Page 155 of Lessons in Cruelty

Not my face, but my hands on his steering wheel. Like he’s imagining them wrapped around something else.

I white-knuckle the wheel and follow him into the gathering dark, knowing I’m driving toward something I can’t come back from.

Knowing I don’t want to come back from it.

Chapter 38

Kai

I put off getting ready for the social committee meeting until the last possible minute. I’m too late to shower—although I desperately fucking need one—so I throw on enough cologne to knock out a horse. I take a gulp from the bottle of Jäger on my nightstand and slip a freshly rolled joint in my pocket for the walk to the sorority house.

It should only take a few minutes, but I stretch it to ten. Awesome night for a stroll, anyway. There’s a hint of ozone in the air. Moisture and raw earth. Clouds skate over the stars, ghostly against the deep purple sky.

I had an epic day, despite my hangover.

Best part? Haven was nowhere to be found.

Bet she finally slunk home, tail between her legs.

Fucking skank.

Almost wish she’d challenged me for another round of ‘will he, won’t he.’

Except this time I wouldn’t stop. This time I’d squeeze until those pretty eyes rolled back and she went limp in my hands. This time I’d⁠—

No. Fuck.

Can’t think like that.

Not here.

I lay in bed last night, trashed out of my mind, but still wide awake, going through the photos I’ve been taking of Haven. No new ones since last week, but the ones I have are plenty.

I’d been intending to delete them. Instead, I ended up with my cock in my hand, stroking it as forcefully as I’d held onto her throat until I came so hard, it felt like I’d left my body.

Just thinking about it, my cock is getting hard.

“Sorry, buddy,” I tell my cock. “That bitch is gone. Gotta find you a new plaything…”

I stop walking.

“What. The. Fuck?”

I’m too high for this shit.

Weed doesn’t make you hallucinate.

But this, what I’m seeing? It can’t be real.

Rooke’s Tesla parked outside the GAZ sorority house isn’t out of the ordinary. He sometimes gets involved in social things, though he hasn’t sat in on any of the previous meetings for the Rain Dance.

That’s not what’s got me feeling like my weed was laced with acid.

It’s the Land Rover that pulls up beside his car that I’m staring at.

Because I swear to fucking God, when the interior light comes on, it looks like Haven is behind the wheel.

But that’s fucked up, because at the diner she was getting into a shitty sedan from the early nineties held together with duct tape and prayers, not a Land Rover.