The Forever Crew

by Stunich, C. M.

  Ranger slams a set of ceramic mixing bowls down on the counter, cracking one in half. He's positively fuming, anger-baking in a whirl of sugar, butter, and flour. His words from the other night—slap your ass and leave a flour handprint—flitter around my mind for a moment.

  “Are you okay, man?” Tobias asks, trying to lightly touch his friend's shoulder. Ranger ignores him and continues to whip out all the ingredients necessary for a lemon meringue pie.

  “A cult?” Ranger mumbles, but more like he's talking to himself than to any of us. “My sister was killed by a cult?”

  Church pulls the pages from the manila envelope and studies them as the rest of us peer around and try to get a glimpse for ourselves.

  There's that symbol again, the one from the stone, next to Jenica's unique handwriting. No wonder Church claimed that it could only have been her who wrote the note; her handwriting is like a signature.

  This is the symbol I saw, on the stone above Libby’s bed. She snatched it back when I asked about it, and the bullying got worse. Way worse. I didn't think anything of it until I found that key. Until I saw them in the woods, wearing their robes and masks.

  Adamson and Everly, two different schools, one history.

  I don't like the way this looks—not for me, or anyone else who stumbles into this mess.

  The danger here is very, very real.

  Church turns the page without waiting to see if the rest of us are caught up reading along with him.

  “Where the fuck are my lemons?!” Ranger roars, overturning a bowl of fruit. An apple rolls across the counter and bounces across the floor. I struggle for a moment to decide if I should go to him or if he needs a moment to himself, deciding on the latter when he smacks the wooden bowl off the counter with his forearm.

  Besides, I feel like we all need to be caught up to understand what he’s truly raging about here.

  The next page shows a dark drawing done in charcoal that looks an awful lot like a door leading into a tunnel, like say, the one we stumbled down last year during spring break.

  Lionel is the only thing that gives me joy anymore, the only person who takes the hurt away. When he’s around, I don’t need Jack’s pills or Rick’s overconfidence; I just need him. He holds my hand the way a boy should always hold a girl’s hand—like he’d rather die than let her go, but also like he’d help lift her into the sky and say goodbye if she wanted him to.

  I should never have taken him down those steps or into the woods.

  This is my fault.

  And I’m going to make certain that I’m the only one who pays for my mistake.

  “This is getting dark, and quick,” Spencer says as I tear my eyes away from the journal pages to look at his face. He’s a bit sweaty right now, like he’s lost in the moment, like he’s just realizing that what happened to Jenica could so very easily happen to us.

  I lick my lips as Church flips the pages again, taking Tobias’ hand when he reaches down to grab mine. We exchange a look before turning back and finding ourselves face to face with a page full of that W-shaped rune, drawn in red, over and over and over again.

  They know that we know.

  The Fellowship of the Divine.

  They heard us creeping around, and they know.

  I thought if I went home for break, that I’d be safe there. But the way my father looks at me, I don’t think that’s true. Not anymore.

  “Ranger,” Church says, lifting his head up from the page to watch as his friend puts every ounce of anger and frustration he’s feeling into a lemon meringue pie. He’s whisking sugar, flour, cornstarch, and salt in a saucepan like it owes him money. Next, he’ll have to stir in the lemon juice and zest, milk, and butter, then carefully add the hot mixture to some egg yolks without cooking them. It’s hard as hell: trust me, I’ve messed up too many lemon meringues to count. Oh, and also been pegged in the face with a few of my zesty failures. “Are you alright?”

  “No.” Ranger turns around, his jaw ticking with anger, sapphire eyes an ebon black with rage. “No, I’m not alright.” His attention flicks to me, and I swallow. He thought he’d scared me before? Nuh-uh. Maybe a little bit now though. Yeah, and you’re like, excited by it. Thirsty bitch. “I need to get naked.”

  He’s quivering now, and yet all I can think is: how much can you love a guy who gets naked, dons frilly aprons, and bakes his anger out? The answer being: with everything you have. I bite my lip.

  “Is it okay if I get naked?” he asks, and it’s Church who answers, gesturing elegantly in his friend’s direction.

  “Take it off, please,” he says, and then he turns the page again.

  I’m having trouble looking back down at the torn journal pages. One, because it’s a bit heartbreaking to read. Two, because I’m maybe, sort of, just a little bit, freaked out by this cult idea. And three, because Ranger is throwing his apron aside and stripping right there in the middle of the kitchen.

  Micah sneaks over and double-checks to make sure the door is locked before he rejoins us.

  We have three pages left, three pages that Ranger’s already seen, that are freaking him all the way out. I have to keep reading.

  They only have two new recruits this year. Sometimes there are more. Sometimes there are none. But there’s always an initiation.

  There’s always a bit of blood.

  Dad knows. He’s one of them. And I know the things he did.

  I’ve been using the key to follow them around the tunnels. They speak freely down there about their blessings, their privileges, and the sacrifices they’re more than happy to make to keep them. The Fellowship of the Divine is a cult, an old one, with origins tied back to the Catholic church.

  And they scare me.

  No, no, they terrify me.

  The more I learn, the less I wish I knew.

  My name comes up more often than I’d like it to.

  Next page.

  I’m honestly not surprised to see a drawing of the fox masks that Spencer and I spied in the woods.

  Dear Diary, I wish I could tell you that I understood. But I don’t. Sometimes people do things that make little sense to the rest of us. Sometimes the people we love betray us. It happens, and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it.

  Today, I move my things into the girls’ dorm.

  On Sunday, when Jack comes back, I’m leaving. I’d go sooner, but I can’t very well send for a car, now can I? Because he’ll know.

  And he’ll never let me go.

  Neither of them will.

  They said to each other, “Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that plunder the vineyards; for our vineyards are in blossom.”

  Deep breath. I look up and catch Micah’s moss green eyes across the drawing as Church slowly switches to the last page. Jenica was such an interesting person, and she carried a lot of hurt. Reading these pages is killing me.

  “Too bad she couldn’t have been a little more direct,” he says, and Ranger makes a growling sound that draws our collective attention … straight over to his cock. It’s not erect currently, which is probably a good thing for me, but is he butt naked, and his muscles are, like, chiseled by the gods.

  “Wipe the drool off,” Tobias whispers, reaching up to dab at the corner of my mouth with the end of his blazer sleeve. I slap him away as Ranger swings a white apron with ruffles and an adorable lemon pattern over his neck. He turns, flashing that tight ass of his to the rest of us.

  “Chuck, if you wouldn’t mind …” he grinds out, as I blink in surprise at his glorious backside.

  “I’m not touching your balls,” I choke back, gesturing at the other boys. “Especially not in front of them.”

  “Oh god, Chuck-let,” Spencer groans, running a hand down his face. Church and the twins just smile as my face turns a brilliant ruby red. “He wants you to tie his apron, my sweet little micropenis.”

  “But it’s nice that you’re thinking about my balls,” Ranger deadpans, looking over his shoulder at me,
eyes dark.

  “I wasn’t though,” I murmur, even though my protests are a lost cause and I’ve already made a total ball sack … I mean ass out of myself. Carefully, so as not to touch his scorching skin, I start to tie the apron strings into a floppy bow. Ranger grabs my hands and pulls them around his waist, pressing my palms over the front of the apron. I can feel the hardness of his abs beneath it as I try to relax against his mostly bare back. His skin smells like leather and sugar, and he’s so goddamn warm.

  “Just … stay there for a minute,” he says, and I close my eyes, pressing my cheek into his skin and trying not to pass out from the dizzying gallop of my heart. My first day attending Adamson as a girl, my first time hugging Ranger Woodruff in the nude. Oh, and cults. Don’t forget about the cult. What a day.

  “I’ll read the last page aloud then,” Church says, exhaling like he’s already glanced down at the page and knows what’s coming. “I’m meeting Jack at the angel statues, that glorious spot where Lionel and I had our first time.”

  Ranger makes a choking sound, but doesn't stop stirring the filling for the pie.

  “I’m going to ask Lionel to run with me; I don't know if he’ll come. He's a good man, but a skittish one. A kind heart does not a warrior make. If he doesn't, that's okay; I’m not sure the Fellowship is aware he’s been watching, too. I just want him to be safe. I just want to make it out of here. I just want to live.”

  Church stops reading, but when I move to step away from Ranger, he won't let me go. He presses one of his hands against my palms, keeping me still, keeping me pressed against him.

  “You know what this means, right?” Ranger asks, the sound of his deep, angry voice rumbling through his body and into mine. If I'd been confused before about, what, exactly, our relationship was supposed to be, well, then, this clarifies a lot. I squeeze him a little tighter.

  “It means we still don't know shit?” Spencer questions, and I hear the old pages rustle as, presumably, he takes them to look at. “So, we're supposed to believe there's a cult on this campus, preying on students?”

  “It's fucking ridiculous,” Ranger says, but when he finally lets go of me, and I peek around to get a look at his face, I can see that he's buried deep in his own thoughts. “But why would Jenica lie in her own journal? It was for her eyes only. There's nothing but harsh truths and sad realities in there.” Ranger removes the boiling mixture from the hot burner, scooting it over to a cool one and putting the whisk in my hand, hot fingers caressing my skin as his eyes make startling contact with mine, sending a sharp thrill from my head down to my toes. “Keep stirring, don't let it burn.” He switches over to a glass bowl with the egg whites in it, whipping them with strong, hard beats of his arms. He doesn't even bother to grab an electric mixture. I appreciate the dedication—and the view. “Did you see her mention my dad?” More whipping, the clink, clink, clink of the whisk against the side of the glass bowl speeding up in both intensity and volume. “That piece of shit.”

  “Your father was involved, clearly,” Church begins, moving around to the opposite side of the island, so he can look at his best friend. His face is cold and dark, that seriousness that used to scare me so much rising to the surface. After meeting his family, though, it all makes a lot more sense. They're ruthless in business, ruthless in protecting the ones they love, but they're not evil or psychopathic or anything else. My heart thumps hard and I look back down at the bubbling yellow mixture in the saucepan. “So, what do you want to do?”

  Ranger starts gradually adding sugar to the egg whites, turning the mixture into a peaked foam that'll sit pretty on top of the pie when it's done. The oven dings, and I scramble to slip on a pair of oven mitts in the shape of pink bear paws, flinging it open and removing the pastry shell Ranger started before it gets burned. Carefully, I pour the pie mixture into the shell, and Ranger steps close to spread the meringue across the top.

  The twins and Spencer move around to stand beside Church, four gorgeous boys in matching uniforms that make my heart pitter-patter, all waiting to see what Ranger's going to say, how he wants us to proceed.

  “I want you all to get out,” he says carefully, watching like a hawk as I take the pie in my mittened hands and put it carefully back into the oven. He nods once, satisfied that I've at least learned something out of my time with the Culinary Club. Last time he let me grab an unfinished pie like this, I dropped it and spattered cherry filling on everyone.

  “You want us to leave?” the twins ask in unison, exchanging a look.

  “If you need space, that's under—” I start, when Ranger grabs me around the wrist and yanks me toward him, looking down at my face with a searing heat that has my throat closing up and my pulse pounding. Uh-oh. That's not a good look, not a good look at all.

  “Out,” Ranger repeats, holding me close and giving the other boys one of his signature glares. “You can wait in the hall, if you want.”

  “Wait in the hall for what?” I choke out as Spencer sighs and rakes the fingers of both hands through his hair.

  “Five for five,” he murmurs under his breath, giving me a look that says good luck, Chuck. “I'd rather you guys didn't get murdered on the way back to the dorms, so we'll wait. Just don't take too long.”

  “Don't take too short either,” Micah says with a bit of a smirk, excusing himself into the hallway. Tobias lags behind slightly, giving me a smile and then pulling out a handful of condoms from his pocket. He leaves them on the counter as the color drains from my face.

  “Text me when you're ready for us to pick you up. We'll be in the library.” Church moves toward the door, pausing just once to look back at us with amber eyes and a bright smile. “If you don't check in with me after an hour, I'm coming up to get you both.”

  “Might be longer than an hour,” Ranger says as Church grins and then slips fully out the door, closing it behind him, and then locking it from the outside with the key. Slowly, carefully, I look up at Ranger, finding all of that dark anger locked into a fairly intimidating facial expression. He's not as scary as he looks though, cute-stuff-loving Ranger.

  “Might be longer than an hour for what?” I ask, backing away slowly and entwining my fingers together behind my back. My skirt swishes around my thighs as he approaches, and I keep backing up, until I'm standing in front of the large stainless-steel doors of the sub-zero fridge, shivering as the cold metal touches the backs of my thighs.

  “You know what,” Ranger says, putting his forearm above my head, azure eyes swirling with hot-blooded intent. “Now get naked and put on an apron.”

  I shiver with delight as he goes to move away and then pauses, turning back just briefly to press a soft kiss to my forehead.

  I notice that before he gets out the newest batch of ingredients, he pauses to put Tobias' proffered condoms into the pocket on his apron.

  Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap, I get to do it with Ranger Woodruff! I think, biting my lip and then cringing when I draw the slightest tang of blood. Standing up and exhaling, I smooth back the perfect ringlets of my sandy blond hair, glad that I made the decision not to bleach or straighten it this year. I kinda like it the way it is.

  “Are you sure you're okay?” I ask him, moving over to the cabinet with all the aprons in it and browsing through a few before I find a black one with pink cupcakes all over it, lace and ruffles galore at the pockets, hem, and neckline. There are even little jeweled hearts on the pockets that I suspect could easily be real diamonds. Fucking rich people. “This can't be easy for you, to learn all this stuff about Jenica and your dad.” I lean my elbows on the edge of the counter as Ranger gets out an avocado, some honey, a banana … My eye twitches. I'm okay with trying kinky stuff, but maybe not that kinky.

  “It's not easy,” he says, looking over at me, quietly fuming. His blue-streaked black hair falls across his brow, his tattoos peeking out the edges of his apron. “But it’s better to know the truth than be left wondering. Now stop stalling and get naked.”

 
Pursing my lips, I step back and reach up to pull on the edges of the ribbon I'm wearing as a bowtie. It slithers off my neck and drops in a puddle of silk on the floor next to me. Ranger's watching, removing the lid to the blender as he studies me, my fingers shaking as I slip out of my champagne colored blazer and start to unbutton my shirt.

  “Back at my mom's house, you couldn't wait to strip down and get naked. But now you're scared?” he asks, leaving the supplies on the counter to come over and help me, pushing my trembling hands aside and sliding his fingers down the bit of bare skin showing between the parted halves of my shirt.

  Exhaling, I close my eyes and try to maintain some level of composure.

  “I'm not scared,” I say, which is true. “I mean, not of you.”

  Ranger pauses with his fingers on the lowest shirt buttons, hovering just above my belly button. I open my eyes to meet his sharp gaze, his leather and vanilla scent that perfect mix of bad boy and sweet thang. I want more of it.

  “Of the cult?” he asks, and we both shudder at the mention. “We're going to get to the bottom of it, for you and Jenica both, I promise that.” Ranger finishes unbuttoning my shirt and then pushes it off my shoulders. As soon as he sees the bright blue bra with the tiny pink bow that I'm wearing underneath, his cheeks heat up. “Fuck, that's adorable,” he whispers, putting his hands on my sides and making me tremble with suppressed need.

  This tension between us, it's been there from the very beginning, since I barreled into him at full speed, running from … Mr. Murphy with a knife. So weird. Anyway, it's finally coming to a peak, and I'm ready to tumble down the other side.

  Ranger slides his hands up my sides, palming my breasts and making me shudder.

  “The bra or the boobs?” I whisper, and a low, throaty chuckle escapes from him.

  “Both,” he says, sliding his hands behind my back and undoing the clasp of the bra. As the cups fall forward, I reach up to cover my nipples, blushing furiously. Ranger sighs, but not in a bad way, in a longing sort of way. “You're so goddamn cute,” he murmurs, turning my skirt around on my hips so that the zipper's in the front. “Even as a boy, with your dirty glasses, your floppy hair …” He unzips it and lets it fall to my feet, leaving my matching panties, garter belt, and knee-high socks exposed. “Jesus Christ.”