But the things I know the Snake Eyes have in the works, the things Damien won’t stop planning, could put people in serious jeopardy. Namely, the two people Carina and Samaire seemingly care about the most, Sylas and Jax, chief members of the Daggers.
I know the girls aren’t naïve, but I can’t help feeling like a traitorous third wheel.
“Hey,” Samaire says suddenly, her hand soft on my shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. This is partly why I came over here, to check on you and make sure Damien wasn’t pulling any bullshit. I told you that day with the Cadillac that I would have your back, and I meant it.”
I give a nod, my eyes watering from the smoke but feeling like nervous tears. “Thanks,” I murmur. It’s strange to feel like I have friends again, ride or die chicks kind enough to extend the circle of friendship towards me. “It’s just, this shit with the gangs. It can feel sort of crazy.”
“The gangs are always doing convoluted shit,” Samaire says, the cigar ebbing away at her fingertips. “That’s why this is just about you. Us girls have to stick together,” she adds with a campy smirk, but I can tell she means it.
Maybe it’s the time she’s spent with the Roses, or maybe she just likes me. Whatever it is, it’s just the type of kindness I need, and the guilt begins to shift away from my conscience, no matter how temporarily.
I really don’t know what Damien has planned. Not explicitly, at least. A part of me hopes he leaves me out of it completely, while another, bigger part of me knows he won’t.
But right now, all I can do is live in the present moment. Right now, I’m sitting in the backyard, in the gazebo my dad built, having my first cigar with girls I might be able to consider my friends. For a single moment, it can’t get much better than that.
“You know,” Carina notes. “It’s pretty nice out here.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “It is, isn’t it?
21
I’m surprised my mother even answers my call at all, so when she does, I almost don’t know what to say.
“Damien?” she says, her voice spiraling into my ear cavity like an ice pick. She hasn’t spoken to me since I’ve been back, but she sounds desperate to now. “Damien, are you there?”
I should hang up the phone, I think. Calling her was a mistake. If anything, she’s always been on my father’s side, despite the harshness, despite the cruelty, almost one hundred percent of the time.
“Mom.” The word feels weird slipping from my lips.
“Are you okay?” she asks in a tentative voice.
I’m parked just a few blocks from Windy’s house, just at the edge of her neighborhood. I couldn’t make this phone call with her around, with anyone around. It had to be done in secret.
“You’re coming to dinner tomorrow,” I say. “With him?”
“Your father?”
A laugh sputters from my lips, and my abdomen aches. Thanks to the Sheriff’s beating, it still hurts every time I breathe. “How can you call him that?” I ask.
She’s silent on the other end, paralyzed by her own guilt, as usual.
“You said once I turned eighteen, you would tell me everything. That you would give me proof. You said—”
“Damien,” she utters in an exasperated voice.
“I’ve got nothing now, Mom,” I hiss into the phone. “If there’s something coming to me, I want to know what.”
She’s quiet, but when she finally speaks, her voice is low and quiet. “He’s been different lately. Worse.”
The Sheriff. No shit.
I wait, and listen.
“I’m sorry, Damien.” Her voice cracks when she says my name.
“Don’t be sorry,” I tell her. “Just help me. Give me the proof I need.”
A sob echoes through the phone. I can tell she wants freedom, but she can’t wrench herself out of his clutches. We were supposed to be the perfect family, on paper.
Only that’s so far from the truth, it’s not even funny.
“We’ll see,” my mother says. “We’ll see.”
I end the call, my jaw clenching so tight it feels like my face rattles. I start up the Falcon and drive.
Windy is already in the backyard when I arrive, hammer in hand, toolbelt slung around her hips at an angle.
“I was right,” I say, announcing myself as I head toward her.
She turns around and grins. “Right about what?”
“You do have your own toolbelt.”
“Actually,” she replies. “This was my dad’s. But it’s definitely been underused lately, so I took it out and brushed it off. There aren’t even anymore black widows in the pockets anymore.”
I mirror her smirk before lifting an eyebrow as a whiff of something that wasn’t back here before catches my nose. “It smells like cigar smoke back here.”
Windy gives a shrug and turns away from me. “I don’t smell anything.”
Whatever happened back here, it’s over now, and I’ve got too much on my plate to bother with her little lies. I step into the shed, and get to work.
The rest of the afternoon flies by, the two of us stepping around each other in an intricate dance of repairs. The place is starting to come together, all of the junk cleared out and the structure patched up with new wood. Windy is a competent apprentice, doing what I ask her to do and calling shots of her own.
I gaze down at her from the ladder I’m perched on. “They’ve should’ve named you Handy.”
“Wow,” she murmurs with a grin. “I didn’t know you were such a punny guy.”
I give a nod. “It’s been a long day. I think I’ve got it from here.”
She lifts an eyebrow. “Are you excusing me from my own backyard?”
“I reckon I am,” I tell her in a drawl. “I bet you’d like to get some of the sawdust off you before dinner. Maybe by the time you get out of the shower, you can come out here and help me with one more thing.”
“And get sawdust all over me again?”
“If you’re lucky.”
She smirks and steps out of the shed, heading towards the house and leaving me alone. It should be just the right amount of time I need to finish off the final touches before the big reveal.
If I don’t electrocute myself first.
But electrocution never comes, and I climb back down off the ladder, folding it up and shuttling it back to the side of the house. By the time Windy comes back out, I’m leaned against the frontside of the façade, nursing a beer.
“Does my mom know you’re drinking her fancy craft beer?” she asks me with a tilt of her head. She’s freshly showered, towel dried hair hanging in loose tendrils around her shoulders.
“You gonna tell her?” I counter.
She takes another step towards me. “Still need help?”
I hold out a hand to her, one she takes, and lead her up the stairs to follow me into the shed. “Your opinion should suffice.”
I flip a switch, illuminating the inside of the structure in golden light that dances against the shadows created from the trees just outside. Windy lets out a gasp, her hand fluttering up to her lips. “Wow,” she utters.
“You don’t like it.”
She frowns at me. “How could I not like light?”
I take a look around, surveying my handiwork in the sparkling lights strung overhead. “Your mom said your dad spent a lot of time out here. Now you can come out here anytime you want, day or night.”
She’s quiet, but when I turn my gaze back to her, I can see her eyes are glossy. She blinks it away. “My mom is going to shit when she sees this.”
A grin tilts my lips, but it clears away just as quickly as it came, because I want her know I’m serious. “I didn’t do it for her. I did it for you.”
She gazes up at me, standing tantalizingly within reach. “Thank you.”
We find each other, lips meeting in a kiss under sparkling lights. I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her close. Right now i
t feels like I could never let go, even if I wanted to. I’m completely under her spell.
Still, something inside me thinks we’re about to be tested.
Windy places her hands on either side of my face as I raise my head away from her. She looks at me with parted lips and questioning eyes. “Are things getting dangerous for us?”
“Whatever do you mean?” I mutter, pulling my arms around her tighter.
“Your parents coming over here. You haven’t exactly been on good terms with—"
“You’ll be fine,” I tell Windy, and I mean it. Nothing is going to happen to her, not if I can help it.
Sheriff Black will have to kill me first, and so far he hasn’t had the balls.
Despite the dinner scheduled for tomorrow, there’s something I’ve noticed about being with Windy. Her presence calms me like a shot of medicine, or the best kind of placebo.
I don’t just need her body, or her kiss.
I need her.
But I know there’s still unfinished businesses between us, things that need settling, but are so jagged and raw I’m not even sure they can ever be set into place again.
We could be doomed to be in this limbo forever, needing each other but not willing to admit it.
I don’t know exactly what’s next. I could perish at the hand of one of the Daggers, or the Roses, or the very man walking through the door tomorrow night.
All I know is that, right now, this moment I have her in my arms, feels like being at the top. And there’s nowhere else to go but down.
22
Dinner with Jessa’s parents. I fall into a mini sort of panic as I follow Damien downstairs.
Am I even going to be able to look them in the eye?
Memories of the way I could barely look at Jessa’s mother when I went back to their house for the final time trickle into my brain. I had been there to sneak around, to see if I could find the journal that Damien, unbeknownst to me, had already claimed. But for some reason, right now, I feel just as guilty.
“Windy,” Jessa’s mom, Vivian Black, says when she sees me. Almost instantly, she brings me in for a hug, and I feel myself freeze up, even as I try not to. “It’s been too long,” she adds.
It’s hard to believe there had been a point in time that I had seen her nearly every day. She had picked Jessa and me up from school countless times, and shuttled us countless places, giving us rides downtown or to the beach or wherever it was Jessa and I planned on making it a party for two.
I don’t know what to say, my mind drawing an uncomfortably conspicuous blank, so I only smile, a wide, teeth baring smile, one meant to convey happiness, but just feels like it could be worn by a scared animal, baring its teeth as a defense mechanism.
Jessa’s father, Sheriff Black, is next, and he approaches me before I can think twice. Instead of a hug, he reaches out and takes my hand, giving me an official feeling handshake. “Ms. Jacobs,” he says in a sort of tongue-in-cheek way.
Beside me, I can practically feel Damien bristle, and once again, feasible words escape me.
“Ms. Jacobs is still my title,” my mother says, seemingly coming to my rescue whether she realizes it or not. “Windy is still… my Windy. At least, for now.”
“At least, until graduation,” Vivian says. When she says it, does she think about Jessa, and the fact that she won’t be there?
“Don’t even remind me,” Mom says, throwing her hands up. “Time flies.”
“Indeed it does,” Sheriff Black agrees. His tone is amicable, sociable, meant to be disarming. But I don’t trust it.
The best villains are always the ones that hide in plain sight.
There’s a pause in the room, a chasm created by the lack of their greeting towards their own son.
My mother clears her throat, obviously hoping for the best, only not willing to face up to reality that it could be anything but. “What can I get everyone to drink?” she says. “Vivian, chardonnay?”
“That would be great,” Jessa’s mother responds.
For a second, everything feels slightly normal. I have a feeling the mood is going to dip and rise like this the entire evening, and all I can do is try and prepare myself as best as possible for the ride.
I follow everyone towards the dining room, watching as my mom mans the bar, pouring chardonnay into identical glass flutes.
“You know,” she says, handing off a glass to Vivian. “It’s been such a pleasure having Damien stay with us lately. He’s actually been helping me get the mess in the backyard under control.”
“Is that so?” Sheriff Black says in a booming voice, intentionally loud and interested.
Damien, who hasn’t said anything since we came downstairs, pulls a sour looking grimace behind his stony expression.
“Damien has always been handy,” Vivian says, and for the first time, she acknowledges her son, placing a hand on his shoulder. His face softens, but only slightly. “I’d love to see the improvements.”
“Then follow me,” my mother says brightly, glass swaying in her hand as she leads the way over to the glass door that filters out to the backyard.
By this time of night, the air is slightly chilly outside, and I wrap my arms around myself as a breeze seeps through the fabric of my dress.
“Now I do remember this being here before,” Vivian notes as she nods towards the gazebo.
“Oh, it was,” my mother says. “But it was in a state of complete disrepair. Damien helped to clean it out, which it desperately needed. Windy’s father could be a bit of a packrat.”
“He wasn’t a packrat,” I say instinctively.
“Just chaotic,” Mom agrees with a laugh. Her head perks up as the timer on the microwave beeps from inside. “That’s the chicken. Windy, will you grab it out of the oven for me?”
“Sure,” I utter. I’m feeling slightly annoyed and out of place, and the assignment gives me the perfect excuse to disappear and catch my breath. I can feel Damien’s eyes on me as I escape inside, but I can already hear my mother asking him to show the headway he’s made on the gazebo.
Grabbing a pair of oven gloves from the counter, I throw open the oven door, bending over to wrangle the baking dish out of the oven. It’s brimming with potatoes and carrots and a roast basted in rosemary, and I feel myself begin to salivate.
I must be hungrier than I thought.
I set the pan down on the stovetop, but nearly drop it as I sense movement behind me.
Sheriff Black stands behind me in the doorway to the kitchen, surveying my movements with interest. I swallow thickly, but manage a small smile.
He walks into the room with slow, measured footsteps, ones that somehow instinctively make me nervous. Soon, I’m cornered in the narrow kitchen, nowhere to go but back or toward him. Instead, I keep my feet planted firmly in front of the oven, glancing down at the chicken like there might be more preparations required.
“That smells good,” Sheriff Black says, and he leans in towards me, over me, breathing in deep to supposedly smell the food.
I give a nod, purposefully staying naïve, unable to see anything else but my former best friend’s father appreciating my mother’s cooking. “My mom makes the best food,” I utter, my words coming out in a breath.
“And you,” he says. “Did you pick up your mother’s skills in the kitchen?”
“I…” I begin. “I don’t know. Maybe—”
“You were always a bit of a daddy’s girl, if I remember correctly,” Sheriff Black says, his eyes examining my face. “I know it’s been a while since we saw each other, Windy, but you look exactly the same.”
I turn around, but he’s left me no place to go, so all I can do is brunt up against the stove behind me, my hands clutching into its warm surface nervously.
“Jessa would have been seventeen this past September,” he continues. “Which means, you must be eighteen now.”
I give a tepid nod, everything catching me by surprise. I wasn�
��t ready to talk about Jessa, not in the same breath as her father confirming that I’m of-age. It could be perfectly innocent, but the way I’m boxed in leaves it feeling nefarious as fuck.
My eyes flutter up to the doorway of the kitchen, heart taking a deep dive into my feet when I catch sight of Damien standing there, watching us. Watching me.
Or rather, watching out for me.
His hazel-eyed stare is deathly serious, eyes shifting from me to his father, but he doesn’t say anything at all. I shift away from the stove, out from the cornering presence of Sheriff Black, and towards Damien. I feel like rushing into his arms, but I know I can’t.
What we are, whatever we are, needs to stay a secret, especially right now.
But I have a feeling we’ve already been found out, in one way or another. The way Damien’s father looked at me said too much. His presence, his words, all of it seemed to be orchestrated to make me purposefully nervous.
Damien shifts to the side, offering me an escape, and I flee from the kitchen, out to the dining room where my mother and Vivian are returning from the backyard, their jovial tones the only comforting thing in an otherwise uncomfortable night.
And we’ve only just begun.
I eye the table, already set, making sure all the odds and ends are there as Mom disappears into the kitchen. There’s a flurry of activity, but I watch as Sheriff Black walks out, and places himself at the head of the table.
It’s a place that’s remained empty ever since my father died, but he sinks into the chair like it’s nothing, the wood creaking below his weight. My stomach flip flops like a fish out of water, but I know there’s nothing I can do, so I bite my tongue until it hurts.
My mother doesn’t seem to notice, going in and out of the kitchen with odds and ends as Damien comes out with the chicken. He sets it down on the table, ever her good little helper, before sliding into the chair next to me.
“This looks delicious, Helen,” Sheriff Black says. It’s the same tone he used with me in the kitchen, innocent enough, nothing behind his words yet something lurking there all the same.
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