AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I still have years to go.”
“You’re such a good student, I just can’t help but wonder if there’s anything other than school going on in your life…a boyfriend, perhaps?” Mom raised an eyebrow teasingly.
I shook my head. “You already asked me tonight, remember? I’ve only gone out with the guys you’ve asked me to,” I reminded her. I couldn’t trust anyone for their reasons to get close to me. I only went on the dates my parents set up to make them happy.
Mom nodded. “But you’re living on campus now, in the sorority house. There’s bound to be men at your parties…maybe you’ll find a boyfriend?”
“Mom, the way you’re saying it is like you want me to bring home some rando from school. Wouldn’t Dad hate that?” I pointed out.
Mom shook her head. “No, of course not. If you really liked him, your father would be on board. He dotes on you. You can do no wrong in his eyes.”
Except tonight I nearly ruined that. The guilty feeling about Asher and the pot snuck through my mind again, but I pushed it away.
“I haven’t met anyone,” I stated honestly. I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t going to jump into bed with someone I barely knew, and I’d never let anyone get close enough to really know them. I was stuck in a cycle of being distrustful of people’s motives and I had no way out.
“You should try. These are the years where you are so…free,” my mother said, reaching out to grip my hand. “A nice boy who loves you and will protect you…slay your monsters for you.”
“It’s freshman year, not the season finale of a zombie show. I can handle myself just fine,” I protested. Then Trent’s face entered my mind.
Could I really protect myself just fine? I had no idea. I was also pretty sure that even if I had no actual monsters at my door, I had plenty inside my head, and those would be even harder to get rid of. I just couldn’t open up to someone like that, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to.
Mom sighed and patted my hand. “Well, if you do, just know we’ll be happy for you. Don’t be afraid to tell us, even if it’s tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay, Mom. You can stop being weird now,” I told her, smiling to ease the tension.
She left soon after, still seeming troubled. She was toying with a necklace she always wore, twisting it around her finger again and again. A nervous habit.
I thought of Asher tying and untying nautical knots. How had he wedged himself so firmly inside my head after one evening? What was wrong with me? I was sure he wasn’t thinking fondly of me, or our little talk while smoking tonight. In fact, he was probably cursing my name somewhere. Somehow, I’d managed to make him hate me more than he already did. I was uniquely talented at being unlikable. My one gift.
I dressed in a long flannel nightshirt, closed the curtains, and got into bed. It was cold in Hade Harbor, with tomorrow being New Year’s Eve.
I plugged in my phone, turned off the light, and tried to shove the entire upsetting dinner out of my head. I must have been really tired, because it worked, despite the anxious feeling in my gut.
The world faded away.
Asher
Breaking into a house like Winter’s wasn’t actually as hard as it looked. Rich people were idiots. They thought that their multimillion-dollar houses and the high walls surrounding their lavish gardens gave them some sort of guaranteed safety. They didn’t. They just made them a target.
After Leonard finished firing me, security escorted me to my locker. My manager didn’t care if the drugs were mine or not; he had to take some kind of action, and taking it against me was a hell of a lot easier than against Winter.
That backstabbing brat. Why I had expected anything more from her, I had no idea. Sure, she’d pretended to be an actual human for a second, a girl far more interesting than I’d ever given her credit for, but then she’d screwed me over as soon as she could.
There was nothing deeper. She really was a vapid, spoiled bitch, and tonight, she was going to learn what happened when you fucked with me. I wasn’t scared of her or her father. It was finally time to teach the Ice Queen a lesson she wouldn’t forget. A lesson a year in the making.
I drove my motorcycle over to her house as soon as my place of employment finished throwing me out on my ass. Parking a little way off so the noise of the engine wouldn’t carry, I headed to her property on foot.
I’d been there before, but never inside. There was surprisingly scant security around for such an expensive property. It was the small-town mentality. Folks thought Hade Harbor was a safe town, especially in neighborhoods like the DeLauries’. If they’d ever ventured across the tracks into the part of town I’d grown up in, they’d have a very different opinion.
There were security cameras on top of the walls, but they were just for show. A deterrent. Families who traveled a lot for business seldom wanted to be bothered with overly sensitive alarms going off whenever a cat walked by. In the case of the DeLauries, I was betting they had staff on the property twenty-four seven, and that gave Charles a false sense of confidence regarding his daughter’s safety.
Tonight, I’d prove him wrong.
Families like the DeLauries’ were all for show. A plastic shiny veneer with nothing underneath.
I climbed the wall easily and dropped onto the gravel drive. The house was huge. Locating Winter’s room would be the hard part. There were a few windows blazing into the dark night. Winter’s mother was walking through the house. I followed her progress along one of the hallways until she disappeared into a dark room. I circled around, searching for a possible entrance, just as a figure appeared in a lit-up window.
Winter, dressed in an oversized nightshirt, brushing her hair and staring up at the stars. She hadn’t closed her curtains yet. She probably felt safe and secure in her privacy, her window overlooking the garden behind the house. Like she’d heard my thoughts, she reached out and tugged the heavy drapes closed.
