Page 5

Blood thumps inside my ears. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

I lift my gaze to the skull covering his face.

Bleached white. Horns. Black holes for the eyes.

No. No, no, no.

He’ll kill me if he catches me! I blink my eyes three times.

Three. Two. One.

“Whoa, whoa! What the fuck are you doing?”

At the sound of Travis’s voice, I snap out of focus and find him leaning over me, looking down his nose, and chin high, as I hold a blade to his throat. My hand is steady and sure, just as I was taught.

What the hell?

I don’t even remember reaching for my blade.

Eyes as confused as my own trail down to my arm, which I have to willfully command to stay in place, or risk slicing his neck open. “’The fuck is your problem?”

“Get off of me,” I whisper, voice shaky and unsure.

Carefully backing away from the knife, he pushes off my body. “For the record, you touched me first, freakshow.” Freakshow. Might as well have been my name in high school. The catty bitches would sometimes even leave little stick figures, like the ones from Blair Witch, hanging off my locker as a gift.

Craning my neck toward Conner shows no horned mask. No blade in his hand. No evidence to prove I’m not losing my shit already.

Icy tentacles of lucidity snake beneath my skin. It doesn’t matter what my eyes see right now, my head won’t relent the images from before. Mocking my desperate cling to reality.

In the absence of his body heat, coldness sweeps over my thighs, and I notice my panties hiked down over my hips. I yank them back up, scowling when Travis sneers while he slips a shirt back over his head. “You’re lying,” I accuse, and snatch up my sweater still crumpled on the ground beside me. The key falls out, but I loop it over my head, and pull the sweater over top, hiding it away, before either of them asks about it.

Gaze slicing toward his friend and back, Travis lets out an incredulous laugh. “Am I lying, Conner? Tell her. Who the fuck put her hands on my dick before I so much as laid a finger on her?”

“You’re full of shit. I never touched you.” I search his eyes for any sign that he might be bullshitting me, because the alternative would mean my body acted completely independently of my head. I’ve had moments, sometimes, where Point A doesn’t always connect to Point B. Times I’ve blacked out and can’t remember what happened, but I was awake this time. My eyes were open. Yet, a glance over my shoulder shows Conner holding nothing more than a stick. No mask. No toy eyeball rolling around in the sand.

“You’re a goddamn train wreck, Céleste. It’s no wonder guys have avoided you like the plague.”

“Let’s go, Travis. Give her the pills, and let’s get the hell out of here. I’m bored.”

“Tell her. Who made the first move?

“Who the fuck cares?” A part of me wants to believe that Conner’s reluctance to say is all about my honor and dignity, but he’s the same jerk who sent naked pictures of his ex to the entire football team when they broke up. “This is stupid. It’s cold as shit out here. I want to go home.”

White hot tension tears across Travis’s face. “Fucking tell her!”

Conner’s protests from moments ago might as well have been a pile of feathers tossed across the flames. “She made the first move! All right? Enough of this!”

“I didn’t touch you.” Even as desperate as I might be for the pills, I wouldn’t have reached for his shriveled dick. Not without some serious pep talking from my head.

“You’re a fucking freak. Always knew it. What kind of girl carries a knife around?”

“A smart one. Give me the pills.”

Tongue sweeping across his lips, he shifts his gaze lower. “Show me a nipple.”

The request is out of the blue, and I frown up at him. Talk about being a freak. This asshole has no shame. “Go to hell,” I say on reflex.

Before I can even process the idiocy in this, lights flash over the darkening sky, and the clipped sound of a siren has Conner scrambling for his clothes.