project

by Torrance, Asa

  But I’m still willing to call his bluff, because I’ve got cards I haven’t played yet. “Go ahead,” I tell him anyway. “What’s stopping you?”

  “Just trying to figure out your motivation,” Sylas tells me.

  We circle each other, guns pointed, the opposing heads of two factions nowhere to be found right now. It’s just us, the leaders, and the shit we’ve gotten ourselves into.

  “Well?” he asks me. “Don’t you want to give your big speech before you carry out your evil plan?”

  I smirk. “I do, as a matter of fact. And I think you’re gonna like it.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “It’s not so much a speech as a list of demands,” I declare. “And you’re going to comply, with a big fuckin’ smile on your face when you do.”

  Sylas doesn’t say a word, but he grins like I’ve just dared him to. He won’t be smiling soon enough.

  “First,” I say, staring down the barrel of the gun at him. “You’re going to dissolve your alliance with the Black Roses. Tell Sloan and her crew of bad girls to get bent. Better yet, tell her she works for me now.”

  “Why not just tell her yourself?” Sylas asks with a lift of his eyebrow.

  “Nah, you’re gonna do it, and you wanna know why?” I grin. “Because I’ve got you in the palm of my hand.”

  “And I don’t even know it,” he counters with a mocking lilt of his voice.

  “Second demand, and really the last demand.”

  I pause, feeling the tension grow in the room. He wants to know, and the suspense leaves me with a taste of the control I’m about to harness completely.

  “You’re going to dissolve the Club of Daggers entirely,” I say finally. “The gang will no longer exist, in any way shape or form.”

  Sylas’s face twitches before cracking into laughter. He’s so confident he lowers the gun from where it’s been trained on me this whole time, hands coming to his knees for a second as he takes a breath. He reorientates himself again, pointing it at me again with a sly smile on his face. “Hilarious.”

  I mirror his expression, and wait.

  “Now why the fuck would I do any of that?” he asks me finally.

  “Because I’ve got something you want,” I say. “A key. The key, really. To your mother’s jail cell.”

  The smile fades from his face like melted butter on a hot skillet. “Fuck you.”

  I give a shrug, and lower my gun. It’s my turn to play confident, only it’s not so much play as it is certainty. “Okay.”

  But I see the realization on his face. He remembers who my father is, and he can’t help but wonder if I really have the leverage I do.

  “Dissolve the Daggers, and set up a meeting with her lawyer, and she’ll be out in time to see you graduate,” I tell him. “Or don’t.”

  Sylas lowers his gun, not willing to chance killing me and killing the chance I hold squarely in my palm for his mother’s release.

  “What do you know?” he asks me.

  “Enough to change your entire world,” I reply. “You decide which is more important. Your new family. Or the old one.”

  Sylas grits his teeth. “I call bullshit.”

  “Like I said, the decision is up to you,” I tell him, sliding the gun back into my waistband. There’s no point in taking out Sylas alone. The Daggers are the real problem, but only he has the power to disarm them. “You know, you and I aren’t so different after all.”

  He shakes his head, hatred burning so bright in his eyes that it blinds him from everything else, including the possibility that I might be right.

  “I used to envy you for being rid of the tyrant that was your step-father. If you only knew the trouble him being gone could bring,” I murmur with a sigh. “Oh well. Ball’s in your court now.” I head towards the exit towards the back of the room, knowing full well he’s not going to try and stop me. “Once you decide, I’m sure you’ll know where to find me.”

  26

  It feels like I hardly sleep. My alarm goes off in the morning, and I can't help thinking the night before was nothing but a dream.

  Only I know it wasn't.

  I shoot upright in bed, tangled in sheets I haven't changed since my tryst with Damien.

  Despite the circumstances, it still doesn't feel like a mistake. I won't allow it to. I won't let myself harbor another regret when I have enough of those as it is.

  "Shit," I murmur. If I don't hurry up, I'm going to be royally late for school. It hasn't taken me long to adjust to Damien giving me a ride in the mornings, and completely forgetting my old bus schedule.

  But I'd better remember it fast.

  I shower and change into my school uniform in a flash. There's going to be no time for breakfast but my stomach rumbles all the same. Darting into the kitchen, I throw open the cabinets, looking for something quick I can grab.

  My hand lands on a honeybun, the same kind I tossed to Damien all those days ago. It bites at my consciousness with a sickeningly sweet nostalgia, one that threatens to drive me crazy.

  I'm not going to sit here and reminisce about him, not now. The thing with the honeybun isn’t even a good memory, it's just a memory, but since it's about Damien, my mind is latching onto it extra hard.

  It's not like I'm never going to see him again.

  Unless of course, he's not at school today. He could have skipped town, but I have a feeling he hasn't done that, not yet, because Damien hates unfinished business.

  Breakfast in hand, I bust outside. My brain has already decided to weave an elaborate fantasy about his car being parked out in the driveway, or at the curb. He’s leaned against it, arms crossed, smirk crossing his cruelly square jawline, waiting to whisk me away to wherever.

  Not surprising to any scenario based in reality, Damien is nowhere to be found. The only elements that greet my eyes are an empty driveway, a deserted curb, and the drab gray color of a sky still solidly committed to winter despite spring being just around the corner.

  A shiver twists its way through my every nerve as I make my way down the street towards the bus stop.

  I get to school with less than five minutes to spare, the halls of Diablo Beach Prep still densely populated but dwindling. My every intention is to just keep my head down and get to class, but as soon as I feel a hand twist around my arm, I know that’s not happening.

  I gasp as I’m flung into the far reaches of the westward facing hall behind Hudson Hall, my back slamming into the chain link fence behind me. To my surprise, my assailants aren’t Damien or any of the Snake Eyes, but members of the Black Roses.

  And all of them look pissed off.

  “Windy, Windy, Windy,” the leader, Sloan, says to me, black motorcycle boots thudding intimidatingly hard over the concrete as she makes her way over to me. “We need to talk.”

  “I don’t know anything,” I reply instantly, the realization that my suspicions from last night are true. This whole confrontation reeks of something Damien has gotten himself into, and brought down on the both of us.

  Samaire steps forward, arms crossed, her face grim. Any friendship with her that I had once considered salvable seems to sail completely out of reach. “You don’t know anything about what went down at the Lobo Loco last night?” she asks me.

  “No,” I say, holding my hands up in innocence. Despite the Roses’ previous commitment to have my back, I get the feeling I’m on shaky ground with them now, and it isn’t a place I want to be. “What happened at the Lobo Loco?”

  “Your boyfriend and his lackies attacked the Daggers,” Sloan tells me.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I say defensively. It feels like a juvenile denial, but it’s not a status I’m willing to give him yet, especially under these circumstances. He’s obviously dead set on getting himself into a whole world of shit, and I’d really rather not get dragged down with him. A part of me is still wounded by the way he took off last night, spooked by the entire confro
ntation and the memories it brought back.

  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one Damien decided to lay to waste.

  “Well, whatever happened last night, it spooked Sylas enough that now he’s not talking to anyone,” Samaire says. “I can’t get a hold of Carina, and Jax doesn’t even know what’s going on.”

  “But whatever it is, it can’t be good,” Sloan surmises, her eyes still locked on me with a skeptical gaze. “Any ideas what could have prompted the attack?”

  I shake my head. The sun has just begun to come out, ebbing forward from behind the clouds as palm trees sway overhead.

  Only here I am, still standing in the shadows, and stuck in the dark.

  “Damien doesn’t tell me anything,” I say. “The Snake Eyes won’t even allow female members.”

  “We all know that’s a crock,” Sloan says. “Or I should say, it doesn’t matter. Snake Eyes or not, men can’t resist spilling their plans for world domination with women they trust.”

  “Does Damien trust you?” Samaire asks.

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. We’re on…strange terms.”

  “Well, that’s good enough for me,” Sloan says. “Do us a favor and do some prying before anyone else gets hurt. Use your feminine wiles.”

  “What feminine wiles?” I utter.

  “Windy,” Samaire says, leveling a skeptical stare of her own at me. Since she’s joined the Roses, even her looks are more dangerous. Joining a gang in Diablo Beach seems to almost be able to alter a person’s DNA. “You’re easily at the top of the list of Damien’s main interests since he’s been back. There has to be a reason for that.”

  My lips zip together, an instinctive move to keep myself quiet. I’m not about to acknowledge the reason behind his preoccupation with me, that at times it seems more rooted in hating me for what I did than anything else.

  “Can you just try?” Samaire asks me. Her look turns pleading, and I suddenly realize there’s more to this for her than just the gangs.

  I give a nod. “I’ll try.”

  “Atta girl,” Sloan says with a satisfied smirk, but I can see in her eyes she’s worried. Suddenly, their collective concern and interest in what Damien is doing has gotten the better of me.

  Whatever is happening, it’s taking place on dangerous ground.

  And I suddenly realize that despite the favor I owe the Roses, I also don’t want Damien to get hurt. Maybe there’s still time to not only find out what he’s planning, but convince him to take a different route entirely.

  I doubt he’ll even listen, a pessimistic voice inside my head seems dead set on reminding me. Why would he listen to someone he obviously hates?

  I’d probably have an easier time convincing him to do the exact opposite of what I actually want, an act of reverse psychology.

  But whatever route I take, I have to try. I’ve already committed myself to as much.

  Business with the Roses adjourned, the bell rings with a shrieking confrontation. I’m officially late to class.

  I take the opportunity to head back towards the parking lot, scanning the rows of cars for Damien’s Falcon. It’s nowhere to be found, and I can’t help wondering if he’s skipped town entirely. Something tells me it’s anything but, that he wouldn’t leave without seeing his plans, whatever those might be, come to fruition.

  Then I hear it. The telltale roar of an engine, the streak of hunter green out in the street, things I’ve just intrinsically begun linking with Damien. My heart starts beating faster, and I bring my hand up to my chest, willing it to steady. If I’m already freaking out at the thought of seeing him again, how am I going to manage an entire confrontation?

  My feet start to move suddenly, the soles of my shoes tapping across the white pavement as I make my way into the parking lot.

  Class be damned.

  This is getting settled now.

  The Falcon pulls into the lot, rumbling loudly down one packed row of cars and then turning with squealing tires down another row, the exact one I’m standing in. I grit my teeth and wait, standing directly in its path. If he’s wants to go any further, he’s going to have to go through me.

  Boom, boom, boom, boom.

  My heart again, an anxious beating I choose to interpret as a war drum.

  If he wants to mow me down, so be it. But I have a feeling he won’t. Before he left last night, there was anger in his eyes, but there was also a specific type of pain.

  He didn’t want what was spelled out in that journal to be true. Not just because it was one of the final steps in Jessa’s big goodbye from this world, but because a part of him cares about me.

  I can feel it in the way he holds me sometimes, the things he says, and the way he looks at me.

  Despite everything else he’s done, a part of me still latches onto those moments, because they feel realer than anything else.

  His car is still rumbling through the parking lot, coming straight at me. We make eye contact through the windshield, but he doesn’t slow down. I narrow my gaze and dare him. If he thinks he owns this place, this city, and everyone in it, especially me, he’ll have to prove it.

  We lock eyes, and I think I see him smirk, but he doesn’t slow down.

  Maybe he really has lost it, I think. In that case, I’m fucked.

  The car comes to a screeching halt mere feet away, a distance that’s too close for comfort, but I’ll take it over cracking his windshield with my skull.

  I glare at him, not happy with his usual amount of confidence when it’s also applied to the brakes of his car, even if I know the abrupt stop was definitely on purpose, something meant to make me think twice, as usual.

  Only it’s too late for backtracking. The confrontation is already on.

  He cocks his head out of the open driver’s side window, and looks at me. “You getting in or not?”

  “You’re not staying?” I ask, my voice coming out stronger than I thought it would.

  Damien grins, a panty-melting smile under any other circumstances, but one that still threatens to bring me to my knees. “I only came here looking for you.”

  I don’t say anything. The only response I need will be accepting his offer to get in the car. And if I intend to get to the bottom of things, it looks like I have no other choice.

  27

  I take off fast as soon as Windy is in the car. Her hands flutter over for her seatbelt, clicking it into place and looking at me with a gaze that threatens to bore holes into the side of my head. I glance over at her. “What?”

  She opens her mouth to speak, but stops when I hold my finger up.

  “Actually, hold your comments,” I say, knowing the order will get under her skin, especially when she seems as wound up as she is right now.

  “What did you do last night?” she says almost instantly, lobbing her first hardball towards me.

  I cock an eyebrow at her, knowing the look will annoy her more, even if she likes it. “What are you talking about? We had dinner at your house last night—”

  “Afterwards,” she growls, white teeth clenching together between her pink lips. I grin again, but this time it’s because she looks disarmingly cute when she’s mad.

  “You know,” I tell her, keeping my words purposefully vague. If I don’t have to drag her into this, I won’t, even if I’m starting to get the distinct feeling it’s entirely too late for that. “A little of column A, a little of column B.”

  “Damien!” she shrieks in frustration, the wind from her open window blowing her disheveled waves around her head like she’s got mystical powers that come alive when she’s angry. “The Roses were all up my ass this morning because of you.”

  “Oh yeah?” I say, voice rising with interest. It probably seems like I’m looking to put her confrontation with the gang of bad girls into some sort of sexual context, but in reality, I’m just interested in what’s been passed down the grapevine already. My confrontation with Sylas has apparently mad
e front page news, and it fills me an electric sort of tension.

  Being this close to destroying the Daggers feels good.

  “Yeah,” Windy confirms, an unamused line stretching across her mouth. Her gaze tilts down the road in front of us. “Are you on the run now, or something? Or you just don’t actually give a shit about graduation?”

  A laugh sputters from my lips. “Sorry, guess I’ve had bigger fish to fry lately. Besides, you know what kind of break they give you when you’ve got a sob story like Jessa and a reputation like mine?” I say. “They’ve probably already signed my diploma.”

  She leans back against her seat and crosses her arms. “I’m glad Jessa dying is something you could use to your advantage.”

  “It’s gotta mean something, right?” I murmur. “Besides that this world is a cold fucking place.”

  Windy gives a sigh, but doesn’t say anything. I know she’s pissed at me, but I can’t find the words to tell her I understand. Not yet.

  “You wanna go somewhere?” I ask instead, pulling onto the highway that snakes along the coast. The ocean is a crystal shade of blue under a sky that’s cleared since this morning, and the sight of it is confirmation enough that not spending my day inside a series of dull gray classrooms was the right choice.

  “What choice do I have?” she shoots back at me, but I know damn well she’s the one who chose to get in my car.

  If I were on the run, maybe she would choose to go with me, too.

  “I mean, I can take you back to school,” I offer. “If your fishing expedition is over.”

  “Hardly,” she replies. “I can’t face the Roses again. Not without some sort of answer.”

  “And you’re expecting to get that from me?”

  “That, or an apology made ahead of time for the ass kicking I’m going to get from them for being connected to you. They already think I’m protecting you.”

  “That’s sweet,” I murmur, glancing at her. “Aren’t you?”