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There’s no way he should’ve been able to do this to me.
“You’ll be okay, right?” Melody asks cautiously, reaching out to take my hand. “Without me?”
My grin widens, and I can’t help the small, surprised laugh that slips free from my lips. “I will miss you all the time, Mel. But yeah. I’m fine. And last time I checked, I’m the adult here. I’m the one taking care of you.”
The withering look she gives me clearly proves what she thinks of that. But instead of saying anything, she only hugs me again before picking up her duffel bag and heading for her mom, who stands waiting patiently outside the rental car that will take them to the airport.
She waves at me, and I wave back, smiling hard as the last few campers get picked up and leave Crestview as quiet as it ever is.
Footsteps on the gravel make me tense until Kinsley rests her head on my shoulder with a sigh. “I’m exhausted,” she murmurs, eyes slipping closed. “I’m dying, in fact. Literally dying of exhaustion. We should get high.”
“We should clean,” I remind her. “Unless you want to be cleaning Otter Hall at three am.” She groans at my words, telling me what she thinks of that, and I force a soft snort in reply.
“Okay, but we could go get high for a bit. Go to the infirmary and sleep on the nice, comfy medical beds. Doesn’t that sound nice? Just for a couple of hours? I bet we could make puppy eyes at Liza sp she’ll help us with the dining hall later.”
It does sound…nice. Especially the getting high part. Anything to make me feel not so raw today. And anything to make me stop imagining throwing Darcy into the lake. “Okay,” I whisper finally, closing my eyes as well. “You’re right. Edibles now, clean later.” It’s unlike me, but Kinsley doesn’t remark on it. Nor does she ask more than she had this morning, when I’d cried against her chest and told her what Darcy said.
I’ll let myself have this, just this once. And just for now. It’s not just Kayde, I think. It’s Melody, it’s Darcy. It’s me.
It’s the fact that I let him do this to me, and the fact that I have no idea how to turn this hurt in my chest to hatred.
But damn it if I’m not going to learn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
By day three of my week-long mini vacation between camp sessions, I’m bored as hell and ready to resort to illegal methods to have a good time. Nothing major, probably. Unless driving five miles above the speed limit is considered major.
With my mom on a work trip—as per usual in the summer—our big house in Wears Valley, a suburb of Gatlinburg and a pretty great place if you ask my mom, is all mine.
Well, all mine and the cats’. Plus the housekeeper, who comes every morning when we’re gone to make sure the cats haven’t gone crazy and all three of them are fed.
As if they know I’m silently badmouthing them and thinking about how they’re manipulating my mom into feeding them way more than they need, one of the Siamese cats saunters into the living room, her eyes fixed on mine as she gets closer and closer. Sure enough, Mint doesn’t hesitate before hopping up onto my chest and digging her claws into my skin under my shirt hard enough to make me wince.
“Ow. Ow,” I mutter, reaching up to unhook her claws. “This is a little much, Mint. If you’re pissed at your boyfriends, go take it up with them.” Since Yarrow and Parsley aren’t here, I have a feeling they’re locked in mock-battle somewhere else in the house. Meaning Mint is bored of them and seeking someone else to inconvenience.
And without Mom, her clear target is me.
She proves this when she starts purring, her green eyes fixed on mine as she kneads her claws into my shirt and skin. Out of the three of them, Mint is probably the cutest. Though she’s a little cross-eyed, if you look at her long enough. But to me, that just makes her that much more adorable.
My hand comes up, finger extended to scratch behind her left ear. Immediately, Mint’s eyes narrow, and her purr gets louder as I stroke her favorite spot. She’s needy, sure, but uncomplicated at least.
But I’m still bored as hell, even with her on my chest and the television at low volume playing some random summer camp horror movie that seemed like a good idea to put on an hour ago.
Instead of watching though, I find myself replaying the events of the past week through my head over and over again. It’s impossible not to think about Kayde, about Melody. About Darcy, though my thoughts towards her aren’t exactly positive. If I’m lucky, she’ll break a foot or get the consumption before Sunday, so that I won’t have to deal with her for one more week before schools start picking up and I have to go back to the real world.
Not that I really know what I’m going to do now that summer is almost over. I’m not like Kinsley, who has it all figured out. Or, at least, did have it all figured out. According to her, she’d made a very concrete plan to move to Pigeon Forge, get a job at her cousin’s coffee shop, and finish up her finance degree. It seemed—and still seems—like a great idea. She’ll be able to save money, finish school, and probably get just about any job that she sets her sights on.
But now I wonder if Liza will change all of that.
“Must be nice,” I mumble to the cat on my chest, feeling myself sink into another self pity party. “You know? To have someone that you might want to derail your plans for. Do you think it’s nice?” My cat doesn’t answer, but she does continue to purr in satisfaction at the feeling of being scratched.
“I’m not jealous.” I let my head fall back onto the pillow, refusing to look at the coffee table where my trash from the last couple of days is starting to accumulate. If I let her, our housekeeper would totally clean it up for me while I lay here like a lump that’s starting to assimilate with the couch. But thanks to my guilt complex and a lifetime of being afraid to inconvenience others, I’d rather die than let Elena anywhere near the trash that I could and should take care of myself.
“I’m really not.” Seriously, I have no idea who I’m talking to as I sit up slowly and push Mint down onto my lap. She prowls away, only to curl up on my blanket where my legs had been until now. “It’s fucking Kayde.” My hands inch for my phone on the end table, and I bring it to me before collapsing onto the sofa again, this time with my legs drawn up so that I don’t bother Princess Mint where she’s currently trying her best to ignore me on my blanket.
Right where I want to put my legs, of course.
Without hesitating, and refusing to think about how fucking obsessed I must seem, I type Kayde’s name into my phone’s internet browser. Figuring that he’d either given me a fake name or that he, like the serial killers I’ve seen on tv, is smart enough not to have any kind of social media presence, I’m not expecting anything to come up.
