Are you happy now? That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
Being honest can’t hurt in this scenario, so I let some of that raw anger flow through me.
You’ve turned me into a cheater. Like father, like daughter, I guess.
The words fly off the tips of my fingers before I can rethink the strategy in actively insulting the man who holds Parrish’s life in his hands. Fortunately, it seems to work well enough.
Has your mother mentioned what happened between us? he asks, and then in comes a request for a video chat.
Fuck.
No!
“Pull over!” I snap, and Chasm startles a bit, jerking the wheel a little as he overcorrects, and then steers us to the side of the road. My seatbelt is off and I’m scrambling for the driver’s side door as Chasm moves out of the way to let me out. “Keep Kimber occupied,” I whisper, stumbling away from the car and answering the call.
Parrish is sitting on the edge of the bed, a bottle of wine in one hand. I’m not sure how he got the cork out, but he lifts it to his lips and swigs some of it as I watch. He seems marginally better today, but it’s impossible to miss the mess that his chest has become. It’s a bloody swath of scars, some of them oozing, some of them dark with scabs.
His beautiful brown eyes are dull and glassy, and the wine bottle seems to weigh about a million pounds as he lifts it to his lush, full lips. As if he can sense me watching him, Parrish lifts his gaze up to the camera. My breath catches and my eyes shimmer with unshed tears.
I betrayed him in the worst possible way today.
I’ve become one of the things I hate the most in the world: a cheater.
With that slow, lazy indolence that I’ve come to love and expect, Parrish lifts a single tattooed hand and flips off the camera.
“Go fuck yourself, you stupid, cowardly prick,” he growls out, throwing the wine bottle at the wall so hard that it shatters. Parrish turns around and crawls back into the bed, yanking the covers over his head to obscure himself from view.
The call ends, and I’m left sitting there on the side of the road, staring at a dark screen.
Chasm comes over after a few minutes to check on me.
“She isn’t an easy one to fool, I’ll give her that,” he offers, crouching down beside me. “Were you able to … did it work?”
Did it work? That’s what it is now, an ‘it’, an experiment. That’s what it has to be, in order for either of us to keep feeling human. We can’t admit that we had a hot fuck, and that we both loved it, and that I’m wondering what it wouldn’t be like to fall asleep in the warm circle of Chasm’s arms.
“You’re lucky,” I whisper, using the passing traffic as cover for our conversation. The very last thing in the world I need to do is piss Kimber off today. She’s vicious on her best days. On her worst? I don’t even want to know. “You might not need to have sex with me ever again.”
Chasm doesn’t respond to that, and I rush to fill the silence, just to make sure that he doesn’t get the opportunity.
“Parrish looks much better. He was up and moving around, drinking a bottle of wine.” I almost smile at that, but the expression just slides right off. “He even flipped the camera off and threw the bottle against the wall.”
Chas lets out a sharp exhale and groans in relief. The sound is far too similar to the ones he made with me in the maze, and I shift uncomfortably.
“Thank fuck,” he murmurs, rising to his feet and helping me up again. This time, he doesn’t yank quite so hard on my hand, and I don’t end up falling into his chest. Still, his hand lingers on mine until I very carefully draw it back, cradling it against my chest. Chas frowns at me, looking me over for a moment. “Are you sure you’re okay?” He hesitates briefly, looking back at the car to make sure that Kimber’s still occupied with her phone before turning back to me. “Because you seem … off.”
I give him a look.
“I cheated on Parrish today, Chas. I … He’s sitting in a fucking torture chamber waiting to be rescued, and I screwed his best friend.”
Chas’ nostrils flare and a muscle in his jaw ticks with anger. I notice him clenching and unclenching his hands by his sides. His eyes take me in with an entirely different glint than before.
“Is that really it?” he asks as I gape at him.
“What do you mean is that really it? It’s everything, Chasm. You said it yourself: it’s beyond fucked-up.”
He exhales, making his yellow and black hair flutter a bit against his forehead.
“I get that. I do. But what else were we going to do? Let Parrish die for propriety’s sake?” Chasm takes a step closer to me, but I don’t have anywhere to back up seeing as I’m not at all interested in stepping into traffic and getting hit by a car. “I’d rather he were alive and heartbroken than sliced up and dumped in a field.”
I cringe a little at that. I know Chasm’s right. I do. We did what needed to be done. That isn’t the part that I’m upset about.
I decide to tell him that.
“Did we have any other valid option? No. But I …” I start, pausing and jogging back over to the car. I lean into the backseat, stuffing my phone into the pocket of my book bag. Kimber gives me an odd look, but I haven’t exactly decided how to explain this whole thing just yet.
I move back over to Chasm, grabbing his hand and drawing him away from the road and closer to the fence that lines a green field to my right.
“We didn’t bring any phones with us to the maze,” I explain, and he blinks at me. The thing is, he’s just as smart as I am. Smarter, actually. Our minds work a little differently sometimes, but in general, he’s the cleverer of the two of us. He’ll see where I’m going with this. “Oh, and also … we forgot the heart pin on my bag, the one that’s a camera.”
He stands there for a second, putting the pieces together.
“How did you figure that one out?” he starts, and I sigh, reaching up to rub at my face. We should really get going. Like I said, Tess is furious about me being late to fifth period. Speaking of periods, I told her that I started mine and bled everywhere and that’s why I was tardy. She seemed to accept that readily enough, but she’s not happy with me.
I give Chasm a quick rundown of my ideas on the heart pin and why I believe what I do about it. He listens carefully, and then clenches his jaw in understanding.
“We didn’t give the Slayer proof that we followed his instructions,” Chasm offers, and then he sighs heavily. “How did you convince him otherwise?”
“I played dumb,” I explain, shrugging my shoulders and then slipping my hands into the pockets of my blazer, as if this moment isn’t one of the most significant ones of my entire life. “I basically asked him if he enjoyed turning me into a cheater.” I look down at the toes of my shiny dress shoes. “He bought it.” Keeping my attention on the ground, I do my best to explain myself to Chasm. He deserves to understand the situation from my point of view. “I’m glad it worked, but if we were really doing that just for Parrish, I should’ve been more aware of the situation. Instead, I let myself get lost in you.”
Chasm says nothing. In fact, he goes completely still; I think he might even be holding his breath.
When he finally does release it, there’s an agony in the sound that I didn’t quite expect.
I force my eyes up to meet his gaze.
“Parrish is … he’s a good person,” Chasm explains, putting his own hands in his blazer pockets and mimicking my pose. “It makes sense that you chose him. I just can’t help wanting what I want, Dakota. I don’t even give a shit that I’m second place. Somehow, that doesn’t matter.”
I shake my head violently, because I can’t allow him to believe that, not for a single second.
“He was the person I met first, that’s the only difference, the only thing standing between him and you. I care about you both the same. I realized that even before I slept with him.”
Chasm closes his eyes and lets his head fall back. My eyes are drawn to th
e strong column of his throat, the lip piercings on either side of his full mouth, and his hair as it catches the sunlight and glimmers blue-black. My entire chest feels tight; it hurts.
“We might be following orders, but I like it too much. That’s the problem. Not you. Not what we did. Just … Parrish.”
He drops his chin back down and opens his eyes to look at me.
“If you keep talking to me like that, Dakota Banks, I’m going to forget that this is all for show.”
Chasm takes off for his car, and I follow along.
“What the hell was that all about?” Kimber asks as I climb in, and Chasm readjusts his seat.
“It was Lumen,” I say, and then I leave it at that. Kimber knows that I had my ass kicked. Every student in Whitehall knows. That seems to satisfy her enough to get her to leave me alone.
I check my phone again, and then stare out the window, my mind straying back to Parrish.
I promised I’d do anything to save him. At this point, I’ve gone too far to turn back now.
I’ll keep forging ahead until he’s here, and he’s holding me, and then I can tell him everything that happened.
Hopefully, he can find it in his heart to forgive us.
In a strange twist of fate, I actually do start my period in the car on the way back. By the time I climb out of Chasm’s backseat, I really am bleeding down my legs.
Chas pauses, cocking his head to the side and staring at me.
“This has nothing to do with …” he whispers, trailing off. I give him a very dark sort of look.
“Coincidence.”
At the very least, when I walk inside and Tess appears to confront me, she looks down at the redness on my pale legs and blushes profusely.
“Oh goodness,” she breathes, and then her eyes flick to Chasm. He keeps his gaze steadfastly focused on anything but me. “You should get upstairs and clean up.” Tess gives a soft smile, directing the expression Chasm’s way. “I’m so sorry, Chasm. I know how boys feel about periods.”
My eye twitches, but I’m not in the mood for a feminist rant right now.
“Oh, it’s so icky,” Chasm drawls, and I clench my jaw. I’m going to punch him in the balls later, mark my words. I take off up the stairs as quickly as I can, in such a hurry that I actually slam right into Maxx. He steadies me with those big, calloused hands on my shoulders, his gaze drifting down immediately to the blood that even now is dripping on the floor.
“Oh shit,” he says, and I groan, pushing past him and locking myself in my bathroom to clean up.
This is … well, it’s a fantastic sort of day. Not only did I cheat on my kidnapped boyfriend, but I also managed to include Chasm and Maxx in the ‘hot guys I’m crushing on who’ve seen my period’ list.
Even though it’s a totally normal process that every girl has to go through, it doesn’t mean I enjoy having them watch me bleed all over the floor.
I wash up, insert a tampon, and then change into sweats and a tank top, fetching a roll of paper towels from under the sink before heading out to clean up the blood. Chasm and Maxx are both waiting for me, sitting on the edge of my bed together.
What a pair they make.
My heart skips strangely, and my breath catches. It’s not a usual sight, to see two Instagram model worthy boys cuddled up on one’s bed. If only Parrish were here, I’d probably suffer a heart attack and die.
“I cleaned it up already,” Chasm offers casually, tilting his head to one side as I stand there with the paper towels in hand. My heart starts up again, but the beats are coming much more quickly than they should, almost frantic. That feeling of free-falling sweeps over me again.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I whisper, and he gives me one of his sultry bad boy smiles, the ones he affects while lounging casually against lockers in the hallway, watching over Parrish and, apparently, me.
“You know how boys feel about periods,” he retorts, and I narrow my eyes, chucking the paper towels at him. Annoyingly enough, he catches them between his palms and sets them aside. Maxx looks between the two of us with a quizzical expression on his face.
I feel suddenly terrified that he might find out what happened between me and Chasm.
Then, of course, I realize that we sort of have to tell Maxx. He can’t help if he doesn’t know the full story. My eyes drift over to his, and he turns back to me, as if he can sense me watching him. He give me an easy, confident smile, like the hero to Chasm’s villainous smirk.
“Anything interesting happen today?” I ask it first, so that I can have time to get myself together.
“Well, first off, I’m pretty sure that GG is a boy,” X offers up, leaning back on the bed on his palms. He’s wearing another wifebeater today. This one’s white, and it strains across his broad chest in a way that’s disturbingly distracting. Not to mention it leaves both of his arms bare, his thick biceps and corded forearms exposed.
“How do you figure that?” Chasm asks, slipping out of his blazer and then reaching down to unbutton the top few buttons of his dress shirt. As he goes to do so, he realizes that a few are already undone and the rest are crooked. His eyes lift up to mine, and I swallow past a lump of anxiety.
“He tried to hump me for one,” Maxx starts, and I let out a snorting laugh, clamping a hand over my mouth. Chasm gives me a look, one that’s absolutely dripping with innuendo. Like I humped you today? That’s what I imagine he’s saying, but maybe I’m just a crazy person. “Second, he sprayed the inside of his cage and also quite a few of Parrish’s hardcover books in the process.”
“He’s going to be so fucking pissed when he gets back,” Chasm says with a sharp grin, but then the expression freezes on his face and slides right off, leaving him with a pained grimace instead. “Fuck.”
Maxx exhales and sits up, trying to move past the sickening sadness that’s just permeated the room. He forces another pretty smile.
“Anyway, I looked it up. It’s possible that GG’s a girl, and still doing those things, but it’s far more likely that he’s … well, he’s a he.”
“Isn’t it, like, obvious?” Chasm asks, giving Maxx a side eye.
“How so?” X queries back, turning to look at his friend. The way they’re sitting and staring at each other reminds me of Parrish, that easy, comfortable friendship the three of them share. It’s something I thought I had with Sally and Nevaeh back home, but I’ll be honest: I don’t think that anymore. Not only could they not be bothered to return my texts or resist dating my crush, but I highly doubt my old besties would ever load a dead maid into the back of their sportscar and dump it off at a rapist’s house in order to save me.
“How so? Man, don’t make me say it. Does the rabbit have a dick?”
“Were you home all day with GG? Did you do an online search on how to sex a rabbit? It isn’t as easy as it sounds, and I’m not fucking doing it.” Maxx turns back to me, his eyes dropping to my chest before lifting back to my face. I know that I’m blushing. He knows it. I have no idea why because we’re talking about freaking rabbits here, but …
I did screw Kwang-seon McKenna in a hedge maze today, so my mind is in the gutter.
“Well, whatever. Your rabbit, your problem,” Chasm says with another smirk. The expression doesn’t reach his eyes, but that’s okay. We’re all trying our best here.
“So, what about you two?” Maxx asks, standing up and moving over to the desk. He’s already brought his laptop in here, sitting down in the desk chair in front of it. I wet my lower lip and glance over at Chasm. It isn’t like we didn’t know that the Slayer could watch us through tech, but at least now we know he’s been watching us another way.
“Let’s go see the bunny,” I suggest lightly, grabbing Maxx by the arm. His eyes drop down to my fingers on his bicep, and he cringes slightly, so subtly that I might not have noticed if I wasn’t looking for it. He stands up in just such a way that he dislodges my grip without being obvious about it.
Much to his surprise, I actu
ally reach my hand into his sweats pocket and snatch his phone, chucking it on the desk beside the laptop.
You’d think I straight-up punched the guy.
“What are you doing?” he asks me, his tone of voice a subtle warning.
I ignore him. I do not have the headspace to deal with … whatever this is.
“Just shut up and show us the rabbit,” Chasm snaps, tossing his own phone onto my nightstand. We head into Parrish’s room, and I take a quick moment to comb over it, searching for a spare iPad, a Kindle, whatever. I have no idea how extreme the Slayer’s hacking skills are, but I’m not willing to risk it.
“We found a hidden camera,” I blurt as soon as Maxx closes Parrish’s door. With his back to me, I can see the edges of those angel wings tattoos peeking out near his shoulders. He turns around to look at me with his brow raised. The thing is, to explain this, I have to … explain everything.
“We had sex today,” Chasm adds unhelpfully, sitting on the edge of the bed and yanking one of his dress shoes off.
If I were Tess, I would describe Maxx’s face like this: The world was rended and remade in an instant. Everything he knew became dark, twisted, like a clone of the life he once lived but one that was birthed wholly from shadows. He understood that his friends had little other choice, but he did not envy them the heavy decision that they’d had to make.
I bite my lower lip and X notices, his nostrils flaring slightly.
“I assume there’s good reason for that?” he asks very, very carefully.
This somehow feels as difficult a conversation as the future one I’ll need to have with Parrish, as if the stakes are that high. When we went hiking, Maxx confided in me that he was a virgin. At the time, so was I, a fact that I also chose to blurt out.
“The Slayer demanded I act on my feelings for Dakota,” Chasm says, wording the story in just such a way that he really does come across as the villain. He glances casually up at Maxx and then shrugs. “And that she allow me to do so.”
“And you thought fucking during the school day was the prime place to start?” Maxx asks with a harsh, dry laugh. He reaches up with his right hand and rakes his fingers through his wavy hair, his eyes closed in frustration. To be quite frank, he looks like he’s within an inch of losing his shit.
Payback Princess (Lost Daughter of a Serial Killer Book 2) Page 18
