself down on the bed beside me.
“Oh, thank God. It’s about time you made the morning coffee.” She grabs the mug from my hand before I can stop her, taking a big mouthful and abruptly spitting it back into the cup while making choking noises.
“That is not coffee. That is battery acid.” Grimacing, she holds the now spitty coffee mug back out to me. “Seriously, that is the worst thing I have ever tasted, and I’ve eaten my mother’s cooking. How do you still have taste buds?” Using the edge of her towel, she scrubs her tongue comically.
“It’s caffeine,” I shrug dismissively. “I’ve never been very good at making coffee for some reason.” Standing up, I take the mug from her outstretched hand and head to the scratched stainless-steel kitchen sink to dump the offending liquid. Before I can pour a fresh one for myself, Sunday’s pouting face is beside me at the counter, and I heave out a dramatic sigh, knowing what she’s after. “You want to go to The Juneberry.”
“Can we? Pleeeease?” She flutters her eyelashes at me, all innocent-like. “Sally makes the best French toast and the coffee there won’t strip paint or traumatize me for life.”
“Sunday Grace, you are what we call ‘high maintenance’ around here,” I tease. Knowing she’s won, she pumps her fist before whipping off her towel and throwing it over my face as she beelines for the bathroom stark naked. “For the record, you are by far the weirdest friend I’ve ever had,” I yell. Balling up the still wet towel, I toss it into the cracked plastic laundry basket on my way to the closet.
“I am the best friend you’ve ever had!” she fires back, with a mouth full of her toothbrush by the sounds of it.
She’s not wrong on that.
Focusing on the closet in front of me, my shoulders sag. When we left Folkestone, I haphazardly threw clothes and toiletries into my bags, leaving random things back in the closet at Tweedvale. Faced with my mismatched options here, I find a pair of mildly ripped skinny jeans and tug them on. Pawing through a small pile of sweaters and tops, I decide on an oversized black sweatshirt with the neck cut out, so it slides down and hangs comfortably off one shoulder. After I finish changing, we trade spots so she can find something to wear, and I can brush my teeth in peace.
Jesus. Sunday’s right—I do need sleep.
Taking a harder look at myself than I have since we landed in New York, I can see how pale my skin has become and that my cheekbones are a little more prominent than they were a few weeks ago. More than anything though, my eyes are what startle me. Violet-blue pools reflecting a sorrow so deep I can’t see the bottom anymore. Choosing to ignore that for now, I give my cheeks a few quick pinches to get some circulation going. I’m gliding on a little cherry-red lip gloss when a groan rises from the living room.
“Oh my God, I’m starrrrrrrrving.”
Running my hands quickly through my dark hair, I suck in a deep breath and go to check on my breakfast-deprived friend. I roll my eyes and shake my head as I take in Sunday draped over the couch. Her eyes are squinched shut, with the back of one hand pressed dramatically to her forehead and the other dangling to the floor.
“Good lord, woman. Have you suddenly got a case of the vapors or something?” I ask, the corners of my mouth lifting slightly. She cracks one eyelid open and peers suspiciously at me.
“I don’t know what that is, but if it means we finally get to go and feed me, then yes, that’s exactly what I have,” she says.
“Come on, weirdo. Let’s go eat before you waste away to nothing.”
We take the back way to the diner so I can stop and check on Mr. Ambrose, and he can flirt shamelessly with Sunday. While I was away, Sally made sure to take the kind old man something for lunch every day, so I know he was getting at least one regular meal. Still, he looks a little slower and a little thinner to me now.
Watching him with my best friend, I marvel at their easy banter and the care she shows toward him. Care that I’ve never seen directed his way by anybody other than myself and Sally. I tried my damndest for a full year to convince him to let me buy him new shoes, but he always refused. Five minutes after meeting Sunday, he agreed to go to Goodwill with her and let her buy him a whole new outfit and a backpack. She has an innate ability to make people instantly comfortable, and sometimes, even charm them into doing things they might not normally do.
Was she ever a sight in the middle of the thrift store. I’ve never seen anybody have so much fun in what can be kind of a sad place. By the end of the shopping trip, every person there was half in love with her, including Mr. Ambrose, who has been shamelessly flirting with her since.
We finally make it in the diner's back door only after Sunday solemnly agrees to consider the old man’s tongue-in-cheek marriage proposal. Halfway across the kitchen, the swinging door to the dining room flies open, smacking into the wall behind it and making us jump while presenting a flushed and flustered Sally in front of us.
“Girls! Hi!” She smiles so widely I can count nearly every tooth in her mouth, and I immediately know something’s up. Fanning herself with the bottom of her apron, she just stands there silently, continuing to smile and fan and block our way.
“Uh, hi? What’s with you, Sal? You look like a fifteen-year-old who just stole the keys to her daddy’s liquor cabinet.” Her face turns a deeper shade of pink, and she swats at me playfully.
“You two have visitors, and if they aren’t the best looking dudes I’ve ever see—” The rest of her sentence is lost to me as my stomach takes a nosedive and lands somewhere near the bottoms of my feet. I see her mouth moving but don’t hear a single word.
They’re here.
They came.
HE came.<
br />
My body is getting its wires crossed and flipping between gleeful excitement, the pants-shitting anxiety I love so fucking much, and straight-up anger. Sunday looks at me with concern and grabs my hand when I start to wobble, instantly turning Sally’s freak out dial to thirteen.
“Shit! It’s them, isn’t it? Should I tell them to leave? I own the damn place, so you know I can kick ‘em out if you want me to. I don’t care how hot they are.” Sally pushes her sleeves further up her arms in preparation to throw down, but before she can ask us to hold her earrings, Sunday pats her on the arm with a reassuring smile.
“You hold on there, Killer. It’s okay. Our girl here is just having a moment. Right, Stell?” Squeezing my hand tightly, my best friend in the world looks me in the eyes, seeking some kind of confirmation. Finally, she nods once and gently pushes past Sally, leading the way into the dining room and tugging me along behind her.
The place is empty except for the two figures seated in a red vinyl booth in the corner; one young, one older.
That’s not right. There shouldn’t be an older one.
I didn’t think it was possible, but at the realization, my stomach sinks even further, and there is a pretty solid chance I’m going to throw up on my shoes. Sunday has the opposite reaction. As Payne unfolds his six-foot frame from behind the table and stands to greet us, she drops my hand and launches herself at him, jumping up and wrapping her arms and legs around him like a baby koala. His blush is endearing, and his grin is massive as he hugs her back tightly.
“Better watch it, Sunday. Payne here might start to think you missed him or something.” At the teasing older voice, she giggles and jumps down.
“Yeah, like I’d miss a brother, right, Payne?” She leans into his side briefly, seemingly oblivious to his megawatt grin losing more than a few degrees of cheerfulness at her words. Turning to the only other occupant of the booth, she steps forward and holds out her hand politely. “How are you, Mr. Halliday?”
Fractured Things (Folkestone Sins Book 2) Page 2
