by Lyla Payne
*
The next night, restlessness set in. My room was the worst place to be, and even though I didn’t feel like drinking or partying or flirting with girls, I had to get out. Quinn’s party offered endless distractions. I decided to check it out, with plans to go somewhere else if Kennedy was there.
Things were in full swing and pretty crazy by the time I pulled in and handed my keys over to the freshman who supposedly stayed sober enough to decide who could drive at the end of the night.
I had no intention of being sober enough to drive at the end of the night.
It took a little while to make a round and ensure there was no head of strawberry hair in sight. Audra Stuart was there, bright red hair and all, and I thought again how adorable she was—I might have even gone against Cole’s warning weeks ago and taken her out.
Tonight, though, I gave her a tired smile and a wave, then asked if she’d seen Kennedy.
“Um…” Her bright green eyes swept the room.
“I’m not looking for her or anything. Wanted to get the fuck out if she’s here, is all.”
“Oh. I haven’t seen her in days. I don’t think she’s here.”
“Thanks.”
She smiled and looked as though she might say something else before the douchebag she was dating tapped her on the shoulder. Instead she grinned up at him like he fucking invented frosted Pop-Tarts and I made my way to the bar. A glass of one of Rowland’s best rye hit the spot. Finn found me and we shot the shit for a while, then a group of drop-dead-gorgeous freshman—Sebastian made sure all the prettiest girls received invitations to the tennis parties—wandered up. They mostly flirted with Finn, because girls love a baseball player, but one of them kept glancing my direction.
I thought briefly about flirting back, about what it would feel like to kiss her or take her upstairs, but it all reminded me of the night Kennedy and I came back here after the spring formal. It would require far more energy than I could summon, even if I’d been interested.
Which, as much as I wanted to be, I wasn’t.
Instead, I had a couple more drinks and left Finn, chatted with Quinn and Emilie for a while, and tossed back a couple more shots. It was almost a good time, and it helped me forget for a few hours the fact that my insides had been kicked loose.
Kennedy said drinking made her feel real things. I felt like shit, so it must be true.
There was no point in wrangling my keys from the pledges-slash-valets, so I wandered upstairs to find somewhere to crash, avoiding the room where Kennedy and I first slept together. There was one up on the third floor with the door standing open, and I flopped on the bed without getting undressed. The alcohol and the grief blended with my relief over my project and sleep stole away my pain without having to be asked for the first time in over a week.
*
The reason that particular room had been empty became clear in the morning, when bright summer sun hit my face as soon as it peered over the horizon. My mouth tasted like ass and my eyes crusted shut, and those combined with my pounding headache reminded me why I didn’t drink too often.
I’d been dreaming about getting a drink of water, so since I was awake at the ass crack of dawn, might as well make it a reality. I clomped down the stairs, thinking I’d find some ibuprofen, too, but stopped short at the sight of Blair in the kitchen.
She looked as surprised to see me, especially since she wasn’t wearing anything except a pair of underwear and a flimsy tank top that made no secret of the fact she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Her arms went over her chest. “I didn’t think anyone else would be up this early.”
“I didn’t mean to be. Thirsty. Headache.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty typical.” She frowned and moved out of the way of the fridge.
I grabbed a bottle of water and dug around in the mostly empty cabinets until I found a bottle of something that claimed to kill pain, then swigged them down and went back for a refill.
“How are you doing?” Hesitant concern edged the more typical cynicism in her dark eyes.
I shrugged. Talking about Kennedy wouldn’t change anything. I’d moved on and gotten my shit together after Trent. I would do it again.
“Fine. How were your finals?”
“Good, I think. Ready to get out of here for a few months.”
“Where are you headed?”
“My dad’s down in the Caymans for the summer. I’m going out there to intern at his office.”
I seemed to recall her father being some kind of big-shot finance manager or accountant or something, but also that there were whispers that he wasn’t totally legit. Most financial guys weren’t, in my experience, and the ones that made a shit-ton of money and lived in the Caymans even less so.
My phone rang before I could come up with a response that wasn’t colored by my current lack of propriety, and my stomach sank when Ruby’s number displayed on my caller I.D.
“What’s up?”
“I haven’t heard from her since Friday.”
The twist in my gut sent me looking for a chair, and I sank into the closest one while Blair eyed me with a mixture of concern and disdain. “Why are you just now calling me?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to be an alarmist. I figured she’d call yesterday, but she didn’t. What should we do?”
I kind of wanted to tell her we wouldn’t do anything, since she couldn’t even handle a simple job, but I bit my tongue. Kennedy needed as many people in her corner as she could get, and Ruby wanted to help. She cared. She’d talked to her parents and they’d offered to take Kennedy in over the summer and get her help if she wanted it. I assumed the answer to that had been no, but it had to have meant something to Kennedy to know she wasn’t alone.
The wheels in my brain were reluctant and sluggish this morning. Stupid rye. As horrible as finding her might be, not knowing would be worse, so we would go looking. The problem was, none of us knew where Kennedy went when she fled underground.
But I knew someone who might. “I’m going to talk to Sebastian. I’ll call you back.”
“Don’t bother. Just come pick me up, okay?”
We hung up and I looked up into Blair’s raised eyebrows.
“Kennedy?”
“She’s supposed to be checking in with Ruby but she hasn’t heard anything in a few days.”
“Where are you going to look?”
“I’m going to ask Sebastian.”
“Give me your phone.” She held out her hand and I passed it to her, too tired and worried to argue. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. “I put a couple of addresses in your notepad. Flop houses off campus where I picked her up a few times, but Sebastian would probably know more.”
“Thanks.” I took my phone back and headed up the stairs and toward the back of the house.
Sebastian’s room smelled okay, probably because someone cleaned it every day, but being in it always squicked me out. Who knew what he did in here in his spare time. It was like hanging out with Tyler Durden—always interesting, mostly fun, but never one hundred percent safe.
He wasn’t alone, some curvy blond I didn’t recognize tangled up in his sheets, but he was awake and sitting in front of his laptop when I peeked through the crack in the door. I jerked my head toward the hallway, cutting my eyes at his guest to let him know I wasn’t ordering him around but asking for privacy.
“This better be good, Wright.”
“I need your help. If someone wanted to stay wasted for a few days around campus, where would they go?”
“I’m not in the mood to play Crazy Eights.”
“Come on. I’m not asking you to do anything, just give me some phone numbers.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to be found. Have you considered that?”
“I know she doesn’t want to be found. I want to know she’s not dead, and I’m a selfish bastard.”
He sighed. “Couple of junkie flops down Overton, one on Fifth—by the new place selling app
arel?”
I nodded, typing the addresses he gave me into my phone. Sebastian also supplied the names of three of his dealers, even though I told him Kennedy wasn’t into drugs. I supposed those kinds of people all ran together, whether they shared product or not. He waved off my attempt at a thank you and shut the door to his room in my face.
I went back downstairs and climbed into my car, heading toward the DE house to grab Ruby. My chin itched from the day-plus scruff, my breath tasted like stale alcohol, and my skin smelled like I’d crashed in my booze-sweaty clothes.
There wasn’t time to go home. I’d lost Trent by not being vigilant enough, and I wasn’t going to do it again. Even if she was pissed, even if she was wasted or with another guy, I would make sure she was alive.
Chapter 24
Ruby climbed in my Jeep, not looking a whole lot better than I felt. Her blond hair flopped around on top of her head in a silky bun and she wore DE shorts and a Whitman swimming shirt that looked as though it had been filched from her boyfriend’s closet.
She handed me a cup of coffee. It smelled like heaven.
“Thanks. Where’d you find that?”
“Stopped at The Grind on my way home from Cole’s.”
“Oh.” I should have assumed she hadn’t spent the night at the house. “I got a few addresses from Blair and Sebastian. Two on Overton, one on MacArthur, one on Fifth. That one’s new.”
“Well, pick one. I’m not looking forward to this, so let’s just get it over with.” She took a deep breath. “How are you doing?”
“I’m not the one we need to worry about.”
“You know, Toby, it’s okay to need a friend now and then. And I’m pretty good at it.”
“I thought you hated me.”
“I thought you were a spineless prick who did Sebastian and Quinn’s bidding with too little protest, especially when my best friend was involved, but I’m over it. Holding grudges is for people who have nothing better to do.” She paused, taking a sip of coffee when we stopped at a light. “Plus, you care about her. I care about her. That puts us on the same team.”
“I’m okay, just worried about her. She’s going to come out of all this one day. I want her to be alive when that happens.”
“We can only do so much.”
I pulled into the driveway of the first address, but it didn’t look as though anyone lived there. The windows and front door were boarded up and the grass hadn’t been cut yet this spring. A yellow piece of paper taped on the inside of the front window said the property was in foreclosure, but I wanted to check it out anyway.
“Stay here,” I told Ruby. “I’m just going to make sure there’s no one squatting.
A peek in all of the windows revealed an empty first floor, but I also kicked in the back door and checked all the bedrooms just to be sure. The bowls, needles, plastic bags, and scent of cooked crank in the living room said people had been using the place, but the layer of dust suggested no one had been there in quite a while.
The second stop was also a bust, the house equally empty and sporting a For Sale sign in the yard. The third, one of the Overton addresses Sebastian had given me, yielded some results.
No one answered the door when I knocked. I stared at the peeling paint on the shutters for a few minutes, then pushed on the flimsy wooden door. It swung inward without much protest.
The inside of the room was hazy with a halo of smoke, and the smell of drugs ramped up my queasiness from last night’s drunkfest. The floor and couch in the living room were covered with people in various stages of stoned and passed out, and I held my breath as I surveyed the lot, blowing it out when I didn’t recognize any of them.
No one asked me what I was doing there or who I was looking for, and as I moved down the hall, peeking into bedrooms, my dread grew. I didn’t want to see her like this.
Pictures of my brother flashed in my mind like a sick, twisted slideshow. He’d been taller than me, almost six-foot-four, but by the time he disappeared, he weighed less than 140 pounds. His skin had turned gray, except for the permanent red rings around his eyes. He had more needle marks in his arms than veins, and I couldn’t remember the last time he’d strung more than two coherent sentences together. He smelled like piss and vomit the last time I found him, clothes so filthy they were stiff and scratchy against my skin when I hauled him up off the street.
Panic set in. Being in this house made my skin itch, made my heart beat too fast, and my lungs fail to keep up. I barely finished my unsuccessful search and made it back to the car before the dizziness set in.
I hung my legs out the door of my Jeep, dropping my head between my knees and concentrating on breathing in through my nose, out through my mouth in an attempt to fight off unconsciousness or vomit. Or both. The panic attacks were a lingering gift from my brother.
At some point, the steady hand on my back registered, along with the smell of whatever perfume Ruby had slept in last night, but I was too gone in the panic attack to even think about brushing her off.
The soothing touch helped, actually, and after several minutes of breathing I felt better.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“There’s nothing to talk about, really. Places like that remind me of things I’d rather not think about, is all.”
“Your brother?”
I squinted up at her, still fighting the freak-out. The sun assaulted my eyes and they watered, and the beauty of the day seemed like it belonged to someone else. In my day, it should be gloomy and raining.
“Em told you?”
“Don’t be mad. We tell each other everything.”
“I guess I should be glad she and I never had sex, then.”
“Not if you’re good at it.” Ruby tried a smile.
I wasn’t angry that she knew about Trent. If anything I felt relief, which surprised me, except it didn’t. It was nice to talk about my brother. It made him a real person, not the fictional character my parents sold to the press, or the one in my script.
“Yeah. I found him in houses like that more than once. It still freaks me out. The smell.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m glad I didn’t go in. No Kennedy?”
“Nope.”
“Well, we’ve got two more to try.”
She and I crawled back into the Jeep, then set off for the other address on this block. It was similar to the last one, but still missing the head full of strawberry hair I was looking for.
The last one was the newer neighborhood, and when we pulled up it didn’t seem as though this could be the right place. The grass was manicured and professional landscaping ringed the porch and sides of the house. Bright white shutters stood out against pale yellow paint and red bricks. It looked as though someone’s grandmother lived here, not a bunch of drunks and stoners.
The inside smelled the same as the previous two, though more of its occupants moved around the living room and kitchen. A tall guy with at least a week-old beard and long, oily hair came up to me when I stepped into the foyer, a confrontational air about him that made me nervous.
“What can I help you with, man?”
The instinct to play my hand close to the vest went up immediately. This was a guy who protected his shit—probably a higher level dealer. They were usually mean as fuck and unpredictable to boot. I shrugged. “Looking to score, and my sister said this was the place to be.”
He eyed me, suspicion oozing. “Who’s your sister?”
“Well, she’s not my actual sister. Sorority/fraternity pairing thing. Little redhead named Kennedy?” I peered around him, scanning the room. “Is she here?”
“How the fuck should I know? What’s your poison?”
“Smack,” I replied without hesitating. “Can I take a piss while you rustle it up?”
“What do I care what you do with your dick? Second door on the left.”
Christ, this was bad. I left the living room while he returned to the kitchen, thankful this seemed to be a one-story hou
se with three bedrooms. The master, which probably belonged to Captain Hardass, was empty. There were multiple people passed out in the others, and my heart sank when none of them were her. I didn’t want to find her here, but I wanted to find her somewhere.
I stopped in the bathroom because I actually did have to piss from the coffee, and my heart slammed into my ribcage, air sucked through my stomach at the sight of strawberry red waves spilling over the edge of the bathtub.
Her face was flopped away from me. I used a shaking finger to turn it my direction, scared when her eyes didn’t open, but limp with relief when breath tickled my palm. She wore the dress and my hoodie that she’d had on when I’d seen her Friday, even though this was Monday morning.
The gray skin, red-rimmed eyes, and shallow breathing tried to force another panic attack but I bit it back and sat on my heels, brain fighting the black fog and scrambling to come up with a plan. I wasn’t sure Captain Hardass would let me walk out of here with her, at least not without paying him for the smack, but I wasn’t leaving her here. She may or may not need a hospital, but now wasn’t the time to take chances.
I shook her but got no response. Getting her out of the tub was awkward as fuck, but I finally managed to get her over my shoulder and drag her feet over the edge. From there, I lifted her against my chest, cradling her close in spite of the days of unwashed hair and filthy body smell. Her breath was hot and stale on the side of my neck, but nothing had ever felt so good.
Hardass met me at the bathroom door, not bothering to hide his suspicion now. “Where are you going with her?”
“She’s a mess, dude. I’m taking her back to her room.”
“What about your smack?”
“Let me get her out to the car and grab my cash. I’ll be right back.” I shouldered past him, figuring alpha male pushiness would earn me more respect than sniveling, and held my breath until we crossed the threshold.
