“What is it?” Edy said. “Hassan, why do you keep doing that?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. No reason.” He exhaled. “Did he hurt you?” Hassan asked, voice delicate as a melting snowflake.
Edy shook her head. “No.”
Images rushed her: the crack back of a thumb, the sluicing of blood, the skid of a nose off course. Nausea jolted Edy and she let down the window for air.
“Cake?”
“I’m okay. I—”
She stared down a second bolt of sickness and won.
“Call your mother,” Hassan said and then made it nearly impossible by taking her hand and crushing it. His grip juddered as if plagued by a seizure.
As the daughter of the reigning district attorney she had training for . . . mayhem, she and Hassan both did. A rudimentary form of that tried to kick in.
“I’ll—I’ll call her in a second,” she said.
Hassan pulled up to a stop sign, jerked into park, and crushed her in his arms.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, baby.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek, nose, eyelid, lips, and brushed hair from her face. “I cannot lose you, Edy. Do you understand that? I can’t—”
Belated tears stung Edy’s eyes. For all his talk, he was the one Reggie gunned for; he was the one that almost died. That image burned the back of her eyelids like an old photo negative: Reggie and his gun aiming for Hassan. It would stay with her always, like acid burns on the heart. No amount of tears could bury that memory; no amount of therapy could soothe it.
The bona fide fear arrived too late. It sloshed through her bloodstream. She saw it flashing in Hassan’s too-green eyes. When high beams illuminated the Mustang from behind, he shifted into drive and took off.
“Call your mom,” he said.
“Hassan?”
“It’s nothing. Just—call your mom.”
He exhaled when the car behind them hung a right at the next intersection.
With no answer from her mother, they agreed to head back to Edy’s place as discreetly as possible and wait in her bedroom.
They found the house dark, clean, and quiet. Edy knew as they navigated the shadows and climbed the stairs, that they were practiced enough to bump nothing. Not that they worried about being heard. Her father would have fallen asleep with his reading glasses fogged and his academic journals having slipped to the floor anyway. Her mother, if she had occasioned not to have slept in her office, would have tucked into bed with a half dozen assortment of sleep and pampering agents designed for absolutely undisturbed relaxation. How did she know both were there? Because both cars sat in the Phelps drive. Which only kinda explained why her mom wouldn’t answer the phone, no matter how many times they called.
Once in her room, space evaporated, and they found each other in an instant. Edy melted in his arms, dripping to nonsense, lulled by his heart hugging apologies and a trembling that plagued them both.
She shushed him. Under thin streams of moonlight, Edy stroked the lump on his brow with two shaking fingers. But Hassan claimed the digits in a fist and pressed the tips to his lips with tenderness, gaze on her as he kissed them. Heat bloomed low in Edy, curling and unfurling like a tease.
“I heal,” Hassan said and moved his mouth lower, tracing the line of her jaw with kisses, trailing appreciation down her neckline. It felt like heaven. It felt like a thousand chances plus two. “Promise me you’re okay,” he whispered. “Promise me you’re not hurt.”
Hurt was the furthest thing from her mind. In fact, she needed a recipe for breathing that second. Edy managed a nod and tilted her head back more, giving him better access. You know, in case he wanted to go a little lower.
He returned to her lips with a smirk.
“Open for me,” Hassan said, and Edy lit, sure as a match dropped in an inferno.
Their mouths met in a spark of greed, in hunger, in certainty—oh so much certainty now, with her giving, validating again and again, until she ached and unraveled, soldering up and into him, leg wrapping his waist, body writhing. She craved what she couldn’t even name and willed him impossibly close, bodies tangling till her remaining foot left the floor and his arm tightened. They collapsed into the wall, then the floor.
They giggled from the tangled little knot they’d made, him with his arm still wound around her. Edy had no idea how he’d managed to bear the brunt of their fall, but a glimpse of his lips had her leaning in. The corner of his mouth curled upward, shooting a thrill through her, sure as some drug. They really had waited too long to get together.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, then drew up again, teasing with tender deliciousness, drawing in steady certainty, before a press of the lips had them hurdling toward desperation once again. Slivers of hair trapped in her fingers as she wound him in. They were pulling, arching, not bothering to care; when that trembling whisper appeared in her head, demanding to know how far she’d take this.
“More,” Hassan whispered and his lips left hers, first to nibble on her ear, then taste her neck, burning her with roaming hands until she let out a shudder that could have singed. Whispers of love passed between them while air came in great gasping gulps. In their white-knuckled, sweat-ridden embrace he moved, they moved as if entranced. It occurred to Edy; she would have to stop this. Even as she had the thought, she willed him close, closer, with hands that clung and ran everywhere. He had no coat and she tugged at his sweater. In between deep and desperate gasps of air, he managed to get her coat in a series of careful maneuvers.
“Really, Cam. I don’t think—” Edy’s mother burst into giggles.
Edy and Hassan went still.
“I would tell you it’s late,” Edy’s mother said with a modicum of softness, “but I know how persistent you can be. No one tells you ‘no’, not even me.”
Edy got up and had a hand on the door knob without knowing how it happened. She registered Hassan hissing her name, then him, vice tight on her arm.
“No. Don’t even.” He shot a hand to the door to block the exit. She knew it didn’t look like much, but the odds of her getting out went to zero that second.
“Move,” she whispered. “You have no right to keep me here.”
“Edy,” he said. “We can find out what’s up with that call another day. But tonight, we either need to go to your mom or the police.”
Edy flinched, hating when he talked sense at her. She started after her mother again.
“Promise me,” he said and took her wrists with both hands. “Promise me there’s an us when you’re done.”
Her heart wilted; frail as a bloom past season, too content to be gathered up or undone by the moment. Hassan reeled her in, so that they molded, and pressed a whisper of a kiss into her hair.
“I’m going with you downstairs,” he said and drew away from her.
~~~
Wyatt watched as Edy flung herself from the Mustang. Anger goaded her into long and hurried strides until she disappeared onto her front deck.
He hated the tendril of hope that burned in his chest, flickering there where a heart should have stood. Never willing to peter out or dim but scorch to the greatest inferno with the promise of her nearness as his fuel.
Wyatt hated hope.
His stomach bottomed out; pain chafing at his insides in great tangled knots, knots yanking at him always, evermore toward her. Every part of Wyatt had been beaten in, chopped off, or scrapped clean; the whole of his body rendered forfeit in a series of high stakes bets.
The driver’s side door of the Mustang opened and Wyatt’s body tensed. Air escaped his lung’s, flattening without the promise of return. With the whole of his will, he ushered Hassan indoors to his home, to his own bed, to his own life.
Hassan eased the car door shut and rose to full height, shoulders tight, tense, weighted. Only when his head snapped counter clockwise did it occur to Wyatt that he was listening. He sprung, slick as a jaguar under moonlight, head low, arms, legs, body, a perfect tandem of obscene gracefulness.
He leapt mid-stride for the lowest branch, swung up and disappeared from sight.
Wyatt couldn’t understand. Edy knew the truth: that no future existed between Hassan and Edy, that not even their friendship could stand where it did, less all that they cherished rot and fester.
But Wyatt couldn’t convince her. Why couldn’t he convince her when the whole world stood against them? Why couldn’t he convince her of the truth he knew? And his version was the truth. He knew that because of the price he’d paid: the depth of his pain, the wrenching loss he felt every time she chose him, and she chose him every day anew. Wyatt was her faithful friend. Wyatt loved her. There had been no summer of girls him. There had been no cheerleaders to sample first. There would never be another for him. Only Edy. He’d been truest to her.
She’d woven into his soul. Couldn’t she see that? How could he make her know?
Time escaped in audible gasps. A fat, mocking moon tip toed across the sky, unapologetic in its creep. Stillness, darkness, nothingness met him in every window of Edy’s house, until Wyatt’s steady breaths became pants, and his head fell with a thump against a frostbitten bedroom window.
Do. No more thinking. Do something.
Guys like Hassan were men of action. Action accomplished things. Inaction accomplished nothing. Wasn’t it obvious?
Wyatt’s feet took to the task even as his mind spoke the order into existence. He didn’t bother with a coat, crossing the gaping maw of his bedroom—shrunken and mocking on any other day. He yanked on battered Converse and a wrinkled flannel button up, pulled on a ball cap, thundered downstairs, and grabbed his dad’s keys as the old man slept in his standard recliner by the door. A plan formed as he moved, quickening his motions, burgeoning confidence, igniting the quivering flame he called a heart until it roared fierce as the fires of hell. On his way out, he kicked over Hassan’s untouched donations.
~~~
Edy stood at the top of the stairs with railing and a bit of wall for cover. At her back, Hassan waited for his cue. In the shadows of the stairwell, her mother’s slim, jutting silhouette descended at leisure. There’d been such novelty in her voice, such an off putting sense of gratification, of velvet indulgence, of utter bliss. A concept so foreign to Edy’s ears it snaked through her, knotting white hot fear with the iciest contempt until nothing but numbness remained.
Buoyancy enveloped Edy on her descent, so she felt nothing. Her hand drifted along the banister with Hassan close behind.
“Now listen to me,” Edy’s mother said from the first floor hall. “We know all we need to know. You’ll ruin our leverage by lashing out indiscriminately. Donations have been coming in, which, as you may recall, was the point.”
Edy hesitated, uncertainty gathering like ghost fingers at her neck, ready to seize her by throat, should suspicion prove unsupportable.
She shot a look at Hassan, whose dark brows and thick lashes slipped low, face an effigy of intolerance. A silent conversation shot between the two before she nodded in agreement. He was right. Edy’s mother sounded . . . weird on the phone with Cam. Giddy. But Hassan was right. The night of a shootout wasn’t the time to tackle that. But tackle that, they would.
Another laugh, one silky as the first, shot a spike straight up Edy’s spine. They froze on the staircase and the doorbell rang.
“Cam! Someone’s here, at this hour. Can you believe it?” her mother said.
Edy cautioned a look back at Hassan. Judging by the stark horror swallowing his face, they’d narrowed their candidates down to the same people: his parents.
“Good evening. Mrs. Phelps?”
“Wyatt?” Edy said.
She shot down the staircase.
“Edy!” Hassan cried and rushed after.
Edy’s mother shot them an annoyed glance, phone wedged between her shoulder and ear. “Hold on, Cam. This looks involved.” She shot Wyatt an intolerant look.
“Go on, Wyatt. You were saying something about my daughter having boys in her room.”
Hassan laughed.
Edy’s mouth fell open, hinges dissolved, lost in the wake of this new storm. This friend—this best friend of hers—he’d come to tell on her?
That old fish faced traitor; she’d split him from gut to gullet and leave him on Mass Ave for traffic.
“Whoa!” Hassan plucked her from thin air; the first indication to Edy that she’d gone for Wyatt’s throat at all—aside for the whites of Wyatt’s eyes suddenly way too visible.
Edy’s mother groaned, as if put off by their drama, before slowing at her daughter’s appearance.
“I’ll call you back, Cam,” her mother said. She turned her attention on Wyatt. “I’m glad you came and I’m even more thrilled that you have taken an interest in the company Edy keeps. It’s a subject I obsess about, as well, when said company appears out of nowhere. Tell you what. Take a trip with me into the study, will you?”
Edy’s mother started off, barefoot and still somehow glamorous, but paused when Wyatt held off, back pressed to the door.
“We could ask Hassan to be your bodyguard if it’ll make you feel better.”
He followed her, eyes on Edy till he passed.
They returned less than a minute later, with Edy’s mother holding a few sheets of paper. Wyatt, on the other hand, had taken on a robust shade of Christmas green, as if Edy’s mother had fed him a shovel full of vomit in the interim.
Well, it was a possibility.
“Chaterdee, Rhode Island,” Edy’s mother announced.
Hassan shot Edy a questioning look.
I’m from Chaterdee. A soot-filled town on the edge of Pawtucket, where steel mills blot out the sun.”
Edy wondered if now would be a good time for her dad to wake up. She wondered it, but she didn’t dare say it. Not yet. She had to know what was on that sheet of paper.
“225 Willow Lane. Distress call received at 5:10 p.m. Police arrival 5:21 p.m. Incident Type: Assault.” Her mother looked up with a grin bearing wisdom teeth before continuing. “White, adolescent male, Wyatt Green, Reporting party. White adolescent female, Lottie Davis, victim, found semi-conscious on living room floor. Breathing is without distress. Multiple blows to the face, torso and legs. Knuckles scrapped. Fingernails torn. Clothes torn and poorly rearranged.”
Edy’s mother tsk-tsked. “So much evidence.” She looked from Wyatt, who refused to look at anyone, to Edy, her smile smug.
“Mom,” Edy said. “If this is for me, I don’t—”
Oh. If looks bore teeth, if looks sprouted fangs, then this one would have clamped down on Edy’s neck and sunk its venom deep. It would have taken its time with her.
“The reporting party, Wyatt Green,” her mother continued, “initially indicated that there was an accident, though declined to go into further detail regarding the type or location of accident. Closer examination of the reporting party turned up surface abrasions on both hands and a half inch scratch on the left cheek. Green attributes these to difficulty cutting grass earlier in the day.”
Edy’s mother tossed him a wink.
“Davis regained consciousness before the arrival of the ambulance. She exhibited considerable reluctance to cooperate with treatment or with the identifying of a viable suspect. She indicated that on arriving home, she encountered a masked assailant who attacked her. Her account depicted him as six feet tall with a black shirt and blue jeans, and no other identifying markers. A thorough search turned up no signs of forced entry.”
She looked up, at last. “This is what I do, Mr. Green. I make it my business to know your business the second I meet you. That’s my real trade.”
Edy had no recollection of compelling her feet to move, yet the audible thump of the back of her head connecting with wall confirmed as much. She’d found Alice’s Wonderland bottle labeled “DRINK ME” and guzzled when she hadn’t meant to, choking on its contents till she shrunk down and drowned in her problems. She found the cake labeled “EAT ME” and shoved it in her mouth, gouging without
hunger. She swelled on her mother’s suspected affair with Cam, on what Wyatt might have done, on lips that wouldn’t call her father, on tears that wanted to and couldn’t fall. The night had no bottom at all.
“I have more ammunition,” her mother said and deigned to look in Edy’s direction. “Like a knock next door. In case you need persuasion to shut your mouth.”
Hassan took a step closer to Edy and placed a hand at the small of her back. Up until then, he’d been a model of indifference for the most part, removed from their spectacle, gathering intel.
“Or what?” he said.
“Quid pro quo. We can all pretend it’s yesterday. Friendships for everyone. Or rather, almost everyone. Cam and Rebecca, Hassan and Edy.” Her mouth dragged in an exaggeratedly sympathetic look at Wyatt. “None for you, I’m afraid. All I can promise is that we’ll be discreet about your background. I don’t think you’ll convince Edy to—” a giggle escaped her, and she placed a hand to her mouth to cover it “—date you.”
Outside, headlights flashed, illuminating the entire living room.
“What in the world?” Edy’s mother murmured, and took on a purposeful stride towards the window.
“No,” Hassan moaned.
He shot past her, threw open the curtains, and cursed. “Get down. Get down now!”
He exploded full throttle. Every bit of muscle and mass gunned until he slammed Edy to the ground. The room flashed black, then white, and the taste of bitter metal filled her mouth. Suffocation. With Hassan atop her as if he could shield her from the Earth’s existence, she could find no oxygen at all.
“Hassan, please. Let go of my ankle!” Edy’s mother shouted as if touching the ankle of an elected official were a serious government matter.
“Please don’t move,” he whispered.
Numbness toyed with Edy’s limbs. Eventually, moving wouldn’t be an option.
“What are you playing at?” Wyatt said, from the floor. Though she couldn’t see him, trembles laced every word. “Who’s outside, exactly? Another girl?”
“Shut. Up,” Hassan said. “And stay on the floor.”
“He had other girls,” Wyatt hissed. “There have always been other girls.”
Love Edy Page 26
